The briefest of history lessons
In the ancient Arabian frankincense trade, farmers in what is now Yemen extracted frankincense resin from trees and left it piled high in the sunlight for merchants to peruse and purchase. The merchants, with packs full of the stuff, would spend months traveling through the desert to deliver the raw chunks of frankincense to Gaza on camel back. From there, the goods would get shipped off to Rome over the Mediterranean sea where the demand was skyrocketing.
Some inspiration
When I first read about this in “Splendid Exchange”, it unfolded in my mind as a board game. The map was clear- Saudi Arabia. Little wooden camel tokens traveled up and down the western coast, passing the few cities that dot the landscape. Players around the table foam at the mouth haggling and shouting prices, all in hopes of striking it big by unloading their frankincense for a huge score.
Frankincense Trade: The Game
For the first week, I began writing rules and imagining how the game would go. There was a distinct flow:
- Market phase- buy frankincense and myrrh in Yemen
- Travel phase- travel up the coast to Petra/ Gaza
- Sell phase- sling that fragrant tree sap to the highest bidder
- Return home phase- while each player’s camel train returns to Yemen, they have a few actions they could choose from.
I wanted the game to be highly interactive with bidding and trading, a la Bonanza or Modern Art. For that, players could make “trading posts” along the road so that when a player passes through an opponent’s trading post, there will be some exotic goods they can bid on or exchange with one another at the trading post. I hoped this would incentivize slow northward travel to Gaza.
To simulate supply and demand in Gaza, the first player to make the journey each round will sell their goods for the best price, and players arriving later will suffer worse and worse exchange rates. This way, there’s incentive to make the journey quickly.
The interplay between wanting to trade and wanting to sell for a high price makes for a tension where fun tactical decisions lie.
Dark Clouds on the Horizon
I had the rules just about “completed”, and I explained the game to my wife. She nodded along, but at the end of the explanation, she said “what’s the fun part of travel phase?”
I forgot to make part of the game fun.
For a few weeks I ruminated on the game and made very little progress, aside from trying to balance the demand cards and the market cards.
Then I was struck a few nights ago while out running. What if I used mancala for the travel phase?
New ideas for mechanisms started popping off in my head, ways to “game the system” and introduce little wrinkles of strategy to consider.
My two problems now
The first problem with this is that there already is a somewhat similar game that I’ve never played- Five Tribes- that’s about the Middle East and trading, and uses mancala. I don’t want to blatantly rip that off, but I think my game sufficiently different, so that’s not a huge deal.
The second problem is that it doesn’t make sense that each player would pick up and move everyone else’s camels. In my mind, the game is more reserved than silly, so tonally I don’t think this mechanism fits.
New Direction
So the frankincense road game is on the back burner for now. I took some of the DNA from it, made it a little simpler, introduced the mancala mechanic to travel, and ditched the four phases for a more dynamic game where all the phases happen all at once.
The new game is about food delivery in Taipei.
I have a box of blank components: cards, various meeples, tiles and tokens of various colors and shapes. I used these pieces when I sat down last night to test the core gameplay. For now, the game is called 台北外送 (Tai Bei Wai Song).
The core gameplay works out rather well. The mancala mechanism allows for very high interactivity. As they cross each other’s routes, they may accidentally take their opponent’s delivery driver to the bubble tea store they need to stop at to pick up something for a delivery. They may also move their opponent’s piece further away from the delivery destination.
Current Status
I have a stack of notes from my play last night. Many of the components were hastily ripped pieces of paper stuffed into card sleeves with blank cards. I need to adapt my notes into rules, mock up cleaner versions of the cards, and try again.
It’ll probably be a week before I can sit down and try it again, but I’m rather excited. There’s a great studio in Taipei for board game design and play testing. Soon I’ll take it over there for a spin.
When I’m finished with this project, I intend to make my way back to the frankincense road.
Near Future
I’ll post pictures from the next play test, and share the rules version 0.1. If I can get this game off the ground, and get it play tested a few hundred times and have positive reviews, I will gladly pay for assets and try for crowdfunding.
If you read this far, thank you so much, and feel free to reach out to me on mastodon or email.
Stuff Cam Wrote 