Byaparव्यापार

The board

The board has 36 squares round its edge. The four corners are Start, Jail, Chautari (a resting place) and Go to jail.

Twenty places are grouped by province, from the cheapest to the dearest:

• Karnali: Jumla, Surkhet.
• Sudurpashchim: Mahendranagar, Dhangadhi, Dadeldhura.
• Lumbini: Nepalgunj, Butwal, Lumbini.
• Madhesh: Birgunj, Janakpur.
• Koshi: Ilam, Dharan, Biratnagar.
• Gandaki: Gorkha, Mustang, Pokhara.
• Bagmati: Chitwan, Bhaktapur.
• Capital: Lalitpur, Kathmandu.

There are also four transport squares (Bus park, Airport, Railway, Cable car), two utilities (Hydropower and Drinking water), two taxes, and two squares each for the Bhagya and Samudaya cards.

Taking a turn

Before you roll you may build, sell buildings, mortgage places or pay off mortgages, as often as you like, and offer other players trades. If you are in jail you may also pay the fine or use a bail card.

Then roll two dice and move clockwise by the total. What happens on the square is automatic (rent, tax, cards, jail), except that you decide whether to buy an unowned place.

Roll a double and you take another turn after this one. Three doubles in a row send you to jail without moving.

Buying places

When you land on a place nobody owns, you may buy it for the price printed on it, or pass. You need the cash in hand to buy it.

If you pass, or cannot afford it, the bank auctions the place straight away. If the game is set so that a place nobody buys stays with the bank, there is no auction: the place waits for the next player who lands there.

Auctions

Every player still in the game may bid, the player who passed too. Bidding goes round the table, starting with the player after the one whose turn it is; that player bids last.

When it is your turn to bid, bid or drop out. The first bid can be as low as Rs 100, every bid must beat the highest bid by at least Rs 100, and bids go up in steps of Rs 100. You can bid only the cash you hold.

Once you drop out you stay out of that auction. A player who cannot beat the highest bid drops out on their own, and at an online table with a turn timer, so does a player whose time runs out.

When nobody else is left to bid, the highest bidder pays the bank and takes the place. If nobody bids at all, the place stays with the bank.

Trading places

On your turn, before you roll, you may offer one other player a trade: some of your places, some of theirs, and money one way, from you or from them. There must be at least one place in the trade.

They accept or decline, and then you carry on with your turn. You may make up to three offers a turn.

A place can change hands only when no place in its colour group has buildings, so sell the buildings first. A mortgaged place stays mortgaged with its new owner.

At an online table you cannot offer a trade to a player who is away, because a computer is standing in for them. With a turn timer, a trade still waiting for an answer when time runs out is declined.

Rent

When you land on a place another player owns, you pay them rent at once. Owners collect rent even while they are in jail.

• A city with no buildings charges its base rent, doubled if the owner holds the whole colour group.
• With houses or a hotel the rent is much higher. Each place shows its rent for one to four houses and a hotel.
• Transport charges Rs 250 if the owner has one transport square, Rs 500 for two, Rs 1,000 for three and Rs 2,000 for all four.
• A utility charges 40 times the dice total if the owner has one utility, or 100 times if they have both.
• A mortgaged place charges nothing.

Houses and hotels

To build on a city you must own every place in its colour group, and none of them may be mortgaged.

Build evenly: a place may not get a second house until every place in the group has one, and so on. After four houses on every place in the group, the next building on a place is a hotel. A place can hold at most one hotel.

A house costs Rs 500 in Karnali and Sudurpashchim, Rs 800 in Lumbini, Rs 1,000 in Madhesh, Rs 1,200 in Koshi, Rs 1,400 in Gandaki, Rs 1,800 in Bagmati and Rs 2,000 in the Capital group. A hotel costs the same as one more house.

You may sell buildings back to the bank for half what they cost, evenly again: always from the place with the most buildings in that group. Selling a hotel turns it back into four houses. There is no limit on how many houses the bank has.

