Well that was fast!

Thanks to Tim Harrison, there are two substantive rules clarifications in this release:

• If nobody bids on a Capitalised bank share then the active player loses 3 months
• Secondary company shares are not available at all until after the 3rd General Dividend

Unless you’re likely to be playing 5 player games, and likely even then, there’s no need to print out a new map for either the #69 or #71 releases. Just grab the new rules and be done. Just remember that 5 player games have one more month than shown on the map if you’re playing with the older graphic.

The download file is in the same place as usual with 71 in the filename instead of the previous number.

Changelog:

• Removed support for 6 players
• Added a month to 5 player game
• Small legibility changes to the map.

There are no other rules changes. The download file is in the same place as usual with 69 in the filename instead of the previous number.

Again, please append commentary, questions, reactions, thoughts etc¹ as comments below so we may all easily track exactly what is being talked about.

• @neilhimself Have a look at #Nambu. I found it preferable to #Tweetdeck for managing high traffic feeds & searches. in reply to neilhimself #
• One of the better flu/pandemic commentaries: RT @terrycojones: Blogged “A few comments on pandemic influenza” http://bit.ly/kK3zQ #swineflu #
• RT @timoreilly: For govt info on #swineflu, follow @CDCemergency and visit http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/ (via @AndrewPWilson) #
• @timoreilly @billpena Same problems with #tweetdeck here. #Seesmic doesn’t save searches. #Nambu does & is faster/richer. in reply to timoreilly #
• @brookscl I found Small World’s art distracting & misdirecting. The gameplay changes didn’t seem an improvement. Not enough arc or depth. in reply to brookscl #
• Facebook’s official AIR applicaiton: http://tinyurl.com/dkblsu #
• RT @timoreilly:Fascinating from NYT: “skeletal integrity consumes maybe 40% of our average caloric budget.” http://bit.ly/yaZL3 #
• @elenuial HR resume parsing has long-since been out-sourced to 3rd party app stacks. Rarely is even PDF or ASCII supported. in reply to elenuial #
• @elenuial Resume is a key-word farm, yes, but cover letters more important to pass HR. Word’s just a standardised data-interchange-format. in reply to elenuial #
• @elenuial The other version is: This is a human problem, not a technical problem. in reply to elenuial #
• @elenuial Yep, and that’s the fate of all communication: finding the common middle ground (lowest common denominator). in reply to elenuial #
• @elenuial BtB I’m getting 1:1 in-person interviews for crafted cover letters. Bare resumes don’t cut it any more. Active selling required. in reply to elenuial #
• @timoreilly So few use #twitter usefully that there are few +ve role models and fewer ways to find ‘en. Celebrity sizzle doesn’t help in reply to timoreilly #
• @toddbert Heck no. Submissions to publishers. in reply to toddbert #
• @elenuial MUDs are rightly incredible. Nothing beats social engineering on that scale. in reply to elenuial #

I’ve posted a first draft of the rules for the un-named game to give an idea where I’m headed. Please note that I’ve not checked or otherwise verified any of the game’s basic arithmetic (eg component counts, scoring values, map sizes, etc), so they are likely to be way off. However the rules should show the intended basic structure and character of the game and to hopefully help get the game name suggestions flowing!

I need a name, a name for a game, preferably a punish double entendre. Here’s the premise:

It is 1958 and pop culture is transforming London, life and society. It is the age of the young and the young want to party and to hook up and to disappear into the night. But first they have to get involved, find their ways to the parties and avoid the police who don’t quite approve of the new social order along the way.

Yep, that’s mostly ripped off from the truly wonderful Absolute Beginners, and yes, this is a game all about getting your’s and the other player’s pieces laid¹. Structurally the game features network-building, pick-up-and-deliver, a very relaxed definition of player ownership² and a Velano-inspired scoring system³. Intended playtime is in the 75-90 minute range, which feels about right but it is early days yet.

