I previously simplified the implemented definition of a future down to:

1. Buy goods now to be delivered at time X
2. Sell goods now to be delivered at time Q

That was a mistake. A necessary element of the core problem of Modern Mogul is that fact that the players should (nearly) never be playing the game as it exists in present time. Instead they should be playing the game as they hope it will be some number of turns in the future. In the above simplified definition the capital is both committed and spent now and only satisfaction is delayed. The more interesting and useful form has the commitment occur now and the capital expenditure when the future matures. In this way the players will not only have to juggle the vagaries of the future market, but also the vagaries of their future liquidity as a result of market activity between then and now. Much better.

Attempting a taxonomy of negotiation:

Open Negotiation

Free-form done through conversation and persuasion. Open Negotiation is unbounded/unconstrained and is frequently only incidentally related to direct/current in-game concerns (what tokens are where, what permissions are granted etc) and is generally much more interested in establishing consensus on mutual policies and long-term collusive patterns. Diplomacy is perhaps the titular grandfather of Open Negotiation in game design. The key elements are primary focus of the negotiation is to persuade another player to pro-actively collude (Will you do XYZ for me?), and while the focus of the negotiation is informed by the game, the majority of the negotiation content is meta to the game details.

Simple Negotiation

Frequently tactical and usually directly informed by and concerning current game specifics and the disposition of specific game tokens. The most common forms are simple requests for permission or abeyance. May I do QRS? or If I do ABC will you not attack me? The key element is direct focus on and discussion of game particulars (and thus a rather tactical focus). Questions of policy and long-term collusive patterns are not part of Simple Negotiation.

Implicit Negotiation

In short, where moves are offers. Moves, independently arrived at by the players, without discussion, for negotiative patterns due to common understandings of collusive self-interest which emerge from the game-play. Gun-boat¹ no-press² Diplomacy is the great-grand-daddy here. More recently Wabash Cannonball has epitomised this model[^3].

Personal views

I am generally not a fan of Open Negotiation in games, rather like Simple Negotiation as (exemplified by such games as Lords of the Spanish Main, Quo Vadis and Traders of Genoa) and adore Implicit Negotiation (eg Wabash Cannonball, Pampas Railroads, or King of Siam).

A while back Jacob Butcher finally categorised me, You like negotiation games! He’s right of course and I especially like them when the negotiation is implicit instead of explicit, or to quote a more recent conversation with another friend, Where your moves are offers.

I love that idea. Moves are offers. Adorable. Juicy. It is likely that single characteristic, married tightly to a raw game theory core¹, is what has so attracted me to Wabash Cannonball. Moves as offers.

So I’ve been thinking for about a week now, mulling around ideas surrounding moves as offers and trying to see what sort of game could be wrapped on that skein. The working concept, which is weak, is a game in which each player has 1/Nth of a limited resource in the game and every move they either offer (partial) access to their stock to one or more other players, or exploits the access that others have offered while also offering access in return. All terribly vague, but the core sense is a sort of dance of offers and engagement and commitment and perhaps even betrayal. The obvious comparables are So Long Sucker and Intrige, but I’d like something far more implicit than those fine stalwarts, as well as far more implicit than explicit.

So far I’ve come up with…nothing. Which is fine for this stage as the thought toy has been delightful, but I’d would like to tangible realise this idea. Sadly inspiration has fled. Still, the thought toy is so charming, so very Mary Poppins in every possible very nearly perfect way.

I’m not getting to play with Muck & Brass as much as I’d like lately – Lords of the Spanish Main is occupying too much of my attention – so a little disclosure seems in order: Rules for Muck & Brass!

I also give you the brief graphical evolution of Muck & Brass.

