Quitter the Game
The card game for people that like to pretend they are quitting social media.
Share Content to collect Reacts and then spend that emotional currency to draw from the Real Life deck. The more Real Life cards you have on the board the less Content you'll have to draw at the end of each turn. When you end a turn with no cards in hand and no draw requirement you win the game by being a Quitter.
Development
Quitter is a fully developed game that just needs more artwork. I’ve decided to use Substack as a community hub to work with artists and catalog the development process. Once that is done it will also be a place for beta and then launch discussion.
Gameplay
Quitter has two decks. The first is the Scroll deck. This represents using social media. You draw from this at the END of your turn, constantly thwarting your own attempts to use all your cards and end with an empty hand.
The second is the Real Life deck. You have to earn draws from this deck. It's a mixed bag, but each good card reduces the amount of cards you need to draw each turn. Some of them also have power ups that help you get rid of your cards quicker.
Turn Breakdown
Each players' turn has the following phases:
Share
React
Take Action
Go Outside (Attempt Real Life)
Draw
Share
Engagement is the currency of social media. For Quitter then, Content Cards that have collected enough Reacts are the currency of the game. Even though you'll want to get rid of all your cards eventually, your first objective is to build up Content that you can spend. A Content card needs at least three Reacts on it to be considered Fully Engaged.
Content is categorized as either Encouragement or Outrage. You can play as much of it as you like in a single turn. You are not required to share every turn, but you must share a card if you do not have at least one of both types on the board.
React
Reacts aren't just the representation of clicking a 'Like' button. They aren't just the sum of an online interaction. They are how you feel! If it's in your hand and you've got the opportunity you gotta get it out.
After the Share phase, you must play every React you can, if you can, according to the following rules:
Encouragement Reacts on Encouragement Content. Outrage goes on Outrage.
One React per Content, per turn
Other player’s content only
If you have more than seven cards in your hand at this point, discard down to seven. Our attention spans are only so long after all.
Real Life
You won't be able to resist the lure of perpetually scrolling through social media until you have something going on in your life. Put those hits of dopamine from online interaction to good use by spending that energy to Go Outside. But beware, Real Life experiences are just as likely to be Negative as they are Positive. Make sure you've got some Outrage ready to process and release. Otherwise you won't have the energy to keep trying!
Once per turn you can spend Encouragement Content to draw from the RL deck. When you draw, set this card in front of you on the board. If this is a Positive RL card, congratulations, you succeeded and cannot draw again until next turn. If this is a Negative RL card you may spend Outrage Content to immediately discard it and draw again. You may continue this process so long as you are getting Negative RL cards and have the Outrage to spend. You can also start the draw process by spending Outrage to remove a Bad RL card left over from a previous turn.
SPEND and DESTROY - Core Mechanics
Content cannot be spent until it is “Fully Engaged”, meaning that it has at least three Reacts on it. When you spend this, the content card goes into the discard pile but the Reacts go up into your hand. The mechanic is the same if another player destroys your Content. Your targeted Content card goes into the discard pile but all of the Reacts on it go up into your hand. For the flow of gameplay, this means that Reacts are in short supply at first but by the end of the game you are just trying to catch the waves.
Action
No strategy card game would be complete without the ability to ruin other players' carefully laid plans. Neither would social media. Catfish, Virtue Signal, and Grift your way to victory!
You generally have one action to spend each turn (although some RL cards give you extra actions per turn.) Most of these will be immediately resolved, but some of them will remain on the board, such as the One Up card doubling the amount of Reacts a targeted Content card needs.
There are also cards that can counter. You can play a Counter card for free as an immediate response or as your action to remove an action card remaining from a previous turn. A card that can be played as a counter will have the word COUNTER followed by a description of what it can be used against.
Draw
You draw three cards at the end of your turn by default. Negative RL cards increase this number and Positive RL cards decrease it. If your draw number would be a negative you can instead discard that many cards.
Game Box Details
The basic version of the game will contain the following:
Scroll Deck
72 React ( 2 Unique x 36)
48 Content ( 24 Unique x 2 )
32 Action ( 8 Unique )
Real Life Deck
44 Positive (11 Unique x 4)
20 Negative (5 Unique x 4 )
Conclusion
Once we have completed enough cards to fill out the basic game requirements, I will print a small run for beta testing and early streaming. After that I’ll relaunch the Kickstarter with a much, much smaller goal and then try to fund more card variety with stretch goals.
This is a cool idea. The art looks cool and I'd be interested in it.