NOT ON MY BLOCK! – P3 First Playable Draft

Rules:

NOT ON MY BLOCK! is a 4-player game about how gentrification occurs, persists, and changes neighborhoods over time. 

Game Objective: The player with the most POINTS at the end wins.

Roles: 1 player is the Developer. The 3 other players are Residents. To assign roles, randomly draw a role card. Each Resident has their separate incentives, so make sure to review those as you start the game. 

Residents’ Objective: The goal for residents is to collectively PROTECT as many hexagons as possible to earn points. Residents also have individual incentives that contribute to their final individual scores at the end of the game (determining the resident winner): 

• Resident A (Cultural Steward; Green tokens): Wants to preserve cultural and artistic landmarks (PROTECT hexagons with museum icon)
• Resident B (Bodega Owner; Blue tokens): Wants to keep shop rent affordable (PROTECT hexagons with shop icon)
• Resident C (Public School Teacher; Red tokens): Wants to preserve schools, libraries, and youth learning spaces (PROTECT hexagons with book icon).

Set Up

1. 1. Choose player roles.
   2. Put the 32 gray “starter” hexagons with different resident resource values on the board, facing down. Make sure the order is at random. Flip them over to display the resources that should be split across different hexagons  (museum, shop, book).
      • Hexagons are grey, and can have 0-3 resources on them. 
      • Resources only differentiate between neighborhoods for residents, not the developer.

Gameplay

1. 1. Residents use POLICY tokens  (the red, green, and blue tokens) to protect neighborhoods. They need 4 to protect a neighborhood. Once they claim it, it becomes permanently PROTECTED. Residents may then collect their tokens from that neighborhood on the board and place a PROTECTED marker on the neighborhood.
   2. Developers use INVESTMENT tokens (the purple tokens) to flip neighborhoods. They need 8 tokens on a single hexagon to do so. Once they claim an unclaimed hexagon, the hexagon becomes permanently GENTRIFIED. They may collect their tokens from the board and place a GENTRIFIED marker on the neighborhood.
   3. Developers can invest into a GENTRIFIED hexagon by adding more INVESTMENT token to make it HIGHLY GENTRIFIED. They highly gentrify by placing 8 more tokens on the single hexagon. Once they have done so, they may take their tokens back and place a HIGHLY GENTRIFIED marker on the neighborhood.
      • If developers have GENTRIFIED hexagons surrounding an unclaimed hexagon, that center unclaimed hexagon also becomes GENTRIFIED.
      • Each round, each Resident puts down 2 tokens while the Developer puts down 8 tokens.
   4. Once all hexagons are claimed (either PROTECTED or GENTRIFIED), the game ends and both teams count up points. 

Win Conditions

1. Determining resident vs developer winner: Residents get +1 for PROTECTED, developer gets +1  for GENTRIFIED, and +3 for HIGHLY GENTRIFIED. 
2. Determining winners among residents: Residents with the most number of protected hexagons that have their incentive icon (museum, shop, tree icon) wins.

Components:

All components except for tokens can be found in Figma.

Here are some images of our game so far: 

Figure 1. Game Board

Figure 2. Example hexagons 

Questions for Teaching Team:

1. One concern from our first playtest was that our game was more of a puzzle than a system, and we wanted to ask if you feel we’ve properly addressed that piece of feedback.
2. We want to highlight how developers have an unfair advantage against residents, especially when it comes to how gentrification can start small but spiral quickly to take over the whole neighborhood. We also want our gameplay to demonstrate how the power of the collective can overcome powerful, wealthier individuals (e.g. developers). Do you feel that our game properly does that, and are there key parts of the system you feel we should include?
3. An idea we have that we didn’t implement was having special hexagons—hexagons that aren’t neighborhoods/blocks but are instead things like parks that developers could invest in, making it easier for them to claim surrounding neighborhoods or buildings with a tenants union that residents can invest in to make it easier for them to protect surrounding neighborhoods. What do you think of this idea?
   • In a similar vein, the icons on each neighborhood mean something for residents (points if they get more neighborhoods with their icon) but nothing for the developer. Would you suggest adding some meaning for the developer? We didn’t want to overcomplicate, but it could be a good opportunity to build up the system.
4. We also had an idea to make it where to protect a neighborhood, each resident must place a token on the neighborhood, but it could become very difficult given that each are vying for different neighborhoods (based on their role’s priorities), which means that if there is a space that only benefits 1 Resident, they have to somehow get everyone to put a token on their space, which is perhaps too many conflicting priorities? If all neighborhoods are equal to each resident, it makes sense to have this new rule to necessitate collaboration (as would exist in the real world), but if we give them personal priorities, perhaps different combinations of residents will end up collaborating based on what the neighborhood’s icons are (e.g. a book + museum would have the teacher and cultural steward working together), which feels a bit more realistic than residents helping out in neighborhoods that aren’t priorities to them (although once they get the ones that are priorities to them, they have the incentive to help out overall). What do you think?
5. We also wanted feedback on the numbers in our game and if it leads to a slightly asymmetric game where the developer has too much or too little of an advantage. How can we anticipate which number of tokens for developers/residents is best for a fun challenge?