Playing Online
There are a few essential things you’ll need to run His Majesty the Worm online:
A virtual tabletop that can manage tarot cards, allowing you to draw, discard, and have hands of cards in different formations
A voice chat service
A screen sharing tool, so the GM can display maps and other assets
Our tools of choice are playingcards.io (for card management) and Discord (for chat and screen sharing).
Tarot cards in playingcards.io
The site playingcards.io is a virtual tabletop that makes it easy to stack, shuffle, and move cards around in a tactile, pleasing way.
Here is an export of room settings for playingcards.io with tarot cards.
This folder contains a .pcio file, which is used to import room settings for playingcards.io, as well as two CSV files that can be used to upload tarot card images to the site (already done if you use the .pcio file).
Setting up a playingcards.io room
To create a playingcards.io room for His Majesty the Worm:
Download the hismajestytheworm.pcio file.
On the playingcards.io home page, select Import Room on the top menu bar next to the Log In/Sign Up.
Upload hismajestytheworm.pcio.
Select Enter.
Your room is all set up and ready to go!
If you want to customize this default room, playingcards.io provides a robust tutorial. The CSV files included in the Google drive folder were previously used to import the tarot cards in the default room. These default tarot cards use the public domain Rider-Waite tarot cards provided by Wikimedia Commons. If you wish to use a custom tarot card deck, you can modify and upload these CSV files to upload new card art.
Using playingcards.io
You’ll notice that there are two decks in the default room: a minor arcana deck and a major arcana deck (for the GM).
The minor arcana deck is on the left. It comprises 57 cards - 4 suits of 14 cards, plus the Fool. It is intended for use by the players.
The major arcana deck is on the right. It comprises 21 cards. It is intended for use by the GM.
For the majority of His Majesty the Worm’s Crawl, Camp, and City Phases, players will click on the cards in the minor arcana deck to reveal cards for tests of fate and other purposes. Once used, these cards can be dragged to the discard container. Discarded cards should be kept face up, so the GM can reference them as an easy randomizer.
For the majority of His Majesty the Worm’s Crawl, Camp, and City Phases, players will click on the cards in the minor arcana deck to reveal cards for tests of fate and other purposes. Once used, these cards can be dragged to the discard container. Discarded cards should be kept face up, so the GM can reference them as an easy randomizer.
Recall and Shuffle
The Recall and Shuffle buttons will pull all dealt cards back into their respective decks and shuffle them. The Recall button on the left shuffles the minor arcana deck and the Recall button on the right shuffles the major arcana deck.
The Recall and Shuffle buttons will not pull cards out of your hands (at the bottom of the screen). If you have a card that should persist (like a facedown defense card during a Challenge or inspiration cards from the High Chant), place them in your hand before the Recall button is pushed.
Deal
The left Deal button will put 4 cards in each of the player’s card holders. This is intended for use during the Challenge Phase, where each player draws 4 Challenge cards.
Because the GM draws a variable number of major arcana cards during a Challenge, there is no Deal button for them.
Tip: When cards are stacked, click the number badge floating near the cards to drag the entire stack.
Player Card Holders
There are three card holders intended for players. These are just examples. Add more or subtract a few for your needs. Rename them for the players in your game. Just make sure you edit the Deal button to give each player’s card holder 4 cards, once you have these assets set up.
GM Card Holders
The GM is given 3 card holders to use to display their creature’s Initiatives during a Challenge. Add more or rearrange to suit your needs.
Running a Challenge
When running the Challenge Phase on playingcards.io using this setup, use the following procedure:
The GM clicks the Deal button to give each player 4 cards.
Players click and drag the cards from their card holder into their hand.
The GM draws as many cards from the major arcana deck as appropriate (per the rules in Chapter 7) into their hand.
Players choose and drag one card for Initiative into their card holder. The card is placed face down automatically.
The GM chooses one Initiative card for each enemy or enemy group and drags these cards into their card holders.
The GM counts upwards from Ace to King. When an adventurer or GM character would act, they click their card in their card holder to reveal their card.
You can drag your card from your card holder to your hand to glance at it, if you need a reminder about what you played.
When the Fool is drawn or one side is out of cards, the GM clicks the Recall and Shuffle button to pull all cards on the virtual table back to the deck.
If a card should persist, such as a face down card (Riposte, Dodge, etc.), the player moves this card into their hand first. The Recall button will not pull cards out of a player’s hand.