Narrative Tension

Game loop:

1. As a group, a narrative goal is picked involving one of the face card suits.

The different face cards can follow narrative lines.

King: Conflict | Queen: Love | Jack: Success 

e.g. the King defends a castle on the moon

(The goal should be reasonable but also difficult)

2. Grab a deck of cards and take out any (number of players, up to 8 players) black cards and (1 through 3) red cards depending on how difficult you want it to be. 

Everybody takes one card and keeps the information of what color it is to themselves.

After everybody remembers their color, put all the cards back into the deck and shuffle.

Black cards are honest

Red cards are liars

3. Repeat the Core loop

4. Once all the cards have been depleted where a full hand of 3 can not be made, reshuffle the Ace’s into the discard pile and continue.

Core loop:

1. The first player draws three cards one at a time and creates a story that involves the cards, including any additional information.

E.g.

A drag queen was strolling down the street a quarter past 5:10.

I walk into the King restaurant and see 3 meatballs of which I smother my 5 fingers into.

1a. If the card picked is an Ace a 3 minute round of deliberation begins to vote out one player from play or to skip the vote entirely, with the most voted option winning.

After voting, the Ace is put on the bottom of the deck.

1b. If the player is a liar they can change any reference(s) to the three cards.

2. A quick yay or nay on keeping the narrative cannon is held, then a new rhetoric is created.

3. The three cards are then handed to the next person in the circle. They may look at them and then answer as many Yes or No questions as they like in 1 minute. Once the time is over, those cards are left in a discard pile and the loop starts once again.

e.g. Were most of the cards red? Was the player lying about a card?

Deliberation:

- During deliberation all the players talk about kicking another player out of the group.

- If there is a unanimous decision that there are no more liars in the group they may end the game to reveal everybodies identity. If there are still liars in the group the liars win.

- If there is a tie, another round of voting begins after a minute of deliberation. After another tie, the game continues.

Story:

- The story must continue with each person adding to the story trying to get closer to the goal for the civilians to win.

- The story must follow logical rules. Non-sequiturs can be rolled for, you may use the deck as a 13 sided die with it heavily balanced towards 10’s (face cards would be 10’s) or a D6.