A.C.E.S.

A.C.E.S. Lite, first edition (core rules build 2026-09-18). Stray Current Studio, straycurrentstudio.com/games/aces/

• What you need
• The decks
• Characters
• The Character Card
• When to resolve
• Hit, Add, Swap, Stand
• Outcomes
• Inventory
• HP and Plot Armor
• Group Resolution
• Player vs. player
• Growth
• Wild tables
• For the Dealer
• Example of play
• Playing online
• Quick reference

A.C.E.S. is a roleplaying game played with cards instead of dice. One player is the Dealer: they describe the world, play everyone the characters meet, and deal against the table. Everyone else plays a character. When a character tries something uncertain and consequential, the table runs a Resolution: the Dealer lays a face-up Tell and a face-down Truth, and the player builds a Layout to beat them without finishing over 21.

It is the house game of The Copper Cabaret, but the four Stats cover any genre: pulp crime, sky pirates, weird science, quiet magic. The character cards on the wiki deal every cast member of our aired seasons into a game.

What you need

• A standard 52-card deck for every participant, including the Dealer. Each person manages their own deck. Jokers are never shuffled into a Resolution deck.
• One Dealer and one or more players.
• A Character Card for each player. Print the blank card below.
• Something to track HP and Plot Armor: pencil marks, coins or tokens.

The decks

After choosing an Affinity Suit, each player removes the 7 and Jack of that suitfrom their own deck, names them as Inventory items, and places them face down beside their Character Card. Shuffle the remaining cards. The Dealer shuffles a complete 52-card deck.

Every Resolution begins with freshly shuffled decks. At the end of every Resolution, each participant returns all the cards they used, and their discard pile, to their own deck and shuffles. Used Inventory goes back face down beside its owner's Character Card instead.

Characters

Each suit is a Stat, the approach a character takes:

1. Stats. All four Stats begin at 1. Distribute 7 Lucky Points among them. No Stat may exceed 4 at character creation.
2. Affinity Suit. Choose one suit. Remove its 7 and Jack from your deck and name them as your two Inventory items: a service weapon, a forged badge, a lucky lighter.
3. Adjective and Role. Pick them from the Wild Characters table, or draw: once for your Role, then once for your Adjective. Take either adjective at that rank, or let the card's colour decide. Together they are your Concept.
4. Write the person. A Name, a Physical Description, a Goal (why they walk into danger), a Flaw (a weakness they act on, not just a mood) and a Secret (something the others don't know yet).
5. HP 3/3, Plot Armor 2/2.

Wild Characters

When to resolve

Resolve only when success is not guaranteed and the result has consequences for the story or the characters. Choose the Stat from the character's approach.

Initiative

If acting order matters, everyone cuts their own deck and reveals the bottom card of the lifted portion. Highest card acts first. Ties break by suit, ♠ over ♣ over ♦ over ♥. If people reveal the same rank and suit, only they cut again.

Setup

1. The Dealer draws the Tell face up and the Truth face down. Together they are the Dealer's Layout; their sum is the Dealer's total.
2. The player draws one face-up opening card from their own deck. This starts their Layout, which stays face up.
3. The player may Hit a number of times equal to the Stat. The opening card is not a Hit.

Hit, Add, Swap, Stand

When the player declares a Hit:

1. The Dealer draws first and either replaces the Tell (the new card goes face up), replaces the Truth (face down), or discards the drawn card. Replaced and discarded Dealer cards go to the Dealer's discard pile.
2. The player draws and either Adds the card to their Layout or Swaps it for a card already there. A replaced card goes to the player's discard pile.

The player may Stand instead of taking another Hit.

Going over 21 does not end the Resolution. If Hits remain, keep going and try to Swap back below 21.

If the opening card plus the first Hit total exactly 21, the player may end the Resolution at once as a Critical Success.

No Hits left? Use Inventory or Stand.

Outcomes

When the player Stands, reveal the Truth. The Dealer's final total is Tell plus Truth. Check the outcomes in this order:

Dealer 22 against your 22 is a Critical. Dealer 22 against your 23 is a Catastrophe. Dealer 22 against your 20 is a Success.

