I have been thinking about designing a cooperative storytelling game that was ‘rules-lite’, fun to play, and did not require a Game Master. OK, so one Sunday I had just finished playing Vampire: The Masquerade with my wife and a new gaming group. The Storyteller told us about how they like to play Lunch Money with drinking rules. The next day, I was on the subway returning home from work when the idea for this game struck me. Or maybe I struck my head on the subway. I don’t remember.
My name is Phillip Foster, and if you have any comments or suggestions, please email me at phillipfallon@yahoo.com.
Thanks to the creators of SAGA and Mark Hughes, creator of DUDE for the idea of using playing cards; S. John Ross, the creator of Risus for proving that simpler is better; Steve Merka, our Storyteller for the idea; and my wife Fallon for inspiration and love.
An ordinary deck of cards is used for this game. Take out the jokers. All the cards use their number value, except face cards. Aces have a value of 1. Face cards have a special meaning (see Taking Control).
To play the game, you need to create a character (it’s a role-playing game, stupid). Characters have 4 attributes, and each
one has a related suit from the cards, as follows:
| Attribute | Suit | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Brains | Spades | Figuring stuff out, creating things, remembering facts, noticing things, thinking quickly, and science-type stuff. Also used for psychic powers. |
| Muscle | Clubs | Picking up and carrying stuff, throwing stuff, breaking things, and layin’ the smackdown on somebody. |
| Moves | Diamonds | Running, dodging, shooting guns, swashbuckling, picking locks, getting out of handcuffs, playing video games, and stuff like that. |
| Coolness | Hearts | Confidence, getting people to do what you want, telling lies, looking good and stylish, resisting persuasion, and picking up chicks (or guys). Also used for casting spells. |
When you are first making a character, you get 12 points to put into all these attributes. You must put at least 1 point in each of them, and you can’t put more than 5 in any of them. 1 point means you are a total loser, 2 is average, 3 is superior, 4 is amazing, and 5 means you are Superman (or Wonder Woman). What the suits mean is explained under Doing Unto Others.
The last step is to give your character a name. Call him or her whatever you want to – it can be meaningful, or totally silly, as long as it is not the same as your name.
There ain’t none in this game, baby! You can try to do whatever you want to.
Shuffle the cards and deal each player 8 cards. Put the rest in a pile in the middle of the table. Set the pretzels (or whatever) in a bowl in the middle of the table. Get the alcohol ready. Have each player draw 1 card off the top of the deck; the highest card starts the game. Reshuffle these cards back into the deck.
The player who goes first starts a story. The story must be a scene involving his character. He can start it however he wants to, no matter how outrageous it is, as long as he interacts with one of the other players at some point by challenging them to a contest. The contest can be anything – attacking them, seducing them, challenging them to a game of checkers, or whatever. The other player can try to resist, but there has to be a winner and a loser (see Doing Unto Others). The player telling the story has at least one minute to keep control of the story; after that, someone else can take it away from him (see Taking Control). Using hand gestures, sound effects, and funny voices is encouraged.
The player telling the story can challenge any of the other players to a contest of any sort, no matter how outlandish or bizarre, from a pie-eating contest to a magical duel. To do so, tell the player what kind of a contest it is, and call the player by his character’s name – if you forget to do this, the contest is invalid and you suffer the same consequences stated under Losing A Contest. Each player’s character is assumed to have the necessary abilities to participate in the contest. However, you might get into trouble if any of the other players think it’s TOO weird, disgusting, or stupid (see Thumbs Down). The player whom you challenged has the right to refuse the contest; see Refusing A Contest.
When a contest is called for, each player plays a card from their hand and adds its value to one of their attributes. Which attribute each player uses depends on what kind of contest it is – for example, a fistfight, pie-eating contest, or arm-wrestling match would use Muscle; a game of checkers, a debate, or a psychic duel would use Brains; a seduction attempt or magical duel would use Coolness; and a gunfight, foot race, or pie-fight would use Moves. For clarity, you should say which attribute you are using. Face cards are not used for this; see Taking Control for how they are used.
Each attribute also has a suit associated with it. If the card played has the same suit, each player can draw another card and add its value to his final total. He can keep doing this as long as the card drawn is of that suit. Any face cards initially played or drawn have a value of zero, but the suit still counts.
