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gwenfrankenstien) wrote2011-09-03 06:26 pm
gwenfrankenstien) wrote2011-09-03 06:26 pm
Entry tags:
The Only Card Game I Ever Play
Okay. I originally invented this game... More than five years ago, and nearly all my IRL friends know it, but I have never actually got around to typing up the rules. I have now finally done that! It's just called The Card Game, and it's somewhere between Apples to Apples, the Game of a Thousand Blank White Cards, and free-form surrealist War. I don't remember the last time I actually finished a game. It feels a lot more complicated written out like this, and yet I can't shake the feeling that I forgot something important.
Deck Creation:
All you need to play is an ordinary deck of cards (or two or three), a permanent marker, an imagination, and at least one friend (preferably also with a deck of cards.) On each card, you're going to write something-- a character, a famous person, a random noun, sometimes even a random verb (I had a deck once where all the 2s were crackfic cliches. “...turn into kittens” was the best one). The only rules wrt deck creation are that you can't use characters you made up, and you can't use specific people you know personally (so “your mom” is okay, “Gwen's mom” is not).
It's generally a good idea to work out what you want the cards to be before writing on them-- I personally do a list of 13 themes and then assign them a value. The game works best if your higher cards (aces, face cards) are more powerful or important, working your way down from there. You can have between one and three standard decks of cards as your Deck.
Starting a Game:
Okay, so now you've ruined a perfectly good deck of cards with a Sharpie. The next step is to grab a friend. If they don't have a Deck of their own, split yours in two and give them half to use. If they do, split yours in half anyway, take half theirs, and shuffle the halves together. If you're playing with three or more people, split the decks accordingly, and, again, shuffle them all together so you have some of everybody's cards. (There should be between one and three standard decks per player. So with my three-deck-Deck, I could theoretically play three-handed even if none of my friends had Cards.)
Opening the round:
So now that each player has some cards, draw yourself a hand. (With two or three players, a hand is seven cards, eight cards with four or five, etc.) Every player then has to open the round by playing their highest (numerical value) card (remember, aces are high). Assuming they're two different values, the player with the lowest value plays first, followed by the next-lowest, until everybody's had a go. (We'll get to what playing means in a sec.) If they're the same value, this is called an Argument. In an Argument, both players play their next highest cards, until they aren't the same anymore. (If you have identical hands, draw seven new cards. This has never happened, but the rule's there just in case.) If you Argue more than twice, you get to reclaim the cards in the middle for your hand.
Play (This is the exciting part):
Now, once play starts, the things written on the cards actually start to matter. The person who played the lowest card has to use what's left of their hand to beat the things written on the higher cards. You can beat things all kinds of ways-- Combinations that are just cooler or funnier, actual logic (“Cass Cain beats Lady Shiva, that happened”), Author/Actor/etc Powers (“Mary Shelley (or Boris Karloff) beats Frankenstein's Monster because Author Powers”), inside jokes, etc.
There are limitations, though-- You can only play up to three numerical values at a time. If you have enough doubles that you can play your entire hand, you automatically win the round-- Unless someone else can also play their whole hand, and it's cooler than what you played.
So the lower-valued person plays their up-to-three-values, and then the next person has to use their hand to beat that, et cetera until either nobody has cards left in their hand or someone has played something so cool that the cards other people have left can't beat it. (Winning is pretty subjective. Often, we agree on a tie, where everyone takes back the cards they played and nobody conclusively wins. This is where a third player can be useful, they can mediate and decide whether things are actually cooler or not.) Everyone restocks their hands to seven/eight/etc, and a new round begins with a new set of highest-cards.
Once you reach the bottom of your deck, you shuffle the cards from your winning pile, and that's now your deck. Theoretically play continues until one person has all the cards, but it's more likely that you'll run out of time or get bored way before that. In which case, the person who has the most cards when the game stops is the winner.
A note about Jokers:
Jokers are wild cards. They can be used for things you don't have a card for, random objects in the room, actual clever logic, or cheap moves (“Life, the Universe, and Everything. I win.”) They cannot be played as part of the opening round. In the unlikely event that you have an entire hand of Jokers, you win everybody else's entire hand.
For reference, my own current deck breakdown, c. mid-September 2011:
A-- Arthurian characters
K-- Classic horror characters, incl. Ripley + stages of the Xenomorph life-cycle
Q-- Adult wizard characters, the Birds of Prey + Renee
J-- Adult superhero characters (JLI, 1st-gen Titans)
10-- Classic horror actors, B-movie directors, Wolf House vampires
9-- Supervillains, incl. the Secret Six
8-- Tim Burton characters & associated real people
7-- Wolf House kids, teen wizard characters
6-- Batkids & other teen superheroes
5-- Romantic Poets, classic horror writers/artists, Slings & Arrows characters
4-- Terrifying Comedy Schoolkids (St. Trinian's girls/Korman kids/the drummer from School of Rock)
3-- Monster High characters, fictional rock stars (HCL/Trigger/Velvet Goldmine)
2-- YJ Animated characters, Jem & the Holograms characters
While the game works best if the people you're playing with know most of your cards, explaining things is sometimes a good way to get your friends into your obscurer fandoms. (That's why I have so many Wolf House characters currently.) As a person who acquires new fandoms regularly and without warning, I tend to remake my deck every two months. This is excessive by other people's standards.
