My mid-west card-playing influence

Spending all my life in Ohio and having family in Iowa and Kansas, it’s impossible not to be fond of card games. The midwest has a strong connection to card-playing which I’d be bold enough to say is an integral part of our culture. And I’d be remiss not to mention how euchre always weasels itself into social gatherings. Considering this influence on me—not only as a player, but as a person—I wanted to design a game of my own which fits in with the plethora of existing games.

How to Play Dramble

Requires

2 players
One standard deck of cards (including Jokers)

Game Setup:

Place the deck in the center of the table
Flip over a card adjacent to the deck on the left and right. These grow into piles during the game
To determine who plays first, players draw a card and the highest card wins. Place them back in the deck and re-shuffle

Objective:

Score the most cards by the time the deck has been completely drawn

Scoring Rules:

Cards are scored from Ace to King, ignoring suits
If your deck includes Jokers, they act as a trump card above King
A high card is considered a card above the card itself. A low card includes the card itself or lower
(For example, a Jack on a Jack is a low card, but a Queen on a Jack is a high card)

Turn Start:

If players have zero cards in their hands, each player draws three cards and begins a round
The first player chooses a card to place face down behind either pile
When the first player is finished, the second player places a card of their own behind either pile
Both players flip over their cards and begin the Pile-Taking step

Pile-Taking:

The cards placed contest the top card in a pile
If a player places a low card, their card is placed on top of the pile, becoming the new card to beat
If a player places a high card, they take the cards in the pile. The card they placed replaces the pile, becoming the new card to beat. Cards won are set aside, and used to keep track of scoring
When pile-taking is finished, the turn is over, and players begin a new turn with their existing hand

Double Contesting:

If both players play cards on the same pile, in order to take the pile, one player must have a high card for both the opponent’s card and the pile’s top card (If a player places a card that beats the other player’s card, they can only take the pile if they beat the pile too)
If both players play the same card they cannot take the pile because there would be no high card (as per the scoring rules)
If both players play a low card, the card of the player that played second is placed on top of the pile

Turn Order:

The player with the most cards scored plays first every turn
Legacy rules apply(if both players have the same number of cards scored, the player who played first the previous turn will continue to play first)
It is highly recommended that players group the cards scored together in groups of five, like tallies. This is to make seeing the score quicker for both players

Finishing the Game:

Players continue drawing rounds of 3 cards and taking piles until all cards in the deck have been drawn (some will be discarded at the end because the piles will remain)
By the end, whichever player has the most cards scored wins
If both players have the same number of cards, then they re-shuffle and play one last hand of 3 cards. The winner takes all

dramble-rules.pdf

Making a "vintage" game

Making a card game which feels vintage means not re-inventing the wheel. Card games don’t feel classic because people weren’t as creative as game designers of today, they are that way because these games are built off of a culture with consistency; in other words, what felt good and familiar stuck and was passed on to the next generation. I implemented this myself wherever possible, keeping score-taking simple and memorable, building rules off of a consistent idea, and keeping familiarity in place of complexity. And most importantly, to push familiarity, the game needed a title to feel at home among odd names like Cribbage, Rummy, and Spit.

Consistency is shown best in Dramble through its main mechanic, taking piles of cards by playing a high card from your hand. What if another player plays a card at the same pile? Look for a high card among all the cards. What if both players play the same rank? Then there’s no high card; put the cards on top of the pile. This level of consistency can be lost in gaming the further we move from abstract gameplay. In the advent of technology and distribution allowing greeting theming in games, the tendency today is to build rules on the player’s understanding of constraints and reality. It’s worth understanding however that the old system of creating universal rules/systems still works to create satisfying, elegant gameplay.