There are eight stats. Those stats correspond to 8 of the 9 suits of cards. The ninth suit is dragons and is meant to be "bad things happening."

Ordinarily you add stat+card to get a result to beat the difficulty, from your hand of cards (determined in char gen in this version it is essentially level--and it goes up as you complete quests.)

However, when a card played matches the attribute suit being played, it "trumps" or you flip the next card over, and repeat this action so long as the cards continue to match the same suit. Essentially exploding dice mechanic but using cards.

If a dragon card is played and  the action fails it is a critical failure, otherwise it is a success as normal.

Dooms in the superhero game worked better, going to the GM to play them back against the players.


I believe there is 1 of each card suit from 1-9. except dragons which has a 10. However I'd have to drag out the rule book and at the moment I don't even have my glasses on. (My vision just went down hill last year, so I'm not always used to having them on for being around the house.)

Magic is complex and uses the system slightly differently, involving spell points. You play cards to maneuver ranges, to strike, defend, and perform all actions. Including leading people, casting spells, intimidating people. and so on.

Thanks for answering!

So wait, that's 82 cards total? Nine suits, eight being stat suits, of 9 each. One 'bad trump' suit of 10 cards. (9x8)+(10x1)=82.

But every player needs their own deck? The GM plays a stat from his hand face down and the players make their best suit guess, otherwise play any high value card. If the GM stat suit and player stat suit matches the cards explode for added result value?

And then magic...

This sounds way more involved than I was expecting. It's a bit more like Guardians of Order or Suzerain adding additional meaning to suits and specific numbers and counteracting each other. Why must a randomizer start off so complex?!

Quote from: Opaopajr;659526Thanks for answering!

So wait, that's 82 cards total? Nine suits, eight being stat suits, of 9 each. One 'bad trump' suit of 10 cards. (9x8)+(10x1)=82.

But every player needs their own deck? The GM plays a stat from his hand face down and the players make their best suit guess, otherwise play any high value card. If the GM stat suit and player stat suit matches the cards explode for added result value?

And then magic...

Nah, there is one deck used by the entire group and the GM doesn't play cards at all*. Its a player driven system. They play against a set difficulty (usually opposing foes stat, in combat.) Plus a single "Narrator" Card played from the top of the deck.


Reclamation is a complex card system that uses multiple decks of standard cards.

Dragonlance isn't that hard at all compared to it.

Each player has a hand of cards usually around 1-5, but can go up to 10 cards depending on their "level" all drawn from the shuffled deck.



*Narrator Card being the exception.  In the Marvel version the GM plays dooms earned, I like that as an alternate rule for Dragonlance as well as it gives the GM more options to make things hard/not hard.

I always thought that the DL version of SAGA was pretty neat. Not quite D&D, but an interesting variant. I particularly liked the use of "quests" for XP instead of counting kills and coins.

There's a yahoo group for SAGA at http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/SAGA_System/

Not much activity there in a long time, but some stuff in the archives.