Lobster Game

Rules are very simple.

Pupils live on an island which has fishing for lobsters as its main industry. There are offshore and
inshore places to do your fishing. Each boat can carry 6 pots. Offshore lobsters are better than
inshore lobsters and therefore bring in more money. These prices depend on the type of weather.
Weather is randomly controlled by rolling of a dice. Good weather allows fishing in all parts of the
island. Bad weather only allows inshore pots to be fished as the offshore pots have been washed
away.

Prices

Weather Inshore Offshore

Good £3 per pot £5 per pot
Bad £5 per pot COSTS £6 per pot.

Weather

1-5 is good weather, a 6 is bad weather. If there is bad weather then the following day a 5 or a 6
gives bad weather. 3 consecutive days of bad weather is a hurricane and pupils lose their boats and
must pay £150 to have them replaced. Weather needs to be done for Sat & Sun just in case there is
a hurricane on Sat, Sun or Mon!

If they don’t want to go fishing then they can work in the hotel but only earn £15. Nobody works on
Saturday or Sunday. However they must pay £80 per week for maintenance and food etc. It’s best
to do this on a Saturday.

Day Inshore Offshore Weather Income Costs Profit Running

(I-C) total
Mon 3 3 Good £24 £0 £24 £24
Tue 4 2 Bad £20 £12 £8 £32
Wed 2 4 Bad £10 £24 -£14 £18

If you have a good group then any negative running totals can be charged interest at 10% per week.

Encourage no cheating as some pupils fill in their pots after the weather has been given.

You can fine pupils for incorrect account keeping or charge them for your time if you have to help
them with their calculations! This works well with higher ability groups!!
Advanced Rules

Rules for the advanced game are exactly the same for the basic game, except that pupils may
purchase extra boats at a cost of £150. Running costs are £50n+£30 per week where n is the
number of boats. If they buy a boat during the week they must pay for the running costs of the boat
on the Saturday.

A hurricane destroys all boats and they must all buy a new boat at £150 and start with one boat
again!

If they go into debt they must sell their boats at £75 per boat until either they are back in credit or
they have only one boat left.

For purposes of who has won the game at the end multiply the number of boats by £75 then add
running total to give overall cash in hand.

Note: I’ve used the openDyslexic font for the IwB. You can download it here:
http://opendyslexic.org/