[System] System check

[stack0v3rflow]

OK, so the setting is the William Marshal meets "Fast and the Furious", kind of a knight-punk; think "A Knight's Tale" with good music and a larger part for Alan Tudyk.  And of course maybe some fantasy aspects.  The characters play young, poor, most unknown knights trying to make a name for themselves on the underground tournament scene (jousts being illegal without royal sanction and large fees).

There are a couple of different systems that I'm thinking about, but my current favorite involves cards.  There are four main types of actions: soldier actions (melee combat, shooting a bow, marching), noble (dancing, insulting, seduction, persuasion), holy man (fasting, knowing stuff, maybe magic), and every-man (brawling, sneaking, feeding chickens).  Obviously these need new names, as the current names are both cumbersome and misogynic (it's knight-punk, there are gangs of female knights that will beat you up, in fact, few things are as knight-punk as female knights).

The system uses standard playing cards.  Each of the four types of actions is related to a suit, but it's not as clean an association as I've seen suggested by other systems sadly.

Clubs – the suit of the soldier
Spades – the suit of the holy man
Diamonds – the suit of the nobleman
Hearts – the suit of the every-man

Each player has a hand of cards (numbers are subject to play-testing change, but the hands start at 7 and can have a total of 10 with four players).  When a conflict occurs, the player and GM decides what sort of action it is.  Then the GM pulls a card from the deck, describes some opposition that the player faces, and puts the card face down in front of him.  The player then describes her character dealing with that opposition and plays a card from her hand face down in front of her.  Play continues back and forth until either the GM or the player call a stop or until the player plays the ace of the suit in question face up (which acts like a trump).  The person calling a stop doesn't get to play a card that turn (so you either call a stop or play a card each turn).

Both the player and the GM flip over the cards in front of them.  The value of the card depends on what suit the action in question was.  Cards of the opposite color (black if the suit in question was red) are worth 1 points each.  Cards of the same color but the other suit (diamonds if the suit in question was hearts) are worth 2 points.  Cards of the same suit are worth 3 points each.  The aces of all the other suits are worth one more point then other cards of the same suit, with the ace of the suit in question acting as a trump (winning the hand).

The winner gets to describe the result.  The loser gets the cards played, except on a trump, in which the winner gets all the cards except the ace which must be given to the loser.  Cards held by players in excess of the maximum hand size go to the dealer.

So, the system is a negative feedback loop, like the Anti-Pool with character power increasing with loses.  The way the suits and the changing card values are set up give the player a reason to vary their actions.  For example, they could go and get into a brawl before a big tournament (hearts), playing a lot of black cards so they have low values to get more cards from the GM to use in the tournament and then after the tournament after they've used all of their black cards winning, use their remaining red cards on the dance afterwards.

This is the fortune system.  I'm working on a roleplaying rewards resource system to supplement it, but I was wondering what the system looked like right now.  Is it playable?  Does it encourage a variety of actions and the players to "take a couple of falls"?  And most of all, does it sound like fun?


-Aaron

[stack0v3rflow]

I hate replying to myself, but the card values need to be changed.

It should read more like:

The value of the card depends on what suit the action in question was.  Cards of the opposite color (black if the suit in question was red) are worth 1 points each.  Cards of the same color but the other suit (diamonds if the suit in question was hearts) are worth 3 points.  Cards of the same suit are worth 5 points each with the ace of the suit in question acting as a trump (winning the hand).

[Josh Roby]

Aaron, have you checked out Graham's Too Much Rock for One Hand?  It also uses a card-trading set up.

I'm wondering why your game needs a GM.  What's the GM do that the players can't handle themselves?

[stack0v3rflow]

Aaron, have you checked out Graham's Too Much Rock for One Hand?  It also uses a card-trading set up.

I'm wondering why your game needs a GM.  What's the GM do that the players can't handle themselves?

I've found a very early version on Story-Games at http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=553.  I like the quick resolution of just comparing high card but I wanted something that had a few more choices.  I actually started the week trying to make something like the Chicken of Game Theory fame, but I know that playing a knight in a joust, I'd always want to go for it, consequences be damned.  but I tested something like it out on my son-in-law, using red and black card and that got me thinking about using the cards themselves.  I expanded it from the colors (red & black) to the suits because I wanted sex, violence, AND religion.  Right now the forth suit is a little bit of everything else plus bar brawls so I can have two different flavors of violence.

But I'm open to new ideas and I haven't spent as much time reading and playing other people's games as I should.  The only indie game I've tried to play was an episode of PTA that got scrapped in the middle because it wasn't working that night.

And the GM is currently there in my head because I haven't yet experienced any non-GM roleplaying games (excepted for some oddly immersive games of Munchkin).  It would be nice to drop the GM spot so everyone can play, but losing the GM spot means that if the game doesn't work, it's my rules and I can't blame a GM.


I have an addition to the system.  I didn't type it up with the other bit because it's all kind of fuzzy in my head, but it might empower the player to do most of what the GM traditionally does.  The game has four players (I'll work other number variations out later).  At the beginning of the first game, you create your character by drawing his coat of arms (you need at least one charge (animal or object) so you can't have just all red).  It should be a bit on the simple side since it will probably be added to and changed through out the game.  You also need to name your knight, remembering the all-important "Sir" or "Dame".

Then the players show each other their coats of arms and say what the name of their knight is.  Then every player gets to vote for "arete" or virtues or excellencies.  I'm work out which virtues I want (and they might be changeable from game to game), but the four names that I have right now are valorous, pious, graceful, and modest.  Everyone votes for every character and every category (so you can vote that you think that Player B is the most valorous, Player C is the most graceful, Player A is the most pious, and that you yourself are the most humble).  Each player gets a point of arete colored by the virtue (glass stones are coolest, but I was thinking of just providing ballots and then cutting them up).

During the game, whenever a player fails a hand, they may bid arete for more cards.  For each point of arete they get another card drawn from the deck.  If they lose, the loser may now describe how they lost because of personal misjudgment or failure (called akrasia so go with the arete to round out my Greek word usage) so no "the horse failed" but "I was over eager at the last second".  If the player wins, then the winner describes things like normal.

Win or lose those arete points must now go somewhere.  So the player pulls out the Major Arcana of a tarot deck and describes a new relationship because of this conflict.  Those relationships are oath, prophecy, blood feud, or passion (the good stuff of knight stories).  So if a soldier-type action (God I need help with naming these things) fails and then I spend some valor arete and still fail, I can pull out the Chariot and describe how I lost but swore a blood feud against the winner (or if I won the loser can swear a blood feud with me).

That card now stays in play.  Other players may challenge the card.  Where before the GM decided how many cards to play, now conflict with this NPC last at least the number of arete plus one (so if it has three on it, the conflict must go at least four cards on its side).  If the players win a conflict against one of these relationships without using arete themselves, then they get the arete on the card and an equal number of arete to give out to other players.  So say that I've spent some arete on a dance roll and created a relationship of passion with Lady Visser represented by three grace arete on her.  Another player comes up and tries to seduce her.  They play four cards each and he wins, stealing not only her heart but also the arete that I invested in her, he can also give two arete to the other two players to help them create relationships and move things going forward.


So you see, the ideas are still all kind of flaky in my mind, I need to sit down and look at it this weekend and see if it will work and come up with some good names, but that's what's been buzzing in my head.  But what do you all think?