Review of GURPS Illuminati

Goto [ Index ]

Trailer Parks Gods, a card game based on the idea that the white trash humor mine hasn't been quite depleted yet, is worth every cent of its purchase price - but no more.

Special thanks to Brady "That was my good silk shirt!" Hustad, Pete "Can I be an American now please?" Indge, Brett "Hold the blanket a little lower" Paul, and Eric "the Barbain" Scott for their indispensable aid in playtesting Trailer Park Gods. [And, for the record, I am John "If you squeeze a bee" Grose.]

Components:

The envelope Trailer Park Gods comes in contains a yellow sheet of rules and a stack of photocopied cardstock cards. While the transfer process left something to be desired as far as the card backs and art is concerned, the cards themselves are nicely cut and everything is centered on them. The whole thing smells like Kinkos on a Saturday afternoon.

One needed component that is not included in the envelope is counters or something to represent about fifty "followers" and "High-Falootinosity points." Dice work well for this, as do pennies, Pente stones, glass eyes, toenail clippings, a small pile of yesterday's boogers, slips of paper with the phone numbers of ex-girlfriends who didn't understand gaming on them, scratch paper, beans, etc..

The Premise:

The god of trailer parks, one of the few divine beings who was able to maintain an active portfolio in the modern world, met with an unfortunate accident and now a heavenly troop of forgotten and dusty gods are vying to fill his shoes (which are really just old K-Mart flip flops).

The Rules:

The object of the game is to win by acquiring a positive High-Falootinosity rating or by knocking out all the other players - or, preferably, by knocking out some of the other chip-scarfing, soda-drinking, semi-confident players and then acquiring a positive High-Falootinosity rating.

Each player starts out with -3 High-Falootinosity points. High-Falootinosity points are gained by successfully completing an advancement (which are the little things that make life worth living in the trailer park). Each time you gain a High-Falootinosity point, you take two followers from each player and your hand size increase by one. If you knock a player out of the game, you get his or her High-Falootinosity points and the Component Cards in front of him or her.

You complete an advancement by collecting all three of its Components. Components are represented by cards, which are played in front of you on your turn. The Psychic Hotline advancement requires, for example, the "Possumgirl Eunice," "Enrique Estrada," and "Make Big Money" Component Cards. When all three Components for an advancement are in front of you, they are placed in the discard pile and you get one High-Falootinosity point. If the art on all three cards matches, you get two points instead of just one.

You can knock a player out of the game by killing off all of his or her followers. Each player starts the game with fifty followers. The second type of card in the draw deck are Attack Cards. These list some natural disaster which regularly afflicts trailer parks and the number of followers a player loses when targeted by the card. Attack Cards are discarded after use. "Earthquake" is an example of an Attack Card. It says "Earthquake" at the top and "Lose 2 followers" at the bottom.

There is a third type of card which is neither an Attack or a Component, but which has some other game effect, i.e., "Divine Piledriver" allows the player to sacrifice any number of his or her followers to destroy an equal number of another player's followers.

All the different types of cards are shuffled together into one draw deck. The starting hands is five cards. Anyone caught cheating gets to help mama feed the pit bull Vienna sausages.

There are three steps to every player's turn. The first is to lose one follower for every Component Card sitting in front of you.

The next step is to play one card. You may play any type you wish. Component Cards may be played in front of another player in order to inflate that player's losses in the first step.

The final step is to refill your hand to your maximum hand size. (Those of you who dropped out of grade school to help pa with the family rendering business can ask the other players to let you know how many cards that is.)

A particularly amusing house rule is to require all quotes to be read aloud in an appropriate when a Component Card is played ("You're proud of the special love you and your cousin share, and now you can get paid to let the whole world know it…'Course, your wife won't be too happy"). When an advancement is completed, the player completing it must read its description from the back of the rules sheet ("Junkyard: I remember it like it was yesterday. There was this hippie van that got into a head-on with a semi. When they brought it in, it was pretty well totaled, and it smelled kinda funny, but the bed in the back was still good. Well, call me a hopeless romantic, but the way the winos were singin', and the way the moonlight reflected off the shattered safety glass, stirred me and your mama somethin' fierce. You was conceived here son. Behold Billy Bob…the only thing greater than you").

Overall:

Trailer Park Gods is amusing for about one afternoon. It's strategies are not complex (the game needs one more strategic element to make it sing) and there are only so many amusing quotes to read. Once you've played it a few times, it is easy to set aside - it's like a truck stop waitress in that way.

The good news is that Trailer Park Gods is cheap. If you're looking to fill an afternoon (maybe the game master is busy trying to convince his parents not to throw him out of the basement) and have a little money, rent a Monty Python movie. When you discover "Life of Brian" is the only thing left on the video store shelf, ignore the scruffy little Unix programmer who insists it's as good as the rest of their stuff, head over to your local game store, and pick up Trailer Park Gods.