Description

A game of trading on the Silk Road. Each player is a merchant who travels from city to city buying and selling ten different goods in an effort to turn their starting 20 units of money into 10,000.

The map is divided into nine regions each of which has a "price index" which is tracked on a erasable tile. Each merchant has a sliding paper device which lets them easily look up the current price of each good for a given price index. After buying goods in a region the region's price index changes, which may have unexpected effects; each good will push the index up or down depending on which direction increases the price for that good, but all purchase effects in a region are added together to produce the final effect. And, since the index determines the prices for all goods, buying one good can cause the prices of all ten goods to change. Selling goods has the same effect, applied in the opposite direction.

The game represents the limited communication of the era by only letting players see the price index for the region they are in (and then only when in a city). Players cannot sell goods in the same region they bought them in for two turns, so information inevitably gets stale. Players can sell or trade each other information as well as goods.

In addition to goods players can purchase animals, rent ships, and hire armies and guides. Animals let the player move faster and carry more goods; ships naturally allow sea movement and can carry an unlimited number of goods. Armies protect against bandit/pirate attacks, which are one of the types of random events rolled for every turn. Other random events can include war (guides help you avoid wars), epidemics, and getting married; marriage gives the merchant a family which does nothing useful, but you can sell goods for more money in your in-law's city. Some events can also change the price indices.