Creating a Buddhist Board Game

The Watercooler
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Hi everyone,

I’m currently developing a Buddhist-themed cooperative board game called Guardians of the Suttas. The game is inspired by titles like Pandemic, Ticket to Ride, and Settlers of Catan, but with a unique theme centered around early Buddhism, ancient history, and cooperative strategy.

In the game, players work together as historical Arhant missionaries to preserve and spread the Buddha’s teachings across ancient cities by building Monasteries, Stupas, and Bodhi Trees, while managing resources (monastics, lay supporters, requisites) and protecting the Suttas(20-30 sutta cards) against war, conflicts, disasters, and corruption as distortions grow stronger over time.

Beyond being a fun strategy game, my hope is for it to also:

  • encourage family closeness,

  • introduce players easpecially the young to early Buddhist texts and Suttas,

  • highlight ancient history and geography,

  • and help people appreciate the efforts of the early Buddhist monks who helped spread and maintain the teachings.

At the moment, I have a general theme, core mechanics, and some generated illustrations already prepared as samples, though I’m still in the process of refining the rules and balancing the gameplay.

I’d be glad to connect with anyone who is interested in helping shape this project, especially playtesters. I’m also very open to suggestions, corrections, and constructive feedback. As I feel everyone is a sutta lover here, I think it is best to consult or ask everyone for suggestions or feedback. And is this board game worth doing?

Eventually, I hope to create a board game that everyone here enjoys, with proceeds supporting SuttaCentral. I would love for the game to serve as a tribute to the kind people here and to help contribute to the valuable work being done.

Thank you for reading.

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Hi,
I think this is a great idea. Dhamma can be presented in many different way and it would be a nice fun game and learning tool for a family or friend group setting. It is definitely worth doing.
My suggestions:

  • I would extend the sutta card to 108. It’s an auspicious number represent the completion of the spiritual journey, the wholeness of existence, and the universe. Or 444 cards: 4 noble truths, 4 right strivings, 4 Satipatthana.
  • The boardgame should has two mode: for single player and for group.
  • Maybe you can find a contemporary illustrator to design the visual aspect of the game. Recently I bought the boardgame called Wingspan and I love the watercolour and realistic/ scientific depiction of the birds in that game. I love that there are Oceania, American, Asian and European expansions packs. You could develop your boardgame to not just ETB but also expansion packs for other Buddhist traditions so everyone can be included.

I would have my hand up for play testing! :blush:

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You wouldn’t be the first to make a Buddhist board game:

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The game mechanics seems not uniquely Buddhist, but using Buddhism as a backdrop. Imagine just swapping with another religion, it can still work. So better to integrate uniquely Buddhist core Dhamma mechanics in the game.

Like let’s say one card has kalama sutta, another card has sutta which the Buddha described about unbelievable things like asuras shrinking and going into the ground via a flower.

Then the target audience to be converted by a missionary monk is scientific based, then one card would be effective, the other card would cause faith to decline in the potential target audience.

But then that’s an easy way to integrate based on your structure.

A more core way of game mechanics would be to go into individual monastics. Let’s say it’s like an abbot setting up time tables for a monastery. A purely meditation type monastery, Vs purely study type. Vs balanced and all sorts of other permutations involving chores, social engagements (like monastics involving in village politics/lay affair, eg. Veganism promotion, forest conservation etc). How some schedule produces high quality monastics who has high stats and is very effective in propagating the faith Vs low stats monastics. The time step then has to be enough to cover a lifetime of a monastic, and beyond for historical events to happen.

It’s not easy actually to get more dhamma mechanics in because most of the dhamma is individual psychological development rather than group social engineering as your game is.

