if KoG has no fans that means i am no more on the earth

I saw this video about Perfect Draw! and it made me think of King of Games (my beloved). Below is mostly stealing from the former and simping for the latter. (obv I'm not FifthDragon so consider none of this as canon)

Each turn, you may do each of the following, in any order:

• Draw from the Kingdom of Duelists. (see below)
• Summon a monster from hand. (Higher level monsters require sacrifices.)
• Attack with a monster or relic weapon you wield.
• Make a Maneuver. Anything that isn't a draw, summon, or attack, including movement, complex tactics, laying traps and casting spells.
• Certain classes get special maneuvers: the Duelist can attack a second time; the Cheat can draw a second card; and the Storyteller can summon a warrior spirit directly from the KoD.

The Kingdom of Duelists (omeyocan, lit. duality place) is the very same realm which the gods drew from to play the first game. Drawing from the KoD produces a random card from thin air. There are four ways to shape one's draw:

• The gods, being divine, always draw the exact cards they need. Those who approach divinity are those who draw favorably, and vice versa.
• One's fate can guide one's hand to draw. When you draw, you may choose to draw from a smaller list defined by your birth sign. The list differs if you are right- or left-handed. (column/row on the big table)
• All cards have two faces, the separation of which allows one to draw from the KoD. Most duelists can only draw either chthonic faces or celestial faces (short kings are the former, lanky lords are the latter). Mirror-breakers draw both faces at once, such that the card can be played as either face.
• All great duelists have a place in the KoD. This is your palace, and it holds the four cards which make up your soul. These are designed in conversation with the gm, are unique to you, and share a common theme. You can draw a random card from your palace, but it costs 2000LP (you've just removed a quarter of your soul).

(I can't replicate the prose of the other KoG classes so i wont even tryyyyy)

THE CHEAT
+1 SKILL and +1 Free Maneuver per Template
A: Pot of Greed, Hungry Grave, Cheat
B: Ante, Hands Full of Fangs
C: Narrow Escape
D: Devour

A: Pot of Greed
You may draw an additional card as a maneuver.

A: Hungry Grave
Whenever you sacrifice or discard a monster, note its name. Each monster you summon has +100ATK and +100DEF for each time you've noted its name this way.

A: Cheat
As long as you are unseen to opponents, spectators, and gods alike, you can get away with up to [templates] free maneuvers per round. You can take these on other players' turns, and you can't be challenged or punished for it.

You can't cheat if your opponent is a Storyteller.

B: Ante
As one of your free actions, you may pay 2000LP to replace an opponent's draw with a random card from your palace. If they win the duel, they get to keep the card. If you win the duel, the card returns, and you may ask [templates] questions about that opponent and/or their fate.

B: Hands Full of Fangs
You may treat your bare hands as relic weapons with ATK equal to the number of cards in your hand times 500.

C: Narrow Escape
Once per Season, if you would lose a duel and/or die, you may choose to barely survive instead. Whatever story you come up with to explain how you survived is 100% valid, even if it's complete horseshit.

You can't cheat death if your opponent is a Storyteller.

D: Devour
You can eat a card in your hand to permanently remove it from the game. It disappears from all spell lists, never to return.

 

booster pack :^0

Card Name (Card Type) Effect

1. Auto-Atlatl (Relic Weapon) Rains spears on foes. Can attack all opponents at once without taking damage back.
2. Frozen Warrior (Monster - Warrior) A colossal eagle warrior with stone skin. Shackled by ice, it can neither attack nor defend.
3. Tlatlatepetl (World Transposition) The battle now takes place at the foot of an ever-erupting volcano. Hazards: Choking ash and lava flows. Treasures: The Old Man's Pipe. (Shapes smoke into dreams.)
4. Change Tactics (Battle Magic) All monsters change from attack mode to defense mode, from defense mode to craft mode, and so on in order. (attack → defense → craft → secret → attack)
5. Great Migration (Ritual) Banish a dinosaur for 1 round. When it returns, draw and play a world transposition card.
6. Pale Invader (Monster - Alien) Its powerful ray gun hijacks simple machines to nefarious ends.
7. Flood (Ritual) Summon all water-aligned monsters from each player's hand.
8. Many Color Venom (Blessing) Poison a relic weapon.
9. Guardian of the Pearl Manor (Monster - Cat) Demands sacrifice. When Guardian of the Pearl House is defeated, draw a card of your choice from your palace without paying LP.
10. Black Earth's Jaws (Trap) Destroy all flightless monsters.
11. Calendar King (Monster - Wizard) A weak monster who sends monsters of the future to the past, and vice versa.
12. House of Darts (Trap) Summon two warrior spirits to intercept an attack.

