Episode: 2402 Title: HPR2402: Petition: the card game for fanatics Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2402/hpr2402.mp3 Transcribed: 2025-10-19 02:22:17 --- This is HPR Episode 2,402 Entitled, Pettiton, a card game for fanatics and is part of the series, tabletop gaming. It is hosted by Klaatu and is about 42 minutes long and can rim a clean flag. The summary is Klaatu talks about a card game key designed. This episode of HPR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com. Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15. That's HPR15. Better web hosting that's honest and fair at AnanasThost.com. Hi everyone, this is Klaatu. You're listening to Hacker Public Radio. This is an entry in my gaming series and it's a little bit different than usual this time. It's about a career change, well not a real career change, but it's about this game that I have decided to design because I've lately fancied myself a game designer sort of all of a sudden. I want to talk about this game that I've designed and I want to kind of pitch it to you to be honest because I'm thinking about kickstarting it. Not as a game, you know, not as one of those kickstarts where you commission the whole box and you get it into stores and stuff like that. I have no interest in that whatsoever, but I would like to commission art for the game better art than what I've got because right now it's basically just a bunch of clip art. So I want to pitch this to you guys because I figure well there's a lot of you and if I can swindle you guys into funding a little bit of this with me then we might be able to make a pretty cool game and send it off to like a print on demand service. So it'd be like there's a site called the game crafter.com and and there's also I mean drive through cards.com a couple of different places have they they do print on demands but specifically for for card games table top games. And that's kind of what I hadn't mind. So let me tell you about this game that I designed and why I think it's worth worth doing right. So here's a quick overview of the game. This is just a broad overview and then I'm going to actually get into the rules so that you know why or how the thing has played. So an overview is that the elevator pitch is that it is a fantasy battle card game except the battles are for mind share. So you are you represent a society your cards are a society of of some fantasy world and you see all these other societies your other players around you and you've decided that you want to convert them to your way of thinking. So you want to convert all of their their religious people to worship your God you want to convert all of their you want to subvert their artists you want to supplant your art scene onto theirs. You want to undermine their economy by having them outsource all their business to you and and of course you want to conquer their military. You just want to slaughter everyone with a weapon. So in other words it's imperialism for fun it's it's a fun imperialistic game about completely obliterating all of your anything that's not exactly like you. I mean what modern person wouldn't love to play this as a game. Okay so here's how it works you've got and by the way I'm not kidding this is actually my idea for a card game this your you probably think I'm making a sarcastic political statement and whether I am or not. I won't comment on but but this is actually a game that I've designed in fact I'm even as I speak right now I've got the mock up cards in my hand I'm shuffling through them right now. So here's how it works each player gets four pillar cards pillar like society pillars you know pillars of the society. I used to call them Paragon cards but but people it was too many too many people were in my cards so I needed some just symbols. So these pillar cards are symbols just icons of four different areas that is that make up a society and those four areas are as I have said the economy or or industry religion art and war military. So each player gets four of these and they put them out on the table in front of them and that's what you have to protect you do not want anyone to steal any of your pillar cards those are very important to you they're your cultural identity. Now in the center of the table we have five cards and these are four different gods there's a god of war there's a god of industry there's a god of goddess of art and a god of gods of religion or magic however you want to express it. Now the fifth card is godlessness godless heathen card and I'll tell you why that's important in a moment and then you get some gaming tokens of some sort I just went to a store and bought a really ugly beaded necklace and broke it apart but you get some beads or something and you put that in the center of these five cards. So typically what I do is I set up the five cards in like this sort of pentagram configuration five points outward and in the beads in the center so that's your temple you got your gods and your prayer beads all right so now you're all set up. So then you shuffle all of your your playing cards all the different normal playing cards that you got shuffle those up and you deal five to each player. So that's the setup. Okay so once you have those things the next step or the next thing that you can do is play and here's how the gameplay works. So on your turn you can do one of one of these things so first of all you can draw a card from the deck so you draw a card and add it to your hand that's one thing that you could do. The other thing that you can do is discard a card that you don't want so if you if you don't want to draw a new card but you want to get rid of a card you can do that. Or you can fortify a pillar by placing one of your card one card from your hand underneath a pillar. So you're bolstering your pillars with these cards from your hands and you're you're probably wondering what kind of cards we have in