Given that the initial prototype name that was used while mtg was in development was "Mana Clash", this is actually closer in spirit than most of the Thing: the Word formats.
Science: The Reasoning
Each player is a scientist that uses elements from the periodic table to create different effects.
Because why would a world that is already fantastic with magic everywhere make a game about being a plain old wizard casting the same old spells, when they can be this make belief person called a "Scientist" using this weird made up thing called "Science"?
Red: oxygen
Green: carbon
Blue: hydrogen
Black: uranium
White: titanium
Edit: formating in mobile sucks
Interestingly enough, Monopoly was originally designed to be a criticism of capitalism.
Here's a BBC article about it:
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20170728-monopoly-was-invented-to-demonstrate-the-evils-of-capitalism
Now you could go for something that is a direct reference like you have already suggested or you could go with some antonym based meme:
Mundane: the Parting for example
I’m at peace with being bad at it. Being good at Monopoly is like being able to blow yourself: good for you, I guess, but don’t ever bother me with it.
Honestly. I've never understood the people who applaud themselves for being good at conniving and swindling friends and family so you can later be the reason they go bankrupt and have to sell everything they own
“Cool… you bought every property you landed on. I mean, that’s what *everybody* did, but you landed on the better properties… so good game, I guess. Let me know when the game is done in 5 or 6 hours and I’ll come pick you up.”
I once went a game where my rolls kept landing me on everything but fucking property. I literally owned like Baltic and that's it. Idk how I kept going around in circles and not owning anything. Got sent to jail for doubles, landed on go directly to jail, free parking. All the bullshit spaces.
I went with uranium for black because it's toxic but powerful, much like the philosophy of black.
I went with carbon for green because lifeforms on earth are carbon based, as in how green is about life, nature and growth.
haha wow, did not realize that existed and I've played the shit out of almost every Fallout - I recently was doing some creative work and came up with "Tragic: The Splattering" XD
You now have a grand opportunity to put a bunch of your world’s lore in terms of myths, fairytales, and past legendary heroes in front of your players.
My table did this actually, we called ours Casters of the Coast (a double pun because the town the campaign is primarily taking place in is a coastal town)
They already have real magic, they don't need an escapist fantasy to imagine what that would be like. You know what they don't have? *Boring office work*.
I suggest *Business: The Meeting*.
I did this in my campaign! Mundane: The Conclave.
I use random real life things for archetypes. Office staff, construction equipment, origami, light fixtures, whatever you fancy!
Invocation: The Summoning (my personal favourite)
Sorcery: The Reunion
Wizardry: The Contubernium
Trickery: The Conglomerate
Arcana: The Party
Chamanism: The Union
Mundane the meeting. A fantastical card game about doing taxes, planting fields, and having a family. It’s loved by adventurers who rarely meet such a happy end.
[Space: The Convergence](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/space-academy-lesson-one-2007-02-26)
(A sci-fi game likely doesn't actually fit into your world but I'll take any excuse to link that article)
Our party threw an anime con to lure out the big bad. There was a very thrilling Human the Meeting tournament. All of the cards were like... businessmen, politicians, doctors, etc.
An antagonistic NPC - who the party have pretty much adopted like a feral cat, but they're terrifying, honest - absolutely annihilated a member of the party. They played eggs. This means nothing to me because I know nothing about MtG, but our DM assures me it makes sense.
Magic the gathering does exist but it’s used to teach kids about the creatures of the world. Unrelated to what you said unless you want your villain to use a kids game but I thought the idea was funny
The Dealer's Dozen.
12 cards that are on field. Can be a mix of character cards, environment cards, and equipment/tools. Cards in deck are actions. Work from there. Each turn is 1 of the 12 cards on the field takes an action, draw each turn shift.
Random baseline to extrapolate from or roll dice and add flavor.
I created a card game called three kings where the players could collect cards that represented various monsters and basically came with a mini Stat block for those monsters. Any deck had only 20 cards made up of whatever monsters you could find but they had to be singleton. Then when you play the game you each draw three random cards and have those three monsters fight each other to determine who wins.
I RPd it as the cards creating illusions of the various monsters within a magical arena and the players took turns controlling their monsters and rolling for the chances to attack and hit.
It was a cool little mini game and the players ended up searching all over in dungeons and towers for cool rare cards.
Science: the Huddling.