• Pasta (penne is more traditional but it really doesn’t matter)
• Tomatoes (I use a 2:1 ratio of diced tomatoes and whole plum tomatoes)
• Bacon or thin-sliced ham (I use bacon scraps and hand-remove all the fat to produce semi-ham)
• Olives (I prefer oil-cured black kalamata olives but green also work)
• Rosemary (a little goes a long way)
• Garlic
• Olive oil
• Salt

Chop the meat into little bits and then heat until cooked but still limp (not crisp or chewy!). Drain the fat. Quickly chop and brown the rosemary in the bottom of a saucepan along with the garlic and a little olive oil. Chop or slice the olives and dump the meat, tomatoes, olives and rosemary into the pan with the rosemary and garlic, and stew until the diced tomatoes have lost most of their consistency. Salt to taste. When ready, dump over freshly cooked pasta (a little al dente is good – the chewiness adds structure and makes it easier to eat).

While great hot and fresh, the final dish also refrigerates well and improves in flavour over time as the flavours meld. If you’ve picky kids, lower the rosemary and olive proportions. If you’re like me, up the rosemary and olives. If you want to (deliciously) experiment, coarsely cube and brown some aubergine on the side and dump into the mix right before the end.

The tool I’ve been using to footnote definitions of terms some readers may not know has a problem. It can result in broken RSS and Atom feeds which don’t validate, usually due to non-UTF8 characters in strings which are defined as UTF8 strings. In turn this causes various RSS readers and aggregators (eg Bloglines and Technorati) to fail to import the feed. Ooops.

For now I’ve removed the offending definition linkages (suet and jocund) and am on the lookout for a replacement WordPress plugin, preferably one based on dict¹.

Tinners’ Trail, while otherwise an ignorable game, reminded me of the noble pastie and what a fine food it is.

Basic ingredients:

• Pie dough (pre mixed sheets from the store or make your own with all-purpose flour, salt, water and a little lard or butter)
• Rutabega (aka swedes – it isn’t a pastie if it doesn’t have rutabega)
• Potato (I like small quartered reds with the skins on)
• Onion (I prefer strong yellow but red will also work)
• Meat (I opted for hamburger, but chopped steak, stew beef, chicken, turkey, ham or pretty much any other lumps of dead animal will work)
• Fatty meat. (I used ground pork but sausage or suet will work and many prefer the arguably more traditional suet)
• Salt & pepper

Optional ingredients:

• Lamb instead of or mixed with the beef
• Beef stock (helps stick it together, adds salt and a little flavour)
• Celery (leave the leaves on)
• Parsley
• Mushrooms
• Most anything else that might be tasty. A little rosemary can go very well for instance.

Ratios are very flexible. Use suet instead of the pork if you want a more traditional (and tastier) pastie. I used roughly two parts beef to one part pork to five parts potatoes to two parts rutabega and one part celery. Next time I’ll probably decrease the total meat proportion as I’m a little tired of meat-heavy/centric meals. I might also throw in a few other vegetables like turnips or cabbage or anything else I can think of just for variation (ObNote: carrots are traditionally verboten).

Precision is not important in the world of pasties – variation is the spice of life. Chop or cube the vegetables. Don’t worry about keeping it small, just whack them about a bit with a knife. Mix everything except the dough into a gooey mass. Salt, pepper and other spices to taste. Parsley is good. Don’t bother with keeping the mix even as distribution variations are tasty. Roll the dough out into circles around 30cm or so in diameter (precision is not important), or use pie dough that has already been formed into circles. Don’t roll the dough too thin; 3mm or so is fine. The dough needs to be thick enough to solidly hold the final contents. Dump of big glob of goo-mix near the centre of a dough circle and fold it over to make a half-circle with the lump in the middle. Thickly fold over and crimp the edges. If needed (depends on the dough), brush the edges before and after with water or butter/lard to make them stick together better. Prick the top in several places to allow steam to escape. Bake for around an hour at around 180C (350F).

Pasties can be made very quickly. 30 minutes from ingredients to oven is reasonable. A quick google search will return scores of variations on the above base. Some of the vegetarian curry pasties are especially good.

