Goblin Night Market — a print-and-play board game for PlayGrid

A fast Monopoly, run by goblins. Roll, move round a loop, buy the stall you land on, pay whoever got there first. Same shape as the game everyone already knows — cut down to half an hour and stripped of the parts that make the original a slog: no debt, no mortgages, no auctions, no trading, nobody knocked out, and no single payment above 3 coins, so one unlucky landing can never bankrupt you. The one real departure is what you are collecting. Not money — reputation. Hoarding pays 1 point per 4 coins at the very end, while spending 2 coins to upgrade a stall pays 1 point immediately. The miser loses. Know what you are getting. This is a light, luck-forward family game. The die decides *where* you go; you decide only *whether* to spend once you land. Playing well is worth real points — but the dice speak first and loudest, and a first-time player beats a veteran often enough to keep the table honest. If you want a game where planning dominates chance, this is not it, and it is not trying to be. It is the game you put in front of children and relatives. Best with four players. At four, 13 of the 24 stalls get bought and four of the six districts end up contested — the paying-a-rival economy actually fires. At two players only about 7 stalls are ever bought and you rarely pass each other; play the long variant to compensate. At three, one corner Gate stays empty and whoever reaches that un-homed quarter first has a small edge. Three game lengths, agreed before setup and counted on the Moon dial: 8 rounds (15–20 min), 12 rounds (20–30 min, the standard), or 16 rounds (35–45 min, the version where good play pays best). What you print About 100 pieces from roughly 35 distinct geometries: - 36 route tiles — 24 stalls in six icon-coded districts, 4 Gates, 4 Festivals, 4 Workshops - 24 small stall façades that stand inside their tiles, facing the route - 24 reversible owner signs — lantern end up for owned, star end up for upgraded, one physical part doing both jobs - 4 goblin pawns with distinct silhouettes, readable without relying on colour - 4 coin/reputation dashboards with peg trackers - A movement die and a Market Mood die - The Moon Market dial — base, turning pointer and cap — which marks one Hot district and one Sleepy one, and counts the rounds - A two-part sorting box with a bay for every piece type Plays on the PlayGrid 10 × 10 modular board; a printable board is included so the game stands alone. Colours Most parts ship in a single-colour version and a two-colour version. The two-colour files carry the inlay inside them as a second named solid: import one, right-click, Split to Parts, assign two filaments. Print those instead of the plain file, not as well as. The dashboard also has a three-colour version giving each track its own colour. Everything is legible in one colour too — every district is identified by icon and by price dots, never by colour alone. Watch it played A narrated video teaches the rules from scratch and then plays a full three-player game to the finish. !Watch Goblin Night Market explained and played # STARS:BEGIN At a glance | | | |---|---| | Players | 2–4 — best at 4 | | Age | 8+ | | Time | 20–30 minutes (the standard 12-round market) | | Rules weight | 2 / 5 — one page, no hidden information, no upkeep | | Reading needed | none on the components — districts read by colour and icon | Play it with four. At four players 13 of the 24 stalls get bought and four of the six districts end up contested; at two, only 7 and 1.5, and the paying-a-rival economy barely fires. Three players leaves one corner Gate empty and carries a measured ~3-point positional bias toward whoever reaches that un-homed quarter first. The dials More stars means more of the named thing — never "better". Every row names both ends, so nothing here needs a legend. | | | | |---|---|---| | Luck | ★★★★☆ | 1 = your choices decide it; 5 = the dice decide it | | Depth | ★☆☆☆☆ | 1 = best play fits in one sentence; 5 = years to learn | | Player interaction | ★★★☆☆ | 1 = solitaire side by side; 5 = every turn changes everyone's | | Swing | ★★★★☆ | 1 = the leader stays the leader; 5 = anyone can come back | | Waiting between turns | ★★☆☆☆ | 1 = almost no waiting; 5 = long gaps between your turns | | Replayability | ★★☆☆☆ | 1 = identical every time; 5 = a new game each play | | Rules weight | ★★☆☆☆ | 1 = taught in a sentence; 5 = a 40-page manual | | Memory needed | ★☆☆☆☆ | 1 = nothing to remember; 5 = constant recall | | Reading needed | ★☆☆☆☆ | 1 = no text at all; 5 = unplayable without the language | | Child-readiness | ★★★★☆ | 1 = adults only; 5 = a three-year-old can play | | Setup time | ★★★☆☆ | 1 = laid out in a minute; 5 = a long build every game | | Print effort | ★★★★☆ | 1 = a couple of parts; 5 = a hundred-plus pieces | | Table presence | ★★★★★ | 1 = flat tokens; 5 = a centrepiece people stop to look at | # STARS:END Documentation `RULES.pdf` is the full typeset rulebook and `ASSEMBLY.pdf` the illustrated print-and-build guide, both attached. The zip holds the same guide plus the rules in ten languages — English, Czech, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak and Chinese. The nine translations are machine-made and say so on their own last page; the English text decides.