New Rule

Introduction: Reaping the souls of the newly dead may sound like an easy job, but as a newly-fledged reaper you’re about to discover differently. In this game, players compete to harvest souls and send them on to their eternal reward (or punishment). It’s on-the-job eldritch training, but if you succeed with the fewest mistakes you could find yourself promoted and that much closer to winning the coveted recognition of Reaper of the Month!

Players: 3-6

Materials:

• One deck of standard playing cards.
• Several quarters or other large coins, one per player.

Setting Up:  Shuffle the cards and place the deck in the center of the table. Distribute the coins to each player. Designate a first player; play proceeds to the left.

How to Play:  Each turn, the card on the top of the deck dies — it represents a newly departed soul ready for reaping. Before the active player draws and reveals the top card, players guess whether it will be a good soul (red) or an evil soul (black). Each player indicates their choice by placing their coin on the table, covered by their hand, as follows: if they think the card will be good, they lay the coin heads-up, and if they believe it will be evil, they lay it tails-up. Once all players have placed and covered their coin, the active player draws and reveals the card. All players then reveal their choice, and if they are correct, they get do one of the following:

• Draw a card from the deck and hold it in their hand. If more than one wishes to draw a card, they do so in turn order. There is no limit to how many cards a player may hold at once.
• Place a card from their hand on top of the deck. Cards must be placed after all players who wish to draw have done so. If more than one player wishes to place a card, they place them in turn order.

Once a card has been revealed, it is placed beside the deck in a discard pile. Whenever the deck is depleted, shuffle and convert the discard pile into a new deck. If at any point both decks are depleted to a combined total of ten cards or less, all player must immediately turn in all the cards in their hands to be shuffled and formed into a new deck.

Promotion: If at any point a player collects ten cards in their hand, they are promoted. They immediately turn in all ten cards to the discard pile, and from now on the gain a bonus ability: whenever a card dies (is drawn and revealed), the player may request a second card to die as well. This is done after all other players reveal their coin but before the promoted player does so. If the promoted player’s coin is correct about either of the cards, they may draw or play as normal. If neither of the cards matches their coin, however, they must forfeit a card from their hand to pay for their mistake. If they have no cards in their hand, they are immediately demoted, and may no longer request bonus cards until they collect ten new cards.

Winning the Game: Play continues until a promoted player collects ten cards in their hand without being demoted — a double promotion. The first player to achieve this is the winner.

Tags: Game Design //