Changelog

1.2.2

A security update. Every GM should update, especially if you import packs from other people.

Security

• Game rules and names can't run code. A game's rules from a pack or a player, its player counts, and names on the Lancer bar's tooltips could carry hidden code that ran in the GM's browser. They're now cleaned or escaped everywhere they're shown.
• The GM checks every move. Moves carry plain values only (no rule formulas), players can only change their own seat's chips, gold and counters (they can still pay anyone), set values stay within the game's limits, and only the GM's browser applies moves.
• Hidden cards can't be edited by players. Players see their own hand but only the GM's client can change it (existing matches switch over the first time the GM loads the world). A shuffled deck's cards get new ids, so a card seen earlier can't be followed into the deck.
• Packs: a pack that inflates past its stated size is stopped, pictures must be real PNG, JPEG, WebP or GIF files (no SVG) and get fresh file names, and the import preview no longer loads pictures from the web.
• Uploads and requests: player image uploads are checked by their contents, and players' uploads, decks and card suggestions are limited per hour.
• Lancer deploys: the GM's client checks the deployable is on your own mech, on a scene your token is on, and on the map.
• Rule formulas have work and length limits, card-face colours and card backs take plain values only, and strict games check a character's deck against the deck rules.

Fixed

• Players' Lancer deploys, image uploads, new decks and card suggestions failed in Foundry 13: Foundry doesn't tell the GM's client who asked, so they were refused. They now go through the module's own connection, which does.
• In sandbox games a player can no longer edit another seat's counters; the GM still can.

Docs

• The docs no longer claim hidden cards can't be seen from the browser console: Foundry sends every player all of a world's data, so a player who opens the console can read hidden cards (as with Foundry's own card decks). They can't change them. Play with people you trust.

1.2.1

Lancer action hand

• Threat on the map: the Templates palette has a Threat slider that draws your threat ring around your token (0 takes it away), with your weapons' longest Threat and a Use button. Dragging a Threat weapon card onto the map sets the same ring. Speed and Sensors rings show how far your move and your Sensors reach. Rings follow your token as it moves, on square and hex maps.
• Integrated weapons and systems (the Enkidu's Plasma Talons) get cards, though they sit in no mount.
• Frame traits and core actions: traits with actions (Combat Repair, Mag Parry), your core's own actions, and the actions your core power grants (the Enkidu's Bifurcate), which unlock once you use it. Undo locks them again.
• Talents and core bonuses with actions, for the ranks your pilot has (the Ace's Acrobatics and Spin Up Thrusters), on mechs and pilots on foot.
• Weapon mods: a modded weapon shows the mod's name and effect; a mod with its own action gets a card.
• Weapon profiles: switches under a weapon's card pick its profile (Siege Mode, Spin-Up Mode).
• End turn button on the bar, for Lancer's popcorn initiative.
• Structure and overheat checks: at 0 HP or over your heat cap, a button on the bar rolls Lancer's own check.

Docs

• A Lancer page on the docs site for the action hand.

1.2.0

Table tools

• Markers on cards: a game can declare markers (Strengthened, Resilience 2): right-click a card you control to set them, under every rules level. They show as coloured badges with hover text, and Alt-hover lists them with what they do. Effects read them like any mark or counter. Click a badge to take the marker off (a count goes down by one), and Add your own marker… in the right-click menu names one on the spot (Cursed), in any game.
• Add a card mid-game: a button on the table puts a card into a running match: one from the game's library (tokens included) or a brand-new card made in the card editor, into the zone you pick. The GM always can; a game can let players add tokens, or make cards too. A card you make can also be saved to your deck.
• Players adding cards to a game: a player who opens a game that takes contributions gets Add a card (or Suggest a card, for the GM to approve) on the builder's Library tab.
• Builder: the Info tab edits a game's markers and who may add cards mid-game; the Card Designer has a Font (Urbanist and IM Fell English ship with the module).
• For game makers: an action can open the card editor once it goes through (opens: "newCard"); a game's own log lines fill in their {placeholders}; actions and action menus can hide while they don't apply (showIf); and card editor notes (editorNotes) show live help under a card being made, like a points budget.

