The House Always Wins - ASHCAN

The House Always Wins is a game about love and loss, life and death, and winning and losing. It will put you in tough spots and present you with tough choices. Ultimately, you will likely fail. After all, the House always wins. 

Ever present and ever-hungry, the House is not a building, a place, or a person. It is a collection of abstract forces that compliment each other by working in tandem. The forces mean nothing outside the House.

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The House Always Wins is a tabletop roleplaying game for 3-5 players in which a group of characters risk it all to pull off a heist against the ever-hungry entity known only as the House. One by one, players leave the table until only one team remains... but the odds are stacked from the get-go. How could they not be?

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In THAW, there are two intertwined threads of play: the Heist and the Plan. The Heist refers to the narrative elements of The House Always Wins. This might include dialogue, description, and narration as the Heist follows the characters face obstacles and perils. The Plan, however, explicitly refers to the exchange of cards in turn order at the table and is rooted in mechanical and quantifiable strategy.

Both the Heist and The Plan are equally crucial for remaining at the table, and each mode of play blends seamlessly into the other and back again in a constant dialogue that flows around the table. Cards will fly, crimes will be committed, and, in all likelihood, everything will go very, very wrong.

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This is an ashcan playkit edition of The House Always Wins. It contains:

• All the basic rules and mechanics you need to play right now
• Five playbooks, or Play Styles: The House and four Players, one for each suit
• Full narrative examples of play
• A slick line art edition of the cover
• A Quick Reference section for getting off the ground as fast as possible

The House Always Wins will be coming to Kickstarter (or IndieGoGo) later in 2022. Stay tuned for further announcements! The full game will include everything in this ashcan, as well as:

• A duo variant of play involving a mysterious and powerful Player known as The Gambler
• More Play Style options and content
• Beautiful, caper-inspired layout
• More art, and a full-color cover!

Credits:

The House Always Wins was written by Sebastian Fazio. Cover art by Leon. Published by Clawhammer Games.