Imagine a monopoly board. The old standard, the one everyone recognizes. The brief intro is focusing on such a board, on hands moving over it, money exchanged, dice rolling. First story has an opening paragraph or two describing someone landing on the first property along the board, one of the purple ones. The story that follows involves a ghetto, a gang turf fight, perhaps with a strange purple tattoo being one of the signs of the gang that is focused on, or the main character has dyed his hair purple, you get the idea.

Each story would be somehow spun from the round of the game showed in each short lead-in paragraph. They would be stories of power, of business, of politics, but most of all, of money. Everything from a leprechaun's pot of gold to a small child's piggy bank to a multi-million dollar deal that goes astray at just the wrong moment.

I could see them done as a set of 'modern elf' stories, or as Shadowrun tales, or perhaps not even really connected at all except for the opening paragraphs and the money theme. Toss it out, perhaps as a fantasy/scifi mix, see who comes up with ideas. It's something that really needs each story to be written by someone different; nothing else gives quite the range of tones that a collection like this would need.

Wonder if anyone's done it yet? If not... ehh. Maybe I'll write up a story, and see what happens from there.

Penguins and fuzzies; my thought processes are a little bit off. I'm curious to see if tomorrow this story idea will sound anywhere as neat as it does now.