At its heart Magic Market is a simulation of the market place that takes place in many fantasy games.
The goal of the game is to be the first to complete a quest. There are secondary goals such as having the most customers completed, having the biggest stall, and having earned the most money.
Each of these things is worth a victory point. The person with the most victory points wins the game.
Magic Market is played using four decks of specialized cards, several marking stones, and a weighted six-sided die (1,1,1,2,2,3).
1: The Quest Deck
The Quest Deck is a deck of 40 cards, each representing a different end condition. Each player draws randomly from this deck at the beginning of the game, and holds their quest secret from the rest of the players.
2: The Item Deck
The Item Deck is a deck of 60 cards, each representing a magical item or component. Each player draws five cards from this deck at the beginning of the game, and holds them secret from the rest of the players.
3: The Customer Deck
The Customer Deck is a deck of 50 cards, each representing a customer to your shop. Players draw from this deck based on the roll of the dice.
4: The Event Deck
The Event deck is a deck of 50 cards, each representing something that can occur to a shop. Players draw from this deck at the completion of a customer card.
Each turn in Magic Market represents a day in that shop.
The day begins by dealing with waiting customers, having new customers arrive (and possibly turned away), completing customer orders, and ends with replenishing your store's stock and throwing away expired materials.
This is represented by the turn phases:
1: Up-keep phase:
At the beginning of every turn you remove one money marker from each customer waiting in your shop. Any customer with no money is removed.
2: New Customers
Next you roll the die to see how many customers arrive at your shop. You can only accept new customers if you have an open slot in your stall. Customers that are turned away are discarded to the Wandering Customer Pile.
3: Action
Then you can complete customer orders by discarding the appropriate items to the Dumpster and collecting the money and the customer.
Anyone can fulfill a Wandering Customer's request, for full compensation.
You can fulfill a rival's customer request, but will receive no compensation.
4: Clean Up
Finally you roll the die to see how many items you draw, and discard one item from your hand to the Dumpster. If your hand exceeds ten items discard down to ten instead.
Comments
Where it's headed now:
The board is made up of streets with places for stalls to be built. Each player starts with a stall at one of the 6 corners
start game with 2 workers, 1 additional worker per stall built to total of 5
set up:
set up board by randomizing the tiles and placing them together
place down one stall and one trade route for each player
each player draws starting resource
split the customers into the three piles and lay face up
determine starting player
turn order:
draw inventory cards
-you may draw a card of any type that is surrounding your stall
-each stall lets you draw 2 inventory card
-each mega stall lets you draw 3
place workers
-1 worker +die roll can build a stall, or 2 workers can guarantee it
-a mega stall requires 2 workers and a die roll or 3 workers to guarantee it
-a mega stall can only be built on top of a stall
-2 dice 3 sides of each are successes, 2 sides are events 1 side blank
-roll 2 successes or a success and an event to build your stall
-all events rolled must be resolved
-it costs 1 worker action to buy a customer, and the appropriate inventory
-it costs 1 worker and 1 inventory to build a trade route token
resolve workers
-resolve events
-pay your costs, roll your dice, build your stalls/routes and buy your customers
pass to next player
Event cards effect your stalls, customers, and inventory
stalls must be connected by trade routes. If your stall is connected by a trade route of a different colour you must pay 1 inventory or 1 customer to the owner of that trade route.
Mixed routes are possible, but do not require a toll
all of your stalls must be connected. if you do not or cannot pay the toll to connect a stall, that stall goes into decline
at the beginning of every turn if you have a stall in decline that you cannot or will not pay the toll to connect, that stall is torn down
components
2 event/success dice
deck of event cards
5 worker tokens each
4 stall tokens each
4 mega stall tokens each
15 trade route tokens each
3 customer cards (worth 3, 2, 1 VP)
deck of inventory cards
I'd like to see this game on
I'd like to see this game on the table, in particular because I am curious at how much player interaction is in the game.
Since there are dice rolls to generate more customers and more ingredients, there could easily be situations where one player is simply left in the dust because of their low dice rolls keeping them behind the rest. If there was more of a direct competition between players and less randomness, there might be more interaction and 'back and forth' with the players.
Secret objectives can also be a nice touch, but aren't all the players trying to make a lot of money? Why not determine the winner by seeing who has the most money, and then have the secret objectives be the "kicker" that bumps up scores at the very end? I think Lords of Waterdeep had a mechanic like that: each player was trying to collect the most VP throughout the game, but their Lord's special bonus was kept secret until the very end when final scoring was taking place.
Good luck on your collection of game ideas, Ekobor. :)
Well, in initial playtests
Well, in initial playtests this game has proven to be quite boring-- probably due to the low player interaction, as you pointed out.
When I return to the drawing board on this one I think it will be a more board oriented game. I want to keep the customers determined by die roll, as I think that nicely simulates the possibility of having a rush of customers or a trickle.
But I want to have another look at how stock is distributed, and the goals of each player.
Thank you for your advice, I will look up Lords of Waterdeep and see what I can learn :)
Playtesting stories
I've had that with many of my early designs. The concept sounds great until I actually playtest a sample of the game using homemade cards (print and cut). This has been a challenge for a CCG/Dual type game (which I have shelved).
I'm really happy with my current WIP ("Tradewars - Homeworld") because playtesters have already started telling stories about the game. And they haven't even used the Tactic cards - YET!
The stories I am talking about had to do with Initiative rolls and how one player is lucky and his opponent is unlucky! It creates some tension, especially since one player enjoys winning (and he was the unlucky player!) Roles also led to some table trash talk especially when the Soldier role was used! :P
I think if you can get playtesters to tell stories about the game, you definitely have something worthwhile...
Best of luck with your game (and finding out how to spice it up!)
Note: If the game was maybe an AUCTION instead of a Market (Magic Auction) and players were bidding on various cards which could be ingredients to the HIDDEN spell they were trying to achieve.
It's just an idea - because AUCTIONS imply more player interaction and the SECRET part could be the spell they were trying to get the ingredients for (no one knows what spell the opponent is trying to build).