Monday 19 March 2012

How To Play (2012 Version)


Bookcrossing Monopoly is a wild releasing game, with challenges each turn (a turn is two weeks) and points to earn... the team with the most points at the end wins

Each turn, the Goddess of Game (or GoG, is me, Vekiki - as named by Wyando during the last game),  will role the virtual dice and move the pieces
Your team has the length of the turn (two weeks) to complete the challenge you have landed on (more details below), and post on the forum with a link to your released book 
The game will last 15 turns (30 weeks)
The winner is the team with the most points after the last turn

The Different Kinds of Square:
Types of square that you may land on the board are:
- Location Squares: like in normal monopoly, most of the squares are locations - simply wild release a book at that location and claim your point! You can be as imaginative as you like in how you define a 'tree' or 'rainbows end' - the more original your idea, the better. This time around, I have tried to make the locations much more open to creative interpretation
- Community Bookshelf: If you land on a bookshelf square, you need to pick any other monopoly player (not in your team!) and send them a wishlist book. This is the only time that controlled releases count in this game.
To clarify: your team still gets a catch when a wishlist book you sent is received - AND the team you post to gets a point for the catch as well. It follows the same rules as any other book in play with points for re-releases too
- Genre Square: take a 'genre card' (GoG will pick one out of the hat for you) and make a release themed around that genre.
- Planes and trains: make a release on public transport - trains or planes, buses or  (Boris) bikes... Bally's on the move!
- Chance: take a chance card.... no way to guess what that may be... (these will sometimes be double or even triple release challenges, an opportunity to earn lots of points)
- In Jail: You landed yourself in jail, but what for? You steal a point from another team by making a release themed to their team (either their team name, or something else about them)
- Recommend a favourite: a favourite book, or authour, or release spot... or word in the title, or colour featured on the cover, or... anything. Whatever it is, tell us why you love it
- Compass Squares: rather than at a location, these releases should be in a direction, or themed around that direction
- Go! This is where we all start, and as you travel the board during the game, you get to make an extra release when you pass Go. In addition, if you land on the GO! square, you get to make a free release
 - Super Speed - it's time to go go go with a speed release - you only have half the turn to make your release (so in a normal two week turn, you will have one week)

And... if you complete all the challenges of a particular colour, you get to make an extra release themed to that colour.

Scoring points:
One point each for any of the following:
  • challenge book released
  • book caught
  • AF sign up to BC
  • Book re-released
  • successful hunting of another team's Monopoly book
  • and... Bonus points
Bonus points are given out by the gamehost for special releases - but she's very hard to impress.... Try to theme the book to your location, or making your bookdrop in fancy dress, or anything to catch her eye and make your team stand out

Making Your release
Once your team decide on a book and place to release, go do it! Be sure to make release notes, then share a link to the book - along with an explanation about how that fits your theme - on the forum thread. Please also PM a link to GoG - these PMs are how she keeps track of points so be sure not to forget!
New turns will be announced on Tuesdays (GMT), and you will have two weeks to make your release and report it before 9PM (GMT) Monday evenings. Then points will be updated and the next turn announced...

The Teams:
We form teams 3 players  each- how you delegate who does each challenge in your team is up to you
Teams will be announced over the weekend ( 24th/25th March)
Teams are assigned by GoG, but if you have requests for who the team with (or not) or what team token you would like, PM her - she will do her best to grant all requests.

Join In:
Sign up in the release challenges forum, on the monopoly thread
Players: I am currently organising your teams. PM me to mention if there is another player who you'd like to be on a team with (or if there's someone you definitely don't want to team up with)
Teams will be announced 24th/25th March

The first turn will be announced Tuesday 27th March, and new turns will be announced every other Tuesday. Turns will be announced here, and on the Release Challenges forum on the main BC site

Once we get going, you can email photos of your releases to Vekiki, or PM her links to them, to be included in the blog.

(oh... erm.. it's just for fun, and to claim the title as BCMP Champions - no actual prizes!) 

I bet there are questions; look below and see if someone beat you to it, or go over to the Release Challenges forum thread and ask 'em. I'll do my best to explain; I'm sure there'll turn out to be stuff I haven't thought of... in which case we shall fill in any blanks as we come across them.

