



A few weeks ago, I was at home with my boyfriend and really fancied a game of Monopoly, or more specifically - Harry Potter Monopoly. I searched high and low for the game to buy only to discover that Hasbro had never actually made one. They've made every kind of monopoly under the sun....but not a Harry Potter one. What are you doing Hasbro?

Anyway, with that in mind I decided to try to make my own one. I had a few failed starts (stupid me trying to design the cards in Microsoft Word) but once Tom set me on the right track with Photoshop, I was on my way! This was my first ever time using Photoshop so it was a bit of a challenge, but a fun challenge nonetheless. I researched loads of other peoples homemade Harry Potter Monopoly games before starting and drew inspiration from a lot of those designs.

(BTW I'm releasing my designs for free, so if you're interested in making this exact board, you can download the cards and board HERE!



I started with a blank monopoly board template printed on an A4 sheet of paper. I used this as a rough work sheet and wrote down which "properties" I was going to assign to which spaces. (I actually ended up changing this slightly later on because I added a new card to the game so the board changed from having 10 spaces on each side to having 11). Once deciding which properties were going to be which colour, I got down to actually designing them on Photoshop. I first designed the fronts of the property cards, and then the backs (with their mortgaged values) separately.



I knew I wanted to add my own spin to the game but was unsure how. This is when I thought of the Chocolate Frog trading cards that they have in the films and decided that I wanted to incorporate them into the game somehow. Their sole purpose being - to cause more arguments! Having played classic Monopoly plenty of times, I thought that the properties and their assigned rent values were a bit boring and plain - you land on a property and you pay the rent - simple, but ultimately boring after a 3 hour game. This is where I came up with the idea that the Chocolate Frog cards will affect the properties and their rent - so now if you land on a property that has a Chocolate Frog card assigned to it, there will be a specific set of instructions/rules to follow (e.g. pay triple the rent, pay no rent but skip a go, etc). I also added the rules for this new card to the rule book that I later made.

Instead of having community chest cards and chance cards, I changed them to Ministry cards and Hallows cards. I once again designed the cards in Photoshop and kept to the "old parchment" look which I felt fit the theme I was going for. (I forgot to include pictures of how the fronts of the cards look - sorry! They're available to download though)



Luckily, the Harry Potter world has it's own currency - gold Galleons, silver Sickles, and bronze Knuts. I would have loved to include the Sickles and Knuts but thought that it would be more effort than it was worth and pretty impractical to have to lots of fake coins that would get easily lost. With that in mind, I decided to use Galleons but in "note-form". The designs I created are transparent so that they could be printed onto 80gsm coloured paper.



For the houses and hotels, I wanted something a bit more "Harry Potter-ry". I came up with the idea of manors and castles and bought some fimo clay from Ebay. I had to make 32 manors and 12 castles out of the clay which I did whilst watching Netflix on the couch with Tom. I struggled to come up with a somewhat reasonable "manor shape" because the clay was being completely unreasonable, so I settled on a triangular-tent-like shape which looks nothing like a manor! (perhaps you guys might be more successful!). I then popped the clay pieces into the oven for about 30 minutes at a temperature of 110°C and let them cool down.



With the cards, money, and game pieces made, it was time to design the actual game board. Once again, I did this with Photoshop (I was beginning to get the hang of it at this stage, and dare I say it - somewhat good?). With the addition of the Chocolate Frog card, I had to add a new tile to each side of the board. Each corner tile measured 2.5"x2.5" whilst all of the others measured 1.5"x2.5" (this makes a 20"x20" square game board. I only added 1 Chocolate Frog square to the board so that they would be picked up less frequently (and cause less arguments!). This left me with 3 extra tiles to come up with uses for (e.g. apparate to knight bus free parking, house cup victory, etc).



When it came to printing the cards, money, and board I went to my local craft shop where I picked up a few different coloured 80gsm sheets of paper (for the money), 2x A2 thick craft boards (for the game board), a stack of A4 glossy white 180gsm paper (for the cards), and a few other supplies such as clear gloss varnish spray, a rotary cutter, and spray adhesive.

Despite how many times I tried, I couldn't get the backs and fronts of the cards to line up exactly when printing so after about a trees worth of paper, I decided to just print the backs and front of the cards on separate sheets, glue them together and then cut them out with my rotary blade (which actually turned out to be a lot better than I expected - the cards were very sturdy having 2x 180gsm sheets glued together). I initially tried to print these on my printer at home but for some reason nothing was co-operating and the toner just wouldn't adhere to the glossy paper. Without giving up, I went to my local Staples and got them to print all of my cards for me on my own paper (ended up being 19 A4 sheets) which I then took home and glued the backs and fronts together.

For the thick board, I cut 4 26cm x 26cm squares. I attached 2 of the squares together with duct tape and repeated with the other 2 squares (this allows the boards to fold). I then flipped all of the attached squares over and duct taped 2 of the opposite squares to each other. If what I said doesn't make sense, then hopefully the crappy Microsoft paint image I made below explains it better!

I printed the four corners of the board onto normal A3 paper and then cut them into 25.4cm squares. I then glued each printed square carefully onto its respective cardboard square making sure that everything lined up perfectly (use the inner corners of the board as your guide rather than the outer corner as there will be a small perimetre surrounding your board once it's glued down). This could take a few tries to get right so I would suggest printing the board a few times just to ensure that you like how it looks (I ended up going for the edge-to-edge look which were 26cmx26cm squares). I finished the board by spraying it with a 2 light layers of clear gloss varnish (wait until the first layer dries before spraying it again) which gives the paper a nice finish and makes it more durable. I suggest doing this step either outside or in a well-ventilated area because I almost died from the fumes in my little studio apartment!

For the game tokens, I bought 2 old second-hand Harry Potter Scene-It games from Ebay for cheap. These ended up being perfect and exactly what I needed. I was contemplating making my own tokens but whatever I would have produced wouldn't have had the same professional quality and feel that I wanted (Yes, I'm a perfectionist).



Finally, the rule book. I wrote this in Microsoft Word and pretty much just used the original Monopoly rules, except for changing the words to their corresponding Harry Potter themed words (House > Manor, Jail > Azkaban, etc) and adding my custom rules for the my Chocolate Frog cards.

As far as projects go, this one definitely had it's bumps in the road along the way, but I enjoyed making it nonetheless and I can't wait to have hours of fun (and arguments) with it! If you fancy making it yourself, I've made my files accessible HERE! for free download. I put a lot of work and effort into designing this game and board, so please give credit where credit is due and DO NOT SELL.

Happy gaming!

P.S. I took all of the pictures when I was drunk and broke my camera :(



