(the simpler version) Camru War (why is this classed as a ritual?)

Camru War is popular for a few reasons: a semi-catchy name, the relative cheapness of it (costing the same amount as a regular board game today) and the variety of game play. Being a future board game, it works by you placing the thingy which is the size of your fist but weighs like a brick and that thingy unfolding into a board with buttons on the sides.

History

One day some nerd called Nigel Stark had an idea and that idea was making a video game into a board game with it also being a hologram game. Being a nerd, he also decided to make it a strategy game with multiple forms of game-play and, after being turned down many times, finally got the funding he needed to get things rolling. Several years later, he sold the copyright to a major gaming company as it wasn't making that much money for barely enough money to last him a year mere weeks before it became extremely popular in the core worlds and quickly came to provide over 45% of this major gaming company's revenue. This company later decided to fling tonnes of pay-to-win stuff into the game which just led to almost nobody with any sense falling for it and just playing the game as they always had.

Execution

When you have a maximum of 8 players gathered around the thingy (which can increase the size of the hologram to suit and can also link up to other thingies via wifi to increase the max to 16), you can play a game of any of the following: death match (take out as many other players as possible), capture the flag (get "flags" (which aren't always flags) to specific points on the map), point control (make sure that only your units are within certain small areas), survival match (try not to die) and so on. Teams can be selected, with the minimum number of teams being 1 (usually done when the map naturally spawns hostiles like zombies and everyone sees how long they can survive working together) and the maximum amount being the same as the number of players or AIs present, followed by a map, modifiers (ie: every time a unit dies they come back as a zombie with half the health, units X and Y are not allowed or deal 2x as much damage), aesthetics (which don't affect the game in any way other than making it clear whose units are whose and making things look pretty), and so on. I told you that the guy who made this was a nerd.

Each player and player-AI (different to other AIs involved in this game) starts out with a certain number of workers, which by default will be 3 for each of them but the modifiers one can use before a game means that you can even have one player getting 70 while the others start with none. These workers gather gold and build things, but can also be used as crappy fighters or converted into badass fighters.

Next, each player will start out with a Defense Point, which is usually made to look like a statue or a mini castle. If this is destroyed, then the player is either out of the game or uses up one of a limited number of respawns as the Defense Point reappears somewhere else on the map with a new set of miners (most games will have no respawns). Each Defense Point will usually spawn with some structures already around it to prevent games from being ended in 10 seconds flat.

Once players have gotten some gold the fun begins. Gold is used to hire workers and fighters and build structures that have various uses, mostly being centered around wrecking the enemy's troops if they try to go on the offensive. Fighters and structures available depend on the modifiers on the game but the basic form is this: with structures you've got towers that you can put archers in to increase their range and decrease the damage they receive if targeted by enemy ranged units while the tower itself has plenty of health and walls that block enemy movement and soak up damage for any ranged troops you have hanging around behind them with the bonus of your own troops being able to walk right through your walls (???) unless modified to do otherwise, meanwhile for soldiers you've got the self-explanatory archers, swordsmen, shield-users and mages.

After that, players can work together or against one another depending on the gamemode and simple circumstance, although the most common gameplay choice is for it to be a deathmatch where everyone has 50 lives and everyone is simply trying to kill everyone else as much as possible.

Components and tools

You just need the brick thingy. You can also connect some devices into the brick thingy but otherwise eh.

Participants

Up to 8 players per thingy. There's a gamemaster, usually the legal owner of the thingy, who gets to choose all of the game settings.

Primary Related Location

Poseiden 7