Dueling is a sacred act, echoing the motions of the first game and the forms of the oldest gods. Thus, a duelist has religious and spiritual obligations in addition to sponsorial ones.

1. To never duel without wager. The Kingdom of Duelists opens only for the promise of sacrifice.
• ...and opens wider for greater sacrifice. The higher your wager, the more cards you start with in hand and the stronger cards you have access to. You can also raise your wager mid-duel to draw more cards.
• The lowest wager is a season of worship-labor (or monetary equivalent: hiring out one's temple duties is common practice amongst the lordships).
• The highest wager is one or more pieces of yourself: a card from your palace, body part, or member of your family.
• Part of each wager is sacrificed to the gods. The rest belongs to the victor.
2. To duel on holy days. These are public affairs necessary to the maintenance of the natural order.
• It is considered best practice for duels to be very personal, which is why every temple encourages aggression, abrasive personalities, and homoerotic rivalries among their duelists.
3. To be visible. Duelists are forbidden from dressing subtly, and must be recognizable on sight from their costumes and headdresses.
4. To maintain (and improve) one's palace.

You can add cards to, improve, and otherwise bling out your soul-palace in a variety of ways. (It's a prerequisite to join certain dueling societies.) Here's four:

• Win cards wagered by other players and graft them onto your soul.
• Transform cards by fusing, flipping, evolving, time-displacing, transitioning, reflecting, mutating, melting, or otherwise changing a card into another version of itself. When that card returns to your palace at duel's end, you may reject or embrace its new form.
• Refine cards with obscene quantities of gold. The Preceptorate knows the alchemical secrets to gilding the soul (resulting in strictly-albeit-marginally better cards).
• Eat cards from your own palace. They're gone for good, your soul forever diminished.

These methods are considered evil, gay, posh, and inhuman respectively. You can hack most of them together yourself with the right blend of drugs and meditation.

it is said that without a soul to cling to, one may swim freely thru the Kingdom of Duelists.
it is known that those without a soul are burned by the sun, and speak only in savagery.

\o/ \o/ \o/ praise the calendar king \o/ \o/ \o/

What are you wearing?

Armor is not very fashionable. (1DR; -1 to Reaction rolls) The refined adventurer has other options.

