Games I Grew Up On: Careers

One of the earlier board games with both choice and hidden goals that I played was a game called Careers.  The goal of the game is to get the right amount of Fame, Money, and Happiness that you wrote on your "Secret Formula" at the beginning of the game by going around the board traveling down various career paths such as Farming, Sea, Hollywood, etc.  Certain careers' squares were more geared towards one stat (Hollywood got you a lot of fame), so choosing the right career was an interesting and important choice in the game.  Most of these career paths have minimum requirements to enter (e.g. you need to have a certain degree by going through the College career path) and reward you for going through them multiple times.  Sometimes you would get Opportunity or Experience cards - akin to Monopoly's Chance and Community Chest cards - that let you either move a specific amount, bypass career requirements, or immediately go to a certain career.

As with most older board games, a lot of the game is determined by luck (if you don't land exactly at the start of a career path you want, you can't start going down that path), so I think it would be an interesting idea to revamp this game with a little less die rolling and a little more decision making.  The simplest way is my favorite method of replacing a die roll: a deck of cards numbered 1-6, every player has a hand of 3 cards or so and gets to decide which card to use to move forward, and then draws a new card.  It still has some elements of randomness that dice have, but it lets the player strategize a little more.  It would also be interesting to have some way to affect the other players.  I don't really remember there being any Opportunity or Experience cards that you could use on other players for example, but that might be interesting.

This definitely was an interesting game to play growing up that was one step more advanced than The Game of Life.  They are essentially the same game, but this has more interesting choices (if the die lets you have your way).  It was also an interesting way to teach young minds about potential career paths, the importance of going to college, and how it's okay to want no fame or money, but lots of happiness.