I'm Sorry I'm Hard To Live With, Living Is The Problem For Me, I'm Selling People Things They Don't Want, When I Don't Know What You Need
--"A Man/Me/Then Jim", Rilo Kiley
I've begun work on a simple card game to fill the niche for a simple, yet challenging game under thirty minutes. The mechanics are ostensibly auction-driven, but the theme is one I haven't seen explored in too many venues. I've decided the theme will be that of a pyramid scheme, or rather two to four different pyramid schemes all competing over the same pool of possible marks. The way it work would be simply each player would have a certain number of initial investors represented by the cards themselves, those initial few would recruit another bunch of investors with different amounts of capital able to be invested, and then those investors would recruit more investors, and so on and so forth. At the end of the game, the winner would be the player whose bogus organization/religion/charity was able to raise the most of amount of cash by duping people.
It's an idea I've been mulling over some time now. I've just been waiting to marry it to a neat mechanic that could simulate the domino effect that pyramid schemes produce. I've always found it interesting when I hear stories about one guy being able to successfully start-up and manage their own version of a pyramid scheme. Stemming more from curiosity than a desire to emulate their success, I've just always wanted to know what it takes to completely impress a person enough for them willing to foolishly part with their money for a painfully obvious scam.
----
The one time I almost fell victim to a version of the con I was eating alone at the local Spire's in Monrovia. It'd been a long day at work, I'd been fighting with Jennifer on the phone, and I really wanted somewhere quiet to get away from the ills of the world. Spires had always been a great place for what troubled you because their food was good and cheap, while their locale made it almost entirely impossible for someone to track me down if they went looking for me. It was at one time the one place I ate that nobody knew I frequented and one place I was sure never to bump into an old classmate, co-worker, relative, &c...
At any rate, I was just about to finish my dinner when this man approached me about giving me free dessert in exchange for hearing him out. Obviously, he had me pegged right from the start because I'm a man that never turns down an offer of free dessert. Well, I got my ice cream sundae with which he purchased fifteen minutes of my time. Almost as soon as we sat down he proceeded to delve right into his "line of quality kitchen products that almost sell themselves." He started rattling off how every household needs kitchenware at one time or another, right? After that he answered his own question by saying of course they do. He was rather convincing. Not convincing enough to make me be interested, but interesting enough that I could fake my way through the whole fifteen minutes while I savored my ice cream concoction.
Then, he moved into the kicker. He started talking about how he made the real money by setting up other distributors and getting a share of everything they sold. Rather than make money by hustling on my own, he said it would be a special bonus to get me started on the limited dealership option. Of course, this option entailed another hundred dollars above the cost of each kitchenware set, "but the dealership practically paid for itself within the first three months."
That's when he lost me. That's when I decided it was nothing more than a two-bit scam and that I didn't want to hear any more. I hurried through the last scoop of my ice cream and told him that I was late to meet someone else. However, I offered to give him name and number so that he could call me later on the week to rattle off more of the benefits of his company.
One fake name (Brillon Brown) and one fake number later ((626)867-5309), I got into my car and left straight away.
----
I'm not saying I'll never be fooled in my life. One of these days my impestuous nature is going to get the better of me. I'm predicting that I will be taken for a ride once in my life, but it won't be from high pressure sales or obvious ploys at getting me to invest something for something better in return. It just doesn't work that way. I've been inured to watching con artist movies and television, read too many con artist novels and how-to books, to fall for something so geared to my basic greed. Nope, when I get duped it will be because I fell for the person doing the scam, they set me up with a long con designed to earn my trust, or because I was willingly drunk at the time.
People who sell other people stuff they don't need just ain't the kind of people who can trip me up.
However, they do make for some interesting card games, in my opinion.
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
I've begun work on a simple card game to fill the niche for a simple, yet challenging game under thirty minutes. The mechanics are ostensibly auction-driven, but the theme is one I haven't seen explored in too many venues. I've decided the theme will be that of a pyramid scheme, or rather two to four different pyramid schemes all competing over the same pool of possible marks. The way it work would be simply each player would have a certain number of initial investors represented by the cards themselves, those initial few would recruit another bunch of investors with different amounts of capital able to be invested, and then those investors would recruit more investors, and so on and so forth. At the end of the game, the winner would be the player whose bogus organization/religion/charity was able to raise the most of amount of cash by duping people.It's an idea I've been mulling over some time now. I've just been waiting to marry it to a neat mechanic that could simulate the domino effect that pyramid schemes produce. I've always found it interesting when I hear stories about one guy being able to successfully start-up and manage their own version of a pyramid scheme. Stemming more from curiosity than a desire to emulate their success, I've just always wanted to know what it takes to completely impress a person enough for them willing to foolishly part with their money for a painfully obvious scam.
----
The one time I almost fell victim to a version of the con I was eating alone at the local Spire's in Monrovia. It'd been a long day at work, I'd been fighting with Jennifer on the phone, and I really wanted somewhere quiet to get away from the ills of the world. Spires had always been a great place for what troubled you because their food was good and cheap, while their locale made it almost entirely impossible for someone to track me down if they went looking for me. It was at one time the one place I ate that nobody knew I frequented and one place I was sure never to bump into an old classmate, co-worker, relative, &c...
At any rate, I was just about to finish my dinner when this man approached me about giving me free dessert in exchange for hearing him out. Obviously, he had me pegged right from the start because I'm a man that never turns down an offer of free dessert. Well, I got my ice cream sundae with which he purchased fifteen minutes of my time. Almost as soon as we sat down he proceeded to delve right into his "line of quality kitchen products that almost sell themselves." He started rattling off how every household needs kitchenware at one time or another, right? After that he answered his own question by saying of course they do. He was rather convincing. Not convincing enough to make me be interested, but interesting enough that I could fake my way through the whole fifteen minutes while I savored my ice cream concoction.
Then, he moved into the kicker. He started talking about how he made the real money by setting up other distributors and getting a share of everything they sold. Rather than make money by hustling on my own, he said it would be a special bonus to get me started on the limited dealership option. Of course, this option entailed another hundred dollars above the cost of each kitchenware set, "but the dealership practically paid for itself within the first three months."
That's when he lost me. That's when I decided it was nothing more than a two-bit scam and that I didn't want to hear any more. I hurried through the last scoop of my ice cream and told him that I was late to meet someone else. However, I offered to give him name and number so that he could call me later on the week to rattle off more of the benefits of his company.
One fake name (Brillon Brown) and one fake number later ((626)867-5309), I got into my car and left straight away.
----
I'm not saying I'll never be fooled in my life. One of these days my impestuous nature is going to get the better of me. I'm predicting that I will be taken for a ride once in my life, but it won't be from high pressure sales or obvious ploys at getting me to invest something for something better in return. It just doesn't work that way. I've been inured to watching con artist movies and television, read too many con artist novels and how-to books, to fall for something so geared to my basic greed. Nope, when I get duped it will be because I fell for the person doing the scam, they set me up with a long con designed to earn my trust, or because I was willingly drunk at the time.
People who sell other people stuff they don't need just ain't the kind of people who can trip me up.
However, they do make for some interesting card games, in my opinion.
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
Labels: card games, con artist, Money, pyramid schemes, Rilo Kiley
posted by mojo shivers @ 7:05 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home