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I think it would be a brilliant idea to insert 3D models of ancient Buddhist sites! And maybe even sutta or sutta quotes and references into your game. But to play a bit of a conservative card, people playing monastics like strategists and warlocks isn’t very..inspiring :sweat_smile:. Is it going to be like gain 100 XP by inspiring this lay follower with a dhamma talk? Or gain reward points for debating this devā? It would be kind of cool, but not sure how inspiring it would be. Still think this is a super brilliant idea though!!!
(PS: I don’t wanna be the party pooper, and I have virtually no idea about gaming and games like this, so take what I say with a grain of salt! :pink_heart:)

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Making a Buddhist board game is a nice idea and I think creative projects and outlets like this are good for integrating aspects of Dhamma into people’s lives in a way beyond plain ‘protestant Buddhism’ :slight_smile:

But personally, I’d say having characters pretend to be arahants is a bit too sacrilegious. Even having lay people pretend to be monks is probably going too far.

What about making donations, like supplying a monastery with the four requisites (food, lodging, clothing, medicines)? Following the uposatha precepts or not, and how regularly? Having a strong community of lay meditators and lay people learned in the texts?

Lay people can also spread the Dhamma, and in fact the lay community is absolutely crucial in actually establishing physical monasteries. I would involve monastics more as inviting them to monasteries for example, having communities with more or less, and so on. Stupas also require funding, space, building, etc. from lay people very often. And stupas can have different degrees of detail, like some that have instructional Buddhist tales built in or monuments like Borobudur teaching about cosmology.

You could also have people reborn in higher realms like deva realms or lower ones like animals/ghosts based off of the types of decisions they make, so a kind of across-lives up and down dynamic. Following the five precepts, or some, or none, helping the community take them, and so on. This teaches about kamma and rebirth in a way that is not disrespectful but is engaging on a different level.

I also think ‘rating’ a monastic by, say, living in X type of monastery is a bit dangerous and not something overall positive to instill stereotypes about someone’s character based on external factors in people’s minds. An arahant could live in a crowded city temple and that wouldn’t make them less enlightened.

Of course, everyone will decide what they feel is appropriate, respectful, and helpful. But just offering some input here to consider. :slight_smile:

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Mettā to you,

First time I know the importance of 108 and 444 numbers.

In India people generally use 358 as auspicious because 3 represents tri gems, 5 panchshilā and 8 right fold path.

Thank you

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108 (along with 54, 27) might be one of the most important numbers in India. Practically all of Hindu - Buddhist beads are strung in these numbers.

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Hmm… I was having some ideas about the players can go micro and take the role of humans who are exposed to the dhamma and how they choose to live life by life. Ordain or not. Then carry forward the 5 faculties to next character when the time for that character ends and that character died, a new character is reborn, and the game continues. Game over if they don’t qualify for human rebirth due to bad kamma. Win when they finally managed to build up 37 factors of enlightenment (and more list) to attain to arahanthood and exit the game.

It does make it more like RPG, or table top role playing, like dungeons and dragons complication.

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Btw, I recently wrote about a Buddhist video game proposal, using AI to write it, but the ideas are mostly from me, AI just helped in presentation, some details, pictures, and things like the 4 vehicles. Here it is, I made it so that anyone can comment.

Abstract:

As the global gaming demographic exceeds 3 billion users, interactive simulation has emerged as a dominant “Fourth Vehicle” for cultural transmission, yet Buddhism remains largely absent or misrepresented within high-fidelity media. This paper presents the design specification for The Samsara Code, a Bio-Responsive RPG framework that operationalizes Early Buddhist doctrine into a rigid, deterministic state machine.
Addressing the dual challenges of “Mechanical Dissonance” in current games and the risk of algorithmic hallucination in spiritual technology, we propose a novel “Data Architect” workflow. This methodology utilizes Artificial Intelligence strictly during pre-production to extract and normalize logic from the Vinaya and Suttas, creating a verifiable, hallucination-free runtime engine.
The framework replaces standard game physics with “Karmic Physics,” implementing the Loṇaphala (Salt Crystal) algorithm to simulate non-linear moral causality and the 37 Factors of Enlightenment as concrete gameplay systems, such as “Mindfulness” functioning as the primary User Interface. By integrating optional EEG bio-feedback for “Neuro-Dynamic Dependent Origination” and a “Hardcore Vinaya Mode” for ethical restraint, the system offers a scalable, low-cost architecture for preserving the Dhamma as a “Digital Dojo” for the modern age.