Cleanup. Everyone returns the cards used in the Resolution, discards included, to their own deck and reshuffles. Used Inventory goes back face down beside its owner's card.

Inventory

Your 7 and Jack stay out of your draw deck, face down beside your Character Card, until used.Instead of Standing, after your opening card or after any Hit, you may use one available Inventory item that fits the fiction:

1. Swap the Inventory card for one card in your Layout.
2. Put the replaced card in your discard pile.
3. Stand. You cannot Hit after using Inventory.

Inventory keeps its normal card value. It may take you over 21, or make an exact-match Critical. It never counts as the opening card or first Hit for the 21 Critical. Each item can be used once per Scene, so only one item can be used in a Resolution.

HP and Plot Armor

Characters have 3 HP. A Failure costs 1 HP. A Catastrophe costs 1 HP plus the worst reasonable story outcome.

At 0 HP a character is unconscious and out of the action until another character helps them. The Dealer decides whether that help simply works or needs a Resolution, using the helper's approach. Successful help restores 1 HP.

Characters have 2 Plot Armor. When a Failure or Catastrophe would cost 1 HP, you may spend 1 Plot Armor instead and lose no HP. Plot Armor does not change the outcome or prevent any other consequence. It returns to 2 at the start of each Episode, and whenever the Dealer says you regain some.

• A Scene is a continuous run of significant events in one general time and place. A meaningful change of time or place starts a new one, and every character returns to 3 HP, even at 0.
• An Episode is one complete adventure, made of Scenes. It can take more than one session.

Group Resolution

Use a Group Resolution when more than one character engages in the same activity and shares the outcome. The Dealer starts as normal, with one Tell and one Truth.

1. Split the Layout. For the second character, separate the original Tell and Truth, draw a new Truth for the original Tell, and a new Tell for the original Truth. For each further character, split the Layout holding the original Truth again in the same way, until there is one Dealer Layout per character.
2. Assign Layouts. The character who started the group action takes the Layout with the original Truth. Hand out the rest starting with the player to their left.
3. Resolve each character normally against their own Layout, including their own consequences.

Then the shared outcome:

• Any Critical overrides any Catastrophe. A Catastrophe with no Critical fails the group.
• Otherwise the group succeeds with more Successes than Failures, and fails on a tie or worse.
• One Critical counts as a Success for the group. Two or more make the group outcome a Critical Success.

Individual consequences still apply when the group succeeds. A Group Resolution is one Resolution: reshuffle only when all of it is done.

Player vs. player

One Joker in the Core carries this procedure. There is no Dealer Layout and no Dealer draw.

1. Determine Initiative. Each player draws one face-up opening card from their own deck and uses the Stat for their action.
2. In Initiative order, each player either Hits (draw, then Add or Swap) or Stands and takes no more turns. Each may Hit up to their Stat. Both Layouts stay visible.
3. When both have Stood, the higher total at or below 21 wins. If one busts, the other wins. If both bust, the one closer to 21 wins. Equal totals, 21 included, are a tie, settled by a rematch.

Growth

The back of the card has four Growth boxes: Concept, Goal, Flaw, Secret. Each can be marked once per Growth cycle. After a Resolution, propose a mark; the Dealer decides whether the trait truly applied.

• On a Success: mark Concept if it shaped how you succeeded, or Goal if the Success advanced it.
• On a Failure: mark Flaw if it contributed, or Secret if protecting, hiding or acting on it contributed.

Change a trait mid-cycle and you erase its mark. When all four boxes are marked, Growth pauses until you complete a Turning Point.

Turning Point

1. Complete your Goal, then choose a new one.
2. Your Flaw exposes your Secret. The Secret is lost, with whatever consequences follow. Give the Dealer a new Secret.
3. Change, if it fits. You may replace your Flaw, and change either your Adjective or your Role.
4. Grow. Clear all four marks and permanently add 1 Lucky Point to a Stat.

A Goal completed or a Secret exposed before all four boxes are marked does not count toward the Turning Point.

Wild tables

Don't know where to start? Draw a card from any deck and read it against these tables.

Wild Places

Choose Locale or Place and draw. The rank gives the location; the suit gives optional prompts.

