Cult Poker 2024

The year, 1923. The life, a university student, one of daily tedium and nighttime revelry, hours sweating over books at the behest of hectoring professors or carousing with friends through the big city or about the countryside in rattletrap cars. It can be exhilarating, meeting decadent connoisseurs of the arts or practiced masters of esoterica. And there are always the dreams, those nervous fabrications flitting through the restive hallways of one’s sleeping mind.

Yet is this all there is? Is there more to life and existence? Some deeper understanding and adventure and … perhaps even grandeur that one lonely soul may obtain? Despite the nagging feeling that doom hovers over you, you nevertheless begin a quest that may take you who-knows-where to sate your subtle mania…

Cult Poker is a solo card game where you employ a standard deck of cards to select poker hands to unlock and explore an occult universe, looking for the strange secrets at the fringes of reality.

The game is make-as-you-play, meaning you will start with an unadorned deck of 54 playing cards, these rules, a few sheets to track your character, tables locking card names to discover, and a permanent marker. You will modify the playing cards throughout your exploration of the world of Cult Poker. By the end of a campaign of games you will know your fate and possess a deck that reflects your character’s discoveries and memories. It can even serve as the jumping off point for other campaigns with other characters!

—description from the designer