About the Commons
The two meters
Most games have one score. CrowdForge has two, always on screen: 💰 Profit (money in minus money out) and ⚖️ Fairness (did the little ones — the visitors with a small budget — get in and get to ride as often as the well-off?). A lever that lifts Profit while dropping Fairness isn't a "wrong" move — it's the question: was that fair? You decide.
The maths is the game
Every lever is a piece of maths. Set the gate fee too high and families with a small budget can't get in. Raise the price and the little ones reach the front of the line but can't afford the ride. Add staff and the queue moves faster. Make the ring-toss odds worse and the booth keeps more money but hands out fewer prizes. Run the same day many times and you find the true average — one lucky day is just noise.
The park is deterministic: the same levers and the same seed always give the same day. That's how you can predict, watch the cause, and be sure what a lever really did — nothing is random for the sake of it.
Meet the cast — the readouts you learn to read
- Tolla the Tallykeeper — running totals at the till.
- Perci the Percenter — "that's a fifth off": proportions & percent.
- Odella the Oddskeeper — the true payout of the ring toss.
- Charta the Chartwright — reads the day's attendance graph aloud.
- Queenie the Queuekeeper — "one every twenty seconds": rate & wait-time.
- Uni the Unit-Pricer — "which is cheaper per cup?"
- Vero the Variance-Watcher — one busy Saturday isn't the pattern.
- Lenny the Lever-Hand — predict before he pulls; replay the cause after.
- Fig the Fairkeeper — watches the Fairness meter for the little ones.
- Nella the Net-Counter — revenue is not profit until you take off the costs.
Roon the Adviser asks — never hands you the answer, never flatters. And Tam the new Intern is still learning the levers: teaching Tam is how you get sure of it yourself. (Illustrated cast stories are on the way.)
CrowdForge is for systems-literacy and consumer-literacy — seeing how a price or an odds trick works from the inside — and for the habit of predicting before you pull. It runs entirely on your device: no account, nothing typed leaves your browser, nothing tracked.