Rules Discussion: Player-to-player Trading

One of the finest, most laudable aspects of any board game is the positive social dynamic that is engendered during gameplay. There's the regular chit-chat small talk, the "catching up" with occasional friends, and even the heartfelt sharing of burdens with family. Through the social dynamic of board games, we sharpen our abilities to read facial cues and semiotics, detect deeper pragmatic aspects conveyed through intonation and body language, and we even treat each other better in person than in online games, during which people can declare the most awful lies about other people in forums and chats. Yet another benefit of the positive social dynamic of face-to-face interaction in board games is player-to-player trading, through which we learn how to negotiate to achieve a mutually beneficial result -- a useful skill for children and adults.

As far as I know, player-to-player trading is not unusual in gaming. Outside of the mainstream rules, trading is allowed in Monopoly, in which people can broker deals for property, money, and/or free passes. Pit is another classic trading game in which players frantically trade commodities until one player, unbeknownst to the others, collect a complete set of a commodity. One game that I own from a favorite designer of mine is Bohnanza, by Uwe Rosenberg. In that game, players trade beans, but the difficulty lies in the requirement to plant beans each turn; if you have two fields of beans already, players have to choose which field to sacrifice to plant beans that they cannot off-load. Better than these games, however, (or at least, more highly regarded) is Settlers of Catan, in which a player's fortunes rise and fall depending partly on how well they can acquire necessary resources from others without trading away too much. In all of these games, the ability to negotiate with other players is indispensible, often leveling the playing field by giving those who are normally not board gamers a tool they can use. I have participated in numerous gaming sessions in which casual gamers or self-described non-gamers have done quite well because they were adept at talking people into giving up something useful.

Player-to-player trading in a game, quite deliberately, adds a much needed social element to many games, such as Settlers of Catan and even Monopoly, and several more (such as Chinatown, which I have yet to play, but I have watched Shut Up & Sit Down's review of it) -- that element being face-to-face interaction and negotiation with other people. Many Euro games lack this element, mostly because it is a built-in constraint for players to have to deal with the resources they have on hand instead of escaping tight squeezes by trading away that unwanted wood for some clay. However, games like Agricola and Stone Age would certainly be loosened up if player-to-player trading could be performed because food, which is essential in both games, could be acquired from a player who has a lot of it. In turn, the other player would benefit from more of a necessary building material, enabling him or her to, say, build a four-segment fence to enclose two cattle or to buy that development card. For games that openly feature trading, player-to-player trading opens up any game not only socially, but tactically, allowing players to escape nigh-impossible situations by acquiring a crucial item from a neighbor.

In my opinion, trading is one of those game-learned abilities that helps anybody beyond the confines of a game; I can imagine that children that grow up with trading games would be skilled negotiators in the future because they practiced at the family dinner table. This is also why I favor board games over video games because you are forced to bargain face-to-face with other people, which has greater application in daily life than negotiating with a screen.