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 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 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 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 Conceptual Shark that tracks prey through the streams of Human thought 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 targets of opportunity 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 a path of least resistance. 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 Thought rating,
2: The highest number of Actions in that turn,
3: The least number of Disorders,
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.
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.
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.
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.
...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. Fry shoals are so small they can easily slip through most defensive barriers. 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.
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.