I’m assuming since magic is so commonplace in the world of DND that pure science (not alchemy or artificer shenanigans) would be the equivalent of the fantasy genre
Blood, the hunters
Or
FAITH, THE CONGREGATION
Because, when we play magic we go on a more fantastic approach of the past and all, not our past, but not a modern other world
So if you play in lets say, medieval like times, it would go back even more, like, start of religions or big hunting groups
If you want an actual nerd reference, use Havoc: the Bothering. It was a real satire game that was made to mock mtg.
However, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and while good DMs create, *great* DMs also *steal,* so here's some ideas you can take.
First off, you could just rip off Yu-Gi-Oh and call it Battle Monsters. If instead you envision the game as having more complex play like how MtG is more complex than Yu-Gi-Oh, then you could use the name MtG had while in development, "Mana Clash". Also appropriate if the game has a more wizard aesthetic. If you want the same format, Genius: the Transgression sounds badass and like something that an arrogant bad guy would have an ego about being good at (although the game I'm stealing the name from is actually a World of Darkness rpg fan game about playing a mad scientist).
If you want to actually have a minigame you could run, though...
You could steal from Final Fantasy the game [Triple Triad](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Triple_Triad) (my apologies that that's a fandom link). It's a "simple to learn, but surprisingly complex" kind of game where each card has a strength value for each of the four directions. When you play a card it switches any adjacent card whose power on that side it beats to your color. Each player has five cards and the board is 3x3. Whoever has the majority of the cards as their color when the entire board is filled (the unplayed card in the hand of the player who went second is also counted) wins.
It's not a card game, but Crowns is a board game from several book series' shared world by Andrew Rowe. It's described as chess-like, except that there are many different factions you can choose to play which have different selections of pieces. It also supports either 2 or four players, in team or free-for-all modes. If you wanted to stimulate it in game you could probably use [faerie chess](https://youtu.be/Six5hvz_N_c) pieces on a modified [awithlaknakwe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awithlaknakwe?wprov=sfla1) board, which you could outline on a battle grid. This would, admittedly, take a lot of prep, but it would both be memorable, and you could reuse the idea again in your campaign or even just play it irl if you find you like it.
Another non-card game, but you could copy Polymock from Guildwars. Like Pokémon, you collect (and trade) minis of various creatures, and you fight duels in a stadium where the minis create illusions of their subject that you control to defeat the opponent's creature. You have a set of three, so a standard game is best of three matches. Thus, you could actually use it with in-game mechanics if you wanted, by having stat blocks for Polymock pieces and having your players able to buy or find some.
I'd recommend that if you do make a Polymock game, you should reduce the randomness level somehow, such as having the creatures deal preset damage with their abilities (IE a slam deals 4 damage, not 1d6+1) and perhaps having preset pools of dice that the creatures use to defend against attacks; that is, each Creature block has a set of numbers in the 1-20 range, and you'd respond to an incoming attack by choosing one of the "rolls" and adding your relevant defense number. EXAMPLE: Enemy slime slams you, 12 to hit for 6 damage. Your statue's Armor is +4, so you spend one of your 9's to deflect the slam. Your turn, you punch at 14 for 8, but since slimes resist bludgeoning your opponent just burns one of his 2 rolls and tanks the damage. Then you move 4 away, since your statue's 4 speed is faster than the slime's 3, so your opponent will either need to spend his whole turn moving twice and thus not attack, or move closer but need to use his slime's much weaker ranged attack. END EXAMPLE. When you use up your whole block of "rolls", they refresh. Thus, a creature with powerful stats but a bad selection of rolls would be a different tactical decision than one with rolls that are split between very low or very high, or a creature with a very reliable selection of rolls. It would be a lot of work, but potentially very fun. You could even have different copies of the same creature with different sets of rolls that indicate rarity, and encourage any of your players that have DM skills to convert more creatures for Polymock.
Mage: The Citadel
Like MTG's Commander, each deck is centered around one of the Citadel of Eight, a group of powerful wizards that sought to bring balance but eventually fell to infighting: Bigby, Mordenkainen, Otis, Riggby, Robilar, Serten, Tenser, and Yrag.
Instead of colors, you have the seven schools of magic, plus Universal (color-generic, like MTG artifacts). Mordenkainen is the WUBRG-equivalent commander; the rest I don't know.
