How to Play

The shape of it

This is an arbitrage game. Not a combat game, not an RPG. You win by noticing that something is cheap here and dear there, and by still being solvent when you find out.

You start in the Bronx on day 1 with $2,000, a coat that holds 100 units, and $5,500 of debt. Travelling to another borough costs one day. After thirty days the game ends and your net worth is your score.

The prices

Six drugs, each with its own range, unchanged from 1984:

That spread column is the whole game. Ludes swing six-fold, so a hundred of them can double your money — but a hundred Ludes is only worth a couple of thousand dollars, so they stop mattering the moment you are rich. Cocaine barely moves within its range, but a coat full of it is worth millions. The skill is climbing that ladder at the right speed.

Five things worth knowing

1. Space is scarcer than money

Your coat holds a fixed number of units whatever is in it. Once you have real money the right buy is not the cheapest thing on the board — it is whatever converts the most cash into the most profit per unit of space. Take every trench coat upgrade you are offered.

2. The debt compounds every single day

Ten percent, daily, whether you visit the Bronx or not. Ignored from day one, $5,500 becomes about $96,000 by day 30. But do not pay it off with your opening $2,000 either: a working coat returns far more than 10% a day, and repaying does not change your net worth at all — it only stops future interest. Pay it down with money you were not going to trade.

3. Geography is reliable, the daily board is not

The Ghetto is consistently the cheapest place to buy and Manhattan consistently the dearest place to sell. That route is the backbone of a good run. It is also the most heavily policed pair of boroughs in the city, which is the trade.

4. Prices remember

Each drug carries a multi-day trend as well as daily noise, so a market that has been climbing all week is more likely than not to keep climbing tomorrow. Watching the board is a real edge, not superstition.

5. News breaks the rules

A police bust or a flooded market can push a price far outside its normal range — three to five times up, or the same down. Those are the days fortunes are made. If you are holding when a spike lands, sell into it.

When the police stop you

The chance of being stopped rises with how much you are carrying. You have four ways out and each costs something different:

• Run — costs nothing if it works, and health if it doesn't.
• Fight — needs a decent weapon. Weapons take up coat space, and their statistics are deliberately never shown to you.
• Surrender — you keep your health and lose every gram you are carrying.
• Bribe — the cheapest exit when your cargo is worth more than the demand. Keep some cash back for exactly this. Officer Hardass does not take money.

Where things are

• The Bronx — the loan shark and the bank.
• Brooklyn — the safe house. Stored stock cannot be taken off you, but you cannot sell it from there either.

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