Ethan Kennerly
United States
California
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Hope you have fun on Halloween...
NIGHTMARE POKER
A variant to HeroCard Nightmare by TableStar Games
Variant by Ethan Kennerly, December 2007 to June 2008
After playing with several casual players, and catering to my son's fondness for Texas Hold'em, I now play with a simpler variant, which is quicker to learn, quicker to play, and focuses on the synergy of deduction and bluffing.
This is not the complete rules and you still need HeroCard Nightmare to play. Refer to HeroCard Nightmare to augment these variants. Assume simplest interpretation of base rules. HeroCard Nightmare Rules are listed at the TableStar website: http://www.tablestargames.com/Games/G_NM_Main.html
Summary of variant is:
* Play with Poker cards in place of HeroCards. No attribute stacks, so no clearing.
* Randomize starting tile locations.
* You can move to ANY adjacent tile. Do not move scene tiles. Move two instead of three.
QUICK INTRODUCTION
Only one will awaken...
You've just looked at a cursed scene photograph of where you will die, and cursed killer photograph of who will kill you. Going to sleep, you share a dream with your friends, in which the only way to survive is to make sure everybody else meets their fate first.
You try to discover other players' Killer and Scene cards, and since you know they are doing the same, you try to hide your own Killer and Scene cards. When your Killer and Scene card is deduced, another player can eliminate you from play.
The board represents a dream that all players share. Killers and the collective Dreamer are moved around, testing who is afraid of some Killer or Scene. You can then deduce the combination of Killer cards and Scene cards another player. But can you do it before they deduce your Killer and Scene?
Components
1 Dreamer Figure
5 Killer Figures
5 Killer Cards
7 Death Scene Cards
7 Scene Tiles
52 card Poker Deck
4 Reference Cards
1 Rule Booklet
Game Setup
Shuffle and deal scene cards normally.
Turn all tiles face down and shuffle them. Place them face down as a hexagon in the center and six tiles around it, all touching the center. In this simpler variant, you can move from any tile to a touching tile, regardless of image on that side of the tile.
Have an experienced player start, or randomly determine who starts. Player to left of starting player places a killer on an empty tile. Continue counter-clockwise, until all killers are placed. Then starting player places Dreamer on an empty tile.
Playing the Game
Avoid revealing your Scene and Killer while deducing the Scene and Killer of other players.
The starting player takes the first turn. Afterward, turns proceed clockwise. On each turn, you have the following phases:
1. Discard any Poker cards, face up to central pile.
2. Draw up to 3 Poker cards not to exceed max hand size of 7 cards.
3. Move two times. Each move may shift a Dreamer figure or Killer figure to an adjacent tile.
4. Play Poker cards to: Scare all players, or Kill a single player.
Scaring a Player
To discover killer or scene, test which players are afraid of any killers or scene where the dreamer is.
Start a poker hand for the attack, with at least one card. Higher ranked hand of attackers (collectively) or defenders wins. In this variant, poker hands are compared:
Royal flush
Straight flush
Four of a kind
Full house
Flush
Straight
Three of a kind
Two pair
One pair
High card
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker_hands
Only 5 cards are compared. Players may not state cards they have in hand.
Killing also uses Poker cards. After scare/kill attempt is concluded, discard those played cards.
If a player is scared, then scared player discards Poker hand and draw a new Poker hand of seven cards. When deck is exhausted, recycle discard pile.
With three or four players, players may join in either attack, but there is no 'Relief'.
When no one is afraid, eliminate tile as usual, if dream becomes disconnected, then reconnect as usual.
THEORETICAL NOTE
In this variant, Nightmare's roots to Clue and roots to Poker's bluffing strategies (to induce false higher-order beliefs) are cleaner. Nightmare Poker was demo'd at AISB 2008, because this variant of HeroCard Nightmare focuses on the knowledge game (as described for Cluedo by Hans p. van Ditmarsch).
http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/faculties/science/2000/h.p.va...
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