The other inspirations include the usual suspects:

• Age of Steam
• Bridges of Shangri-La
• Clans
• Through the Desert
• TrainSport: Austria
• TrainSport: Switzerland

The core premise is that of shared public actions, player actions which affect and move not only that player’s own pieces, but those of other players. The hope is to create a diffuse yet strong temporary emergent alliance/mutual incentive system that is based on spatial relationships and not partial-ownership via company shares (ie not like Wabash Cannonball, Pampas Railroads etc and more like Bridges of Shangri-La and Clans).

FWLIW previous themes and titles included Infection and Necrosis, but #bgdf_chat successfully persuaded me those titles and themes were non-starters⁴.

New rules for Corner Lot. The only substantive change is to the starting capital for different player counts.

Change Log:

• Starting capital adjusted slightly for different player counts
• Several small language tweaks around bonus scoring, market layout, etc.
• Added poker chip colour section (to match the sets I’ll be sending out)

A possible clean-ish address for the problem of remembering the value assigned to a wild card: 20 small chits, 4 in each suit’s colour, double sided with each side bearing a revenue value (3/4/5/6/7/8/9/12). When a player buys a wild card they place the matching chit on the card with the appropriate side up so as to record the revenue they assigned to the card.

Unfortunately it means not only an extra component, but an extra component-type. Oh well. I guess I can’t hope for an Adlung-Spiele small-box presentation.

A few playtesters have requested player aids or cheat-sheets for Corner Lot. I may be too close to the game to see the wood for the trees: If there were to be a player aid, what would you like to see on it and how would that help you? Would a player aid have been useful to you? If you have played the game already, would it still be useful to you> Would it make teaching the game easier?

Only one of the 40+ players I’ve taught the game to locally requested a player aid, but didn’t have a clear statement of why they wanted one, how it would be useful or what data they thought should be on it (more likely a product of my bad questioning than their fault). My perhaps unflattering impression was that the player aid would provide comfort by re-assuring the player that they hadn’t forgotten any of the core game structures rather than providing data they’d forgotten. Does that about right? What do you think of the need and value for a player aid for Corner Lot?

• Delegating truth to authoritative experts, the (wonderful) information/communication theory vantage: http://bit.ly/FP4pC #
• A view/data-history centric model for a firefox? http://tinyurl.com/ceoh6y #
• Tweetie (OS X) would be a lot more useful if it saved search windows/strings between invocations. #twitter #tweetie #tweetdeck #osx #
• @tharri I’ve not tried. I know several who use it for multi-account on iPhone. I’m about to look into Seesmic. #tweetie #twitter #seesmic in reply to tharri #
• @hnshah Important thing isn’t title but, “Did you learn the lessons?”, “Are you still learning?” & “Will you use that to build success?” in reply to hnshah #
• @icheyne @Linnaeus The locals, who include Wei-Hwa & Tom, say the tiles offer more viable paths & make several corner cases viable. in reply to icheyne #
• @Linnaeus @Icheyne The assertion is that they force those reinforced strategies to be narrower and thus riskier if pursued directly. #rftg in reply to Linnaeus #
• @Linnaeus @icheyne Talk to Eugene Huang about #RftG exp tounament w/ Wei-Hwa. Amazing play by Wei. Eugene is ext-good. Wei steamrollered. in reply to Linnaeus #
• Accident on I85: 4 cars, motorcycle in middle, man lieing in oil spill desperately holding rider’s head/helmet still. Right on ya mate! #
• @ingredientx Clippers: Best game Alan Moon has done. 5 players only. Turn back lines so nothing gets to the 8 point islands. Avoid Samoa! in reply to ingredientx #
• @ingredientx SFR is terrible: the decisions are after the commitments. So wrong. Trick in Clippers is to fight off every avenue of success. in reply to ingredientx #
• @ingredientx My other phrasing: Stifle & strangle. Just stifle & strangle the other players on the board. You’ll get an amazing game! in reply to ingredientx #
• #Nambu is neat. Faster than #tweetdeck, clunky UI, multi-account, good threading, long histories, but still can’t edit searches! #twitter #
• @msaari So far #Nambu is happy with Spirited Away and doesn’t pop up unprompted. (http://drikin.com/spiritedaway/) in reply to msaari #
• @dan4th What about Chicago Express annoys you so? in reply to dan4th #
• @dan4th Yep, a tight dance with little forgiveness - but not inescapable. Usually hard but possible. See my set piece articles on BGG. in reply to dan4th #
• @brookscl Arguably the latter should be #go4 not #gof in reply to brookscl #
• @ginn5j @brookscl Absolutely. Sufficiently dense keys are always ambiguous: they’re called hashes. in reply to ginn5j #
• I find #gov20 so terribly encouraging. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103461990&ft=1&f=1014 #

