Odd Luck Charms version 1.0 is finally available! The new version is a 20-page booklet with pages the size of playing cards, with darn-near-completely redesigned rules based on playtesting insights (and a few more years of game design wisdom under my belt).

The new form factor happens to be much easier to read on phones, and you can also print it out and trim it to stuff in your pocket with the poker cards required to play. There's an ulterior motive to that size, though: I intend to design a deck of object and trait cards in the near future, and include this booklet right in the tuck box. I love having object cards to speed things up when I run this myself, so you can draw objects randomly and easily pass them around between players during play. In the meantime, feel free to use this printer-friendly print-and-play deck of objects, traits, and blank cards.

The new game design, meanwhile, takes a page from Grant Howitt's Royal Blood, an excellent card-based game about pulling a heist on one of the major arcana so you can take their place on every tarot deck in the world. That game has a lot of good stuff going on in it, but the part I swiped was to simplify how actions are resolved: Draw a single card, and use the number to check for failure, success at a cost, or success, much like Apocalypse World and its Powered by the Apocalypse descendants.

The earlier version of the game (still available as a free Google Doc, in case you miss it) had a more convoluted system based on drawing a card for each threat to establish their difficulty ratings, and then having players play cards from their hands to beat those numbers. I was making it more involved than it needed to be because I was stuck in a D&Dish design mindset of "challenges" that need to be "defeated," and because I just like card games that let you play from your hand. Fortunately, playing and designing more games since then convinced me that resolution rules can actually be pretty briefly stated, and working on another game scratched the itch that made me want to design a game where you play cards from your hand. That made it a lot easier to recognize that I needed a simple resolution mechanism, and choosing a card to play for it was never the fun part.

The fun part, my playtesters helpfully assured me, was the objects—and so this version also significantly tweaks the rules around those. Now, the more you activate objects, the quicker you get to a point where the situation inevitably gets weirder. The rules for interaction effects are also much more clear-cut now, and cut out scenes like this one inadvertently encouraged before: "I hold The Keychain next to The Lighter. Now next to The Pen. Now next to the The Sunglasses...." 

I also tried to address one other bit of playtest feedback you hear a lot at Metatopia: "How are you going to package yourself with the game?" The new GMing  guidelines are still pretty brief, but I think they should give a better sense of how to run the game.

I'm very excited to get Odd Luck Charms revised and in your hands after nearly four years on the back burner. If you get it to the table, please let me know how it goes!