Ludovician deck
| Ludovician deck | |
|---|---|
| Designer | Quietly Confident |
| Date | 25/07/2007 |
| Players | 3+ |
| This deck has not been categorised. | |
| To play Dvorak: Draw five cards each and leave the rest as a draw pile. On your turn, draw a card from the draw pile and play one Thing and/or one Action. (See the full rules.) | |
 Print this deck | |
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This is a deck based on the book "The Raw Shark Texts"[1] by Steven Hall, and featuring book's creepy Ludovician Memory Shark. The special feature of this deck are the Conceptual Fish, especially the Ludovician, which are things that operate by their own rules and can either be a boon or huge problem, depending on the rules currently in play. It contains some things that are elements from the novel but should not be considered spoilers. You don't need to have read the book before playing the game, and if it helps, rename the Ludovician to a Snark or a Beast or something to make it easier to conceptualize.
At first glance, there seems to be a lot of rules. Most of these are just to govern the fish behavior, the game is really quite simple, far more simple than the Timecube deck. For the safest possible gaming, please put one dictaphone at each corner of the playing surface.
Playing the Game
First things first, stay calm.
Requirements
This game uses three decks, the Standard deck down below with the black Disorder cards seperated, and an additional Blank Card deck, which can also be just strips of notebook paper, pages of a legal pad, or whatever you choose. The Standard deck covers the basic rules of the game. The Blank Card deck governs Concepts, which are the reality-altering stuff responsible for Conceptual Sharks in the first place.
Concept Deck
Like normal Creative Dvorak games, these cards can be anything, and are written mid-play. Within Ludovician, these are called Concepts, and are different from real Things and Actions. They are Conceptual Things and Conceptual Actions. Aside from a few special rules pertaining to Concepts, they play the same way, and add extra flavor to the game. That's all!
The only other thing you need to know is how to make the Ludovician behave. Like any angry monster, it wants to eat someone, and it doesn't care who. It does have a pattern though, and the rules below detail how to model that behavior. No Concepts can alter the Ludovician's behavior though. Aside from that, knock yourself out. And stay out of the water.
Winning the Game
If your hand is empty, or filled with nothing but Disorder cards, you are eliminated. Eliminating all the other players in any method will win you the game. The Ludovician will help with this.
You can also win the game Nomically by writing your own victory scenario out of Concepts. This is not out of the spirit of the game, and should not be considered cheating.
Lastly, there is a special rule card that allows you to change the rules and win the game. This is intended as a concept card to inspire creative Concept use, not as a real strategy for victory. If you so choose, though, feel free to attempt it. The Ludovician will help with this one too.
Cryptozoology of Purely Conceptual Sharks
The following Special Cards, such as Conceputal Fish, Ludovician and Dead Space cards, have their own behaviors which are subject to the rules in play.
The Ludovician
The Ludovician is a Conceptual Shark that tracks prey through the streams of Human thought and feeds upon Human memories, causing mental illness and death. It is always played at the beginning of the game, but begins Face Down in the center of the table and is considered inert. There are several cards that directly effect the Ludovician's behavior, and Concepts can be used to change the rules of the game in such a manner that it turns on your foes.
The Ludovician is a predator, and while it is active, it aggressively seeks out humans to devour memories from. When a card dictates the Ludovician take an Action or be played onto a Memory, it becomes active, and follows the Feeding Habits as detailed below. When the Ludovician leaves play, return it to the center and turn it face down again.
Feeding Habits of a Conceptual Shark
A short set of basic behaviors define the way the Ludovician behaves once it has entered play. The Owner is the player in whose hand or Things pile the Ludovician currently resides. The Ludovician's action takes place at the end of the Owner's turn, giving them some time to attempt to shake it loose. When you are finished, or pass, the Ludovician performs one of these actions, listed from first to last in order of priority.
1: IF Owner has a Thing in play, THEN discard one Thing of your choice. Or,
2: IF Owner has a Memory in play, THEN discard one Memory of your choice. Or,
3: IF Owner has a Disassocative Disorder in play, THEN pass Ludovician card Clockwise to next player. Or,
4: IF Owner has no Memories in play, THEN draw a Disassociative Disorder. Or,
5: IF Ludovician can take no action THEN it leaves play and goes inert.
