Once Upon a Card Game

Once Upon a Time: The Storytelling Card Game is twenty years old. Originally published in 1993, AtlasGames released a third edition in 2012 after several years of the game being out of print. This has allowed the game’s designers to tinker a little with the mechanics and Atlas Games to redesign the cards, all the whilst retaining the game’s simple play and theme. As its title suggests, Once Upon a Time is a game about fairy tales, in particular, it is a game about telling fairy tales, one that has both co-operative and competitive elements. Designed to be played by two to six players, Once Upon a Time encourages creativity and collaborative imagination in adults and children alike.

The game consists of three types of cards – Story Cards, Interrupt Story Cards, and Ending Cards. The Story Cards form the basis of each player’s story and each illustrates an element to be found in fairy tales and is further divided into five categories. These five categories are Character – for example, ‘thief’ and ‘child’; Thing – for example, ‘food’ and ‘door’; Place – for example, ‘village’ and ‘garden’; Aspect – for example, ‘disguised’ and ‘frightened’; and Event – for example, ‘fighting’ and ‘falling in love’. The five categories are also colour-coded. Interrupt Story Cards share the same categories and colour coding as the standard Story Cards. Each can be used as a normal Story Card, but each can also be used to interrupt another player’s story when that player plays a story card of the same category and colour coding. Together the Story Cards and Interrupt Story Cards make up the Story Deck. Each Ending Card gives an end to a story, for example, ‘he lived the rest of his life as a beggar … which was perfectly just.’ or ‘the flames rose higher and the wicked place was destroyed.’

At the start of the game each player receives a handful of cards from the Story Deck – the number varying according to the number of players – and a single Ending Card. On his turn each player tells a story, his aim being to mention the elements on his cards and bring them into play. Once a player has brought all of his Story Cards into play, he can play his Ending Card, using its text to complete his story. The first player to do so wins the game.

In the meantime, a storyteller’s fellow players will be listening to the story. If the storyteller mentions an element that another player has a Story Card that matches that element, then he can play it to interrupt the current storyteller and take over. Similarly, a Story Interrupt Card can be played to interject the current storyteller and take over if the category of the Story Card played by the storyteller matches that of the interrupting player’s Story Interrupt Card. A storyteller can also be interrupted when gets stuck, rambles, tells a silly story, fails to properly incorporate the elements on his cards, and so on. A storyteller can also pass the story onto another player, but whenever he passes his story or losses control by other means, he must draw a new card from the Story Deck. 

For example, in a four-player game, each player receives seven cards. Dave receives the Story Cards, ‘beautiful’, ‘window’, ‘book’, ‘key’, and ‘door’, and the Story Interrupt Cards, ‘kitchen’ and ‘treasure’. He also receives the Ending Card, ‘So he told her was a prince and they lived happily ever after.’ Stef receives ‘king’, ‘tree’, ‘making mischief’, ‘sword’, ‘parent’, and ‘journey’, and the Story Interrupt Card, ‘returned’. His Ending Card is ‘and the kingdom at the end of the tyrant’s reign’. Dave begins his story about a girl who is kept locked up by her mother. Dave did not play a Story Card to bring this element into play, but Stef has a Story Card, ‘parent’, which although not an exact match, is a close enough fit to successfully interrupt. Thus Dave not only has to relinquish control of the story, but has to draw another card from the Story Deck. 

Stef’s story is about a tyrant king and towards its end, he tells how the king rushed to get his ‘sword’ in order to defend himself when attacked, but as he plays the ‘sword’ Story Card, Dave interjects with a cry of “Interrupt!” and plays his ‘treasure’ Story Interrupt Card. Thus he regains the control of the story and tells how it was not a sword that the king first ran to when attacked, but his ‘treasure’!

Whenever one player takes over from another as storyteller, he must continue telling the same story. He is free to incorporate new elements from his Story Cards, but he cannot ignore those have already been included as part of the on-going story. This is the game’s collaborative aspect.

Physically, Once Upon a Time is very nicely produced. Everything has been done in full colour, with all of the Story and Story Interrupt Cards each given its own piece of art. The cards are clear to read, as are the rules, which manage to fit everything into four pages, including examples of play and a short discussion of how the game can be included in the classroom. A leaflet available for download from the publisher’s website expands on the information given here. One issue is with the packaging, or rather the lack of internal packaging which means that the cards are left to rattle around in a large box.

