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Friday, 5 August 2011: Games on Demand: Playtest: Neal Stidham's House of Cards

*Neal Stidham: GM / The World, author
*Me: The Chariot
*Joshua Kronengold: Death
*Mike Holmes: The Sun

House of Cards is nearly done, if not already at a printer. The players take on the roles of humans who have bonded with a force represented by one of the major arcana of the tarot deck -- but not the World, as that force has been conspicuously absent for the last century. Think Neverwhere and Nobilis.

While there might be angst, one must remember that a PC embodies an archetype because he or she is already in line with it, and the PCs, whatever rivalries they may have, do tend to work well together. The game is set in the modern day, although the world works under fairy tale logic rules.

There's a world on the other side of every mirror. Unbounded mirrors are dangerous because Things can come through, which, we noted, means that mirror manufacturing companies must be pretty interesting places. Somehow, the balance between the two worlds has been thrown off, but no one knows how.

Mike: Is the masquerade in effect?

GM: There is no masquerade.

Josh: What are the consequences of using powers?

GM: Creatures from other side are drawn -- like attracts like.

We noted that anyone working in a mirror factory must have seen some pretty strange stuff, given that beings can come through any unbound / unframed mirror.

The mechanics involve tarot cards, of course. Each player has a hand of minor arcana which are used instead of die rolls, and also as de facto Health / Hit Points. All PCs have certain powers, and all can develop others, the exact type depending on their major arcana.

GM: For example, Death can destroy indecision -- no one can waffle. Do what you're inclined to do for this scene.

Josh: I wish I could do that to players!

PCs feel, but can resist, such abilities.

The scenario the GM used is the one that will appear in the book, and I don't want to give away the details, apart from the premise: Someone or something is stealing the gleam from lovers' eyes. Our group handled the matter very differently from a previous group. The other group solved things via negotiation, whereas our group was clearly setting up for a fight.

We did run out of time before getting to that, and while under other circumstances, we might have kept going, I, at least, really needed to eat. That's when we'd planned to do the Crowne Plaza's restaurant, but that proved too crowded for anyone to talk to us even to let us know our odds of getting served in a reasonable amount of time or whether there was a waiting list, so Josh steered me to a Ruth Chris's.