Poker's Rogue Reckoning – A Player's Guide

Poker's Rogue Reckoning – A Player's Guide

By Damian Reloaded (2025)

Get the PDF ↗

Contents

  1. What You're Playing
  2. The Loop
  3. The Economy
  4. Combat
  5. The Optional Depth
  6. What It Feels Like
  7. Tips for Your First Run
  8. Playing It

What You're Playing

Poker's Rogue Reckoning is a solo dungeon crawl built on a standard 54-card deck and a handful of dice. You play as Poker, a wanderer with dice in hand, trying to cut through twelve enemies across a series of dungeon levels and reach the final boss.

Your job as the player is to make sure you walk into each one strong enough to survive.

Components

  • The provided themed deck or a standard 54-card deck (52 + 2 Jokers)
  • 12 red dice (HP)
  • 2 blue dice (ATK)
  • 1 yellow die (Shield)
  • 5 white dice (player combat dice)
  • 5 black dice (enemy combat dice)
  • A money counter (any die or token works)
  • Pen and paper, if you don't have the dice or numeric counter

That's it. If you have a deck and some dice, you can play.

The Loop

Every round follows the same beat.

  1. Deal a grid. Deal a 2×2 or 3×3 grid of face-down cards. This is your dungeon floor.
  2. Reveal cards one at a time. Each card is one of:
    • Money — Add to your counter, or trade for 1–3 HP instead.
    • Red Potion — Healing. Save it or use it.
    • Blue Potion — +ATK buff for your next fight.
    • Curse — Strengthens the next enemy. Try to remove it or it sticks.
    • Sword / Heart — Permanent +1 ATK or +1 HP die. Rare. Take them.
    • Enemy — The fight starts.
  3. Prepare. Spend money on shield points, potions, or buffs before the fight. This is your real decision space.
  4. Fight. See Combat below.
  5. Rest. Recover 2 HP.
  6. Deal the next grid. Repeat until all twelve enemies are dead.

The deck is a finite, shifting pool. Every card you buy, use, or discard changes what's left in the draw. If you've been pulling healing and buffs, the remaining deck is weighted toward curses and enemies. An experienced player can feel that shift and adjust their spending accordingly.

This isn't a printed rule. It just happens. But it's real.

The Economy

You start with 12 money, 12 HP (two red dice at 6), 2 ATK, and 2 white combat dice.

  • Money is your primary resource. It buys shield points (4 per point, max 6), higher-value potions, and bribes (if you decide to play with them).
  • Shield absorbs damage before HP. It does not recover. It is a one-time buffer.
  • ATK determines how many combat dice you roll and how much damage you deal. Sword cards increase it permanently.
  • HP is your life. When it hits zero, the run is over. You can trade 1 ATK (if above 1) to recharge one depleted HP die as a last resort.

Money caps at 24. Excess is discarded. You cannot hoard infinitely, which keeps every round a decision: spend now or save for the next fight you know is coming.

Combat

You pick one combat mode before you start and use it for the entire run. You don't have to know all three. You don't have to use all three. Pick the one that sounds fun and go.

Mode 1: Poker's Combat

Both sides roll dice equal to their ATK value. You build the best poker hand you can from those dice.

High Die → One Pair → Two Pair → Three of a Kind → Full House → Four of a Kind → Straight → Five of a Kind

Highest hand wins. The loser takes damage equal to the winner's ATK plus any active buffs.

It's fast. It's visual. And it rewards the satisfying "wait, I've got a Full House" moment.

Mode 2: Jack's Combat

A push-your-luck system. You and the enemy take turns rolling dice one at a time. After each roll you choose:

  • Hit — Roll another die and add it to your total.
  • Stand — Lock in your total.

Go over the bust limit and you lose. The ATK die value is added to your final total. The bust limit and auto-stand thresholds scale with enemy tier. It plays like a tense, one-against-the-deck version of blackjack.

Mode 3: Max Attack Points

Both sides roll all their combat dice at once. You then assign your dice to action slots on a small pad.

