Implement the homerule from Monopoly where 1 credit cost spends go to the Tax Man and when you land on Free Parking (the secret word is spoken), you get the whole pool of credits.
Maybe it should be stupidly complicated and silly. Maybe it’s like Jackbox games where you spend to force someone into answering a question they don’t have an answer to.
Maybe the silly amount of credits from Free Parking can be spent for extra lives in the competitive segments so that the episodes last way too long and Esper has to cut them down further.
(These are terrible ideas and should not be considered)
Between every question, the participants should play a minigame, the winner of which receives 10 credits. During the questions, participants throw dice determining how long they get to speak. It is the goal to navigate the conversation to a star vendor, who’ll sell them a star for 20 credits. At the end of the episode, the player with the most stars win.
before each episode, each panellist is given a secret assignment. this can be guessing what someone else will say in response to one of the questions, having to talk about something unrelated but make it sound related, or saying the opposite of their opinion in response to a given question. at the end, if they completed the secret assignment they get a credit, but if the others can guess what the secret assignment was, they instead lose a credit.
I’m all for keeping it simple, but some stray ideas:
Negative Lightning Round - On occasional episodes, a credit is lost for losing the lightning round. I doubt that would change how anyone plays, only reduces the total.
Last Word / Finishing Blow - For 1 credit, at the buzzer the panelist can go over time and have the final say. After that, another panelist can also spend 1 credit to instead get their final say, and so on. More for concluding a tangent, to take a strong stance on light and humorous questions, or just to goad a fellow participant to have their say-- wouldn’t expect it for stifling or shutting down discussion, obviously!
Spend some amount of credits to force another question from the Question Hole. (This adds another one, and doesn’t replace the week’s already chosen question.)
Spend a credit to end a question early. (Different than skip, which happens once the question is read.)
Spend credits to get Esper something cause she deserves it.
Maybe call the questions Side Quests? Seems thematically appropriate as they sometimes do a show with all listener questions, almost like they’re cleaning up some side quests.
I say deduct a credit whenever Messrs Cage, Molyneux or Blow come up, like how there was a fail-state for bringing up Earthworm Jim all the time early on in the show’s life.
Encourages using them while you have them and potentially challenges the panelists from going back to those old chestnuts so often.
In the event that all three panelists cumulatively amass 20 credits or more, forfeit all credits + institute a mandatory full-length improv zone bonus episode
I like the current system! I agree with others that it’s a bummer when the timer goes out and one panelist hasn’t gotten to contribute at all, but I don’t think that that’s worth changing the existing rules over (and I’m personally glad that this credit system seems to have brought back the buzzer completely shutting down the discussion mid-sentence, like it did earlier in the show. I think it’s funny and part of the show’s flavour–and the “spend to extend” credit system does make it less severe).
I don’t have any suggestion for a new idea, but I do think there should be a minimum number of hours required when someone spends credits to make the others play a game (when Brandon spent credits on Knuckles Chaotix I was a bit disappointed the other panelists didn’t play more of it!)
Maybe something like a minimum play time of 3 hours, or beating the game if it’s really short, whichever comes first?
Wait, actually I do have a new idea–Jaffe gives everyone 8 credits at the start of every episode, triggering an Improv Zone. Then after the Improv Zone he removes 8 credits from everyone and the show resumes like normal