Coupling Money and Victory Points in Mansa Musa

So plenty of games make earning the most money your winning condition. Plenty of games make earning victory points your winning condition. Some games combine the two into one unit of currency. Others include both money and VP, but each focuses on short-term and long-term goals, often at odds with each other.

In Mansa Musa, I was initially thinking of doing the latter, money being what gives you mobility across the map but not in itself leading to victory. Instead, I'm kind of doing this wobbly halfway thing that is inspired by Jaipur's bonus tokens. Imagine a set of currency as follows:

There are $1 bills, $3 bills, $6 bills. Each individual bill has a victory point value assigned to it on the back. In play, each denomination is shuffled and sorted into its own stacks as the general supply. You only ever see the money side of each bill. You only ever look at the VP side of the bills at the very end of the game. Say for example there are nine bills in each denomination, the bills' hidden VP values would be as follows.

$1      $3      $6

1p      4p      8p

1p      4p      8p

1p      4p      9p

1p      5p      9p

2p      5p      9p

2p      5p    10p

2p      6p    10p

3p      6p    10p

3p      6p    10p

In other words, four of the $1 bills are worth 1p, three are worth 2p, and so on. As you earn money, you also earn victory points, but it's never entirely clear how many points you've earned. Collecting lots of money is still clearly a good goal though.

The tension comes when you upgrade to a higher denomination or decide to keep lower denominations. Higher denominations offer much higher point values, but also make your short-term assets less liquid. Suddenly, making change for a $6 actually has tactical importance. You could accidentally be trading 10 VP for 6.

I think balancing this mechanic with some other methods of publicly visible point acquisition will make Mansa Musa a very interesting experience for economic gamers. Now, the perennial question: Has this peculiar money-and-victory-point mechanic been done before?

Further Thoughts on Modeling Inflation in Mansa Musa Board Game

I've been thinking more about the inflation system I posted earlier this week. It didn't have the elegance I was really hoping to achieve. I wanted to be able to tell at a glance how valuable it would be to sell a good to a particular market. Here's another way of doing that.

The cards above represent cities along Mansa Musa's pilgrimage route. They begin with 1-3 random cubes and the remaining spaces stay empty. Musa moves from west to east, then east to west, along the dots indicated below the cards. Each time he lands below a column, he fills it with up to three random cubes.

$ Value of cubes = (number of empty spaces on that card) - (number of cubes of that color on that card).

So if the blue player above were to sell a red cube to the city on the far left, she would earn $4 because there are four empty spaces on that card. Selling a blue cube here wouldn't earn as much because this city already has so many. Selling a blue cube here earns only $2. (Four empty spaces, minus two).

Selling goods earns VPs = (number of empty spaces on that entire row) - (number of cubes of that color in the entire row).

So if the blue player above were to sell a red cube to the top row, she would earn four victory points because there are four empty spaces in the entire row. Selling it to the middle row would only earn three victory points (four spaces, minus one). Selling to the bottom row would only earn two victory point (four spaces, minus two).



So we have three basic methods of determining units of value. CARDs determine the dollar value of any particular cube. ROWs determine the victory point value for selling goods. COLUMNs are what get filled up when Musa arrives. Thematically, I was having trouble figuring out what to call these. I got some good advice from folks on Twitter, especially Ben Marshalkowski and T. C. Petty.

I think cards will stay Cities, columns will be the East and West District of that city, and rows will be social castes. This creates some interesting natural in-game language. For example, if you were to consider the top row to be Nobles, you might say, "The nobles of the second city have everything they could want, no point in selling there. But no Nobles have red cubes, and the Nobles in the first city are hungry for more of anything, I'll sell my red cubes there."

And perhaps the castes offer different rewards for selling to them. Perhaps Nobles earn you the most money, Merchants earn a balance of money and victory points, and Peasants earn you little money but lots of victory points.