Reading between the lines, it seems that some of your players have had difficulty grokking some aspects of Corner Lot, especially the value and size of the bonuses, or how the stack will unroll etc. Below is a rough transcript (from memory) of the spiel I use when teaching the game. It has worked well for me. I wrote this originally in reaction to a session report. In case I forgot anything, I’ll update this version as needed.

This is a set collecting game. We’re going to be buying cards in a weird auction and collecting revenues for the cards we get. At the end of the game we’ll get bonuses for having certain patterns of cards. The player with the largest net worth wins.

There are 5 suits of cards with 8 cards per suit. (Lay out 8 cards, one of each value) Property cards have a cost and a revenue. The cost is the baseline of how much they cost to acquire and the revenue is roughly what they’ll pay you every round for owning them. With one exception the cost is always the revenue minus two times five. And the exception is…? (Wait for someone to point at the 40/12) Correct!

The deck will be shuffled and five cards will be laid face up to the side. (Lay 5 cards off to the side) These are out of the game and yes, you get to see them. Then 7 cards are laid in a sorted row as so. (Does this) This is the current market: the cards up for auction first. Then another 7 cards are set out, and make the future market: the cards auctioned in the second round. Later they’ll move down to become the current market, a new set of 7 will be dealt to be the new future market and so forth. As there are 40 cards in the deck, 5 are out, leaving 35, the game has 5 rounds of 7-card lots.

Okay, we’ll also pick a start player. They’ll get the first turn, then the player to their left and so on. Always purely rotational. That never changes.

On your turn you may bid, buy or pass. That’s it, just bid, buy or pass. Bidding! You may bid on any card in the current market that isn’t the cheapest/bottom card and that you haven’t bid on already. Just to keep the bids straight, make your bids by putting your chips on the corner of the card nearest you. So you get this corner, you get this corner you get this corner etc. (points) The minimum bid is the cost of the card plus $2, or $2 more than the highest bid on the card, whichever is more. Instead of bidding you can just buy the cheapest/bottom card for face value: this number on the card. Pay your money, take the card. And of course, you can pass. If you pass you’re not out: you can come back in later.

So why bid ahead and pay that $2 premium? Because the high cards are worth a lot more than their face value and the low cards, are well, not so good. (Quickly throws some chips on the various cards, some cards with a single bid, some two, some three, usually the penultimate card with none) Just pretend these chips are the bids by various players. When someone buys the bottom card we then look at the next card up. If it has just a single bid on it, then that player gets the card instantly for his bid. (Shows this) Then we do it again. Ahh, the next card has two bids! Those two players then go clockwise bidding for the card until only one person is left and they win the card for their bid and the losers get their money back. The minimum raise is $2. This next card has 3 bids on it: same thing happens, round robin etc, And this keeps on going, the stack keeps unrolling until there are either no cards left or you get to a card with no bids on it. Then it stops. Often all 7 cards in the market will go all at once! The key thing is that by bidding ahead you are securing the right to bid later. If you didn’t bid ahead on a card, you’ll have no chance to bid on it when the stack unrolls if someone else has bid on it. You are bidding for the right to bid!

