Adaman
Adaman Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Setup
Shuffle a single basic deck.
Deal five cards in a row; these represent people and events occurring around the capital city.
Deal another five cards below the capital to represent resources you have at your disposal. If you turn up a personality when dealing your resources, put it in a row above the capital cards and deal another card to your resources. Repeat if the next card is a personality, and so on until you have five resources none of which are personality cards.
The row of cards above the capital represents people snooping around the royal palace. If you place a sixth card in the palace row, the game ends immediately. You only place cards in the palace if you turn up a personality while dealing your resources, however, so there will typically be a few or even no cards there.
Game Play
You may exercise your resources to control a card in the capital or palace rows. In order to do so, discard one or more cards from your resource row. The cards must all share a suit with the card you are trying to control, and the total of their ranks must be at least the rank of the target card. Aces are rank 1. Crowns (the crown symbol) are rank 10.
Note that the cards from your resource row do not need to share a suit with each other, provided they share a suit with the card you are trying to control.
If you control a personality, move it to the discard pile. If you control a non-personality card, move it to your resource row; you may use it later to control something else.
After a play, deal cards so that the capital row has five cards. Then deal so that your resource row has five cards; put personalities in the palace row, as above. When the deck runs out, continue to play until one of the end game conditions is met.
Ending the Game
The game can end in three possible ways. One means victory, the other two mean defeat.
- You have moved all of the personality cards to the discard pile. You have control of everyone who matters and can safely seize the throne. You win.
- You cannot make any further moves, but there are personality cards remaining in the palace or capital rows. Without the backing of everyone, your plan must be abandoned. All that scheming for nothing! You lose.
- There are more than five personalities in the palace row. With so many people snooping about, someone has discovered your plot. You lose utterly. It's the gallows for you, old chum.
If you want to keep score, beyond just winning or losing:
- If you win, total up the ranks of the personality cards you control and the cards remaining in your resource row. The ranks of the eleven personalities in the basic deck add up to 70, so it's 70 plus the ranks in your resource row.
- If you lose, total up the ranks of just the personality cards you control. With the basic deck, it will be less than 70 since you lost.
- If lose utterly, you score zero.
Card Types
In addition to ranks and suits, each card has an interpretive type. There are four different types.
- Aces
- Locations, indicated by the small ring symbol
- Events, indicated by the filled dot symbol
- Personalities, the cards done up like face cards with two close-ups of a single figure
These won't matter for most games. But in Adaman, the Personalities are point cards.
Personalities
The table below lists the personality cards by rank, with their suit icons as printed and their names. Suit icons in the source are unnamed pictograms; they are described here by shape and colour (grey crescent, orange sunburst, brown acorn, green disc, yellow disc, blue swirl). The Pawns and Courts are listed separately in the source, because they aren't used in Adaman.
| Rank | Suits (as printed) | Name |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | grey crescent, yellow disc | Author |
| 3 | orange sunburst, yellow disc | Painter |
| 3 | brown acorn, green disc | Savage |
| 4 | blue swirl, brown acorn | Sailor |
| 5 | green disc, yellow disc | Soldier |
| 6 | grey crescent, blue swirl | Lunatic |
| 6 | orange sunburst, green disc | Penitent |
| 8 | orange sunburst, grey crescent | Diplomat |
Listed separately in the source (pawn and court rank symbols, not used in Adaman):
| Rank | Suits (as printed) | Name |
|---|---|---|
| Pawn | grey crescent, green disc, yellow disc | Watchman |
| Pawn | orange sunburst, blue swirl, yellow disc | Light Keeper |
| Court | grey crescent, blue swirl, yellow disc | Consul |