How To Prevent Trade Goods Laundering

Some players refuse to trade because they fear giving their opponent an advantage. If your game revolves around trade, this is a problem. One of the simplest solutions is to give them resources they cannot use themselves. The problem is that players can often circumvent your restrictions through "laundering."

Sidereal Confluence is an excellent trade-focused game. It puts up to nine players in the roles of alien races wheeling and dealing to get what they need to run their economies. Among its many mechanics are "donation goods." You can't keep these goods; you must trade them away or donate them to another player. In theory, this encourages you to seek trades for them.

Such a straightforward implementation is unfortunately trivial to get around. All you have to do is trade them to an opponent who then gives them right back. Find another player with donation goods, and you can simply agree to launder for each other. This is a trade, but not a particularly interesting one, nor one that requires much thought.

One way to prevent laundering is to force players to use traded goods immediately. In Bohnanza, you have a hand of beans that must remain in a certain order, and two plots of land to plant them in. You must plant any beans you receive in trade immediately, and once planted, you can no longer trade them. If your Wax Bean is too far back in your hand to use, you cannot launder it because the opponent you give it to must plant it.

Another approach is to let players trade services instead of resources. In Zoo Vadis, each player has a unique rule-breaking ability they can't use themselves. Instead, they may allow another player to use it during that player's turn as part of a deal. Since it is not a tangible good, it cannot be returned to them and thus cannot be laundered.

Laundering isn't a huge problem, but it can still detract from a game by creating an obvious loophole in the rules. Fix this loophole, and you ensure that players must find interesting trades to succeed.