Anyway, the player that has the highest total wins the contest. The loser has to see the Losing A Contest rule. After the contest is over, each player puts the cards they played into the discard pile and re-draws cards until they have their maximum hand size (which can be lower than 8; see Losing Cards). Reshuffle the cards if needed.
Be creative with contests, and assigning attributes. For example, one player could say "Hey, Player X, I'm using my Coolness to convince the police to throw you in jail!", and Player X could respond with, "Well, I'm gonna use my Moves to bust out of that joint!" This is still run as a normal contest. Player X could also use his Muscle to try and fight the police, his Moves to try and run away, his Coolness to try and bribe them, or whatever else he wants to try. Contests such as this can even lead to other contests - if Player X fails and goes to jail, he can get control of the story and try to break out - in that case, one of the other players (the one he decides to challenge) plays the role of the jail guard(s) Players may assume many different roles throughout the course of the game in this way - for instance, the player with control of the story may turn to one of the other players and tell him he is the captain of an enemy starship, and he must leave the area or be fired upon. As long as the player being challenged is referred to by his character's name in some way, this is OK.
Note that it is possible to CHOOSE to lose a contest, in which case no cards are played and you automatically suffer the fate of Losing A Contest.
If you lose a contest, you have two choices. You can either lose a card, or take a drink.
If you decide to refuse a contest, you have to take TWO drinks, or you can lose TWO cards, or you can do one of each.
If you decide to lose cards, take the highest-value card(s) you have and put them face up in front of you. Face cards have a value of zero for this purpose. These cards count towards your hand size; in other words, if you have two cards in front of you, you only have 6 cards in your hand that you can play. When you have lost all of your cards, you are out of the game (see We Have A Winner).
If you don't want to put lost cards in front of you, then use poker chips or some other sort of marker to help you remember how many cards you have lost (but don't use Pretzels!).
As stated under Doing Unto Others, the player who starts has about one minute to tell his story (minus the time it takes to perform any contests). After one minute, another player can decide to take control of the story. To do this, you can either play a face card, or take two drinks. Put the face card in the discard pile, and draw another card to replace it in your hand. You continue telling the story and challenging other players as before. You should try to continue the story that the last player was telling as well as you can, but this is not absolutely necessary (you’ll probably have pretzels thrown at you for changing it too much, however – see Thumbs Down).
Exactly measuring the time each player has to keep control before someone can take it away is not necessary (and is really very anal). The other players can use their best judgment (if the other players are really drunk and can’t measure the time limit, this is especially good for the one telling the story).
If you are narrating a part of the story, you can make the story as wild-ass and bizarre as you want. When you challenge another player, you can declare a contest of any sort, no matter how strange the contest is. However, the other players have the right to express their displeasure at your choice by throwing pretzels at you. Put any they throw at you into a pile in front of you. Pretzels that don’t land on the table don’t count. You can only have pretzels thrown at you once during each time you have control of the story, and each player can only throw one pretzel at a time. If you accumulate enough pretzels, you are out of the game (see We Have A Winner). However, there are ways to remove pretzels (see Removing Pretzels).
The winner is the last player left in the game. There are several ways to drop out of the game:
The winner of the game gets one point to add to his character’s attributes. However, he has to set up for the next game and help the host clean up any pretzels that landed on the floor (unless he invokes The Pet Rule).
There are two ways to remove accumulated pretzels:
You can only remove 3 pretzels by eating them, unless you invoke The BFA (Big Fat Ass) Rule.
The winner can entice the host’s pet to eat any pretzels that landed on the floor so he doesn’t have to clean them up. Goldfish cannot be used for this purpose.
If you are a person of considerable girth, you can invoke this rule when removing pretzels by eating them. The rule says that, if you weigh over 250 pounds, you can remove up to 6 pretzels by eating them.
OK, so every RPG on the market has optional rules, so here are some for this game.
There is nothing stopping the players from playing in teams, like the crews of enemy spaceships, or squads of enemy soldiers. The different teams can cooperate in telling the same part of the story, and different teams can challenge each other. When players are challenged as a team, they designate one of the players to act as the leader (the one who plays the cards), but ALL members of the losing team must suffer the consequences of Losing A Contest. Players can even change groups and form new ones at any time; to do so, one of the players wishing to make the change must take control of the story (see Taking Control).