Perfect Draw! (free pack)

• Any table: player v player duels (no Judge), players against the Judge's opponent, and up to five seats. Begin the card game asks who the Judge is (or nobody); the last player in wins a duel, the players win together when the opponent hits 0, and I'm out takes a player at 0 life out of the game.
• Making cards: the card editor shows a card's Effect Points as you pick its type and strength (+1 for an Ace) and what each effect costs. Decks follow the rules: one Ace, at least four cards of your own, and two staples. A player with no deck gets the example cards with two staples.
• An opponent's cards live in the Decks area too: the opponent sheet links to a deck (Make the deck, or Start from the example), edited in the deck builder; the sheet sets each card's role (Plan to Win or Power move) and the Simple Card Moves that follow. Opponent decks skip the players' deck rules.
• Opponents (NPCs) for the Judge: a Perfect Draw! opponent sheet (gimmick, Lash Out, Backup Plan, Plan to Win and Power cards with their Simple Card Moves, their own Simple Card Moves; Start from the example makes the Starborn Bears). The GM's Opponent button brings one to the Judge's seat: an opponent card with the portrait and gimmick, and the Judge's moves offer the NPC's own cards first.
• A character's deck lives in the Decks area: the sheet links to a deck and shows its cards, staples and whether it's ready, with Edit in the deck builder. Make my deck creates one (moving any cards the sheet held); cards from Draw the Perfect Card join it at Reflect. In the deck builder, Make my own version copies any card into the deck's own cards to rename it (a renamed staple keeps its effect).
• Perfect Draw! characters: a character type the module adds (any game system) with its own sheet: stats, look, baggage (serious, and ticked relevant), your playbook's Combat Tension questions and abilities, experience; the general moves rolled with the baggage penalty worked out; your deck's cards and staples (pick and rename two generic staples, type in your playbook's); Your Struggles and Your Friends. At the table the sheet is your deck, relevant baggage is your starting Advantage, and Tension follows the questions you cross off. Cards made with Draw the Perfect Card wait on the sheet, and Reflect after the battle adds them to your deck and marks experience. No playbook content ships: type yours in from your book.
• A free Perfect Draw! pack (download it from the itch.io page): card game combat from Double Summon Games' TTRPG. Players' decks and staples against the Judge's opponent, life and opening hands by significance, Advantage and Tension, attacks with clashes (2d6 + Tension, raised with Advantage), the generic staples doing their own work, the Card Combat General Moves, Draw the Perfect Card opening the card editor, markers for Strengthened, Overwhelm, Resilience and the rest, the Judge's moves on roll-on tables, response and threat moves, the example cards and the Starborn Bears. Our own card faces. Rules used under Double Summon Games' Creative Commons attribution licence.

Lancer (beta)