Eat hot or cold. Some like them plain or with catsup or hot sauce; it is all good. Eat by hand like a slice of watermelon, holding onto the thick crimped edge and eating out the filled centre. I made a bunch on Sunday evening and ate them all week for lunch. They were great.

THE ORDER LINE IS NOW CLOSED.

John Bohrer has kindly consented to allow me to act as a broker for this year’s Winsome Games’ Essen Collection. The 2008 Essen Collection is only available as a set of 4 game titles. The games cannot be ordered individually. Quoting Winsome Game’s release materials:

1. Eddie Robin’s “Gulf, Mobile & Ohio” is an innovative new boardgame with no luck factor. This game takes place in the Southern US 1830-1850 where many small and large railroads sprang up, starting in 1830. Players charter railroads, build track, sell common stock and vie for connections in cities with other railroads. This game is for 3-5 players for about 1 hour.

2. Harry Wu’s “Preußische Ostbahn” introduces an innovative new Player Order mechanism. Preußische Ostbahn is set in old Germany, 1840-1870. Eight historic Railroads create the network that bound the Germanies together. Each has a special characteristic, based upon its history. This game is for 3-5 players for about 90 minutes.

3. The Age of Steam: Texas, Oklahoma & New Mexico Expansion happens in the Wild West. This expansion introduces two new Actions: Ranching and Cattle Drive and it also includes 32 Cattle cubes. The expansion is for 3-6 players, for about 2 hours.

4. Harry Wu’s Wabash Cannonball: Erie Railroad expansion adds another railroad to Harry’s original Wabash Cannonball game. The Erie Railroad had an important influence in the history of this period of American railroad expansion. The expansion uses the base Wabash Cannonball game and allows the same number of players; it takes about the same time as the base game, maybe a few minutes longer.

If you are local to San Jose California and can collect the game directly from me, please use the following payment button to order the 2008 Essen Collection (US$130 + $5 S&H):

If you are elsewhere in the continental USA or Canada, please select the following payment button to order the 2008 Essen Collection (US$130 + US$15 S&H):

For buyers in the rest of the world, please select the following payment button to order the 2008 Essen Collection (US$130 + US$25 S&H):

I only have access to 100 copies, total. It is likely they will sell out quickly. If you are going to order 3 or more copies and would like to save on S&H, please place multiple orders above and then contact me on BoardGameGeek (user: clearclaw) or via email at my PayPal account address so that I may calculate the correct S&H for you and refund the difference.

The games will be packed and shipped by the most economical methods available. Orders for foreign countries with known package/postal problems will be heavily taped. Customs forms will identify the contents as media. Please be aware that the clamshell polystyrene cases may be damaged in shipping. This is a risk of the economical shipping method used. I will be shipping the games in a padded envelope but some postal services can be surprisingly rough. Shipping in a more protective box would more than double the S&H costs and due to lack of interest in previous brokered orders, is not available for this collection. I will have a small number of replacement cases available for shipping damages. I will receive and ship the games some time after the Essen trade fair in October. Estimated shipping time from here to your door is 7-10 days within the continental USA and 2-3 weeks for international addresses. Progress and updates for the group order will be made as comments to this post. Please subscribe to the RSS feed linked in the bar to the right if you’d like to keep up to date.

THE ORDER LINE IS NOW CLOSED.

A thought model; just a skein of partial ideas to consider hanging a game from:

