Summit
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Summit is a game of climbing, of exploration, and of discovery. With the help of a standard deck of playing cards, you'll make a journey never made before, attempting the heights of a mountain unique to your character. There's no mapped-out route: you'll discover the quirks and dangers, as well as the wonders, of the mountain as you journey ever upwards.
Your character, too, will be discovered as you reach for the clouds. Each night at camp you'll encounter a figure from their life, be they close friends or half-forgotten acquaintances. You'll learn about them, how they know your character, and you'll learn who you're playing as, bit by bit, want by want, memory by memory. Step by step, you'll grow closer to your final goal: the Summit itself.
Not everyone will make it to the top. But after all, isn't it about the journey, not the destination?
Summit is designed to be a relaxed but rewarding experience, over the course of which you develop your character and their surroundings. As such, it would be ideal as a means to develop a character you plan to play for another TTRPG. With its card-based mechanics, there are literally millions of potential games, so no two will ever be the same. Will you make the climb?
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Summit started off as an idea for a business-card sized TTRPG. The idea was that the business card could be folded in half both ways, one way to make the triangle of a mountain, the other the triangle of a tent. You can still see some remnant of this in the two phases in the game, Climb and Rest. Playing cards as the base mechanic arrived not long after this, and with them the mechanics expanded far beyond the scope of a business card.
The climbing of the mountain being mirrored by the shrinking of the card grid is a mechanic I'm particularly proud of, as well as the supply cards used each Rest phase. I read the Carta SRD while designing the game, and I think that shines through as an influence: the two games definitely have shared DNA.
What I said at the time
The video this game was first released with