Slot Effect
Attack Deals ATK + buffs as damage
Heal / Prevent Heal 2 HP, or stop the enemy healing
Block 1 ATK Reduce incoming damage by 1
Reroll / Prevent Reroll one die, or stop the enemy rerolling
Block 1 Buff Cancel one of the opponent's active buffs
Buy / Prevent Gain a buy action during combat

The enemy places their dice highest-to-lowest. You place yours in any order. Each slot is a head-to-head comparison of the highest die in that column. The higher die wins the slot.

It's the most tactical of the three, closer to a mini strategy game than a dice roll.

What All Three Modes Share

  • Enemy abilities resolve first.
  • Buffs and curses stack. Each active blue potion is +1 ATK for you. Each uncleansed curse is +1 ATK for the enemy.
  • Ties allow a reroll or a reset, depending on the card in play.
  • The Bribe. If you're in over your head, you can spend 10 / 15 / 20 money (depending on enemy tier) to flee. The enemy shuffles back into the deck. This is the only universal "I'm not ready yet" option, and it's expensive. Use it like a blood transfusion, not a band-aid.

The Optional Depth

Everything above is the full game. You can play ten runs and never touch what comes next.

The themed card set prints a named ability on each blue or red potion and curse card. These are small, targeted powers that layer on top of the base stat.

  • A Blue Potion 7 might be Scout — Peek at the top two cards in the deck.
  • A Curse 9 might be Terrorize — You can't flee this fight.
  • A Healing 10 might be Time Travel — Restart combat with the enemy at full HP.

You don't have to use them. A potion is a potion and a heal is a heal.

The abilities are there if you want additional options that give you more control over what happens during combat and make the run feel a little more like a story and a little less like a math problem.

They're printed on the card so you can read them in the moment. You can check the manual at any time for a refresher on how they are used.

What It Feels Like

The macro game is a resource-management puzzle. You're walking through a dungeon, seeing what's behind each door, deciding what to grab and what to leave, and trying to build a loadout that will survive the next mandatory fight.

The deck under your fingers is getting meaner as the run goes on, and you can feel it. The cards you need are the ones you've already spent.

The combat is the spike of tension in that slow burn. You've prepared. You've bought your shield. You've saved your potion. And now you're rolling, and the dice are the dice they are.

And that's the whole design in one sentence: the game is about preparing for a fight you can't avoid, against a deck that's getting meaner, with dice that don't care how hard you planned.

The optional tools, the bribe, the shield, the abilities, the Revival Pill, don't remove that risk. They give you a voice in it. A way to say "not yet" or "one more round" or "I'll take the hit instead."

That voice is what turns a bad roll from a coin flip into a decision you second-guess, which is a much better feeling to sit with.

Tips for Your First Run

  • Pick one combat mode and commit. Jack's Combat is the most intuitive if you've ever played blackjack. Poker's Combat is the fastest. Max Attack Points is the most thoughtful.
  • Buy your first shield early. A Tier 1 enemy with a lucky roll can delete 12 HP in one hit. Six shield points is 24 money, which is a lot, but two points (8 money) is cheap insurance against an otherwise-ending run.
  • Don't greed the money. 24 is the cap. If you're at 20 and a healing potion is 4, spend it. The next round will have a curse in it.
  • Watch the deck. If you've pulled six red potions and four blue in the first two rounds, the remaining cards are curses, enemies, and money. Play accordingly.
  • The Bribe is not a failure. It's 10 to 20 money, which is a real cost, but it's cheaper than a lost run. Flee a Tier 3 fight, heal up, buy a Sword card, and come back. That's the game working.
  • Tier cards (swords/hearts or aces/jokers) are what increase your power. If you're lucky, you'll find them when you need them most.

Playing It

One deck, a handful of dice, and about forty minutes to an hour per run. No setup beyond dealing a grid and setting your HP dice. No cleanup beyond shuffling.

Shuffle the deck. Deal the first grid. Reveal the first card.

Welcome to the dungeon, Poker.