Description

This educational game shows the consequences of lobbying for fair trade relations with third world producers. It is used in schools of the German state of Rheinland-Pfalz, with the goal of inspiring students to put pressure on their communities to buy fair trade goods.
Up to five players represent importers of third world goods (bananas, stones, coffee, tea and cotton clothes), trying to be the one with the greatest profit who doesn't get caught either overcharging the buyers or inhumanly exploiting the producers. The board has five tracks, one for each product (for the sake of the game, they all have the same price). On the track, there are three markers: The lowest is the price that the producers get; the middle one represents the overall cost including shipping costs, the third one the price that a municipality buys the goods for (the distance between the latter two is the profit margin). The mechanism is a simple "play one card, draw one card". The cards have events printed on them, with each event either influencing the own track (with some choices to make) or that of another player. There are also hidden cards which can be played face-down to another player's track. These are revealed at the end of the game and influence the the maximum prize a municipality will pay and the maximum abuse of producers it will tolerate. A player who exceeds either of these levels is out of the game; the remaining player with the highest profit margin is the winner.
The game has some push your luck element (you can make a rough guess about the tolerable levels from the number of cards played against you) and is embedded in a curricular project in the schools of the state.
It is not for sale nor does it come in a box. 12 copies were hand-made by Reinhold Wittig, of which 10 copies will be used in schools beginning in 2011.