It is difficult not to see Once Upon A Time as the spiritual ancestor to co-designer James Wallis’ The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen. In that game, the competitive element has been increased and the theme has been matured and broadened, if not made wholly magnificent. To an extent, Once Upon A Time is also the spiritual ancestor to Gloom, also published by Atlas Games, but while that opts for a darker, if not a maudlin tone, it also opts for greater complexity. Once Upon A Time is a much lighter game, both in terms of tone and mechanics, thus making it suited to all ages, though in an adult group, there is nothing to prevent their incorporating some of the darker elements of the original fairy tales, though they are not supported by the game’s Story Deck. One option there would be to use the Create-Your-Own Storytelling Cards expansion to add such elements. Other expansions available include Enchanting Tales – Tales of Enchantment and Magical Adventure and Seafaring Tales – Tales of Pirates and Seafaring Adventure which take the core game in differently themed directions, whilst the Once Upon a Time Writer's Handbook explores how to turn a tale created using the game’s cards into a piece of fiction.

What is surprising is that despite its age and despite the simplicity of its design, Once Upon a Time has never been re-themed. Perhaps with the release of the third edition, this might be a possibility? In the meantime, Once Upon a Time: The Storytelling Card Game is a thoroughly engaging game that combines the charm of fairy tales with simple, elegant rules and lovely production values that spark the imagination. 

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It Spells Murder!

Murder of Crows is a new card game from Atlas Games – the publisher of other card games such as Gloom, Cthulhu Gloom, and the recently re-released Once Upon a Time. It is a game of spelling, detection, and undermining your fellow players that can be played through in twenty minutes or so. Designed for two to five players, aged thirteen and up, it is a darkly themed humorous game that easily slips into play between other games.

The aim of the game is simple. To win, a player has to spell out the word, MURDER. This is done by playing the game’s many letter cards, each marked with the letters M, U, R, D, or E. Each of the five letter cards also has an extra effect beyond adding to a player’s MURDER. The “M” or “Misplace” card allows a player to steal a card from a rival’s MURDER and add it 0t1000o his hand; the “U” or “Uncover” forces every other player to reveal his hand of cards and allows the current player to steal any one of the revealed cards; the “R” or “Reap” allows a player to draw another card; and the “E” or “Expell” card forces every other player to discard his hand of cards and draw back up to three. As can be seen from these five cards, the game has a strong “take that” element in that the majority of the letter cards affect the other players rather than the current player. Well, this is a game about murder after all…

Given this strong “take that” element, it is no surprise that Murder of Crowsprovides a means of blocking these “attacks.” Each of the letter card is marked with a number of crows in the top left hand corner – one, two, or three. When a letter card is played, if a targeted player has a card marked with a number of crows equal to those on the letter card played, then it can be used to block an attacking card. A second card type, the “Wild Crow” card, can also be played to block an attacking card. Another use for a “Wild Crow” card is as a letter card in a player’s MURDER. The letter it replaces needs be chosen when it is played and it has all the effect of that letter. A player’s MURDER can contain only the one “Wild Crow” card.

Play itself is simple. Each player begins the game with a hand of five cards. The first player is decided upon who is decided to look the most suspicious… (Cue any number of arguments, if not murder itself!) On his turn he draws one card and plays one card into his MURDER on the table in front of him. The effect of a letter card takes place – or is blocked by one or more of the other players, and then the next player takes his turn. The first player to spell out MURDER is the winner.

In addition to spelling out the word Murder, a player’s MURDER also tells the story of a murder. Placed in order, the “M,” “U,” “R,” “D,” “E,” and “R” letter cards spell out the atmosphere, place, culprit, motive, means, and victim for the player’s MURDER. For example, “Shadows haunted the night” “on a shore reeking of dead fish when” “Heidi Harmony” “due to an inferiority complex” “used a frozen turkey to bludgeon” “Alexis Eldridge”. This adds an element of ghoulish storytelling to the game as well as a degree of uncertainty to the crime as the atmosphere, place, culprit, motive, means, and victim for a player’s MURDER will change over the course of the game.

Physically, Murder of Crows is nicely done. The rules sheet is easy to read through, although it will be passed around from player to player in order to check what each letter card does. It helps that the game includes a reference card, but more than one would have been useful. In fact, one per player would have been very useful.

The game’s fifty-five, full colour cards though, are very nicely done. Perhaps a little thin for extensive play – though Murder of Crows is a filler game and will not be played over and over – every card is attractively illustrated by Thomas Denmark, who along with Eduardo Baraf, designed the game. Denmark’s full colour art for Murder of Crows is Gothic Americana in style, possessing a sly humour that echoes that of Edward Gorey.

In terms of play and tactics, a player is simply trying to spell out his MURDER whilst preventing his rivals from spelling out theirs. Late in the game, as the players get closer and closer to achieving that goal, the game becomes quite cutthroat as they try and stop each other. Since almost every letter card is used to attack one or more of the other players, then one key tactic to be aware of, is knowing when to block. A player can of course use one of his letter cards – that is if the crows on the blocking card matches the card being played, but if he has a “Wild Crow” card, he can use that. Of course, that “Wild Crow” card might be a stand in for the last letter he needs to complete his MURDER.

