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[Coone]

So I have a bit of an overactive imagination and I'm a little ocd so I like to figure how the dominion game would translate into actually running a kingdom.

Here's the way it works in my mind:

You only have five random cards per turn because without modern technologies a king (or queen) can only deal with so much at a time.

Treasures are like taxpayers.  It wouldn't make sense for them to be actual coins or else they would disappear after you use them.  However seeing coppers as the copper income you get from having lower-class taxpayers seems more feasible.  Silvers: middle class.  Gold: upper class.  Etcetera, etcetera... 

Victory cards hinder you during the game play because you have to attend to your lords.  Pleasing the minor lords of estate is least efficient, while only having to deal with a major lord who runs over a complete colony or province is more efficient.

Victory points (as earned through monuments, goons, and bishops) represent the respect and support of the masses.

You can only attend to one action per turn because you are only one person, however sometimes the support of a village can help you along.

The game ends when the provinces run out or three cardpiles because it represents the climax of the competition.  After that point the strongest player takes things by force at power.

Anyways, I just posted this to see if any of you had similar imaginations, or how different card combinations would make sense.  Like how trashing cards with a chapel represents giving them up to the church.  Could be a fun conversation.

[sherwinpr]

A friend of mine once tried to rationalize the Chapel's trashing ability as representing "atoning for your sins," this makes sense with the Bishop too, if it represents confessing to a Bishop (this is an idea found in Catholic, Orthodox, and several protestant branches of Christianity).  Not that the game has any hidden religious message or anything like that!

The Bureaucrat ties up people's property in red tape, freezing their assets for a while, and somehow (legally or otherwise) acquires money, which itself takes some time to free up.

Two cards I don't really get are Feast and Talisman.  Maybe you form new connections at the Feast, which is a one-time thing, so you get to know a Governor, Witch, or Mandarin, you hear about a Festival, or you've invited the whole City, or manage to make a deal to get a Duchy there?  And maybe the Talisman is magical?

[qmech]

There is convincing evidence that Dominion is a Marxist allegory.

See also.

[Fuu]

There is convincing evidence that Dominion is a Marxist allegory.

Nice. Maybe that's why it's called Dominion (/ Mother Russia - which even mentions Lighthouse  )

[ConMan]

A friend of mine once tried to rationalize the Chapel's trashing ability as representing "atoning for your sins," this makes sense with the Bishop too, if it represents confessing to a Bishop (this is an idea found in Catholic, Orthodox, and several protestant branches of Christianity).  Not that the game has any hidden religious message or anything like that!

Given that this is a medieval theme, perhaps the Bishop is selling indulgences?

[Coone]

Ya, given the prevalence of Witches, alchemy cards, and ghost ships talisman can be dismissed as simply being a magical object.  I recall some older fantasies where an object could duplicate other objects, but only if they were not worth that much to begin with.

Holy cow...  That is quite the novel about how Dominion could represent a Marxist struggle, but as an English major I've seen more than my fair share of Marxist interpretations.  The quantity of potential ties to Marxism doesn't really lend to the quality of the argument though.  For example, yes, the motivation to eliminate the annoying estate holders can be seen as a link to the communist value of eliminating the bourgeois, but it can just as easily be seen as the elimination of bureaucracy by autocrats (like Hitler or Mussolini), or as a big business eliminating less efficient small businesses.  It was interesting to read though.

The peddler is kind of a harder card to rationalize.  I suppose the more connections (actions) you have in play, the more impressed peddlers are by you kind of works.  But how a peddler can be expanded into a colony??  Maybe he is selling opium to China

[sherwinpr]

A friend of mine once tried to rationalize the Chapel's trashing ability as representing "atoning for your sins," this makes sense with the Bishop too, if it represents confessing to a Bishop (this is an idea found in Catholic, Orthodox, and several protestant branches of Christianity).  Not that the game has any hidden religious message or anything like that!

Given that this is a medieval theme, perhaps the Bishop is selling indulgences?

That's perfect!  The +1 coin represents the money received, and maybe the +1 VP is lands the church is acquiring, or prestige the church is receiving.  But indulgences are sold to all, so your fellow players can trash too.

As for Peddler, I think the discount is either because they have more locations or people to sell to (economies of scale), or, and this is how I always thought about it, you're sort of bargaining (haggling, but then there's Haggler for that) the price down with the more influence (actions) you have in play this turn.

[WanderingWinder]

A friend of mine once tried to rationalize the Chapel's trashing ability as representing "atoning for your sins," this makes sense with the Bishop too, if it represents confessing to a Bishop (this is an idea found in Catholic, Orthodox, and several protestant branches of Christianity).  Not that the game has any hidden religious message or anything like that!

Given that this is a medieval theme, perhaps the Bishop is selling indulgences?

You don't want to go there.

[Scissors61]

Anything involving trashing Cultists is automatically sacrificing them for the dark lord Cthulhu.