# The Fight Card System

**The Fight Card System** is a design guide/system reference document for making games or supplents based in **Transgender Deathmatch Legend**. Fight Card Games are tabletop roleplaying fighting games where one character fights their way across a map. Combat is resolved in a trick taking game. One player, the **Protagonist**, controls the lead character while the other plays every other character, narrates details of the world, and plays any opponent in combat. They are called the **Facilitator**.

# Fight Mechanic

During set-up the players remove the Jokers then shuffle the deck, and the Protagonist draws a hand of cards (in Transgender Deathmatch Legend a hand is 9 cards, you can change this number as you see fit). When a fight begins the Facilitator also draws a hand of cards. Then the rules of a fight are as follows.

## Rules of a Fight

- Reveal the top card of the deck, this is the Trump Suit
- Starting player puts down a card matching the Trump Suit
- The opposing player must play another card in the same suit
- The move oracle explains what move is being attempted
- The oracle also explains any bonuses trump cards give
- The highest card wins, and claims both cards (the trick) in a winnings pile
- Describe how this situation plays out
- The winning player begins the next trick
- Players don’t draw back up during a fight
- If a player cannot match the Trump Suit they can play any card, but they are considered to have lost the trick and a new Trump Suit card is drawn
- If neither player can match the Trump Suit, the highest card played wins.
- The first fighter to claim a simple majority of tricks is the winner, describe how they finish the fight
- If the Protagonist defeats their opponent they move on from this hex, if the Protagonist was defeated they move directly to one of the Respawn Point hexes.

You can copy the rules of a fight wholesale or modify them. Some of our commentary on the mechanic offers ideas for changes.

(The rules of Transgender Deathmatch Legend were taken from our own one page game BLOOD//RUSH, where two players create and burn through various characters in a fighting tournament. In BLOOD//RUSH you play until all cards are gone, as the ratio of tricks won/lost affects the winning player's draw in the next fight. Given how TDL and other Fight Card games follow a central character, playing out all tricks no longer seemed fun and well paced enough so it was changed to a Best of X.)

## Respawn Points and Other Ways of Losing

In Transgender Deathmatch Legend if the Protagonist loses a fight they move to Respawn Point. There are three on the map and each asks how the character got there. From there they go back out and can either take a different route or go back and fight the same enemy again.

Depending on what sort of map you use you may phrase that rule differently.

Alternatively you may find Respawn Points aren't the best way for dealing with lost fights in your game. TDL is a queer power fantasy so we weren't interested in losing a fight being a major setback. If you were interested in other failure options you could have parts of the map blocked off after a lost fight or impose a disadvantage of some kind on the Protagonist. You could have the fight replay immediately instead of moving the player on the map. In certain games it may even be appropriate to have someone create a new character if they want to proceed.

## Optional Mechanic: Score Outcome

You might have the Protagonist check the final score and have an effect based on that. In Transgender Deathmatch Legend if it's a close fight (5 tricks won, 4 tricks lost) the Protagonist can reclaim some spent cards or discard weaker cards to draw back up. In BLOOD//RUSH (which used a different set up than Protagonist/Facilitator) the winning player has to discard trump's equal to the number of tricks lost, rewarding the losing player for a close fight. You could use either of those rules or any variations if you wanted the results of a fight to influence the Protagonist's hand.

If you were exploring an advancement system (see the later section on Multi-Session Play) or had the map feature restricted access (see the later section on Map Navigation) You might have either of those things influenced by the score of a fight.

You could also have the score a purely fictional factor, how it reflects the nature of the fight and how people respond to what happened.

## Move Oracles

Here is the move oracle from Transgender Deathmatch Legend and the move oracle from BLOOD//RUSH. The trump mechanics are the same in both games but the theming is different, TDL based in pro wrestling move sets while BLOOD//RUSH is all about strikes. You are free to replicate and modify either oracle in your own Fight Card games.

Move Oracle

- Ace - Forearm Smash - Re-draw one card
- Two - Headlock- Start the next trick, even if you lose
- Three - Uppercut
- Four - Big Boot
- Five - Knee Strike - Exchange a card with the Trump Suit card
- Six - Lariat
- Seven - Dropkick
- Eight - Backbreaker
- Nine - Spinebuster - Exchange a card with your opponent
- Ten - Sleeper Hold
- Jack - Suplex - Draw a new Trump Suit card after this trick
- Queen - Neckbreaker - Opponent must play their highest card or a matching 2
- King - Slam

Move Oracle

- Ace - Jab - Re-draw one card
- Two - Hook - Start the next trick, even if you lose
- Three - Low Kick
- Four - Fast Elbow
- Five - Cross Punch - Exchange a card with the Trump Suit
- Six - Spinning Elbow
- Seven - Haymaker
- Eight - Uppercut
- Nine - Spinning Backfist - Exchange a card with your opponent
- Ten - High Knee
- Jack - Jumping Elbow - Draw a new Trump Suit after this trick
- Queen - Twisting Kick - Opponent must play their highest card or a matching 2
- King - Axe Kick

(An initial draft of the oracle in TDL had a greater amount of holds but we realised this started to make roleplaying a fight unapproachable unless you had a greater degree of wrestling knowledge. So we redrafted to mostly emphasise strikes and throws.)

