Castle Clash

a (TTRP)G by @tiiimezombie

v1.0.0 | 2025-09-29

In the castle throne room, a devout knight fights a vile sorceress over the life of the princess. The air is thick with magic, the princess is too weak to flee, and the room is starting to buckle under the intensity of the battle.

How to play

You will need a deck of cards and a way to record the story.

Draw a card
Each time you draw, place the card on a pile of the same suit, record the outcome, and add at least one detail/embellishment/justification to keep the story's flow.

Once a suit has enough cards in its pile (5 for characters and all three face cards for the castle), the next drawn face card is the end of that narrative thread (the first result out of the two listed). Cards drawn for a completed pile may be discarded or used for the suit of your choice.

Play until you have two completed arcs, and the story should wrap up naturally.

Author's note, if just journalling isn't enough RP for you, pick any character POV as 'you'.

A card is drawn! It affects...

- the knight, - the princess, - the sorceress. (assign genders/pronouns for each character as you please)

- They monologue
- They distract someone from their goal
- They open themselves up to danger
- They seize a risky opportunity
- They play this next part defensively
- Oh No! They take a severe injury
- They are enraptured by another's beauty
- They find something genuinely admirable about another party
- They commiserate
- They understand another's true motive, ignoring the one stated
- They are magically transformed | They are magically altered
- They are fully convinced to join their once-enemy | They fall in love with their enemy
- They die | They take a fatal blow and will not survive long after the fight ends

- the castle

- A wide shot of castle. It's ages old and a battle rumbles below it's walls
- The sound of fighting outside grows dim
- A table is flipped and its contents spill
- Assorted furniture falls to disarray!
- A window shatters from the force of attacks connecting
- The tapestries are sliced and fall to the floor with a thump
- A load bearing pillar is blasted clean through
- A slow pan over the heraldry on the walls, reminding us of the stakes
- The flash of magic casts dramatic silhouettes on the walls
- The floor cracks under the strain of blows
- The magic pulls the castle out of time and space to strand the combatants | the castle is twisted by the magic
- The battle is pained in the soft light of a setting sun | a chandelier falls and burns the closest character
- Part of the ceiling crumbles and buries the healthiest person | a large chunk of ceiling gives way and light pours in dramatically

Originally this was a game about a witch twinning you.
If you don't know what twinning is, don't worry about it. I don't have the spoons to provide examples. Treat "magically transformed" and "magically altered" as idk turned fully and partially to stone, or like into a frog or something.