• The Lancer action hand: in a Lancer combat, your mech's options as a hand of cards docked at the bottom of the screen: the standard actions (Boost, Ram, Grapple, Hide, Search, Quick Tech, Improvised Attack, Stabilize, Disengage), each equipped weapon (Skirmish or Barrage), and your systems' actions. Your budget shows above the hand (two quick actions or one full action, plus your move).
• One click plays a card: it opens Lancer's own roll, and your action budget is spent only if the roll goes through (cancel and nothing's spent). Undo gives back the last card's budget.
• Lancer's rules on the cards: an action can't be taken twice in a turn (Quick Tech options and different systems count separately), protocols only at the start of your turn, Superheavy weapons only in a Barrage, unloaded weapons and spent Limited uses greyed out with the reason.
• Overcharge: a card showing the next heat (+1, +1d3, +1d6, +1d6+4). Lancer applies the heat; you get one more quick action this turn, even one you've already taken (the normal slots are used first).
• Reactions: a reaction row on the right, live on other characters' turns: Brace, Overwatch (pick the weapon) and your systems' and NPCs' own reactions, each once per round.
• Brace, Prepare and Full Tech: Brace locks your reactions and leaves your next turn one quick action; Prepare holds a quick action until its trigger (it fires from the reaction row); Full Tech takes two Quick Tech options.
• Core Power as a card while your core is charged, and heat shown on cards and on the bar.
• Pilots on foot: select a dismounted pilot and the hand becomes theirs: Boost, Hide, Search and Skill check (rolled with your triggers), Reload, Prepare, Jockey (climb on with Grit, then Distract, Shred or Damage), Disengage, Mount, your pilot weapons (Fight), your gear's actions, and Overwatch with Fight. A pilot's actions come out of their mech's pool, as the rules say. Mechs get Dismount and Eject cards.
• Aiming: attack cards ask for a target when you haven't picked one: click a token on the map (shift-click for several, then Done; Skip rolls without). Area weapons and systems (Blast, Burst, Cone, Line) put Lancer's own area on the map; place it and everything inside is targeted, and the area stays as a zone. Targets the hand picked are cleared after the roll.
• Turn it off: the × on the bar, or the hand button in the token controls (left toolbar), shows or hides the action hand for you.
• Organised in tabs: Actions, Weapons, Systems, Reactions and Saves, each showing how many cards you can play now. The hand opens on your last tab on your turn and on Reactions on everyone else's.
• Saves on the hand: Hull, Agility, Systems and Engineering (Grit for pilots), rolled any time with Lancer's own check and never spending your budget.
• Right-click a card to open its weapon, system or gear sheet (or the mech's sheet).
• Undo puts back what the roll spent: a Loading weapon's load, Limited uses, Recharge and Core Power, as well as your budget.
• A stats strip under the bar's header: HP (and overshield), Structure, Heat, Stress, Evasion, E-Defense, Armor, Speed, Core Power, Repairs, Burn and your active statuses, each with hover text (a pilot on foot shows HP, defences, Speed and Grit). On your turn the Speed chip shows whether your standard move is ready or taken; click it to mark it, like Lancer's own Move button.
• Hover text on everything in the bar's header.
• A new look: whole cards (no more half-hidden cards), Lancer's own icons in a hexagon medallion on each card, colours by kind (weapons, systems, core power, reactions, pilot, saves), uses as pips, a USED stamp, the Orbitron font for headings, tabs as one switch, and icons on the stats. Cards you can't play only because it isn't your turn stay in colour.
• Grenades, mines and deployables: a single-target grenade (like the Gravity Grenade) asks for its target and the chat says who it was used on. Charges that can be mines offer Lay a mine, and systems that deploy something (drones, cover) get a Deploy card: click the spot on the map and its token is placed (the GM's client places it, so players don't need extra permissions). Mines and deployables spend the system's charges like the grenade does.
• Show ranges and areas on the map: drag a weapon or system card onto the map to place its area (Blast, Burst, Cone, Line; cones and lines point from your token to where you drop) or a ring showing its range around your token. The bar's Templates button has the common shapes (Blast 1–3, Burst 1–3, Cone 3/5/7, Line 5/8/10, Range 3/5/8/10). Areas use the Lancer system's own templates. Nothing is rolled or spent.
• Hex maps: mines, deployables and dropped areas snap to hexes as well as squares; range rings and Lancer's own areas draw as hexes.
• Safe by design: the action hand only switches on in a Lancer world with the Lancer system's API present, never changes Lancer itself, and turns itself off (with a console note) rather than break anything if Lancer or Foundry changes.
• NPCs for the GM: select an NPC token during a combat and its features become its hand, with the same rules.
• Settings: Lancer action hand (beta) and Lancer action hand for NPCs, both on by default in Lancer worlds.

