I was possessed by some fae mood to make a party game CARD-BASED WRITING EXERCISE over the course of a few hours the day before yesterday, and, while I'm sure actually making the cards would be no biggie, it's certainly going to be difficult to share and play it over the internet... But I think I've found a roundabout way to do it.
Of course, that's way less interesting than what the [CARD-BASED WRITING EXERCISE] actually is, so I'll get to it.
It's one of those 'fill-in-the-blank' games in the same vein as Cards Against Humanity, which has proven popular with certain users in the past, but it's more of a 'pitch game' that encourages chat and debate rather than the instant judgements we usually pass, so it lends itself particularly well to this play-by-post format.
In this game, you play as blacksmiths, making magical and unique tools and weapons with names similar to the kind you'd see in a roguelike. Only, these aren't randomly generated. You pick their materials and features according to what you think best fits the situation, and then pitch your 'design' to the judges with a description of what you think it is and how it would work. Hopefully, the results will all be equally ridiculous, but that's what playtesting is for!
How to play:
Each player draws 2 of each card type, and then an additional one the type of their choice: Materials, Items, Prefix Descriptors, and Suffix Descriptors.
For example of how these would be put together, |Blessed|Brass|Rope Dart|Of the East|
I ran these through a hackneyed version of Rando Cardrissian, and so far I wrote them in a way that most any combination would at least resemble consistent grammatical sense, but time will tell.
Players will take turns in order of who joined first to be the "Customer". They will read out a "Quest" card which describes the potential customer and their needs.
For example,
"Plague doctor needs new surgical equipment after their last dysentery patient exploded."
And then the other players would submit and describe their inventions- Have fun with your interpretation, just try not to veer too far away from what the actual card (the prompt, if you will) is saying! To avoid this becoming a game of people inventing the most all-encompassing magical multitools or just extremely overpowered weapons, the Customer is advised to pick the one best suited to their specific situation. As well as what they think would be funny.
The rest pretty much proceeds as this sort of concept-pitch game always does. After the winner is declared, all players who spent cards this turn will discard their cards to the bottom of all relevant piles and then draw from the decks until their hands contain the original amount of cards. (Though if the "additional" one was spent, the player is allowed to pick a third of a different type.) The winner is awarded the judge's card, and the first one to get up to a number picked before the game starts wins. Because I'm just testing to see how this will go right now, let's go with 3.
As far as syntax rules, I'll say that a creation doesn't need to be just one of each card in that specific order. At bare minimum, it can be two cards. At maximum, I'd say 5. As long as it makes grammatical sense for what you're proposing, you can even use materials as items and vise versa, since they're both nouns. You could, say, use "Cake Sword" to mean your sword is made of cake, or "Sword Cake" for a cake made of swords. I don't want to be too restrictive, but my only limit is that you can only have one suffix per creation. I'm open to debate on this in some cases, but adding multiple always feels janky. If any combination comes to mind when you're playing that seems like it's dancing on the edge, just ask me about it.
I'll need 3 to 6 people to play this game. 6 leaves room for people to flake out, but it'd really be helpful if you didn't. Rounds will be mafia-style, so time is flexible, just remember to be online and check the forums the same day as the game and you'll do great. I'll give you your hands via PM when the game starts, just remind me which card type you want an extra one of.
Additional Note: Because Sent doesn't have the time or the resources to make this an actual cardgame, google images of certain weapons will be provided in lieu of card art, as an official example of what certain exotic or unusual weapons are.