our hand. Don't worry about that yet I'll get to it. So that's that's your the first phase of your turn you do either with those three things. Next you have the option to petition a god from the center of the table or if you already have a god then you can attack an opponent. So you can never attack any opponent unless you have the favor of a god and you get gain the favor of a god by petitioning and we'll go over that in a moment as well. And then the final phase of your turn is that you draw back up to five cards if you're beneath five cards and you take one prayer bead from the center of the table. Okay so that's that's your turn. Now if you don't want to do any of those things you can also forfeit your turn by dumping all of your putting all of your your entire hand all five cards in your hand back into the deck. And drawing five new cards so you can opt to just to just replace your current holding instead of taking any of those moves. Okay so what kind of cards are we drawing from the deck anyway you you're probably wondering great question you draw citizens from the deck. That's what the deck is mostly comprised of their citizens who dwell in your society. Now each citizen supports one or more of your pillars so for instance here I've got a craftsman. Now he has two points in industry because that's kind of what he does but he also has a point in the art because craftmen you know they don't just make stuff they're artists essentially. So he could either support your industry pillar with two points or he could support your art pillar with one point. You have to decide which one you're going to use him for but that's what he can do. Now here's a foot soldier card that I just drew randomly and he's got one point in war. He's just sort of a general recruit that's pretty much all he does he's probably a farmer in his real life and when you bring him into the war he pretty much takes you know stabs at things and that's pretty much all he can do. Then there's a knight for instance now he's got three points in war he's very good at war and he's even got two points in religion because he's you know a Templar or something like that. He's been he's been blessed by the gods to defend his faith and so on. So you've got lots of different kinds of citizens and they each have their own unique skillset or a combination of skills and ultimately you have to decide how you're going to use those skills to defend your society, your culture. Now when you decide to rope someone into defending you you can do that a couple of different ways you can either scroll them away under a pillar card. Now of course again they they it has to be a card that they can actually defend or you can send them into battle for you and we'll talk about that a little bit later as well. So those are the main cards that you're dealing with are just the citizen cards and you're kind of bidding on the god cards. The other kind of card that you might find yourself drawing from the deck are the power-ups and those are just different things. They don't they they have different restrictions on them just kind of depending on what they say. Here's one I just uncovered so here's a power-up prodigy, your society's fine cultural institutions have produced an artistic prodigy and this this power-up gives you two bonus points in art or one bonus point in religion. Here's a power-up plague bearer your opponent is stricken by plague valid only with a god's favor and this one gives you two points in industry and one in military because presumably it it affects your your societies and so on and so forth. Okay so there's a couple of power-ups but mostly the vast vast majority of the cards are going to be citizens. Alright so that's what you're dealing with now how do you go to war or how do you go how do you how do you capture a pillar from a neighboring society. Well you petition and in fact that's the name of my card game is petition because that's the central mechanic and I'll I'll go over the basic version first because there's a couple of different ways that this could happen. But the simple version is that you kind of get it into your head hey I want to attack my my neighbors art scene let's say. So you would then spend two prayer beads to petition the goddess of art so you would take that card from the temple and you would add it to your you put it in front of you so people know that hey you've got a you've got a bonus to your attack because you're holding the god the art god card. It costs two beads and once you've done that you can do nothing that's your whole that's that's your turn. It's not your whole turn but that's that's the second phase of your turn and then it's the next person's turn and so on. Now when it comes back around to you you since you have the god card you can attack a fellow player. Now if you don't attack you have to put the god card away but if you do attack then then battle commences. Now especially since I chose the art god again this I I see this as a a battle of of mind share. So you're you're essentially you're you're sending your best artists over to this to their society to show people you know your local style and and how your society does things. They're not going over there with like daggers to kill people they're going over there to influence people to buy their stuff instead of their local art stuff or whatever. Although you know having said that if you don't if you prefer to just imagine bloodshed you can imagine bloodshed doesn't really matter to me. So what you would do when you attack is that you would announce to the person that you're attacking and you would place whatever citizen cards you're holding in your hand down on the table face down in front of you and your defender the person who you are attacking will do exactly the same thing they will put down cards in front of them that they believe would serve them well in a battle of art maybe it's a dance off I