Molly House

The Game

Molly House is set in 18th century London. It is a game about people with unconventional tastes and desires. The rulebook isn't very explicit in explaining this. I interpret it as gay and lesbian circles. Yes, you're gay, and in that day and age homosexuality is not generally understood nor is it accepted. You are going to hold parties, have fun, and ultimately you want to create awareness and promote acceptance. Now things can go bad because some people in power do not like this and may clamp down on such inappropriate activities. If you are one of the notorious, you may get arrested and punished, possibly ending up getting hanged. The game can end in different ways. If the community becomes accepted, the person who is most prominent wins. However if the community is persecuted, then only those who betray the community and become informants may win. The third way the game ends is when neither happens by the end of the fifth round. Everyone loses. 

My first thought upon setting eyes on this game board was this. Is someone going to ask me "Is this like Monopoly?" - that most dreaded question of boardgamers worldwide. I must admit this does remind me a little of Monopoly. That track around the edges is indeed for pawns to move along. The four corners are important locations - molly houses where you hold parties, score points and create awareness about the community. In the middle of the four streets (i.e. the equivalent of the railroad stations in Monopoly) are shops where you get to acquire tools. 

The cards come in four suits, each representing one of the four molly houses, i.e. your party venues. A game round ends whenever you exhaust the deck. At the end of a round, the police does their investigation, possibly closing down shops and arresting people. They investigate the gossip discard pile. There are two discard piles in the game - the gossip pile and the secret pile. Gossip is bad and secret is good. Secret means you hold your parties discreetly. Gossip means you are being careless and bold, and this can endanger the community. Under different situations, used or discarded cards go to one or the other discard pile. This is something you need to be mindful of.

The basic actions on your turn are simple. You roll the dice and move, non unlike Monopoly, mind you. Then you get to perform an action depending on where you land. There are two types of icons on the dice - card and boot. They mean discarding a card from the general display, and moving one step. You must use one or both dice to move. You may move clockwise or counter-clockwise. You will move between 0 to 4 steps. Using this photo above as an example, you may choose to either not move or move one step. Depending on where you land, you may take a card, acquire a tool, or hold a party. You can also decide to do nothing. 

Parties are the most important part of the game. It is the main way you score points. You may score points for yourself, and you may help the community in general score points. This means the community is getting more understanding and acceptance by society. If you land on one of the houses, you may initiate a party. To have a successful party, you must be able to make specific card combos using the cards contributed by players. As host, you must contribute 2 cards. Cards are drawn from the deck as well. Others may decide how many cards they want to contribute. After all cards are played, the strongest combo is picked, and whoever has contributed to that gains something. If the cards from the deck are involved, then the community scores points. If there are two or more best combinations, as host you get to choose whose cards to use. In case you can't make any valid combo, the weakest cards will be used. As host, you will lose points. The community loses points too. A dull party is bad. 

These are the combos you want to make when throwing a party. You need four cards to make a combo. The first one is a straight flush. The second a Q plus three of a kind. The third a J with a straight. Before you decide to hold a party, you can ask whether the other players want to join you, and what cards they have. They can't show you their cards before the party, so they might lie. They may promise to play certain cards, but promises are not binding. Parties can be a form of collaboration, since everyone whose cards are used gets something. However, beware of people who encourage you to start something but eventually never contribute. Wait... why does this sound familiar? 

When examining the gossip pile, you categorise the cards into two, threat cards and normal cards. Each of the four suits are checked separately, to see how much investigation the authorities are making. Let's use this photo above as an example. Let's look at the yellow cards. That card in the middle is a threat card. Those two beside it are normal cards. With 1 threat card and 2 normal cards, the investigation value is 1 x 2 = 2.  When a molly house accumulates 7 points of investigation, it gets raided, and the best known patrons of that house get arrested. You may be sentenced to lose points, or possibly death. The punishments are meted out only at the end of the game, because during the game indictments may get pardoned, if you turn traitor and help the authorities clamp down on fringe activities. 

