So I playtested yesterday and found out that something interesting I'm doing for a different game is very promising for Business Solutions as well.  For moths I've been at an impasse over the card mechanic in BS - a combination of self-imposed constraints and the nature of the conflicts made it a little leaden in play, not all that fun, deterministic in a way that reflected the genre but still wasn't very engaging.  As we mulled over this problem, Clinton carefully suggested taking the conflicts out of the realm of an interlocking card mechanic and putting some responsibility on the players.  I'm already doing this hardcore in Medical Hospital but it never occurred to me - this turns out to be really promising.  Now when you reach a point of conflict (there are 18 of them in a complete game, three per business day, Monday-Saturday), you break it out and do something.  Something small and silly, a mini-game.  Right now I'm tying these to job titles for color, but they divide into knowledge, skill, chance, and subjective categories.  So, in order:

CATERER
The referee names a color, and the two competitors take turns naming foods that correspond with that color.  The first player to hesitate or fail to issue a reply loses.

CARNY
The competitor who can throw a playing card the farthest wins.

LIBRARIAN
The referee grabs a nearby book (any book will do, even a phone book).  The two competitors estimate the number of pages.  The closest estimate wins.

WEB DEVELOPER
The competitors each draw a logo for the current client.  The referee chooses a favorite and winner.

These are a joy to come up with (I wrote down like thirty immediately), and they are extensible, so players can come up with their own.  There are rules that surround these but they are minimal and oriented toward maintaining momentum.  I'm thinking of breaking them out by theme, so you can play a macho, physically oriented challenge game or a cerebral, puzzle oriented game if you want. 

Hi Jason,

This may seem like an unrelated topic, but it actually isn't in my own little mind anyway.

What do you think of allowing play itself to alter the schedule of (5 days * 3 conflicts/day)? Could the way a particular conflict works out negate conflicts for the rest of the day? Could the outcome of a given day's events cause the next day to be skipped, or actually close out the week?

The immediate source of this idea is the game One Can Have Her, in which after any series of "snitch or don't" rounds, the game might end. It might not, either. So one never knows whether one's snitching (or not) is going to be the conclusive, story-ending effect for the other characters. If it's not, then the other player will know that you or someone snitched, and that will have consequences.

I've found this sort of uncertainty to be fabulously wonderful in practice. I'm not necessarily suggesting the same dynamic for Business Solutions, but something similar, in the sense of certain outcomes messing with the upcoming itinerary to some degree.

So now that I've typed that out, let me think about whether or how that relates to your point about the "breakout" resolution mechanic, particularly quick-and-whacky ones. I know! It means that I, as player, would actually try to throw that playing card farther, or try to guess that number of pages. The relative silliness (not the best word, whackiness is better) of the mechanic would, I think, be most fun for me that way, because I'd still be trying.

Well, there are some question marks that can mess my point up - one is whether the schedule gets altered on my success or on my failure, and another is whether I'd have some reason (based on the alterations of the schedule) to throw the contest, which would be no fun. So don't chalk me up as 100% sure about any of this, only interested in whether some flexibility in the schedule based on conflict outcomes might be worth considering.

Best, Ron

Thanks, Ron, there's an underlying currency in play - the wacky minigames are binary, so somebody wins, and the loser accrues Blame.  At the end of the complete game there is a winner (who has successfully managed their personal Blame pile and kept it low, so they don't get fired).

The mini games remind of a Danish scenario I've read (though not played). The setting was old farmer-Denmark in the 40'ies and 50'ies, inspired by the Danish author Morten Korch (for good reasons probably not known outside DK). The players were farmers competing in a local farmer contest to show off.

The ploughing competition was to cut a piece of paper with scissors, not cutting the lines that were drawn like a maze.

The milking competition was to down a chocolate milk the fastest.

That sounds like exactly what I'm after, Frederik, although perhaps even more disconnected.