Yup. Feeling pretty good about this iteration. Things get even more interesting when you mess with the grids.



Conjoined spaces count as just one space. Anywhere without a space doesn't count as a space. A random shuffle and rearrangement can make some rows much more valuable than others. I think adding bonus tokens to the axes can add even more replay value. Hm!

Inflatable Jewels? A Modular Method for Indexing Inflation in the Mansa Musa Game

Here's my current experiment with adjustable values for goods that get progressively inflated or deflated as Mansa Musa passes through. (Reminder: Mansa Musa was the richest human in history. On his pilgrimage from Mali to Mecca, he spent so much gold that he caused a wave of hyper-inflation across North Africa. His procession was basically a Medieval Singularity of post-scarcity.)

I'm considering using a set of cards to create a winding connected path representing Mali to Mecca. I think this linear path can serve two purposes: It's a pacing mechanic for the game a whole with Musa inexorably traveling east, then back west. It's also a sliding dial to note relative inflation.

Basically, the Musa meeple acts as a progress bar and wherever you are to the east or west of that progress bar indicates the relative value of your goods. After all, checking an inflation line chart isn't exactly a fun time for most people.

I wanted to index the value of goods to Mansa Musa's progression across the track. Every so often, there is a demarcation space in the track that is used as the increment of inflation. In the final game, these might represent cities.

The base value of goods are as follows:

ARCH.:    3
MATH:     2
ART:      1
SPICES:   1
STONE:    2
JEWELS:   3

If you're to the WEST of Musa, the value of the first three goods is increased while the other three are decreased. When determining the value of ARCHITECTURE, MATH, and ART, add the number of hexes between you and Musa to their base value. For SPICES, STONE and JEWELS, subtract the hexes.

In the example above, the blue player is two hexes west of Musa, so the value of goods would be:

ARCH.:    5
MATH:     4
ART:      3
SPICES:   0
STONE:    0
JEWELS:   1

If you're to the EAST of Musa, the value of the first three goods is decreased while the other three are increased. When determining the value of ARCHITECTURE, MATH, and ART, subtract the number of hexes between you and Musa to their base value. For SPICES, STONE and JEWELS, add the hexes.

In the example above, the orange player is one hex east of Musa, so the value of goods would be:

ARCH.:    2
MATH:     1
ART:      0
SPICES:   2
STONE:    3
JEWELS:   4

For now, goods cannot be worth less than zero, though I am amused by the idea that if you're far west of Musa, people would actually pay you to take away their jewels. It's an idea worth considering if it's not too mentally burdensome in actual play.

For replay value, the map cards could be shuffled or flipped for alternate layouts. More cards could be added for more players, too.

Initial Thoughts on a Mansa Musa board game

In 1324, Musa I, the king of Mali, set out on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Unfortunately, the Mali empire left behind few written records, but we do have the eyewitness accounts of Musa's extravagant procession of 60,000 people and animals. All carried large quantities of gold bars and gold dust that were given to the poor along the way. In fact, Mansa Musa singlehandedly depressed the value of gold across the Mediterranean for decades after his pilgrimage (and supposedly inadvertently helped fund the Italian Renaissance).

I've been fascinated with this story mainly from a science-fiction perspective. I'm reading Iain M. Banks' Culture novels which mostly concern an interplanetary post-scarcity utopia. It's kind of like if Star Trek's Federation, the Borg and Kahn all teamed up to make the universe a happier, more peaceful place. I'm mostly interested in seeing how citizens of the Culture value their time and possessions when neither are in scarce supply.

I've also been playing Jaipur a lot lately. I really like the elegance of taking the top chip from the resource stacks to reward early trades and reflect the relationship of scarcity to value. At UnPub3, I was also talking about roll-and-move games and how they get a bad rap despite several very nice roll-and-move games being out on the market for years.