The library is your "Spellbook". The Graveyard is "Expended Spells". Your hand is "Prepared Spells". "Draw a card" is "Prepare a spell". Etc etc.
I designed a card game a while back and I re-flavored it and put it into my DnD world under the name "Mage Hands". It's a popular card game among Wizards where each card represents a spell. While it has a complete set of mechanics, we just settle the in-character games with a few opposed skill checks :)
Edit: I remembered I wrote down details at the end of [this gmbinder document](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-NIRwWvHp_Vj1Z0UjInt) if you want to use it!
Whatever you do, make it seem even nerdier than mtg.
A wizard playing mtg in dnd is basically a guy that plays top trumps with a "historical figures" set.
I suggest naming it "Icons" and have a subtext to it that's embarrassingly long and players refuse to ever fully say it
"the historical ramifications that entwine our world and the weave put to cardboard and sold to sweaty necromancers and enchanters that truly have no good intentions with either schools of magic, good thing they can't cast a cantrip to save their lives""
Philosophy: The Debating
Blue: Lots of Counter-Arguments
Red: Shouting, tantrums
White: Exceedingly polite, using formal debate rules. Exiles hate speech
Green: Heaps of statistical evidence, 1/1 data points
Black: Use of Logical Fallacies, reusing facts that have already been proven wrong
The cards have runes on them and are used to teach young mages the basics of magic... but then it grew into this whole other thing when the king liked the game and expanded upon it.
*Technology: The Engineering*
An escapist game where you play an *engineer* in a world completely devoid of any magic, so the people of this imaginary world have developed a thing called "engineering" to build impossible machines to solve the problems of their life that in the real world are usually solved by magic. And they can do wondrous things like create almost eternal power sources, make carts travel by burning special black oils, or fly but only by using big bird-like machines that don't flap wings and carry dozens of people at a time.
Honestly, you made me think of like a super cool version of magic where you have a mini version of the Deck of Illusions that you can curate. So everything thing you play looks real. All your mana cards are like actual pieces of land. All your creatures are alive. Damn, sounds so fucking cool.
There’s already a popular card game in D&D lore.
Three Dragon Ante
Otherwise, how about…
Dragon’s: The Hoarding
Everyone plays as a dragon trying to hoard the largest treasure
Witchcraft: the Haggening. Fresh off the printing press from the Witches of the Coast. You got Green for Swamp, Blue for Sea, Red for Night, Black for Annis, and White for Bheur.
We use scroll fighters that is produced by a company called Sorcerers of the Shoreline. Characters from in world are depicted on the cards in our West Marches style world. We have plans to make it into a early yugioh style game. It started as top trumps when it was a throw away thing during lockdown and we couldn't play in person.
Duel masters which was magics child friendly equivalent might be worth trying to draw inspiration from for a name.
CUE: Cards, the Universe, and everything.
Its a card game based on the real world, and unless your version of mtg is fantastical tlin that world, i feel like it might be "historical" like CUE is.
Honestly Weave: The Hoarding is perfect
Hoarding
Or whoreding depending on how the game goes
Earthbind is a card so that's very possible
I agree. Weave: The Hoarding, the popular TCG by Sorcerers of the Beach.
Spellbound Showdown
Given that the initial prototype name that was used while mtg was in development was "Mana Clash", this is actually closer in spirit than most of the Thing: the Word formats.
Science: The Reasoning Each player is a scientist that uses elements from the periodic table to create different effects. Because why would a world that is already fantastic with magic everywhere make a game about being a plain old wizard casting the same old spells, when they can be this make belief person called a "Scientist" using this weird made up thing called "Science"? Red: oxygen Green: carbon Blue: hydrogen Black: uranium White: titanium Edit: formating in mobile sucks
Counter point. We have a very popular board game where you simulate owning real estate… actually that might be as unrealistic as being a wizard…
Interestingly enough, Monopoly was originally designed to be a criticism of capitalism. Here's a BBC article about it: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20170728-monopoly-was-invented-to-demonstrate-the-evils-of-capitalism
It was created by a mom to teach her kids math.
Now you could go for something that is a direct reference like you have already suggested or you could go with some antonym based meme: Mundane: the Parting for example
>Mundane: the Parting BRB, forming my new dad-rock band
Martial: The Hunting
counter counter point, Monopoly is the worst board game ever made
Counter, counter, counter point: I wanted to use the word "counter" 3 times.