don't know. So once you both put down your cards then you turn them over and you see how how it all shakes out what that typically looks like is that well you've got the god cards so that's a plus three on your attack and then you count up how many citizens you're playing in that little battle. Now I have three cards here the performer the antiquarian and the craftsman and that's a total of one two three art points so I'm attacking my defender or my opponent with six total points. Now let's say that they had essentially the same thing let's say they had three art points then they would lose and I would take their pillar card and that we would both discard our everyone in battle would go back to the shuffle. The draw deck and that would be the end but let's say that they actually had maybe more maybe they had five artists and or four artists and a no five artists and a power up card that gives them two plus two art well then I could send if if I wanted to if I had anything else that I could spend maybe I had another antiquarian so I could throw that in and then if they had something else that they were holding and they realized okay this person serious well here's another craftman so I'll send him in so they send you know and then you can you can keep bidding up essentially until you finally reach the point where neither of you want to sacrifice anymore or neither of you can sacrifice anymore and someone wins. Now if you're if your opponent wins it's just a nothing happens no no pillar cards exchange hands if you win as I said you take their pillar card and now they have no art scene their art scene has migrated over to your culture and you kind of own them in that sense. And that's battle now there's a variation on how all that could go depending on the petitioning stage so when you petitioned for for a god. People can challenge you they don't have to let you they don't have to let you take the god card because and I've played I've played tested this quite a bit and what happens essentially is that you know when someone takes a god card obviously people know that you're going to attack on your next round so it kind of sends up a bunch of red flags and that's what was intended to do so when you when you petition a god for a god's favor anyone at the table can challenge you. And here's how the challenging process goes so if someone challenges you they have to do so immediately so you you take a god card someone has to speak up right away hey I'm going to challenge you so what they have to do is they have to spend beads to counter your offer and then you each have to spend citizens to sort of convince the god that you're worth supporting or favoring. So it's much like a battle you put your citizen cards face down on the table and you're to fit your your your challenger does the same and then once that's done and they put prayer beads as well they offer up prayer beads to the god and once that's done here's how it all shakes out if your challenger so you are the person who is petition so if your challenger offers more beads and more cards. Then they win the god's favor with a plus one bonus so they don't get the full plus three they get a plus one and the back of the god card is sort of the same god it's it's god except with it's in black and white or it'll have a plus one instead of a plus three I don't know yet I haven't completely done the layout yet but yeah so they'll they get they get the the favor of the god but it's it's for a lesser it's just for a plus one. Now if your challenger offers lower beads and higher cards than the god favors nobody god just gets sick and tired of you guys and and doesn't go and just goes back to the temple takes your beads though and and that's the end of the petition of the petition. Now if your challenger offers higher beads and lower cards than the god favors you favors you the petitioner the original petitioner with a full plus three with the caveat that you cannot add to your society cards that you have already put on the table so when you put your citizen cards out to to to please the god those are the same citizen cards that you're going to attack with. Now you can still add power-ups in the actual battle because that that's that's a completely separate mechanic but the citizens that you have put down on the table are now locked in. Now if your challenger offers lower beads and lower cards than the god favors them with plus three but they are locked in therefore bitten from adding to their citizen cards again they can add power-ups but they can't send in more troops. So it's a little bit of a prisoner's dilemma actually because you both know each other's power-ups or prayer beads but you don't obviously know the citizen cards that you're bidding on until you turn them over and and and see how it goes so the challenger has to kind of decide what they want to do in terms of bidding the number of beads. Now a god's favor only lasts one round that's that's consistent throughout no matter no matter what if you petition to god you get that god's favor for one round so you you either attack the next round or you turn that god back to the temple. Now if you don't like fighting you can always just surrender so if you if someone attacks you or if you attack then then the the people the person being attacked may immediately surrender now if you surrender you lose your pillar card but since you've played no cards in your defense you don't discard any citizens the attacker on the other hand still has to discard the citizen cards that they sent into battle. And that's true for any battle if you if you go into battle the cards that you put down on the table are spent they go back into the draw deck. Now the reason that we've been sometimes maybe fortifying our pillars is that during the battle you can always the defender can always take a peek under their pillar card and grab a citizen from under the pillars to send into into