All these subjects are mashing up in my head into an idea for a roll-and-move economic trading board game. See, Mansa Musa was essentially a medieval singularity moving across North Africa, totally up-ending the stable rule of gold at the top of the economic hierarchy.

It would be fun if you played traders trying to maximize the value of your goods in the time of Musa. You move back-and-forth ahead and behind Mansa Musa along his pilgrimage. Ahead of him, gold and precious metals were still valuable. Behind him, they're pretty worthless and instead education and culture are the most valuable goods.

Here's a mockup of what such a game might look like, mashing up elements of Jaipur with some new stuff.

 

Components and Setup

• Two standard six-sided dice.
• A board showing Mansa Musa's route from Mali to Mecca as a series of 30 spaces. There are also designated spaces are available for resource cards, resource chips and bonus chips.
• A camel token for each player, placed in Mali.
• A big Mansa Musa token, placed in Mali.
• Resource cards Food, Gold, Gems, Silver, Poetry, Maths and Architecture. These are shuffled face down and placed on the board. The top five cards are dealt in a row into the designated spaces of the board along the bottom. As play progresses, cards will move down the line from left to right.
• Each player gets dealt a hand of five random resource cards.
• Corresponding resource chips come in a range of values and are stacked in descending order of value, so the most valuable tokens are on top. Food is the only resource token without an inherent value and can be stacked in any order.
• Bonus chips are separated into three denominations, representing sales executed with three cards, four cards, or five cards. Their values are hidden, so you don't know the value of a claimed bonus token until the end of the game, but generally it's more valuable to claim a 5-card bonus token. 

Outline of Play
This is all still loosey-goosey, so please forgive any vagueness. The player facing east takes the first turn. Turns proceed clockwise around the board. On your turn, do the following:


Step 1: Trade (Optional)
You may trade one card from your hand for a two cards from the board. First, take the two cards you want from the board. Then place the one card you don't want from your hand onto the board in one of the designated spaces on the line. This leaves one gap in the line indicating a benefit you will gain this turn:

• You don't have to move Musa on your turn OR you can double Musa's movement.
• You may add 1 to your movement roll.
• If you sell this turn, treat the sale as if you sold one extra card. So a sale of two cards counts as 3, for example.
• Gain 1 pt.
• Gain 2 pts.

Step 2: Sell (Optional)
(You may not do this step if your camel is in the same space as Musa.) Sell two or more cards of the same type from your hand to take one chip from the corresponding resource stack. You will take either the top or bottom chip depending on if your camel is to the east or west of Musa.

• West of Musa: Top Chip: Poetry, Maths, Architecture. Bottom Chip: Gold, Gems, Silver.
• East of Musa: Top Chip: Gold, Gems, Silver. Bottom Chip: Poetry, Maths, Architecture.
• If you sell food cards, take any chip from the stack. They're not valued individually.
• If you sell three, four or five cards, also take the top chip from the corresponding bonus chip stack.

This swapping of values reflects the depressed prices of scarce resources once Musa passes a city. According to history, on his return trip he tried to repair his damage by borrowing back much of his gold at exorbitant interest rates.


Step 3: Move (Mandatory)
Move your token and the Musa token by rolling two dice. Choose one result to move your token and the other result to move Musa's token.

• Both tokens may move up to the full distance indicated on the die result but no farther.
• Musa must move in the direction indicated by the gold arrow until he reaches Mecca, at which point he turns around and begins moving back to Mali.
• Your token may move east or west at any time.

End of Turn
Move the remaining cards down to fill in the gap. Add more cards from the deck from left to right. If you have more than seven cards, you must discard down to your hand limit at the end of your turn. The next player may take their turn.


End of Game
The game ends immediately when Musa returns to Mali. Each player scores total points from their collected resource tokens, any points earned from trades, and points for food tokens.

Food tokens are scored as a square. For example, one token is worth one point. Two is worth four points (2x2). Three is worth nine points (3x3) and so on.

The player with the most points at the end of the game wins!