Landlord income/late fee financial mechanics

Apologies in advance for the long post. Hope it helps.

I'm not clear on whether you have a "resource level" income or "accumulation" income. Accumulation income is like Monopoly -- you earn money, can store it over multiple turns, and can spend it to buy stuff. "Resource level" income represents spending power per turn, but cannot be stored or saved up for future turns.

Accumulation incomes are naturally fiddly, and with the number of properties you describe if you are using Monopoly-type money you will spend a significant portion of the game just collecting and sorting your cash. The addition of non-payments / late fees almost forces you down the path of additional counters to track who paid / didn't pay, further increasing the fiddliness of the game.

Resource level incomes may simplify a game like this, but also changes the economy / game balance drastically. In essence, it would be a totally different game. Say you have 10 properties, which means you can spend 10 income per turn but cannot store it. Gameplay could then revolve around the tension between actions to increase income vs actions to progress towards victory. Of course if increasing income also progresses towards victory, then there is no tension.

One way of simplifying an accumulation income that incorporates non-payment of rents would be to draw 1 card (or chits from a bag) for each property you own. 60% of cards are cash, 40% are IOU's. You can spend or hoard the cash as normal, or send in the debt collectors to try to turn the IOU's into cash (discard all your IOU's and draw the same number of cards -- which might be more IOUs!). If sending in the debt collectors wastes your whole turn (or incurs some other risk/cost), then players will only do it once they accumulate enough IOU's to make it worth the cost. Given the right balance, you may even incentivise players to buy and sell IOU's between themselves -- thus, player interaction.

Reading between the lines of your post, it sounds like lack of player interaction could be an issue. Long, fiddly turns with limited player interaction will kill just about any game. You could combat this with some combination of: rapid turns (e.g. collect rent from only 1 property per turn, so it cycles quickly), simultaneous phases (e.g. all players collect rent, then all players buy property, then all players do end-of-turn actions), and/or player interaction (e.g. bidding on properties for sale).

For example, say the board is divided into zones (or classes of property). On your turn select a zone. All players who own properties in that zone collect rent. Now you've got shorter turns (because you're only collecting from some of your properties not all), engaged players (because they get to collect rent on your turn), and strategy (do I buy more property in my core zone, or branch out to get "freebies" on other zones). You could also use the zone idea to simplify other types of record keeping, for example if you use tokens to show which properties have paid rent or are overdue you can do this on a per-zone basis rather than a per-property basis.

As an aside, you describe a "family" game as 3-4 hours. Any game of that length will seriously reduce the number of people willing to give it a go. If you go down to your FLGS and look for games more than 60-90 mins, you won't find many.

What I'm getting at is that if you, as the game designer, recognise the need to make the game simpler than it's pretty much a guarantee that it is massively, hugely over-complex to everybody else. (I'm speaking from my own experience making massively, hugely over-complex games, so don't feel bad.) Listen to that inner voice, and cut your game savagely to strip it back to the core "fun-factor" that inspired you to make it in the first place.

All the best,
kos

Imagine two hypothetical games:

Game A: The victory condition is to have the most money at the end of the game. There are various actions a player can take each turn, most of which revolve around spending money to earn more money. The skill of the game is to optimise your money spent vs income gained.

Game B: The victory condition is to be the first to finish building a Wonder. The Wonder costs money to build each of 5 levels, and each level costs upkeep which reduces your income on future turns. There are various actions a player can take each turn, most of which revolve around either getting more money or building the Wonder. The skill of the game is to decide how much to focus on optimising income and how much to focus on building the Wonder.

Game A is an optimisation puzzle, which for many people (including myself) can be a fun and absorbing passtime. A well designed Game A style game will have multiple valid strategies to explore, hopefully of the type that involves both forward planning and player interaction: "It looks like my opponent is trying to get X, so I'll swoop in and get Y first which gives me an advantage over X. But if I'm wrong and he's actually trying to get Z, then I've wasted my money on Y for no reason."

Game B has tension between the two (or more) core options each turn. Spend too much time increasing income, and your opponent will steal the win by completing the Wonder first. Spend too much time building the Wonder, and your income will run dry before you finish it. A well designed Game B style game will also have multiple strategies to explore, as well as hopefully forward planning and player interaction.

There are many excellent games which would fit into each category, so it's not necessarily a case of A > B or vice versa.

I would classify Settlers of Catan as primarily Type A, because the core actions you want to take (building towns and cities) both increase income and progress towards winning (10 victory points). There is no tension between "Shall I upgrade a city or do something else." If I can upgrade a city I'm going to do it every time because it gives me both income and VP. There is a smattering of Type B, such as buying Development Cards which may or may not make progress towards victory, and the existence of Longest Road and Largest Army bonus cards which can rapidly swing a bad investment into a win (or vice versa). But at it's core, it's still a Type A.

