Seems good; a simple core goal, and plenty of reason for the players to muddy it with desperation and selfishness.
I think you can probably simplify the role of the Hand, though, and just have the moderator standing up periodically to announce the Full Will of the Market - given that players are going to be diversifying a lot anyway, to pre-empt future Hand calls, it won't make much difference to announce a particular colour in advance.
The strong incentive to diversify might be a problem in that, a few rounds in, most players will be able to match any short pattern of beads. I don't know if "three for ten" was a general example, but you might need to bump it up to a pattern of five or seven, or scale down the rewards.
Can the moderator just make it all up in his head, for the Invisible Hand details? I can't see any benefit to it being diligently random, although I may be missing something. (I'm not sure what you mean by the possible need to "create a card set for an exact number of players".) Making it up on the spot would certainly be useful for letting the moderator play it by ear, on the first playtest.
Seems good; a simple core goal, and plenty of reason for the players to muddy it with desperation and selfishness.
I think you can probably simplify the role of the Hand, though, and just have the moderator standing up periodically to announce the Full Will of the Market - given that players are going to be diversifying a lot anyway, to pre-empt future Hand calls, it won't make much difference to announce a particular colour in advance.
The strong incentive to diversify might be a problem in that, a few rounds in, most players will be able to match any short pattern of beads. I don't know if "three for ten" was a general example, but you might need to bump it up to a pattern of five or seven, or scale down the rewards.
Can the moderator just make it all up in his head, for the Invisible Hand details? I can't see any benefit to it being diligently random, although I may be missing something. (I'm not sure what you mean by the possible need to "create a card set for an exact number of players".) Making it up on the spot would certainly be useful for letting the moderator play it by ear, on the first playtest.