"Just Right" - A Goldilocks Game

Goldilocks!

This is a simple game that sprouted from an earlier post about "balancing" or "equilibrium" score mechanics, where you're trying to keep two or more groups of assets in roughly equal balance in order to maximize score.


Setup
Get a deck of cards, remove all cards of one suit of your choice. We'll only be using three suits, each representing Chair, Porridge, and Bed.

Draw three tracks on a piece of paper, with 21 spaces each. Each player should have a set of three pawns in their own color, each placed in the center space of each track. Either end of the tracks should be labeled with a + or a -. Label each track Chair, Porridge and Bed.

  Chair     Porridge     Bed
   [+]         [+]       [+]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
  [ x ]       [ x ]     [ x ]       
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [ ]         [ ]       [ ]
   [-]         [-]       [-]

Deal a hand of five cards to each player.

Turns proceed simultaneously.


Playing a Turn
Take any number of cards from your hand and keep them face down very close to you.

From the remaining cards, take give one to each player of your choice.

Any remainders are discarded.

Reveal all cards.

Move your pawns down (-) a number of spaces indicated by the cards given to you by your opponents. So, if you were given a 4 Chair card, you'd move your Chair pawn down the Chair track four spaces towards the "-" end of that track.

Then move your pawns up (+) a number of spaces indicated by the cards you kept.

Keep all your cards and set them to your side.

Then deal another hand of five cards to each player and continue.


Endgame
When the deck runs out, the game is over. The player whose pawns are all closest to the center space wins. If tied on a track, the player who has the lowest total sum of ranks in that suit wins.

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