NAR – a card game – Joris Lemoine

I created this small card game as a way to build some game design muscles. The point of the exercise was to make a simple, cheap and interesting game. One with as few mechanics as possible that could still generate complex gameplay strategies. One that would not require the manufacture of special board pieces or artwork. A game, in short, scaled down to the bare idea of game design.

Ruleset

(Any rules included inside brackets, much like this statement, are added to provide clarity and guidance. It is assumed that even moderately experienced gamers would solve the lacuna in the game mechanics, caused by their removal, in the same or a similar way as stated in said bracketed rules.)

This game is played with a standard pack of playing cards: 52 cards, 4 suits (hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs) per pack, 13 cards per suit.
This game can be played with 2, 3 or 4 players.
If you start a game out with 2 players, a 3rd and 4th player can join in at any time (cf. infra).
At the start of the game, every player has 5 lives or tokens (use anything to stand in as a token near you). If you lose all 5 tokens, you lose the game. If you collect a total of 10 tokens, you beat all opponents.

To start the game, every player takes 5 cards from the top of a shuffled deck.
(Toss a coin/roll a die to determine who begins the first round.)
(Players each take a turn per round.)
Each turn technically consists of four phases:
- Drawing 1 new card from the top of the deck.
- Putting down 1 card from your hand to your field (= a flat surface in front of you).
- Playing all the abilities of active cards on your field (in an order of the player’s preference).
- Discarding excess cards from your hand to the refuse pile.
However, the first three phases are interchangeable. All abilities on your field must be played (if possible) before you can end your turn.

The first round differs from every other round, in that players will draw only one card and get to play two cards from their hand, but they do so in turn, meaning that the first round is technically two rounds, of which in the second round you skip phase 1.
(All proceeding rounds follow all 4 of the previously given phases.)
In phase 4, you can choose which card(s) to discard. The maximum number of cards you can hold is 5.
If you start a turn with no cards, you may take 1 extra card from the top of the deck.
The refuse pile, where all discarded cards go, is added to on the top.
When the deck runs out, you shuffle the refuse pile and it becomes the new deck. (A new refuse pile is created as soon as another card is discarded.)

Cards can be laid down either serially or as groups of one-of-a-kind.
e.g. “Ace-2-3”; “King-Ace-2”; “3-4”; or “5-4”; “two-Ace-King” etc.
Every player can have a maximum of 3 stacks of cards on their own field.
Each stack can contain a maximum of 3 cards, of which the card on the bottom (on the field) is called the field card, or primary card or active card, and the other two cards are called the secondary and tertiary card, or the modifying cards in general.
Cards can be played to the field both as a primary card or as a modifying card.
You cannot put down a card on top of another card of the same suit.
e.g. you cannot make the series “2 of hearts, 3 of hearts, 4 of hearts”(, in the same way that you cannot play “ace of hearts, ace of hearts, ace of hearts” with a standard pack of cards).
To remove a full stack of three cards, you can add a fourth card that finishes the series or group, and play the ability of that stack’s field card twice in that turn. Then discard all four cards to the refuse pile and draw a new card from the top of the deck.
The exception to the previous rule is when you finish a stack on an opponent’s field. Then its ability will not be triggered and neither player will draw a new card.
If a card is acquired through an ability, but there is no valid way to play it, discard the card to the refuse pile.

Primary cards have the same active effect irrespective of suit, so there are 13 unique abilities in total. (cf. infra for the abilities and their modified forms.)
e.g. an ace of diamonds will have the same effect as an ace of spades or an ace of clubs etc.
Cards have different secondary effects, depending on the suit of the secondary card versus the primary (active) card, or on the suit of the tertiary card versus that of the secondary card.
e.g. a four of spades on top of a three of diamonds will not provide the same secondary effect as a four of spades on top of a three of hearts.
Modifying cards can modify a primary card (and its secondary effect) in one of three ways:
- Negating an ability.
  e.g. any negatory card nullifies the active ability. However, combining the negating and amplifying modifiers cancels them out. Double negation is still negation.
- Amplifying an ability.
  e.g. instead of gaining one token, you can gain two, or if double-amplified, three.
- Reversing an ability.
  e.g. instead of gaining a token, you lose a token. If double-reversed, you gain a token once more.
Any combination of these three effects is allowed (N, NN, A, AA, R, RR; NR/RN, NA,AN AR/RA) and leads to predictable results that can be extrapolated from the previous examples.
To determine which modifier occurs, you must remember this sequence:
Clubs > Hearts > Spades > Diamonds > Clubs (etc.)
- Whenever a new card’s suit is trumped by the previous card’s suit, then the effect of the primary card is negated.
  e.g. 2 of hearts on top of an ace of clubs.
- Whenever a new card’s suit trumps the previous card’s suit, then the effect of the primary card is amplified.
  e.g. Two of Clubs on top of an Ace of Hearts.
- Whenever there is no direct relation between the suits of a previous card and a newly laid card, the effect of the primary card is reversed.
  e.g. the stack “ace of hearts; two of spades (amplify); three of clubs” (reverse) would result in a player losing (due to reversal) two (due to amplification) tokens on his turn, if he cannot sabotage the effect before it must be activated on his own turn.

