You are the head of a respected but troubled family estate in mid-19th century Victorian England. After several lean decades, family fortunes are looking up! Your goal is to improve your estate so as to be in better standing with the truly influential families in Derbyshire.

Obsession is a game of 16 to 20 turns in which players build a deck of Victorian gentry (British social upper class), renovate their estate by acquiring building tiles from a centralized builders' market, and manipulate an extensive service staff of butlers, housekeepers, underbutlers, maids, valets, and footmen utilizing a novel worker placement mechanic. Successfully hosting prestigious social activities such as Fox Hunts, Music Recitals, Billiards, Political Debates, and Grand Balls increases a player's wealth, reputation, and connections among the elite.

Each turn, players choose a building tile representing a room or outdoor space in and around their 19th century British country house. The tile chosen dictates the event that can be hosted and the guests to be invited. Players must carefully plan, however, to have the proper staff available to service the event and support guests as needed. The reward for success is new investment opportunities, permitting further renovation of the estate (acquisition of more valuable/powerful building tiles), an increase in reputation in the county, an expanding circle of influential acquaintances, and a larger and highly-trained domestic staff.

Throughout the game, a competitive courtship for the hand of the most eligible young gentleman and lady in the county presents specific renovation and reputation objectives. The player who best meets these objectives while accumulating victory points will win the hand of the wealthy love interest and the game.

These twenty (20) promotional tiles were developed as part of a stretch goal during the 2019 Upstairs, Downstairs Kickstarter campaign.

Users were invited to submit tile ideas, which were evaluated for thematic integrity and gameplay coherence, with the top two finishers in a user poll - the Parish Church/Parsonage (Stephen Cleary) and Babbling Brook (MJ Petrie) - being included in the Upstairs, Downstairs expansion.

The remaining eighteen (18) promotional tiles are now available as a separate item. These improvement tiles span all five tile categories: seven SERVICE, two ESTATE, two ESSENTIALS, three PRESTIGE, one SPORTING, and three SPECIALISED tiles (one hybrid, one wildcard, and one prototype tile).

Search for comets in a Garden Observatory, attempt to launch a Hot Air Balloon out on the East Lawn, enhance your service staff in countless ways, or be anything you want to be in the Art Gallery! All tiles are thematically sound, fitting the Victorian period.

An expansion for Obsession that introduces four new servants - the Hall Boy, Cook, Head Housemaid, and Useful Man - who can be used to mitigate Victorian Fate found in the base game.

It also enables 5 and 6 players and adds the Howard family with their legendary cook.

Upstairs, Downstairs includes new service and improvement tiles along with a ton of new casual and prestige guests. The expansion components empower players to screen guests, work around prestige limitations, find tiles, refresh the market more easily, and enhance favors early in the game.

Finally, there are three new game modes: Solo Estate Challenge, Team Cooperative Play, and Tableau Obsession.

The Wessex Expansion adds a fifth family board to the mix that gives the advantage of a larger starting country estate. A player selecting the Family Wessex player board will have their choice between the Breakfast Room and Tennis Court - second level improvements - in his or her manor house at the beginning of the game. The expansion also adds five additional Starter Guests, five additional Casual Guests, five additional Prestige Guests, and six new Solitaire opponents.

A strange Dowager lives outside of Derby in a sprawling manor distastefully done up like a Scottish castle. More distasteful yet is that her estate is simply crawling with odd characters, refugees from around Europe and eccentric, if pedigreed, characters from closer to home. Respectable people shun the great lady for her appalling taste in acquaintances, but one must confess that her rabble is spectacularly interesting...

The Characters expansion for Obsession brings thematic new personalities to Derbyshire who provide unique actions for managing your country estate: Constable Bucket, a fair hand at running off all manner of unsavoury guests; a Mr. Higbee who can find domestic help in a pinch (?References? I am sure they are here somewhere??); the wise Reverend Grantly, a dispenser of sage advice; and an Eccentric Dowager Marchioness, who will connect you with a Prussian major, Swedish noble, and a Russian count as quick as a wink.

Upgrade your copy of Obsession with these beautiful coins!

Substantial, thick and heavy; this set of coins weighs almost over 300g, and each coin is 3.3mm thick! The Coins are also designed to stack just like poker chips to keep them tidy

Since Obsession is set in the 1860s, these coins feature a very young Queen Victoria on the œ100 coin and a slightly older Queen on the œ500 coin. No elderly Queens here. The backs have Obsession elements (lion rampant, fleur-de-lis, courtship couple, starter guest crown, tile rose), yet these coins will fit like a glove in any Victorian-era board game.

These coins take up the same volume of space as the cardboard coins.