As we know that a lot of card games are there and also different game variations are present in the form of land-based and online clubs. Considering that there are plenty of fictional games that are invented by various authors for their movies, books, and tv shows. So let’s start with the 5 fictional card games that belong to the most fictional worlds.
1. Dragon Poker
Dragon Poker was created by sci-fi and an American fantasy author, Robert Asprin. It is based on the MythAdventures series. It’s a complicated version of a card game. Dragon Poker is also based on the basic stud poker that includes 52 cards and four traditional suits, namely spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds. It also has four types of face cards: Unicorns, Elves, Ogres, and Dragons. Things can be complicated in this game. Conditional modifiers are the only thing that makes the game stand out and the player’s brain boil. The rules of the game are modified based on various shifting conditions such as the number of players, the individual player’s chair position, the day of the week, etc. But one thing is clear that Aspirin never described the whole rules. Some of the rules can be explained as follows:
- The sequence of the cards is reversed after getting in 5 hands. Thus, the high cards become low and vice versa.
- On even-numbered hands, the red dragons are wild.
- If Ogre is the first card in a round, the round is played with four cards facing up, five cards facing down, and one extra hole card.
- A player is allowed to change the suit of his or her cards once a night.
2. Cripple Mr. Onion
This card game is based on the Discworld novels written by the famous English author, Terry Pratchett. Cripple Mr. Onion is well described in the “Reaper Man” “Witches Abroad” and “Wyrd Sisters” Books. It is played with a deck of 8 suits which are Discworld Tarot Arcana suits. Four of these suits, coins, staves, cups, and swords come from the real Tarot cards and the added suits, elephants, octograms, crowns, and terrapins. Each player has 10 cards in his/her hand. Firstly 5 face-down cards are dealt. The players can then discard up to four cards and then receive new cards. After that remaining 5 cards are dealt face up. The winning combinations are called “Onions”
For example, Double Onion is for the two picture cards plus two aces. The lesser onion is for four picture cards plus four aces and a great onion is for five picture cards plus five aces. Thus, the nine-card running flush will cripple the great onion hence the name of the game.
3. Fizzbin
Frizzbin is a card game based on Star Trek that was created by Star Trek: The Original Series and invented by James T. Kirk. He came up with this idea for the game when he along with Spock and McCoy were there in the prison on Sigma Iota II Kirk made the rules of the game so complex and confusing so that the guards would get distracted. Six cards are dealt to each player for the player positioned on the dealer’s right. Kirk used some odd kind of terminology and it is understandable given the fact that he was inventing the game just as he was teaching it to henchmen and the round ended abruptly with prisoners escaping and a fight. For example a pair of jacks is called half fizzbin and if you have that then it will be called shralk. Royal fizzbin is the top hand and the last card that is dealt is Kronk.
Star Trek fans have come up with numerous versions of Fizzbin, and the game is played at the Star Trek conventions.
4. Exploding Snap
This card game is that game which we saw the Wizards playing in J.K Rowling’s “Harry Potter” universe. It is most common among the students of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The three versions of the game are explained as Classical, Patience, and Bavarian.
In the Exploding Snap game, the player who sees two identical images must tap the card with the wand and score a point. Talking about the difficulty of the game that players face is that the wizards’ cards shuffle with increasing speed. In the patience version, there are 20 cards that are revealed in pairs and all the players must find a similar image and the cards are burst once they are revealed for the first time. There is a Bavarian Snap where the dealer deals the cards in a circle and then puts the identity cards to those who have already dealt in the center of the circle. Players need to tap the cards with their wand and they have very little time to do before the cards explode.
Mountain Trolls, Cyclops, Giant Squids, and Bowtruckles are some of the cards that are used in this game.
5. Sabacc
Sabacc is the most popular card game in the world of Star Wars. In this game, the player has to collect the value closest to but that should not be higher than 23 and thus win the sabacc pot. The deck contains 76 cards. Out of that 60 are grouped in 4 suits and 16 special cards remain. Players in Sabacc place their cards into an octagonal energy column that is called an interference field. Once the player has tossed the card in that field the next card is displayed. After the sabacc shift, the value and suit of the cards that are not inside the interference field are altered randomly.
It was in the game of Sabacc that Han Solo won his Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian.
