CANON: the Liberal Arts Trading Card Game

Overview

You are a time traveler from the grimdark future, a world where the arts and humanities are no more. You have been sent back to salvage them: to assemble a council of great figures, read the classic texts, and build a canon school that can survive underground for as many millennia as necessary. You are not the only one on this mission. If your canon lacks the staying power to reach the future, your future self gets deleted.

To blend into the past you work a job, so your time-energy, the large, energy-infused, repeatable blocks of time you need in order to read, mostly goes to labor power. Each month you free up a little more. Spend it wisely: every win comes with sacrifice.

Canon is the argument over which collection of voices best speaks to us still today. Those voices are measured by staying power, and rereadability is the test of canonicity. The player with the most victory points (VP) when the game ends wins. VP come chiefly from reading texts once, twice, and three times, with the third read worth the most, because a book you return to three times has proven its voice.

Cards & Decks

Each player brings two decks.

The Historical Salvage Pile (HSP)

Your main deck: 60 to 100 cards, of which 10 to 15 are Council Members and the rest are texts, concepts, and goal cards. No duplicates of any card within your deck (time-energy excepted). Other players may run the same cards as you: everyone can have their own Plato.

The time-energy deck

Your resource deck: 28 time-energy cards, with a limit of 3 hyper cards. Each time-energy belongs to a historical period. Hyper (Cyber era) time-energies are wild and count as any period.

Card types

Periods & Pips

Every card belongs to one or more of six historical periods. The period sets the card's frame and its pip, the colored period-specific portion of a cost.

A card takes the pip of the era its author lived the majority of their life in, regardless of publication date. Figures and works that straddle eras can carry two or even three pips. Cyber-era time-energies are the hyper wilds.

Zones & Limits

Setup

1. Choose your starting council. Pick 3 Council Members from your HSP and place them face-up in front of you. You do not pay their costs. If a starting CM is ever forgotten, it can only return under special conditions, and must then be paid for unless stated otherwise.
2. Shuffle. Shuffle your HSP and your time-energy deck; players cut one another's decks.
3. Draw. Draw 6 cards from your HSP and 1 from your time-energy deck.
4. Mulligan (optional, once). Put up to 3 non-time-energy cards from your hand on the bottom of your HSP and draw that many from the top.
5. Set the timer. Agree on a game length (an hour, ninety minutes, whatever the table wants) and start the clock. See Ending the Game.
6. First player. Everyone rolls; the higher roll goes first. Play proceeds clockwise.

Rounds & Turns

Start of round: the coin flip

Every round begins with a coin flip, and everyone draws the moment the coin lands. Tails: everyone draws 1. Heads: everyone draws 2. Draws may come from your HSP or your time-energy deck, in any split. No coin? Roll a die: odds heads, evens tails.

Turn structure

1. Roll and reap. Roll 2d6. The sum triggers the activated ability of every player's Council Member bearing that number, not just yours. Triggers resolve simultaneously unless they conflict, in which case the roller resolves first, then clockwise. Trigger numbers run 2 to 12; effects that modify a die still produce a single sum, and a sum above 12 triggers nothing (which can itself be a weapon: pushing a roll past 12 denies everyone its benefits).
2. Revitalize. Set your exhausted time-energies and faded Council Members upright.
3. Play one time-energy. Up to one per turn from your hand, unless a card allows more. It enters ready.
4. Spend. Play cards, collect texts, read, and activate paid abilities in any order.

When you are done, pass clockwise. When every player has taken a turn, the round ends and a new coin flip begins the next.

Reading Texts

Collecting. Any text may be played from hand into your library for 1 time-energy of any period; its pips only matter when reading. It enters sideways, unread. Finding a used book is cheap; reading it is not.

Reading is where the game lives. Each read of a text costs its printed cost again (unless stated otherwise) and demands a sacrifice from your council. The Council Member you fade or forget for a read can never be the author or subject of the text being read: reading Plato is precisely how you attend to Plato; it is everyone else who falls to the back of your mind.

Committed time-energy is removed from your general pool and placed under the text. From then on it is a standing reserve: it can only be spent on costs belonging to that text's family, meaning the text itself (including its further rereads), its author, and that author's other texts and concepts. It revitalizes normally but stays restricted. Committed time-energy is also the visible count of reads: upright in the library with none committed means R1, in the Canon with one committed means R2, with two committed means R3, so anyone can read the board state at a glance.