Fixed

• The hand bar at the bottom of the screen has a ×: close it for a match (opening the table brings it back), or turn it off everywhere with the Hand bar setting.
• Turn-start rules ("at the start of your turn" triggers and abilities) now run in games where turns just pass around the table.
• A game rule that can't be worked out (say, a card made at the table without a value the rules add up) now refuses the move with a message, instead of leaving the table waiting.
• Players no longer see Duplicate to edit on a game they can't copy.

1.1.0

His Majesty the Worm

• A built-in game for His Majesty the Worm: the players' fate deck (the minor arcana and the Fool) and the GM's doom deck (the major arcana), each with its discard pile.
• Tests of fate with favor, disfavor and Resolve, great successes, pushing fate and great failures; inspiration cards from the High Chant.
• The Meatgrinder (with loud-noise and moving-carefully pulls) and every card table in the book: City Events, Hangovers, contracts, the four maleficence tables, Malediction, dispositions, the Underworld's rooms and seeds, and more.
• The Challenge Phase: enemy groups from the bestiary (or your own), the GM's doom count, Initiative cards, the count from Ace to King, actions totalled against Initiative, minor actions revealed together, face-down actions that last between rounds, the Fool's reshuffle.
• A reference journal, His Majesty the Worm: reference: every card table (card → result), the bestiary, the spells, kith, kin and talents, Bonds, conditions and effects, gear and upkeep, and the Camp and City actions. The Reference button on the Worm table opens it; Read the tables (Doom deck menu) opens the tables.
• A Worm adventurer sheet (a character type the module adds; it's offered in Create Actor in Simple Worldbuilding worlds, the system we suggest for the Worm, and stays out of other systems' lists unless you turn it on with the setting His Majesty the Worm characters): attributes, Resolve, conditions and Wounds, lore bids, motifs, quest, Bonds, talents with XP, gear in hands, belt and pack with slots, notches and lights that flicker when the torches gutter, and Camp recovery. Show a talent, an item or a Bond in chat with one click; Wounds and Camp recovery post what happened. Test buttons on the sheet's four suits draw a test of fate at the adventurer's Worm table (with favor, disfavor or Resolve), with Push fate after a failure; every test of fate posts its result to chat.

Pathfinder 2e

• Pathfinder 2e characters link to seats like D&D 5e ones: gold (the character's coins, with change made for you), hit points, Hero Points, conditions with values (Frightened 2), and skills, saves and Perception rolled with pf2e's own checks.
• The built-in games work in pf2e: Tavern Gambit plays for real coins with a pf2e Deception check, the Fate Deck gives pf2e conditions and Hero Points, the Initiative Deck fills pf2e's combat tracker. Games made for D&D 5e have their checks and conditions matched to pf2e's.
• The Harrow Deck, a free pack (download it from the itch.io page): the Choosing and the nine-card Harrowing, with each card's match shown under it.

Starting a match

• A game picker instead of a long list. New match shows the games in sections (favourites, played recently, card games, for your campaign, trading card games, your games), each with a line about it and how many can play. Type to search; games that don't fit the players you've ticked are greyed out.

Play mats

• Change the table's background. In the Game Builder (Info → Look and feel), give a game its own felt colour and a picture under the cards (fill the table, tile it, or show it whole, darkened so the cards stand out). The GM can also change the mat for a single match with the Play mat button on the table. Packs carry the picture with the game.

Builder

• Reference journals: a game can have a reference journal; its table shows a Reference button, and actions can open one of its pages.
• Action groups: a game's buttons can be gathered into menus (one button that opens a list) or tabs (a switch, like the Worm's phases), so games with many actions stay tidy.
• Zones that hide while empty (and appear as drop targets while you drag a card), zones that show only when a formula says so, and zone names that change with the game.
• Typed answers ("Call them…"), result tables read by card value (table()), and join, flat and seatName in formulas.
• Give a condition has a Value for systems whose conditions have a number.

