An Excavation in Egypt, 1817

This is a collaborative story-telling game. Which I hate, but the idea has come to me so here it is.

The players are employees of Henry Salt, famous Egyptologist and infamous robber of the dead. They have just found something in the sand; a stairway. An unknown tomb, perhaps? Or an unknown side-entrance to a known crypt? The cards will tell.

Yeah. Cards. I dislike card-based games, too, but here it is. Take a standard 52-card deck (I'll come up with rules for using a 6-suit deck later), shuffle it, and lay the whole thing face down on the table. Play starts with whomever goes "So we found this stairway..." first. They draw the top card, then using it as a guide describe the first 'room' of the new crypt, as well as what their explorer does when they enter it. Play then continues to the next person who speaks up, until everyone has had a turn. Then the next round begins, where the first person who goes "Then we found a..." gets to draw a card, and the game continues in that vein.

Hearts: Something related to health and safety, life, love, shit like that.
Spades: Something to do with finding something, digging, searching, cracking open a door.
Clubs: Something violent, a trap or altercation between explorers, or MUMMY or some shit.
Diamonds: Fuckin' treasure.
Jokers: Salt shows up and ruins everything by taking credit for whatever the player was about to do, sends everyone away. Game Over.

Higher the card the better the thing (use your judgement, you fucks. A 2 of Diamonds would be a broken chunk of pottery, a Q of Clubs would be a giant fucking scorpion or something), from 2 to 10, then face-cards, then the aces.

Take a card or something and draw a rough map of the place you're exploring, make notes or whatever, and keep track of treasure found. In the event of combat, everyone draws a card and whoever draws lowest gets hurt. If anyone gets hurt three times before someone bothers to say something like "I patch Iggins' wounds with a piece of my shirt and some saliva" they die. Whoever draws highest wrecks whatever's attacking the group. Put those cards back in the deck and re-shuffle.

When you draw cards normally put them in discard; when the deck's done, you're done.

There. You've told a thrilling tale of tombs and robbers. Good job.