Essen 2008: The Three Commandments

The Lamont brothers have a second Essen release this year. This is a collaboration with Friedemann Friese that is being released as Die 3 Gebote by Bewitched Spiele and The Three Commandments by Rio Grande.

Each player takes the role of a High Priestess once and determines the rules of her own religion. The other players are novices trying to sense these rules and thus gather as much karma as possible. The “priestess” player secretly chooses four cards that determine which actions are rewarded and which taboo. The other players simply move a pawn on the board and are awarded points by the priestess based on how their actions (including seemingly irrelevant ones like body movement or tone of voice) correspond with the rules. At the end of a round the priestess receives the same score as the highest-scoring adept, encouraging her to make the rules difficult but not impossible to guess.

This looks an interesting deduction game that could be a load of fun, depending on which obscure rules are picked by the players.