Get this Monopoly game over with!

Uh oh… running late. It’s four in the morning but I’m gonna call it Wednesday night!

The grounded, gracious, good-natured, green thumbed, friend of the biosphere; the Green Lady; Earth Writer has given us the good word and it is…

Games

I guess she wanted to go easy on me. I have a gargantuan heap of material on this subject. One of my premier hobbies is building board games. Many are variants of games already out there. Many are my own inventions. A couple are straight up rip-offs where it’s more affordable to produce my own version than to buy the product. That said, I do purchase games as often as I reasonably can. Their makers deserve their income but my personal game appetite far exceeds my budget.

My 30 or 40 creations tend to fall into a few different categories and I shall succinctly reveal one interesting category tonight and perhaps another later in A-to-Z month.

This category is the modernized version. There are old time board games out there which still have much to offer but bear badly outdated, undesired components by today’s high standards. The copyright holders have no impetus to replace their classic products and no one else has the legal permission to.

I however, don’t need to give a shit about the legal realm because I’m not selling anything. Some examples (the titles are working titles):

Masterpiece Pro

The old art auctioning game. The dynamics here are very flat and random and yet the game was popular and might still be?

In my version each player is both artist and collector and earns income buying and selling. You actually create little works of art which can be perfectly rudimentary and which are added to the game permanently so that the realm of possibilities grows the more times you play the game. There are specific game-bot collectors and galleries which come into the fold and affect the value of different pieces. The dynamics around value evolve from a combination of random factors and strategy.

Clue Millenium

Gone are the goofy rolls for movement. Each room is only one space away from its neighbours but the layout of the rooms and door placements makes every room slightly unique. There are nine suspects and nine weapons now. What? That will make the game too long! No, I don’t think so. The clue-gathering will happen much faster for a few reasons. I may include a strategy guide and advance “logic charts” which show the less experienced player how to more quickly isolate the secret cards.

Each character has their own unique combination of movement rate, number of starting clue cards and weapon status. Some players have to grab weapons on their way to their destination in order to call on it while others have the power to summon weapons to their current location. Thus there are three factors with each combination intended to sum up to equal overall advantage. So you choose your avatar based on the strategies you prefer.

Monopoly Village

No bartering or bargaining. No waiting forever to start building properties. This version will never be dragged out a long time.

There are villagers of various professions who gradually enter the game and are dragged about the board, sometimes helping, sometimes harming, the players who encounter them. There are many new dynamics. For instance, some hotel builds actually manifest institutions instead, which have their specific effects on those spaces. It’s a very different and fast-paced game.

Oh and when you are eliminated from the game: You may if you wish, return as a zombie! The zombies can not win the game but they can help to end it more quickly by killing off or converting the other players, so that you can more quickly move on to the next game at game night!

I’m looking forward to completing these “prototypes” and convincing pals to play-test them.

Bye for now!