Wild Adventures and MacGuffins

For an adventure, combine the rank's Subject with the suit's State. For a MacGuffin, combine the rank's object with either word for the suit.

For the Dealer

Play the world; don't decide the outcome. You decide what the people of the world want, know and attempt, and how they respond, all consistent with the established fiction. You add complications and consequences, but you never decide in advance whether an uncertain, consequential attempt succeeds. When someone's action puts a character at risk, resolve it with the Stat for how the character responds.

After setup, you draw only when a player Hits. Choose freely among the Dealer's options to challenge the characters from unexpected directions, not to fix their failure.Make the danger real. Let the cards decide whether the characters overcome it.

• Describe the world and what its people do. Ask the players what their characters do.
• If success is guaranteed, let it happen.
• Let the established fiction decide what is possible.
• Apply the outcome to the situation, not just the numbers. A Failure changes the situation; it need not stop the story.

Example of play

Dr. Jacqueline Damascus (Cunning 4) has to read the cipher on a sluice gate before the water reaches her knees. The Dealer calls it Cunning and lays the Tell, a six, and the Truth face down. Jacqueline opens with a four. First Hit: the Dealer draws a queen and replaces the Tell with it, so the Tell is now 10. Jacqueline draws an eight and Adds it, for 12. Second Hit: the Dealer draws a three and discards it. Jacqueline draws a king and Adds it: 22, over, but she has Hits left. Third Hit: the Dealer draws a five and discards it. Jacqueline draws a two and Swaps it for her four: 8, 10 and 2 make 20. She Stands with a Hit to spare. The Truth turns: a nine. The Dealer has 19; Jacqueline has 20. Success. The gate grinds open.

Playing online

The Suit Yourself adventures and the character creator still run the earlier build of A.C.E.S. ("Universal 21"). They will move to these rules; until then, the online table differs like this:

• Characters spend 8 points across Athletics, Cunning and Eloquence. Strange starts at 1 and rises only through a Strange Surge: a Strange scene that ends at exactly 21. Concepts are written freely rather than drawn from Wild Characters.
• Face cards count Jack 11, Queen 12, King 13. House Aces always count 11, and an Ace you open with counts 1.
• The house never draws on your Hits; the Tell and Truth stay as dealt.
• Passing 21 ends the scene at once as a Catastrophe.
• Only a Catastrophe costs harm. You may spend a Plot Armor pip to ECHO it instead: replay the scene against the same Tell and Truth.
• A house over 21 is a locked door: only a two-card 21 gets through.
• Every card comes from a fresh shuffle, so the same card can turn up twice. Items, Plot Armor and HP last for one playthrough.

To bring a creator character to a tabletop game, keep its three Stats, set Strange to 1, add the 2 remaining Lucky Points (no Stat above 4), and give it an Adjective and a Role.

Quick reference

CARDS      2-10 face, J Q K = 10, A = 1 or 11 (owner picks)
STATS      ♠ Athletics  ♣ Cunning  ♦ Eloquence  ♥ Strange
BUILD      all 1, +7 Lucky Points, none above 4
           HP 3, Plot Armor 2, the 7 and J of your Affinity Suit
DECKS      one each; fresh shuffle every Resolution
SETUP      Dealer: Tell face up, Truth face down
           You: one opening card (not a Hit)
HIT        up to your Stat. Dealer draws first: replace Tell,
           replace Truth, or discard. Then you Add or Swap.
OVER 21    play on while Hits remain; Swap back down
INVENTORY  instead of Standing: swap in, then Stand; once/Scene

CHECK IN ORDER
  opening + 1st Hit = 21, or exact match   CRITICAL
  you over 21                              CATASTROPHE  -1 HP
  Dealer over 21                           SUCCESS
  you higher                               SUCCESS
  you lower                                FAILURE      -1 HP

PLOT ARMOR spend 1 instead of losing 1 HP; 2 each Episode
0 HP       out until helped back to 1; new Scene = 3 HP
GROWTH     Success: Concept / Goal   Failure: Flaw / Secret
           4 marks, Turning Point, +1 Lucky Point