External markets phase

• A graph, nodes connected by edges. Some nodes are identified as (potential) start nodes.
• Nodes bear a die indicating the current market demand at that node. cf The future market die (central collumn) in Lokomotive Werks
• The die or node may be coloured to indicate a specific transport type (passenger, freight etc)
• Players may claim edges between start nodes and other nodes, or between nodes already connected and other nodes (connected or unconnected). In this manner the network grows and becomes incestuous
  • Possibly an auction of the nominated edge?
    • cf Dutch Intercity’s blind-bid edge within a very small graph
  • The Riding Series method of rotation auctions until at least one player has spent all their cash and all players have auctioned at least once may be interesting
  • Ordering by cash holdings, or inverse, may also be interesting. cf The Riding Series and Lokomotive Werks for value considerations
  • Possibly there are limitations on contiguous networks, costs for non-contiguous networks etc.
    • Should claimed edges be coloured by player and if so, what is the value?
• By claiming a connection a player has acquired commits them to supply transport in that volume in N-turns (N = 3?)
  • The auction for the edge sets the price for that product-type ($/volume) and this is tracked/recorded
  • Future auctions produce new values, also tracked
  • Minimum bids may be set as a function of projected values from this history
• As additional edges are claimed new markets enter the game with their own demands for volume
  • Represented by a new “line” of dice for that node, possibly in a different colour or a higher value of a current colour
  • Thus a thriving market for one sort of transport (eg freight) prompts a market for passengers etc etc and so forth (yay theme)
• In a later phase players may sell the futures among each other
  • Again an auction, modifies the tracked price?

Production phase

• Effectively Lokomotive Werks redressed
  • D4s? – lower variance
  • Number of dice in future orders column equal to total of all dice-values on nodes connected by claimed edges
• Building new factories unchanged.
• Building capacity unchanged
• Players don’t claim dice, they auction them (and receive the money personally)
  • What is auctioned is a commitment to supply Q product of that type in N turned (N=3?)

Future fulfilment

• The current turn’s contracts are resolved
• Each buy must be matched with sells of the same type etc.
  • Open negotiation?
• Unmatched buys are satisfied by the hidden market which operates at a cost of X% of a function of the tracked market prices and those funds are covered by the players
• Unmatched sells force the market price down and penalise the holding player by n% of the then market value?
  • Simply losing the future may be enough penalty
• What is resolution order of what buys and sells are matched and in what order?
• Monies are paid from the bank to players holding satisfied buy futures (they ship the goods?)

Market maintenance phase

• Each dice line on a node grows or shrinks by one die Lokomotive Werks-style
  • Possibly this is a global function across all nodes, a local function/property of the node, or a mix of both
  • Possibly a function of the properties/types of lines in neighbouring nodes (reflective/communicative/memetic markets)?
  • The dice are rolled, establishing total orders within the period (may be less or more than total futures)
• Each player in rotation claims either auctions a die at a currently connected node (assumes uncoloured edges?), or auctions a new/additional edge
  • A new edge may connect a new node, in which case they automatically get that die/contract, or if between already-connected nodes, may affect market maturation patterns in those nodes (see above)
  • Not clear what auction value an edge between connected nodes has?
• Limit to total growth of dice lines on nodes?

A fractured thought model to be sure, plangent and struck through with gaping flaws.

After some odd thoughts about how the network growth potentials of ‘Ohana Proa could be mapped as a pseudo-futures market, i’ve been thinking about representing futures in games quite a bit lately and I’m having a really hard time of it.

The simplest way to present a future seems to be as a pair of contracts:

1. The agreement to sell at time X for price Y
2. The agreement to buy at time Q for price R

The two are of course reciprocals. There are more complex forms of futures, but they are just that, more complex. The basic form would have PlayerA selling a contract to PlayerB, PlayerB giving PlayerA money in return for the guaranteed market (to buy or sell). The complexity is that PlayerB has to have the money now to buy the contract, and depending on the type of the contract, will also either have to have the trade goods or the money to satisfy the contract when it comes due. The primary justification for futures is to guarantee both the pricing and the existence of the marketplace into the future against the vagaries of market dynamics. Thus a wheat producer can not only set his effective price for next year’s tonnage now, but can also guarantee that there is in fact a market to sell his wheat next year. A wheat buyer can do likewise, protecting themselves against price spikes due to bad weather and a reduced crop (for instance). But you know all this – I repeat myself, re-tracing the pattern in hope that repetition reveals something new and useful.

