This is just something I made up for fun and giggles when you’re missing those long drives, frayed emotional states and uncertain circumstances that tours so generously provide
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How about a board game called Tour Promoter?
It’s a board game where you get to organise your very own tour, so choose the colour of your van, start with $500 for gas and off you go.
The board looks like trivial pursuit, you can play with a trivial pursuit board. The vans start in the middle and have to drive off to the 6 cities to scout acts, so it’s a bit of a scramble like monopoly to get to the cities and start getting your line up sorted. There’s no dice, you simply pay in cash to drive your van across the country. You’ll need a drummer, a bass player a guitarist and a frontman to make your band, but to put on a gig in another town, you need a support act too, so you’ll need to put a DJ and/or a singer/songwriter in your van.
The aim of the game is to put on a gig in every town on the board and get back with the most money for your album release.
Promoters make money when they play a new town, but they must have 2 acts. If they only have 2 DJ’s and/or Singer/songwriters they will only pick up $200 for the gig, $300 for 3, but if they have a Band it will be $500 but a band AND a singer/songwriter or a DJ it will be $600 and if it’s all 3, it will be $800 per gig.
A band can still play without a singer but is still regarded as a support act in terms of gig fees. A singer can generate an extra $100 at gigs with a DJ but no band.
The issue is you have to pay $10 per turn for every musician in your van, so that’s up to $70 a turn for 7 muso’s.
You can’t play the same city twice, and you must play every city before you can head home, so it’s wise to fill up the van early and get the well paid gigs and then finish the tour with smaller acts to save costs and return to base with the best kitty for your album release.
Once the first promoter returns from tour, the other promoters can still win if they return with more money for their album launch, but as each town gets played it gets harder to bring the tour home with a higher net profit - promoters coming in later are forced to tour with larger line ups to maximize profit as quickly as possible to minimize loss, but also, the musicians returning from tour will be retired from the game, making less muso’s available as each tour ends.
You cannot play a gig if you have recruited muso’s in that city 2 turns in a row without moving. This means that in the early stages of the game, players must recruit in 1 city and usually hold their first gig in the next.
Every turn spent in a city or town not moving as they are playing a gig or recruiting acts, must end in drawing a “What goes on Tour” card, which will often add or deduct funds, or advise on movements such as “a bass player joins your tour” or “if you have a drummer, they have just learned their partner has moved out in their absence - place a heartbroken drummer back in his home city if you currently have a drummer in your van.”
Most cards will be negative to mix the game up and encourage players to not hang around for too long, this way players can also “take the scenic route” - by not driving directly from city to city they will incur less draw cards and have a lesser chance their functioning tour party will be broken up.
Between each City is a town, which can be played for $200 each once in the game, this helps bands who run out of gas, as each player can call their parents once in the game for $50 that will have to be repaid once they are back from tour, but of course stopping to play towns does waste time.
Often a player with no money and a larger line up will be forced to play towns for several turns to build up gas money.
If a player runs out of gas a second time their tour is over, the only way they can win is if other promoters fail to complete their tour with less gigs paid.
So there’s not only strategy in budgeting for gas and securing a line up to make the most profit, but there are only a limited a mount of musicians in the game, so if one player can fit 3 drummers in their van, they can prevent other players from forming a band and securing maximum performance fees.
You can not have more than 7 muso’s in your van, and of course each muso costs $10 per turn. In this way smart players can transport band members other players need to cities they’ve already played, thus creating more delays and costs if they choose to return to that city to collect them.
Finally if two vans land on the same square and neither band refuses to back down, only one band will be paid. A roll of the dice favouring the bigger line up 2-1. A Promoter can still play for free in a city they’ve played before to stop another promoters gig going off but in that case, no band gets paid.
This makes it easy for a small line up to be a nuisance to a bigger line up as they incur less costs and have less to lose by challenging the bigger line up.
Alternatively, a tour promoter with their van on the same square as another van can attempt to poach a musician from the others party with a dice roll, but the instigating promoter cannot play a gig the turn of the attempted poaching.
The game lends itself to 2 distinct tactics - tour with small line up, get the gigs done, and play politically to thwart other threats from completing their tour with a larger line up, principally throwing obstacles in their way that will create delays that in turn incur costs so that their tour is less succesful in net profit.
The other way is to spend confidently in securing a robust line up and get the course completed as quickly as possible. It take longer to establish your line up, but once you had it you could collect large fees on gigs to cover your higher overheads, but you must be particularly sensitive to delays and potential risks.
The tone of game play would suggest that whoever has the largest line up is the biggest threat as they collect the most money from their gigs, other players will be aiming to sabotage the larger line ups tour and then complete their tour quickly and cheaply while a larger line up wallows.
The smaller line up already has a head start and can knock off more dates cheaply, but the larger line ups can get into trouble if they lose a key member either from a card draw or a poaching or get caught out logistically zigzagging across the board to complete all gigs and incurring higher overheads.
If a larger line up does lose a key member, they may have to switch tactics, drop the band altogether and go on with a smaller line up of support acts, or their could be a city nearby with a muso available.
Once a promoter has completed their tour, they may decide to opportunistically attack another threatening player by playing free gigs on the night of their gigs and poaching key members before bringing their profit home.
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