defense. Now the attacker can't do that it's it's just a defender and that's the advantage of taking that option during your turn rather than maybe drawing a new card or something like that maybe you just want to bolster your certain pillar with a useful citizen now they can only be used in defense so you're kind of giving them up in terms of being able to use them for an attack but it's an option that you have and sometimes it's a good option because that gets in them out of your hand. And now you're fortifying your pillars and you can defend yourself a little bit better when and if you are attacked. So the final mechanic I guess which I haven't even mentioned well I mentioned very early on is the godless heathen so the godless heathen card dwells there in the temple with the other gods and it's the sort of well as the name implies it's it's the option of going without a god. So the godless heathen cannot be challenged if you decide you know I really want to attack someone but I just don't I don't want to go through the trouble of being challenged and having to spend prayer beads and and risking someone you know gaining the favor of the god without me or whatever then you can just grab the godless heathen card the disadvantage to the godless heathen card is that you don't get a bonus. It's just it just gives you the permission to attack a few of the power up cards apply to a godless heathen but I think very few I think it may actually being it might only be one power up havoc is I think the one that that goes without without a god's favor you can use that one. All the other power ups I think no actually martyrdom also works without a god's favor so martyrdom and havoc so that's two power up cards that actually work if you're if you're operating without the favor of a god so that's kind of a disadvantage but the advantage of it as I said is that you can't be challenged. So if you really really want that you really really want that power up card not that power up card sorry that you really really want to attack of an enemy then you can just grab the the godless heathen and no one can say anything about it you just get it for free for around the other good thing is that since it can't be challenged you will never have your citizens locked in so you know someone challenges you then you have to put your citizens down on the table and and then once you know if you do win that that that that challenge then your your army is pretty much locked in you can't add to it right so the godless heathen you never run that risk. So and it doesn't cost you prayer beads so if you're low on prayer beads or you don't it's early in the game you didn't get enough or whatever it doesn't matter you can grab the godless heathen to do that now the godless heathen also does not require a category godless heathen can attack anything so if someone's already got the goddess of arts favor and you still want to attack someone else's art scene maybe not there is because they have god's favor but maybe another godless heathen. So if you're a godless heathen then you could take the godless heathen and still attack someone's art scene even though someone else has the the the goddess of arts favor sort of actively on their side so that's mechanically it's it's quite an important card for you know for keeping the game sort of dynamic. The game has been play test and that's the game that's that's pretty much the game so the the spirit of the game is for me at least I really like the card battle kinds of games those those appeal to me a lot and I'm talking about for instance magic the gathering or dominion if you've ever played that dominion if you've never played it I should probably do a show on it at some point although I haven't really played it enough I don't think to speak authoritatively about it but it's this. It's just this big box of cards so you're it's sort of almost if you imagine you know one of the criticisms and certainly the reason I'm not into it is of magic the gathering is that it can get costly right you have to keep buying the cards to kind of keep up with the with the scene and to build your deck and to build a good deck that can compete with other peoples. So dominion it's just a big box set with a bunch of cards and the mechanic of the game is that you're drawing cards and building your deck as you play and you're playing with the deck that you're building it's it's it's really really interesting it's pretty confusing honestly I've only played it maybe once but maybe twice once or twice I don't remember but it was really it's really fun and it's got that mechanic of yeah like gathering up your cards and kind of seeing what you have and then kind of. You're seeing and figuring out how you're going to attack other people and and that's kind of the the feel that I wanted for this game which in in some ways I think it does achieve that in other ways it's you know to a purest it's going to it's like nothing like that at all but that is kind of the spirit that I wanted for the game. The mechanic of petitioning gods and challenging that petition I think is it has been a lot of fun and I've played tested this with up to four players so far as few as two so what about single players maybe you don't have anyone to play the game against well I mentioned a long time ago very early in this mini series on gaming I mentioned dark cults and obscure little 80s game that I rediscovered one of the most eye opening events was when I looked at this game and saw all the little tricks that Kenneth ramen the game designer had had come up with like so he released the game initially as a two player game it was one was life when was death that was the game but then he came out with an expanded an add on pack and in that add on pack he had additional rules for three player four player five player and solo play. And it was just so cool because I could see the almost see the thought process or