Careers - splitting hairs

We had a retro board gaming session this afternoon, with two runs of Pirate and Traveller and two games of Careers.   P&T is always fun ... though Anne started off game one by spinning a 30 and getting Havana, then St. Paul MN, then New Orleans all in one round, then Danver just a few spaces away before being diverted to Australia, while I bounced from Alaska to Batavia and back.  The second half of the game, constantly hopping over each other and stealing cards, is a blast.

In Careers, we hit some interesting snags.  The first game was close but I ended up with almost no actual money, so I changed my victory conditions for game two to ignore money entirely, just 30 fame and 30 happiness.  So what happened?  I ended up with over $40K and only 4 fame, and while I had 28 hearts, I lost them all a few rounds before the game ended.  Haha. 

It's funny how differently the rules for games used to be written.  They don't have the clarity and completeness we expect from modern rule sets.  The little rule pamphlet seemed to cover the bases, but then they went and printed additional Q&A on the inside of the box.  What?  Is it really possible that such a simple game had so many cracks to fall into?

Yes, in fact.  There are a lot of situations where the wording on the cards or the board was just not clear enough.  Case in point, the Hospital and Unemployment both says "Roll 5 or less or forfeit half your salary to move".  There are two kinds of financial measures in the game: your salary and your actual cash on hand.  "Forfeit half your salary" sounds like you would cut your salary in half, so if your salary was $2K, you would forfeit half and now get only $1K when you hit payday each time around the board.  But the Q&A notes say no, it means make a one-time payment equal to half your salary but leave you salary unchanged.  So, um ... why not just freaking SAY that?

Being a product of the 50's through the 70's, the game is comically adamant that no human being can have more than one college degree.  The College space evens says, "If you land here and already have a college degree, roll again."

A neat design flaw: to enter a career path, you land on the big career space and qualify to start the career by either paying money or having some other experience or degree, and then I guess you put your piece in the little corner of the big space where the career path begins and remember to start down the inner track on your next turn.  Meh.  We start on the career track right away, to get that piece off the outer track so there's no ambiguity about where it's going.  There should be a little rectangle where the inner track theoretically overlaps the outer track, probably with an arrow clearly pointing to the inner track, so it's clear what's going to happen next.  I like our version, since it makes starting a career a bigger move, it feels like much more of an advancement if you get to do all those things in one turn.  Only to screw up and get sent to Unemployment on your next roll.

Halfway through game one we remembered that you can bump other players off to Unemployment by landing on them, which made those Experience Cards where you can move a fixed number of spaces really important.  Oh, I can move 3 spaces instead of throwing the dice, and land on the other player, that's fun.  And there was a Q&A note that said yes, you can even bump someone if they're on the payday space, ANY space except Hospital and Unemployment.

Now, why were the Hospital and Unemployment inset slightly?  Both look like there is a narrow track around the outside of the space, exactly like the "Just Visiting" track around the Jail space in Monopoly.  We played a few times where you could visit someone while they were in the Hospital, not that simply landing there was enough to get your legs broken.  I think the Q&A sheet explained this, too, but not in a very helpful way.  Why are those spaces not flush with the edge of the board like every other space?  You'll end up there enough times without dumb luck doing it for you one more time.