Hybrid Board Games part 1: Sorry Duopoly

There are few things in this world I enjoy more than a good old fashioned seemingly eternity lasting board game, rife with alliances, betrayals, teamwork, corruptness, money, fame, and prizes. But not being content with the usual Monopoly, what with its boring singular poly, I decided to move on to bigger and probably not better things. First was the two Monopoly boards overlapped at the GO to make a continuous figure eight, otherwise know as Duopoly. This, however, had been done to quite a large extent. At least according to the great and powerful internet, because we all know the internet never lies. So I was yet again discontented with my lack of sheer ridiculousness involving the board games at hand. Then, one day while rolling on the floor laughing my ass off out loud due to Sheldon Cooper's antics in the Big Bang Theory, it hit me: Monopoly and Sorry, combined into one glorious confusion of a game. No wait, let's make it roughly 33% more glorious and confusing:

Sorry Duopoly.

Yup, essentially three board games jammed into one silly looking mess of a piece of cardboard. I drew out the beta version immediately for fear of the design leaking out of my brain, and because of the promptness of it all it came out looking pretty rough. Well, really rough. Like, this draft is often found stumbling drunk on the ave wearing half of a trench coat alternating between singing Tom Jones songs and yelling angrily at passing pigeons. That rough. So don't judge just yet, at least not until the final board is complete.

Like I said, rough. I mean, the Jail is a single "J". And those Home Zones look like a sheriff badge drawn by a particularly untalented two year old.

Everything is abbreviated and mostly terrible looking, but that doesn't stop me from being stoked on playing it. "S" means the Start Zone in Sorry, "RR", "J", and "COMM CHEST" stand for Railroad, Jail, and Comm Chest respectively. And that stupid "X" marked place to put a pile of cards is absolutely nothing.

So before we continue, how the fudge do you play? Well, the rules are surprisingly simple at first. Then get increasingly complicated. You start with double the normal amount of Monopoly money (referred from here on out as Monopomoney purely because it sounds funny), with your five Sorry pieces in your start zone and your one Monopoly piece on the GO tile, facing towards the first Monopoly board (the upper left one). Then, you use a 12 sided die (if you don't have a 12 sided die then you clearly don't play enough D&D) to control both your Monopoly piece and your Sorry pieces. From here on out, the game play follows both the standard Sorry and Monopoly rules, only with a few kick ass exceptions. These are:

See? That's totally a two year old's sheriff badge up at the top there.

In case you can't read my flawless, beautiful handwriting, the exceptions are these:

- All players begin with 2x Monopomoney. As stated above.
- Rolling a 6 (six) awards a "Sorry!". This "Sorry!" acts exactly as a normal one would.
- Winner of "Sorry" receives one piece of property (chosen randomly) per "Sorry" piece not in "Safe Zone" at end of game, from all players. This means that every single Sorry piece that isn't inside those five Safe Zone squares or the Home Zone when somebody wins is a piece of property lost. Chosen randomly by covering the backs of the property cards with one hand and fanning out the rest with the other. If the player doesn't have enough pieces of property, then they haven't been buying enough crap and will have to relinquish 200 Monopomoney per sorry pieces not in the Safe or Home Zone.
- If both "Sorry" and "Monopoly" piece land on the Railroad at the same time (with the same roll), one receives an automatic "Sorry Duopoly", which can be applied as a normal Sorry in "Sorry" or a jail sentence in "Monopoly" to a player of choice. Player does not pass GO or collect 200 Monopomoney. I think an automatic jailage of somebody is far more damaging than an auto-Sorry, but we'll see.
- There are definitely doubles, in the form of rolling a 2 (two). This applies to both Monopoly and Sorry. Yes, it will get a man out of the Start Zone in Sorry, and yes you will get jailed for getting three in a row in Monopoly.

Later, after some beta testing and countless inevitable frustrations, I will add Chance and Community Chest cards that affect either Monopoly, Sorry, and/or both.

One of those up somewhat close and vaguely personal shots.

Also, I'd like to think that having two different themes for the two Monopoly boards would make things a lot simpler in the real estate area, ideally so drastically different that they would be damn near impossible to confuse. Mine are Star Wars and Scooby-Doo.

I'll be back with more on the lates, moosh! (I love Paul Rudd)