1. Mourning Black - A particular shade for particular occasions. Grief is unavoidable when swaddled in mourning black. All the folk of House Devinsen are required to wear this color in public.
2. Ensign's Coat - Signed by the Queen herself. No sacred place or disputed territory is off-limits to you.
3. Top Hat & Tux - +1 extra pocket for each magic trick you know how to do (max +8).
4. Sensible Swimwear - The bold striped pattern makes it harder for predators to pick a target out of the beachgoing herd.
5. Savage Mink - In your dreams, this warm winter wear is replaced by a 7' carnivorous mustelid.
6. Mothwing Cloak - Unlocks the air dash ability.
7. Living Floral - Sprawled across the head, chest, and shoulders. Requires daily water and sunlight to maintain its color and aroma.
8. Gothic Dress - Dark, lacey symbol of the Gotlandic warrior. Terrifies Catholics.
9. Coat of Honors - Military badge mosaic. You can carry (decorative!!!) arms without ruffling any feathers.
10. Cage Crinoline - Metal support for a wide dome skirt. Can, in a pinch, trap a creature no stronger than a cat. 
11. Cold Crinoline - As above, except it keeps the temperature of any item stored within, and you have to wear long underwear.
12. Cottagecore Bullshit - Fools the upper and middle class into thinking you are lower class. Doesn't fool anyone else.
13. Cuirasse-douce - Appears to be armor; is in fact made of beautifully embroidered cloth. In your dreams, the armor is real.
14. Squirreler's Sleeves - Four secret (unsearchable) pockets, tucked into folds and frippery.
15. Graduate's Blazer - From Tobias Walnut's School for Sharp-Faced Boys. Alumni are honorbound to assist one another. (Their motto translates to No lad left behind.)
16. Blood Red Ruff - Antiquated accessory. Puts one in mind of zinnia in bloom. Unfolds into 45' of crimson fabric if you're willing to ruin the outfit.
17. Inverness Cape - Weatherproof, waterproof, acidproof, bloodproof. Has a dedicated pipe pocket.
18. Patterned Shawl - As invisibility cloak in rose gardens.
19. Academy Waistcoat - The armor of the skeptic. (Ghosts avoid intellectuals if they can help it.)
20. Ancient Robes - A cultural artifact no less than 300 years old, tailored to fit modern sensibilities. Its origin is mysterious, not for lack of historical context, but because the tailor didn't give a hoot.

Additional Accessories

1. Midnight Sleeves - Shoulder-to-wrist tattoos of the night sky. A useful astrological reference. 
2. Amber Brooch - Some primordial creature is suspended within.
3. Original MacHotep - A painting folded in the Eastern style into a priceless piece of headwear. Popular with art collectors but not artists. 
4. Ticking Timepiece - Has hands for days, months, years, and centuries. Very heavy.
5. Chastity Belt - +2 Save to resist temptation. May manifest mild Ψonic abilities.
6. Pants - Only men wear pants. Thus, anyone wearing pants is a man.
7. Big Wig - Fashionable to foreigners, vain to locals.
8. Liquid Lead - For coloring nails, lashes, and lips.

clan-as-individual-as-class-as-npc

You meet a young Celd on the road, scouting ahead of her clan. She introduces herself as Shan, and says that it was she who built Giant Finger Castle (exactly what it sounds like) together with her brother.

Reasonably suspicious (quite an old castle, that), you ask for her brother's name. She says her brother's name is Hong, and that although he is an effeminate lout, they fought side by side against the giants a few hundred years ago. She then adds that her brother's name is Cairenn, and he is twenty-three and quite handsome if you are interested?

She's not a compulsive liar; you've actually met a remarkably honest Celd! Her name is Dara ap Shan. Her brother is Cairenn ap Shan; Shan and Hong are clan names, passed down from folkloric ancestors. She is not, in fact, 600+ years old-- she's 22. You breathe a sigh of relief. Everything makes sense again.

You and your friends assess the situation and decide to rob her blind. Then she breaks every bone in your arm. 

* * *

 

Celdic heroclans are seminomadic communities of ~60 (30 adults and 30 children) that are simultaneously a singular folkloric hero, specifically an ancestor who survived the end of the world.

The heroclan is both communal and individual, practical and exalted, at once eking out a living and seeking adventure in the treacherous hintercity.

In the Celdic perspective, this is a form of immortality earned by the City's surviving vanguard. They have earned the right to walk its roads and sample its hunting grounds forever, to see their lineage extend into eternity.

Talking to a Heroclan

For the most part, treat heroclans as rival adventurers. They take a single turn in combat, and speak as a single entity when conversing with outsiders. They tend to travel with eclectic bands of hangers-on and tamed beasts, much like player characters do. (the best way to make a heroclan is to play a solo rpg and see what comes out)

Heroclan duality is context-sensitive: the Celd who is actively representing their clan is their clan, and the clan is the hero, so the Celd is the hero in that context.

A heroclan is not a hivemind. The members are individuals, capable of keeping secrets, forgetting things, getting sick or injured or falling in love, etc. on their own. They can fail to live up to their ancestors. They can forget their roots.

