A storytelling game for two players

By Stentor Danielson

One of you is a wizard, struggling to make it in modern society. The other is the wizard’s
familiar, a companion creature through whom the wizard does their magic. Decide who is who,
and pick a name, pronouns, and a little description of yourself.

Next, choose an ordinary, everyday task that the wizard needs to complete. This should be
something like getting their car inspected, or going to the laundromat, or hosting a dinner party.
The task should be one that requires several steps to complete.

Shuffle a deck of cards and deal seven to each player. Each player places five of their cards
face-down in a row between them, paired off with one of the other player’s cards. The other two
are kept for later. The row of cards represents the steps it will take to complete the task.
The wizard begins play by narrating how they go about the first step of their task, in a wholly
mundane way. At any point during their narration, the familiar should point seductively to their
first card in the row, and ask “wouldn’t you rather do that with maaaaaaagic?”

The wizard now decides whether to let the familiar magically help with the task. If they say yes,
the wizard takes the familiar’s card and places it with the other two left over from the original
setup, and the familiar takes the wizard’s corresponding card. The familiar then compares the
suit to the chart below, and describes how the magic helps to complete that step of the task, in a
way consistent with the theme.

Love, social interaction, human connection

♥
Money, resources, materialism
♦
Nature, the non-human world
♣
Violence, destruction
♠
If the wizard declines to accept the help, each player takes their own card back. The familiar
then uses the suit on their own card to inspire a description of the magical chaos they create
while pouting about not being allowed to help.

Repeat this process for all five pairs of cards. The wizard’s task should not be completed until
the final scene.

Once the final pair of cards is allocated and played out, each player should look at the seven
cards they now have and make the best 5-card poker hand that they can. Both players reveal
their hands, and the player with the winning hand narrates an epilogue to the story.