Introduction
In Stage Blood, you and your associates are theatrical agents, placing actors in Shakespearean plays. You will send your performers to the various popular plays of the season, hoping to win favor with the six major households, and earn renown for managing the finest actors in the land.
Stage Blood is a simple card game about managing a troupe of actors, for 2 to 6 players.
We’re not sure if it takes place in the Renaissance, or a fantasy world, or in modern-day renfairs, but it’s certainly not historically accurate. Which is fine.
Each round, players choose one actor from their hand and send it out into the world, assigning it to one of the unfinished plays at the center of the table. Smaller actors act first, while larger ones act later. And there are no small parts, just small actors.
The game lasts for four seasons, after which players will compare their collections of favor tokens from each of six households, earning points for placing high in each one. There are some other ways to earn bonus points as well, and you can keep score on paper or use extra cards as explained in the rules.
Stage Blood is coming along nicely, and we hope you’ll take a look and send us your thoughts. Here are the files you need to make your own copy:
Actor Deck (54 cards, Version 1.4, 9/15/24)
Play Deck (32 cards, Version 1.4, 9/15/24)
Token Sheets (2 pages, 72 tokens, Version 1.4, 9/15/24)
Stage Blood Rules (Version 1.6, 5/21/25)
Video: We don’t have a complete “how to play” video yet, but this bare-bones pitch video is enough to give you the basics:
This game requires two decks of cards: one deck has 54 Actors, and the other has 32 Plays. There are also 72 tokens and a rulebook. You will also need about 24 coins.
The Token Sheet: These tokens are double-sided, so pages 1 and 2 create the first set, page 3 and 4 create the second set. The few tokens marked “Stage Blood” are spacers, not part of the game.
Because we can’t make tokens at DriveThruCards, we’re considering creating a third deck of 72 token cards, which would do the same job. They’re a bit clumsier than tokens, but they might work. Or maybe we’ll find a publisher who wants to make it for us.
Meanwhile, if you have any suggestions, please let us know!
Making Your Copy: Here are links to some of our videos on how to make your own cards and tokens:
Note: Stage Blood is a revision of another game of ours called Coat of Arms. That game had some additional mechanics about building a heraldic device, but it was otherwise very similar to this one. If you see any old blog references to Coat of Arms, this is where it lives.
Also, since James Ernest keeps talking about stealing this game title back, for use in a completely different game about Shakespearean actors, we are likely to rename this one before we offer it for sale, probably to either “Company of Players” or “Season of the Bard.” But it’s still “Stage Blood” for now, because with the right publisher, it might even revert to “Coat of Arms.”
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