The Basics

Bootleggers is set during the prohibition. Alcohol has been outlawed, but enterprising individuals, such as yourself, are making and selling illicit booze across the city.

This is a game of economics and negotiation. When you start you will own only one peice of the booze production pipeline. You will have to negociate with other players to turn a profit.

Booze

Booze is the only commodity bootleggers care about. Booze comes in five grades of quality.

	X Booze: Its rough and its nasty, but it will not send you blind (mostly).
	XX Booze:
	XXX Booze:
	XXXX Booze: This fine booze is especially enjoyed by Australians.
	XXXXX Booze: The finest of booze, XXXXX will tempt even the most affluent and law abiding citizens.

Operations

Booze is brewed in stills, moved by truck and sold in speakeasies. You will choose which of these operations you start with.

	Stills produce booze.
	Trucks trucks move booze around the city, usually from stills to speakeasies.
	Speakeasies sell booze to a parched public.

Choose a Starting Operation

Once you have signed up, verified your email address you are ready to play. Here are some quick tips for getting started in Bootleggers.

When you log in for the first time you will be given a choice of starting operation. You can choose either a still, a garage or a speakeasy. On the screen where you make this selection you will see a tally of the number of each operation type currently in the game. All three types of operation are necessary to the booze trade. If you see from the tallies that one of the operation types is under represented you should consider taking it as you may find your services are in greater demand.

Once you choose your starting operation you will be given a random location in the city and some money and booze to start you out.

You will start on the News page. There will be a welcome message for you here. This is also where you will get announcements from Bootleggers, notices of activity at your operation and mail from other players.

Your Operation

Click the ‘My Business’ tab at the top of the screen. A map of the city will open on the right of the screen and details of your operation on the left.

Looking at the map you will see a grid of streets numbered from North to South and West to East. On the intersections of these streets are the operations. Your operation is green and other players’ are brown.

Clicking on an operation will highlight it and show you the owner’s name. Speakeasies will also show you the price they are charging the public for their booze. Looking at these will give you an idea the price booze is selling for.

On the left of the screen is your ledger. At the top of the ledger is a summary of your business. Under this are details of your business. You will have $200 in your wallet and your business will have $50 in the til and two crates of X booze in its store.

Speakeasy owners: Your operation details will show you the price you are selling booze for. By default the price is set much lower than you are able to get.

One of the actions for your speakeasy is ‘Change Prices’. Click this link and price dialogue will open where you can change the prices on the booze you are serving.

You only have X booze to sell at the moment so only the price you are selling X for really means anything at this stage. Change the price for X booze to $50 and click the update button.

In the ledger you will see the price booze and the number of people drinking it change. Every time you change your prices the number of drinkers will change. The more expensive you make your booze the fewer drinkers you will get.

You only get paid when the drinkers finish a crate of booze. Each drinker takes one drink every hour and there are one hundred drinks in each crate of booze. To work out how long it will take for the drinkers to finish a crate divide one hundred by the number of drinkers you have. The result is the number of hours it will take for the drinkers to finish the crate and you to get paid. With four drinkers it will take just over one day to finish one crate.

Adjust your prices until you have four drinkers.

Your First Contract

On the side of the ledger are three tabs. You are currently looking at your operations. You can also view your contracts and Edges by clicking these tabs. Click ‘Contracts’ now.

Contracts are a very important part of Bootleggers. They are a way of arranging for the sale and transport of booze between players. You can accept contracts from other players or make a new offer of your own.

Click ‘View available contracts’ under Actions. A list of contracts being offered by players in your grapevine appears. Click view for any contract to see its details. Contracts can be offered by players looking to buy, sell or get transport for their booze. The tabs at the top of the contract will filter the list by offering type.

Let’s offer a new contract. Click ‘Offer a new Contract’ under Actions. A new contract form will open. The details of the contract you want to offer will depend on the type of operation you have, so choose the section that is relevant to you.

Your First Contract - Still Owners

You want to sell the X booze you currently have in your store. Select ‘I have booze and want someone to buy it.’ Your Still will be listed as the pick-up location. You will not know the delivery address until someone accepts the contract.

Leave the Booze quality as X and enter 2 as the number of crates. For the price enter $40. This is the price for each crate so the total price for the contract will update to $80.

Under transport select ‘I will arrange and pay for transport of the booze.’ By selecting this option you are agreeing to set a price and pay for the transport of the booze. The transport costs will be come out of your profits so do not make them more than you are selling the booze for. In this case enter a transport price of $20 per crate.

From this contract you will make $80, less $40 for transport – or $40 all up.

Click the ‘Offer’ button and your ledger will update showing your contract as offered. You offer is now visible to other players as they look at the available contract list. Someone has to accept the contract and someone has to agree to transport it before the contract can be completed.

Your First Contract - Garage Owners

You want to sell the X booze you currently have in your store. Select 'I have booze and want someone to buy it.' Your Garage will be listed as the pick-up location. You will not know the delivery address until someone accepts the contract.

