Capitalist Megaquest

That^'s what Trav said the game we ran in Warrnambool on Friday night was called.

We (me, Trav and Dale) were supposed to be going down to Warrnambool to visit a kids club that is run by one of the churches there, and see if any of the leaders were interested in being involved with the Scripture Union mission in Warrnambool. It turned out that a number of their key leaders weren't going to make it that night, so they asked us to run the program, because Trav is a childrens ministry expert.

In Capitalist Megaquest the group is divided into a number of different countries. About forty kids turned up, so there were three countries, one in the sanctuary, one in the foyer, and one in a hall out the back.
At the start of the game, each country has to elect a Prime Minister. Everyone else gets assigned a job.

Prime Minister
The PM has to have meetings with the other PMs, where they have to sign forms. They also get interviewed on the news a lot and get paid more than anyone else.

Junk Salespeople
The Junk Salespeople have a table full of junk which they get to sell to people. They can also buy things from other people and try to resell it at a higher price.

McFood Salespeople
These people sell junk food.

Builders
The builders build houses from cards, and then tries to sell them to people.

Doctor
Every now and then me and Trav and Dale would go and tell someone they were sick or injured, so they had to go to the doctor. In the country I was looking after (Victoria, in the hall out the back) the whenever someone had to go to the doctor, she'd ask for all their forks (we used plastic forks for currency) or she wouldn't operate, and they would die, in which case she would get all their forks anyway.

Shoe Salespeople
These people had to sell shoes. Except we didn't give them any shoes. So they either had to sell their own shoes, or buy other peoples shoes off them and then resell them for more.

We also had a number of other roles that were carried out by leaders:
Good News/Bad News People
I was the Good News/Bad News Person in Victoria, Trav was was in Tasmania and Dale was in Queensland. We had to go and tell people they had suffered an injury or illness, or had won the lottery, et cetera.

Gaoler
People who stole things, or didn't pay attention to the news, or threatened other people got sent to the gaol (a store room). The gaoler lectured them about what they had done, and made sure they didn't escape until they'd done their time. The PMs of Victoria and Queensland both spent a lot of time in gaol.

Banker
At the end of each day (I think they went for about twelve minutes) everyone went to the bank (the creche) to get their pay. One of the kids from Victoria didn't want a job, so she was on the dole.

Eventually, most fo the kids just started stealing off each other. At one stage more than half the population of Victoria was in gaol for stealing. A number of times one country invaded another country and looted all their shops.

At the end of the game we took them all into the sanctuary and Trav tried to get them to think about whether it's really worth it trying to get lots of money and lots of stuff, but they were to busy trying to steal each other's forks.