A Lifer's Diary, Part 2: Wheely Good Fun

A Lifer's Diary, Part 2: Wheely Good Fun 

Shortly after making a set of spinner wheels for simulating a Game of Life using the Generation III rule set, I came up with the idea of doing the same for the earlier Generation II rule set. Here it is:

A set of spinner wheels that can be used to simulate a Game of Life using the Generation II rule set. This time, there are only six wheels, including one each for every career, salary and house present in this version of the game.

In this version, there are a total of six wheels; they are as follows:

• Spin: Created to simulate the spinner in the real-life board game (or a 1d10/10-sided die, which is functionally identical if you treat the 0 as 10), each player must spin this wheel once at the start of their turn. In addition, each player must spin this wheel once at the very start of a game to determine the order in which they take their turns. Any player who lands on the Pension space must also spin this wheel once, after which they will earn $20,000 multiplied by the number they spun (compared to $10,000 per number spun in Generation III).
• Start/Choice: This determines whether or not a player goes to college at the start of a game, and whether or not they take the longer of the two routes when they reach a fork in the Path of Life. It is also used to determine whether or not a player will follow the instructions on a blue space (Night School and Trade Salary Card) upon landing on them.
• Salary: When selecting a new salary (unless going to College or entering Night School), a player must spin this wheel once. If going to College or Night School, spin this wheel three and two times respectively, discarding a result if it is already taken.
• Career: When selecting a new career (unless going to College or entering Night School), a player must spin this wheel once. If going to College or Night School, spin this wheel three and two times respectively, discarding a result if it is already taken or if the spinner lands on a career that requires a college degree, but the player whose turn it is currently lacks a degree.
• House: Each player must spin this wheel once when they land on the Buy a House space, discarding a result if it is already taken. Note that the "sell house for 150% of its original value upon retirement" house rule is optional, but I would prefer to implement it to incentivize purchasing the more expensive houses.
• Life Tiles: As with the wheel of the same name from the Generation III set I made earlier, each space on this wheel represents a different Life Tile denomination and how many times at most it can be spun. When all players reveal the values of the Life Tiles in their possession, spin this wheel once for every Life Tile they have, but if the spinner lands on a space for which you have reached the maximum number of spins (3 spins for $250k, 4 spins for $200k, 5 spins for $150k, 6 spins for $100k, and 7 spins for $50k), spin again until it lands on a value for which you have not reached the spin limit for that denomination. Note that all Life Tile values are 5 times larger in Generation II compared to those Generation III.

With this set of spinner wheels, I can finally simulate a Game of Life using the Generation II rule set - the first one I grew up with. It's a simpler set compared to the one I made for Generation III (6 wheels instead of 8), but it works equally well for its intended purpose.