[digression: Clanhood is not a performance, but it does have performative elements. The ancestors are passed down thru storytelling tradition; in Shan's case, this is a 14'x24' quilt that depicts his many exploits. He has a definite character in these stories, and leaning into that helps lubricate inter-clan relations-- the Hongs would be very upset if they met up with Shan and found him lacking in courage.]

Being a Heroclan

Heroclans are exogamous, and maintain long-standing relationships with their fellows for marriage and trade.

When many clans come together to accomplish a common goal, it's called a tribe (basically an adventuring party of folkloric heroes, as well as a big and very messy intermingling of Celds).

Heroclans are living, breathing identities: marrying into one makes you part of it, marrying out takes you out of it; they can split in two opposed halves, or fuse with neighbors; they can die, if forgotten.

[digression 2: disrupted oral traditions and demographic collapse can also kill them. Starvation is especially lethal-- as much as they function on storybook logic, heroclans are still subject to the offscreen material reality of being ~60 people]

(Heroclans also have a class, and gain xp collectively, see below)

They can be hunter-gatherers, nomadic pastoralists, and sometimes stationary agriculturalists. If it comes up, there are 1d4-1 births and as many deaths per year.

 

All of the above is set dressing to justify this generator. It began as a jscript that built interconnected clans of 60+ named npcs (ripping off archon's navigators completely) with extensive family trees, but it had no sauce. So I returned to my favorite mechanic: treating abstract concepts as people. 

24 Sun Gods

There are 24 sun gods; 24 emperors who ring in the day and lay down the night; 24 great and terrible Hours, who rule the 24 sects of humanity.

There are 24 suns, and they are all at war.

[sidebar: the names of the 24 evil wizards below are stolen from the real world cultures which (very loosely) inspired them. If you take any part of this post for your own games, I suggest renaming them- I'm just riffing on a tumblr post]

1 - Tagaloa
Light has weight, and Tagaloa is the scale. Those who earn his ire float off into the sky, or are smashed flat by the weight of their own skulls. He's got a lot of tricks up his sleeves; currently, he's working on time travel. He will be 16 in December.

He is orbited by twin moons of his own creation. The shadow of one blinds the eye, the other blinds the soul. He hasn't experienced guilt in a decade.

His desires are those of a teenage sociopath.

 

2 - Kāne
Light is life, and Kāne is the life-bringer. He raises angels out of mud and turns deserts into lush jungles. Nothing can die under his watchful eye, so butchers work in the dark.

War was once a nighttime activity in the kingdom of the living. Kāne was so distraught by this that he refused to leave the sky. To his dismay, this has not banished violence from his kingdom, only made it more horrific: an endless, deathless war rages in the heart of Polynesia.

He desires an end to all suffering.

3 - Malina
Light is justice, and Malina is the judge. At night, with a fistful of ash, she marks the guilty for death; in the morning, the touch of sunlight annihilates all who bear her mark. This is where vampires come from.

Her throne on Novarupta has been exploding non-stop for the last hundred years, raining volcanic ash on everyone in a 100 mile radius. She has given up on her people. All are guilty. All are consigned to the night.

She desires solitude. To this end, she orchestrates extinction.

One Hundred Languages

click to view full size

Ceci est un linguistic hexmap. Connections are in yellow, language barriers (heh) are in red.

I made it by running a picture of shiny fabric thru a crystallize filter, dropping a hexmap on it, and working outwards from my first handful of ideas (tonal bird latin/atonal chinese/nahuatl c++)

There are roughly 7000 languages spoken worldwide irl-- only 69 more of these and I'll finally have a fleshed out setting.

How to Use it

• decide how much vocabulary overlap there is between any two characters
• (I'm particularly proud of the word categories approach to shared vocabulary above, like "logistics" and "emotion". If I were smarter I'd just post a d100 list of those)
• maybe local (cheap) translators only bridge the yellow connections, and all other translation services are rare and expensive.
• maybe learning new languages takes more time based on the distance between them on the map?
• as a scaffold for a linguistic archaeology game, where the goal is to reassemble this map for college credit
• as a worldbuilding prompt, i guess

okay, but why tho?