at least the the logic behind okay well here's this game that that's for two players how can I take all of this game logic and cram it into a single player motif or expanded out to a five player motif and it was really cool and I know you could totally see like reading the instructions for the two player and then the one player you just get it you're just like oh my gosh you're just taking all the things that a second player could do and you're shuffling the deck and making it reliant upon chance so that's kind of what I did here with the solo rules for for petition and it changes it you know quite a bit because because there's a lot of stuff that's kind of reliant upon a second player but but it does work out really well so I'll give you the quick rundown of of solo play and I'll do it quickly and it's not it's only about four or five steps so first you place four four God cards in the center of your table there is no God this he then in this game so you have to have faith in order to play solo this game solo so four four cards on the table for four God cards then you take five faith beads for yourself five prayer beads whatever you want to call them for yourself now if you run out of beads the game is over okay so you place four pillar cards on the table so that's again war economy art and magic and then you deal each pillar card a fortification stack of three cards each now those three cards will be citizen cards they'll be power up cards doesn't really matter you treat power up cards and citizen cards exactly the same in the solo version and you won't know what they are of course you'll deal them face down for each pillar so you've got these pillars you want to target you want to capture those pillars and you do know that there are three cards at the bottom of each pillar you don't know what those cards are but you know that each pillar has a fortification of three cards that will defend it to the death so you start battle or petition is really sort of a hybrid of both by putting one or more attack cards from your hand on the table and then when you're ready you reveal the fortifications of the pillar that you've decided to target so you don't know what kind of forces they have but you do know that of those three cards anything that matches up to that pillar is going to work in defense of that pillar so for instance if you turn over three cards and they are all artists and you've just attacked the art pillar I hope that you've attacked with quite a strong hand now if they're all economy citizens and they have no artistic power whatsoever and you've attacked the art pillar then you're doing pretty well but you're not necessarily one the battle yet because the lowest power whoever has the lowest hand in this battle automatically wins the favor of a god plus three take the the god for the art pillar and and add that to the to the lowest hand on the the lowest attack hand on on the table that could be you it could be the pillar who knows so if you have just won favor of a god then the battle is over and I'm saying you the player so if you've won the favor of the god then the battle is over now again that doesn't necessarily mean you won the battle it just means that that's the end of the battle so count up the the citizens see who wins and and either sacrifice a prayer bead or take the pillar in in in victory now if you didn't win the favor of the god so the pillar has won the favor of the god then the battle is not over and you the player can add more cards from your hand to your attack so if you've realized that the pillar had lower cards and just got a plus three and that that means that they're now attacking with more power then you are then you have on the table you can actually add stuff from your from your hand cool right so if you win the battle then you take the pillar if you lose the battle then you give up a a prayer bead so the things that the cleanup process here to to to resolve all this stuff is that you now shuffle any unused fortification cards from that pillar if there are any and give them to the other pillars so if you've taken the pillar then anything left over in there in its wake goes to the other pillars that are left on the table they're still still out on the table if if there are no fortification cards and just draw new ones from the from the deck so in other words anytime you you you win a battle all the other pillar cards on the table get one more card at least one more card so everyone levels up but you so if you if you personally had won the favor of the God during that battle win or lose if you had the God on your side in that battle now it's time to pay the God's price for supporting you so to do that the God draws one card from the draw deck and place it on the table and now you have the obligation to match or beat that card with any in any category from your from the remaining cards in your hand if you cannot do that you lose another faith bead so for instance let's say that I had just come out of battle again doesn't really matter if I want or lost and but I and I had I did the battle with the the power of a of a God so the God will draw a card from the draw deck put it down I just did that in real life and I got the power up martyrdom card and that's got the power of two in magic and one in war so I would have to look at my hand and see if I have either a two or above in magic or one or above in in war and if I do then I put that card down I've matched it and they get discarded if I do not then I lose a faith bead that's the end of that's the end of the round so then you draw back up to five cards you add one fortification card to each pillar and anytime you draw a new card as a turn you give like if you if you're if you've decided that you don't want to attack anyone that day or that turn you want to draw a card from the deck to sort of fortify yourself then each pillar also gets a card in fortification so it's