Coupling Money and Victory Points in Mansa Musa

Money Queen

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?

Comments

  1. Stéphane BuraMarch 1, 2013 at 5:53 PM

    Do spread the VP values a bit more if you use this mechanism. With these values, it's statistically more interesting to make change.

    Expected VP value of a $3 bill: 5
    Expected VP value of three $1 bills: 5.33

    Expected VP value of a $6 bill: 8.11
    Expected VP value of two $3 bills: 10
    Expected VP value of six $1 bills: 10.66

    Better VP values for these currencies could be:

    $1 : 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2
    $3: 5 5 5 6 6 6 7 7 7
    $6: 12 12 12 15 15 15 18 18 18

    ReplyDelete
  2. DanielSolisMarch 1, 2013 at 8:55 PM

    Yay! It's good to know mathematically inclined people. Thanks, Stéphane, this is every useful.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Paul OwenMarch 1, 2013 at 9:43 PM

    Daniel, this is a very clever idea. I worry that Stephane's recommended values, though, might motivate players never to accept large bills until the very end of the game. Changing a $6 into a $3 and three $1 bills drops the expected victory points from 15 to 10.33. So making change for a $6 means losing 4.66 VP, which is the expected value of three $1 bills, and that's before you've spent money on anything. If I buy something that cost $1 and the only way I can pay for it is to break a $6, the expected VP cost of the $1 item is 6.11 VP - the equivalent of a $3 bill. If I buy something that cost $2 by breaking a $6, the expected VP cost is 7.56 VP.


    But I like the idea in principle. If you can contrive the players' situation to make them agonize between consolidating money for VP and keeping small change to avoid having to break the larger denominations for purchases, then I think you'll have a nice little game-inside-the-game.

    ReplyDelete
  4. DanielSolisMarch 2, 2013 at 12:07 AM

    Paul, any recommendations for a better point spread?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Stéphane BuraMarch 2, 2013 at 5:42 AM

    I totally agree with your analysis Paul and, to me, it's a feature, not a bug ;)
    The idea was to give the players a choice of locking their money into larger denominations for more VP.
    The thing missing from the design is that this should carry an opportunity cost, so that buying higher denominations can't be done at will. Maybe it's linked to travelling, a specific board state, other transactions, or maybe you just pay an extra $1.
    You could always spend your large bill if you needed to later on, but you'd have spent the opportunity cost, so it would no longer be a free action.

    ReplyDelete
  6. DanielSolisMarch 3, 2013 at 1:23 PM

    For now the idea I have in mind is that moving one space is free, but you may pay to move more spaces. Perhaps you can only trade in your denominations by visiting a specially designated "bank" in a central location of the board.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5 Graphic Design and Typography Tips for your Card Game

Image
Chris Farrell of Illuminating Games just wrote a thorough critique of card games setting their body text to be so small that they cannot be read at arm's length, let alone across the table. Here's an excerpt, but the whole thing is worth a read for any would-be card game designers out there. (Myself included.) Break out your copy of the base set of Dominion, and look at the Chapel. This has a text box roughly 3.5cm by 4.5cm. It's got a single line of text. That line of text is 1 (one) millimeter high. 1mm! For me, it's only clearly readable at half an arm's length even in the bright light of day. (...) Compare this to a more sane game like Glory to Rome, where the font size is 2-3 times as large (text is 2mm high, keywords 3mm and usually highlighted). I can generally read Glory to Rome cards across the table, and can certainly see the important keywords. To heap insult upon injury, not only does Glory to Rome have far more legible text than Dominion it also has
Read more

Low-High Dice Game

Image
A dice game inspired by the stock market (and playing lots of Martian Dice). Roll a bunch of dice and choose which sets to keep. Choose your strategy wisely! Stuff You Need Two-to-Six PLAYERS A PENCIL and PAPER to keep score Thirteen standard six-sided DICE How to Play The shortest player takes the first turn. On your turn, first roll all thirteen dice. Several dice will have matching results. These are called SETS. (A single die result is a set, too.) You must choose a set to keep. For example, your first roll results are 111124445555 . The sets are four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, and four 5 s. After keeping a set of dice, lock them up in a row. This is called the GOOD TRACK. For example,  you could keep the set of four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, or four 5 s . You decide to keep the four 1 s and line them up in your good track. After keeping a set, you may end your turn or re-roll the remaining unlocked dice. When you re-roll, immediately set aside any results that ar
Read more

The Thousand-Year Game Design Challenge

Image
UPDATE: The submission period has closed and here are the entries. If you're an entrant, continue sending pics or vids of people playing your game. The first step to a game lasting a thousand years is for people to play it today. UPDATE 2: And here's the winner! To support games designed for longevity – that can be learned, played and shared for hundreds of years – we offer this challenge to any game designers, artists and imaginative people who also share this desire. Challenge Create a game. The game can be of any theme or genre you desire, but there is one restriction: You're creating a "new classic," like Chess, Tag or card games. So, create a game to be enjoyed by generations of players for a thousand years. Prize $1,000 to the winning entrant, to be announced and awarded January 1, 2012. Entry Deadline Entries must be submitted before midnight July August 31st, 2011. ( Update ) Entry Guidelines Enter by posting a comment below with a link
Read more