by Vitor Gatti
Modern games that uses a standard deck of cards. I discovered them back in 2022 or 2023 through Regicide. I was browsing an online board game shop when I stumbled on it and the title caught my attention. After doing some research about the game, I quickly got the rules online and learned how to play. After my first match, played solitaire mode, I was blown away. I never thought a regular deck of cards was capable of such thing. Fascinated about that game, I did some research to discover if there were more games alike. I googled "games like regicide" and I went down the rabbit hole. I found posts on Reddit and Board Game Geek about them and I was blown away again. I found a couple games in the same style and I started to gather information about them compulsively. Including, I made links to the very lists I used to explore this genre back then.
I gathered every booklet I found online about those games, and my interest in them just grew bigger. But one question remained unanswered: how was this kind of game called? The lists I found on BGG named them "thematic solitaire" (Desmond Meraz) and "modern solitaire" (Will Su), on Pagat they're categorized as "invented games". But I wasn't convinced yet. I researched intensively for weeks, made posts on Reddit asking this question, contacted other players, but I could just conclude that those games didn't had a proper, well established, name. I realized I should come up with the solution myself.
Afters some years bumping my head around, gathering, analyzing and playing a couple games, the name I found to best suit this genre is "modern traditional card games". I confess that looking to it now it seems funny to took so long to find out such a simple name. But now I undestand why this process took me so long. During all this time playing those games, I was trying to find a name that encompasses them all, and the name I got prior in my head was "neo-traditional card games", but I was not fully convinced of it, because of some philosophical implications of the term "neo", and in some extent because it arouses some translations issues to the portuguese language (there's an effort in the brazilian community of gamers to came up with a definitive taxonomy for those card games and I wanted my efforts to be in tune with theirs).
The eureka moment was during a conversation with my girlfriend, also an enthusiast of games, when she pointed that those games are like "post-modern" games. Suddenly all made sense, right after thinking about the term "post", in constrast to "neo", all came naturally to an organization in my head. I realized that there were two kind of games: "post-traditional card games" and "neo-traditional card games". The difficult I was enduring all this time was because I was looking to two different things thinking they were one, and trying to figure out a name for it. After realizing that, it was easy to find out a more generic name to fit them all: modern traditional card games.
Now I'll enter the discussion of those concepts in detail. From this point beyond I strongly recommend reading Nate Straight's article "Defining the Traditional". All my thoughts here are further elaborations upon the concept of traditional card games proposed by him.
Neo-traditional card games are characterized by the re-implementation of traditional card games mechanics into novel games. They may have a strictly traditional or a new mechanics resembling a traditional one. Traditional mechanics are those based on the interaction of card's ranks and suits, like forming sequences, melds, playing the highest card, following a suit, hitting a specific sum of card's values and so on. It's important to note that neo-traditional games are mostly commercial releases. Since they're re-implementations of well known games and mechanics, they generally displays special decks and additional features to differ themselves from its predecessors. They commonly uses decks with more or less suits than four, and ranks greater or smaller than one to thirteen, some of them also features special unique cards. Despite this, a good amount of those games can be adapted to the standard deck, since the core element of those game is its mechanics based on ranks and suits. Those games, more specifically: those commercial releases, do have an overall theme and imagery, but they're just ornamental, doesn't affecting the game in any matter. Some neo-traditional card games are: Wizard, Tichu, Odin, Trio, Fishing, Rebel Princess, Maskmen, Spice etc.
On the other hand, there are the post-traditional card games. This genre keeps the "traditional" in its name because it uses the 52-card standard deck, but adds novel mechanics to the universe of traditional playing cards. The key feature that distinguish them from other modern card games is its emphasis on the theme. The theme in those games is a constitutive part of the experience, it's a necessary resource to the rules make sense. Cards in post-traditional games generally represent something beyond its rank and suit; they may be enemies, spells, potions, weapons etc. Also, your actions in the game are meant to represent something, they need to be interpreted, imagined.
Let's take a well-known game as an example to clarify. Imagine how it would be if Regicide didn't had any theme. It would be a pointless game, it would even be difficult to memorize the rules at all. Our actions in the game just make sense if we imagine them to be something like attacks, blocks, spells, enemies and so on. Other good example: Scoundrel. If Scoundrel didn't had its rooms, monsters, health points, potions and weapons, it would be a game about what? Without its theme, the game is meaningless; or bland, at best.
One more noteworthy point, in contrast to neo-traditional games, post-traditional games are generally non-commercial releases. The majority of those games are designed by enthusiasts and shared online in forums and specialized sites, it is a very narrow niche. Some of them may be sold on platforms like DriveThruRPG/CardGames and itch.io, but in a more indie fashion, not totally profit oriented as a proper commercial release. Since they strictly adhere to the standard deck of cards, they may not be so commercially interesting in comparison to other games, because the final product is basically a standard deck of cards.
In cases where games fall between those two genres, the term Modern Traditional is sufficient to encompass them. So, roughly summarizing: neo-traditional card games features traditional mechanics with novel cards; and post-traditional card games features novel mechanics with traditional cards. Those two genres, and any other card game that can't be defined well by them, are encompassed by the concept of modern traditional card games.
With this elaborations I feel I came to a solution to this question of the taxonomy for those novel games. Obviously the debate isn't finished, certainly there's room to expand, alter or even to further subdivide the concept to encompass other games that may blurry the lines of this definitions. Of course, the community of gamers around the world will have the final word on the matter of those definitions. But, by now, I think those concepts presented here are useful and precise enough so I stand for them.
If you want to talk about this topic, or any other related to games, please don't hesitate to send me an e-mail. All replies about it will be immensely welcomed.