The given age of the game – thirteen plus – seems a little over cautious. Younger players should not have too much difficulty playing Murder of Crows, although the “take that” element might be a little too cutthroat for them. Nevertheless, Murder of Crows is a light filler game, one with slight tactics, a light storytelling aspect, and a wryly dark theme. Murder of Crows offers fast, fatal fun.

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The Gloom that overcame Glaaki

Back in 2004, Atlas Games published a card game of a singularly ingenious, yet depressingly design. It told the story of how the members of four families were driven each to a mournful end after a life time of ill omens, distressing events, and ennui to end it all. The cleverness of the design lay in the nature of the cards, for they were not cards at all, but each was a slice of thin, transparent plastic marked with various icons, images, and pieces of text. Game revolved laying cards upon the top of various family members, the transparency of the cards enabling various elements of the cards underneath the uppermost one to remain visible and in play until such times as they were covered up, their effects negated and replaced with the uppermost icons. In addition, the design of the game and its theme, inspired by the art and stories of the artist, Edward Gorey, enabled the game to work as a story telling game too, letting the players narrate how each member of his family was driven first to despair, and then to his or her death… The game in question was Gloom – The Game of Inauspicious Incidents & Grave Consequences, and it would win its publisher, and its designer, Keith Baker, the 2005 Origins Award for Traditional Card Game of the Year.

In 2011, Keith Baker returned to Gloom. Not though to provide us with another expansion, but rather to explore a new theme using the same basic format and mechanics. That new theme draws from a source as uncaring as that of the original Gloom before going on to exacerbate it with elements that are in turn batrachian, inhuman, and tentacular, if not to say, wholly unwholesome. The theme in question is the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and the new game is Cthulhu Gloom -- The Game of Unspeakable Incidents and Squamous Consequences.

As with the original Gloom, the aim in Cthulhu Gloom is to drive your “family” down a path of horror and madness to an untimely death, suffering the most horrifying stories possible, all the whilst attempting to keep the members of your opponents' family happy, healthy, and annoyingly alive. This done by playing Modifier cards and Event cards on top of the Character cards, the aim being to drive each character’s Pathos as deeply into the negative so as to give the lowest Self-Worth score possible before doing them in by having them suffer an Untimely Death. A game comes to an end when an entire family has been eliminated, all of its members having fallen prey to the same inevitable inter-dimensional doom that will befall us all – though the fate of the family members in Cthulhu Gloom will at least be more entertaining. In a non-Euclidean sense, that is... At which point the Pathos inflicted upon the dead members in each family is totalled, along with any points gained from Story Cards played. The player whose family has the lowest Family Value – or the highest negative Family Value – derived from the Self-Worth scores of those Family members who met an Untimely Death wins the game.

More recently, the original Gloom has been the subject of an episode of Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop. It is worth watching to get an idea of how the original Gloom is played and thus an idea of how Cthulhu Gloom is also played.

One difference between Gloom and Cthulhu Gloom is the nature of its families. In Gloom, the members are for the most part, related by blood. In Cthulhu Gloom, this is not necessarily the case. So whereas the Whateleys are all related as members of the old Dunwich family, and the Marshes are all related as members of the old Innsmouth family, the members of the other two families in Cthulhu Gloom are not. They are instead members of the faculty or students at Miskatonic University or staff and patients at Arkham Sanatorium. Thus, they are a family by association.

Designed for two to five players, aged thirteen years and up, Cthulhu Gloom is intended to play in an hour. The game comes with twenty Character cards, fifty-four Modifier cards, eleven Event cards, twenty Untimely Death cards, and five Story cards, along with the double-sided rules-sheet. Of all the cards, the Character cards, each of which has the name of the character, an illustration of the Character, and a piece of flavour text on it, do not have any game effect icons or text on them. The Modifier cards all also illustrated, but have one, two, or three icons on the left-hand and right-hand side of the illustration, place a game effect described in the text below. The icons on the left are always Pathos Points, the values ranging from +25 down to -30; whilst the icons on the right are either Effect icons, which indicate how and when the game effect takes place, or Story Telling icons – Blank, Goblet, Horror, Investigation, Madness, Magic, or Romance – which have two uses in the game. When a Character has certain icons visible on him, it allows other cards that require those icons to be visible to be played on him. The other use is if the game is being played as a Storytelling Game, in which case the icons are used to help tell the story of how the Character came to his Untimely Death.

