I only kept a very few "monster" wargames in the sell-off. Most of them are just too big, too time-consuming, and in most cases I have a game handy that does what the monster does in a smaller, more manageable package. One of the monsters I kept is Europa Universalis. A thread on BGG recently asked what game we would play if we had an entire week off, a picked set of gamers, and infinite space. I picked Europa Universalis--a mess, but a glorious one. There's been no game like it. 1492-1792 in yearly frickin' turns, that covers everything from conquering the New World to squabbling over the old one to developing new technologies to industrialization to the development of a merchant marine to the Reformation...it's an amazing achievement.
And I don't think anyone has the foggiest idea how to play.
It came out in 1993, so it's about seventeen years old. About the same age as the freshmen I teach history to. (Good God.) I bought it for $20, because the store in Austin (the one up north that sold train stuff, too) put the wrong sticker on it. Anyway, for the past seventeen years there has been a community of Europa Universalis players (such as myself) that has been trying to figure out the rules. We have not yet succeeded. Every day, there are a fair number of rules questions posted to the mailing list, from people who have played the game twenty times.
It doesn't help that there are various versions of the rules out there. There are the original French rules, the French rules with errata--and there are many iterations of the errata--French rules with expansion rules and clarifications, the second edition French rules...and then there are the English rules, which were officially done by the publisher but are often laughably bad (these are the rules that follow a "homogeneous rubric"). Any version of these rules is labyrinthine. One group of players has split off to forge a new set of rules so you can play a game with the old components but new(ish) rules. And now that set of rules has translation issues, since it was decided to do it all in English since that was a common language...even if it's a third language for many! And of course it has errata of its own, and clarificaitons...and for both sets of rules, there's a running argument about whether the exegetical work carried out online is "official" and also what "official" could possibly mean because the very concept of a Europa Universalis tournament is patently absurd.
So here's the thing. Is there something one can call "The Rules" to Europa Universalis? Is there some ideal ruleset that's worth approximating, or I daresay achieving? At some point during this game's early days the designer and developer presumably had some reasonably hard-and-fast idea of how you were supposed to go about playing the game. The designer and developer have shrunk back, however, and direct access to this kind of information is no longer with us. We have to deal with what we have, which is the rules, the components, occasional flashes of insight from the publisher (now sunk under the waves), and cold reason.
It's an interesting philosophical question. One group is questing after the One Perfect Set of Rules, which preexisted the published game, which any player can take and use, with or without a homogenous rubric. Another group (Hi!) has given up, and accepts that playing a game of Europa Universalis requires having a roll of ludic duct tape handy to kluge one misinterpretation after another.
We all like the game; none of us play it enormously often, because it's just not that kind of game. I'm toying with the idea of setting it up again for a great, silly solitaire experience. But I don't think two games have ever been played with the same set of rules, and I don't think it'll ever happen.
(More fun with philosophy: Are all these then playings of the same game? By what criteria can one say that a particular playing was "more incorrect" than another?)
Anyway, it's impressive to see a game with such a hardcore following, a group that one can say has faith in the game, that sees its greatness despite all its shortcomings. I can also see why it got turned into a computer game...with very different rules.
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