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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It's a work in progress. I'd appreciate some good ideas, for those who pop by this, for reducing the ruleset without reducing it's emphasis on backstabbery and strategic thinking. This is as far as I've gotten this first night, and I'll be back soon to put some more work into the set. I've got plenty more ideas, but typing them in is something I'm going to have to do in a bit later, once I get the balance straight in my head.
This is a hybrid Nomic deck based on the book "The Raw Shark Texts" where you attempt to kill off your friends by making them fodder for the Ludovician Memory Shark. It contains some things that are elements from the book 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.
While the game may seem rules-heavy, the majority of the rules are designed to govern the behavior of the Ludovician itself. For the safest possible gaming, please put one dictaphone at each corner of the playing surface.
Playing the Game
First of all, stay calm.
Requirements
This game uses two decks, the Standard deck down below 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
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 Conceptual Sharks
The following Special Rules, as well as the Ludovician and Dead Space cards, are the only elements that cannot be altered by Nomic/Creative Dvorak blank card rules.
The Ludovician
The Ludovician is a Memory Shark, and feeds upon Human memories. It is always played at the beginning of the game, but begins Face Down and is considered inert. It becomes active and Face Up immedietely after the first Action is played. The Ludovician's turn is always at the end of the round, before the discard phase. It must always attempt to make at least one action per round. If no player forces the Ludovician to act, it will naturally move on it's own at the end of turn order, before the discard phase. This act is an attack, and follows the rules on the card.
You must defend yourself from the Ludovician by avoiding it's predation while also attempting to coax it into attacking your opponents. 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.
However, as a Shark, it has a fairly predictable feeding pattern that governs the attack behavior. If left to it's own devices, it will seek out and attack players on its own, and so there is provided a simple list to run down and determine who is attacked.
Feeding Habits of a Conceptual Shark
If left to act on it's own, the Ludovician will attack a player based on it's own priorities. If the values of a higher priority are equal between two players, the Ludovician will discriminate between them according to the order as follows:
1: The highest Visibility rating,
2: The most Actions in that turn,
3: The least number of Dead Spaces,
4: The most recently attacked.
5: If the Ludovician has not yet attacked a player, or all Visibilities are no more than zero and no actions have been taken, the Ludovician will pass that round and go Face Down.
Visibility
As mentioned earlier, cards have numbers on them showing their total 'Visibility' rating, or the degree to which playing such a card attracts the attention of the Shark. The higher the total number of visibility for that turn the more attractive a target you become. Actions create visibilities that only last a single turn, but Things such as Memories create a constant effect. Some cards, such as Conceptual Fish, have no visibility penalty.
However, some Things allow you to disguise yourself. Several of these things exist in the Deck already, such as Dictaphone Loops, or Logic Traps. These can allow you to act covertly, without alerting the Ludovician, or to build up a defensive barricade capable of keeping the shark at bay indefinately. This would be tantamount to winning the game, if it were not for the other players interfering.
Conceptual Objects
Key to the game, even more key than the Ludovician itself, is the idea of conceptual reality. Concepts can be given concrete reality, and the Ludovician is only a conceptual shark. The real power and danger in the game is using conceptual objects or actions to alter the shared reality, and this is done in Nomic and Creative Dvorak form using the Concept deck.
The Concept deck is a stack of blank cards used for the creation of Concepts. To keep Conceptual reality seperate from actual reality, it is wise to add 'Conceptual' as a prefix, allowing you to discern between Things and Conceptual Things. Concepts can be actions, rules, things, or even other Conceptual Fish. So long as they do not interfere with the Special Rules, this deck is free to be used in Nomic and Creative Dvorak fashion.
However, all Conceptual Objects have a visibility of one, and remain visible as long as they are in play, and any card that would normally be played on nobody (such as a new game rule) must be played on themselves.
Card List
...the Cognicharius family, a species of predatory, purely conceptual fish. They are solitary, territorial and see only people, especially the ones they are hunting. 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.
...are little thought fishes that like to pick at commas and more old-fashioned letters. Fry shoals are so small they can easily slip through most defensive barriers. Aren’t big fans of the note Middle C.
...small conceptual sharks known as 'Shoal Queens,' they are powerful of conceptual predators, and prey nearly exclusively on other conceptual fish.
...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. These journeys can last hours, or even several days or months...
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.
Literally a letter bomb, a set of old iron typeface wrapped around a pipebomb mixed with shredded newsprint can create a momentary disturbance capable of killing small conceptual fish or stunning the Ludovician.
"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 that the Ludovician was not just a predator, but a divine being. These great dream fishes consumed all of the dreams, memories, events and identities of the people consumed and they would live on forever in a neverending paradise of dreams.