Thought Streams
As mentioned earlier, cards have numbers on them showing their total 'Thought' rating, or the degree to which playing such a card opens a stream of thought for it to attack you through. The higher the total number of Thought for that turn, the more attractive a target you become. A card must be in play for it to count towards your total. Thought generated from Actions fade after one turn, but not before the Ludovician can take notice. Some actions, such as playing a Conceptual Fish card, cause no Thought increase.
Some cards have a Negative Thought listed, which masks your current Thought rating equal to that number. A Negative or Zero Thought rating does not make you immune to the Ludovician's predation if your foes coax it, but it will make you far less likely to be naturally attacked.
Disassociative Disorders
The symptoms of a Ludovician feeding survivor are clinical mental illness relating to memory loss and trauma known as Disassociative Disorders. They are represented as Cards that consume a space of your hand and provide no value whatsoever. If you are fed upon many times, your hand will fill with Dead Spaces and other Disorders and you will be eliminated. Playing a Disorder card will remove it, but only if you satisfy the specific situations and pay the heavy cost. This is intended to replace an artificial hitpoint value and allow for strategic play.
Fish, Disorders, Things, Memories, and Actions
There's quite a few card types. For reference, everything besides the Disorder cards in black go into the Standard Deck pile. The Concept deck is just blank cards, or any other paper. The Disorder Deck pile is full of copies of the Disorder cards, and nothing but. You may need to make several copies of them to have enough, though it is generally advisable not to make it a habit of playing while highly Disordered.
Card List
...the Cognicharius family, a species of predatory, purely conceptual fish. It eats memories and is the biggest and most aggressive of the conceptual animals.
...is a primitive conceptual fish. It lives inside humans and feeds on their ability to think quickly; parasite of a kind that ensures its host is quiet and well-behaved. Causes nausea.
...dangerous in large schools, deconstructive pihrana attack human ideas, and chip away at meanings and definitions. A once obvious truth can become confused, stripped of all relevence or objectivity.
...small conceptual sharks known as 'Shoal Queens,' they are powerful of conceptual predators, and prey nearly exclusively on other conceptual fish.
...are little thought fishes that like to pick at commas and more old-fashioned letters. Aren’t big fans of the note Middle C.
...formerly Psychogenic Amnesia, is a pervasive loss of significant personal information. This disorder is characterized by a blocking out of critical personal information. Dissociative amnesia does not result from other medical trauma, such as a blow to the head....
...is a rare disorder. An individual with dissociative fugue suddenly and unexpectedly takes physical leave of his surroundings and sets off on a journey of some kind...
...a mental condition whereby a single individual evidences two or more distinct identities or personalities, each with its own pattern of perceiving...
...periods of detachment from self or surrounding which may be experienced as unreal, while retaining awareness that this is only a feeling and not a reality....
Un-Space is the greatest refuge from conceptual life. It is the empty abandoned area of the world. The corridors behind the shops in malls, storeroomes, dark tunnels, passageways, fire escapes, stairwells, elevators, old boarded up houses.
The most effective conceptual camouflage is the non-divergent conceptual loop, played back through four dicataphones.
Fiction or Non-Fiction work equally as well. Be sure not to open any live texts outside of a Circular Pile of Books.
Letters from people you don't know, ideally addressed to other people you don't know, and left unopened. A light masking defense, inadequate at close range.
Mimicing another person's thoughts, responses, jokes and prejudices allows you to hide yourself in the mind of another person. While only of temporary good, it is wise to have several alternate identities.
A literal weapon as well as conceptual camouflage, a letter bomb is an explosive wrapped in iron typeface and old newsprint.
"I wanted to say, 'No really,' and explain how Ian really wasn't a getting-to-know-you type of cat or even a casual-hello type of cat, more a sort of whirlwind made out of blades."
Myth: Ancient Native Americans believed the Ludovician to be a great dream fish, and that all of the dreams, memories, events and identities of the people consumed would live on forever as part of it.
Conversions
One of the cleverest things to do is convert the ruleset to something your friends might know better. Cthulhu, for example, works well. Change the Ludovician to an Elder Horror, memories to Dark Knowledge, and try to avoid encountering evil enough times to go insane and lose the game. Any sort of Survival Horror game works, even a Zombie Horde game. Use the Things I've provided, but rename them to Flaming Barricades or Moats and try to hold out against the Zombie hordes while steering your cross-town rivals into them.
You can also play this, or any Conversion of the game teamplay if you want. Use your cards to save friends from evil, and work together to deflect the horrors back at your opponents. Change Memories into 'Survivors' or 'Soldiers' or even 'Bullets' if you want.