If you aren't a dedicated conlanger, languages (in ttrpgs) have two gameable components:

• 1-3 vocab words
• relative positioning to adjacent languages

The first is immersive: say fasoy to a bartender for a hard drink, say maigen to an mermaid to make a friend. It also gives you (pl.) a sound library to riff on. (Does this language sound like GWAGWAGWA or skisisisis?)

The second is a measure of immediate interpretability. Can you communicate with these goblins if you don't speak goblin? If you only speak American English, how well can you get by in Italy? In Japan?

Consider this an incomplete experiment in maximalist language gaming. The important part is it was fun to make, and it looks pretty.

6 Axis Alignment (Class: Paladin)

石 子

The holy warrior is chiaroscuro. The higher the contrast, the sharper the cut.

Choose two of the following gods. You're an agent of their ongoing spiritual conflict.

• ULULU, god of fear, silence, and the ocean. 
• OHOHO, god of speech, darkness, and the sky.
• Ululu hoards secrets. Ohoho speaks truths. (They are the wise twins.) 
• ATATA, god of crafts, fire, and the sun.
• Ululu snuffs out flame. Atata boils the sea. (They are the cruel winds.)
• Ohoho hunts by night. Atata hunts by day. (They are the proud hunters.)
• EKEKE, god of love, life, and the earth.
• Ululu rules by fear. Ekeke gathers admirers. (They are the first queens.)
• Ohoho flies. Ekeke crawls on all fours. (They are a comedy duo.)
• Atata works metal. Ekeke shuns tool use. (They are humanity's creators.)

[...so a Cruel Winds Paladin may be called to act when the dry season is particularly harsh, or appear in the days preceding a typhoon.]

Alignment

The gods reward mortals aligned with them in each conflict. One aligns oneself with a god by:

1. Carrying only items that share a letter with their name. (ex. a SWORD for OHOHO)
2. Carrying no items that share a letter with their enemy's name.
3. Saying only sentences that contain a letter in their name.
4. Saying no sentences that contain a letter in their enemy's name.

[...so a Cruel Winds Paladin of Atata can carry a spear but not a javelin, and say "greetings" but not "hello".]

 

While aligned, you have the upper hand against foes of the opposite alignment. [...so a Cruel Winds Paladin of Atata strikes true against creatures aligned with river and sea.] 

If you fall out of alignment, lose your powers until you pray (10min). If it was an honest mistake, you may simply be forgiven.

If you're judged disrespectful (or if they're in a bad mood) you lose your powers until you make a large and appropriate sacrifice: a white cow for Ekeke-comedy, a useful tool for Atata-creator. Also, you can't benefit from armor or cover until you're back in their good graces.

Dual Wielding

You can align yourself with both sides of a conflict by:

1. Carrying exactly as many items aligned with one side as the other (but no items aligned with both). Each weapon only strikes true against foes of the opposite alignment. 
2. Speaking in exactly as many words aligned with one side as the other (but no words aligned with both).

[...so a Balanced Cruel Winds Paladin can carry a dagger and a shield, but not a javelin. Furthermore, if they lose either item, they must throw away the other or lose their balance and fall out of alignment.]

 

 

With careful maneuvering, you can balance all 6 conflicts and wield all 12 powers. 

Powers

ULULU-WISE - Only those you allow to hear you can hear you. To everyone else, you sound like moving water: trickling, splashing, rushing. You are invisible in the rain.

OHOHO-WISE - You can double-speak, saying one thing to one person while another hears something entirely different. In the event you are disarmed, your tongue is literally sharp, silver, and snake-like.

ULULU-WIND - You can grumble like approaching floodwaters, which causes animals to panic. If it is raining, you can summon a torrential rainstorm.

ATATA-WIND - You can breathe fire, simple as. This burns your tongue such that you speak with a lisp.

