This was something I was working on a while ago. It's a solitaire game that' more in line with a German, designer game philosophy than an abstract card game (well, at least that's what I think). Darkehorse brought it up recently, but I forgot the rules; but I've had a relapse! I think.....
Anyway, I present to you....
Dark and Stormy Night
A Solitaire Game
Object: Help the investigative team out by increasing their knowledge of what the Dark is to defeat it. However, you must be careful, as too much knowledge of one type too fast can cause them to move further towards The Dark.
SetUp:
You need two different types of tokens.
There are four characters. Each character has a character sheet with which to place tokens on, and a pawn. Each character is related to two suits of a standard deck of cards. Each character has 7 “slots” for one suit, and 4 slots for the other one. During the game, players will add Knowledge Tokens (KT) to each of these slots. At the end of each round, a character can exchange 3 KT for a “Battle Token” (BT). BT’s are used when the character encounters The Dark. Above each character sheet is enough space to place a card.
For lack of better names:
Abigail: 7 Heart Slots, 4 Spade Slots.
Bruce: 7 Club Slots, 4 Diamond Slots
Carrie: 7 Spade Slots, 4 Club Slots
Donnie: 7 Diamond Slots, 4 Heart Slots.
The board consists of a large clock face. The Dark pawn starts at 12, the four character pawns start at One. Below the clock is an area for BT for the Dark. Near the board will be a discard pile.
There is a deck of cards made up of two sets of standard cards A,2,3,4 of the four suits, plus 2 joker2. (32 cards + 2 jokers).
How To Play:
At the beginning of a round, shuffle all cards into the deck.
Card Play:
A round consists of drawing cards off the top of the deck and playing that card either in the discard pile, or on a character sheet. Only one card can be played on a character sheet per round, and the card that is played on a character MUST be one of the two suits associated with that character (you can only play a heart or spade on Abigail). The first joker can be played on any character as a zero card or discarded.
Card Play ends when the second Joker is drawn, or when all living characters have a card with them.
Update The Dark BT:
The player must add up the value of each card in the discard pile (joker is a 0).
Add BT to the Dark on the board equal to the total value of the discard pile.
On each character, in any order, the player must do the following:
Update KT:
On each character, add KT to the appropriate slots based on the card that was played. Example: a 3 of Spades was played on Carrie; add 3 KT to her spade slots. A Joker played on a character adds nothing.
Aces count as 1 KT.
If a character goes over the limit of slots, the character moves one step on the clock, clockwise, towards 12 for each KT over the limit. When moving pawns, only one character can be on a number space (except for the 1) at a time. So if a character finishes moving on a space as another character, the moving character needs to be bumped forward one space “for free.” If a character lands on the space with the Dark, they battle.
(See Battle The Dark)
Dead characters sheets are removed from the game.
Update BT:
A player may turn in, from their character sheet, 2 of one suit of KT and 1 of the other suit of KT for one BT. Each character may do this as many times as they can pay on a turn.
Move the Dark:
If the Dark has had a battle with a character or has 50 BT, IT HAS BEEN AWAKENED!!! If this is the case, the Dark moves one space Counter-Clockwise towards the characters. If it lands on a space with a character, a Battle begins.
Battle The Dark:
When a character meets in the same space as the Dark, a battle begins. Whoever has the least amount of BT is killed and removed from the game. Count the BT of the loser, and remove that amount of BT from the winner. If the Dark is the loser, the player has won the game!
If the Dark has won, the Dark advances one space counter-clockwise towards the characters, which might start a new battle with a character. The battle process begins again as noted above.
Collect all the cards, shuffle, and repeat the sequence.
WINNING THE GAME:
If the player manages to defeat the Dark and have at least one character with BTs left, the players has won.
Actually, the card play is pretty simple, flip over a card, decide where to play it. It's the upkeep of all the tokens is the pain.