Possibly one of my strangest theme weeks ever, this one is devoted to games that feature either Tarot or poker decks as the main mechanism for task resolution. Inspired by the release of James Wallis' Alas Vegas, I decided to take a look at other games that feature card-driven gameplay. There's... not that many. Still, some standout examples can be found below; just be careful you don't accidentally summon a doom of some kind upon yourself while laying the cards out!
ALAS VEGAS
The long-awaited James Wallis art-as-RPG, Alas Vegas, is finally available for purchase, and it’s led me to launch It’s In the Cards Week – a week dedicated to games that eschew dice in favor of cards for gameplay and task resolution.
This game was Kickstarted five years ago, and various elements in play pushed its final delivery out quite a ways. However, the wait is more than worthwhile as “the Godfather of Indie Games” (as anointed by Robin Laws), along with a truly all-star cast, brings us one of the most innovative immersive story ideas with a gameplay style that will throw you for a loop while it drags you into a story you help unveil as the clock keeps ticking.
BAD BETS, BAD DEBTS AND BAD DEATHS
You wake in a shallow grave in the desert. It’s night. You have no memory of how you got here, or who you are, or the location of your clothes. A scar of neon in the shape of a city squats on the horizon. There are answers there. And trouble.
ALAS VEGAS is a dark journey through a bizarre and terrifying casino city where everything has a cost. Caught in a war between the Rat Packers who run the place, the players must find allies, the truth, and a way to escape. Memories are recovered, secrets are revealed, old debts are settled, and nothing is what it seems.
Your character sheet starts as blank as your memories, but your character gains skills by having flashbacks to their previous life, so as the game progesses their backstory does too – creating a twisted web between the characters, as they piece their past together and work out how that fits with what’s happening to them.
The mechanics are based on the casino game Blackjack played with Tarot cards, creating high-stakes narrative showdowns, and spinning elements of the game’s story from the cards that come up in play.
‘Alas Vegas’ lasts four sessions, structured like a high-budget HBO miniseries, leading to a revelatory final climax that’s a fitting end of the campaign. It’s Franz Kafka’s Fear and Loathing. It’s The Hangover meets The Prisoner. It’s Ocean’s Eleven directed by David Lynch. It’s like nothing you’ve played before.
PLUS THREE EXTRA CAMPAIGNS
ALAS VEGAS runs on the Fugue game system, built to tell stories of characters with amnesia. It uses Tarot cards and rotating GMs to create unique, high-tension adventures, heavy on character and narrative. As well as ‘Alas Vegas’ itself, the book contains three extra complete Fugue campaigns:
Plus all the Fugue mechanics, of course.
PLUS A HOST OF STARS
ALAS VEGAS also contains articles by some of the finest games writers of the last two decades:
THROUGH THE BREACH
Not much chance of doing an It’s In the Cards Week without talking about one of the style’s more standout examples. Based on the Malifaux miniatures gaming universe, Through the Breach makes use of regular playing cards to move players through character creation as well as task resolution.
Control your destiny.
Journey back to the early 1900s, where a dimensional rift leading to the magical world of Malifaux has changed human history. Steam power and steel collide with magic and monsters in this dangerous and exciting roleplaying game. Are you brave enough to change your destiny?
This second edition rulebook has been designed to be backwards compatible with all first edition Through the Breach supplements and adventures.
The Core Rules contain all the information players need to begin adventuring in the world of Malifaux!
REIGN OF TERROR
If you have a Tarot deck of any kind, you can play Reign of Terror, based on the Tarochi card game that uses such decks, and the latest entry in the It’s In the Cards Week theme. In this setting, you face the utter terror and devastation of the French Revolution while investigating what sinister forces might be pulling the strings behind it all.
The Terror, during the French Revolution, was one of the most horrific moments in history. At its height, thousands were imprisoned or executed. But what if the Terror wasn’t just happenstance? What if there were dark forces at play behind those, and other, historical events?
In Reign of Terror play the part of a Revolutionary seeking to find the truth behind the Revolution and Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. This book contains everything you need to start playing, including:
Be a Revolutionary! Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity! Or, Death!
TRIALS OF THE MAGI
There really aren’t that many games that fit the bill for It’s In the Cards Week, but here’s another Tarot-driven one that can also be played with standard (poker) playing cards. Trials of the Magi falls firmly in the 21st-century realms of player narrative and innovation, though there are firm mechanics in place. Intended to help bring players new to the concept of roleplaying into the hobby, the game focuses on allowing players to essentially “be themselves” while the explore the concepts of RP and shared fiction.
