The Great Dalmuti

Quite often, the people who have the most startling impact on games are one-hit wonders -- Gygax and Arneson, for example. Pace both men, but neither produced a game worth the powder to blow it to hell after D&D.

Garfield, by contrast, has certainly never designed another game with the commercial impact of Magic, but his other games, of which this one, are all worth playing.

What's particularly interesting about Dalmuti is the way that it encourages a particular style of socialization above and about the gameplay. That is, if you look at the game as a simple, formal system, it's a mildly interesting Go Fish variant. What makes it interesting beyond that are the roles it assigns to players, the modest game impact those roles have, and the game's encouragement to players to assert their status. Paradoxically, it is a card game that's more fun to play with roleplayers.

It's worth noting in passing that Garfield is the first person to articulate the concept of the metagame (in the sense that game designers now use it), and the appeal of Magic is, to a high degree, the metagame of collection and competitive deck construction it encourages. Here, Garfield is experimenting with the metagame in a different way.

At game start, the four game roles are, in essence, chosen at random: one player is the Great Dalmuti, one the Lesser Dalmuti, and two others the Greater or Lesser Peons. (If there are others, they are called Merchants.) The cards are all dealt out, at random, and the Great Dalmuti leads. Before he does so, taxation occurs; the Great Dalmuti gives the Great Peon any two cards he wishes, and the Great Peon must give the Great Dalmuti his two best (lowest numbered) cards. Similarly, the Lesser Dalmuti taxes the Lesser Peon for one card.

The deck consists of cards ranked from 1 to 12, with the rank also corresponding to the number in the deck -- that is, there are twelve 12 cards, one 1 card, and so on. There are also two "Jesters," which serve as wild cards. The leader plays any number of cards of the same rank. Play then goes around the table; each person may play cards of a better (that is lower) rank, but must play exactly the same number of them as played by the leader. If he cannot, or chooses not to play, he passes. Once all players pass, the last player to play cards leads the next round.

The objective is to get rid of all your cards first. The player who does so is the Great Dalmuti for the next round of play, the second player to do so is the Lesser Dalmuti, and so on.

The Great Dalmuti is thus a game with a strong first-mover advantage, normally considered a flaw in a game design. Here, however, the "flaw" is transformed into a central part of the game's appeal; combined with taxation, it gives the Great Dalmuti a commanding advantage in play which, particularly if he roleplays the part of an arrogant noble indifferent to the suffering of otehrs, can irritate the other players in a fruitful way. When it happens that cardplay shifts the order of hierarchy, this becomes a highly enjoyable moment.

Dalmuti is not a game of great strategic depth; you rarely hesitate over what to play, though there is some modest advantage to card-counting. But if you view it as a beer-and-pretzels game with a bit of roleplaying appeal, it's not bad at all.