GLYPH mM ®Alebrukreais January 2014WHAT IS GLYPH? Welcome to Glyph, a card game system designed to be able to play an enormous variety of games. The deck of 98 cards can be whittled down to a standard 52-card deck to play all the classics, though it contains 6 full standard suits and plenty more, includ- ing story suits for storytelling games, three colored suits, and six elemental minor suits that have no problem sharing their cards with other minor suits. Glyph cards are orientation- dependent, so the properties they take onwill be different depending whether — they are played right-side-up or upside-down.TYPES OF SUITS Six major suits Glyph contains the suits CROSSES, HEARTS, DIAMONDS, HORNS, CLOVERS, and TOADSTOOLS. These suits and their corresponding numbers are found in white font on the colored sidebar of each card. G2 QO CdS? While a standard deck of cards contains only four suits ranging from 1 (Ace) to 3 (King), these six major suits are numbered from 0 to 14. If standard suits are needed for a game, the 0 and 14 cards can be removed from play. — Cards 1, 11, 12, and 13 are also marked A, J, Q, and K for ease of use.TYPES OF SUITS © Six major suits Major suit i This is the 12 (queen) of crosses! laa a SeteTYPES OF SUITS Six minor suits Glyph contains the minor suits EARTH, WATER, FIRE, AIR, MAGIC, and ALCHEMY. These suits can be found on the colored sidebars of each card. QOOOOS2 Like the major suits, the minor suits are intended to be used with their corre- sponding white numbers. But the minor suits are unique: most minor suit cards are multi-suited, meaning they are EARTH and FIRE or MAGIC and AIR, etc. This opens up interesting strategic — game play possibilities.TYPES OF SUITS Six minor suits There are two full sets of minor suits in Glyph: some games will require only one full set but some will require two. It is simple to separate the two sets (they align with the major suits). If you make a pile of HEARTS, HORNS, and TOADSTOOLS and a second pile of CROSSES, DIAMONDS, and CLOVERS, those will be your two decks each containing a full playable set of minor suits. You will notice that the minor suits are different colors, but during gameplay red, blue, and green minor — suits have no practical differences,TYPES OF SUITS Six minor suits Simple games can be played with only the base cards numbered 0-9. 0's and 1's are considered equivalent Aces; value differences should be ignored. You may also choose to play with the extended deck, which includes cards numbered 10-14. These are marked by either one dot, two dots, or a crown. e eo 2O®@ One dot denotes an Apprentice, two dots denotes a Magician, and a crown denotes a Wizard.TYPES OF SUITS Six minor suits Just as you would with Aces, you should ignore the values of these particular cards and instead assign rank only by symbol/title. In other words, no matter the written value of the minor suited cards, their ranks are as follows: Ace-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-Apprentice- Magician-Wizard There is also one joker per full set (two total) with no minor suit. This can be used or set aside during game play.TYPES OF SUITS Six minor suits Minor suits This is the Pebician (note the two dots) of EARTH, WATER, and MAGIC. Only — because itis a titled card, we ignore the white number 12.TYPES OF SUITS Three colored suits Glyph contains the suits RED, GREEN, and BLUE. These are perhaps the easiest to distinguish (red cards are RED, green are GREEN, blue are BLUE). These suits contain corresponding colored numbers, so that there are cards numbered 0 to 29 in each colored suit, making the colored suits a good option for trick-taking games.TYPESOFSUITS Three colored suits Colored suit This is the RED 12. esTYPES OF SUITS Five story suits Glyph contains the story suits WILD, ITEM, EVENT, CHARACTER, and LOCA- TION. Each card in the deck has a unique image; its suit is denoted by the number of triangular tick marks on the upper-left of its card. No ticks: WILD > 1 tick: ITEM > 2 ticks: EVENT > 3 ticks: CHARACTER P 4 ticks: LOCATIONTYPES OF SUITS Five story suits Each image should be played accord- ing to its story suit, but doesn't neces- sarily need to be interpreted literally. One card, for example, depicts mechanical gears. The suit for this image is ITEM. A player could choose to play the card as a literal set of gears, oras a machine, a robot, etc. WILD suits depict more vague images and can be played as any of the other four suits. The story suits are meant to be highly flexible and simple storytelling games can be played with only the images — and the tick marks.TYPES OF SUITS Five story suits Story suit This is a LOCATION. aTYPES OF SUITS Jokers/ Wild Cards Glyph contains 8 wildcards. The cards are rainbow colored and can be used as jokers, wildcards, or any other type of special cards required by a particular game. They can be grouped by color (making 4 groups of 2) or by number of dots (making 2 groups of 4). raENJOY! While these are the basic uses for Glyph, you can of course pick and choose which suits and properties work best when making your own games. Perhaps you'll want a storytell- ing game where each image has corre- sponding elemental powers (combine images with minor suits) or maybe you'll decide that red cards have a higher value than green cards which have a higher value than blue cards, or that tick marks are actually part of a point system that is to be used with the major suits. The games that can be played using Glyph are many, but the games that can be invented are many more.