Now all this unrolling and bidding and cards going places etc happens during the turn of the player who bought the bottom card. Once it is all done, the next player gets his turn.

Now of course with this card here (points to the penultimate card with no bids), say you (points) have the next turn, you can just buy that card for face value, you can bid on this last card if you haven’t already, or you can pass. It might be a good deal. Or not.

Okay, once all the cards in the current market are gone we get revenues! You get paid for every card you have. But you don’t get the full revenue! If the wild card for that suit hasn’t been bought, then every card in that suit pays $2 less. (I’ll talk about the wild cards and how to get them later) So this 5/3 card only pays $1 and this 25/7 only pays $5 and so forth. The key thing here is that cards pay back at roughly 22%. So you don’t get your money back quickly!

So we all get our money, a new future market is dealt and we do it all again. We do that 5 times and the game is over and we figure out how much I won by. Or not. Again. Bahh!

At the end of the game you get bonuses for the cards you have. There are four bonuses. For 3 or more cards in the same suit you get the number of cards you have of that suit times the highest revenue card you have in that suit, Then, 3 or more cards in the same suit in adjacent numerical order (and 12 comes after 9 as there is no 10 or 11) pays the number of cards in the run times the highest revenue card (so 4/5/6 or 7/8/9/12 for instance), 3 or more cards of the same value pays the number of cards time the revenue, and 3 or more cards of adjacent values but with each card of a different suit and each suit only occurring once pays the number of cards times the highest revenue. Sort of a “rainbow” run. It is always 3 or more cards and always times the highest revenue card in the set.

Each card can pay all four bonuses, but it can’t pay any bonus more than once. So 5/6/7 in suit will pay two bonuses, one for the suit and one for the run! But you you can’t take four 7s and say you have lots of sets of triple 7s as you mix and match them, and you can’t take two 5s, a single 6 and two 7s and say you have two rainbow runs.

So these bonuses are where the real money is in the game. And what you really want is for all of your cards to pay out multiple bonuses in different directions. Something like a 5/6/7 in 3 suits will pay every which way, for the suits, the suited run, the triples, and the three rainbows, see? See why the big cards are so much more valuable? (Get an answer) There’s lots of money there.

So we do all that and the player with the most money wins! It takes about 45 minutes.

Oh, the wilds! Okay, remember the bid, buy or pass business? You can just buy a wild card. It costs $20. It is just like buying the bottom card but it doesn’t start the stack unrolling. When you buy a wildcard you have to instantly say what it is. It is a 7! This is a 12! Whatever, just one of the card values: 3/4/5/6/7/8/9/12. But! But! When it comes to revenue time, the revenue for the wild card goes straight to the card and just piles up there. You don’t get it until the end of the game. Also, you have to pay the bank $5 for each wild card you own. You do get your revenue income first, so you can pay from that, but if you still can’t pay the $5, you have to put the wild card back and you lose all the money that piled up on it!

Now for the bonuses the wilds are just like any other card. They have a suit and they have a value. You can have the wild be a duplicate of another card you have, so you could have a blue 40/12 and have a wild blue 40/12 too. That’s fine.

And of course, once someone buys a wild, all the cards in that suit will now pay their full revenue.

There’s also a trick in passing. If everyone passes in a round, $5 is put on the bottom card. It is now $5 cheaper! However the first person to pass doesn’t get first dibs at the card at the new price. The turn marker moves forward and the next player does. Of course if everyone one passes again, it gets $5 cheaper again and the turn marker moves forward etc. If it ever gets to $free the next player has to take the card. Such a problem!

So we do all this: bidding, buying cards, moving cards about, vast amounts of money leap out of the bank and go to me, little small bits go to you guys, all that stuff. We do 5 rounds, then we pay out the bonuses, count up the money, and see that I won yet again. Hey gee, I’m the banker too!

Any questions?