User talk:LouisB3/Roman Politics Variant

Rules

I cobbled together the following simple introduction to Dvorak and the Roman Politics deck for my parents - middle-aged Midwesterners who don't need their blood pressure aggravated by poorly-explained card games.

Dvorak

Dvorak is played entirely with cards, and there are just two types of card - Things and Actions. When you play a Thing card, it goes onto the table in front of you and stays there, usually having a useful effect while it remains in play; when you play an Action card, it does whatever it does and goes to a discard pile.

Take the deck of cards, shuffle it, and deal five cards to each player (which they hold in their hand where other players can't see). The rest of the cards go in the middle of the table as a face-down draw pile, and whenever a card is discarded or destroyed, it goes into a face-up discard pile.

Starting with a random player, you take turns in order. A turn consists of:

• 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.)

• 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).

• Checking your hand size; if you have more than five cards, discard down to five.

The game continues until somebody meets the deck's victory condition.

Roman Politics

"Epic political manoeuvreings as players struggle to replace the Emperor through military might, backstabbing, appeasing the proles, and the rest."

The object is to defeat the other players in your common goal of becoming the next Emperor of Rome. The game ends when the "The Emperor is Dead, Long Live the Emperor" card is played. When that occurs, the winning player is whoever has earned the greatest of these titles (listed in descending order):

• Rome's Greatest General. To become Rome's Greatest General, you must play the Triumph card. It requires that you control two Campaigns, each of which must have two Armies and two Victories.

• The Emperor's Heir. To become the Emperor's Heir, you must play the Declaration of Adoption card. It requires that you control five Emperor's Favours.

• The Senate's Choice. To become the Senate's Choice, you must play the Declaration of Favour card. It requires that you control three Corrupt Senators.

• The People's Choice. To become the People's Choice, you must play the Public Demonstration card. It requires that you have three of either Public Works or Bread & Circuses, and at least one of each.

If more than one player earns a title, it belongs only to the player who most recently earned it.

Note: if a Thing's description includes the word "Action: ", then you can perform the action listed there in the place of playing an Action card for your turn.