Friday, February 14, 2025

Proposal: This Land is My Land

Withdrawn. Failed by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 14 Feb 2025 18:21:37 UTC

Replace the rule text of “Forbidden Island Local Rules” with the following text:

Each Token has a publicly tracked Land, which is a list of colors where each color is one of the possible random results for the Dice Roller’s COLOR command, as specified in “Random Generators”, except for White. Land defaults to an empty list. A color is Deeded to a Token if that color is in that Token’s Land. When a color is Deeded to a Token, the Meeple who owns that Token is a Landlord of that color. If all the Tokens of a Meeple have the same color Deeded to them, that Meeple is a Monopolist of that color.

Each Meeple has a publicly tracked number named Gold which defaults to 500.

Colors have a Cost according to the table below:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Color !! Cost
|-
| Black || 5
|-
| Silver || 10
|-
| Orange || 20
|-
| Yellow || 40
|-
| Red || 50
|-
| Green || 60
|-
| Turquoise || 75
|-
| Magenta || 90
|-
| Purple || 100
|}

As a Phase 3 Turn Action, the Current Meeple may remove a color from the Land of a Token they own, and if they do so, they may then add half the Cost of that color to their Gold.

As a Phase 4 Mandatory Turn Action, for each Token whose Position has changed in prior Phases this Turn, if that Token is in Forbidden Island, and the square that Token occupies is not White, the Meeple owning that Token may perform Real Estate, which is an atomic action where that Meeple is considered the Buyer, that Token is considered the Visitor, the color of the square that Token occupies is considered the Property Color, and the action has the following steps:
* If there is a Meeple other than the Buyer who is a Landlord of the Property Color, the Buyer must pay that that Landlord an amount of Gold equal to 20% of the Propery Color’s Cost, multiplied by the number of Tokens owned by that Landlord that are Deeded that Propery Color, then rounded up to the nearest integer. This amount is doubled if the Landlord is a Monopolist of the Property Color. If the Buyer does not have enough Gold to pay the full amount, they must pay as much as possible that would bring their Gold to 0, then set the Visitor’s Position to 199 and complete this atomic action, skipping any further steps.
* If the Property Color is not already Deeded to the Visitor, and no Meeple is a Monopolist of the Property Color, the Buyer may either skip the rest of this step or spend an amount of Gold equal to the Property Color’s Cost, and if they do spend that amount of Gold, they may then add the Property Color to the Visitor’s Land.

As a Phase 5 Turn Action, the Current Meeple may perform Loop Around on each Token they own that has a Position between 251 and 299 inclusive. Loop Around is an atomic action with the following steps:
* Change that Token’s Position to 201
* Add 50 to that Meeple’s Gold

A Meeple is Worthy of the Forbidden Island Gate if that Meeple’s Gold is higher than all other Meeples’ Gold and twice as high as the Gold of the Meeple with the second-highest Gold.

Monopoly-ish rules. It’s not exactly like that game, but close enough without being too complicated. I could have added tracking by square value rather than color, but I chose not to in order to allow Tokens to acquire Land easier.

I just put in some values that kinda made sense. Balancing tweaks are welcome.

Comments

ais523:

14-02-2025 01:08:20 UTC

The wording of Loop Around is confusing – is it meant to apply to each token individually, or all tokens at once? It looks like you’re asking the player to perform multiple atomic actions as part of the same action, and I’m not entirely sure why or whether it works.

I’d suggest making both your atomic actions non-atomic: the first one has only one step and thus the atomicity isn’t required, and the second one doesn’t have any timing exploits. That would simplify the rule a bit and doesn’t seem to hurt anything.

Note that as written this gives a very large advantage to a Meeple who reaches Forbidden Island substantially earlier than the other Meeples – if you can buy lots of colors early on then it may be very hard for the other Meeples to make any progress. I think you can fix that by making the starting Gold substantially lower (as it is in the actual Monopoly game), so that if a Meeple is there on their own there’s a limit to how much you can spend before some other Meeple gets there and starts losing money to you.

Habanero:

14-02-2025 01:10:22 UTC

If I’m the only Meeple with Tokens on the island, I’m immediately Worthy. This is not good - it should get easier to be Worthy the more Meeples are on an island, not harder, to prevent those ahead from breaking away even more. Similarly it should get easier the longer you’re on the island, which isn’t the case here since at most one can be Worthy at a time.

Also, what happens when I land on a colour with multiple Landlords?

Habanero:

14-02-2025 01:17:47 UTC

Thinking about it more, these mechanics might be a good fit for the Hellapagos rules rather than Forbidden Island. Once someone becomes Worthy on the final island there isn’t all that much more to do to win, so it’s alright if capitalism causes everyone else to go broke (though there should still be a requirement for at least three Meeples on the island before Worthiness can be handed out).

Desertfrog:

14-02-2025 08:05:55 UTC

against per the concerns above and also due to overall complexity

ais523:

14-02-2025 13:43:44 UTC

against I’m not opposed to the general concept of Monopoly-like gameplay, but I don’t like the details here.

Snisbo: she/they

14-02-2025 15:53:08 UTC

against

JonathanDark: he/him

14-02-2025 18:21:10 UTC

All the comments are fair points, thanks for the suggestions. I may go back to the drawing board with this.

Withdrawn for now.  against