Action: A Mix-and-Match Roleplaying Card Game

Easing a bit off of the Pause train for now to present to you an easy-to-learn card game.

Action! is a roleplaying card game for four to ten players. One player assumes the role of the Director, who chooses a Genre for the other players, who assume the role of the Actors, to play out a scene in. Each Actor has a Character archetype and a primary Attitude to use while playing out the scene. The Director can choose to CUT! an Actor from the scene, after which the role of Director goes to the left and a new scene begins, with all new Genres, Characters, and Attitudes to go with it.

The complete rules and cards can be found here.

Please note that when printing out the file, print it out double-sided so that the cards' obverse and reverse match to cut them out with ease.

Pause // Playtest Rules 0.4

Updated playtest rules!

• Character Creation
• Added a section on creating a character's concept
• Domains
• Down from 10 Domains to 7 Domains
• Domain scores are re-interpreted
• Domain uses are re-interpreted
• Examples now in priority of target number
• Anchors
• Weapon mode is now as flexible as tool mode
• Damage
• Got rid of composite damage (Light+Moderate, etc.)
• Personal Time Recovery
• Got rid of the excess ET dice rule
• Breaks
• New appendix with a better description of them
• Aberrations
• Got rid of the particular examples
• Improved Aberration generation in its appendix
• Character Sheets
• Changed them to reflect the rule changes

Taking a Break

More like taking a break from Pause and focusing on something else. I've also been taking more time to focus on ye olde job searche. I have also been revisiting an older game idea I called Iconoclast.


In Iconoclast, every player had control of a fictionalized pop culture Icon, be it an analogue of a rich corporate executive, a clueless celebrity princess, a greedy televangelist, or a haphazard politician. Players could then link Puppets - entities who could defend the otherwise defenseless Icon - and Toys - abilities which can be used for instant effects later in the game - to their Icons. Further cards could be linked to these cards, so forth and so on.


Iconoclast was all about positioning the Puppets and Toys. Certain cards could only link in certain directions in relation to the originating card, and linking them in certain ways could trigger bonuses upon the involved cards. Also, the stronger the card, the more cards in your hand it would cost to place the card in the first place.


While promising, Iconoclast proved rather unwieldy in playtesting. First of all, each player had his or her own array of cards surrounding his or her Icon. While good in theory, this required a large playing space for each player in the later stages of the game. Secondly, the rules got a bit complex and difficult to explain, which caused all sorts of grief when trying to make it understandable to the players. Soon enough, I dropped the project, but somehow kept the cards from the playtest.


I would like to revisit the idea of a modular card game, but with some notable fixes. 1) Make the array of cards shared among all players, perhaps leading to more shrewd and treacherous strategies. 2) Make it more rules-light to increase accessibility and playability. 3) Maintain the parodying theme, but make it more relevant to current culture.


Ideas and suggestions are always welcome!

Welcome to ThatNewGame

First and foremost, thank you for visiting ThatNewGame. I hope that you will enjoy the blog as much as I will writing it.

ThatNewGame is the blog of board, card, and pen-and-paper games I currently have in development. This blog is here to 1) provide news about these games in development; 2) provide in-progress materials for playtesting; and 3) provide a platform for playtesters to give feedback. This blog will also be a launch pad for other game ideas that I may have, but not ready to develop quite yet.

As for the reason of creating ThatNewGame, it's quite simple. I believe that gaming has become more and more of an open-source affair. Development has become far more transparent than before given the advances in the Internet. I also believe that gaming, in general, has the power to bring people together, even (and sometimes especially) in hard times. The synthesis of open game development along with the fundamental social value of gaming is what makes ThatNewGame special to me. Hopefully, you will share in that vision, or at least enjoy the product of such synthesis.

J. S. Cervini