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Open Beesness

A playable simulation of a capitalist economy

As a player, you control a bee colony.

All colonies operate in the garden of Commons.

Throughout the game, you can deploy different beesness models: from converting flowers' nectar into honey, to stealing other colonies' honey, privatising flowers and other nasty moves..

Your goal

To have the most honey at the end of the year!

End game scenarios

1. At the end of the year (12 turns), the colony with the most honey wins, provided there are still some flowers left in the garden.

• If all flowers are picked from the garden, at any point during the game, everybody loses.

Unpacking the metaphors

Just in case you still think this is about bees.

Symbol	Meaning
Colony	Private company / corporation
Flowers	The Commons ideas, raw materials etc.
Honey	Money
Turns	Time
Worker bees	Self-explanatory
Drones	Military?
Queens	Growth?

What other metaphors can you think of?

Could you re-skin this game with a different set of symbols?

How would that impact the meaning(s) produced during the gameplay?

SETUP

How many players?

From 2 to infinity.

The garden of Commons

Plant flowers in the garden, according to the number of players.

Players	Flowers
2	10
3	15
4	20
5	25
6	30
etc.	The formula: 5 × players

The colony

Each player starts with 1 worker bee.

The bank

Place all the honey aside. That will be the bank.

If necessary elect a player who will take care of the honey handling.

The calendar

Put a month marker (any token) on the first month of the year.

The colonial cards

Place the colonial cards aside and face up, stacked by type (4 stacks).

NAME	PRICE honey	SKILLS
Worker bee	2	Take 1 flower / month IF the garden has more than half of the starting flowers (eg: if flowers > 10 when there are 4 players)
Austerity bee	4	Take 1 flower / month
Drone bee	8	Take 3 honey / month
Queen	16	Generate 1 bee / month OR Privatise 1 flower / month

GAMEPLAY

Every turn (month):

1. Who starts?

   You can invest extra honey to execute your beesness strategy before all other players.

   You do so by bidding honey. The highest bidder gets the nectar card (that is, the right to start first) and gives the honey to the bank.

   This is optional, but starting first in a turn may be useful in times of austerity.

2. Execute your beesness strategy!

   Starting from the player with the nectar card and proceeding clockwise, everyone plays their colonial cards.

   You can play from zero cards (but why would you?) to all of them.

   Sticky situations

   IF	BUT	THEN
   you want to use a worker bee to pick flowers	there are not enough flowers at the beginning of your turn to meet the condition if flowers > X	you cannot pick flowers with that card
   you want to deploy drones against another player	s/he has got less honey than you could get	you can force them to use one or more of their colonial cards as "payment" (see price for that card)

3. Trade flowers for honey!

   Determine the price of one flower for this month by looking at the price chart line corresponding to the number of flowers picked by all players in the garden of Commons.

   FLOWERS	PRICE honey
   < 2P → less than 2 times the number of players (P) eg: < 8 for 4 players	8
   2P ⟷ 3P	4
   3P+1 ⟷ 4P	2
   > 4P	1

   Each player gets an amount of honey equal to the market price multiplied by the number of flowers she picked this month.

   For example: if you picked 2 flowers and their individual value is 4, then you'll get 8 honey.

   Flowers picked from the garden are set apart. Unless you have a queen (and you haven't already used it this month to generate a bee), in which case you can keep one flower per month. From the next month, this privatised flower will generate more honey for you (at its current market value).

4. Invest in your colony!

   At this point you can decide to buy a colonial card by paying its price to the bank.

   You can buy one colonial card per month.

5. Replant the garden!

   For each 2 remaining flowers, add 1 flower to the garden.

   For example: if there are 9 flowers left, add 4.

6. End of the month..

   Move the month marker to the next space to keep track of the turns.

   If the marker in on the last month the game ends and the winner is the player with the most honey.

   Otherwise, a new month will start with the player on the left of the one who began this month.

Hackable ideas

• Different types of flowers?
• What happens when there are no flowers left? Declare a winner, everybody loses, something else?
• Bankruptcy?