A card game I've been playing at Arisia

So, there's this new game that's been kickstarted and is now being professionally printed, but one of the creators is at Arisia and demoing the prototype.  It's called "Slash", and it's about coming up with crossover fanfic pairings.

 

Despite the name, the pairings don't have to be slash, but they can be.  Don't worry: I'll define these words as I go on.

 

The deck is like four hundred cards, each with a different character on them, most fictional, but some real people, too.  The gameplay is in the Apples to Apples/Cards Against Humanity family of games: one player is the judge for the round; they choose a card from their hand (note that, unlike those other two games, Slash has only one deck, rather than two separate question and answer decks, and that the judge chooses a card, rather than randomly drawing.)  Everybody else chooses a card from their hand representing a character who would make the best pairing with the judge's character.  That pairing may be slash (romantic pairing between two same-sex characters), het (romantic pairing between two opposite-sex characters), or gen (non-romantic pairing such as platonic friendship).

 

If the judge chooses your card, you get to put it in front of you; cards are worth one, two, or three points based on how difficult the designers thought it would be to come up with a good pairing for them.

 

If the judge doesn't pick yours, you can argue the point by telling a short vignette about your pairing -- how they met, how they work together, or even just explaining why you think they would work together.  The judge chooses what they think the best pairing would be, based on logic, or emotional appeal, or just which story they'd most like to read.

 

As an example, one judge was convinced that the best match for Mr. Spock would be Marie Curie, based on the player's argument that they are both scientists who died of radiation poisoning while working for the greater good.  I believed that the best match for Shub-Nigaroth would be Cruella de Ville. And who could deny how adorable the spawn of Ursula the Sea Witch and Lolth the Spider-Goddess of the Drow would be?