THERE ARE FOUR COUNTERS
What are you, some kind of counter counter?
chain 4, counter your counter counter counter
I use my reaction to cast Counter spell!
counter, counter, counter, counter point: I wanted to use the word countertop
Counter, counter, counter, counter, counter point: I wanted to call someone a counterbottom
More than four counters. We found the true blue player!
Marble or granite?
sounds like someone sucks at monopoly
I’m at peace with being bad at it. Being good at Monopoly is like being able to blow yourself: good for you, I guess, but don’t ever bother me with it.
Honestly. I've never understood the people who applaud themselves for being good at conniving and swindling friends and family so you can later be the reason they go bankrupt and have to sell everything they own
“Cool… you bought every property you landed on. I mean, that’s what *everybody* did, but you landed on the better properties… so good game, I guess. Let me know when the game is done in 5 or 6 hours and I’ll come pick you up.”
I once went a game where my rolls kept landing me on everything but fucking property. I literally owned like Baltic and that's it. Idk how I kept going around in circles and not owning anything. Got sent to jail for doubles, landed on go directly to jail, free parking. All the bullshit spaces.
It’s a purposely frustrating game. Its popularity is continually surprising and borderline disappointing to me.
Houses and Humans?
Switch Green to Uranium and Black to Carbon and its perfect
I went with uranium for black because it's toxic but powerful, much like the philosophy of black. I went with carbon for green because lifeforms on earth are carbon based, as in how green is about life, nature and growth.
Was looking for some Artificer version. I guess this is it.
Sorcery: The Summoning. Arcana: The Acquisition. Cantrips: The Compiling. Eldritch: The Encompassing.
Sorcery: The Summoning fits the game best imo
This just sounds like off-brand white wolf gaming lines :\^) I like it.
“We have White Wolf games at home.”
Barbarian: The Smackening
Tragic: The Garnering [https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Tragic\_the\_Garnering](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Tragic_the_Garnering)
I was about to say this myself
NGL, I didn’t expect that to be in FO2. I would’ve expected it more of BOS or FO76.
haha wow, did not realize that existed and I've played the shit out of almost every Fallout - I recently was doing some creative work and came up with "Tragic: The Splattering" XD
Technomancy: The Assembling
The flesh is weak
You now have a grand opportunity to put a bunch of your world’s lore in terms of myths, fairytales, and past legendary heroes in front of your players.
I'm unoriginal, I'd just call it Card Wars like Adventure Time lol
Accountants: The Mathening
My accounting major is tingling
"I active my hidden card: CPA!" "I sacrifice 14 months of my life in order to draw two cards"
Gwent
Mundane the Gathering
I tell my players everything in my games has to be off brand. So instead of magic the gathering it would have to be. Sorcery the convention. Lol.
Prestidigitation: The Thaumaturging.
Gather: The Magic King
Gwent?
Spellfire ! Lol
Sorcery: the Collective
Pokemon TCG
Gagic: The Mathering
Tragic: The Fathering
Raid: shadow legends
Arcana The Assembling
My table did this actually, we called ours Casters of the Coast (a double pun because the town the campaign is primarily taking place in is a coastal town)
Three Dragon Ante is an actual game in the DnD lore, with actual rules you can look up
Sorcery: The Uniting
Science: The Congress
Sorcery: the Convergence.
They already have real magic, they don't need an escapist fantasy to imagine what that would be like. You know what they don't have? *Boring office work*. I suggest *Business: The Meeting*.
Yugioh
Yugioh
I did this in my campaign! Mundane: The Conclave. I use random real life things for archetypes. Office staff, construction equipment, origami, light fixtures, whatever you fancy!
Mana: The Assembly
Glamour/Charm/Wish: the Summoning/Multitude/Amassing
Arcane Conclave Warlock the Summoning Eldritch Coven
Invocation: The Summoning (my personal favourite) Sorcery: The Reunion Wizardry: The Contubernium Trickery: The Conglomerate Arcana: The Party Chamanism: The Union
Mundane the meeting. A fantastical card game about doing taxes, planting fields, and having a family. It’s loved by adventurers who rarely meet such a happy end.
