Guilds of Florence

Guilds of Florence is a worker programming game where every player represents a clan of humble origin that is putting all their savings into improving the status of the clan. In order to do this, they will send their brightest sons as apprentices to some of the guilds of the city in seek of fame and fortune. To facilitate this, they will also marry some of their prettiest daughters to influential members of society in order to gain access to their exclusive guilds.

Game flow:

1. Coming of age: each clan adds a son ready to work and a daughter ready to marry to their resource pool.

2. Getting a job: each clan sends as many sons from the resource pool to find a job as apprentices as they want and can afford. To get a job as an apprentice, you must have influence in that guild, there must be an available apprentice slot (only one per guild every turn) and you must have enough money to pay the admission fee.

Other ways of getting influence in otherwise inaccessible guilds, is by marrying your daughters to one of the meeples already in that guild. By doing so you gain access to that guild as long as that daughter lives or if you have already sons working in that guild. Some guilds can only be accessed by bribing the master a fixed amount of money.

3. Wedding day: each clan marries as many daughters from the resource pool as they want and can afford. To marry your daughters you need to pay the dowry to the lucky husband-to-be. When choosing which husband in a guild you would like to marry, your clan needs to have someone (son or daughter) in a guild of the same class as the target one. For example, someone in a minor guild, can only marry someone in a minor guild, whereas someone in a major guild can marry anyone.

4. Pay day: in this phase salaries get paid, products get made and products get exchanged for money.

5. Time goes by: apprentices may become journeymen. Journeymen may become masters or keep improving their skills and maybe get a higher wage. Masters may improve their mastery and gain increased reputation and produce more products. Masters that reached the highest in their career, when time goes by, will sadly pass away. Same applies to their wives, who will also suffer the same fate.

6. Going to the market: each player buys as many products as they want and can afford. They can also exchange certain products for different products as a barter according to the market table. They CANNOT sell products for money; only masters can sell their own products for money.

7. Adjusting turn order: in turn order, and one at a time, players may exchange sets of products for licences (VP). Move the VP tracker for those players accordingly. Once all players have passed in sequence, the new starting player will be the one with the most VP at this point in time.

End of the game and scoring The game ends when all players run out of meeples as they have all passed away. The game also ends immediately if after one full turn, none of the guilds have any meeple on them but there are meeples in the clan or resource pools. The winner is the player with most Victory Points.