Reading a text triggers its R1/R2/R3 ability line each time, so never forget to do the thing.

Fade & Forget: the Two Sacrifices

Sacrifice is the genus; fading and forgetting are its species.

• Fade (short-term): turn a Council Member sideways. A faded CM's constant abilities keep working subconsciously; its activated abilities do not trigger, even if its number is rolled. Faded CMs revitalize on your next turn.
• Forget (long-term): send a Council Member to the Forgotten Wastes. Nothing works there. A forgotten CM only returns through abilities such as Remember or Salvage, and must be paid for again unless stated otherwise.

Card text that means permanent loss says "forgotten." Older printings that say "sacrificed" for permanent loss should be read as "forgotten."

When forgetting a CM for an R3, you may choose a Council Member you already faded this turn.

Costs & Discounts

• A cost has two parts: period pips (paid with time-energy of that period, or hypers) and a generic amount (paid with time-energy of any period).
• Discounts only ever reduce the generic part of a cost, never the pips, unless a card's own text names a period (Plato's "minus 1 time-energy cost for all Ancient texts" can remove an Ancient pip, because it says Ancient).
• If a discount produces a fraction, round down, to a minimum of 0. Half off a cost of 1 is 0.
• The Translation keyword lets its bearer pay period pips with time-energy of any period. See the glossary.
• Hyper time-energies pay any pip or any generic.

Attacks & Defense

An attack is any card effect that targets another player's cards or resources: forgetting their Council Members, unreading their texts, requisitioning their time-energy, and any effect whose card text says it counts as an attack. Attacks are governed by the card that makes them.

Defense is likewise card-driven: Will grants instant blocks that refresh each round, Reverse turns an attack back on the attacker, and Justice lets you retrieve from the Forgotten Wastes after being attacked. Some texts may be left unread in the library specifically to be spent as blocks, where their card text says so.

Scoring

Victory points measure staying power. Each player tracks their own VP privately; totals are tallied and announced at the end. Sandbagging is legal and traditional.

• A tie for "largest" anything means nobody scores it.
• Scoring sources stack: the same text can satisfy multiple goals unless stated otherwise.

Ending the Game

The table sets a timer before play begins. When it goes off, finish the current round.

• Casual play: everyone then gets 2 more rounds under ceasefire: no attacks, no cards that target other players.
• Tournament play: everyone gets 1 final round, and there is no ceasefire.

Then tally VP. Most VP wins. Your future self thanks you, or is deleted.

Keyword Glossary

Every deck ships with a reference key. X is the number printed with the keyword. "Find" means search, then shuffle the deck you searched. Abilities are constant (always on), activated (fire on the CM's dice-sum trigger), or paid (spend the stated cost), as printed on the card.

Befindlichkeit X

Ponder X from the bottom of your HSP; you may play 1 of them for 1 time-energy.

Comradery X

Your council limit is X more than the largest council at the table.

Contingency X

Roll X extra times on your turn, then choose which sum counts for triggers.

Conviction (X)

All of this CM's abilities keep working while faded or exhausted. At Conviction 2+, up to that many CMs touching this one gain Conviction as well.

Courage X

Discard X cards, draw X cards.

Cunning X

Look at the top X of your HSP, reorder them, and send any of them to the Forgotten Wastes.

Deduction X

Draw X concept cards.

Devotion

Exchange a member of your council, or a read text, for 1 goal card of your choice from your HSP; put it into play without paying its cost.

Discipline X

Minus X generic cost on each reread (R2 and R3).

Distinction

Find a specific concept in your HSP and add it to your hand; for each concept acquired this way, discard a concept from your hand or play.

Drive X

Draw X from your HSP; play them or sacrifice them to the Forgotten Wastes. For each card sacrificed this way, reduce the read cost of a text this turn by that card's printed value.

Faith X

Recover, recruit, or remember X cards directly associated with the thinker or text that triggered Faith.

Fellowship X

Add X to your council limit.

Focus X

When this card enters play (including as a starting council pick), draw X from your HSP or time-energy deck, in any split.

Grace X

Play X cards from your hand for free.

Hermeneutics X

Choose X text abilities another player has triggered and trigger them for yourself this turn.

