THE GREAT DALMUTI
Editore: Wizards of the Coast
Autore: Richard Garfield
(1995)

In an issue of GiocAreA dedicated mostly to Chinese card game, you may find it not appropriate to talk about a game by one of the world’s most famous game designers.
Just in case you didn’t realize, we are talking about Richard Garfield, the designer of Magic: the Gathering, possibly the best collectible card game ever created, for the love of its fans and the hate of their wallets.
The connection with the Chinese world of card games is explained by the designer himself in the first pages of the rulebook: Garfield tells us that he actually played for a long time a card game that a fellow student taught him.
After some years, his curiosity about the real source of that game pushed him along the tracks of other games around the world: SUPER PEASANT in Japan, RICH MAN – POOR MAN in Alaska, SCUM in Utah, and so on.
At last, his investigations aimed at finding the ancestor of the game ended up on a chinese game called ZHENG SHANGYOU, of which you shall already know something (check the cover article, if you didn’t!).
THE GREAT DALMUTI is a “climbing game”, where the core mechanism tries to simulate a social climbing of the players, who are trying to improve their status – with the nest one being represented by the Great Dalmuti, of course.
The game include a 80 card deck ranging from 1 (The Great Dalmuti) to 12 (farmer). Each card is represented in the deck a number of times equal to its value: there is only one Great Dalmuti, 2 Archbishops (worth 2), and so on to the twelve farmers.
There are also two wild cards with no face value. The deck composition seems to be one of the best improvements, with respect to the original game that employs a standard 52 card deck.
The game mechanic is pretty simple. Before the first round, one of the players is randomly elected Greater Dalmuti, another one Lesser Dalmuti, another one Greater Peon and finally a last one Lesser Peon; all the remaining players are merchants of the same rank, more or less. The deck is distributed entirely to the 5-8 players.
The Greater Dalmuti chooses from his hand two cards and give them to the Greater Peon, who in return, must pass to his lord his two best cards. Then, then game begins: eahc player at his turn may play one or more cards of the same value or pass. If the player chooses to play, then he must play the same number of cards played by the previous player, but of a greater value (being 12 the lowest and 1 the highest).
Hence, after a pair of 3s, you can reply with a pair of 2s. If all players pass and turn gets back to the player who played the last combination, the cards of the round are discarded and that player begins a new round. One by one players run out of cards, are out of the game and gain a corresponding social rank: the first player to go out will be the Greater Dalmuti, the second one, the Lesser Dalmuti; the last two players will be of course the Lesser and the Greater Peon.
The rules are more or less all here; fun is ensured by the small role-playing side of the game.
While a player is the Greater Dalmuti, all the others must “obey” his orders, and worship him; at his will, he may also introduce new rules to the game! Similarly, the Greater Peon is assigned the most humiliating tasks (collect and deal the cards, offer drinks, etc.) – but he can always look for better days.
This social climbing components and the numerous variants included in the rules make this heir of the classic Chinese game one of the most fun and played “climbing game” on the market. Probably this also explains the astonishing success of Magic: Richard Garfield knows what makes a game fun...