Rise Up: The Game of People and Power

Lead a march of thousands of people. Write a protest song that goes viral. Fight for what you believe in. Rise Up is a cooperative board game about building people power and taking on oppressive systems to create change. In Rise Up, the game weaves a story about your movement, which can either be based in reality (like stopping an oil pipeline) or fictional (like fighting for dragon rights). But “the System” is hard at work too, maneuvering to crush your efforts through tactics like setting up surveillance, making arrests, or causing infighting. In order to win, players must collaborate to build a movement that scores more victories than the system. To do this, players spend supporter tokens to use Movement Cards that allow them to grow their movement power on the ten different locations on the board (such as Workplaces, Campuses, Internet), take down the System’s power, as well as help their fellow players gain more supporters and cards. Players can strategize together by playing Movement Cards with matching symbols and starting a “chain of events,” which increases their impact. As your movement gains power, the system will retaliate with more cards of its own. Everyone loses if any one player runs out of supporter tokens, or if the system scores too many victories. Rise Up also comes with two versions with a double sided board: one for more experienced game players, and one for novices as well as younger children. Rise Up is ethically manufactured.