A story about gambling and casinos. With a sort of fantasy/magical variants of well-known gambling games on Earth.
A children’s book? To inform children about the dangers of this?
One character starts a new casino. We follow their path, while they figure out with what kinds of tricks you can fool people and make them spend more money.
Another character is the strategic gambler. That person tries to pull luck to their side with tricks, but of course must constantly watch out not to get caught.
(Interesting: gambling or games of chance were already done by people before we could even read and write.)
The entire idea is:
- Show what kinds of psychological tricks gambling uses on you. And how you can defeat it.
- On the one hand a story of development/growth, on the other hand one of constantly being afraid and having to flee.
- There must be something extra. Something like a “magical addictive game” that gives you a huge amount of money, something with those cavemen from earlier who also gambled, something of backstory for the characters.
IDEA: Of course things like a “lottery” (or “contest”) are in the same category: maybe someone organizes such a big lottery, and a poor main character keeps participating, but never wins.