This is an indictment card. At game end you roll a die to determine the outcome. Dice are 10-sided, from 0 to 9, so 6+ means 40% of getting hanged. If you still hold this card by game end, it's either losing points or dying. 

The cubes represent investigation. When a house gets seven, it is raided and shut down. No more parties here. Shoo! 

You use these markers to decide whether you are going to betray the community. If you ever play the black one on the board (face-down), it means you intend to become an informant. You will ever play at most three of the markers. Other players who catch you can flip one of your markers. By doing so they are accusing you of being a traitor. If the marker they flip is the black one, you are exposed and they score points. However if they reveal a white one, they lose points. If you are indeed an informant and you get caught by a fellow player, it becomes difficult for you to do anything at the particular house you have planned to leak information about. If the game ends with the community being persecuted, only traitors have any chance of winning. They win only if the information they have provided actually help the authorities in making arrests. When you see the situation become hopeless and society is not ready to accept you, you may well need to consider turning traitor. 

The Play

Molly House is a challenging game to learn. It uses several unconventional mechanisms, which make the game feel unintuitive. It tries to convey a story and the dynamics behind it. When you understand that underlying story, the game mechanisms make more sense. Still, there are many special situations and corresponding rules for each of them, and this can be overwhelming. There are three ways the game ends, and under different scenarios, the measure for victory is different. The game is immersive. You and your fellow players are part of the same community, and you want what's best for the community. Yet you are also competing to be the most popular. When the authorities start clamping down, the option to turn traitor becomes hard to resist, especially when your life is on the line. This is not a cooperative game, yet there are many aspects in which you need to collaborate. 

Many of Cole Wehrle's games have this kind of dynamic. A big part of the game is about manipulating the way the game ends. You can't just simplistically pursue points, because there are different types of points, and depending on the game end situation, some points become irrelevant. You need to know how the game ends so that you put your effort into what matters. This is not easy to manage. You are watching how the situation evolves, evaluating how you are doing compared to your opponents, and trying to steer this all in a direction that benefits you. 

There is an interesting tension between competition and collaboration, for example when you need to hold parties. You want to leverage on the resources of other players. You want to collaborate with others frequently because that will help you. You may not want to run too far ahead, because if you are doing well and the community is doing well too, someone will probably sabotage the efforts of the community and steer the game towards doom. If you are doing well, you may want to allow your opponents to trail only slightly. Give them hope and encourage them to help the community, so that when the community wins, you win too by the gayest of them all. 

In the game we played, I was the most prominent when the first molly house was raided. I became public enemy number one. The indictment card I drew could get me the death penalty. Now I had to decide whether to betray my friends. I thought it would be too obvious, and someone would quickly confront me, so I decided to stay loyal to the cause. My thinking was someone would come accuse me, only to find that I was loyal, and he would lose points. However to my surprise no one bothered. Sigh... I should not have bothered. I should have turned traitor. The clamping down became more severe, and eventually the community lost. Had I turned traitor, I could have won. All of us lost. Our only consolation was at least we lost with dignity. 

The Thoughts

Molly House is a game with a lot of character. I love the art and the components. I consider this a historical game. I certainly learned something from playing it. This is not an easy game to learn. Expect to refer to the rules frequently. This is the kind of game seasoned gamers will enjoy exploring. I like how daring the designers are in coming up with their own ways to convey the story. Just be prepared it takes some effort to play. 

A big part of the game is manipulating how it will all end. You always need to keep this in mind. For the first half of the game, you can't be certain how things will turn out, and you can't be certain which of the actions you take will ultimately matter. That's a little unsettling. I enjoy figuring out the game and the dynamics among players. This is ultimately still a competitive game. However as you get immersed into the story, when you eventually decide to backstab your mate, you will feel a little guilty, and dirty.