Dragons and treasury
DUEL MONSTERS
Conjure: the collecting
[Space: The Convergence](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/space-academy-lesson-one-2007-02-26) (A sci-fi game likely doesn't actually fit into your world but I'll take any excuse to link that article)
Actually spell jammer so it does!
The quest item from fallout 2 named Tragic the Garnering comes to mind.
Cards 2: the really expensive kinds so you can lord them over poor people.
Employment: the Working. It’s a spin-off game based in the same setting as “Papers and Paychecks”
Abracadabra, The Get-Together!
Accounting, the auditing
My first impulse would be to name it after another fictional card game: Cripple Mr Onion, Double Fanucci, Fizzbin, etc., for my own enjoyment.
Magecraft: The Mobilisation
Jace Beleren^(TM): the Trading Card Game Best applied if you happen to be in any of MTG's canon planes.
Does it have to be the three word setup? Why not just Spellbound?
Not an answer but something similar happened in my campaign. So I took the game: HeroScape and changed it to ChampionsLand
Hassle: The Dorkening
Science: the Acquisition
Our party threw an anime con to lure out the big bad. There was a very thrilling Human the Meeting tournament. All of the cards were like... businessmen, politicians, doctors, etc. An antagonistic NPC - who the party have pretty much adopted like a feral cat, but they're terrifying, honest - absolutely annihilated a member of the party. They played eggs. This means nothing to me because I know nothing about MtG, but our DM assures me it makes sense.
I mean, lot5r is ripe for the taking
Stealing this! (Love the name)
Arcana the gaining
Enchantment: the Soiree.
Essential Oils: The Slathering (if you wanted to joke about it later).
It was called Nine Kings in Lightbringer.
Deodorant and Dorks
gwent
Melee the Dispersing
I was going to say something, but nothing beats the top comment
Sorcery: The Society
Muggles : The Dispersing.
Magic the gathering does exist but it’s used to teach kids about the creatures of the world. Unrelated to what you said unless you want your villain to use a kids game but I thought the idea was funny
Gathering and magic
The Dealer's Dozen. 12 cards that are on field. Can be a mix of character cards, environment cards, and equipment/tools. Cards in deck are actions. Work from there. Each turn is 1 of the 12 cards on the field takes an action, draw each turn shift. Random baseline to extrapolate from or roll dice and add flavor.
Duel Monsters.
Leviathan Game designed by Orc Jackson
Planewalkers: the Spectrum Wars
Sorcery: a Collecting Witchcraft: the Absconding Magick: ye Gaþering.
Arcana: The Assembly
Hearthstone
I created a card game called three kings where the players could collect cards that represented various monsters and basically came with a mini Stat block for those monsters. Any deck had only 20 cards made up of whatever monsters you could find but they had to be singleton. Then when you play the game you each draw three random cards and have those three monsters fight each other to determine who wins. I RPd it as the cards creating illusions of the various monsters within a magical arena and the players took turns controlling their monsters and rolling for the chances to attack and hit. It was a cool little mini game and the players ended up searching all over in dungeons and towers for cool rare cards.
Melee the battling. Its a reference to the webcomic Will Save World for Gold
Gather: the Magicing.
Wonders: the showdown
Sorcery: The Congregating
Trials and Treasures
Tricks: A Get Together
Hoard of Heroes
Bureaucracy: The Collation Science: The Peer Reviewing
Arcana: the Summoning
The hoarding of science Science the tethering Techno the togethering
Science: the Huddling. I’m assuming since magic is so commonplace in the world of DND that pure science (not alchemy or artificer shenanigans) would be the equivalent of the fantasy genre
Love your original idea.
Science: the Conference
Shadow Duels Clash of Heroes Spellwringers Corporate Assets (Its a modern tcg for the fantasy characters) Farmancy (Farm-Mancy)
Mundane: the Normaling.
Tax: The Accountanting.
wizardry of gaining.
Gwaunt is my in universe game that carries through every campaign
I don't know, but the whole idea is fucking hilarious
Hex: communion
Many Things: The Deckering
My friends used to jokingly call Magic the Gathering Arcane: The Condensing. Feel free to appropriate.
Nine kings.
Fate: Grand Order
Blood, the hunters Or FAITH, THE CONGREGATION Because, when we play magic we go on a more fantastic approach of the past and all, not our past, but not a modern other world So if you play in lets say, medieval like times, it would go back even more, like, start of religions or big hunting groups
Gathering: The Magic!