Mortgages

Mortgage a place to get half its price from the bank. First sell every building in its colour group.

A mortgaged place stays yours but charges no rent. To pay off the mortgage, pay the bank the mortgage value plus 10%.

Taxes, Start and Chautari

Income tax costs Rs 1,000 and Property tax costs Rs 1,500, paid to the bank.

You collect Rs 2,000 whenever a forward move takes you onto or past Start, including moves made by a card. Going to jail or moving back never pays it.

Chautari is a place to rest: nothing happens there.

Jail

You go to jail if you land on Go to jail, draw a card that says so, or roll three doubles in a row. Your token goes straight to the Jail square and your turn ends. Landing on Jail by an ordinary move just means you are visiting.

While in jail you still collect rent and may build or mortgage. To get out:

• before rolling, pay the Rs 500 fine or use a bail card, then roll and move as usual;
• or roll for doubles: a double lets you out and you move by that roll, but you do not roll again;
• after your third miss you must pay the Rs 500 fine and move by that roll.

Bhagya and Samudaya cards

Bhagya (luck) and Samudaya (community) are two shuffled decks. Land on one of their squares and the top card is shown to everyone, then carried out automatically.

Cards may pay you, have every other player pay you, make you pay the bank or the other players, move you to a place or on to the next transport square, send you back three squares or to jail, or charge you for each house and hotel you own. A card that moves you forward pays your salary if you pass Start, and you deal with the square you reach as usual.

A bail card is kept until you use it to leave jail, and then it goes back under its deck. Every other card goes back under its deck straight away.

Running short and going bankrupt

If you owe more than the cash you hold, you must raise the money by selling buildings and mortgaging places, and the payment goes through as soon as you have enough.

If even selling everything would not cover it, you are bankrupt and out of the game. Your buildings are sold to the bank at half price first.

• If you owed another player, they take all your cash, your places (still mortgaged if they were) and any bail card.
• If you owed the bank, your places go back to the bank, unmortgaged, for anyone to buy.

Winning

A round is one turn for every player. After the last round (40 by default) the player with the highest net worth wins. Net worth is cash, plus each place at its price (half price if mortgaged), plus buildings at what they cost. Equal net worth shares the win.

If everyone else goes bankrupt first, the last player left wins straight away.

With the game length set to until one player is left, play goes on until only one player is not bankrupt. If that has not happened after 100 rounds, the richest player wins.

What this version keeps simple

Trades are offered only by the player whose turn it is, before they roll, and each offer gets a plain yes or no. Counter-offers are made as a new offer on your own turn.

A mortgaged place changes hands with no fee to pay, and the bank never runs out of houses.

Where these rules come from

In Nepal, Byapar is the name for the property-trading board game that Indian shops sell as Business; Nepali families play it at home with their own house rules. This table uses the rules most tables share:

• Rupee play money, a salary for passing Start, doubles rolling again, three doubles to jail, leaving jail by doubles, a fine or a card, building evenly, and the richest player winning when time is up: the Indian Business game as written up by Gurugamer.
• Hotels after four houses, mortgages at half price with 10% to pay them off, the fine after three failed tries in jail, auctions in which the player who passed may bid too, trading only places whose colour group has no buildings, and how bankruptcy passes on property: the standard property-trading rules, as summarised by Official Game Rules.
• A round limit as the default, because a property game played to the last player can run for hours. Until one player is left is one tap away.
• The board, place names, prices, rents and every card text were written for this site.

Game length

40 rounds (the default), a quicker 20 rounds, or until one player is left. In a round-limited game the highest net worth wins after the last round.

Starting money

Rs 15,000 by default. Rs 10,000 makes every purchase a hard choice; Rs 20,000 lets everyone buy and build sooner.

A place nobody buys

Goes to auction (the default), or stays with the bank for the next player who lands there. Without auctions, colour groups come together more slowly.