Trials of the Magi is a tabletop role-playing game centered around the idea that arcane spell casters known as Magi exist within our world and have kept their existence hidden for thousands of years. Those with the potential to learn magic are scouted out and must prove themselves worthy by undergoing a specialized exam.
Inside each session of this narrative card game a group of Candidates attempt to overcome the surreal and magical challenges put before them by the Arcane Scout. Where each success bringing them one step closer to becoming fledgling Magi.
Who is this game for:
While any group of players can pick up and play the game, Trials of the Magi was developed as a tool to introduce new players to the hobby of role-playing games. This goal is achieved through the game’s quick to learn, tactile mechanics and the ease of roleplaying within the game’s fiction.
In contrast with most role-playing games, the characters that the players control in Trials of the Magi are direct representations of themselves known as Personas. These imagined characters look, act and talk just as the player would, making it easy for some one new to the hobby to step into their first game.
How the game is played:
The Candidates construct their personas by choosing 3 cards from the four possible Tarot suits of Swords, Wands, Cups or Coins. Then by answering a suit specific question they determine the source of the cards power, and write it on the card. This written word shapes the narrative capabilities of each card, as it represents what form of magic the Persona has access to within the mental landscapes of the trials.
Each Tarot suit represents a type of playstyle, and by picking a combination of 3 cards, you tailor your gameplaying interactions effectively create your own custom “character class”.
This hand of cards comprises the entirety of each player’s Persona, and gameplay revolves around each player’s ability to effectively manage how their cards cycle between the three positions of, in their hand, on the table, or discarded. This is crucial because if all of the players are forced to discard all of their cards, they fail the trial.
CASTLE FALKENSTEIN
The close of It’s In the Cards Week brings us to one of the most famous and beloved examples of card-based games ever published – Castle Falkenstein. Though the poker-deck mechanics were a bit difficult for many to wrap their heads around, the setting carried the day as one of the earliest examples of steampunk at the RPG table. The game lay fallow for quite a while, but Fat Goblin Games revived it with an entire line of products dedicated to updating and expanding the Falkenstein experience.
SPELLNAPPED!
When computer game designer Tom Olam found himself sorcerously shanghaied by a rogue Wizard and a Faerie Lord, little did he suspect that he would soon become the pivotal force in the struggle to control an alternate Victorian Universe. But before the deadly game could end, he would first have to battle gigantic Landfortresses, outwit Dragons, romance a beautiful Adventuress, and defeat the Evil legions of a Dark Court determined to destroy him at all costs.
Then maybe, just maybe, he could find a way home again …
It’s a novel. It’s a game. It’s both. It’s Castle Falkenstein™, an amazing journey into another universe just a few steps away from our own: a place where Dragons and Steampower rule the skies, Faerie Lords duel atop the battlements, and where the forces of Wizardry and Magick meet the gaslight streets of the Victorian Age. But with Castle Falkenstein™, the story never ends, as you too take up saber and spell to adventure in a distant world on the other side of the mysterious Faerie Veil: a world of Swashbuckling Fantasy, High Romance, and Magickal Technology. The world of—Castle Falkenstein™
-----
The question is begged - is there room for more games that are driven by either standard playing cards or Tarot-based mechanics? What do you think?
Meanwhile, the Freedom Squadron Kickstarter is cooking along nicely, and I greatly appreciate all the support folks like you have given us. One of the cool unlocks is the new Scientist Vocation Framework; feel free to hit the link (or the picture of TOPSIDE, action oceanographer!) and check it out!
The Adventure Continues!
Note that I use affiliate links in all my posts as a way to generate additional revenue for my efforts; I make my Picks and other article choices, however, based on the desire to share a wide variety of things with you. Thank you for your support.
Sean Patrick Fannon
Writer & Game Designer: Shaintar, Star Wars, Savage Rifts, Freedom Squadron, and much more!
Please check out my Patreon and get involved directly with my next projects!
ALAS VEGAS
The long-awaited James Wallis art-as-RPG, Alas Vegas, is finally available for purchase, and it’s led me to launch It’s In the Cards Week – a week dedicated to games that eschew dice in favor of cards for gameplay and task resolution.
This game was Kickstarted five years ago, and various elements in play pushed its final delivery out quite a ways. However, the wait is more than worthwhile as “the Godfather of Indie Games” (as anointed by Robin Laws), along with a truly all-star cast, brings us one of the most innovative immersive story ideas with a gameplay style that will throw you for a loop while it drags you into a story you help unveil as the clock keeps ticking.
