Archivist’s Dream report— Cardboard ritual

I could spend the majority of this article glazing the Wehrle brothers and John Company, but that would be wasting time retreading old ground. Suffice to say, it's a god damn masterpiece, and I leapt at the chance to participate in their megagame-esque layer that they held at Gen Con. Friday night, around 30 of us filed into a hotel ballroom, divided into our houses, and got on with the business of ineptly colonizing India for a chance at wealth and glory. Nominally, we were playing John Company, but a few twists ratcheted the experience from masterfully curated East India Company exhibit to Quantum Leap, 1700s British aristocracy edition. 

Whenever a family added a piece to the board or gained the PM title, the family's leader tapped a volunteer to take on that role, to be called up to the table with the actual board on the other side of the room whenever something happened relating to that piece. Otherwise, we generally hung around in the circles of chairs that became our de facto London schmoozing with other families, gossiping about recent events in India, or talking shit to the downtrodden poors whose plans were failing to produce fruit. Of course, nothing was ever stopping you from taking a walk over to the board when you hadn't been called over, but it was so far, the chairs were comfy, everyone else was sitting around as well, and you'd be getting updates from whoever in your family had to run over anyway, so it never felt worth the hassle. Finally, whenever there was some great going-on in India, somebody relevant was tapped to write a letter about it.

Like any experimental format, there were some rough edges and kinks that reared their heads, but that was entirely overridden by the sort of magic that makes me fall in love with the hobby all over again. When it was announced that the first dividends weren't being paid, the room erupted in boosts, and that family was on damage control for the rest of the night. Of course, it was almost definitely the right play in a strict John Company the board game sense, with the big players barely ever actually looking at the board and being pressured by people even less present, but they didn't have the board in front of them to reinforce any argument for that decision. Which made it that much more delicious when my family successfully embezzled half the company's and that wasn't announced,  simply leaving the room questioning how we had so much money to throw around, and me as the one tapped to write the wildly paranoid that someone would see, so instead I opted to write some fluff about being governor and really wanting to build a ship. That decision, coupled with the majesty of the model ships being plopped on the board, led to me being sorely tempted to let my region burn in the final round. Not because of roleplay reasons, and certainly not because of John Company reasons, but because my governorship had been mostly ineffective and that ship was to be my legacy, dammit! But then I remembered how much money we were sitting on and how well I could retire if I survived, so I swallowed my pride to abandon my prestige project. Suffice to say, I've never had a game occupy my brain quite this fully, and I've been kicking around how I could run my own rendition whenever I persuade some indeterminate amount of people to create magic out of cardboard and flesh.