Greetings
Inspired by the excellent finish to Living World Season 3, I decided to create a card game based on the Siren’s Landing map and its denizens – and, about 500 screengrabs later, here it is!
One Path Ends Card Game
(PDF File on Google Drive, about 12mb)
This is an easy-to-play “shedding” card game where the aim is to get rid of all your cards in each round and have the lowest overall score at the end of the game. It is very similar to games like “Whot!” and “UNO”, but with a Guild Wars theme and a few small innovations.
The Basic Cards
Each card features a creature (mob) from Siren’s Landing. These are arranged in suits relating to the reliquaries of the human gods: Dwayna, Melandru, Grenth, Lyssa and, of course, Balthazar. The cards also have a number (top-right & bottom-left) which approximates to the strength of the creature. In this game, lower scores are better so this number represents “Penalty Points”. Watch out for “Boss” cards which have much higher Penalty Points than the others.
(Some low-res examples attached at the end of the post)
Basic Gameplay
The pack is shuffled and each player is dealt 6 cards. The remainder is placed face down and become the “Draw Pile”. The person to the left of the dealer places one of his/her cards face up in a space next to the Draw Pile. That becomes the “Discard Pile”. The card face-up on top of the Discard Pile is known as the “Call Card”.
With gameplay commencing in a clockwise direction, each player, in turn, can place a card on the Discard Pile that matches either the number or suit of the Call Card. If they do not have a suitable matching card in their hand then they have to take a card from the Draw Pile (don’t let anyone else see it!)
If at any time, the Draw Pile become exhausted, then the last Call Card is left face up and the remainder turned face down to make a new Draw Pile (without shuffling!)
Gameplay continues until one person has managed to get rid of all their cards. That ends the round. At the end of the round, the numbers on the cards are added up to see how many Penalty Points each player with remaining cards has obtained. All cards are shuffled and the next round can be started, with players being dealt new cards and a new Draw Pile being made.
A game can consist of an agreed fixed number of rounds or, alternatively, players can be “out” if they have accumulated a fixed number of penalty points (say, 300.)
But there’s more to it than that…