The challenge is to (literally?) transcribe this into a game. There must be risks sufficiently large that the inefficiencies of futures are worth it. The range of extent of the risks must also be knowable (supply may be high or low, prices may be high or low, demand may be high or low). Additionally, if a futures market is to be represented, the actual trade of futures and the tracking of futures prices as a discrete market entities, then fulfilment must be sufficiently postponed that the value of the future has the opportunity for multiple significant changes and can be reasonably traded multiple times.

This suggests a future length of between 3 and 5 rounds¹. The future would be sold and there would then be 3-5 rounds of market evolutions and potential trading of a given future before it matures and is fulfilled. A good rule-of-thumb is that a game has 7-10 rounds, with each player making at least one strategically significant evolution per round. 7-10 rounds gives sufficient time for player investments to mature, carrying player commitment and value, and for game arc to develop. Given that futures must have a maturation time of 3-5 rounds and assuming that all the maturation periods will stack as densely as possible, that means a game duration of 10-15 rounds.

This of course assumes that the players start the game with positions which require the sort of risk abeyance that futures provide: another problem to resolve. But, so far so good. The remaining problems are to establish the risks and the market variance controls which can express reasonably in 10-15 rounds.

The future definition could also be simplified to :

1. Buy goods now to be delivered at time X
2. Sell goods now to be delivered at time Q

In essence the transaction occurs now except the fulfilment, the actual movement of goods, happens later. The pattern is similar to the mail order market model (given guaranteed delivery times) except that fulfilment is delayed by more than the postal system². This is almost the same kettle of fish except that all the capital is required up front for the purchaser to abey the risks.

If the simplified model is combined with a loans/temporary-liquidity system ³ it becomes remarkably similar to the more classical and complex split contract/fulfilment/payment futures model.

Now for the risk system, and this is where I’m running dry.

The system needs a market with the following properties:

1. High potential price variance
2. Increasingly difficult to predict the longer the prediction (early-, mid- or late-game), not exponentially, but probably worse than linearly
3. Reasonably predictable market volume demands

That last is a doozie. If I simulate supply and demand then either the supply and demand is highly unpredictable, or there is another large random factor in addition to supply and demand which affects market prices. One appealing possibility is using Lokomotive Werks’ novel dice-based market system, as it does provide a highly dynamic market with high variance supply and demand relationships⁴.

Positing Modern Mogul as an extrapolation of Lokomotive Werks is appealing as Lokomotive Werks is a fine game (review). Lokomotive Werks internally simulates the demand side through a combination of the number of dice rolled (which is a function of competition), the values that are rolled on those dice and the individual player’s turn order but leaves the supply side for players to construct. Somehow this needs to be split so that players can occupy both the supply and demand sides of the equation.

Demands are supplies for the next stemp in the consumption pipeline. What if there were the equivalent of two Lokomotive Werk’s tracks, one of factories for production (much like the current game) and the other with second stage demand? Thus, keeping with the train/transport themeing, one system would generate erratically growing sequences of transport demands (passenger, livestock, freight, etc), perhaps using a very similar system to Lokomotive Werks, which the players would then attempt to fulfil by representing back to the train production market as demands in some value distribution. Thus on the one hand players would attempt to gauge their position against the variations in transport demand, and by reflection from that, against the variance in production vehicle demand.

Much as I like perfect and certain information games, the use of dice (as a stand-in for any random system) seems suitable. here. The requirement is to create a high-risk difficult to predict system. A random system obviously does that and has the advantage that the range and distribution can be relatively precisely tailored. Building the system from player-interactions is likely possible but seems a difficult butterfly effect challenge and runs the risk of being fragile/crackable.

Hurm. Back-to-back Lokomotive Werk’s-like systems with a full futures market (time-based contracts to buy-and sell, plus dynamic price tracking). This needs musing on.

Harrumph. I started writing this post indending to explain how impossible it was to reasonably represent a futures market in a game and I had a stack of good solid (swiss-cheese) reasons in-hand. However, as hoped, as I assembled and articulated the reasons they built something else.