Some Questions so far: 
* I'd rather not be in a team with x, or on a team called y, is that ok?
Sure - not everyone gets along with everyone else, that's just a fact of human life. if you let me know, I won't make you team up with any particular person. Ditto team names. the team names  are based on the token that you play with in Monopoly - and if you're anything like my family, everyone has a favourite 'lucky' token... 
  *Do I need to be in the same country as my team mates?  nope! you can communicate via email / PM. Lots of people last game enjoyed getting to know BC team mates (as well as competitors) around the globe  

* I'm not very confident with my English skills, it's not my first language, can I still play?Sure thing, Bookcrossing knows no language boundaries!  English is my mother tongue and I make mistakes all the time with spelling and grammar rules (and typos. If you haven't noticed yet, trust me you will!) I would advise though  to request at least one team mate who is a confident English speaker - simply because I will always be posting in english  (the only other language I speak is Dranasian Secret Sign language, which is very hard to type) and it may cause problems otherwise. You can either request a friend to team with to help you translate, or let me know and I'll try to find you another player who speaks English and at least a little of whatever your native tongue may be. We're shaping up to be a pretty global game! 

* Can I count books from other challenge games towards this?
Sure!

* What if I'm busy or go on holiday?
because there's a team of you, if your busy and can't act promptly, your team-mates will be able to take that challenge instead
To be clear, you play as a team - so as long as one of your team does the challenge, your covered. And even if you decide to sit a turn out, that's fine, just you don't get the points :)

* What if my team and I can't get to a suitable release spot?
you can interpret them however you like. So one spot is castles and palaces: now, not everyone can get to a real castle - but you can build a sand castle... or leave a book in front of a painting of a palace in an art gallery... or find a toy shop with toy castles... or maybe something to do with the castle pieces in chess? Or... well... anything you can come up with. Creative thinking is your friend - and will earn you bonus points!

*Will mailing to other players cost a lot and mean I have to keep going to the post office?
the controlled releasing is only involved if you land on a bookshelf space - the equivalent of community chest on a normal monopoly board. And as you're in teams, you can discuss with your team who will do the book posting. As it's a pretty international game, you should be able to find players close-ish to home. (or maybe even close enough to pass books by hand) plus, of course, if you do land on that square, it's not compulsory, you can sit that turn out

*How will I know when each turn is posted?
Before the game starts, I'll send a PM out to everyone with their team on it, and just after that the first turn will be posted on the forum - I won't be PMing each turn out to every individual as I just don't have time to do that each fortnight - but I'll be posting in the release challenges forum, and here on the blog.
I'll be posting the turns each fortnight on a Tuesday, so you can just check then for your challenge - though of course if you drop in on the forum more often you can see what other teams are up to and get inspiration, chatter... speculate about who's winning...

*Can my team release as many books as we like?
No. We had some discussion about this in the previous game, and I have decided to make it officially against the rules. Previously some teams were 'fishing' for points by releasing lots of books and seeing what was caught before submitting their turn. This is not fair on other players, as the game is supposed to be about creative releases, not mass releases. There is no realistic way I can police this, obviously, but I ask that you pre-determine your Monopoly book before making the release. Of course if you want to leave other books with it, you feel free, but you should know in advance which exact book you will be submitting.

* How do we as a team decide on our release - just pick one between us and do it, or do one each then choose the most creative to submit for the game?
How you decide each turn within your team is up to you guys - maybe you come up with better ideas by brainstorming together first, or maybe you want to take turns, or maybe one of you has a great idea and another person acts it out... however you choose to play, as long as the team is happy with it, is fine.

*What do we need to do to claim our points?
All you have to do is send an PM to me, with a link to the book, you also have to post the release in  the forum. It won;t count unless you do both! Giving us a bit more info about why you choose that release if you want - or include it in the release notes, it helps me see how the challenge was done and makes it more likely that you will get bonus points
Pictures are fun to see, and if you send them or include them in the release notes I will include them in the blog, but they are not 'compulsory.' You could also post links to the forum if you have put your release photo elsewhere

The same applies for claiming points in case of a book getting caught / re released / new member sign up / etc... to claim your point PM the link to me. If you then want to go and gloat on the forum, well, who am I to stop you?!

* Do teams get a bonus point if they complete one colour on the board?
Not bonus points - they get to do a book release themed around that colour, so they get points for the release / catches/ etc that come with that. They could earn a bonus point too on that release, same as any other.

The turn that they land on the final location of the colour, that is the turn they have to make the colour-release too (so... say you have 2 red done already, then next turn you land on the third red... you have to do a book release for the location, and one for the colour, in that turn - in any order)

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