Mercantile Mechanic For Pirate Game

I think you are on the right track with the cards, but I think going too deep with the numbers is not going to work.

Instead, how about trying to simulate the buying low and selling high by making the cards play off each other? You arrive in port with a hand full of commodity cards and you can draw event, market, etc cards that let you play your commodity cards differently depending on the situation. Your players can basically sell their goods in that port, or sail on and hope for better luck/prices.

Some event cards could even have you travel to the next port because they are paying crazy money for X good. Then, the opposing players could try and intercept the shipment for themselves, essentially stealing your card after defeating you in battle or through some other card related mechanics.

You could also use cards to make all kinds of events such as treasure maps, bounties, etc.

What I am trying to cut is the "number" part of the equation.
The number of commodity pawns is limited, so every player could load on the ship only a certain amount of goods (e.g. you have 9 boxes on a ship-sheet and you can fill them with a maximum of 9 commodity pawns).

Let's say you have 1 pawn which represents a ton of sugar and 2 pawn for 2 tons of cocoa: the exchange in a port is an easy matter: just add or subtract port quotations from the standard value of your commodity, one time for each pawn (3 times).

Hope I explained the concept better

This is my first post here, so forgive me if its useless to you!

What if each commodity sells for a base price (say 5 gold as an example) regardless where you sell it. And then each port had a commodity associated with it (cocoa in Madrid, spices in London, etc) and you can sell that specific commodity for double (in this example 10 gold). You can vary and change the in-demand commodities via cards. When someone sells the in-demand commodity to the associated city, the card is removed and replaced with another.

You'd only need as many commodity cards as cities plus a few. You could have multiple cities need the same commodity, or maybe none, depending on how many cities/commodities/cards you have in the game. And because its first come first serve, there's an element of urgency and risk as well...this of course depends heavily on the number of cities/commodities you use. You could even have a couple rare commodities that garner 3x the usual price.

I think this is mathematically simpler: since the price is per item you can count it out easily and because the multipliers are also low (and don't change based on quantity) it's easy for people to use simple shopping skills: "I get TWICE as much to sell in Amsterdam as opposed to Tripoli, awesome!"

I do wonder how a player gets the commodities in the first place and how many commodities you plan to have in all. I did see you have 6 cities, which seems like a good number - provides options, but not an intimidating amount...

Hope this helps!

Sorry I can't find the post... but it had something to do about games being designed. Basically it was saying is that there are TOO MANY Zombie games and merchant trading games.

Not to discourage you, since your game is a pirate game.

On another note, have you heard of the PC game called "Pirates!" (Made by Sid Meier's)? No? Well the map is similar to the image you uploaded at: http://www.bgdf.com/node/12410

The difference is that the left side of the map was the shoreline of Mexico.

Here is a WIKI about the game... It might give you ideas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Pirates!

I remember playing this game and it was GREAT. You had different types of ships, you could ram ship to for a fencing dual in which your crews battled while you dueled. You could marry different daughters of city governors if you had enough credibility. You could get a pirate map and hunt for hidden gold. The game was filled with a lot of *stuff*. And yes, I loved it!

Good luck with your game!

I'm glad my suggestion was useful to you!

I didn't even think of using commodities as the monetary unit, that's a neat concept. I'm sure you'll have to play test it to make sure it works...money may still be a necessity...but then again maybe not... Yeah that might just be a great system! Means you don't have to vary the ports desires and such. And it keeps the focus on the fighting not getting money! Could work really well.

Best of luck with the game!

Since you asked, I was working on a hero/questing game where you try to become the most renoun hero in the land to become its ruler. It got a bit too complex (though is still a fun play) with items and money and spells and characters. The idea was to gain renoun through quests, make your character stronger with items and use spells to augment encounters. Throw in some pvp and cooperation options and it amounts to a large learning curve...Plus I got stuck on the end game concept. I wanted to make it winnable for most players at the end with a final dual...lets just say I haven't found my solution yet...

I'm currently thinking of changing the game (or building a second game to work off the same pieces/board/concept) that is a more defend the realm type play. It's be more along the lines of a tower defense game, but with individual heros and various castles. I think it has more potential for accessibility, which was a problem before. Though my issue there is enemy spawn. Of course I've spent zero time working on it lately, so I'm sure a solution will present itself when once I do.

Eventually I'll start blogging on here about the games, but currently it's on hiatus as I have a couple film/theater projects happening.

Regardless, let me know how the new system works out! I'm very interested now!