Dominion in Life

I saw my nephew’s on Father’s Day and we played a game called Dominion. It’s a deck building game where you collect cards that do various actions.

There are three unofficial stages to the game, (1) setting up a value generating system, (2) generating your value, (3) converting that value to victory points. It’s unofficial because these stages don’t have specific starting and ending points, you need to switch stages depending on game flow.

Victory points can be earned in a few different ways, such as buying them or having more cards in your deck. So the second stage is optimizing the capability to earn victory points and the third stage is actually earning them.

Dominion is an interesting metaphor for life.

In our lives, we go through stages of setting the groundwork, doing the work, and then reaping the rewards. But in Dominion, the victory points are clearly defined - in life we need to choose what success means to us. And success can change as we age.

Picking the wrong measures for success means as much or more as executing your plans. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.