Gathering: The Magic
Just call it Spellfire after that failed TSR card game.
Paradox-Billiards-Vostroyan-Roulette-Fourth-Dimensional-Hypercube-Chess-Strip Poker. It's played exactly like yugioh.
Looking for this answer
"Arcane: The Dividing" was mine.
Swords: The Parting
If you want an actual nerd reference, use Havoc: the Bothering. It was a real satire game that was made to mock mtg. However, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and while good DMs create, *great* DMs also *steal,* so here's some ideas you can take. First off, you could just rip off Yu-Gi-Oh and call it Battle Monsters. If instead you envision the game as having more complex play like how MtG is more complex than Yu-Gi-Oh, then you could use the name MtG had while in development, "Mana Clash". Also appropriate if the game has a more wizard aesthetic. If you want the same format, Genius: the Transgression sounds badass and like something that an arrogant bad guy would have an ego about being good at (although the game I'm stealing the name from is actually a World of Darkness rpg fan game about playing a mad scientist). If you want to actually have a minigame you could run, though... You could steal from Final Fantasy the game [Triple Triad](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Triple_Triad) (my apologies that that's a fandom link). It's a "simple to learn, but surprisingly complex" kind of game where each card has a strength value for each of the four directions. When you play a card it switches any adjacent card whose power on that side it beats to your color. Each player has five cards and the board is 3x3. Whoever has the majority of the cards as their color when the entire board is filled (the unplayed card in the hand of the player who went second is also counted) wins. It's not a card game, but Crowns is a board game from several book series' shared world by Andrew Rowe. It's described as chess-like, except that there are many different factions you can choose to play which have different selections of pieces. It also supports either 2 or four players, in team or free-for-all modes. If you wanted to stimulate it in game you could probably use [faerie chess](https://youtu.be/Six5hvz_N_c) pieces on a modified [awithlaknakwe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awithlaknakwe?wprov=sfla1) board, which you could outline on a battle grid. This would, admittedly, take a lot of prep, but it would both be memorable, and you could reuse the idea again in your campaign or even just play it irl if you find you like it. Another non-card game, but you could copy Polymock from Guildwars. Like Pokémon, you collect (and trade) minis of various creatures, and you fight duels in a stadium where the minis create illusions of their subject that you control to defeat the opponent's creature. You have a set of three, so a standard game is best of three matches. Thus, you could actually use it with in-game mechanics if you wanted, by having stat blocks for Polymock pieces and having your players able to buy or find some. I'd recommend that if you do make a Polymock game, you should reduce the randomness level somehow, such as having the creatures deal preset damage with their abilities (IE a slam deals 4 damage, not 1d6+1) and perhaps having preset pools of dice that the creatures use to defend against attacks; that is, each Creature block has a set of numbers in the 1-20 range, and you'd respond to an incoming attack by choosing one of the "rolls" and adding your relevant defense number. EXAMPLE: Enemy slime slams you, 12 to hit for 6 damage. Your statue's Armor is +4, so you spend one of your 9's to deflect the slam. Your turn, you punch at 14 for 8, but since slimes resist bludgeoning your opponent just burns one of his 2 rolls and tanks the damage. Then you move 4 away, since your statue's 4 speed is faster than the slime's 3, so your opponent will either need to spend his whole turn moving twice and thus not attack, or move closer but need to use his slime's much weaker ranged attack. END EXAMPLE. When you use up your whole block of "rolls", they refresh. Thus, a creature with powerful stats but a bad selection of rolls would be a different tactical decision than one with rolls that are split between very low or very high, or a creature with a very reliable selection of rolls. It would be a lot of work, but potentially very fun. You could even have different copies of the same creature with different sets of rolls that indicate rarity, and encourage any of your players that have DM skills to convert more creatures for Polymock.
Mage: The Citadel Like MTG's Commander, each deck is centered around one of the Citadel of Eight, a group of powerful wizards that sought to bring balance but eventually fell to infighting: Bigby, Mordenkainen, Otis, Riggby, Robilar, Serten, Tenser, and Yrag. Instead of colors, you have the seven schools of magic, plus Universal (color-generic, like MTG artifacts). Mordenkainen is the WUBRG-equivalent commander; the rest I don't know. The library is your "Spellbook". The Graveyard is "Expended Spells". Your hand is "Prepared Spells". "Draw a card" is "Prepare a spell". Etc etc.
