Quayle & Co. · Articles of Salvage
How to Play
A sunny salvage pier over the wreck of the SS Prosperity. The whole room holds a sealed crate — except one of you, who wears the bowler and buys them for as little as the room will stand.
The banker is a player
No faceless phone call from upstairs. The bowler is someone in the room, they are on the same leaderboard as everyone they are lowballing, and next game the hat goes to somebody else.
3–15 players · one wears the bowler · ~15 min
The Sale
1. Everyone holds one sealed crate
Your crate is barnacled, stencilled with a number, and nobody on this pier knows what is inside it — the broker included. Twelve more crates sit in the pool, unclaimed. Every crate on the boards holds exactly one value from the manifest.
2. The manifest is public, always
One boot at 1 crown, the purser's strongbox at 50,000, and a ladder of salvage in between. Everybody reads the same board, and the clerk keeps a running figure in the corner: what one still-sealed crate is worth right now. Information is symmetric — the broker's edge is nerve, never knowledge.
3. The house cracks three, every round
Nobody picks. The winch hauls three pool crates out of the water, one at a time, with a crowbar and a lot of straw, and their values strike off the manifest for good. A big one going to the fishes is good news for holders; tat surviving is good news for the bowler.
The Broker’s Chalk
The blanket price
The broker gets 45 seconds and a chalkboard: one price that any holder may take for their crate. Anchored on the clerk's figure — under it and they are stealing from the room, over it and they are bleeding the tin.
Two chalk marks
Up to two named players a round can be given their OWN price, above or below the blanket. Sweeten the nervy one, slash the smug one. Marks are public and they are personal.
The clerk's revenge
Let the 45 seconds lapse and the clerk posts the expected value verbatim as the offer. Inaction has a defined, slightly humiliating outcome.
The Handshake
Sealed, not shouted
Every holder secretly picks DEAL or HOLD on a 20-second clock. Change your mind as often as you like until it runs out — an empty rail counts as HOLD.
All hands flip together
At the deadline every choice turns over at once: DEAL palms up in green, HOLD fists in red. Nobody gets to wait and see which way the table breaks before finding their courage.
Dealers aren't out
Take the money and you are paid on the spot, you sign the sale book, and you join the hecklers at the rail with the best information in the house. Your crate stays on the boards, sealed, wearing a SOLD stencil.
Close of Books
The sting
After the fourth handshake everything cracks — sold crates FIRST. Sam sold for 900 in round one; his crate held the bullion case. Twenty-four thousand crowns, in front of everybody. That is the story people retell.
Holders get paid true
Anyone who never shook a hand is paid their crate's real worth out of the tin, cheapest cracked to dearest, the tin draining live while it happens.
The tin is the broker's score
The tin opens funded with the whole room's expected payout plus one share. Every crown a crate sells UNDER its true value stays in it; every panic-sweetened boot takes some out. Whatever is left at close of books is the broker's score — and it may go red.
One ranked table
Contestants score their take, the broker scores the tin, and they land on the same leaderboard with no asterisks. Par brokering finishes mid-table by construction: fleece the room to top it, bleed the tin and prop it up.
3–15 players · phones & desktops
Open the sale