Wizardry! A Card Game

A card game in which players draft cards and use abilities - from cards or their character - to combine them and score them.

Base game: a common deck with cards 1-10, four suits, sits in the center. All players are dealt three cards from it. On each players turn they draw one and then may play a scoring hand, or may discard one, then draw back up to 3 if they end the turn below that. Play passes clockwise. The round ends when a player’s pile shows 50 points or more, at which time points are scored.

Each character has its own cards that they may draw instead of the base deck. These could be x2 cards, extensions of the 1-10, duplicates of the 1-10, cards that lend no points but allow actions, wild cards that can take any place in a straight or change their suit or both, but impose a -1 point penalty, and so on.

Each character has an ability, passive or triggered, that persists throughout play. For example, the witch allows a player to move one card from their discard pile to each scoring pile, possibly extending straights and the like. The sorcerer can discard a card to force another player to discard one. The seer can review the top cards of their own deck and the common deck before each draw. Etc., etc.

Character decks typically complement their character: a sorcerer might have cards that grant additional resources on being discarded (i.e., “if this card is discarded from your hand, draw 2 from your character deck.”); witches might have cards that add more points if taken from the discard pile, seers might have cards that immediately score if scryed.

Scoring is per standard poker rules: pairs, threes, fours, straights, flushes, full houses; with some changes. Many characters only need 3 to make a straight or flush. Some can continue to add cards to existing scoring books, allowing them to play one-at-a-time. Others can play anything in their hand at the last minute, as a round ends. Some can hide their points, playing books face-down. Others have multipliers that might offer +1 point to an existing book (play at any time) or that say “x2 score for one book of diamonds,” or so on.

Character identities should feel different. A few off the dome:

Wizard: focused. Chooses a strategy early on and builds on it. Gets big, big multipliers IF they can pull it off. I.e., “enchantment: double the value of all spades. You can have only one enchantment in play - when you play this, discard all others.”

Witch: builds up a lot of little scores, then chooses one that’s successful and piles onto it at the last minute. Can play books of three, but cannot score anything below four. At the moment the game ends can discard any number of books, redistributing their cards elsewhere and discarding the rest. Thus, a few pairs and such could become a straight-flush, suddenly.

Seer: controls the cards they get, and can move cards to others’ piles, effectively counter-drafting. Has actions that allow them to see others’ hands or face-down books, getting a sense of their strategy.

Sorcerer: curses: reduce hand size or draw, steal cards, force discards. Nobody likes this guy.

Necromancer: gets bullshit cards and can’t draw without an ability card, but CAN pull from other players’ discards if they can immediately put together a book with them.

Magician: Builds a big, big hand, plays books face-down. Has actions that allow stuff like ‘play this at any time, even during scoring: trade one card in your hand for one card in a book of yours.’ Allows them to go from no points showing to a good standing without warning.

Warlock: earns points only from playing off the face-up books of others. Can extend their runs, can turn their pairs to threes, and so on.