College Football Risk, or CFBRisk, is a biennial collegiate strategy game that takes place during the spring and is inspired by the Hasbro Boardgame Risk. Each season, more than 8,000 students and non-students participate, representing all NCAA Division I FBS schools in the United States. The game is a continuation of the popular game run by the college football subreddit, "r/CFB," on the social media site Reddit. CFBRisk first took place in the spring and summer of 2018. It is an MMOG-style game where college football fanbases compete for control of a fictionalized map of the United States. The goal is to control as much territory as possible for ultimate domination of the map. From season one forward, College Football Risk has been played independently from Reddit.
Gameplay
Premise
The concept of overtaking another team's territory spurs from a series of Reddit posts where users modified maps of the United States to illustrate a team's power, known as college football 'imperialism maps' or 'empires maps.' These were not based on the board game Risk, but the outcomes of college football games throughout the season. Fanbases and news sites later pointed out the similarities to the Risk, and a game where fanbases themselves controlled the outcome (independently of their teams actual performance) was developed in the college football offseason. CFBRisk is played on a map of 131 territories in the United States, 130 of which represent the geographical home of NCAA Division I FBS schools and one additional territory designated for team Chaos. Initially, home territories were determined by which school is closest in straight-line distance to the geometric center of each county, but have now been adjusted as to reduce the overlap in state boundaries. The goal of the game is to expand your home team's territory and ultimately control the entire game map.
Players affiliate with a school and have the option to make a single move every day. Players either defend one of their own territories or attack an adjacent territory that is held by an enemy team. Every night at 11PM EST, the results of each team's attack and defense are calculated for every territory, and the map updates based on which teams win each territory. Every team is assigned a point value based on the total number players from that team who attacked or defended a given territory and a random number generator (RNG) determines the victor. The odds of winning a given territory is found through the ratio of total points of each of the attacking teams and the defending team. A random player from the winning team of a territory is selected every round and designated as the MVP.
Star Power
Players gain power, known as Star Power by completing milestones within the game that fall into five categories. A player's total star power is the median number of stars over all categories. For instance, a player with star powers of 1-2-2-2-3 has a median value of 2. The star power a player has represents a player's power multiplier when attacking or defending. When attacking, a player's power points are designated to be 1 for a one-star, 2 for a two-star, 6 for a three-star, 12 for a four-star, and 24 for a five-star. When defending, a player's power is 1.5x their power points.
The five star power categories are: Total turns played in CFBRisk: 0 turns: One Star 10 turns: Two Stars 25 turns: Three Stars 50 turns: Four Stars 100 turns: Five Stars Total turns played in the current season: 0 turns: One Star 5 turns: Two Stars 10 turns: Three Stars 25 turns: Four Stars 40 turns: Five Stars Consecutive turns played: 0 turns: One Star 3 turns: Two Stars 5 turns: Three Stars 10 turns: Four Stars 25 turns: Five Stars MVPs obtained: 0 MVPs: One Star 1 MVPs: Two Stars 5 MVPs: Three Stars 10 MVPs: Four Stars 25 MVPs: Five Stars CFB Awards obtained: 0 Awards: One Star 1 Awards: Two Stars 2 Awards: Three Stars 3 Awards: Four Stars 4 Awards: Five Stars
Winning the Game
Although the object is for the entire map to be conquered, no team has accomplished the task to date. The current method for selecting a winning team is to choose the team which has the most territories by the announced season end date. The team that has come closest to obtaining complete conquest is the University of Florida, controlling 40 territories, or 31% of the map, in season one, day 63.