The game I am choosing to modify is Ladies and Gentlemen in order to teach the topic of how socio economic status reflects what choices you are able to make. Ladies and Gentleman is a game about gentlemen controlling the stock market so that they may buy the best clothes for their ladies to wear at the ball. The ladies never know how much money they have, and then gentlemen never know how many stars (how you win the game) the team has. A lot of the gentlemen’s moves are based on speed when selecting items, and ladies must think of how they can create the best combination of clothing and servants.  Each team will be randomly assigned a different status, and up to 2 teams may have the same status. The different options are: poor, middle class, and wealthy. The poor teams will start with $100, but are allowed to have up to 3 designers and are not allowed to have more than 1 servant. Middle class teams will function as in a normal game (starting with $500, can have up to 2 designers), and rich teams will start with $700, but are only allowed to have 1 designer and cannot have any items below 3 stars. For the gentlemen, the poor are only allowed to fill one contract per turn and are not allowed to have the first pick token. The wealthy are allowed to pick up to 4 resources per turn and are not allowed to have the 4th pick token, and are also allowed to use 2 hands (their father offered to help them start their own stocks). The middle class remains the same.  For the ladies, a poor woman will always pick from a shop with multiple people last, and is only allowed to pick 1 item from that shop (if she goes to a shop on her own, she may pick 2) and she does not get 50% off if nobody goes to her shop. The middle class remains the same. The wealthy ladies always have first pick at a shop and always have 50% off at her own shop (her father owns it, and would give anything to his little girl). Other than these rules, the game functions as it normally does. 

I hope that the modification of this game is able to help explain to people how easy/rough it can be when randomly placed into one of 3 socio economic categories. Based on how the game is set up, it is nearly impossible for a poor team to win, especially if there is a corison in play. I want these modifications to show people that although everyone has free will of what they want to use their money for, there are a lot of restrictions when it comes to a person’s economic background that may hold them back to achieving their full potential or a win in the game. I think that if this was how the game was actually set up, nobody would want to play (unless they were wealthy) because it simply wouldn’t be fun, so this modification is best used as a teaching tool rather than an actual expansion of the game. This modification aims to teach those who believe that “poor people are poor because they’re lazy” that there is much more to a person’s life than the effort they put in, and that a lot of how you started really plays into what you can do with your life.