Manifested Destiny
A downloadable game
Players: 3 to 6
Supplies: 52 card deck, writing utensils, 1d6, 1d4
Time to Play: 1 to 2 hours
Manifested Destiny is a worldbuilding game set in the last year of a crumbling empire. Players will take the role of administrators, and with limited resources and a useless bureaucracy, try to uphold their duties as the nation loses its facade of control. It is inspired by games like Alex Robert's 'For the Queen' and Avery Alder's 'The Quiet Year.'
Manifested Destiny was funded by a Story Synth Microgrant. The entire game can be played in-browser for free here. This itchio page provides a PDF and text version of the game.
Written by A. A. Voigt (@aaronsxl on Twitter). Find more of my work at aavoigt.com.
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I found this game from the TTRPG Talk Short comparing it to The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard, and played it with some other fans! We had a great time and found the website it's hosted on very useful, though a notes section would've been very helpful.
While we enjoyed playing a more collaborative game than Quiet Year, it added to the time quite a lot, and we played it over 3 different sessions (approx. 7 hours total), which was a lot longer than the time listed.
Some of the prompts were better than others, with some feeling very small scale for a supposed empire, which could be a bit awkward given the premise we'd already built up. If I was playing it again, I'd probably print the prompts I liked the most and play with 20 or so of them, rather than a full deck.
The ending mechanic of stress was interesting, but we were a pretty happy collective, so we ended up tweaking the rule. We played so stress was acquired when the characters were stressed, so we were under a bit more pressure and only adding collaboration when our players collaborated to solve a prompt.