Turn Playmobil into a Board Game

Turn Playmobil into a Board Game

 

We are big fans of Playmobil in our house.  I love it, my kids love it, and they will play with it for hours.  But today we added a twist to keep things interesting.  Using a white board and some dry erase markers we created a game board and our Playmobil became the game pieces.  

 

Here's the setup and rules we came up with:

Draw a path of squares on the white board - straight, curvy, long, short - up to you.

Pick a few squares to put some "bad" items on.  We used pirate flags and skulls from our Playmobil pirate ship.  

Pick a few squares to put some "bonus" items on.  We picked some  transportation items - a bike, horse, and camel.  

All the other squares get regular items.  We just used any accessories - hats, magic wands, flowers, little animals, all those fun little pieces that come with Playmobil sets.

Each player picks a Playmobil figure and lines them up at the start of the path.  

We didn't have any dice handy, so we picked five little Playmobil objects, drew a circle in the middle of our board, and tossed the objects in.  Count up the number of objects inside the circle, and that's how many spaces you move.  If you want to use dice, they'll work just as well.

Anytime a player lands on a regular space, he takes the items found there.  The object of the game is to collect as many items as you can before reaching the finish line.

If a player lands on a "bad" space, she has to drop all her collected items in that space and move the "bad" item to any empty space.  If this happens to a player it creates a "really good" space with a whole pile of items.   

If a player lands on a "good" space, he can now move along the path in either direction.  That's why we used transportation type objects for these spaces.  This allows players to go backwards to collect missed items or avoid bad spaces.

The player with the most items when they cross the finish line wins.  

Variations:

The nice thing is you can pretty much make up any rules you want!

• We used Playmobil, obviously you could play with anything... Lego, Barbies,   etc.
• Don't have a big whiteboard - use blocks, sticky notes, or a large piece of cardboard or paper to create a path.
• Maybe transportation pieces allow a player to move double the number they roll?  Or they let a player choose how many spaces to move.  Example: roll a four and you can move one, two, three, or four spaces.
• Add a motivator at the end of the path to give a bonus to the first player to finish - a collection of items that will give their score a boost.  
• What happens if a player lands on an occupied space?  Maybe they have to give that person one of their items.  Or maybe both players are forced to trade their entire collection of items.
• Rather than a single linear path, create a path with multiple branches or simply a grid of spaces so players can choose their own path - adding an element of strategy.
• Change the game as much as you like, as often as you like, and HAVE FUN!