House of Cards (roleplay)

An Original Character-only Journal Roleplay based on humanized versions of playing cards. Characters live in a place called the Deck, which can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Typically, only people who have heard of the Deck can enter it, but it is possible for some to simply stumble in. There are also those who are Deck-born and have lived there all their lives.

Each character has a Rank, varying from Two through the Face Cards, and belongs to a Suit (Hearts, Clubs, Spades and Diamonds,) just like in a regular deck of cards. Newcomers start out as Twos, but can move up through the Ranks through things called Challenges. Lower Ranks are typically more serving/working-class, while higher Ranks are more involved in the running of their specific Suit.

The community can be found here. Not to be confused with the the TV show.

Tropes used in House of Cards (roleplay) include:

• Anyone Can Die: Not even the Royals are exempt from this.
• Babies Ever After: Best seen in the Alternate Universe "Grimverse." Which isn't so grim after all.
• Bright Castle: The Diamonds Castle is known as the Crystal Palace for a reason.
• Death by Origin Story: In the heroes and villains AU, Andrew's brutal murder and Argine's presumed death are the driving forces in the appearance of Eileen's powers and she and her brother's vigilantism. Also Edgar and several other family members/friends of player-controlled characters in canon.
• Death Is a Sad Thing
• Fictional Country
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Heroes/Villains-verse heroic twins Eileen and Darren, thanks to Twin Telepathy. And, well. General telepathy.
• Full Name Ultimatum:

"Evan Aaron Benjamin McCartney!"

• Heroic BSOD: Chives, after Urania telling him she was pregnant.

"There's no change in expression. There's no shift in posture. There's no breathing, actually. There's just a man entirely shutting down, perhaps rebooting, from the sudden influx of Too Much that's slammed into his incapable processors. The rest is silence."

• Non-Player Character: In great abundance-- the Deck can't run on only player-controlled characters, after all!
• Not Quite Dead: A rarely-occurring trope, most notably witnessed in the return of the the Spade King David after an assassination attempt by his wife and Queen, Athena.
• Overly Long Name: See the Appolonideses, the Berthiers, and the Fitzgeralds for some examples.
• Past Right Now
• Standard Royal Court
• Tangled Family Tree: One of the Alternate Universes, the "Lord of the Cards"-verse, has this. Can likely also be seen in many old Deck families due to interbreeding.
• You Called Me "X" - It Must Be Serious: Or Heartbreaking, in the case of Rachel calling her beloved niece by her proper name instead of the usual, fond, "little one" in Marcus' execution.

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Characters in this game provide examples of:

• Absent-Minded Professor: Fin, the Clubs' resident professor.
• Angsty Surviving Twin: Calypso after Echo's death.
• The Ace: Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Badass Normal: Just about everyone in the Deck.
• The Caligula: The former Spade King.
• The Good King: Andrew, Ceiro.
• The High Queen
• Ice Queen: Queen of Diamonds Rachel and her Ace, Säde.
• Little Miss Badass: The twelve-year-old Ace of Clubs Eileen in a nutshell.
• Master Swordsman
• The Nicknamer
• The Reliable One
• The Stoic