Idea for card-based combat mechanic.

[Hereward The Wake]

Going with the drift. I find that the potential in cards is great, but is limited by the inherant nature if the regular card set. One needs to customise te deck by blending a number of decks or completely design a deck which suits the ideas one wants in the system. I found that I was spending more time trying to work around the cards and adapt my system to that rather than finding out if the system worked on its own. Why only have 4 houses, if you need 6 use 6 etc. and the value attached to the cards does not always help, a more average value spread generally helps with inly a few very high and few very low cards.

JW

[Lxndr]

I've been tempted for a while to use baccarat-style resolution in a roleplaying game.  Off the top of my head, I imagine the following situation:

Each participant (individual or group) in a conflict gets a certain # of cards from the deck, to put in their hand.  How this # is determined is left up to other parts of the game system.

Then, going around the table, the participants put a card down in front of them.  This is their starting card.  Ace is one.  Tens through Kings are all zero.  (Maybe face cards have special abilities that can be invoked).

Anyway.  After the initial cards are put down, it's a free for all.  Anyone may place any card on any stack, ally or enemy... the numbers are added together, and if it goes over 9, it goes back down to 0 and starts over again.  All cards MUST be distributed.

Conflicts are then determined starting with the person with the highest total (remember, 10=0) and going down.  What they can DO in the conflict would be based on the suits they have in their pile (some use for the face cards right there).

Anyway, just some brief thoughts.

[Hereward The Wake]

quote"timfire"

I have added in a "disengage" feature that lets combatants break from a fight. My idea was (1) combatant's must hold the initiative (2) Play a Face card. When I get around to play-testing we'll see if the Face card requirement is too strict.

Do you not think that it will be rare for the person with initiative wanting to disengage? I can see it happening, but it would be just as likely and more benficial for the person on the recievng end, to try to get away, using the 'disenage' instead of a parry and get away?!

I understand what you mean with the counter attack, but I started to find that even with the same number of parry/counter attack cards in the deck it was a bit arbitrary, for me any way, whether it was real or cinematic

I also understand the idea of the different sized hand for the different fighters based upon skill. Again I was finding it a bit to random. The theory was that the more skillful fighter would have the chance of getting better cards but of course that didn't always happen, which is fine, but I was getting the better fighter going to often for it to feel right for me. I've not found the right solution yet!

How you play your hand also has a big effect.

I like the idea that the playing of the hand is the key it really adds to the skill of it which is what I wanted, as I am sure that you do to.

All the best
JW

[Ulmus]

timfire, you said you were looking for more generic comments on card mechanics, and when reading these posts, my mind starts to wander...

I have some ideas that will need a couple of decks to realize. It's also probably best suited for onetimers or just a night of orc-bashing fun, although it could be used for longer campaigns.

Say whe define the four suites as the foru different characteristics of a character (a bit Falkensteinesque):
Spades - Brawns (Fighting, Taking damage)
Hearts - Charisma (Priests?, Bards?)
Diamonds - Brains (Magic?)
Clubs - Speed (Athletics, Archery)

Ok, so we sit down at the beginning of the evening to create characters. The GM has prepared a number of decks (at least as many as the players divided by two, preferrably more) by dividing them into suites and then shuffling the suites, ending up with four piles of cards, one per suite.
Each player now draws a card from one suite. This is repeated 25 times, leaving each player with 26 cards. These 26 cards define the capacities of the character.

As the game starts, each player draws, say five cards from his 26 card pile. A player will then play the cards for their value. This can be combined with different ways of refreshing the hand and different task resolution mechanics. A few thoughts I had was:

* Each player always holds five cards. A used card goes to his discard pile and is replaced from his card pile.

* Each player ha a joker in their pile. When he draws a joker it means reshuffle the cards with the discard pile.

* The GM draws cards from an ordinary deck (with a reshuffle-joker) to represent difficulties. For task resolution, the player must match or beat the value of the card drawn, using the correct suite as dictated by the GM. An idea is to have them GM using two or more different piles for different task difficulties. Only non-Face cards represent difficulties. If a Face card is drawn, it represents a twist of faith (as called by the GM) and more cards are drawn until you get a non-Face card representing the difficulty. The suite of the Face card may give inspiration as to the type of twist.

* Face cards have special meanings. For each face card in a players deck, he may assign it a special ablity when creating his character (combat feats, magical feats, etc) from a list of feats for each face card or in dialogue with the GM.  The face card is then played together with another card, so that a fighter may for instance activate his Cleave by playing a queen of spades in addition to his 6 of spades card.

* If you want to play more than one adventure, the players may draw one or more new cards after each adventure, discarding cards down to a deck of 26. These cards may be drawn at random or from a selected suite (or from a suite decided by the GM depending on the adventure). The cards are then saved (or written down) until next adventure.

[clehrich]

* If you want to play more than one adventure, the players may draw one or more new cards after each adventure, discarding cards down to a deck of 26. These cards may be drawn at random or from a selected suite (or from a suite decided by the GM depending on the adventure). The cards are then saved (or written down) until next adventure.

One thing that came up when I posted Shadows in the Fog, which uses Tarot cards, was this problem of saving hands from session to session.  It's very helpful in some games (such as mine) to save hands, because it discourages "blowing" good cards and figuring you'll get a clean hand next time; this encourages careful, precise use of small cards.

What was suggested (I think by Spooky Fanboy) was that everybody should have a little envelope for his or her cards.  At the end of the session, once all hands have been appropriately refreshed and whatnot, you put all your cards in an envelope, which is then kept by the GM or the game's host (i.e. the one who controls the venue).  This means that everyone keeps his or hand, and there's no possibility of cheating.  Oddly enough, the cheating question came up a lot, so this is a means of avoiding that problem.

Incidentally, one important question was whether the GM should know what's in people's hands.  I thought not, but there was considerable disagreement on the point.  Thoughts for your system?

Chris Lehrich

[Ulmus]

The question (in my system) would be, should the GM know the hands of the players and/or should he/she know the decks of the players. I would say that hands are secret to the GM, as I'm leaning the gamist-narrativist side of things, and the GM knowing the hands of the players would be a bit like cheating. The GM should however know the deck of the players, to aid him or her when writing adventures.

The players should only know what suites the other players drew from, not the values of the cards.

A few questions that popped up:

In what order should cards be played? Should the GM play the difficulties first and the players be able to choose cards after that or should it be the other way around?

How do I handle NPCs? Grunts, animals and the like are comparatively easy. Just have a deck made up for them with five-ten cards and draw. More dangerous critters lean towards the high end. Swarms of similar critters may use the same deck, reshuffle as necessary.
Important NPCs should probably have a deck and a hand of their own. This means that no more than two or three important NPCs should be played at the same time. Preferrably not more than one.