Alembic: a deckbuilding game for 3 players
A game of Alembic has three players: the Alchemist, the Wizard, and the King. The Wizard and Alchemist play roughly the same; they are both Viziers, while the King takes the role of a judge, awarding Favor (victory points) to the other players. A full match consists of three rounds. Between each round, the Alchemist discovers the Philosopher's Stone and becomes a Wizard, the Wizard creates life and becomes a King, and the King grows obsessed with immortality and becomes an Alchemist. After each player has played each role, the one with the most Favor wins. In the event of a two-way tie, the player who was King last executes the player who was a Wizard, the player who was a Wizard dominates the Alchemist, and the Alchemist poisons the King. In the event of a three-way tie, all of these occur simultaneously and everyone loses.
Your Alembic deck consists of at least fifteen cards, no duplicates. Alembic cards are cards you steal from other games, ideally an eclectic mix. Use playing cards, tarot, Uno, MtG, YGO, Dominion, Dixit, BTCG, Spiceomancy, Inscryption, literally anything else. Each player may bring their own deck, or a deck can be shared by the table since no more than five cards are used per player per round.
First, the King reveals their three Demands. Each Demand is a card describing the qualities the King wants from their Viziers' Creations; each one is scored separately and is worth one Favor. Choose one from the deck. Then shuffle and deal one randomly from the deck. Then draw 3 cards and play one.
Then the Viziers must each draw a hand of five ingredients with which to bring about their Creations. A Creation consists of two ingredients played from a hand: a Reagent and a Catalyst.
The Reagent is to be understood as the core nature of the thing, with the Catalyst determining its superficial form and supplementary effects. A Wizard's Creation is fantastical and arcane in nature; an Alchemist's Creation is visceral and scientific.
Then, each Demand's Favor is given to the Vizier whose creation is determined by the King to best serve its purpose. Cards may be interpreted by their name, art, game rules, creative text, numerology, any combination of these traits, or anything else. Viziers may provide their interpretations and attempt to influence the King, but only the King's word is binding.
IF THE KING CANNOT DECIDE ON A WINNER: Each Vizier plays a Secret Ingredient at random from their hand. A Secret Ingredient functions as a second Reagent which revels itself with time. A Creation can only have one Secret Ingredient; if the King still can't decide, or moves to a subsequent Demand and also can't decide, they lose a Favor (this can take them below zero) and flip a coin, with Heads going to the Wizard and Tails going to the Alchemist.
Variants
- The King may keep one or more Demands face-down until judged in order to increase variance if one or more Viziers are getting too smart deckbuilding.
- A third Vizier may be introduced, an Artificer, in between the Alchemist and Wizard. An Artificer's Creation is perfect and soulless. There is no fair rock-paper-scissors configuration with four players; ties may simply be shared victories.
- Simultaneous play may be achieved by the cards each player plays functioning as both their Demands and Ingredients. In this variant, the three players are an Alchemist-King, and Artificer-King, and a Wizard-King. Secret Ingredients are played from the beginning, but face down. There is a discussion period, during which any player may choose to reveal their Secret Ingredient at any time. Then each secretly writes down the Favors they award to the other players, then finally all awarded points and face-down cards are revealed.
- To reduce social manipulation, your play group may choose to forbid actions such as taking each others' loved ones hostage.