SSSS Monopoly game

[Jitter]

Suggestions for the fifth “railway”:
Bornholm harbour island
The Crate

The Kastellet could be the fifth corner?

It could be done on a four sided borad too but I think the groupings of the locations would need to change even if the same squares did remain streets / not streets

[Jitter]

Or, the locations could be grouped by importance and population rather than nation, so that the two final ones were Mora and Reykjavik and down from there as per the original groupings.

[thegreyarea]

Or, the locations could be grouped by importance and population rather than nation, so that the two final ones were Mora and Reykjavik and down from there as per the original groupings.

That would be a good solution if we stayed with the square board. But I really think that the pentagonal will work great, and give that feeling that you are traveling through the 5 countries :-)

[JoB]

Problem is we have 5 nations and just 4 sides on the board, unless some crazy maniac that likes to play with photoshop (and, in this case, with some vectorial graphic program) decides to create a pentagonal board, which could be filled, in the center, with the Nordic Council symbol and/or images from each country...

Wouldn't we rather want the (hexagonal) SSSS logo? (He says, totally unrelated™ to the fact that the gaming industry's more accustomed to hexagonally structured game boards than pentagonal ones, which would promise lower production costs.)

The sixth "nation" ... I don't think that the Silent World would fit the bill, unless players get paid to "own" parcels there. Maybe the "homelands" of magic, from havens in magespace (I'm pretty sure that Onni and Lalli would say they "own" their havens, they're sure the official decorators!) to posts of The Finnish Eyes?

Fitting additional corner: "(Have a) Prophetic Vision" (a sneak peek at the top card of each stack).
Fitting additional "railroad": Instant country-hopping as your luonto/fylgja?

[thegreyarea]

Suggestions for the fifth “railway”:
Bornholm harbour island
The Crate

I'm not seeing what's "the Crate", but Bornholm harbour island is an excellent idea.

I'm thinking in images from the comic to fill those "commodities" squares.

[thegreyarea]

Wouldn't we rather want the (hexagonal) SSSS logo? (He says, totally unrelated™ to the fact that the gaming industry's more accustomed to hexagonally structured game boards than pentagonal ones, which would promise lower production costs.)

The sixth "nation" ... I don't think that the Silent World would fit the bill, unless players get paid to "own" parcels there. Maybe the "homelands" of magic, from havens in magespace (I'm pretty sure that Onni and Lalli would say they "own" their havens, they're sure the official decorators!) to posts of The Finnish Eyes?

Fitting additional corner: "(Have a) Prophetic Vision" (a sneak peek at the top card of each stack).
Fitting additional "railroad": Instant country-hopping as your luonto/fylgja?

Hi JoB! Thanks for the suggestions. I've though about the hexagonal board. Not because of "production costs" since I'm not exactly envisioning the SSSS edition to actually go on production. Eventually some Minnion could print one for himself, but then we would have to design also the adapted sets of cards, the stands for the player's tokens and so on. And them using pieces from a regular game to complement the set.
That's not impossible, but would demand some time. Let's stay with the board for now and, later, if popular demand increases, or if someone joins the "production line" we may reach the full set.
*starts thinking about a 3D printer to make the custom pieces...*
The dreamworld is an interesting proposal, since it plays a good part on our story. Maybe a place (a board side) where things happen to players, but not where you can build houses and hotels...

The "Prophetic Vision" is a great idea for a new corner! Hoping to another country of your choice is also excellent, but sine the luonto is (in-story) a temporary effect I'm not seeing how to justify the "teleportation" of the player without bringing said player back later.
 But, If we have 6 corners, we could simply have two "go to quarantine" and problem solved

Now, before I go much further, I'd like to hear you, my friends. 5 or 6 sides? I need to do some things now, and will come back later to check your opinions before moving ahead.
Butter good!

[LooNEY_DAC]

I'm not seeing what's "the Crate"...

Why, Captain Ása's Special Reynir Delivery Service, of course!

[Jitter]

LooNEY_DAC yes, that crate

[thegreyarea]

Why, Captain Ása's Special Reynir Delivery Service, of course!

LooNEY_DAC yes, that crate

Oh, you mean the Túnfiskurinn (page 282)! Yes! I think it's a good choice!
So we would have, as commodities: Túnfiskurinn (Iceland), Sveavägen (Sweden), Keuruu-Pori waterway (Finland), Krabben line / Travel Hub (Denmark) and I was thinking on a Longboat from Dalsnes to have something from Norway.
Or we skip the longboat and fully follow Purple Wyrm suggestions, including the Saimaa Canal (Finland). Well, nobody said that you must have one "company" for each country...
Any suggestions?

[Alkia]

I like the pentagon board because it is so unusual, and, well, longboats are just too good to pass up ! I can totally imagine  Sigrun leading the crew in a mini version (is there such a thing as a small longship??)

[Jitter]

While the five-sided board is great as a concept, if we plan a second one for the normal board it could be possible to print paper slips to lay over an actual board one has at home and play on that. The card would have the normal names of course but if we added like a numbering on the locations it could be marked on the cards too with minimal effect on normal play. The Fate and Scavenging cards would be easy to print as well. You’d have to play with the normal pieces, or 3D print them (my hubby immediately said that hey I could print the pieces when I showed him the concept art). No reason why there couldn’t be plans for both!

[thegreyarea]

I like the pentagon board because it is so unusual, and, well, longboats are just too good to pass up ! I can totally imagine  Sigrun leading the crew in a mini version (is there such a thing as a small longship??)

