Housewarming

by Jonathan Leistiko

for Kat and Marcus

Goal

End the game with the “homiest” house by furnishing it with comfy furniture, stylish decor, hosting cool parties, and having interesting pets.

You Need

At least 2d6 (2d6 per player is nice)
A deck of Housewarming cards and a Housewarming Life Events chart
Tokens to act as bucks
Paper and pencil for each player to track bonuses to cool, comfort, and style.

Setup

Shuffle the Housewarming deck. Place it, the Events chart, and the tokens where everyone can reach them.
You start the game with five bucks, some paper, and a pencil.
Pick a player to go first. Play passes to the right.

Play

Always round fractions up.

Every Pet you have at the start of your turn must be fed during your turn. Each Pet costs 1/2 of a buck to feed. If you can not feed your Pet (or forget to feed your pet and another player reminds you as soon as you end your turn) your Pet goes to the Animal Shelter (face-up to the middle of the table) for purchase during Go Shopping phases on later rounds.

During your turn, you can take two actions. The actions you can take are: Workin’, Tempt Fate, Go Shopping, and Rearrange Furniture.

Workin’ – Roll two dice and pick one. You get that much money. If you rolled doubles, take a free Tempt Fate action immediately.

Tempt Fate – Roll two dice and read them as a two-digit number. Look that number up on the Life Events chart and follow the instructions there. If an event gives or takes away Comfort, Style, or Cool, note it on your paper to remind you at the end of the game.

Some events are parties. To see who holds the party, you (and all other players) sum up your Comfort, Style, or both (depending on what the party says). Roll two dice and add them to your sum. If you have the highest total, roll a die. You get that much Cool.

Go Shopping – You may draw up to three cards. Declare how many cards you will draw from the deck, then draw them and lay them face-up in the middle of the table. You get to choose the order the cards resolve in. You can pay the Cost of a Decor or Furnishing card to put it in one of the rooms in your house. You have four rooms. Each Room can hold up to two Furnishings and one piece of Decor. If you want to put more in a room than it can hold, and you have another action available to you, you can interrupt your shopping with a Rearrange Furniture action. If you do not have room for a card, choose not to purchase a card, or can not purchase a card an auction starts.

In an auction, the player to your left may bid any number of bucks for the card. Bid passes to the left. Each bid must be greater than the bid before it. You may bid on a card you put up for auction, but you may not bid less than the printed value of the card. The player with the highest final bid gets the card. Bucks bid go to the token pool.

Pets and Misc. cards don’t go in rooms, and don’t take up space. You can have as many Pets and Misc cards as you can afford to keep.

Rearrange Furniture – You may move any and all of your cards from the room they’re in to any other room of your house. You may also auction off any unwanted Decor, Furnishings, and Pets; you get the bucks from this auction. Anything that does not get bought goes to the curb (face-up to the middle of the table) for purchase during Go Shopping phases on later rounds.

Ending the Game and Winning

If you end your turn with at least one Furnishing and one Decor item in each room, you can declare that you’re having a housewarming at the end of your next turn. At the end of your next turn, the game ends.

At the end of the game, total your home’s Comfort and total its Style (Remember to include any modifiers you wrote down during the game!). Subtract the smaller from the larger. This is your home’s “clash”; remember it. Add your Comfort and Style together, divide by two, subtract your clash, and add your Cool (Again, remember your modifiers!). This is your house’s “hominess”. If you have the most hominess at the end of the game, you win!

Origin and Credits

‘Toshi was so pleased with PerkyGoth, the game I made for her birthday in April, and I had so much fun making it, that when Sharon and I received an invite to Kat & Marcus’ housewarming (that we helped them move in to) I just had to make another game. I’d originally intended for Housewarming to be a more representational game, with little blueprints and pieces of furniture and such. Time, materials, and playability all conspired to drive me toward a simpler, card based solution. If you compare PerkyGoth and Housewarming, you’ll find a lot of similarities, but Housewarming retains a distinctly different play style. I suspect that’s because of the events chart and the stronger economic emphasis.

Super-big mondo-thanks to Sharon for playtesting, rule ideas, and editing and proofing the rules. The banner is from a picture of the box I made:

Happy Housewarming, Kat & Marcus!