Category: Game Rules

Created by Christine Ursiny

1. The Game: Bond or Die

Welcome to The Eyrie, the cutthroat military academy where you and your fellow Aspirants have formed a Fated Bond with an ancient magical creature. This RPG is focused on high-stakes teamwork under pressure to graduate; you must survive the brutal, lethal trials of The Reckoning and work together to expose the dark secrets of the oppressive Staff. 

2. Character Creation: Set Up

Step 1: Roll for Your Identity

Roll on the table below to determine your: Descriptor, Species/Skill, and Sector.

Step 2: Set Your Stats (The Bond)

You have two opposed stats. Both start at 3.

3. Action Resolution

When you attempt an action and the outcome is uncertain and has real consequences, the Game Master (GM) will tell you which stat to use, and you roll a single.

• Succeed: If your roll is equal to or under the stat, you succeed!
• Fail: If your roll is over the stat, you fail!

 The “Expert Edge” Rule (Specialized Skills) 

If you use one of your character’s unique strengths, you get a significant edge:

• Creature Skill: If you invoke your Creature’s unique Species Skill (Burn, Shatter, Vanish, etc.), you may treat your BEAST stat as 4 for this single roll (even if it is lower or higher).
• Sector Niche: If you use an action directly related to your Sector (Weapons Master with gear, Archives Guard spotting a trap), you may treat your RIDER stat as 4 for this single roll (even if it is lower or higher).

4. The Shifting Bond (The Core Mechanic)

Your stats are never safe; they shift based on your successes and failures. Keep the two numbers balanced!

The End of the Line: When a Stat Hits 6

If either stat reaches 6, you have gone too far and are out of the game!

• RIDER reaches 6: You become corrupted by self-serving ambition. You betray your squad to join the oppressive Staff.
• BEAST reaches 6: You have completely Lost the Bond. Your creature flips out and rejects you. You are expelled (or killed).

5. Quick Q&A: 

I’m writing this rule set because I want to prototype this idea first instead of my other rule set I posted two weeks ago. I’m just very curious how a traditional matching game would work with different languages and how peoples memories are affected when it’s unfamiliar words rather than pictures.

Players 2-5

SET UP: Pick the stack that you want to play with and shuffle them with the language NOT in English face up. Lay out all 50 cards in a grid face up

Gameplay:

This is a pretty traditional matching game but obviously instead of remembering where pictures are, you are trying to remember the translation of the words that you are gradually learning throughout the game.

Each turn players attempt to make matches. Every turn, the player flips over two cards.

On their turn, a player flips over a card and reads the translation. They then pick up their second card by trying to find the match to the English word on the back. If the second card does not match the first card THEY PUT BOTH CARDS BACK WHERE THEY ORGINALLY WERE with the NON-English word face up.

FOR EXAMPLE – player 1 flips a card that says “perro” on it. The back reads “dog”. The player then scans the grid trying to see EITHER if they know another word for dog or if a previous player had flipped over the word “dog” before and they remember where it is.

Players take turn attempting to make matches until the grid has been completely matched.

HOW TO WIN:

Players with the most matches wins.

Congrats! You either already know another language or are good at memorizing places on a game board!

possible ALTERNATIVE PLAY:

1. If a matching game seems too boring, here’s another idea to spice it up a little bit.

Instead of taking a turn by trying to find a match by flipping over two cards, there will be an extra “hard” section of words above the matching grid that IF YOU KNOW OR CAN GUESS THE WORD counts as an additional match in your hand. However, guessing wrong does not remove the card from the game but you must reveal your guess and put it back above the grid if you guess incorrectly. The potential then is that other players have the opportunity to steal these bonus cards, narrowing down the meaning. 

2. If there is a tie OR just if you want to keep the matches with the NON English words face up and shuffle the card and whoever remembers the most meanings gets an extra point or the number of points for that number of cards guessed right (by the players discretion)

Madison Hurst

The AlleyWay Pharmacy

Idea: The Alleyway Pharmacy is a card game in which the players are drug dealers competing against other drug dealers where they have to collect various drugs to resell. The kick to it is, the drug dealers have to make sure whether the drugs they collected are real and not candy. If they are caught using candy (x amount of times) then they will go to jail (lose).

Objective: 

• Players are rival dealers that are fighting for the same street block. They are competing to make the most profit by reselling drugs while avoiding fake ones (candy). To win, the player must be the first to reach the profit goal ($20,000) or by the last one that didn’t get busted. 