it's basically a betting game on whether or not you have more cards of greater power in your hand or whether the the targeted pillar does and then the variable obviously that gets thrown in is the God's support and the God's price it works pretty well it's pretty fun I have no complaints about it I mean I designed it but you know I mean when when sometimes comes up with ideas that don't work out and this is not one of them so far this has been a game that's been a lot of fun to play the advantage the the cool thing about the game is that I have you know it's it's it's all designed like it's the the game the rules exist the the even the cards technically exist it's not they're they're hastily put together I just threw them together in a weekend I think on a Saturday specifically it wasn't even a full weekend and it's just from click you know I just gathered up some clip art from online and just really quick put some flavor text on them and it was just kind of super super fast and it all kind of the whole idea came to me just sort of as I would walk to and from work each day I just I kept having this you know sort of building this idea up and then one weekend one Saturday I just I was like I I'm going to I have to do this and I did it and and it works and I play tested it and I play tested it with like I say up to four people at the table and and it's been a lot of fun so in terms of kickstarting this thing let's talk about you know brass tax it's down to business kickstarting or crowd funding or whatever this thing is that it's already done it exists already so the kick the the funding wouldn't be for a I want to make a game the funding is for hey I want to put the finishing touches on a game which I think is a pretty good position to be in I imagine because you know it's it's you don't that there's no there's no development being paid for here it's really all about just putting all the materials together sending them off you know uploading files to a print on demand service and then and then pointing people to the print on demand and it is not a it's not it's it is not a profit venture this is not something that I'm hoping to make money on I am hoping to make it available to people and so the idea is that I want to get money to finance artwork that will look like a proper fantasy card game because that is you know for both magic the gathering and dominion and any any you know sort of you if munchkin um pathfinder car adventure card game you know any fantasy card game part of the experience is looking at the art and saying oh I wonder you know I wonder what's in that city or I wonder what that person does with that axe you know how many people have they how many heads if they chopped off with that battle axe that sort of thing it's just a lot of fun you know you kind of want to see you want to see cool art not um random clip art from online that some guy just downloaded from a tarot card site historical tarot card site so yeah I want proper art to be involved and for that I have commissioned an open source an artist who uses open source tools and he's been drawing some stuff so I actually have some art already done for the game and it's it's you know I if I had more money I would I would commission more art um and really ultimately I think um even if the kickstarter fails if the crowdfunding attempt falls flat I'll still be able to do it which is probably a bad thing to say publicly but but realistically I'll just keep throwing money at this thing until it gets done it just won't happen as fast um so I'm hoping that the process can be sped up a bit by a lot of people contributing to financing it um and the financing yet is exclusively for the artwork it's it's honestly that's that's all that needs to be done at this point I am happy to do the card layout on my own time and certainly not really any amount I mean no no reasonable amount of crowdfunding would offset my time enough you know for me to take a week off of work or something I mean that would be silly so I mean yeah I'll do the layout myself and that's not that hard that's just ink scape and and sort of laying stuff out so that it makes sense I've got a couple of mock-ups already done so I've made progress on that as well and um and then I want to do a video a little six minute sort of quick start video so that people can learn how to play the game quickly and not have to listen to me ramble on you know just like here's exactly what you need to do and here's the little animation of it being done so that you kind of get a feel for it and it's just it'll be fast one of the new innovative ways that modern games are instructing people how to play them is just like here give me six minutes of your time and then you will know how to play this game now go for it and then in addition to that there are a couple of cards that I've designed to sort of remind people how to play the game you know kind of like hey this is what happens when you challenge someone and this is what happens you know this is what you can do on each of your this is around you know this is what you can do on your turn you can draw or fortify you can petition or attack you can take a prayer bead you can draw back up to your full hand just really quick little reference cards that you lay out on the table pretty much is what the idea is and that's I don't think that's going to require any art necessarily it's just going to be a little you know little design work so not not a big deal so that's my idea I hope you like the sound of the game and if you want to help me finance this thing then head on over to some crowdfunding link which I will surely put in the show notes thank you very much for listening and I hope this thing works talk to you later you've been listening to hecka public radio at hecka public radio dot org we are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday 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