Poker Decks are Holy Relics

Hold it in your hands. Fan a few tricks. Shuffle them real smooth. Smell that new card aroma and that old card scent and tell me that poker decks aren't holy.

In Porte Noire, nothing is more important to a dead or dying soul then their cards. Everyone carries them. Those that don't are given them when they get off the boat, and can buy new ones virtually anywhere in the city. See, to the dead, currency ain't worth much. You can buy things, but often you just end up trading favors, secrets, and promises, given everyone's after their own personal legend. If you can't compromise, pull the cards out. Play a game of blackjack or spades. Up the ante. Keep searching.

Duels happen, but settling your problems over the poker table is better. The dead and dying are always betting more of themselves, more of their purgatory lives, all in desperate attempts to draw closer to that miracle they so crave. Then, when they've bet too much, they find themselves trapped by the whims of some fresher or more focused zeitgeist. Or worse yet, they look around and realize they suddenly on a raft straight down the Styx.

Consulting the cards is something you can do too. If you don't want to sell your time to an oracle or your services to a hougan or mambo, feel free to throw the cards down and interpret what you have. The higher the number, the stronger the message. Face cards are when you enter into the extreme and the uncanny.

Clubs represents bonds, kinship, luck, doom, misfortune, destiny, chaos, nonsense, divination, paths, and change.

Hearts represent love, sex, hatred, hysteria, knowledge, wisdom, fertility, tomorrow, generations, traditions, and enlightenment.

Diamonds represent guidance, clarity, strength, wealth, courage, direction, determination, vanity, envy, greed, and sin.

Spades represents death, memory, yesterday, moving on, darkness, variety, stealing, air, fading, pain, and reincarnation.

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Jacks represent warriors, bards, adventurers, individuals of great renown, potential, and exploration.

Queens represent counter-culture heroes, chain breakers, executioners, and authority through philosophy.

Kings represent monomyths, epics, conspirators, hypocrisy, and authority through brutality.

Aces represent perfection, the true form, a saint..

Jokers represent the breaking of the illusion.

This may sound like a bunch of crazy stuff right now but it works out. If you ask the cards "Where is the hoodoo man that stole my scrolls?" and draw a 10 of diamonds you know he is in a place of great sin and wealth and that it'll take courage, strength, and clarity to get to him. If you ask the cards "Who is hunting me?" and draw the king of clubs you know its something like a serial killer or someone trying to kill you because they feel they have too.

A game of Porte Noire is also played with a deck of cards in addition to dice. The GM is the card holder--they are the oracle that draws and divines. The players have a set of 5d10, though they don't always roll all 5.

The game rules are simple.

• The GM separates their deck into two. One is the face cards + 1 joker. The other is all cards 2-10 + 1 joker.
• The GM draws 5 cards from the 2-10 deck. They are lined in front of him. 3 are face up, two are face down. This is called a book.
• When the players need to do something that would be contested or has a chance to fail, they roll a d10 against the revealed card furthest away from the face down cards. If they roll higher, they succeed. Equal to or lower, he fails.
• If the player fails, the suite of the card determines how the failure manifests. A failure against a Clubs means some twist of fate ruined everything. Against a Hearts, some emotion or passion from you or another party intervenes and prevents success. 
• If the player succeeds, the card is shuffled back into the deck. The two face down cards are face down purely so at some point, the players have no idea what their odds are anymore.
• If the player has a skill, they succeed as long as they are within a -1 range of the card. So if the card is a 6 and I roll a 5 on my d10, I succeed. A mastered skill is a -2 range.
• Once all cards are dealt with, all the players receive experience and a new book is dealt. The old book is shuffled back into the deck. 
• Players can roll an additional d10 if someone helps them, if they have a relevant tool, or if they decide to "Up the ante." This means increasing the severity of the failure consequences, which can lead to the drawing of a face card. A player can never roll more than 5d10. I'm not sure if additional successes will mean anything yet.

This is the core of the game. I called it the "Up the Ante System" or the "Black Poker System" or I don't know something edging and cool like that. All play revolves around this deck of 2-10 suit cards and the players own dice. There are other rules, of course (such as using the face card deck, what a joker does, what additional successes mean, etc), but this is the CORE of playing Porte Noire. In this model, the GM is a New Orleans saint holding the deck of fate and the players rolling dice to try and overcome it. They are dead or dying souls trying to discover their own personal miracle before they fade away entirely. 

All that for the next blog post though.