Love Letter

You are suitors, and each of you wants your letter to reach the princess by passing it from hand to hand through the people at court. The card you hold is whoever is carrying your letter right now. A round ends when the deck runs out or when only one suitor is left: the letter that gets through, and earns a point, belongs to whoever holds the highest card, or to the last suitor standing. The first player to reach 6 points with two, 5 with three, 4 with four or 3 with five or six wins the game.

Deck

★ ★ A♠ A♥ A♦ A♣ J♠ J♣ 2♠ 2♣ 3♠ 3♣ 4♠ 4♣ 5♠ 5♣ 6♠ 6♣ 7♥ 8♥ Q♥21 cards: only these, from the 52-card deck plus both jokers

In hand

1 each, kept hidden

On the table

deck face down in the middle, one card face down crosswise under it: the set-aside card

1. The card set aside Shuffle the 21 cards and set one aside face down without looking at it, crosswise under the deck: it sticks out, so nobody draws it by mistake.
2. With two Besides the face-down card, set three more aside face up, so that nobody can deduce everything by elimination.
3. The hand Deal one card to each player, kept hidden.
4. Who starts Whoever most recently wrote a letter by hand goes first. From the second round on, the winner of the previous round goes first.

The two ★ are worth zero and are the Spies, the Q♥ is worth 9. The three one-of-a-kind roles are red, like two of the Guards (A♥ A♦); the other paired roles are black. J♠ and J♣ count as 1 and are the fifth and sixth Guards.

Nothing else is needed: keep score in points, one for each round won. The numbers stay small, so memory or a note on a phone will do.

The people at court, from the lowliest to the Princess:

1. Draw and play On your turn, draw the top card of the deck, so that you hold two, then play one of them face up in front of you and apply its effect (see the table below). The other card stays in your hand: that is who carries your letter now. Played and discarded cards stay face up in front of their owner for the whole round, so everyone knows what is already out. Then play passes to the left.
2. Out of the round A player who is knocked out discards their card face up, without applying its effect, and skips every turn until the next round. They can no longer be chosen as a target.
3. End of the round The round ends when the deck is empty at the end of a turn, or at once when a single player is left. In the first case everyone still in reveals their card and the highest wins; on a tie every tied player wins and scores a point. In the second case the last player standing wins. Then the Spy: if exactly one player still in has played or discarded a Spy, that player scores an extra point, even if they also won the round.
4. Next round The winner scores a point. Shuffle the 21 cards again, set one aside as before and deal one card each. The winner goes first; after a tie, one of the tied players picked at random. The game ends as soon as someone reaches 6 points with two, 5 with three, 4 with four or 3 with five or six, and more than one player can win together.

What each one does when played:

• Count what is out. There are six Guards and a single Princess: when the table is littered with played Guards, whoever has kept the same card for many turns is probably holding something high.
• Play the Baron when the card you keep is high. With a Guard in hand it is almost always your way out of the round.
• Playing the Countess when you do not have to costs you a turn, but it may convince the others you hold the King, and a Guard pointed at you naming "King" is a Guard wasted.