For example, the “Gibbered with Ghouls” Modifier card has an illustration of a Ghoul on it, and to the illustration’s left is a single “-10” Pathos Points icon, whilst to the illustration’s right, is a Persistent effects icon (meaning that the card’s effect continues until covered with that of another card), plus a Madness and a Horror icon. The game text below tells the player that whilst his draw limit is decreased by 1 card, he can now draw from the top of the discard pile as well as the draw pile!

Event cards lack the illustrations and icons of the other card types, and once played from your hand, are discarded. For example, “The Thing on the Doorstep” allows a player to move one Untimely Death card from a dead Character to another along as the soon-to-be dead Character has negative Pathos Points, or “The Voorish Sign” which can be used to cancel another Event card when it is played.

Story cards also lack icons, but they do have dramatic and powerful effects when played and can benefit a player’s Family Value at the end of the game. For example, “The Call of Cthulhu” requires a player to have two Madness icons visible, but at the end of the game, all of the Pathos Points for a player’s Characters count towards his total Family Value, whether they are alive or dead! This is a very powerful card!

Lastly, the Untimely Death cards, one for each of the Family members in Cthulhu Gloom, are all illustrated with a skull. Some also have Pathos Point icons or blank icons that cover up Storytelling icons, but all have a small piece of game text that can be positive or negative. For example, the “Wasted Away” Untimely Death card adds an extra -10 Pathos Points if the Character it is played on has a Madness icon visible. Once an Untimely Death card is played on a Character, he and his cards are set aside. He is out of the game until the end, although he can be affected by certain Event cards.

At the start of the game, each player receives his Family, or four of them in a four-player game to prevent the game from going on too long, the discarded Family members combining to form a fifth Family if there is a fifth player; and a hand of five cards. Two random Story cards are placed in the middle of the table.

On his turn, a player can take two actions. He can play a Modifier card on any Character still alive – this will alter the Character’s Pathos Points and Storytelling icons, and give an effect too; play an Event card for a one-time effect; play an Untimely Death card on any character with negative Self-Worth score; claim a Story card and its benefits, though it is only possible to have one of these; discard his hand, or pass. These actions can be done in any order except that an Untimely Death card can only be played as a first action. A player cannot place a really good Modifier card on one of his Characters to make his Self-Worth score even worse and then protect the newly depressed Character by playing an Untimely Death card. He must wait until his next go to play the Untimely Death card as his first action, giving every other player the opportunity to improve that Character’s Self-Worth score and so make the playing of the Untimely Death card less attractive.

Strategy in Cthulhu Gloom is simple. Decrease your Self-Worth of the characters in your Family whilst attempting to improve that of characters in rival Families. In other words, make them have a less miserable time than yourself! A player should not refrain from having a rival Character suffer an Untimely Death, especially if his Self-Worth is not very low. This effectively takes that Character out of the game and prevents his Self-Worth from being lowered even further.

In addition to keeping a careful watch of the Self-Worth of each of the Characters in his rival Families, a player should keep an eye on the icons and the text visible on their cards. By covering these up with the icons and text on other Modifier cards, a player can stop negate the effect of a good card or reduce the number of Storytelling icons in play and so prevent an effect from a Story card, for example.

As clever a design as Cthulhu Gloom is, and Cthulhu Gloom is a clever design, it suffers from the same issues as Gloom did. The cards are too small. Not too small for a player to read them when they are in his hand or in front of him on the table, but too small to be read by other players sat round the table. Which leads to a lot of peering at other players’ Families and the cards played on them, and this has a disruptive effect as from a distance the cards appear to be a little too busy. In some ways, this fussiness seems strangely appropriate, but it is almost as if the game would have been better if the cards had been double the size… Of course, the cost would have been as proportionately large as well.

Physically, the cards in Cthulhu Gloom are well done, and pleasingly illustrated by Todd Remick. If there is a physical issue with the cards it is that in places it appears that the Storytelling icons do not match. This had me looking for a “quarter Moon” icon until I realised that it was actually a simplified Madness icon. The rulebook requires a care read through though, as the game actually looks more complex than it is.

Although not mechanically any different from the original Gloom, this is a well done reiteration. Where it improves on the original game is its theme, as thematically, Cthulhu Gloom is highly entertaining, especially if you know your Lovecraftian fiction. The game takes a slightly “tentacle in cheek” approach to its source, one that is just humorous enough to entertain, but not so as to detract from awfulness that will be inflicted upon the Families. Cthulhu Gloom is a fiendishly luminescent design with a fussiness that complements the theme and the source. Mannered and maddening, Cthulhu Gloom -- The Game of Unspeakable Incidents and Squamous Consequences is satisfyingly sanity sapping.

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