Live at Gen Con ’04: Gloom-y days ahead

Lurking in the Atlas Games booth, I ran into Keith Baker, creator of WotC’s Eberron, and Lee Moyer, major contributing artist for same. After talking for a few minutes, Keith mentioned his upcoming card game Gloom, for which John Nephew helpfully brought out the prototype. Set for release in October, Gloom will have players competing to be the most miserable. Each player will heap unfortunate events upon his family of poor souls while stacking good fortune atop his opponents. To enable players to see which “bad” cards cancel “good” cards and vice versa, the cards will be transparent and lay on top of the “character” cards each player has. Looking down through the card stack will show which traits are covered by something else, thereby being cancelled, and which traits are still in effect. When a family dies off completely, the game ends, and points of misery are scored.