Ponzi's New Plan

In this Main Match, continue to take out loans to make sure you aren't the first person to go bankrupt. (Original design by Jesse Li)

Designer(s): Non-original Game Match Type: MM (for 5 players)
Featured in: The Genius: PnP

MM6 Ponzi's New Plan


Summary

Take out loans to invest in real estate! No money to pay off that loan? No worries, just take out another one! As long as you aren't the first one to go bankrupt, you get to swim in those sweet profits!


Rules


The game is split into a 48 hour pregame with a mock round (check announcements after reading rules) and a number of rounds, each lasting 48 hours. Each round will be split into Funding and Trading phases, where each trading phase overlaps the funding phase of the next round.

On day 1, players will submit for the funding part of round 1.

On day 2, players will submit for funding part of round 2 and trading part of round 1.

On day X, players will submit for funding part of round X and trading part of round X-1.


The game will last at most 16 days but can end earlier. (, excluding possible extensions.)


Game Objectives.

Players will be trying their best to raise funds by claiming to invest in various bogus industries. When time arrives, players will have to pay promised dividends to their investors.

When a player fails to pay the interest, the game ends immideately. All bankrupt players lose, as well as the players who invested the least.


Funding phase.


In Funding phase, players will be able to earn money through fund cards and earn victory points through industry tiles.


Fund cards will give you an amount of money immediately, but also ask for a recurring payment every so often. Every card will be of form "Receive X money now. Every Y rounds, lose Z money."

There are 62 total investment cards, each giving you a unique amount of money between 9 and 70. The higher the amount of money gained, the more predatory the recurring payment is, occurring more often or requiring more money.


There are 4 types of industry tiles: Transportation, Grain, Media and Real Estate. They will be colored blue, red, green and black.

At the end of the game industry tiles will give victory points to players who didn't go bankrupt. Your Nth tile of a certain type will give you N victory points. So for example, 3 Grain tiles will give you 6 points (1 + 2 + 3).


Each round, 9 fund cards will be presented to the players in a 3x3 grid. This grid will always be sorted from lowest to highest.

In the first round, the 9 smallest fund cards are present. Cards taken by any player will be replaced by a random fund card that hasn't appeared before (and then sorted).


✏️ Each round, players may take both an industry tile and a fund card. You can't take one but not the other.

Players can take any of the 4 industry tiles, but they can not take a 4th tile of the same type.

Depending on how many industry tiles a player has, they also have to take a fund card from the same row. For example, if a player takes their second grain tile, they have to take a fund card from the second row of the grid.


TL;DR: In the funding phase, you will be able to get victory points from industry tiles, as well as money from fund cards that you can use to pay off debts you accumulated from said fund cards.


Trading Phase.


In the trading phase, players will be able to exchange money and industry tiles.

✏️ If you and your opponent share an industy tile, you may offer a sum of money for that tile.

In the next round, the opponent will be forced to either take the money offered and give up the industry tile, or to make a counter offer and give the amount of money offered and take your industry tile.

The offer can not be refused, it has to be either taken or counter-offered.


:garnet: Instead of offering money, players can also offer a number of garnets. The opponent will then either accept or counter-offer, as usual.


Players are expected to take note of their trades and to not give away more industry tiles or money than they own.

If a player fails and gives away more tiles than they own, they will be forced to pay investors 2 rounds earlier (for example, an payment that is in 5 rounds will instead become a payment in 3 rounds).

If a player fails and gives away more garnets than they own, they will go negative.

If a player fails and gives away more money than they own, they go bankrupt and the game ends.

Processing order


As there are many overlapping parts and every bit of money matters, it is important to understand in which order the things are resolved.


Each round, the processing is as follows:

  • Process all trades
  • Pay off investments
  • Take new industry tiles and fund cards.

Trading will allow players to earn a bit more money from other players at cost of victory points, or gain some more VP at cost of money.


Players will then use this money to pay off investors, who come every Y rounds after taking a fund card, forcing the player to go and search for more investors to give them funds.


Taking new fund cards allows the players to stay afloat a little bit longer, as well as providing the players with necessary victory points.


Game End.


The game ends as soon as one of the players goes bankrupt due to not being able to pay investors or by trading poorly.

If 13 rounds pass, the player with the lowest amount of money goes bankrupt.


:EC: The player(s) who went bankrupt are EC.

:EC: The player(s) with the least victory points and aren't bankrupt are EC.

*️⃣ If everyone is EC, the player that is not bankrupt with the most VP dodges, ties broken by amount of money, then majority vote.


There are no winners in this game. Survive just long enough to dodge EC and dodge DMO.


Dodging awards 5 garnets. Winning a DM awards 3 garnets.


Known information:

Known to everyone, at the start of each round.

  • Round number
  • The 9 available fund cards
  • The industry tiles of each player

Known only to you, at the start of each round.

  • Offers made to you, which tile they want and for how much
  • Results of your last round's offer
  • Your money amount
  • How much you have to pay in how many rounds (investors)

Known to everyone, at the end of the game.

  • Everyone's money count.
  • Everyone's victory points.

Credits

This game is very heavily based on the board game Ponzi Scheme, adapted for simulations submissions. Additional thanks to Chaotic_iak for bringing this game to my attention.


📌 Amendment: Players losing by bankruptcy are ranked lower.

Players going bankrupt are ranked by VP.

Players losing from VP are ranked by amount of money.

In case of further ties, they are broken by garnet counts, then randomly.


📌 Amendment You can not offer more money or garnets than you have.


Rule Change: on the topic of impossibility.

Changing this to simultaneous submissions opened up WAY more edge cases than I thought!!


Imagine you have limited game supplies, only 2 tiles, only a wallet of money and only a handful of garnets.

You can't give away more stuff than you own voluntarily under any circumstance.

Some examples:

You have 1 tile, but 2 incoming offers. You can not accept both of them.

You have an incoming offer for 10 garnets, but you only have 9. You can not accept it.

You have $10, but you want to make an offer for $11 knowing they will counter. You still can not do that.


The impossible situation for running out of tiles may still happen, but it will always involve your own offer being countered.

Easiest example is you offering player A, them countering, player A offering you more money than you have and being forced to accept.

The penalty for that will stay the same.


The other two scenarios should not happen, ever.

If you go into garnet debt, you will now bankrupt.


Blanket rule: you are not allowed to submit a set of invalid submissions that will bankrupt you or leave you at -1 tile.


If you have $9 and have 2 incoming offers for $10, you are allowed to accept one and counter another.

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