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Fairmarket

From the lawless taverns of the Dew Point universe comes Fairmarket, a gambling game with a three-suited deck.

The Fairmarket deck is used for a small collection of games which includes Fairmarket itself; a trick-taking game called Tresotti, and a gambling / trick-taking game called Scurro, based on the Cheapass game Renfield. Read all about them below.

View it in the Shop

Fairmarket is a gambling game for 2-6 players. The game uses the “Knotts Deck,” a unique deck from DeVere’s South Coast, also called the Annet Sky, in the Dew Point universe. The deck has three suits (flags, cups, and bells), and an unusual distribution of numbers: Ace through 9, 10 through 60 (in multiples of 10), and three face cards.

In Fairmarket, players ante five coins, and divide these coins into five pots, each beside a faceup card in the center of the table. Players receive five cards and stack them in order. Round by round, players reveal their cards and compete against each other, and the cards in the center, to win the money in those pots. It’s a simple and fast card game with lots of variations and plenty of action.

Our second game for the Knotts Deck is Tresotti, a three-player trick-taking game.

How to Play Video: Check out James Ernest’s How to Play Fairmarket video.

Help with PnP: If you’d like to print and play your own cards from the files above, check out video below, How to Make Cards.

Playtest Feedback? Let us know what you think with our detailed playtest form.

About the World: To learn more about the Dew Point Universe, check out our other games Shipwrights of Marino, Pirate’s Bluff and After the Fog, as well as the Dew Point pages at World Anvil.

About the Deck: You can read more about the development of this deck (and traditional card decks as a genre) in James Ernest’s design article, Designing Traditional Card Decks, at the Lecture Hall.

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