Royal Wedding (a name that really needs to be changed) draws loose inspiration from the fascinating Crusader Kings II. CKII is what Civilization would be if, instead of playing as an eternal and effectively-omnipotent ruler, you played as a specific person with no more than about 40 years of rulership in you. If you want to keep playing after that, you need to arrange to have an heir.

Manipulating royal lines of succession is one of the best parts of CKII. Royal Wedding runs with that idea of political marriages, following up on CKII‘s example (and a great conversation with my Game Center colleague Alexander King) by putting intense focus on the question of who’s related to who. Your ability to carry out key game functions increases or is constrained depending on whom you have marriage ties with, and how closely those ties bind.

In play, Royal Wedding is to Diplomacy what Dark Moon is to Battlestar Galactica–or at least, I hope so. The intent was to provide the Machiavellian calculation that Diplomacy inspires in a much shorter timeframe. I’ll leave it to the player to decide whether the game succeeds. 🙂

The rules for Royal Wedding can be found here. Print-and-play elements amount only to a few cards, so this is an easy one to assemble. I hope you enjoy it!