Laboratory: Glory or the Gulag

Laboratory: Glory or the Gulag places 3–5 players in the absurd world of 1960s Eastern Bloc science, where disposable researchers in a backwater puppet republic are conscripted into “revolutionary” projects and struggle to remain in favor by presenting Progress Reports credible enough to avoid political consequences.

Each player leads a laboratory assigned an ambitious Project such as Pig Manure Distillation Vodka or Potato Peel Textile Substitute. Players compete to achieve the highest Status, which determines the winner at the end of the game—unless a scientist executes the most ambitious project of all: slipping away to the West and winning instantly.

Status equals the lower of a player’s Authority and Loyalty. Authority rises only if Progress Reports withstand scrutiny, but without Loyalty to the Party, credibility offers little protection.

Each round, players conduct Lab Tests on a shoestring budget using limited Resources, Catalysts, and Assistants, including equipment, funding, and test subjects supplied by political reeducation facilities. Assistants range from the occasionally competent to incompetent hires, Party appointees, secret police moles, opportunists, and alcoholics. Lab Test results determine the credibility of the Progress Report, from Laughably Fake to Vaguely Credible. Players will of course attempt to Discredit and invalidate their rivals' reports. In Laboratory, weakening a competitor’s Authority or Loyalty can be as decisive as strengthening one’s own.

Players may also pursue Uncivil Enrichment through Embezzlement of State funds or through Black Market dealings in scarce goods—such as Real Chocolate or West German Erotic Magazines—valuable currency in the numerous opportunities for bribery. These Crimes are recorded in a personal Sedition deck, creating leverage for opponents. Through Snooping, Blackmail, and Denunciation, players attempt to expose one another’s transgressions, while Assistants may occasionally be sacrificed as scapegoats to absorb political consequences.

In Laboratory, the surest advancement rests on one expertise: concealing your crimes while exposing your rivals’.

—description from the publisher