Good morning, beloved -
Today, somewhat surreally, is my 57th birthday. I don't know why it's hitting so much harder than my 56th, any meaningful difference between the two numbers being nonexistent. Either way, I'm in the back end of my fifties, right? And still trying to figure out how that fact shows up in current year, from the inside and the outside both.
Maybe the strangest aspect of this is that I'll be rounding out this year as both a British citizen and a doctor of philosophy, and therefore bringing to ground the long arc that began the day we moved to London so I could take up a fellowship at LSE Cities. Loops are closing, cycles are ending: we've completed moving house, we've confronted and weathered the long-feared loss of our cherished catboss Olive, Lifehouse is out in the world. Suddenly there's space and time for new pursuits. And, equally, for something I haven't done for literal years now: sitting outside a cafe, under a leafy tree, drinking an unhurried coffee and reading for nothing more than the pleasure I take in it.
(I do hope, by the way, that this doesn't land like the typical foreshadowing speech, early on in some dumb-ass buddy film, where some crusty cop in their last few days before retirement waxes lyrical about how great it's going to feel when they're fly-fishing in Saskatchewan this time next week. You know full well what happens next.)
But yeah, I have plans. Plans that involve stretching myself a little, trying things more challenging than simply churning out another book. Like, say...game design.
Yeah. Someone on Mastodon made a throwaway comment about an imaginary card game based on Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers, and it just lit something up in me, possibly as a way of immersing myself more deeply in the history of this land of which I am now become a citizen. Within a few moments of conceptual sketching, I was able to lay out a more or less complete picture of what just such a game would look like, how it would have to work and what it would feel like to play.
What I came up with was a card game set in 1649 England, somewhat inevitably called "The World Turned Upside Down." In the wake of civil war and the execution of the king, players represent the various inhabitants of a village who must cooperatively organize to resist the enclosure of their life-sustaining commons, all while facing threats from landlords, state power, hunger, weather and internal fracture. Three to five players choose roles – the Preacher, the Weaver, the Herbalist, the Farrier, the Widow, the Apprentice, and so on – and must defend their village against the coming of the Steward’s men, through Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer. Was the Earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease; or was it made to preserve all her children? Draw a Threat card and defend against it without losing all your Principles.
The core gameplay loop would explore collaborative decision-making under tension, demanding the players overcome their differences in order to manage scarce resources (tokens for Hope and Principles, as well as a number of tiles representing features of the Commons) while facing escalating threats. Each player has a distinct function: the Preacher accumulates Principles tokens and rallies resolve, the Weaver builds and defends Commons tiles more efficiently, the Herbalist heals and stabilizes other players, and so on. (Each might also have a special power they could play once per Season, too, but I'd want to see what effect that might have on gameplay and balance before inscribing that into the rules more permanently.)
Basically, threats to the Commons escalate over time. Spring brings petty harassment, and the first stirrings of internal tension. Summer comes on with storms, betrayal and subterfuge on the part of the landowner. Autumn is the season of risks to the harvest, of exposure, of legal machinations, and Winter brings illness and hunger in its wake, the depletion of long-banked resolve...and soldiers. All the while, the villagers must contend with the threat of Enclosure — fences, lawyers, traitors from within — and the destruction of their lifeways.
What can you as the villagers do to counter this array of threats? Well, you have all the benisons of whatever Commons tiles you are able to preserve against Enclosure. Each Field tile yields food, of course; the Shelter protects against weather and injury, while the Well negates certain risks that arise in Summer and Autumn. The Oven creates Hope tokens spontaneously through shared meals, in every turn it remains unenclosed, while the Hedgerow slows the progress of external threats. The Meeting-Tree has a special role, restoring the village's sense of itself as a collective. (Some threats destroy or corrupt specific tiles unless players act collectively.)
As these resources suggest, each player additionally accumulates tokens for Hope, symbolizing emotional resources they can dedicate to challenges, and Principles, registering the degree to which they remain aligned with the Digger ethos. Players may face choices that cost one or the other — for example: “You may fence a Field tile to permanently protect it from attack, but doing so will cost 2 Principle tokens. Do you sacrifice your founding values to preserve a private garden?" — and seeing either decrement to zero will involve a risk of collapse or betrayal, respectively.
At the end of the final round of play, if any Commons tile remains, and some number of Principles tokens are held, congratulations: you have successfully defended the land. If all tiles are lost, or only a threshold number of Principles remain, the commons is enclosed. (If only Hope remains, but all Principles are lost: you survived, but forgot why; contrariwise, if only Principles remain, and the land is lost: you were broken, but the idea lives on.)
§ Sounds cool, no? I mean, imagine this all worked up as an act of living resistance with proper, woodcut-style illustrations. I would play the hell out of that game, and I'm not so much a player of games. So I think I'm minded to actually try spinning this up on Kickstarter, engaging the services of a capable illustrator — Nick Hayes of Book of Trespass fame immediately comes to mind, should he be into it — and bringing "The World Turned Upside Down" to life.
The best part is that I'd release the ruleset and all card and token illustrations as a downloadable PDF for free, as how could a game about the Diggers and the preservation of the commons possibly be made available in any other fashion? We'd work up a version on premium cardstock as an incentive for Kickstarter supporters — and obviously, as well, for eventual retail sale, if a market for such a thing there should prove to be — but the crux of it is restoring the Diggers to life, for any and all who’d be interested.
Let me know what you think of this notion, if you would, either in comments here or via Signal (where I’m soixantehuitard.68). This is obviously a project of a sort I’ve never attempted before, I don’t have what we might call the “brand permission” to undertake it, and wouldn’t necessarily start from a place of credibility or trust in asking complete strangers to fund it. But I would love to see it in the world, to play it and see it played by others, as a way of preserving the Winstanley spirit down through the centuries. It isn’t merely that I tire of games predicated on the triumphal vanquishment of your enemies, in an unending war of all against all — games like Death Stranding have already done interesting things with nonviolent dispute resolution and asynchronous collaboration. It’s that the logic of Enclosure continues to dominate our time, and we so badly need to practice the skills and techniques we will use to preserve ourselves and our Commons against it, with every chance we get. And to my way of thinking, so much the better if we can do so over a few pints, with bags of “crisps” torn open on the table as our own instantiation of the collective harvest.
§ Right now I’m reading, at last, Graeber’s Pirate Enlightenment (and, should any of the above prove doable, not-so-idly contemplating what a companion game based on that might look like), as well as two histories I’m consulting in my design of the game, Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down (see? inevitable choice of title) and Healey’s The Blazing World; listening to the ten-hour playlist I ginned up for next month’s Dunwich Dynamo, testing for timing and flow; and watching Perfect Days, which is simultaneously genuinely charming, and a gorgeous love letter to a kind of city life it’s still possible to live in Tokyo, and a promotion for a specific, actual concern so blatant and so neglectful in certain aspects of its depiction of the city that it should really have come with a disclaimer.
That's it for now. As always, I hope that you are well, that you have your feet planted solidly on the good Earth, and that you are taking care of those who need you, taking care of yourself, and letting others take care of you. You have
all my faith,
ag
ldn
This is Dispatch from London No. 144 of Thursday, 5 June 2025, offered to you under the terms of a Peer Production License. You are free to reuse this content, but must acknowledge Adam Greenfield as its author. ◊