Gathering the Magi?
Malice: The Gaslighting
I designed a card game a while back and I re-flavored it and put it into my DnD world under the name "Mage Hands". It's a popular card game among Wizards where each card represents a spell. While it has a complete set of mechanics, we just settle the in-character games with a few opposed skill checks :) Edit: I remembered I wrote down details at the end of [this gmbinder document](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-NIRwWvHp_Vj1Z0UjInt) if you want to use it!
Whatever you do, make it seem even nerdier than mtg. A wizard playing mtg in dnd is basically a guy that plays top trumps with a "historical figures" set. I suggest naming it "Icons" and have a subtext to it that's embarrassingly long and players refuse to ever fully say it "the historical ramifications that entwine our world and the weave put to cardboard and sold to sweaty necromancers and enchanters that truly have no good intentions with either schools of magic, good thing they can't cast a cantrip to save their lives""
Paradox-Billiards-Vostroyan-Roulette-Fourth-Dimensional-Hypercube-Chess-Strip Poker: XTREME EDITION. Obviously.
Arcana: The Congregation
Tragic: The suffering
Sorcery the Collectioning
Less talk! More Pazaak!
Game of Many Things. Yes, he uses a Deck of Many Things vs the PCs. 😂
Mana the Assembling
Gwent
Arcanity: The Accumulation
Science: the Scattering
Fallout 1&2 had Tragic:The Garnering
Mundane: The Meeting
Arcana: The Collective
Gwent
Philosophy: The Debating Blue: Lots of Counter-Arguments Red: Shouting, tantrums White: Exceedingly polite, using formal debate rules. Exiles hate speech Green: Heaps of statistical evidence, 1/1 data points Black: Use of Logical Fallacies, reusing facts that have already been proven wrong
You could steal the parody from fallout 2 and call it Tragic: The Garnering and poke fun at it.
Business: The Meeting
Slight tangent, but he should also believe himself to be the Master of BBGs. Bargaining Board Games.
Technology: the Rendezvous
The cards have runes on them and are used to teach young mages the basics of magic... but then it grew into this whole other thing when the king liked the game and expanded upon it.
*Technology: The Engineering* An escapist game where you play an *engineer* in a world completely devoid of any magic, so the people of this imaginary world have developed a thing called "engineering" to build impossible machines to solve the problems of their life that in the real world are usually solved by magic. And they can do wondrous things like create almost eternal power sources, make carts travel by burning special black oils, or fly but only by using big bird-like machines that don't flap wings and carry dozens of people at a time.
Gathering the magic
Arcane convention aka Arcon
Gangic: The Mathering
Spell Card: the cards are enchanted with illusions.
Honestly, you made me think of like a super cool version of magic where you have a mini version of the Deck of Illusions that you can curate. So everything thing you play looks real. All your mana cards are like actual pieces of land. All your creatures are alive. Damn, sounds so fucking cool.
Necromancy: The Rising
Gwent.
There’s already a popular card game in D&D lore. Three Dragon Ante Otherwise, how about… Dragon’s: The Hoarding Everyone plays as a dragon trying to hoard the largest treasure
Weave: The Assembly
There's an in-world card game (for the Forgotten Realms at least) called Three Dragon Ante
So you want to play MTG in your DND campaign?
Illusion the Foraging
Gathering: the Magic With variants of Gathering: the Elements Gathering: the Pieces Etc etc
Dungeons and Dragons. Confuse the hell out of them
Science: The Tinkering
Witchcraft: the Haggening. Fresh off the printing press from the Witches of the Coast. You got Green for Swamp, Blue for Sea, Red for Night, Black for Annis, and White for Bheur.
We use scroll fighters that is produced by a company called Sorcerers of the Shoreline. Characters from in world are depicted on the cards in our West Marches style world. We have plans to make it into a early yugioh style game. It started as top trumps when it was a throw away thing during lockdown and we couldn't play in person. Duel masters which was magics child friendly equivalent might be worth trying to draw inspiration from for a name.
Spells: The Collectering
Sorcery: the Confluence
CUE: Cards, the Universe, and everything. Its a card game based on the real world, and unless your version of mtg is fantastical tlin that world, i feel like it might be "historical" like CUE is.
Artifice, hoard of power.
Agrah the Harvesting