Young Jacob Marley is a clever little banking game. Players take turns buying and selling loans, using a small stake of Jacob Marley’s money. Some loans pay high interest, but are slow to earn out. Others pay back quickly, but might have very low interest (or none at all). Profit is what matters here, so you must strive to earn the most money for your employer, and perhaps you’ll become his friend for life.

This game is based on an older game, Jacob Marley Esquire, from Cheapass Games (2004). This version has a simpler and better version of essentially the same mechanics. The Crab Fragment Labs version of Young Jacob Marley is nearly identical to the print-and-play version released by Cheapass Games in 2017, save a change in branding and a few edits to the rulebook.

You can print the game yourself, or you can buy the deck and the board separately from DriveThruCards.

Order from DriveThru:

• Jacob Marley Deck: A 72-card deck in a handsome tuck box from DriveThruCards

• Jacob Marley Board: A colorful one-page board from DriveThruCards

Printing Files:

• Jacob Marley Rules (4 pages, Updated April ‘22)

• Jacob Marley Cards (8 pages and one cutting guide)

• Jacob Marley Board (One page)

You Will Also Need:

• Money: Small bills or poker chips, about $300 for a six-player game

• Tokens: Six small tokens (such as pennies) for marking the board

Help in Making and Playing:

• How to Make Cards (3 Ways) Video

• How to Make Game Boards Video

• Chips: Some very nice micro poker chips can be found at Discount Poker Shop.

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More About the Game:

The basic premise of Young Jacob Marley is that players earn money by buying loans. “Buying a loan” means lending money to a client, represented as a card. That client repays the money over time, adding some amount of interest. The speed of payback is affected by the current health of the loan, which can vary wildly from round to round..

Loans come in six categories: Financial, Industrial, Shipping, Criminal, Aristocrat, and Legal. The Marketplace Board tracks the relative health of each category. When loans are “healthy,” they can pay back their investors quickly, but they offer very little interest. When they are “unhealthy,” they offer extra interest, but they pay off very slowly.

If you have active loans, you gain the ability to adjust the marketplace, moving one category of Loan that you currently own. In this way, players can manipulate the market to help themselves, or thwart their opponents.

Overall, this is a simple and clever little game, shot through with Dickensian characters who need money for all sorts of questionable reasons:

• Terrified of being attacked by another giant squid, Captain Horley Moon requires a loan of £7 to outfit his 90-foot brigantine with the latest in anti-squid measures.

• Conningway Breathminster desires a loan of £3 to help wage a campaign of terror on the local bakery, which has ceased to make his favorite variety of pie.

• An accomplished woman of letters and resourceful philanthropist, Estelle Panache requires a loan of £8 in order to publish a scathing rebuke of the new ink tax.

This project began in 2016 as a slight rebuild of Jacob Marley, Esquire, a Cheapass game from 2004. Over its development the game became something wholly new and different, preserving the spirit of the original game without a lot of the complications. Young Jacob Marley was hosted for many years at the Cheapass Games website, and migrated to Crab Fragment Labs in April, 2022.

For the most part, we consider this game to be finished and no longer in an open beta test. But if you have questions or concerns (an unclear passage in the rules, for example) please let us know!