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A bullet does not, in any world but shmup, kill immediately. In that concept does this pack specialize. For number cards, bullets weave, they store, they feed. Number cards transform, they strip, they insult, unharm, untether, unmake. Death an outcome second to consequence.

Here, a deck of cards’ inherent power structures & the time/path a bullet takes to kill get subverted.

From page 1, the definition of deck of cards dissolves. It’s whatever’s most interactive at your table. Is that the contents of your group’s pockets? A recipe box of index cards from others’ games? A search result’s page of pixabay images or itch.io covers or youtube thumbnails? A music visualizer setting? Is that dice? It’s dice, isn’t it? Then your deck of cards is dice.

A royal card never benefits your bullet. Royal cards are the bare minimum, royals are bullets with no flavor nor additional function. At the table, the pack’s design does not let such withholding royals go unrecognized. The pack accuses these cards. The pack says tables who take out these cards, who treat these cards as destructible NPCs, are rewarded. A royal card which a table removes makes drawing flavorful number cards easier and easier.

Favorite bullet: eel bullet, I like each of the pentacles but I like this one most bc it’s like shooting ribbons out your gun and the air dies and you can run along the air’s carcass unless if you have some sort of boots or a board available, then you can grind down the dead air instead. Cool.

What bullet would I bring to a table?

Snack Bullet — For 7 minutes, target table is dead, the game loudly regenerating through squelching people at the table producing crunchy orbs or a hot leaf drink or phone call to mom.

If a table rules no meta bullets, I’d sub in

Feather Bullet — Stripping the nearest source of calcium to grow, feathers erupt from the target who is dead the moment such feathers are not preened for x hours a day, where x is the number of days it’s been since this bullet was fired.

(Shoot a statue with the tar bullet and the feather bullet to watch it crumble into corvids. From all the living, remove all Wounds made in The Crumbled Statue’s name. Add 1 crater to a prominent celestial object for each wound removed in this way.)

Thank you for writing this, xander

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And thank YOU for writing this lovely review!! ♥ I'm glad the royal themes came through 😉 The idea of meta bullets fascinates me (as I'm sure it would for Rathayibacter as well): bullets that lets you swap out your character sheet, bullets that let you rewrite an uncomfortable scene, bullets that burst into instances of other games... Feather Bullet is also really cool!