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| :''The rules to Dvorak are also available in [[Pravidlá|Slovak]] and in [[Règles|French]].''
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| :''An older version of this page is archived [[Rules/Old|here]].''
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| This is how a game of Dvorak works. You can either start with a deck of cards that somebody else has
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| made (we've got lots of them [[:Category:Decks|archived]] on this site), or you can start with a pile of blank cards and build a new deck from scratch.
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|
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| ==Basic rules==
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|
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| Dvorak is played entirely with cards, and there are just two types of card -
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| '''Things''' and '''Actions'''. When you play a Thing card, it goes onto
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| the table in front of you and stays there, usually having a useful effect
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| while it remains in play; when you play an Action card, it does whatever it
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| does and goes to a discard pile.
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|
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| <div style="padding:16px 0px">[[Image:Examplecards.gif|800px|center]]</div>
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|
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| Take the deck of cards, shuffle it, and deal five cards to each player
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| (which they hold in their hand where other players can't see). The rest
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| of the cards go in the middle of the table as a face-down draw pile, and whenever
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| a card is discarded or destroyed, it goes into a face-up discard pile.
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|
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| Starting with a random player, you take turns in order. A turn consists
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| of:-
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|
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| * Drawing the top card from the draw pile. (If the draw pile's empty, shuffle the discard pile and turn it over to make a new draw pile.)
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| * Playing up to two cards from your hand. You can play one Thing and one Action per turn (or just one of those, or no cards at all).
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| * Checking your hand size; if you have more than five cards, discard down to five.
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|
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| The game continues until somebody meets whatever victory condition the
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| deck has. (Some decks have fixed victory conditions, while others have
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| them written on a card - "when you play this card, you win
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| the game if...")
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|
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| ==Making a deck==
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|
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| If you're making a new deck from scratch, you need to prepare an initial
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| set cards before the game begins. Take your pile of blank cards, and
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| distribute it amongst the players.
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|
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| Before you start creating, decide whether you want to have a theme to
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| the game or not, and whether it needs a fixed victory condition ("if you have five pirates or ninjas in
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| play, and none of the other type, you win!") or one you can write on
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| the cards. (Advanced players might like to agree on
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| thematic rules for the deck to make the final game more coherent; such
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| as restricting the nature of what Things can and can't represent, or agreeing on
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| what variables like "number of cards in hand" represent in the game world.)
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|
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| Players can then start creating cards, writing them up (with or without
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| a picture) and throwing them into the middle of the table. To get a good sized deck, try to get nine or ten cards from everyone. A useful
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| design tip is to have two different coloured marker pens, one for Things
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| and one for Actions, and to underline the card titles appropriately.
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|
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| Each player has absolute veto power over the cards being created - if
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| you see something that you don't like, for whatever reason, pick the
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| card out and see what everyone else thinks. A card only makes it into
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| the actual game if everyone is happy with it.
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|
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| When you're done, you've got a deck of cards - you can now play a game
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| with it, as described above.
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|
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| ==Adding and changing cards==
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| You can also add new cards to the game while it's being played - again,
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| just write it up and throw it onto the table. If nobody wants to veto it,
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| it gets shuffled into the draw pile.
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|
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| If you want to remove a card from the game or just change the wording of
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| it (maybe because it's too powerful, or because it clashes ambiguously with
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| another card), then announce your intention and see what the other players think.
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| If nobody objects, then you can remove or change the card.
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|
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| ==Advanced rules==
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|
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| Over the years, the game has developed a few extra, optional rules to cover
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| the sorts of mechanics that tend to come up a lot. Some of the archived
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| decks use them, and you're welcome to adopt them yourself.
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|
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| ===Glossary===
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| A lot of the archived Dvorak decks use consistent terminology like "discard" and "destroy" - these are terms which have been adopted by consensus, and which allow cards to be written more concisely. Being able to say "opponent discards a card" instead of "a player other than you discards a card from their hand".
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| You're encouraged to make up your own jargon, but there's a [[glossary]] of the terms we tend to use on the site.
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|
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| ===Special rules===
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|
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| "Special rules" are additions to the basic game rules to give the game a
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| little more depth. Things like "each player starts with twenty hit
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| points and you're out of the game at zero", so that people can make cards that say "every player loses 5
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| hit points" or "you gain 10 hit points" without having to define what
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| hit points are on every single card.
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| If you want to add a special rule to the game, suggest it in the same
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| way as a card - if everyone's in favour, it gets added.
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|
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| ===Action abilities===
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| One of the early Dvorak decks included a Thing that said ''"Each turn, instead of playing an Action card, you may destroy a Thing."'' - the player who controlled it could skip their ability to play an Action, to get a special effect from the Thing.
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|
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| This became so widely used that a shorthand developed for it. Instead of writing "Each turn, instead of playing an Action card...", a card would just say "Action:" - whatever's after the colon is what you get to do instead of playing an Action.
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| This is called an "action ability", and still counts as an Action for the purposes any other cards that affect or react to Actions being played.
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|
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| ===Playing cards onto others===
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| If you like, you can specify that some Thing cards can be played "onto"
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| other Thing cards to give them some sort of bonus or penalty (like armour,
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| or equipment, or a brain-sucking alien). A useful rule for these is that
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| if the Thing it was played onto is destroyed or otherwise leaves play,
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| the Thing that was played onto it is destroyed.
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|
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| ===Multi-deck Dvorak===
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| Although it's possible to make a normal Dvorak deck where two different
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| 'sides' are in conflict (as in the [[Day of the Triffids deck]]), such
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| games either have to be vague (players aren't forced to pick a side, and
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| can change and mix allegiances as much as they like) or include
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| redundancy (players are forced to choose a side at the start of the
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| game, and the other side's cards are useless to them except as
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| discard-fodder).
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| A more effective way to create such a game is to have separate decks,
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| each deck focusing solely on that side.
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|
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| Multi-deck Dvorak is played in the same way as normal Dvorak, except
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| that:
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| * Each player has their own draw and discard pile.
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| * When a card is destroyed or discarded, it is sent to the discard
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| pile of the player whose deck it came from.
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| If playing creatively, new cards are created as normal, going into the
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| creator's deck by default. You can still veto other player's cards, but
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| in this case it might be more useful to resolve disputes by creating a
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| similar card for your own deck - "if you can have something that destroys
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| all my aliens, I'm going to have something that makes you discard your
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| entire hand".
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|
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| ===CCG Dvorak===
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| The Dvorak framework has been used to make a few fledgling
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| [[:Category:CCG sets|collectible card games]] - these typically have a lot of
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| special rules, and involve the group creation of a single, agreed card pool
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| from which players can build their own custom decks.
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| [[Category:Rules]]
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