(Could a Fight Card Game use the trick taking mechanic to represent something other than combat? It could focus on performances of some kind, plays in a game of sport or focus on a broader range of responses to a challenge. How would this affect the roleplaying element of the game?)

We'd recommend including an example of play so players can get a sense of how roleplaying out the trick taking game might work. We've included our Example of Play from BLOOD//RUSH here. You can't include it exactly in your own games but it might be useful inspiration.

Ahmed, the player leading the trick leading the trick, plays a Jack of Hearts, a jumping elbow matching the Trump Suit. Ahmed’s character is scrapmetal cyborg brawler called Jane Fury. Her opponent is a focused luchadora called La Hija del Gato. La Hija’s player, Suz, can’t beat a Jack so plays the 3 of Hearts, her lowest card matching the Trump Suit. They decide del Gato goes for a surprise Low Kick but Jane spots it, jumps over and immediately launches into the Jumping Elbow. They draw a new card for the Trump Suit.

Ahmed  won so claims the trick and then starts the next trick by playing a 9 of Diamonds. Suz plays a King of Diamonds, meaning del Gato wins the trick. They describe how Jane Fury’s Spinning Backfist connects but La Hija del Gato turns her skin to iron, weathering the blow. Lightning strikes their conductive body and with a mighty electrified Axe Kick she brings Fury to the ground.

Ahmed narrates a small scene reflecting the trump effect of the 9 of Diamonds. Jane stomps the ground in pain. She makes intense eye contact with her opponents and both begin to cry ichor. Fury rises to her feet, having scanned del Gato’s mind. Ahmed and Suz exchange a card, Ahmed picks his while Suz draws at random.

## Suit Use

In Transgender Deathmatch Legend the suit indicates two things. The Trump Suit (named the Weather Suit in TDL) controls the weather in a fight, extreme freak weather befitting the schlocky tone. The suit of any card played also adds an optional flavour that can modify a description of an attack.

We considered what else the Suits could represent in other hypothetical Fight Card Games. We thought it could signal a change in fighting style or tactics that is needed to succeed. We also thought you could have the Protagonist playing multiple characters fighting together (either a team working together or a plural character switching between fronters). In these instances what the current Trump Suit is doesn't have to correspond to anything in fiction, it can just be a determiner of success.

(In BLOOD//RUSH the suit doesn't correspond to much, and there's no reason you couldn't replicate that in your game.)

## Alternate Trump Rule

While thinking of how else suits could be applied we did think of a different rules approach.

There is no overall trump suit. Instead whichever player leads the trick plays a card of any suit. The opposing player then plays a higher value in a specified different Suit.

- Hearts and Clubs Counter Each Other
- Diamonds and Spades Counter Each Other

Alternatively you could stipulate removing an entire suit before shuffling the deck and have three suits countering each other in a Rock-Paper-Scissors order.

Countering rather than matching a suit might better fit the theme and fiction of your Fight Card Game, though you'd likely need to fiddle around with trump card effects to best facilitate this.

# Map Navigation/Out of Combat Play

Transgender Deathmatch Legend is played on hexcrawl. Players start on one hex and can move in any direction. Hexes correspond to a legend and might start fights, present challenges or other roleplaying scenes.

We'll include the rules for the default hexes from TDL here. You can use these to make a hexcrawl for TDL or your own Fight Card Game.

## Ally Hexes

An ally is any character you meet who isn’t trying to beat you to a pulp. Ally hexes have some details about these characters and where you meet them. You can interpret the brief prompts for allies as you see fit or disregard them entirely. You can play out a short in-fiction scene as you go on your way.

## Challenge

A challenge hex will present some sort of opportunity for the Protagonist. The Facilitator establishes the challenge and draws three cards from the top of the deck. The Protagonist must play a card from their hand that beats the highest numerical value of any of the Facilitator’s cards. If they pass this check they receive a benefit; this may be pre-setting a Trump Suit or re-drawing a number of cards.

Remember to draw back up after playing through a challenge.