Hope X

Another player cuts your HSP; draw X from the cut and play them immediately for free. A text drawn this way enters your library as read once, no fade required.

Inspire (X)

Choose which Council Member's activated ability to trigger (X of them).

Judgement X

As Prudence, and when shuffling that time-energy back at end of turn, draw half X (rounded down) off the top of your HSP, keep 1, and discard the rest to the Forgotten Wastes.

Justice

After being attacked, remember a text, concept, or Council Member from the Forgotten Wastes.

Literacy X

Add X to your hand limit.

Logic X

Another player cuts your HSP; take X off the top of the bottom stack. For each card you keep, send a card of the same type from your hand or play to the Forgotten Wastes.

Love X

Find X cards with Fellowship and play them for free.

Memory X

During a normal draw, you may draw up to X from the top of the Forgotten Wastes instead.

Necessity X

Make another player roll X extra times, now; you choose which of those sums applies to their turn. If it is not currently their turn, the chosen sum replaces the roll of their next turn.

Obsession

Reveal cards from the bottom of your HSP until you find a goal card; put it into play without paying its cost.

Passion

Reveal cards from the bottom of your HSP until you find a goal card; add it to your hand.

Ponder X

Look at the top X cards of your HSP. Riders such as "keep 1" or placement instructions are printed on the card; Ponder itself is looking only.

Possibility X

Add or subtract up to X from a roll's sum.

Prudence X

Draw X time-energy, use them this turn, then shuffle them back into your time-energy deck at end of turn.

Recover

Find a specific text in your HSP and add it to your hand.

Recruit

Find a specific Council Member in your HSP and add it to your hand.

Remember X

Return X cards (Council Member, concept, or text) from the Forgotten Wastes to your hand.

Requisition X Updated

Exhaust X of another player's time-energies and use them for your own costs this turn. They return to their owner exhausted, so the owner loses their use for a full turn.

Ressentiment X

At end of game, score X VP for each goal card other players have played.

Retroversion X New

Take X bonus rolls during your turn. Each bonus roll triggers activated abilities table-wide, per normal trigger rules. Where card text says so, these rolls count as attacks and can be blocked or answered like any attack.

Reveal (X)

Choose which text's activated ability to trigger (X of them).

Reverse

Turn an attack back on the attacker. If the attack would have forgotten one of your Council Members, ricochet: the attacker rolls, and their CM matching the sum is forgotten instead. No CM of that sum, and they dodged that bullet, son.

Revitalize X

Refresh X exhausted Council Members or time-energies, as specified.

Rhetoric X

Inspire for yourself and for each other player, who each choose their own Council Member to trigger. For each other player inspired this way, draw X from your HSP or time-energy deck.

Salvage X

As Remember, but from the Forgotten Wastes or the HSP, to hand.

Self-Help X

Minus X generic cost on all other texts you read this turn.

Solipsism

Once per round, block every other player from a roll's benefits; you keep them.

Sovereign X

Add X extra dice-sum triggers to another Council Member.

Stewardship X

Up to X of your committed time-energies may be spent on any cost.

Summon

Put a specific Council Member (or an Archetype, when the card says so) from your HSP directly into your council, without paying its cost.

Teach X

Whenever any player reads a text, draw X.

Temperance

At the end of your turn, draw 1 for each time-energy you left unspent.

Translation X New

Up to X times per turn, pay a period-specific cost (a pip) with time-energy of any period. Each use covers one pip. The signature keyword of historians: the only reason anyone reads Aristotle is that someone carried him across a border.

Will X

X instant blocks against attacks made against you; refreshes each round.

Wonder X

Look at the top X of your HSP and reorder them.

Under Design

Open items, recorded here so every table and every working session shares the same state of the rules.

• The un-fade rule (undecided). Playtest variant: if you read a text whose author is currently faded in your council, that author revitalizes. Good either way; not yet official.
• Transmission and Reception (in design). Cousin keywords to Translation, covering the survival of texts and the reactivation of the past. Not yet on cards.
• Archetype retrieval (open). Whether summon effects can fetch an Archetype from the Forgotten Wastes as well as the HSP.
• Card text migration (in progress). Older printings saying "sacrificed" for permanent loss are being reworded to "forgotten."