Playing Cards: My Emergency Gaming Kit

This weekend I was at a multiple day family function and couldn’t get my gaming fix. It was day two and the shaking had gotten so bad that I was considering knocking over convenience store so I could go buy a Monopoly board. That’s when I decided that I would have to put a game together. Fortunately, I had paper, pencils, and a prime audience for creating a new gamer: a fourteen year old boy. What I lacked were dice.

I was lamenting this fact and working on ideas in my head for flipping coins, or fabricating some sort of die, when I spied a couple packs of playing cards. Salvation was at hand!

I took one deck apart and separated it by suit. From the spades, I removed everything higher than a ten; from Hearts, everything above an eight, and so on. Thus, I had a d4, d6, d8, and d10, rolled by drawing a card. I helped them build novice characters from memory, which meant that I didn’t have a complete list of edges or hindrances, but I could wing it. Essentially, you get a benefit if you take a detriment of some sort. It wasn’t really very important to get it right.

And thus we played. I ran a pulp adventure with a tropical island, savages, and Nazis. Pretty basic stuff, but it went well and fun was had by all.

And best of all, the card-based dice work rather well. It was a little slower than normal, but acceptable. So now you know. If you can’t keep dice nearby, try to locate some playing cards and all is well.

Do you have any tricks that worked on the fly? Maybe you have an actual gaming emergency kit. Let your fellow readers know in the comments.