All the Skills
Honour Rae
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Honour Rae
All the Skills
Honour Rae
Progression fantasy
Deck-building LitRPG
2022
6
6
In a world where every spell has been captured into a card, a boy from a border village that exists to shovel dragon dung comes into possession of a Legendary card a baron will kill to recover, and has to leave home to survive owning it.
The lowest person in a card-based magical economy acquires the most valuable card in the region and cannot tell anyone.
A deck-building game rendered as a coming-of-age road story, closer to YA in tone than most LitRPG.
Arthur — a young boy, physically unremarkable, living with his father, a fallen noble, in Border Village #49 on the edge of the deadlands. His mother and sister died of the scourge.
Baron Kane and the noble order that owns the cards, the land, and the labour.
Character core
Keep the Master of Skills card hidden, learn how to use it, and get himself and his father out from under the Baron.
To trade a survival mindset — hide, endure, do not be noticed — for the longer, riskier thinking that owning something valuable requires.
If I keep my head down, a boy from a border village can quietly get by.
The system is designed to keep border villages producing dung and dying of the scourge. Playing it safe is a slower loss, and the card is only worth having if he is prepared to be someone who has it.
Execution if the card is discovered; his father's safety; and the village's continued grinding attrition under a baron who does nothing about the scourge.
Structure
Third person limited on Arthur, past tense, in a clean and deliberately uncluttered style. Card mechanics are foregrounded and explained as Arthur learns them.
Village-then-road construction. The first act establishes a closed, exploited community and the exact value of a card within it; the rest is a caravan journey that functions as an episodic training sequence. Notably light on combat — the progression is almost entirely about acquisition, combination, and concealment.
Arthur follows the Baron's carriage and watches a riderless dragon destroy it and harvest the dead men's cards. A Legendary card ends up in his possession.
Concealment stops being sufficient. Arthur has to start using the card in front of people, which converts a secret into a reputation.
Attention from people with the means to take the card forces him out of the caravan's protection.
Arthur solves a problem by combining skills in a way the card system was not obviously built for, which is the book's central pleasure.
He is out of the village, allied with Horatio, and holding something that will define the series.
Story beats
| Beat | Where | How it lands |
|---|---|---|
A door closed behind them | Act I | Leaving the village is not reversible; the Baron's reach ends the option of going home. |
Recognizing a face on a wanted poster | Middle | Recognition is a constant hazard — being identified is the primary threat, not being outfought. |
Losing something small and irreplaceable | Act I | The mother and sister lost to the scourge are the specific, small grief under the whole book. |
Discovering their gift was purchased or inherited | Throughout | Power in this world is literally inherited property, and the injustice is a matter of ownership rather than talent. |
Discovering the empire built the roads they're using | Middle | The road, the caravan, and the trade routes all belong to the order Arthur is hiding from. |
Asked to teach — and being bad at it | Middle | Arthur has to explain his skills to Horatio, and articulating them is how he understands them. |
A door closed behind them
Leaving the village is not reversible; the Baron's reach ends the option of going home.
Recognizing a face on a wanted poster
Recognition is a constant hazard — being identified is the primary threat, not being outfought.
Losing something small and irreplaceable
The mother and sister lost to the scourge are the specific, small grief under the whole book.
Discovering their gift was purchased or inherited
Power in this world is literally inherited property, and the injustice is a matter of ownership rather than talent.
Discovering the empire built the roads they're using
The road, the caravan, and the trade routes all belong to the order Arthur is hiding from.
Asked to teach — and being bad at it
Arthur has to explain his skills to Horatio, and articulating them is how he understands them.
Tropes
The card deck is the skill tree, made physical, tradeable, and stealable — the book's best structural idea.
Master of Skills is game-breaking and must be concealed, which converts the power into a liability.
Concealment is the plot for most of the first act.
The card economy is a class system with a rules engine attached.
Rarity tiers are economic facts within the world rather than reader-facing shorthand.
Conventional, and the least distinctive element of an otherwise inventive book.
Craft notes
Rae writes a progression fantasy with very little violence and does not lose momentum, because the escalation is combinatorial rather than numerical. Every new skill multiplies against the existing deck. If your magic system is modular, escalation can come from interaction rather than from bigger numbers, and it reads as cleverness rather than inflation.
The book has been fairly criticised for a conventional young-hero arc. The lesson for writers is the inverse of the usual one: an inventive system does not excuse a familiar spine. If the mechanics are the draw, the character work has to be at least as specific as the card design.
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