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The scenario list for A Force More Powerful was one of the first things we settled on. York-Zimmerman and ICNC had pretty clear ideas about what sorts of situations they wanted to model in the scenarios. It was important that the scenarios include a broad range of risks to the movement, political dynamics & themes, and adversaries.
It was fairly easy to settle on Corruption is Stealing as a tutorial scenario, since it was a city-only scenario with simple victory conditions and objectives, and the regime's effectiveness was limited by the high Status Quo value for Corruption. It evolved from the prototype scenario we had developed in order to test the game models and the basic concepts, too, so it had been in playable shape for the longest time.
ICNC provided us with a list of abstract situations that they wanted brought to life. That was one of the most interesting and fun parts of developing AFMP: creating the fictional countries and societies that would bring out the lessons ICNC wanted the game to teach. We had considerable leeway in devising the scenarios. We decided to make the women's rights scenario, Pain and Suffrage, a struggle against religious fundamentalism, since that is the largest obstacle to women's rights today in the real world, and we wanted to keep our scenarios grounded in the modern age (even though the editor allows users to create scenarios set decades in the past).
Some of the scenarios were based on real world events, both current and recent: for example, The Weight of Tradition has obvious historical inspiration from the early U.S. civil rights movement. Others were mosaics of elements based on real world events and entirely fictional ones, with Justice on the Waterfront sharing some themes with the real-world Solidarity movement in Poland, but with major changes to the background to remove the situation from a solidly eastern-bloc country.
Similarly, the regimes in the scenarios vary widely. In Eternal Vigilance, there are scheduled elections since the country is still democratic, but the current president would probably prefer these be the last fair elections for awhile. The regime in Unwelcome Guests is a ruthless, efficient occupying army. Players must deal with these different adversaries in different ways, or the consequences for their movement members could be dire.
The cultural divide in each scenario varies too. In We're Done With the War, the country's inherent political divisions are handled through the cultural attitudes system, much like the idea of "red" and "blue" states in the U.S. In Go Back to the Barracks, the ruling military junta owes much of its stability to the fact that its opposition is deeply fractured along traditional tribal and religious lines.
The scenario editor and the associated map editors let us continue to adapt and tune the scenarios throughout the course of developing AFMP, and we were very happy that they were in excellent shape at the end, so much so that they could be released along with the game to permit users to create their own scenarios and tweak the ones that come with the game. One of the things we are most looking forward to is seeing what AFMP's users come up with on their own. Tinkerers and budding game designers should find much to engage them in AFMP's scenario tools. We are looking forward to seeing everyone's creations, and putting the best ones up on the official site!
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