Park Royal 1977

The Park Royal '77 ruleset was produced as the Silver Jubilee version of the game, but unfortunately the increased token weightings on Royal stations meant that calculations involving the Snerge Coefficient blocked Neasden? from both ends. This meant that the game could not officially be released until midnight on the day after Her Majesty's official birthday, which put paid to grandiose plans for a demonstration game on a boat on the River Thames. A commonly-accepted workaround was simply to set the game date to June 8th before commencing play. Even some Purists proved willing to put their patriotism ahead of their horror at such an outright fudge, but naturally the IMCS could not be seen to officially condone this behaviour.

This ruleset has a number of interesting modifications, the main ones of which are listed below:

• Royal Stations receive a 25% increase in their token weightings, 1% for every year of Queen Elizabeth's reign.
• Putting a player in tess (a typographical error; it should have been Bess) means they cannot farkle until Morden? is declared as a home station.
• Silver? tokens were increased in value by 25%.

Players will immediately note that the increased values of royal stations significantly affects the power of a Parks and Royals cascade, to the point where in most circumstances it is more effective than a Parks and Greens cascade.

[SM]

---

Categories: A to Z, Rulesets