## Weapon Pick Up

A weapon pick up is a chance to grab some plunder. The Facilitator introduces the scene where a weapon can be claimed and draws a card from the top of the deck. The Protagonist can claim the weapon and exchange a card from their hand of a matching suit. When they play this card in a fight they can replace the standard flavour of it with the flavour of a weapon attack. Mechanically the card acts as normal.

## Respawn Points

If the Protagonist is defeated in a fight they move directly to any Respawn Point. Depending on the key the Facilitator describes the scene where they come to and the Protagonist acts out how they get back on the brawling path.

You can invent new kinds of hexes. You could also do a different method of map navigation. You could create a point crawl (a series of locations/encounters linked by paths), some kind of grid system, or an open map. You could have a map generated by drawing cards that key to encounters. You could also try having a Fight Card Game work in a theatre of the mind fashion, with the Facilitator calling for fights when they see fit, like someone might call for a dice roll in other games.

## Thoughts on Challenge Mechanics

We thought of other ways of resolving non-fight challenges. An earlier draft of TDL featured multiple kinds of challenges, in addition to a simple "beat the numerical value" challenge there were "match the colour" and "match the suit" challenges. These were dropped, for simplicity's sake, but if you wanted to vary difficulty you could do so like that. You could resolve a challenge using the trick taking game rules, but only playing a single trick.

Another alternative would be instead of having a persistent hand you could have the Protagonist draw from the deck, with the numerical value determining success. This would work essentially like a d13 check in more traditional ttrpgs and could open up adding stats into character creation. This does lose a degree of mechanical symmetry between combat and other scenes.

You could forgo involving the cards in challenges and have character creation involve creating reputation and item tags, then beating challenges involves arguing their relevance against the Facilitators judgement.

(In TDL Challenges include cutting a promo, working out and settling your nerves, but the substance can be changed to any sort of non combat action. Depending on what your fiction involves you may want different mechanical effects, the next section has some ideas on this.)

Any of these changes may render Weapon Pick Ups less mechanically relevant as a consequence, so you may choose to not include Weapons in your game, or implement them differently.

## Thoughts on Challenge Effect

In TDL beating challenges allows the Protagonist to either pre-set the Trump Suit of certain fights (choosing a suit that their hand seems strong with) or to re-draw a certain number of cards (ideally replacing weaker cards in their hand).

We didn't want to allow too much influence over what happens when a fight starts, so we avoided automatic successes in certain tricks, ambient number boosts or increased hand size. You may feel you desire differently for your game.

You could also remove the idea of having Challenges affect fights at all. You could have challenges affect the map, beating them could open up new areas or shortcuts, or losing against them could block off certain routes or reveal new enemies. You could have the results of challenges only influence the fiction of the world.

# Multi-Session Play and Character Advancement

Transgender Deathmatch Legend is a one-shot game which requires zero prep, beyond having the text and a deck of cards. New adventures for TDL could follow the same character two people may have played in a previous session, or a new story in the same system. Your own Fight Card Game might be designed to accommodate multiple sessions. In that instance you might want to think about character advancement.

TDL itself has no rules for character advancement in the core game. We wouldn't find it interesting to allow advancement to make fights easier, as we feel that might reduce the fun of the game.

If you were using stats or tags for challenges and as such have a more detailed character creation, advancement could look like stat bonuses or new tags.

You could have cosmetic, fiction only affecting advancement. You could have the Protagonist update their move oracle with new attacks or customise their look further, like changing video game cosmetics.

You could have advancement be achieved by XP system, a money system of some kind or simply advance on a per-session basis.

## Thing That Could Reward/Affect XP or Money

- A Win in a Fight
- A Win in a Fight with the ratio of tricks won/loss affecting the reward
- Reward for Successful Challenge
- Reward for Successful Challenge, affected by different ranges
- Money could be found on the map.

(The idea of finding money on the map could combine well with making exploring the map more difficult or more influenced by fights and challenges.)

Alternatively you might use a Fight Card Game as a minigame in an anthology system, or modify it to work as a character creation tool for a system hopping Multi-Session game.

(We have thought you could run a system hopping campaign using TDL and other wrestling themed games to follow the same cast.)

# Character Creation

Characters in Transgender Deathmatch Legend are all about the vibes. You define their shoot name, ring name, background pitch, and gimmick off of picklists. You also give your character some pronouns and draw cards to determine a finishing move (pure optional flavour for when you win a fight).

You could replicate this approach in your Fight Card Game or devise the character another way, maybe drawing cards and checking against random tables or drawing your starting hand and checking each card against one large table for a series of character prompts.

If you've approached challenges in a way that relies on stats or tags you'll need to include creating these in character creation. You could have picklists or tables for this or play out a tutorial fight where your score corresponds to certain tags or stats.