Context:

  1. The Oral Vehicle: The chanting and communal recitation that preserved the texts for centuries.
  2. The Literary Vehicle: The transcription of the Tipitaka onto palm leaves and later paper, allowing for the widespread study of doctrine.
  3. The Artistic Vehicle: The development of statues, thangkas, and temple architecture that visualized the cosmology for the lay public.

Features:

Kammic system, rebirth, vast timelines including Buddhaless ages, many realms, EEG data meditation, sutta recommendation system (like Netflix’s algorisms to recommend sutta based on current stats and difficulties), option to play as monastic, Pāli learning gameplay, right speech combat system, 37 factors of enlightenment as stats, skill trees, etc.

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Here’s a post from October 2019 from @scatterbrain who talked about creating a Buddhist based game.

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Hi thank you so much, your suggestion of board game for 2 modes is interesting. but may not be that easy to implement. I have seen the review of wingspan and yes it is amazing. it allows users to see and learn more about different species from all the cards. It is also a way I try to use to introduce different suttas, historical characters and also historical cities with quotes, visuals and descriptions.

yes i believe if using the same theme, it can also be silk road, china to korea & japan, and southeast asia maritime or maybe the whole world expansion packs.

I will finalise a draft rulebook and post to anyone interested in playtesting.

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Yes, I would love that idea. I was also thinking of a card game that utilized greed, aversion and delusion as setbacks. Loved to be part of this.

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Well, this is D&D… :rofl:

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The medieval Indian game of Snakes & Ladders became the inspiration for the Victorian English, and later American (Milton Bradley), board game of Chutes & Ladders. The Indian game was originally based on ideas of karma and liberation (moksha). (The Anglo-American game is one of pure chance, which is decidedly un-Victorian and un-American, where titans of industry create themselves fully formed from the forehead of Zeus, or so the biographies of certain Silicon Valley goons have led me to believe…) There were Buddhist and Jain versions of Snakes & Ladders as well.

A medieval Tibetan version of the game was re-packaged and sold as Rebirth: The Game of Liberation in the 1970s, and the Tibetan lama Namkhai Norbu designed his own game called “The Game of Liberation.” His publishing company sells a copy online.

There was also a short-lived tabletop RPG of Tibet, where you could choose different characters navigating life there. The PDF is still available online.

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Hi everyone, I have done up a draft rulebook and also with a playtest build in order to test the game mechanic and to see if the game is challenging enough or interesting enough.

Download and open the html program file to playtest the game and the document is the rulebook.

Players mainly gain resources of monastic, lay supporters, requisites, wood, and land to build monasteries and stupas across the map at various cities. Players also earn suttas by fulfilling its requirements. once the sutta cards are active, they provide additional advantages to the player. Random events may happen such as corruption of the suttas. When the suttas are all corrupted the game loses.

Please take note that some of the functions are not complete and there are also errors and inaccuracy regarding the cities and routes. The terms or wordings might also change to make it more appropriate. The card’s designs are not done up yet. Currently only clicking on mahaparinibbana sutta or potaliya sutta brings a sample card. The game is not that balanced yet.

Some of the important points are: Cities or waypoints might be added or enough? more abilities? Cards are too easy or difficult to achieve? Players get too bored? Enough options or choices for players to make? Players are stuck? Game is too complex or too long? etc..

The theme and concept is to encourage players to learn more about the suttas and also the historical background in ancient india. through the game i also hope to bring people closer together by cooperating to win the game together. This game eventually is to be a board game and not a computer game. There will be planning, discussions, learning and fun. Having a concept is easy, but making the game with a balanced game mechanic is hard.

Hope to hear from your feedback! Do let me know if anyone is interested to help contribute, design and test it together to make it a perfect game!

Thank you so much.

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