Deck Creation:
All you need to play is an ordinary deck of cards (or two or three), a permanent marker, an imagination, and at least one friend (preferably also with a deck of cards.) On each card, you're going to write something-- a character, a famous person, a random noun, sometimes even a random verb (I had a deck once where all the 2s were crackfic cliches. “...turn into kittens” was the best one). The only rules wrt deck creation are that you can't use characters you made up, and you can't use specific people you know personally (so “your mom” is okay, “Gwen's mom” is not).
It's generally a good idea to work out what you want the cards to be before writing on them-- I personally do a list of 13 themes and then assign them a value. The game works best if your higher cards (aces, face cards) are more powerful or important, working your way down from there. You can have between one and three standard decks of cards as your Deck.
Starting a Game:
Okay, so now you've ruined a perfectly good deck of cards with a Sharpie. The next step is to grab a friend. If they don't have a Deck of their own, split yours in two and give them half to use. If they do, split yours in half anyway, take half theirs, and shuffle the halves together. If you're playing with three or more people, split the decks accordingly, and, again, shuffle them all together so you have some of everybody's cards. (There should be between one and three standard decks per player. So with my three-deck-Deck, I could theoretically play three-handed even if none of my friends had Cards.)
Opening the round:
So now that each player has some cards, draw yourself a hand. (With two or three players, a hand is seven cards, eight cards with four or five, etc.) Every player then has to open the round by playing their highest (numerical value) card (remember, aces are high). Assuming they're two different values, the player with the lowest value plays first, followed by the next-lowest, until everybody's had a go. (We'll get to what playing means in a sec.) If they're the same value, this is called an Argument. In an Argument, both players play their next highest cards, until they aren't the same anymore. (If you have identical hands, draw seven new cards. This has never happened, but the rule's there just in case.) If you Argue more than twice, you get to reclaim the cards in the middle for your hand.
Play (This is the exciting part):
Now, once play starts, the things written on the cards actually start to matter. The person who played the lowest card has to use what's left of their hand to beat the things written on the higher cards. You can beat things all kinds of ways-- Combinations that are just cooler or funnier, actual logic (“Cass Cain beats Lady Shiva, that happened”), Author/Actor/etc Powers (“Mary Shelley (or Boris Karloff) beats Frankenstein's Monster because Author Powers”), inside jokes, etc.
There are limitations, though-- You can only play up to three numerical values at a time. If you have enough doubles that you can play your entire hand, you automatically win the round-- Unless someone else can also play their whole hand, and it's cooler than what you played.
So the lower-valued person plays their up-to-three-values, and then the next person has to use their hand to beat that, et cetera until either nobody has cards left in their hand or someone has played something so cool that the cards other people have left can't beat it. (Winning is pretty subjective. Often, we agree on a tie, where everyone takes back the cards they played and nobody conclusively wins. This is where a third player can be useful, they can mediate and decide whether things are actually cooler or not.) Everyone restocks their hands to seven/eight/etc, and a new round begins with a new set of highest-cards.
Once you reach the bottom of your deck, you shuffle the cards from your winning pile, and that's now your deck. Theoretically play continues until one person has all the cards, but it's more likely that you'll run out of time or get bored way before that. In which case, the person who has the most cards when the game stops is the winner.
A note about Jokers:
Jokers are wild cards. They can be used for things you don't have a card for, random objects in the room, actual clever logic, or cheap moves (“Life, the Universe, and Everything. I win.”) They cannot be played as part of the opening round. In the unlikely event that you have an entire hand of Jokers, you win everybody else's entire hand.
For reference, my own current deck breakdown, c. mid-September 2011:
A-- Arthurian characters
K-- Classic horror characters, incl. Ripley + stages of the Xenomorph life-cycle
Q-- Adult wizard characters, the Birds of Prey + Renee
J-- Adult superhero characters (JLI, 1st-gen Titans)
10-- Classic horror actors, B-movie directors, Wolf House vampires
9-- Supervillains, incl. the Secret Six
8-- Tim Burton characters & associated real people
7-- Wolf House kids, teen wizard characters
6-- Batkids & other teen superheroes
5-- Romantic Poets, classic horror writers/artists, Slings & Arrows characters
4-- Terrifying Comedy Schoolkids (St. Trinian's girls/Korman kids/the drummer from School of Rock)
3-- Monster High characters, fictional rock stars (HCL/Trigger/Velvet Goldmine)
2-- YJ Animated characters, Jem & the Holograms characters
While the game works best if the people you're playing with know most of your cards, explaining things is sometimes a good way to get your friends into your obscurer fandoms. (That's why I have so many Wolf House characters currently.) As a person who acquires new fandoms regularly and without warning, I tend to remake my deck every two months. This is excessive by other people's standards.