Let's play Victim! - the ideal game for our whining times

I’ve thought of a new board game to help while away those long, joyless evenings that will follow hard on the heels of the re-election of Gordon “Bonkers” Brown and the subsequent cataclysmic collapse of what’s left of the country’s economy. The game is provisionally entitled Victim! 

The aim of the game will be to collect so many “Victimhood” points – called “Entitlements” – that no other player will be able to claim to be a greater victim than you. The game ends when a clear winner has emerged. 

Cards are distributed randomly at the start of each game. Each player is given a number of “Victim Identities” – religious, racial, regional, sexual, physical, mental and behavioural. For instance, a player could start the game with the following Identities:  “Muslim”, “White”, “South-East Asia”, “Gay”,“Diabetic”, “Bi-Polar”, and “Career Criminal”. Or “Satanist”, “Brown”, “Europe”, “Back Trouble”, “Dyslexic” , and “Drug Addict”.

Each player also receives a number of “Grievance” cards, covering historical and contemporary insults, slights, rights abuses, sufferings, persecutions, snubs, hardships and outrages. These could, for instance, include “homeland invaded by West”, “homeland swamped by immigrants”,  “turned down for job”, “sacked for wearing a Cross”, “great-great-grandparents were slaves”, “workmates make fun of my accent”, “colleagues make fun of my foreign name”, “ancestors slaughtered by U.S. Cavalry/Cossacks/Vikings”, “no prayer-room at work”, “excreta through letter box”, “criminal past cited”, “my drug addiction mentioned”, “fact that I’m stupid/useless/lazy held against me”.

In addition, each player would have a number of “Rights” cards – including “British Law”, “European Court of Human Rights”, “Fifth Amendment”, “Sharia Law”, “UN Charter”, “My Religion Teaches”, “Bono Says So” and “I’m As Good As What You Are”.

Finally, there are a number of “Bollocks!” cards, including “Grow Up”, “Get a Life”, “Boo-Hoo!”, “We’ve All Got Our Cross To Bear”, “Says Who?”, “It’s My Country”, “Well, Who’s Stopping You?”, “Political Correctness Gone Mad”, “That’s What The Nazis Believed In”, and “It Didn’t Stop Douglas Bader”. 

Each of the 10 rounds would start with a “Situation” – applying for a job, seeking asylum in the West, applying for a council flat, being searched at customs, applying for a US visa etc. The player who fails each test shouts out “Victim!” when their “grievance points” total can’t be reached by any other player. The “Victim” is then awarded 100 Grievance bonus points which they can deploy at will: i.e. they aren’t attached to any particular state of victimhood or grievance, he or she is simply “entitled”. At the end of each round, players replace used cards from a central stack before staring a new round.

Come to think of it, the game might just be a little too close to real life!