When a new player enters the game:
- They will be given the average amount of tokens held by the other players (rounded up).
- They will take 7 cards, play and activate 3 cards on their first turn and then discard until they have at maximum 5 cards in their hands.
- After that, the game will progress as before, with each player taking a turn per round.

The base abilities of the cards (for quick reference)

ACE/ONE: The player gains 1 token of life.
TWO:         The player can discard 1 card of choice on an opponent’s field.
THREE:       The player discards 1 defending card on an opponent’s field.
FOUR:        The player discards 1 card from an opponent’s hand to the refuse pile (blind choice).
FIVE:           The players draws 1 card from the top of the deck.
SIX:              Cards on the player’s field are defended from being discarded.
SEVEN:       The player can play 1 (extra) card from the top of the refuse pile to their field.
EIGHT:        The player can play 1 (extra) card from their hand to an opponent’s field.
NINE:          The player can play 1 (extra) card from the top of the deck to their field.
TEN:           Cards in the player’s hand are defended from being taken or discarded by opponents.
JACK:         The player destroys 1 of an opponent’s tokens of life.
QUEEN:     The player plays 1 (extra) card from their hand to their field.
KING:           The player’s tokens are defended from being destroyed.

The abilities of the cards together with the effects of their modifiers (full list)

(“The player” in the descriptions always refers to the player on whose field the stack rests. For some reversed actions, it is not necessarily the player (who is at play) who gains advantage from the card on their own field.)
(Doubled effects are not mentioned here, only single ones. Doubled effects should be self-explanatory from context. e.g. A single-reversed ace means the player loses 1 token of life, but an amplified and reversed ace means the player loses 2 tokens of life. Any combination of a negatory card, except for negated-amplified which cancel each other out, results in (null).)
(“(null)” denotes that no action is taken.)

ACE/ONE:
Ability: The player gains 1 token of life.
Amplified: The player gains 2 tokens of life.
Reversed: The player loses 1 token of life.

TWO:
Ability: The player can discard 1 card of choice on an opponent’s field.
Amplified: The player can discard 2 cards of choice on (one of) the opponent’s field(s).
Reversed: In the player’s turn, an opponent can discard 1 of the player’s cards on the player’s field. (The player decides when this action takes place. This can amount to removing cards from the same stack that allows the opponent to take away cards from the player’s field. If the player has a 6 as a primary card on the field, the opponent cannot perform the action.)

THREE:
Ability: The player discards 1 defending card on an opponent’s field (cf. “6”, “10”, “King”).
Amplified: The player discards 1 reinforced defending card.
Reversed: Stacks on the player’s field with a discard effect are defended from being discarded (cf. “3”, “4”, “9, reversed”).

FOUR:
Ability: The player discards 1 card from an opponent’s hand to the refuse pile (blind choice).
Amplified: The player discards 2 cards from an opponent’s hand to the refuse pile (blind choice).
Reversed: An opponent chooses 1 card from the player’s hand which must be discarded to the refuse pile (blind choice).

FIVE:
Ability: The players draws 1 card from the top of the deck.
Amplified: The players draws 2 card from the top of the deck.
Reversed: The player discards 1 card to the refuse pile.

SIX:
Ability: Cards on the player’s field are defended from being discarded (including this card, except when countered by a “3” of sufficient amplification).
Amplified: The defense of cards on the player’s field is reinforced.
Reversed: Cards on the opponent’s field are defended from being discarded.

SEVEN:
Ability: The player can play 1 (extra) card from the top of the refuse pile to their field.
Amplified: The player can play 2 (extra) cards from the top of the refuse pile to their field.
Reversed: The player can play 1 (extra) card from the top of the refuse pile to an opponent’s field.

EIGHT:
Ability: The player can play 1 (extra) card from their hand to an opponent’s field.
Amplified: The player can play 2 (extra) cards from their hand to an opponent’s field.
Reversed: The player can play 1 (extra) card from an opponent’s hand to the player’s field.

NINE:
Ability: The player can play 1 (extra) card from the top of the deck to their field.
Amplified: The player can play 2 (extra) cards from the top of the deck to their field.
Reversed: The player must discard 1 (extra) card from their hand to the refuse pile.

TEN:
Ability: Cards in the player’s hand are defended from being taken or discarded by opponents.
Amplified: The defense of cards in the player’s hand is reinforced.
Reversed: Cards from any opponent’s hand are defended from being taken or discarded by their opponent(s).