If you do something particularly outstanding when involved in a contest, whether you are the challenger or not, to the point where someone laughs or says “That was cool!”, or your opponent visibly flinches, you can draw another card from the deck and add it to your total. If the suit matches the attribute, keep drawing as usual.
If you say something incredible or narrate a terrific action while you are telling the story, again where one of the other players laughs or says “Wow!”, you can do one of three things:
If you did particularly well in telling a story or role-playing your character, then you can ask to get an extra point to add to your character at the end of the game, whether you won or not (or one of the other players should feel free to make the suggestion). The other players will vote on this, by giving a thumbs up or thumbs down; if you get more thumbs up than thumbs down, you get the point. Of course, if you were particularly obnoxious during the game and try this, they will probably pelt you mercilessly with pretzels (and you have to help the winner clean up).
You can also try to get an extra point by bribing the other players (like saying, “Next round’s on me!”). If ALL of the other players agree to the bribe, you get the point.
When you are narrating a part of the story, and you choose to interact with one of the other players, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a contest. You can do this just for fun, or if you are trying for the Hamming It Up or Getting Extra Points options. Just be sure to tell the player that it is not a contest.
To represent a lengthy contest like a pro wrestling match, you can run it as an Extended Contest. To do this, both players play cards as usual and redraw after determining the winner and loser of each round. If the loser decides to lose a card, he puts his highest value card face up, but in a separate pile from his cards lost from other contests. These cards will lower the player’s hand as usual, but ONLY FOR THIS CONTEST. Keep going until someone runs out of cards or gives up. At this point, you take all the cards from the special lost pile and put them back in your hand, then suffer the consequences of final defeat, which are the same as Refusing A Contest.
The winner of a contest can choose to either remove a pretzel or get a card back. Be warned that this could extend the length of the game considerably.
At any time during the game, if you have control of the story, you can try to vote another player out of the game. This is usually done by announcing something like "Sorry, Dave, but we’re voting you off the island.", or "Bzzt! I'm sorry, you’re the Weakest Link, goodbye!", or "Friends don’t let friends play drunk." Basically, you are calling for a vote. The other players (besides you and the one you are voting out of the game) vote by giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down; if there are more thumbs up, he is out of the game, but if there are more thumbs down, YOU are out of the game, and the person you tried to get out of the game automatically gets control of the story! A tie means that absolutely nothing happens to either player.
Anyone who has to leave the game in this way has the option of either losing THREE cards or taking THREE drinks (or any combination thereof) to stay in. If you called for the vote and lost, and you take this option, the other player still gets control of the story. Any of the voting players also have the option of throwing pretzels at you for being such an obnoxious S.O.B.; these pretzels count towards your total as usual (and of course, pretzels that don’t land on the table don’t count). The remaining votes (if any) are counted; if everyone threw pretzels, treat it as a tie – nothing happens.
Keep the Jokers in the deck. If you play a Joker for a contest, whether you issued the challenge or not, you AUTOMATICALLY win. This can only be countered by another Joker. If the other player plays a Joker, then play cards as usual. For a REALLY evil twist, the one who lost gets to replace a card in their hand with the Joker! If you do this, prepare to get really drunk...
You could use a Tarot deck instead of a regular deck of cards for the game. The major arcana should be removed from the deck. The suits will have to be assigned to the four attributes as before. The minor arcana use their number value, and the aces count as one. The court cards act as face cards (mainly for taking control of the story, remember) - there are four more of them (one more per suit than face cards in a regular deck).
If you want, you can leave in the major arcana cards and use them as plot cards. If someone uses a major arcana card to take control of the story, and they can somehow work in the image on the card (or any associated meanings) in a creative way into their part of the story, then they can either get a card back or lose two pretzels (see Taking Control). The other players should judge this and can feel free to vote thumbs up or thumbs down (if one person votes, then everyone else must vote), or throw pretzels at dumb choices.
One final note about Tarot cards - some decks have descriptive words on the minor arcana cards. If you play a card and you can use the word on it in a creative way when issuing a challenge to another player for a contest (or you are the defender in a contest), you get a bonus of +2 to your final total. You can only do this on the initial card played. Court cards have zero value as before, but the word can still be used for the +2.