Camp NaNo Day 4, and a card game

1364 words today, most of it involving a card game that gets more and more complicated every time I write about it.

It's a game I made up for this world, because how can you have a wild west setting without some good card games going on the saloons? And since this is a fantasy world, it had to be a fantasy card game.

Suits: Sun (4), Moon (3), Stars (2), Earth (1), Air (2), Water (3), Fire (4)

[Edit, just so I can keep this straight myself. In the suits, the point values are actually multipliers. So a Sun Dragon is worth 4x15 pts, or 60 pts, while an Earth Dragon is only worth 15 pts (1x15)]

Ranks: Dragon (15 pts), Mage (14), King (13), Queen (12), Priest (11), Crone (10), Warrior (9), Merchant (8), Hunter (7), Farmer (6), Beggar (5), Harlot (4), Fool (3), Demon (2), Death (1 pt)

The players lay down combinations of three cards, and see who has best combos. Points are determined by the point values of the cards along with factors such as straight flushes (triples point value of combo) or three of a kind (suit or rank) (doubles point value of combo) and how much better or worse the combos are relative to the other players' combos (if there are 6 players, best-scoring combo gets an extra 5 points, worst-scoring gets 0 extra points), and are kept track of with colored pebbles. Bets can change after each time play passes around the table. Play continues until no more players can lay down a three-card combination. Points are totaled up at the end, but a really spectacular combo can win the game single-handedly. (Think catching the golden snitch in Quidditch. The point score doesn't necessarily matter when the snitch is caught.) The longer the game goes on, the more money is likely to be in the pot, so there's no advantage to ending the game early with an unbeatable hand.

Lainie, it turns out, is really good at this game.

Today's Camp Word Count: 1364; total 3720/30,000