Vast numbers of Eurogames are primarily Type B -- in fact it's one of their key factors. The more complex ones have multiple separate income sources and multiple victory conditions, leading to ever more complex and involved strategies to win.

Many (most?) deck builders also follow the Type B pattern, following in the footsteps of Dominion where in order to win you have to buy VP cards but the VP cards themselves are completely worthless and actually weakens your deck the more that you buy. If Dominion was exactly as it is now except that every VP card also gave income, it would (in my opinion) be a worse game because it would lose the tension and simply become a steamroller.

In Puzzle Strike you buy new cards (abilities) at the end of each round, and generally have a choice between increasing your income (so you can buy even more powerful cards later) vs attacking your opponents (to eliminate them from the game). Spend too many turns increasing income and you'll get eliminated before you can spend it, but spend too much on weak attacks in the early-game and you'll get stomped by a mega-combo in the end-game.

My personal preference is towards Type B games, but I do balk at the more complex Eurogames. I've played too many complex Eurogames where what seemed to be a valid early-game strategy turned out in the mid-late game to be worthless, which leaves me more with a feeling of frustration than being inspired to try again. Of course, others may have the alternate response.

Once again a bit of a rambling post, but I hope it helps.

Regards,
kos

Such a system could work, and I'd encourage you to give it a go. The earlier you try a set of rules, the earlier you find out if it suits the style of game that you want. I would definitely be careful about unnecessary complexity though -- each type of currency needs a good reason to exist (in game mechanics) and needs to reinforce the theme.

If you have a one-way transfer from resource A (permanent) to resource B (temporary), this creates a meaningful decision for players and options to pursue different strategies. "Do I overload one of my power cores to get a speed boost for this turn but at the cost of permanently reducing my speed for the rest of the game?"

From a game mechanics perspective, "wealth" can be represented in many different ways and themes. Having a wealth wheel is no different to counting the number of properties owned, or the number of planets in my galactic empire, or workers in my vineyard, or politicians that support my bill.

I included upkeep in my hypothetical game because it dis-incentivizes early progress on the "Wonder" (thus creating an early-game, turing-point, end-game progression) and further differentiates the strategies of building income vs building the wonder. However, upkeep is not a necessity for the style to work.

The nature of the "wonder" and "upkeep" is entirely dependent on the theme. I could be building research labs to cure a mysterious disease, where each lab costs X dollars per turn to maintain. I could be building a grand monument in my honour, where every worker I allocate to the monument means 1 less worker mining for coal. I could be painting a masterpiece, where every day I spend painting is a day not spent scavenging rotten food from the dumpster.

Victory could be a simple "first to build 4 research labs wins". Or it could include a random element: every time you build a research lab draw 1 research card; if you have at least 1 each of cards A, B, C, and D you win. Extending this, it could include player interaction: Spend an action to buy a research card from another player. Now you have created uncertain progression towards victory (generally a good thing, in my opinion), and player interaction through bluffing, negotiation, and deal-making.

In each of these examples, the players use the core currency of the game (dollars, coal, and food respectively) to take actions, but this currency does not contribute to the victory condition. The "victory currency" is research, size of monument, and progress on the masterpiece.

Either method would work. Personally I like the tactile nature of "allocating" wealth pieces, whether they be workers, coins, or death stars. I also dislike fiddly games, so having a smallish number of tokens to allocate each turn appeals to me more than collecting money from the bank and paying it back every turn.

Many games use individual player boards for this purpose. The use of simultaneous secret allocation is somewhat common, especially when paired with rules where the person who assigned the most to a particular action gets a better result. E.g. whoever allocated the most money to bribing the mayor gets 1 special action. This creates instant player interaction, because you want to get the special action for a low cost, or at least block somebody else from getting it. Example: Samurai Swords, where you secretly allocate income between initiative (turn order), recruitment, building, and hiring the ninja.

Other games use a common board where players take turns placing tokens (typically workers, but they could be anything) on action spaces. There is a limit to the number of workers allowed on each action space, leading to indirect player conflict as they try to get the best actions using the least number of workers. This style of game usually needs another rule for determining or bidding on turn order each round, since simple round-robin often leads to first-turn (or last-turn) advantages. Examples: Every second Eurogame released in the last 10 years.

If you are placing workers/resources/control markers on a common board, then you need unique tokens for each player (e.g. different color meeples). However, if you are placing them on a player board you can have generic tokens (e.g. coins).

I've given a bunch of random examples to try to show that there are lots of different styles of game and any/all of them could be great. I hope you find the style that works for you.

Regards,
kos