Once again, we are defeated (Second Edition)

In every time that there is, if you look in the dingy expanses of the world, you'll find poor villages held together by brick, dust and bones. One such village is about to be attacked by a thirty strong army, who will strip them for all they have and leave them for dead. When this village learned of what was coming their way they knew they needed to act. Some talked of running, some wanted to see if they could placate the attackers. But the settled idea was fighting fire with fire.

They went looking for violent protectors, dangerous outsiders who'd have the skills to trifle with the attackers. The kind of people who wouldn't usually be seen in a place like this, but the village will take any chance in hell. They'll be outnumbered, they may not make it out alive, they may not even be enough. But they'll be there to saddle up and come face to face with thirty foes.

Inspired by Seven Samurai

Once again, we are defeated is a narrative map-making where you tell the story of a desperate village who hire outsiders, dangerous drifters, to protect their village from an marauding army of thirty foes. Inspired by Seven Samurai and the Magnificent Seven, in the game you define a place together, argue over how to protect it, and then see out the battle.

Play Materials

• Writing Utensils
• A sheet of plain paper (preferably A3 sized but A4 can also do)
• A standard 52-card deck of playing cards

The game is played across three phases; the Village Phase where you create a map of the village and establish the people who live there, the Preparation Phase where you introduce characters, prepare for the fight and negotiate odds as a table, and the Attack Phase where this all comes to a bloody end and we learn the final fate of the village and it's protectors.

The game is GM-agnostic, meaning it can be facilitated by rotating roles that share responsibility around, or by one player taking on all the responsibilities for facilitating the game as a qausi-GM figure.

Out of the Fold and Other Games

This is a new edition of Thirty Foes OR Once again, we are defeated. It restructures the phases of blades, focuses the mechanics so they're all entirely card-based and reframes the game to be more focused on collaborative worldbuilding. This edition was written for inclusion in the paperback collection Out of the Fold and Other Games, coming soon.