Divine Right is a board game published by
TSR in 1979. The game is set in a mythical land called
Minaria. Minaria, as laid out on the board's map, bears a striking resemblance to
Greece,
the Balkans, and
Asia Minor. Thematically it's similar to
Avalon Hill's
King Maker and the venerable
Diplomacy.
Players (from 2 to 6) use
diplomacy and military force to rule Minaria. However unlike
King Maker's historical war between the
House of York and
House of Lancaster or
Diplomacy's battles between pissy Europeans, Minaria is firmly set in a fantasy realm with human, elvish, dwarven, and troll (trollish?) kingdoms.
The game is turned based. Each turn is made up of movement, diplomacy,
siege, combat, and random event phases. Each player has twenty of these turns to amass as many points as possible. The player with the most points wins. Points are awarded for surrounding and sacking towns and castles as well as capturing foreign monarchs.
There are 15 kingdoms in Minaria, of which a maximum of 6 can be commanded by players. The remaining kingdoms are controlled via personality cards. To win against other human players, one has to send diplomats to these kingdoms and get them on side or at least remain
neutral in a fight. How your diplomats win allies is determined partially by the randomly generated personalities. Sometimes bribes work. Sometimes they fail and result in random parts of your
diplomat returned in a box.
Loyalty is not assured, however, and chance favors those making bold, calculated moves. Waiting too long to amass allies can result in a sudden shift in allegiances on the turn you decided to launch your massive assault. A player suddenly finds himself not marching along side an army of dwarves but having an army of dwarves attacking your
flank.
The game did not last very long in TSR's catalogs. They discontinued the game in the early '80s. Although
Divine Right never really found a
D&D-sized audience it remained, like
Junta, a
cult classic for decades. Part of the game's cult appeal was its extensive back story. For a couple years TSR's
Dragon magazine ran an ongoing feature called "
Minarian Legends". While the column was no doubt a delight to hardcore fans who finally had a history as rich and as mythical as
King Maker and
Diplomacy's attendant back stories, to non-players it was probably one of the least read and most confusing columns to ever run in
Dragon. People unfamiliar with the game had little to no idea what a Minarian was and what the legends were about or why they should care. Still it beat the ass off of
Darlene Pekul's mercifully short-lived serial cartoon
Jasmine.
Part of the game's problem was it was highly complex and the rules did little to aid
novice players. Also the game tended to be most playable when one could
drum up 4-6 players. As a two or three player game, the game played out like a
staid game of
tic-tac-toe. Everyone knows the next move and counter move. A larger number of players, however, creates a very fluid, ever changing game.
Drumming up 4 or 6 people created another problem. It's easy to find another lonely soul to hunker down for a Saturday night over Avalon Hill's
Squad Leader with a PBS pledge drive
Doctor Who marathon running in the background. However, if you were able to get 6 people willing to get together to game in a fantasy
milieu, they probably wanted to play D&D.
Nothing is ever final in fantasy gaming, of course. A newly expanded 25th Anniversary has been released. More kingdoms and races have been added to the game along with some rule expansions.