I agree on the pentagon and the longship. But now I'm starting to have doubts on which direction to go...

While the five-sided board is great as a concept, if we plan a second one for the normal board it could be possible to print paper slips to lay over an actual board one has at home and play on that. The card would have the normal names of course but if we added like a numbering on the locations it could be marked on the cards too with minimal effect on normal play. The Fate and Scavenging cards would be easy to print as well. You’d have to play with the normal pieces, or 3D print them (my hubby immediately said that hey I could print the pieces when I showed him the concept art). No reason why there couldn’t be plans for both!

I fully agree. It would be great to have a simple solution to adapt, without great effort or cost, a normal Monopoly board, so Minnions could really play the SSSS version. That would imply creating new sets of cards, that anyone could print (using a 120g paper to make them more resistant), printing the characters (again a resistant paper plus some folding and gluing) and creating some kind of "cover" for the board. Houses and Hotels would be the same, and any kind of plastic ring could work as a "fortification".
The five (or six) sided board would be more expansive to make. Minnions would have to print the whole board (ideally on photographic paper or, even better, vinyl) and fix it to a hardboard (or plywood?) base. The rest is basically the same from the 4 sided board, except you would have more places, so more cards to print. 3D printing is great, but few have access to it (in a few years that will change, for sure).
Right now I'd stay with creating the new boards (4 and 6 sides) so I can make images of the whole set, like that first one that I made. Once the boards are made we would have to work on all those cards... I'll try to do that tomorrow, using Purple Wyrm's version as the starting point.
Anyway I'm open to suggestions. See you soon :-)

[Róisín]

There are small longships, we have a 16 footer at the Gumeracha Mediaeval Fair. The boatbuilding team is working on a 32footer now and hope to eventually do a hundred footer. (If you want to see pictures look up ‘Gumeracha Mediaeval Fair’ on the internet, I can’t do links. It may amuse you to know that the boat we have is named ‘Little Viking’. Our next Fair is going to be the first weekend in May. I will be storytelling and doing apothecary stuff in the Viking village down near the Gumeracha Creek. Don’t think I have yet put up a photo of Little Viking on the re-enactment thread, if I haven’t I should try.

[Purple Wyrm]

I like the idea of a pentagonal board, but am not adverse to a hexagon as long as we can come up with something for the sixth side. JoB's suggestion of the dreamworld seems good - we just need to come up with enough spaces to fill it.

Maybe we could reduce the number of spaces on each side? Each side of standard board has nine spaces consisting of...

Side One: 1 Railroad, 5 Properties, 1 Chance, 1 Community Chest, 1 Tax
Side Two: 1 Railroad, 6 Properties, 1 Utility, 1 Community Chest
Side Three: 1 Railroad, 6 Properties, 1 Utility, 1 Chance
Side Four: 1 Railroad, 5 Properties, 1 Chance, 1 Community Chest, 1 Tax

With the four corners this makes for 40 spaces total. If we followed the same pattern for a hexagonal board we'd have 60 spaces, which seems a bit high. Reducing the spaces on each side to 8 would result in 54 spaces, to 7 would give us 48.

In terms of railroads, I like the idea of having one per nation. My personal choices would be...

Finland: Saimaa Canal
Sweden: The Sveavagen Line
Norway: Longboats
Denmark: Bornholm harbour island
Iceland: Krabben Line
Dreamworld: ????

For the corners (in no particular order)
* Go
* Quarantine
* Safe Zone (the troll piece has no effect here)
* Go to Quarantine
* Kastellet Fort (roll to see what happens)
* Prophetic Vision (as per JoB)

And finally the Utilities as per my board design - the Oresund Base, the Seithur Academy and the Cat Academy.

I drew up my board as an SVG file in Inkscape - I've uploaded it to Dropbox if anyone wants a copy to play around with Download Link

A final thought - would it be best to spin this out into another thread? We've fully moved into game design instead of just speculative art now

[Róisín]

Don’t we have a game thread already? Somewhere. I’m not a gamer so haven’t been following it, but do remember when one was started.

And transport in the dreamworld......Onni flies, Reynir both runs on the water and can bear other people up on the surface as in Lalli treading in his footsteps to reach Onni’s haven or Reynir hustling Onni across the water to visit Pastor Anne, and he also has a boat there. I guess stepping stones are an option, since that seems to be what Lalli uses to get out into the Dream Sea when he is trying to call Onni. I am not so familiar with Finnish folklore as to know what other options exist, but since most of the cultures that have Dreamworlds or equivalents also have some means to get about in them I think there might be one. The only Finnish folktales I remember that have such a concept have the shaman/noita using a rowing boat, then swimming, and there was one in which a woman sends her soul out in the form of a small bird to get to where she needs to go so as to give someone a warning of danger.

 Some of the modern Ásatrú have a ritual for soul retrieval which is done by a group, in which the person leading the attempt sits his helpers in the formation they would be in if rowing a boat, and starts a chant which the ‘rowers’ then carry on while he ‘steers’. I guess what this does is to lend the strength of the helpers to that of the godhi.

Then there are the Celtic tales in which the Otherworld transport is usually a boat, a horse or somebody leading a person by the hand. The tale of Oisín comes to mind, and that of Thomas of Ercildoune. There are even some where the transport is a salmon, a seal, or an eagle. Many possibilities!