An Infamous Traffic

The Game

Being ethnic Chinese myself, this subject matter in the game An Infamous Traffic is a heavy one. It is about a dark part of Chinese history - the opium trade and the Opium War. British merchants with the collusion of corrupt Chinese officials smuggle opium into China, creating a severe narcotics problem. The game designer is Cole Wehrle, designer of Root, Pax Pamir and John Company. I think this piece of history being tabled and discussed is a good thing. We learn from history so that we don't repeat the same mistakes.  

The game board is part of the Chinese map. Each province has at least one supply chain - a row of spaces. These supply chains represent the opium business. When a chain is completely filled, you are open for business. Everyone who has a counter in the chain makes money. A supply chain can involve more than one player. 

This is the player board and on the right the player counters. There are two tracks on the player board. The one with a black background is for tracking the number of investments you've made in the current round. Some actions reduce your profitability, and these are called investments. The number of investments you can perform within a round is limited by your revenue level. Your revenue level is the other track with the white background. 

You have three types of counters - ships, merchants and goods (opium). Creating a counter is one of the actions you can perform. You need to create a counter (bringing it into play from your supply) before you can place it on the board. You set prices for your counters. This determines how much money you earn when your counter opens up a supply chain. 

Revenue of your company is but a means to an end. You don't win based on revenue. Your ultimate score is the prestige points on these Prize cards. Every round some Prize cards are randomly drawn and placed face down. Each player may look at one of the Prize cards. Each round when you are done with all your actions and decide to pass, you send your scion to London to mingle with the aristocracy. How well he does depends on your revenue level at the time. After everyone has passed, you compare the reputation of your scions, and the most respected get to claim Prizes. If tied, the player who passed earlier has an advantage. So all that drug dealing is just for your kid to fraternalise with rich brats.  

Black dice in the provinces represent demand. A province must have demand for business to be viable. The game has a dice pool. Certain actions allow you to move a die from the common pool to a province. Black counters in the provinces represent illegal activities. Those skulls are smugglers. The cross is  Christians. Yes, that's illegal too. The number of black counters determines the number of black dice. The dice total of a province is its demand for opium. A supply chain has a total price - the sum of the prices of all its counters, and that total price cannot exceed the demand of the province if that supply chain is to be activated. 

Yellow counters belong to the Chinese Qing Dynasty. Those on the supply chains are corrupt officials benefiting from the opium trade. Those in the provinces are army units. Some army units do policing and remove black counters when deployed. The presence of army units represent the strength of the Chinese government and that prevents or delays the Opium War. 

The red and yellow tracks here are what determine whether and when the opium war breaks out. Red represents how many times the Qing government has angered the British. Think of it as excuses the British can use to take action. Yellow represents the strength of the Qing army. When red exceeds yellow, the Opium War is triggered. This can happen more than once during the game. When war breaks out, the British army can eliminate Qing army units and Qing officials. The Qing government may be forced to open some ports to trade. 

Along the top there are spaces for eight groups of counters. These are randomly set up at the start of the game, and every round counters will be added. One of the actions you can perform is to move counters from these holding circles to the map. So in this game you are not just doing opium trading. You have some control over the British government, the Chinese government and the illegal activities. 

Business is business. You are here to make money. Often you want to collaborate with others to open supply chains. When you join forces, you can get things done quicker. Who doesn't want to start making money earlier? After supply chains are established, they can be disrupted. Sometimes counters are removed and the chain is broken. There can also be price wars. Your opponent may undercut you by placing a counter with a lower price, kicking your counter off. That means they are desperate enough to earn less for the sake of grabbing market share. 

The Play

When playing games, there is an attraction to playing the bad guy, because we don't get to do it in real life. In a game world, we can do something different, be someone different. That is the joy of gaming. So I must say I was a happy drug dealer destroying families and bankrupting enterprises. In our game I chose to focus on producing opium, and since I was the biggest producer, I had the power of monopoly. No one else could undercut me. 

Our game was unusual, in that we had many Qing army units in play, and few British army units. With the Qing Dynasty being so powerful, the Opium War never occurred. We played an Opium War game with no Opium War. 

At this point the inland provinces of Guangxi and Henan had completed supply chains too. Opium was flowing further inland. Getting a supply chain up is actually not easy. There are several conditions to fulfil. In our game we did not get many Qing army units which could do policing. We had some which came up earlier when we didn't have many illegal activities yet anyway. So later on many of our illegal activities went unchecked. It certainly helped with the opium business. Despite not having the Opium War or the British navy forcing ports open for us, we were able to do business well enough. 

Our game ended in revolution. This was an alternative ending. When there are too many illegal activities, the dice in the common pool will be exhausted, and that will cause the downfall of the Qing Dynasty. In this case, the Prizes no longer matter. You determine victory based on your presence in China instead, i.e. the counters you have on the board. Since we knew the revolution was likely going to happen, in the final round we worked hard deploying our counters, even to supply chains which we knew we wouldn't be able to complete, and even when we knew we wouldn't be generating revenue. It was about branding and exposure now, not profitability.    

This was the situation at game end. There seems to be many counters on the board, but if you look closely, the opium business is only running in Guangdong (Canton), Guangxi and Henan. Jiangxi has a completed supply chain, but it is dependent on the coastal provinces of Fujian and Zhejiang. Neither has an operating supply chain, so Jiangxi has the infrastructure, but no goods to sell. Zhejiang is only short of one counter to start selling opium. We are short of one smuggler. The light blue shallow sea space can only be filled with a smuggler. 

The Thoughts

This is a simulation type game. It is certainly thematic. This is the kind of game with a fair bit of work  involved because there are many rules created to represent historical elements. This is a complex game. Not very long, but it is complex. It portrays well this chapter in Chinese history. From a gameplay perspective, it has solid mechanisms. There is player interaction, plenty of competition, and at the same time players do want to cooperate for mutual benefit when the situation is appropriate. We are all shrewd businessmen, but when there is profit, we are willing to sleep with the devil. This is not an exercise in reenacting history. Our game certainly turned Chinese history upside down. No Opium War, non Nanjing Treaty, and Hong Kong never ceded to the British Empire. 

I enjoy seeing history being told (despite not exactly being true to the original in our case), and I like this unusual topic. An Infamous Traffic is an immersive experience. Drug dealing has been great fun! One thing that I like is Lin Zexu (林则徐) being in the game. He was a powerful official who cracked down hard on the opium trade.