Double Fanucci

Double Fanucci (also Fanucci or Fannucci) is a fictional card game in the Zork series of computer games, and the official national sport of Quendor. It is a joke game - the rules are designed to be extremely complicated, but even the rules that have been written down are always marked as "abridged". It is speculated that a complete rulebook for the game would be larger than the entire Encyclopedia Frobozzica. Thus it is described in the aforementioned encyclopedia as "a game of tremendous complexity and almost infinite rules" [1].

Double Fanucci was in fact designed at least in part as a copy protection mechanism for the game Zork Zero; winning a game of Double Fanucci is necessary to complete the game, and the game of Double Fanucci that takes place can only be won by a specific technique that was printed in an obscure location in the game's documentation.

Fanucci was designed by the deposed king Zilbo III and quickly became a popular pastime. From 691 GUE, annual Fanucci tournaments have been held in Borphee. Mumberthrax the Insignificant made Double Fanucci the National Sport of Quendor in 757 GUE. This was one of the 13 significant accomplishments of Mumberthrax, the other 12 being The Twelve Flatheads.

1 Gameplay
2 Variations on the game
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Gameplay

A screenshot of the game being played in Zork Zero.

The game is played with a deck of 174 cards, including 165 suit cards and 9 face cards.

There are 15 suits:

Mazes
Books
Rain
Bugs
Fromps
Inkblots
Scythes
Plungers
Faces
Time
Lamps
Hives
Ears
Zurfs
Tops

Each suit features eleven cards, with values from 0 to 9 inclusive, and infinity.

Lastly there are nine face cards:

Granola
Death
Light
Snail
Beauty
Time
Grue
Lobster
Jester

Gameplay is taken in turns. Each player is dealt four cards at the beginning of the game, and can draw another card at any point when this stock diminishes beneath four. Cards may also be discarded. The simplicity ends here. Every move holds the potential for a special 'play'. The possible plays are as follows:

Combine
One-Play
Two-Play
Pass
Overpass
Trump
Undertrump
Reverse
Muttonate
Divide
Ionize

Each play can cause a player to gain or lose points. Unfortunately this is where the gameplay becomes so complex that, even if one were capable of understanding it, it would require a large volume to write it down - the specifics are determined by what card was used, with which play it was executed, and other factors, like the phase of the Moon, the ancestry of the players, and which of the many hundreds of rule variations are being used.

One important rule is as follows (from Encyclopedia Frobozzica):

Three (legal) undertrumps after an opponent's discard of a Trebled Fromp is an indefensible gambit. [2]

This is the only way to win at Fanucci that has been definitively spelled out.

Another well-known rule is as follows:

The game is suspended when one player's lead exceeds 1241, and the game must be replayed in its entirety, except during a Frotz Moon or in a 6-player game where at least 3 players are of Mithican ancestry.

The game is similar in many respects to Mornington Crescent, which is also a fictional game of near-infinite rules and variations.

In Grand Inquisitor, after casting a spell (to simplify instructions) on a book claiming to have the secret to winning Fanucci, the text is reduced to "The only way to win is not to play."

[edit] Variations on the game

A simpler, "corrupted" version of the game is known as Gabber Trumper, which can be played by those who do not wish to learn the complicated rules of full Fanucci.
Port Foozle Casino usually plays with Revised Miznian Rules, 7th-Level Amendments.
The Fanucci Casino Rebuilding Act of 817 GUE has adopted another set of rules.
It is assumed that there are many other variations on the rules.