Defenders
Defenders is a fantasy RPG where players take arms against a terrible menace, threatening their families and lives, their villages and dreams. There are various types of characters - from the roaming warrior to the local druid, from the hired mercenary to the good villager, from the altruist rogue to the greedy wizard.
What bonds them all together is a location (they might live there or just happen to pass by), and the inevitable threat of a major menace, set to destroy and kill.

Think of… 
… A small village in the woods, surrounded by wild wolves lead by a giant, white and monstrous wolf as tall as a men. The characters are the only ones who will stand up to defend the village.
… A little town built next to the sea, and of a giant covered of seashells and seaweed, emerging from the waves, marching on the beach, to the port and the boats, that are the most precious possession of every family in town. Imagine the characters as the only ones brave enough to take arms against the giant.
… A small encampment in the northern lands, hosting refugees from various villages, seeking shelter from the ongoing war; and imagine a gang of knights, lead by a corrupted cleric, marching nearby - filled by anger, hatred and greed. The characters are the only hope for the refugees to avoid a raid and the consequent violence and death.

Defenders is a game where the players work together against the menace, and against a “virtual GM”: everybody has a couple of characters (roughly sketched) to use against the incoming threat. 
A deck of cards acts as the GM, and by drawing cards (bad) things happen.
The game is harsh, hard, evil; characters will die. 
You play to find out if you can somehow stop the menace, and how many of you will make it out alive… somehow (and that’s why you have two characters per player).

Setup
To play you need:
•	A simple setting sheet, where to take notes about the setting, the menace, and perhaps draw a map
•	A character sheet per player (each sheet with space for two characters)
•	A deck of French playing cards (52 cards, including the 2 jokers), shuffle the deck before you play

Setting and Menace design
The setting design is a collaborative phase, driven by randomly drawn cards.
[this needs expanding, i.e. with more options in the tables, by cards score]

Draw 4 cards and read them, in order, on the tables below. 
The first card represents the setting, the second the scope, the third the menace, the fourth the menace’s drive/target.
Keep these cards aside; you will play with the remaining 48.

I.e. a Diamond and a Club would outline a town of critical importance (i.e. give it a port or a mountain pass).

Card	Setting	Scope	
Hearts	Village	Small	
Diamonds	Town	Medium	
Clubs	Traveling group	Critical	
Spades	Military group	Magical	
Joker	Fortress 	??	

For the menace, remember that the drive would be the menace main target, but still, the menace would destroy, kill and bring havoc on its path - nobody’s safe.

Card	Menace
(size according to the above scope)	Menace’s drive	
Hearts	Huge horrible hybrid monsters	Kidnap women (odd) or men (even) or children (J-Q-K) from the location	
Diamonds	Giant or similar	Kill for revenge	
Clubs	Knights, raiders, some sort of gang	Kill for the sake of it, or plundering	
Spades	Vampire, ghosts, demons or similar	Kill on the path for another location	
Joker	Dragon or flying monsters	Kill just because that’s the way it’s always been	

Virtual GM

There is no single GM, everybody at the table participates in describing what happens, what the menace does, and so on.
While discussing and narrating as the GM, all together, remember the following:
•	The menace has a drive; always look first of all for a chance to pursue the menace target
•	While the menace has a drive, it also brings havoc and death on its path. To grab two children, it would kill four adults and wound twice as many, and destroy, destroy! Describe horrible stuff happening to NPCs and the setting
•	The menace is directed by cards; use the tables below to inspire and guide you while you GM the game all together 

You already drew 4 cards for the setting, you’re left with 48. You draw the top 3 cards from the deck for each scene, so you play 16 scenes. A scene is not a specific unit of time, it is not a turn, it is not a single event or combat round. A scene is…

Draw 3 cards, read as follows:
•	Cards with numbers have their face value (A=one, 2=two, etc…)
•	Figures count respectively J=11, Q=12, K=13
•	Joker: a special event

If you draw 2 or 3 cards of the same suit, add them together (i.e. if you draw a 4 and a 7 of Hearts, and a J of Spades, count as 11 Hearts and 11 Spades). Use the score to give proportion and scope to the below.

Read the result on the table below, and have the menace acting accordingly:
•	Clubs: the menace advances directly towards the target, and makes a substantial progress towards its objective
•	Diamonds: the menace is somehow slowed down, attacked by others, in an effective way; it is distracted or anyway detoured from the target path (delete cards from Clubs pile)
•	Spades: the menace harms horribly the characters, if possible, and if not it brings terrible havoc and advances to the target (as if Spades was Clubs; add them with Clubs drawn in this scene and put them in the Clubs pile)
•	Hearts: the menace offers some vulnerability to the characters, and can be more easily harmed (characters must be in position to do so)

Mechanically:
•	When you have 4 consecutive Clubs (or Spades as Clubs), like A 2 3 4, or 3 Clubs Figures (J Q K) the menace wins
•	When you have Diamonds, discard the same value Club (if present) from the Club pile
•	With Spades, inflict additional horrible harm to characters
•	Hearts make attacks easier against the menace in this scene

Characters
Characters are simple and randomly generated. This is not about the hero of your dreams; it’s about regular folks trying to fight with a terrible menace.
[impossible to include in 1100 words]

TO-DO-LIST?
•	Characters
•	Actions (role-playing defies clubs)
•	Combat (kill characters/menace)
•	early menace victory
•	end of scene 16