House of Cards: Core

The clinking of glasses and the pleasant chatter of the dinner guests permeates the night at Lord S. McGuffin’s manor house/castle/villa. You have never quite had clarity on the building classification; just that it is big and swanky.

However, you don’t have time to think too hard about that fact as the lord’s son/daughter/wife/mistress/totally platonic lodger comes barreling down the stairs into the dining room, crying that your host has been murdered. At that moment, you know that for whatever serendipitous reason, you are going to have to solve this case.

Your qualifications? You are in the right place at the right time.

Welcome to the House of Cards: a murder mystery with a sliding scale of improv. Use a deck of cards to generate a location, the players and how the honourable lord McGuffin died, then play out a bunch of, probably quite drunk, socialites and generally awful people trying their best to figure out which one of them is a murderer. 

You can choose to set this up two ways: completely improvised, drawing all the cards at the start of the game and coming up with it as you go, or with as much prep as you want. Use the cards as inspiration to create the most complex plot you desire for your players to solve. 

You will need:

• 2 decks of cards
• A GM
• One to six players recommended (technically, you could play with more. We aren't stopping you!)
• Some pens and paper for notes

House of Cards is a system created by Cat of The Cryptid Collection.