These game can be played on standard gaming dice and the standard 52 card deck.

Less Is More

Get a handful of dice, however many you happen to have, but at least five to keep it interesting.

Each player takes one die to begin with and they roll, higher number wins. The loser takes another die and everyone rolls again, but now one has one die and the other has two.

Keep going until you're out of dice. Whoever ends up with more dice in the end loses.

When played Vampire: The Masquerade 5e official dice, add three more rules:

- Every second additional die you take is a Hunger die until you run out of Hunger dice.
- If you roll a skull on a Hunger die, you automatically lose. If you both roll a skull, whoever has more skulls or less points loses.
- Successes with two stars/fangs count as two.

Special thanks to my beautiful wife for naming this game, and my beautiful son for playing it with me.

All the Queen's Men

A card game where the object is to protect your queen. You can sacrifice other court cards to save her. The winner is the one who has kidnapped all queens.

Each player claims a court (king, queen and jack of the same suit) and adds them into their hand. If there are fewer than four players, remove the extra court cards from the game. Then shuffle the rest of the deck, including the jokers, and players pick out another two cards to begin play.

Turn:
Every player puts a court card on the table, face-up. Then, going right to left, a player tells the person next to them they are attempting either "a challenge" or "diplomacy".

For a challenge, the challenger lays down any number of cards of the same suit from their hand (it does not have to be their own suit or the suit of the person being challenged). The challenged player can defeat the challenge by matching the offered cards with cards of a higher number of the same suit, or any cards their own court's suit. If the challenger plays cards of the defender's suit, they must be defeated with higher cards in that suit. So, your own suit acts as trump when meeting a challenge. (The challenger's suit does not give the challenge cards trump status.) You CAN play kings or jacks to defeat challenges, unless they are on the table. If the challenger wins, they kidnap the court card that is on the table, but lose their played cards into the discard pile. The player who lost their court card will place another one down at the start of the next round. If the challenger loses, the challenged player gets the challenger's played cards and adds them to their own hand.

If diplomacy is chosen, the two players can a) both pick up two new cards from the deck; or b) the first player can lend cards to the second player for the next turn.

The last option means that player A can give player B any cards they wish from their hand to play against player C in a challenge when the turn goes to B. These cards will not be lost if the challenge is lost but returned to player A. This could be a useful way to harm a mutual enemy without losing your own cards.

If you have a joker in your hand when you are offered a challenge or diplomacy, you can play the joker to turn it into the other option. In other words, if you are offered a challenge, you can instead reveal your joker and ask the challenger to choose from the diplomacy options instead. The joker will then be discarded into the deck and the deck shuffled. Likewise, if diplomacy is offered, you can force it into a challenge.

If a player has no cards in their hand when challenged, they automatically lose, and their court card is kidnapped. If a player has no cards and offers diplomacy, but a joker is played on them, the joker kidnaps their court card and is discarded. This is the only situation in which a challenger can end up losing their court card. If they already lost their court card earlier in the round and does not have one on the table, the joker is discarded but the move has no other effect.

Once every player has had their turn, the round ends. If a player's court card was kidnapped, they have to put another one down.

If a player has lost both the jack and the king of their own suit, but still hold on to their queen, and there are more than two players left in the game, it becomes possible to send kidnapped jacks and kings on the court instead of the queen. This is no longer an option if there are only two players left.

Setting the queen down is your last resort, and if she is kidnapped, you are out of the game.

All games here were the work of Ilthit unless otherwise specified.
Credit given to collaborators on each game's info. 2024.