You could also use pre-written characters for the Protagonist to pick from.

(One possible supplement idea we did have for TDL was alternative character creations, guiding the fiction like different playbooks in Belonging outside Belonging games, which was actually an influence on the games approach to character creation.)

# Different Approaches to Varying Player Count

Transgender Deathmatch Legend is designed by default for two players, but while designing it we did think of some different approaches to play that could accomadate an expanded player count. We've reproduced those thoughts here and you're welcome to use them in your own Fight Card Game.

## Pass and Play

If you want to accomodate more players you can simply add a pass and play element. Perhaps when the Protagonist enters a new hex roles rotate. Any player not currently with a central role can add details and ask questions. Every player could have their own hand in this scenario.

The pass and play could just apply to fights with a winner-stays-on (as the Protagonist) mentality.

## Protagonist, Antagonist and Narrator

If you were just expanding to three players and didn’t want to go a pass and play route you could have one player as the Antagonist. The Antagonist roleplays every oppositional character in the story and always acts against the Protagonist in fights.

If you wanted to add another mechanical element you could have the Antagonist also play a card during Challenges, simultaneously as the Protagonist. The Protagonist must beat both the dealt hand and the Antagonists card.

The Facilitator acts more as the Narrator in this mode of play, playing every relevant character in any non-fighting scenes and filling in details of the world and any crowds in fight.

Additionally depending on the kind of game you might find it appropriate to simply have multiple Protagonists, and the Facilitator picks who resolves an individual fight in the way someone in other games picks who resolves a dice roll.

We also ultimately believe this system is a fun game for observers as well as players.

# Licence Details and Logos

If you follow the terms of the license you are allowed to publish (free or commercially) third party content for Transgender Deathmatch Legend or you own game using the Fight Card Systems without the express permission of Rat Wave Game House.

You may not not reuse any art from the base Transgender Deathmatch game, nor the base Transgender Deathmatch Legend logo. You may not reuse text from the game that isn't included in this guide for use.

Rat Wave Game House is built on a culture of care, respect, and lending a voice to the voiceless. We reserve the right to disavow your product and revoke access to this licence. For example, and without limitation, we will disavow your product and revoke access to this license if we determine that your product contains content that is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or in any other way hurtful towards marginalized identities and experiences.

The above agreement does not apply to any corporate entity with more than $1,000,000 in gross revenue within any one of the previous three tax years. Any such entity should contact mackenziealter@outlook.com to discuss licensing.

If you are publishing third party content for Transgender Deathmatch Legend you are allowed and and encouraged (but not required) to use the "Compatible with Transgender Deathmatch Legend" logo. If you plan on making any significant alterations to the logo, please email us at mackenziealter@outlook.com for permission (which we’ll usually grant.)

![](https://gyazo.com/33ec62509b57ae385ab7b6ff7dc24645.png)

The following bit of text must appear somewhere visible in the product, and on any website or storefront where you promote the product.

\[Product name\] is an independent production by \[Author or Publisher\] and is not affiliated with Rat Wave Game House. It is published under the Transgender Deathmatch Legend Third Party License.

If you are publishing your own game in The Fight Card System you are allowed and encouraged (but not required) to use "The Fight Card System" logo. We’ve included 2 versions [here](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16lmrWiZ3eAvG74cRCdzkgiC2cH3iDeoL?usp%3Dsharing&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1649546031661772&usg=AOvVaw10WFGc4RpPVxSnANdTzMa2), based on the background of the image. If you plan on making any significant alterations to the logo, please email us at mackenziealter@outlook.com for permission (which we’ll usually grant).

![](https://gyazo.com/acd03cdfc89d2140ffbe5b8653511ebf.png)![](https://gyazo.com/871002e9fe75c065f258fe4f14fa4939.png)

We request you include the following disclaimer in your game.

This game uses The Fight Card System, created by The Dice of Rat Wave Game House. This game is not affiliated with Rat Wave Game House.

Rat Wave Game House is not responsible for any legal claims against you or your products.

# Credits and Resources

This design guide/SRD was written by Scales, a sub-system of The Dice.

Transgender Deathmatch Legend was written by Domino, a sub-system if The Dice.

Layout and Graphic Design by Finley, of The Dice.

Editing by Ace, of The Dice.

The backdrop is a painting by Kayla, of The Dice, originally used in Transgender Deathmatch Legend.

If you're interested in relocating the type used in Transgender Deathmatch Legend (not a requirement), know that the logo is in Megapolois Black, headings are in Bebas Nueue and the body is in Kalam. This guide uses the same fonts.