I'm thinking of creating a "free market" board game....

[ThatPoetGuy]

All players start as teenagers. One player starts with a billion dollars, other players start with nothing.

Each player gets in trouble in high school. Roll a six-sided die to see the result. On a six, the trouble is bad and public, and will haunt the player for the rest of his or her life. The player can buy a "get out of trouble" card for one million dollars.

Roll a die to see what kind of grades you get in high school. Roll a six and you're an A student, roll a 5 and you're a B student, roll a 3 or a 4 and you're a C student, a 2 and you barely graduate, a 1 and you flunk out. The player can buy a higher grade, $100,000 per grade increase.

Then there's getting into a good college, graduating, etc. There are three ways to earn a decent income: get a good degree, join a union, and start a business. Getting a good degree starts you out in debt. If you start a business, you might get hit with a lawsuit; you have to stop the business unless you can buy your way out of the lawsuit for a million dollars.

At the end of each turn -- which represents a year -- the billionaire's investments return another ten million dollars.

Every player can, at random, get sick. Roll a die each turn; on a 1, you get sick or injured. You can't do any actions on your turn until you roll a six. But for each $50,000 you pay for better medical care, you get +1 to your die roll, up to +4, so a rich person who gets sick does need to roll higher than a 1 to recuperate.

That's the kind of thing I'm working with here. Just to point out the absurdity of free market philosophy in a rigged system. Make it possible, but just barely, for players to make a good life for themselves, and practically impossible for the billionaire to fail, no matter how badly he or she plays.

So far there's no "board" in the game, just a die roll, which sounds not very fun.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Do you see this as a worthwhile project? Why or why not?

[freshwest]

1. Good project to draw the libertarian lemmings, just make sure you make it clear the can suffer too.

[Systematic Chaos]

2. It sounds like an updated and more socially relevant version of the old MAD Magazine Game.

Remember that one from the late 70s? The object was to be the first to lose all your money. And if I remember right there was one penalty space on the board which caused you to become hopelessly rich and therefore unable to win the game. :)

Maybe your idea would work really well. Keep polishing it! As for suggestions right now, I don't really have any -- I'm not the world's most creative person.

[LiberalLoner]

3. Reminds me of what I read once, that "Monopoly" was created to help teach people why

it's bad to let money be concentrated in too few hands in an economy.

[sfwriter]

14. Yup, the Monopoly board is PART of that bigger game...

Where Monopoly ends, the other game kept going with the "winner" of Monopoly abusing them.

That should be taught in 3rd or 4th grade so you can think of it over the next decade of your life...

[angstlessk]

4. Very worthwhile...it is Monopoly in Reverse...call it anti-Monolopy

I spent months creating a board game for business...but I like your idea better!

[RandomThoughts]

5. The players should remove the billionairs.

wouldn't that make sense?

[louis-t]

6. Don't forget to add the billionaires can

obstruct and manipulate the 'free market' system by being allowed to sell someone crap, bet against it's success, then collect on the insurance when it fails. They should also be allowed to gamble away someone else's life savings and reap huge rewards if they succeed. but pay no penalty if they fail. They should also be able to ignore free market principles of supply and demand whenever they please by forcing up the price of oil based on manufactured fear of what 'might' happen. I think you're onto something. They laughed at the guy who thought people would buy bottled water.

[AsahinaKimi]

7. Question: Now I am not sure but

Was there not once a game called "Dealer McDope" that was a kind of Monopoly game? Seems like someone told me about that...and doing a quick google image search I came up with this.. anyone ever play this?




***Note/Edit: found this: http://www.lastgasp.com/d/30123/

[Kurovski]

8. K&R

You are a poet, aren't you? :thumbsup:

[Curmudgeoness]

9. Very creative. I like. Instead of just using the dice for everything,

squares on the board can dictate what happens to you, or cards can be drawn that say things like---get into a good college for $xxx or get a job a McDonalds.

The more I think about this, the more it seems like Chutes and Ladders. I was just going to suggest a ladder to climb, or fall off of.

I still like the idea, keep working on it. You seem to have spent a lot of time thinking this through---me, not so much yet.

[saras]

10. Two meta-rules missing

One
You need a system by which you can buy changes in the rules in your favor. The changes can be as extreme as you like as long as you can convince the other player to keep on playing and not just beat you up.

Two
You need a rule by which if you take a small amount of money by force or cheating, you are penalized heavily, possibly with forfeiting the game, whereas if you can take more than half of all the money by force, you are allowed to keep it.


Other than that, here's a whole bunch of ideas if you want them. I think it needs a monopoly-like board with realistic items and costs.

There has to be ways for the people who start out poor to earn enough money to pay rent, at least most of the time. On every public property, the poor roll a die to see if they can collect wages, the rich always collect dividends (the rich being defined as anyone who owns at least one utility). On any owned private property, a player may give up a turn in exchange for wages, which are negotiated with the other players. You can only collect wages if there is a consensus. Dividends are proportional to how much money is still in the bank. There should be many costs that are trivial for the rich and expensive for the poor - $1000 car repairs, $1000 plumbing leaks, etc. Membership in fraternal organizations which cost substantial amounts get you discounted prices on some real estate, and some real estate offers not even made to other players. Getting raped while in jail, which only happens to those who can't pay protection, makes your only roll one die for twenty turns, unless you can afford expensive therapy and drugs, in which case you recover after only seven turns. Military service likewise has a risk of PTSD, which makes you lose one turn out of five for the rest of the game, unless you can afford officer training school before service or twenty rounds of medical treatment afterwards. Skipping treatments once started entails a small risk of going postal and being confined in jail until you can buy your way out. There's bank loans for the wealthy, with property as collateral, so they don't have to sell property immediately if they're cash-short, whereas the poor have loan sharks, with outrageous interest rates collateralized against future income.

Start with a real Monopoly board, and substitute every concept with something more modern and appropriate, so that the resemblance disappears, replaced by original content.

[Canuckistanian]

11. If it's successful, your game will be taken over in a hostile buyout

Sure, you'll go to court to try and protect your Intellectual Property, but your opposing lawyer is paid millions to acquire your game.

Your assets will be sold off and you'll be left with nothing.

Hey! Maybe you can write a book about it!

[rhett o rick]

12. They will be sued by Parker Bros. nm

[Canuckistanian]

13. I was thinking Milton Bradley

They know how to game the system.