Cooperative Poker in Cyberpunk Legends
Night CrewNow that you know a bit more about the game, we can talk more about a key aspect: the coop poker hand.
So how does the cooperative poker hand work? Well, starting with the person with the Leader token (which moves after every Obstacle), each player gets to place one card in the Plan. You go around clockwise doing this until you hit the Plan limit (which by default is 5 cards...but the Netrunner is particularly good at changing this number). Then the Plan resolves and you check to see if you hit, and if so how much damage you did as a group.
Let's say you throw down Razor Girl. She counts as both an 8 and 6 of Muscle because cards count as ALL NUMBERS AND ALL SUITS ON THEM.
This means that if anyone else can place an 8 or a 6 we're going to hit...but if the person going next doesn't have either, well, maybe they toss in a seven, leaving the rest of the team open to make a straight.
If we do hit, Razor Girl will deal 1 Damage to the Obstacle (that box is the rules box, there's a bunch of wacky things we can do there, but we wanted to keep it simple to start).
The key, though, is Table Talk.
Because when the bullets start flying, communication isn't perfect, so you can't just tell your crew what you've got. You can say whatever you want...but you can't mention specific numbers, suits or card names. But hey, it's Night City so we highly encourage you to bend those rules as far as you can without breaking them. Part of the social fun is trying to get your friends to understand what you're trying to make happen without actually being able to tell them.
Oh, and as a designer, what we love about this system is how hard it is to netdeck. We'll do a different blog post about this, but you can argue all day about whether an 8/6 with a Might symbol and 1 Damage is better or worse than 7 with a Might symbol and 2 Damage or something with just 3 Might symbols on it (it takes 5 of a symbol to make a flush, even if that's done with only 2 actual cards).
In the end, this system means playing your cards right relies on much more than just the cards in your hand, a challenge we hope people enjoy as much as we do.
-JP
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Razor Girl card artwork by Rob Shields.