ircnukes

An online zero-sum game blending strategic thinking and unthinking brutality, set in the current, possibly terminal, era of human existence. Based on the Nuclear War card game from Flying Buffalo.

The software

An IRC bot written in Python. No official releases, but the current codebase is available: ircnukes.tar.gz (GPL v2). Bugs remain, features are still planned. Failing that, try #nukes on irc.quakenet.eu.org.

Gameplay

Only one game per channel. Warfare and propaganda happen in the channel; manipulating your hand and covert activities happen in private messages to the bot.

1. Someone in the channel creates a game with !creategame
2. Players !joingame — each is dealt a hand plus population cards
3. In your private message window, push 2 cards onto the queue
4. The bot announces when you're ready
5. Once everyone's ready, any player may !start
6. The bot announces whose turn it is; the game starts in peacetime
7. Each turn is one !flip
8. After your turn you're dealt a new card and must push one onto your queue before your next flip
9. In other words: turn one over, pick one up, put one down
10. Retaliation turns take a series of !use commands, finalized with !done
11. Whoever survives wins

Command reference

Channel commands

• !creategame — creates a game for the channel
• !joingame — join the game
• !start — once all players are ready, start the first turn
• !flip — flip the first card in your queue on your turn (auto-refills from the deck); warhead/propaganda cards need a target, e.g. !flip jesus
• !use — like !flip, but during retaliation, any card from your hand, e.g. !use b70 / !use w50 jesus — bombers get discarded if warheads are used out of sequence
• !done — end your retaliation turn
• !suicide — leave a game at any point
• !status — game status, optionally for a given player, e.g. !status buddha
• !listgames — list saved games
• !savegame — save the current game to a named slot, e.g. !savegame freddy-vs-jason
• !loadgame — load a saved game (current game must first be saved, if any)

Private commands

• hand — shows your hand
• queue — shows your queue
• population — shows your population
• push — push a card, e.g. push p20 / push b70 / push w50 / push warhead(10)

Cards

• w10/w20/w50/w100 — warhead(N), N-megaton warhead
• polaris — polaris(10), 10-megaton rocket
• atlas — atlas(20), 20-megaton rocket
• saturn — saturn(100), 100-megaton rocket
• b70 — b70(50), 50-megaton bomber
• p5/p10/p20 — propaganda(N), N-million propaganda

License

GNU GPL v2.