Introducing Rochi

Rochi is a tavern game for 2-6 players, played with a unique Tarot-style deck of 54 cards, beautifully illustrated by Mark Ferrari. The game was developed by James Ernest and Sonia Lyris for her 2017 fantasy novel Unmoored.

Rochi is an unusual tavern-style gambling game. It has no betting, very little bluffing, and six small pots that carry forward from hand to hand. Winning ar Rochi requires guile, finesse, patience, and just a little bit of luck.

Rochi was our Coconut Crab reward in May 2026. Join our Coconut Crabs on Patreon, and help Crab Fragment Labs keep making great games. You can buy the game from DriveThruCards, and download the rules below.

Links:

• Rochi at DriveThruCards

• Rochi Rules and History (Version 1.0, 5/27/26)

• Rules for Roche and Rugen (Related games, beta rules from 2021)

• Token Sheet (PDF) Art for making your own suit tokens

• Read The Seer Saga by Sonia Lyris

The Basics: The Rochi deck has six suits, each of a different size: four Mages, six Realm, eight World, ten Valor, twelve Kin, and fourteen Commons. The suits are marked with a number that is half the size of the suit, because a core mechanic of the game (“cutting”) involves counting out half of the suit.

Each round begins with a shuffle. In the center of the table is a row of suit tokens, one for each suit, and a row of small pots, each associated with one of the suits. Players receive a hand of five cards, and players take turns playing, drawing, or folding.

When you play a card from your hand, it adds to a stack of cards in that suit, and this action buys you the suit token, for a price equal to the number of cards in the stack. You might be buying the suit from the table, putting money into the pot, or you might be buying it from another player, paying the price directly to them.

When you draw a card from the deck, it also goes into the discard pile (not into your hand). You can’t acquire a suit token this way, but this is the only way that a suit can cut, meaning that half of the suit has been placed into the discard pile. This ends the hand, and the winner is whoever currently owns the token of that suit. That player takes the pot, and a penalty from every other remaining player. If no one owns the suit when it cuts, the game continues.

To win at Rochi requires patience and skill, and a good bit of luck. You want to chase suits that you can control, and time your actions to maximize the chances of owning the winning suit when it cuts. You can also fold, which spares you from paying the penalty when you lose.

Our DriveThru Rochi deck includes the 54-card Rochi deck, as well as additional cards to act as suit tokens, and other various helper cards. Along with those you’ll need the complete rules (linked above), and chips for betting, at least 50 per player. You can find our favorite micro-poker chips, as well as garden variety normal sized ones, at Discount Poker Shop.

Older Stuff:

• Rochi beta deck at DriveThruCards, disappearing soon!

• Rochi Beta Rules 2021, an older draft that includes variant games Roche and Rugen

• Token Sheet, (suits for the beta version)

• Print-and-Play Cards, (beta version)

Making Your Own Deck:

If you’d like to try Rochi for free, you can make your own deck by combining the appropriate ranks from two Pairs decks or four Poker decks. You can also use the print-and-play files above, and check out James’ “how to make cards” video for some help in putting them together.

Along with the cards and tokens above, you’ll also need chips for keeping score, about 50 per player, and any object that can serve as a dealer button, to remind you who goes first.

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