Description

The Planet Management Game™

Players have a high paying job with University Planet Management Associates. This team has been given the task of managing the planet Clarion for the next 50 years. Note that a Clarion year is much shorter than our own.

A brief history of Clarion (from the game manual)

The plant Clarion is much like the Earth in size, climate, and geography. However, the land area is smaller than the Earth’s. The living things on the planet are similar to plants and animals on Earth with one exception – there is no native animal like man.
About 10 years ago the Council of Civilized Planets transported 100,000 colonists to Clarion from the planet Rasmuss. These colonists are similar to people, but are smaller. They have shorter life spans than people and look a little different, too. You could call them “humanoids.” Their food is similar to ours.
The natural state of Clarion is like Earth’s before man began to change it. Some of the land is flat and has a mild climate that is good for farming. There are some deserts of purple sand. They are fiery hot during the day and cold at night. There are other regions of bare rock that separate the fertile areas. All the land is on one continent. The rest of the planet is a blue-green ocean much less salty than Earth’s.
There seems to be only one major threat to life on Clarion – the disease Holobinkitis. It attacks both plants and animals, Clarionmen included. No one knows the cause of the disease or a cure for it. It is almost always fatal if you catch it.
Clarion has one large and unusual mineral deposit. The mineral is Walterite ore. In fact, Clarion is the only known planet with such large deposits. Several scientists say that the metal obtained from the ore is superior to iron or steel for most uses. However, Walterite is usually found under a thick layer of hard rock. Thus, it is often difficult to mine.
In comparison to Earth, Clarion has a low standard of living. The Clarionmen don’t produce all the things need and want. As a result, they are thrifty. They don’t like to spend money unless it’s absolutely necessary. Then they want to get a “good deal: for every bit of money they spend.
They have some of the same problems the Pilgrims had when they first settled in North America. Food sometimes becomes scarce, and it is expensive to import food from other planets. One of the big problems with raising crops is that the insects on Clarion really like to eat them. Therefore, a large part of every crop is lost to insects.
Most of the Clarionmen say they will stay on in spite of the hardships. They believe Clarion has a bright future once things get going. The Clarionmen usually give three reasons for leaving their home planet of Rasmuss:
1: It was getting too crowded there.
2. There was a promise of a better life on Clarion.
3, Clarion is a beautiful place to live.
Most Clarionmen have a strong appreciation for beauty, and they enjoy nature. They look forward to more leisure time outdoors.

End quote from game manual

As manager of Clarion, the players will keep track of four variables: population, income, food, and environment. They are given a budget of 10 bux (a Clarion buc is equivalent to about one million U.S. dollars) to fund planetary project for the next five years. Each budget will determine which projects Clarion will fund for the following five years. In the course of the complete game ten 5-year budgets will be prepared.

On turn one Clarion’s population index is at 100, each unit representing 1000 Clarion citizens. The income index and the food index also start at 100. When the population index equals income index, citizens have enough money to buy basic necessities. If income exceeds population, Clarion citizen’s standard of living will have improved. When the population index equals the food index there is enough food to provide each citizen with a well-balanced but simple diet. If food index falls below the population index, citizens are going hungry, perhaps even starving.

When humans first landed on Clarion, the environment index was 100. The air was pure, the oceans and river clean, the land beautiful. In the first years of colonizing Clarion, the environment index has decreased to 90. The population would like the environment restored so that environment index is at least as high as the population index. However, they would also like the income and food indices to increase relative to the population index as well.

For each budget, players have 10 bux to spend on projects. There are five different groups of projects that may be funded: red, blue, orange, yellow, and green. Each group (or color) contains three projects, only one of which may be funded. Each funded project may be funded for 2, 4, or 6 bux. Of course any group with no funded projects costs no bux.

Red (Agricultural Improvement projects)
1) Clear more land and prepare it for raising crops.
2) Import chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
3) Buy machinery to plant, cultivate, and harvest crops.

Blue (Scientific Research projects)
1) Conduct research to develop new varieties of corn, wheat, and rice with higher yields per acre.
2) Conduct research to identify the cause and cure of Holobinkitis.
3) Conduct research to find better ways to mine and use Walterite.

Orange (Industrial Expansion projects)
1) Build more Walterite mines and purification plants.
2) Build more highways and railroads to connect towns.
3) Construct new electric power plants.

Orange (Public Education projects)
1) Build more schools for all age groups and for general, professional, and technical education,
2) Pay people to go to graduate schools of civil engineering, biochemistry, medicine, and agriculture.
3) Finance the Einstein Plan: a) send a few of the most capable individuals to Earth for advanced study, and b) connect more Clarion homes to the educational television network.

Green (Industrial & Residential Pollution Control projects)
1) Construct more and improved treatment plants for city and factory waste.
2) Finance the Wright Plan: a) buy areas of land around lakes and oceans to be used for recreation, b) build mile-high apartment buildings surrounded by 100 acre parks in the center of cities.
3) Equip more chimneys of homes, industries, and other buildings with antismoke equipment.

The mechanics of playing this game:
A major part of this game is the 50 8½ x 11” cards. These cards have a variety of small holes punched in them similar to early IBM punch cards. Each of the 15 possible projects has 3 cards: a 2 bux, a 4 bux, and a 6 bux card. And in case no project for a given color is funded, there is also a zero bux card for each of the five colors. To make their budget, the players select one card of each of five colors not to exceed their 10 bux limit. When the players have chosen their five cards, the five cards are stacked together revealing one (and only one) hole that is open in all of them.

The game also includes a data book. This book contains data pages for Population Change, Income Change, Food Change, and Environment Change for the different rounds of the game. For the first round of the game, the players turn to the “Rounds 1 & 2” pages, where they are presented with four different population change pages.

It is almost quaint to realize that this game was made in the days before Dungeons & Dragons and the ready availability of four sided dice. The data book carefully explains how to flip a coin twice to generate a random number from 1 to 4.

The players then lay their group of five project cards on the randomly selected data sheet to determine how much that particular datum has changed. This process is followed for population, income, food, and environment changes. The final results are written down, and play advances to the next round.

To play round 2, players select another set of projects and proceed as they did in round 1, possible selecting different projects.

As play progresses through rounds 3 - 10, the appropriate pages of the data book are used. Blank graphs are provided to help players visualize the results of their chosen projects.

The game is completed at the end of 10 rounds. The players are then asked if they think the citizens of Clarion would be pleased with the state of their planet at the end? Did their team mange Clarion well? Could the same results have been achieved with less money?

After playing the game, the management team should decide how well it did. If they play the game again, they can try to do better. They can decide what is better. Comparing the results with those of another team, who did the better job. Here are some things to think about in deciding a winner or which job of Planet Management was best:
1) Were the same results obtained by spending less money?
2) Which set of final index values would you prefer to live with?
3) Do food and income indices compare favorably with the population index?
4) If things continued to change in the same way for another fifty years, would Clarion be a good place to live?