Fixed

• What's new opens inside Foundry, in the browser and in Foundry's desktop app (where the link in the update message did nothing). Click the version in the match manager's footer to open it any time.
• Card library: the selected card's preview keeps its shape when the builder window is short (it was squashed flat); the side panel scrolls instead. Same for the card editor.
• Table: crowded tables (6–8 seats) keep every zone at least a card wide, so cards and labels no longer overlap; side seats put the hand on top and the smaller zones side by side instead of one tall column.
• Table: other players' hands at a crowded table show as a small fan of card backs (four cards look like four cards) instead of one stacked card.
• Table: shared piles and spreads too wide for the table wrap onto a second line instead of pushing the first one (usually the deck) off the left edge.
• Game and deck pages show "Card game" / "Deck list" in their window titles instead of an internal key.
• Condition names in the match log no longer fail in systems that keep their status effects as a list of their own (pf2e).

1.0.2

• Card text at the table: hovering a card, or holding Alt / Ctrl / Cmd over it, now shows the text its face doesn't print, like a tarot card's meaning (upright or reversed, as it lies).
• Updates apply straight away: the built-in games and their cards refresh as soon as an update loads, not the next time the match manager opens.
• Builder: "Write in the log" steps show their message instead of an internal key.

1.0.1

• Oracle (Tarot): the card meanings are now Arthur Edward Waite's own, from The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), upright and reversed, as he wrote them. Worlds that already have the Oracle get the new text; cards you added to its library are kept.
• Docs: the guide journal is gone. The GM gets a link to the docs at bigblobgames.dev/card-engine the first time the module runs, and a link to what changed after each update. The match manager's footer links the docs.
• Release downloads are now named blobs-card-engine-module-v…zip.

1.0.0

The first release of Blob's Card Engine.

Play

• A real card table in Foundry: hands, piles, rows and fans, drag and drop, flipping, tapping, shuffling with a riffle, undo, and a log of every move.
• Three rules levels for every game: Strict (the table enforces the rules), Assisted (it suggests and warns) and Sandbox (anything goes, like a real table).
• Hidden information stays hidden: each player's hand is only sent to them.
• Sounds for shuffles, deals, chips and wins (can be turned off), keyboard play and screen-reader support.
• A hand bar at the bottom of the screen for your cards in every match, and map pins that place a deck on the scene.

Built-in games

• Card games: Texas Hold'em (Strict, with side pots), Poker Night (Sandbox), Blackjack, Go Fish, Crazy Eights, War and Klondike Solitaire.
• For tabletop RPGs: Oracle (a full tarot deck with spreads and reversed cards), Fate Deck (fates that heal, hurt and twist your hero), Tavern Gambit (a bluffing game played for your character's gold) and Initiative Deck (card initiative in the Combat tracker).
• Star your favourite games to keep them at the top.

Build your own

• A Game Builder: zones, values, turn flow, card actions, triggers and win conditions, with templates, tips and a linter that explains problems in plain words.
• A Card Designer with layers, looks for different card types, and art from your files.
• A card library with gallery and table views, filters, bulk edits and image upload.
• Trading card game support: card abilities, targets, a stack with priority, deck rules, a deck lobby, and Resource, Lane and Energy battler templates.
• A deck builder for players, with several decks per game, custom cards and proxies, decklist import and a test hand.

Tabletop RPG features

• Seats can be linked to characters: gold, inspiration and other values stay in sync with the sheet (dnd5e and a generic adapter for other systems).
• Dice rolls, character checks (with the system's own roll dialog), initiative, healing, damage and conditions from card effects.
• @BlobCards[...] links in journals that start a game, open a table or deal a tarot reading.

Sharing

• Packs (.bcepack): one file with games, decks and their art, to import into another world.
• Deck codes to paste in chat.

Also

• Docs at bigblobgames.dev/card-engine, and an API for macros and other modules.
• Tarot meanings are A. E. Waite's own, from The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910).