This is currently a public draft post in progress…

With the upcoming Game Design Conference in SF (http://gamedesigncon.com/) I decided it was time to finally develop a business card game for my card, one suited to conferences (quick play, utilizes business, cards, simple rules, etc).

So without further ado, here’s the current draft rules (need more playtesting) of “Dog Pile”:

Number of players: 2

Playtime: 5 minutes.

Goal: Score the most points by being “Top Dog” on piles.

Setup

Each player chooses 8 cards from their wallet to use. Whoever suggested the game goes first.

Play

Take turns playing a card onto 1 of 3 piles based on the kind of card: Business, Membership/ID, or Financial (bank/discount/gift cards).

Play a card face down instead to score the cards below it (2 card min.). Add to your score and return the cards to your wallets.

Game ends when both players run out of cards. Unscored cards are worth 0.

Inspiration

Its worth noting that a fair part of this design was inspired by BRAWL, a fantastic card game by Cheapass games (Free to print and play http://www.cheapass.com/freegames/brawl and available on iOS).

Design Constraints

Since the goal of designing this game was to spread a game along with my business card it was important that it not require additional components beyond what people receiving my business card might reasonably have on them at the time. While I considered designs that might require dice or coin flipping, I can’t count on those components being available on the fly.

Originally I intended to make something where my card itself may have a variety of attributes to make it so those receiving my business card would play against each other and seek out others with my card. I realized this limited the play audience to only those with my business card and didn’t really lend itself well to viral distribution. My solution was to instead present rules on my card so that my card was not a required component of the game, although it still can be used! This allows players without my business card to learn the game and spread it without requiring my card. The risk of course is that the game may not be properly attributed to me or lead to any interest in me personally, but if the game is fun and spreads I can certainly live with that risk!

Feedback appreciated!