OHOHO-HUNTER - You can fill a fancy outfit with shadows to make a servant, like those creepy guys from howls moving castle

ATATA-HUNTER - You can combine flame and metal in equal parts to make gold.

ULULU-QUEEN - You obliterate the dead, banishing ghosts, terrifying ghouls, and quieting graveyards.

EKEKE-QUEEN - You can convince any dumb animal to do any simple task. If someone would dislike you, they instead like you too much, to an equally troublesome extent.

OHOHO-COMEDY - You treat capes and gowns as wings, allowing you to glide. You can also talk to birds, but they are rarely helpful.

EKEKE-COMEDY - You can eat rocks like apples and plant the seeds; they'll grow into boulders, then hills, then mountains.

ATATA-CREATOR - You can breathe life into any man-made object older than a hundred years old. It can speak and hop around Beauty and the Beast-style.

EKEKE-CREATOR - Your bare hands and feet are hard as iron and insensate. You are immune to knives.

There are no system neutral rangers

Anyway, here's a system neutral ranger:

• Whenever you go someplace new, its name appears in the dark souls map font. If there is no name, you get to name it, and the gm must retroactively justify the name. (So if the name is valley of gold, perhaps the inhabitants wear lots of gold, or perhaps the valley is simply full of golden flowers.)
• You can speak to places as if they were people. They can answer questions about destroyed landmarks, people who used to live here, and the events of yesterday.
• Forests, old manors, sewer systems: places, like people, have desires. You can learn these by asking. If you fulfill a place's desire, it becomes friendly to you: you never get lost, and always have the home turf advantage.
• In every place, there is a keystone: a person or object holding everything together. (Removing it causes famine, collapse, etc.) You know where to find it. If it's missing, you can give up your character to become a keystone.

[note: there's enough abilities to spread into ABCD templates, but they're not so potent that they can't all fit on a single class in a level-less system]

[also note: this still falls into the third major pitfall of ranger classes, where having 2+ rangers in the party is completely redundant]

[also also note: the personification of places is an abstraction of a ranger's skill at navigating, tracking, and knowing things others don't. No genius loci or nature spirits are required in-setting for these abilities to function]

Here's some locations with the extra bits this class suggests you should have:

• Ono Woods. Wants: The last two bears in the forest to fall in love. Keystone: Not the tallest, but the widest oak. If it's felled, no one will be able to hunt here ever again.
• New Laguarat. Wants: A messiah elected into office. Keystone: The real estate bubble.
• Station 16. Wants: The destruction of the late doctor's research reports. Keystone: The backup generator, which runs life support. 

the Spiceomancy Trading Card Game

This is a productivity game, for when you need a little extra motivation. 

When you complete a task, or a series of tasks, open a booster pack by clicking the button below. Then, save the images to a folder. The more tasks you complete, the more your collection will grow.

Treat these images as physical cards. If you get a second copy of a card, keep both. If you trade cards with a friend, delete your card as you download theirs.

Optional Rule: Bonus Packs If you have three copies of the same card, you can trade them in for another pack. If you have a set of three cards that share a theme (size, color, fungi, etc.), you can trade them in for another pack.

Optional Rule: Rare Cards You can trade in a rare card for another pack, with the caveat that you can only keep the cards that share a theme with the traded rare.

Optional Rule: Big Spender You can give $5 to a charitable cause for another pack. (Here's one.)

For the collectors, there are currently 22 28 common cards, 11 20 uncommon, and 8 13 rare, not including foils.

For the powergamers, please post your decklists below. The meta currently favors Chomik Combo, but the next expansion will probably shake things up.

Update: Oct 3, 2025 - Added 20 new cards to fill out the higher rarities, plus an additional 26(!!!!) submitted by guest artists Morgan Miller, Thorø Murphy, Locheil/Nothic's Eye, VikugnaVikugna, and Archon! These will appear in regular boosters, as well as in the new guest artist packs, for those of you after that chase foil Cool Ant.