JACK:
Ability: The player destroys 1 of an opponent’s tokens of life.
Amplified: The player destroys 2 of an opponent’s tokens of life.
Reversed: The player adds 1 token to an opponent’s life.

QUEEN:
Ability: The player plays 1 (extra) card from their hand to their field.
Amplified: The player plays 2 (extra) cards from their hand to their field.
Reversed: The player plays 2 (extra) cards from their opponent’s hand to their opponent’s field.

KING:
Ability: The player’s tokens are defended from being destroyed.
Amplified: The defense of the player’s token is reinforced.
Reversed: The tokens of an opponent (one of the player’s choice) are defended from being destroyed.

Caveats and ruminations

I had the hardest time of all finding a good name for this simple game. Eventually, inspiration struck as I was looking at the first letters of the secondary effects – the mechanic that really makes the game zing. N-A-R thus became simply “Nar”, which is Dutch for “Joker”, being the one card that isn’t at play, but which is usually provided along with any standard book of cards.

This is apt, because the joker is a figure in folklore who represents chaos and the upending of the social order. Allow me this bit of wordplay, for you will see that that is where any semblance of narrative ends.

The sequence of “hearts – clubs – diamonds – spades” is entirely meaningless. I toyed with making it more meaningful either by relating either of the suit’s symbols to some abstract concept or by going back to the original tarot and extracting a meaning from those symbols.

As the symbols appear in the standard playing deck, I would ascribe the following concepts to them in the following manner:
Hearts = love/passion
Clubs = war
Diamonds = greed/money
Spades = death/labour
As such, war trumps love, greed trumps war, death trumps greed, and love trumps death. But the particular shade of war that trumps love is not the same shade of war that is trumped by greed.

I ran into other such conceptual issues when I juxtaposed the concepts to find a meaningful explanation for the reversal mechanic. Love versus greed works rather well. However, war versus death is not so much a reversal as a one-way causation.

Going back to the Tarot, the original symbols were those of cups (hearts), staves (clubs), pentacles (diamonds) and swords (spades). One could try to map concepts on those such as “feminine”, “nature”, “ratio”, “masculine”, but having a mnemonic that says that the masculine is always overpowered by the feminine – even if empowering in lieu of contemporary culture – is still sexist. And a similar thing occurs when “ratio > nature”, which in actual fact is non-sensical. Only at a metaphorical or metaphysical level does this kind of relationship make any sense at all, but once it does, it too plays into a distorted worldview, namely that anything man-made is superior to anything that is natural or organic. Or that rationality is better than one’s gut instincts. No such absolute statements really deserve merit.

In all, this conceptualisation turned out to be an insipid endeavour of mentally bending over backwards to justify something that needed no justification. It would have been nice to give the player a small mnemonic to aid them in remembering the relations between the suits, but that is in effect already achieved by choosing to alternate the colours of the suits.

For any black card on top of a red card (or vice versa), you know that the effect will be either magnified or nullified, and you will soon know the rules by heart to determine which is which. Only at the start will you have to refer to the sequence. When cards of the same colour are stacked, the only valid way of doing so always results in reversal, so there is no need for any narrative mnemonic.

Then for a few caveats.

The idea that the starting round requires two cards to be played and only one to be drawn is an inelegant solution to the problem of having too many choices and not enough chances to play cards at the beginning. Players may choose to omit this rule, however, if they feel that it speeds up games too much.

The requirement of “life tokens” to satisfy the victory condition disappoints me. The point of this game design exercise was simplicity and frugality. In this case, it amounted to creating a game requiring no more than a standard deck of cards. No additional equipment would be necessary: no art work, no special cards, no special board or pieces. The mechanic of life tokens does require such pieces, though. Luckily, they can be anything: little balls of paper, chess pieces, marbles, salt shakers etc. Or players can simply keep score in their head, on their phone, or on a piece of paper.

I have toyed with abolishing the idea of life tokens altogether and instead making the win/lose conditions dependent on having a double-amplified stack with either a jack or an ace as a primary card. However, most of the other mechanics in the game hinge on being able to sabotage your opponent, turning their own cards against them. Getting a double-amplified stack would be quite the feat no matter the primary card, and as such, the win/lose condition might become a practical impossibility or at the very least lead to very long and drawn-out games. This goes against another condition I set for myself upon creating this game: individual play sessions would be short and sweet. Not as short as tic-tac-toe or 4-in-a-row, but definitely no longer than many of the other (adversarial) card games that I have played when I was a boy.

As it stands, I am resigned to the current victory mechanic. Of course, leave a comment should you happen to think of a better way.

The 5/10 token rule is arbitrary – as most rules are – and I think players might like to try out games where they start with only 3 tokens, or they might agree amongst themselves that they will play up to 12 tokens instead of only 10, making the experience of sabotaging each other last a tad longer.

Have fun!

Share this:

Like this:

Related

Leave a Reply Cancel reply