Materials needed:

• Deck of cards:

• Drug cards
• Candy cards
• Action cards

• Profit tracker (score pad)
• Busted disk trackers
• Rules sheet
• Your hand for your cards
• Stash (faced down pile on the table)

Setup:

• Shuffle cards into one deck which will become the draw pile
• Each player will draw 3 cards that will be their starting hand 
• Give each player 3 busted tokens
• Have a space for the discard pile
• Discuss what the profit goal will be for this game (default is $20,000)
• The tallest player will go first

Insight:

• Hand: these are the cards you can see and choose from (max. Card limit is 5)
• Stash: cards you placed face down on the table (max card limit is 6)
• Profit tracker: how much money you are at
• Busted tokens: track how many times you had a candy drug (3=jail and you lost the game)

Turns:

• Draw 1 card from the draw pile

You will then move into your action part of your turn:

• You can choose one action play

• Options:

• Play a drug: place 1 card from your hand to you stash pile (face down)
• Play an action: use it immediately (sneak, inspect, etc)
• Slip a fake drug (sneak): Put a card from your hand (candy or real drug) to an opponents stash pile (face down) 
• Pass (take no action)

• Resell (You can resell if you think you have 3 of the same cards in your stash)
• If you have all 3 of the same drug, then you will earn a profit based on the value of the drug type. After, you have collected your points you will discard this set

1 Candy drug:

If you have a 1 candy drug  in your stash during RESELL, then your resell fails (even if you have 3 of the same drug) and the player will take a penalty. 

Penalty: Lose ½ of the profit or discard 1 random hand card

• Discard the candy card after 

2 or more Candy drug:

If the player has 2 or more candy drugs in their stash during resell then resell fails, and collect 1 bust token. Discard all candy cards 

Check hand and stash number:

• If you have more than 5 cards in your hand, discard extras
• If you have more the 6 cards in your hand, discard extras

Out of turn options:

Players are able to play an action card during another players turn

• Inspect: peek at only one card in a players stash
• Steal: Force a player to reveal one of their stash cards 
• Snitch: take one random card from an opponent’s hand 
• Hideout: block a sabotage or inspection against you 

Win/Lose:

• Be the first person to reach the profit goal
• Be the last person standing, if the other opponents went to jail
• Player is out of the game if they received 3 bust tokens

Card Meanings:

• Inspect: peek at only one card in a players stash
• Steal: Force a player to reveal one of their stash cards 
• Snitch: take one random card from an opponent’s hand 
• Hideout: block a sabotage or inspection against you 
• Sneak: place 1 card from your hand to an opponent’s stash
• Swap: trade 1 card from your stash with 1 from an opponent’s stash (face down)

Drug Values:

• Weed set: $3,000 
• Pill set: $5,000
• Coke set: $7,000
• Heroin set: $10,000

Rules Update

Madison Hurst

Mow Masters!

Objective:

• The objective of the game is to get as many grass points/cards as you and your opponent mow all the grass on the board in order to end the game. 

Materials needed:

• Board
• Grass cards
• Setback cards
• Two dice
• meebles  (marks which space/tile was mowed already)
• Paper and pencil to keep track of score
• Iphone timer

Setup:

• Take all of the cards and shuffle them into one deck and place them in a empty space on the board.
• The tallest player will start the game or be the first turn.

Turn:

• Both players are going simultaneously

• The player will roll one dice, and move the amount of spaces of that number on the dice.
• The player can go anywhere on the board, no restrictions.
• The player will pick a card for each space they move. For example, they roll a 2 and move 2 spaces hence pick up 2 cards. 
• After you have moved (mowed) a space, you will mark it with a x  or a meeble.

(you can still use this space to move around in it but you can not get a card from it.)

Ex: rolls the dice and gets 3, but ⅔ spaces are mowed already. So, you can only pick up one card. 

• If you pick up a card that has a setback, you will have to complete the task on the card in order to continue. 
• You have approx. 25 seconds to complete the 

1. Out of gas 
2. Nebby neighbor 
3. Dinner time
4. Reapply sunscreen

• You do not have a time limit with:

1. Mower broke
2. Dog poop on the blade

• If you do not complete the setback challenge within the time constraints then you have to remove one grass card point from your pile. 

Winning/Losing:

• Once the whole lawn is mowed, and there is no more space to collect cards then the game is over.
• Count up your points, and the points win.