BlogNomic: There’s Always Money in the Brisket Stand

Tuesday, November 08, 2022

Proposal: There’s Always Money in the Brisket Stand

Passes 7-1 after more than 48 hours. -Bucky

(vote count corrected)

Adminned at 11 Nov 2022 17:34:31 UTC

If the proposal “Fuel for the Fight” failed, add a new rule called “Money and Items”:-

Each Group has a publicly tracked pool of Money, defaulting to $100. Whenever something happens to a Visitor which costs an amount of Money, this is subtracted from the Money of the Group that controls them (unless doing so would reduce that Money below zero, in which case the Money is instead not reduced and the costed occurrence does not happen to that Visitor).

Each Visitor is carrying a number of Items. This is publicly tracked, and default to carrying no Items.

If “Fuel for the Fight” passed, instead add a new rule called “Money” containing only the first paragraph of the above blockquote.

Reword the rule “Bucky’s BBQ Stand” to the following (or create it as a subrule of Attraction List, with the following text, if it doesn’t exist):-

Bucky’s BBQ Stand is a Queue. Its front effect is: Admit 3: Gain 1 Brisket, costing $5.

Add a subrule to “Attraction List” called “Gift Shop”:-

The Gift Shop is a Queue. Its Front Effect is: Admit 10: Gain 1 Souvenier item, costing $10.

If “Fuel for the Fight” enacted, add an Item to the “Sticky Fingers” rule:-

* Souvenier. Ongoing: No effect.

Unclear if Fuel for the Fight is going to pass, but items seem like an idea worth pursuing. If Fuel fails, this instead suggests having them held by specific Visitors, which may have more potential for how they interact with particular attractions.

Comments

Bucky:

09-11-2022 00:59:26 UTC

“Each Visitor is carrying a number of Items. This is publicly tracked, and default to carrying no Items.” is unfortunately ambiguous. The number of items is publicly tracked, but which items are being carried isn’t, even though they can be deduced.

Fixable.

Raven1207: he/they

09-11-2022 02:28:47 UTC

Josh: he/they

09-11-2022 09:56:35 UTC

Seems like a shame; the idea in Fuel that I liked was that items were held by the Group and affected all Visitors in that group, as it meant that you had to balance your inventory for multiple needs.

Money management also feels like an odd can of worms to open, as someone will chew through it, and then we’re going to feel impelled to add a mechanic by which Visitors can earn money while at a theme park.

Kevan: he/him

09-11-2022 10:25:47 UTC

I think there’s more mileage in assigning items to individuals: it has the same scope for group inventory management (if we allow items to be passed around the group), with additional grist of per-Visitor rules like “can’t take balloons onto the rollercoaster”, “log flume ruins food and paper”, “carried objects impede rushing”.

Money generation seems plausible (a casino, a shop returns policy, a job staffing an attraction, a declaration that every X turns we all go home and come back another day with an extra $100 each), but it also seems narratively strong that when your spending money’s gone, it’s gone - so that a group who knew this but deliberately bought 10 Souveniers won’t get much sympathy.