Packing Games for Bahrain

I’m headed off to Bahrain! Only for a few months, but I’ve got limited space in my bags. So what to bring along?

As tempted as I am to bring along my beautiful Star Wars Legion models to play with my friend who’s already over there, I don’t want to risk breaking them, and I’d have to go without the speeder bikes and airspeeders, and that’s no fun. Instead, I need some small and compact games to fill the time. I’ll be taking along a few one-shot games, simple things to pick up and play. I’ve got a small Loot Crate box, so I’ll be filling that with anything I can.

First on the list: The Quiet Year. It’s a small compact game of a deck of cards and a single rulebook. All you need is a pen and paper as you and the other players create a setting and tell the story of a small settlement in a post-apocalyptic society, trying to survive before they are wiped out come winter. “For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. One quiet year, with which to build our community up and learn once again how to work together. Come Winter, the Frost Shepherds will arrive and we might not survive beyond that. But we don’t know that yet.” It’s beautiful and tragic. Really good stuff.

Second: Durance. In Durance, you play the prisoners and guards of a prison planet, sent by the government to colonize a new world. But this far from home, with no way of leaving the world, what is the difference between the guards and the prisoners? Each player will play a character on either side of the Prisoner/Guard line, and you’ll watch as it all falls apart.

Third: Downfall. You and the other players will tell the story about the fall of a civilization. What is it that brought this place down? What corrupting influence destroyed it? This game’s great because you can use it in literally any setting.

Finally, Microscope. With Microscope, you tell the story of a civilization from beginning to end, skipping around and exploring various elements from various degrees of detail.

As you can see, all of these games deal with civilizations and how we make them work. They also don’t require the players to be tied to specific characters, but instead explore things on a broader scale.

What other games should I include as I pack? Space is limited! Lemme know.