Leave the Booze quality as X and enter 2 as the number of crates. For the price enter $30. This is the price for each crate so the total price for the contract will update to $60.

Under transport select 'I will arrange and pay for transport of the booze.' By selecting this option you are agreeing to arrange the transport of the booze. Because you own a garage you will get the further option to use your own truck for the transport. You will want to do this as it costs nothing.

Select 'I will transport the booze with my own truck.’ Your garage will appear in green as the origin of the truck to use for this contract.

From this contract you will make $60. You will not be paying for transport so it will all be yours.

Click the 'Offer' button and your ledger will update showing your contract as offered. You offer is now visible to other players as they look at the available contract list. Because you have already arranged the transport, as soon as someone accepts this contract your truck can start delivering it.

Don’t let your truck sit idle while you wait for your contract to be accepted. View the available contracts and filter the list to transport contracts. You can accept anything you see offered.

Your First Contract - Speakeasy Owners

Unlike the still and garage owners you do not want to sell booze but rather buy it to sell to the public. Select ‘I need booze and want someone to sell it to me.’ Your Speakeasy will be listed as the delivery location.

Leave the Booze quality as X and enter 2 as the number of crates. For the price enter $20. This is the price you will pay to the supplier for each crate so the total price for the contract will update to $40.

Under transport select ‘I will arrange and pay for transport of the booze.’ By selecting this option you are agreeing to set a price and pay for the transport of the booze. The transport costs will be come out of your profits so add them to the price you are buying booze for to calculate the total cost of this contract. In this case enter a transport price of $20 per crate.

From this contract you will get two crates of X booze, paying $40 for the booze and $40 for the transport – or $40 total per crate. Make sure you are selling X booze in your speakeasy for more than $40 or you will not be making a profit.

The total cost for this contract will come from your speakeasy when the booze is delivered. The total cost is $80 and you only have $50 at your speakeasy. This should not be a problem as long as you sell a crate of booze to the public before the delivery arrives, if you want to be safe you can use the ‘Transfer cash’ action to move some cash from your wallet to your speakeasy. If you do not have all the money for the contract at your speakeasy when the delivery is made you will get a Black Mark.

Click the ‘Offer’ button and your ledger will update showing your contract as offered. You offer is now visible to other players as they look at the available contract list. Someone has to accept the contract and someone has to agree to transport it before the contract can be completed.

While you wait look at the available contracts and see if you buy some other booze. Ideally you want to be selling all the different types of booze simultaneously, keeping your speakeasy packed, but that will be hard. See if you can get a some XX booze.

Your First Contract - Conclusion

You have just offered your first contract. You can offer or accept more now if you want to, however you are limited to being party to only four contracts at any time for now.

You can pull out of a contract you are party to by opening the contract and clicking the withdraw button. If you withdraw from a contract when someone else is a party to it you will get a Black Mark. Get too many Black Marks and you will not be able to use Edges and enter new contracts.

Your Edges

Click the 'Edges' tab on your ledger to see your Edges. Edges are opportunities and advantages you can apply to your operations and business.

You start with two Edges: one 'Grow Grapevine' and one 'Get Fitout'. You will also see under actions links to buy new Edges and buy Edges at auction.

Grow Grapevine

Click 'Grow Grapevine' to open the Edge interface. You will be shown an image and a description of what the Edge does. There will also be a number of options as to how you can apply the Edge. What these options are will change from Edge to Edge and with your circumstances. Some Edges you will not be able to apply because you do not meet its prerequisites. In this case there will be no options, only the text ‘You cannot apply this Edge’.

The Grow Grapevine Edge will grow your area of influence in the city by one street in one direction. The options for the Edge are the directions you can grow your grapevine. Growing your grapevine is important as you are often restricted to only interacting with players in your grapevine. The bigger it is the more options you will have.

You can click and drag the Edge interface by its title bar to move it around the screen. Move it aside and look at the map of the city. You will see the streets at the edges of the map are faded and you cannot click the operations there. The faded portion of the map is outside your grapevine.

Look at the North, South, East and West faded sections and choose the one with the most operations in it. This is the direction you want to grow your grapevine. Now select that direction from the options in the Grow Grapevine Edge and click the Apply button.

Get Fitout

Click 'Get Fitout' to open the Edge interface. This Edge will give you a random Fitout. The options for the Edges are the types of operation you can get a fitout for.

Select the operation type that matches your starting operation and click apply. You will get a Fitout of the selected type.

Fitouts are explained in the next section

Your Fitouts

Click the 'Fitouts' tab on your ledger to see your Fitouts. Fitouts are improvements you can install in your operations.

If you have used your 'Get Fitout' Edge you will have one listed. Click on the name of the Fitout to see details of the Fitout, the set it belongs to, and the bonus you could get for having a complete set installed.