BAD BETS, BAD DEBTS AND BAD DEATHS
You wake in a shallow grave in the desert. It’s night. You have no memory of how you got here, or who you are, or the location of your clothes. A scar of neon in the shape of a city squats on the horizon. There are answers there. And trouble.
ALAS VEGAS is a dark journey through a bizarre and terrifying casino city where everything has a cost. Caught in a war between the Rat Packers who run the place, the players must find allies, the truth, and a way to escape. Memories are recovered, secrets are revealed, old debts are settled, and nothing is what it seems.
Your character sheet starts as blank as your memories, but your character gains skills by having flashbacks to their previous life, so as the game progesses their backstory does too – creating a twisted web between the characters, as they piece their past together and work out how that fits with what’s happening to them.
The mechanics are based on the casino game Blackjack played with Tarot cards, creating high-stakes narrative showdowns, and spinning elements of the game’s story from the cards that come up in play.
‘Alas Vegas’ lasts four sessions, structured like a high-budget HBO miniseries, leading to a revelatory final climax that’s a fitting end of the campaign. It’s Franz Kafka’s Fear and Loathing. It’s The Hangover meets The Prisoner. It’s Ocean’s Eleven directed by David Lynch. It’s like nothing you’ve played before.
PLUS THREE EXTRA CAMPAIGNS
ALAS VEGAS runs on the Fugue game system, built to tell stories of characters with amnesia. It uses Tarot cards and rotating GMs to create unique, high-tension adventures, heavy on character and narrative. As well as ‘Alas Vegas’ itself, the book contains three extra complete Fugue campaigns:
- YET ALREADY, frantic time-travel to save a chaotic, collapsing universe, written by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan;
- WARLOCK KINGS, paladins returned to life as generals of a dark army, by Allen Varney and Johnstone Metzger;
- REMEMBERING COSMIC MAN, in which you play two characters: one of a gang of superheroes whose leader has just been found dead, and one of the police investigating the crime, by Laurent Devernay and Jerome Larre.
Plus all the Fugue mechanics, of course.
PLUS A HOST OF STARS
ALAS VEGAS also contains articles by some of the finest games writers of the last two decades:
- Kenneth Hite contributes a complete stand-alone story-game set in the blood-red heart of classic Vegas, ‘Killing Bugsy Siegel’;
- Robin D. Laws tells you how to use tarot cards to create game narratives on the fly in ‘Tarot-Jumping Other Games’;
- Mike Selinker adds a bizarre casino in which your characters can place bets on their own chances of success in the adventure;
- Matt Forbeck details the ins and outs of running gambling games in RPGs ;
- Richard Dansky expands the Alas Vegas setting in ‘Grifts, Scams and Making it’;
- John Scott Tynes serves up cocktails in ‘The Guide To Drinking Heavily In Vegas’;
- Eye-popping interior art by World Fantasy Award-winner John Coulthart and Dennis Detwiller;
- John Kovalic contributes an exclusive in-game comic strip!
- And Sean Smith describes how to… but you have to let us keep a few secrets.
THROUGH THE BREACH
Not much chance of doing an It’s In the Cards Week without talking about one of the style’s more standout examples. Based on the Malifaux miniatures gaming universe, Through the Breach makes use of regular playing cards to move players through character creation as well as task resolution.
Control your destiny.
Journey back to the early 1900s, where a dimensional rift leading to the magical world of Malifaux has changed human history. Steam power and steel collide with magic and monsters in this dangerous and exciting roleplaying game. Are you brave enough to change your destiny?
This second edition rulebook has been designed to be backwards compatible with all first edition Through the Breach supplements and adventures.
The Core Rules contain all the information players need to begin adventuring in the world of Malifaux!
REIGN OF TERROR
If you have a Tarot deck of any kind, you can play Reign of Terror, based on the Tarochi card game that uses such decks, and the latest entry in the It’s In the Cards Week theme. In this setting, you face the utter terror and devastation of the French Revolution while investigating what sinister forces might be pulling the strings behind it all.
The Terror, during the French Revolution, was one of the most horrific moments in history. At its height, thousands were imprisoned or executed. But what if the Terror wasn’t just happenstance? What if there were dark forces at play behind those, and other, historical events?
In Reign of Terror play the part of a Revolutionary seeking to find the truth behind the Revolution and Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. This book contains everything you need to start playing, including:
- an original system based on Tarochi, a Tarot-based card game
- the detailed history of the French Revolution
- a chapter devoted to the daily life of people in Revolutionary France
- a simple character creation system that gets you playing within minutes
- a Cast of Characters: over 60 historical figures described for the game
Be a Revolutionary! Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity! Or, Death!
TRIALS OF THE MAGI
There really aren’t that many games that fit the bill for It’s In the Cards Week, but here’s another Tarot-driven one that can also be played with standard (poker) playing cards. Trials of the Magi falls firmly in the 21st-century realms of player narrative and innovation, though there are firm mechanics in place. Intended to help bring players new to the concept of roleplaying into the hobby, the game focuses on allowing players to essentially “be themselves” while the explore the concepts of RP and shared fiction.
Trials of the Magi is a tabletop role-playing game centered around the idea that arcane spell casters known as Magi exist within our world and have kept their existence hidden for thousands of years. Those with the potential to learn magic are scouted out and must prove themselves worthy by undergoing a specialized exam.
Inside each session of this narrative card game a group of Candidates attempt to overcome the surreal and magical challenges put before them by the Arcane Scout. Where each success bringing them one step closer to becoming fledgling Magi.
Who is this game for:
While any group of players can pick up and play the game, Trials of the Magi was developed as a tool to introduce new players to the hobby of role-playing games. This goal is achieved through the game’s quick to learn, tactile mechanics and the ease of roleplaying within the game’s fiction.
In contrast with most role-playing games, the characters that the players control in Trials of the Magi are direct representations of themselves known as Personas. These imagined characters look, act and talk just as the player would, making it easy for some one new to the hobby to step into their first game.
How the game is played:
The Candidates construct their personas by choosing 3 cards from the four possible Tarot suits of Swords, Wands, Cups or Coins. Then by answering a suit specific question they determine the source of the cards power, and write it on the card. This written word shapes the narrative capabilities of each card, as it represents what form of magic the Persona has access to within the mental landscapes of the trials.
Each Tarot suit represents a type of playstyle, and by picking a combination of 3 cards, you tailor your gameplaying interactions effectively create your own custom “character class”.
This hand of cards comprises the entirety of each player’s Persona, and gameplay revolves around each player’s ability to effectively manage how their cards cycle between the three positions of, in their hand, on the table, or discarded. This is crucial because if all of the players are forced to discard all of their cards, they fail the trial.
CASTLE FALKENSTEIN
The close of It’s In the Cards Week brings us to one of the most famous and beloved examples of card-based games ever published – Castle Falkenstein. Though the poker-deck mechanics were a bit difficult for many to wrap their heads around, the setting carried the day as one of the earliest examples of steampunk at the RPG table. The game lay fallow for quite a while, but Fat Goblin Games revived it with an entire line of products dedicated to updating and expanding the Falkenstein experience.
SPELLNAPPED!
When computer game designer Tom Olam found himself sorcerously shanghaied by a rogue Wizard and a Faerie Lord, little did he suspect that he would soon become the pivotal force in the struggle to control an alternate Victorian Universe. But before the deadly game could end, he would first have to battle gigantic Landfortresses, outwit Dragons, romance a beautiful Adventuress, and defeat the Evil legions of a Dark Court determined to destroy him at all costs.
Then maybe, just maybe, he could find a way home again …
It’s a novel. It’s a game. It’s both. It’s Castle Falkenstein™, an amazing journey into another universe just a few steps away from our own: a place where Dragons and Steampower rule the skies, Faerie Lords duel atop the battlements, and where the forces of Wizardry and Magick meet the gaslight streets of the Victorian Age. But with Castle Falkenstein™, the story never ends, as you too take up saber and spell to adventure in a distant world on the other side of the mysterious Faerie Veil: a world of Swashbuckling Fantasy, High Romance, and Magickal Technology. The world of—Castle Falkenstein™
-----
The question is begged - is there room for more games that are driven by either standard playing cards or Tarot-based mechanics? What do you think?
Meanwhile, the Freedom Squadron Kickstarter is cooking along nicely, and I greatly appreciate all the support folks like you have given us. One of the cool unlocks is the new Scientist Vocation Framework; feel free to hit the link (or the picture of TOPSIDE, action oceanographer!) and check it out!
The Adventure Continues!
Note that I use affiliate links in all my posts as a way to generate additional revenue for my efforts; I make my Picks and other article choices, however, based on the desire to share a wide variety of things with you. Thank you for your support.
Sean Patrick Fannon
Writer & Game Designer: Shaintar, Star Wars, Savage Rifts, Freedom Squadron, and much more!
Please check out my Patreon and get involved directly with my next projects!
