Game mechanics for a swashbuckling Rpg (Lost Eden)

[Mattias]

First of all im new here so...Hi to everyone!

Secondly excuse my English, as I am not American

Im trying to develop a game, which I call Lost Eden, the stories takes place in a very far distant future. Mankind has left earth and traveled beyond the solar system at some point in time the found a planet so beautiful they named it Eden and the native inhabitants started worshipping them as goods. However after a while mankind started (ab)using the planet and eventually turning the whole planet into a gigantic laboratory, where they would perform social, political, biological, medical, anthropological, psychological etc experiments with the native inhabitants and the nature. The technology available to characters involves things such as gigantic airballons, steam pirate ships, flintlock pistols, sabers, industrially made and trained creatures pulling trains and so on. As a default the players play pirate like rebels against the human followers. Society is very hierarchical with nobles, slaves, pirates etc.

I want the fights and everything else in Lost Eden to have a swashbuckling atmosphere with an amount of strategy while being quick thus my question is regarding the game mechanics.

Everything is resolved as a conflict weather you want to kill a monster before he kills you; you want to convince the noble lady to take a dance, or trying to jump a cliff. (In this case the cliff will try to stop you) There is a GM and he plays the opponents.

It is played with normal cards (taking away jacks, queens and kings) when there is a conflict each player is given a number of cards on their hand depending on how interesting, important, fun and in-game time consuming the conflict is. The player chooses this by holding up the amount of cards they want and then the average is used (the opponent gets the same amount of cards).

When they want to do an action they take a card from their hand if it above the stat it is counted a 0. If it is below the relevant stat the value of the card is compared to the opponent's value of the card. Whoever has higher wins and draws a card from the opponent's hand. When someone has no cards left the conflict is over. (this is where the strategy comes in when to use which card, and you can fool someone by pretending to attack and lay a 0 value card)

Each suite represents a situation in the conflict that can be used. If the player chooses not to respond to this situation then the value of the card is automatically 1 (unless its above the stat in which case it is 0). To respond to the situation the player describes his action in accordance to the suite.

Hearts: There's an opportunity to use something in the environment. Ie you pick up a flower to give to the sweet lady, you smash a glass in the head of the jelous husband, you jump up on the table and thrust you're saber, I throw you're self out of the balcony and lands in the pillow store etc

Spades: There is an opportunity to use something about you're opponent i.e. you tell the lady she has a nice dress, the pirate king is distracted by a bird so I stab him etc

Clubs: There is an opportunity to use another skill then the default skill, i.e. you quote a poem to the lady(with the knowledge skill instead of social skill), you head-butt the jealous husband instead of using you saber etc.

Diamonds: Either nothing (i.e. the card value counts no matter what you do) or to use something about you're self. For example, as my cape is so wide I manage to hide my thrust, I twin my large moustache to impress the lady and ask her to dance etc

Notice that I has no real rule effect what you do, it is simply a way encourage the players creativity, so there are no reasons for long discussions about whether a fake moustache is the environment or something about yourself.

I the player want his description to have a game effect he use a card to do the  Jumping-on-the-table-to-distract-the-opponent action and a separate card to thrust his saber. In that case the jumping on the table action will give the opponent a negative modifier equal to the card value on his next action.

Now does this system enforce the kind of atmosphere I am looking for?

Do you have other suggestions of what kind of situation the different suits could stand for?

Any other problems or input( I mean will it become boring after a while for example)?

Thanks all of you for reading, all comments are appriciated.

Cheers and regards

[Simon C]

That's a really interesting game! I like the way you use the suits of the cards.  That's a good idea, but I think you can do it a little better.  I'll try to use simple English, to make sure we are understanding each other. 

I think that "Clubs" has an advantage over other suits.  It lets you use a different skill.  That's cool, but I think it would be better if every suit had a small benefit. 

Hearts - Maybe every scene could have an "Aspect" of the environment, which you can use for a small bonus when you use a heart. Like, a ballroom could have a big stairway, or a ship could have rigging (ropes overhead).  You can only use each "aspect" once.

Spades - You could use a similar "aspect" system.  Maybe every character has a secret weakness or vulnerability.  If you can invoke that, you can get a bonus for one card.  Like, the lady is maybe trying to protect her father (if you offer to help her father, she'll like you more), or the cliff has a small crack that makes climbing easier.

Diamonds - Maybe each character could have an "Aspect" as well, which they can use for a bonus if they can describe it in the scene.

These are just ideas, but I think it's good to reward people for using the extra value of the suits.

I think you might need more clear rules for deciding how many cards to use in a scene.  It seems like there might be a tactical advantage to using more or less (skilled people want more, unskilled people want fewer).  That's not bad, but it means that there'll be some conflict over deciding how many cards to use. 

I the player want his description to have a game effect he use a card to do the  Jumping-on-the-table-to-distract-the-opponent action and a separate card to thrust his saber. In that case the jumping on the table action will give the opponent a negative modifier equal to the card value on his next action.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, but it seems like you don't need this rule.  Jumping on a table and thrusting a sabre can be one action, using one card.  One card should be an abstract amount of time, however long it takes to do one interesting thing in the scene.  I think it would be better to let any bonuses from using scenery, good description, or whatever, apply to a single card, rather than holding from one card to another.

I think this system could support very descriptive play, with a light tactical game.  You need to make the different suits mechanically beneficial, and you need a better way to decide how many cards to use.  This will make your basic mechanic more robust, and support more tactical play, while not detracting from the descriptive style you want.

This is an interesting idea, and I hope it works out for you!

[Mattias]

Thank you for you're answer and you're feedback.

I like you're ideas, made me think!

I think this system could support very descriptive play, with a light tactical game.

I hope so that is what im aming for, I Play tested a scene with a friend that never played RPGs and atleast the descriptive part worked quite good. (I'm currently working abroad without possibilities of doing proper playtests)

Im splitting my answers into a few different posts so that they are easier to discuss. 

I'll begin commenting on how to decide how many cards to use. My original idea was to let the players decide how interesting they thought a specific conflict/scene were and thus let them decide how many details i.e cards it should consist of. For example jumping over a cliff would not be so interesting so only one card would be used, that means that however wins that draw would win the conflict. Trying to convince the lady to dance would be much more interesting, with arguments and counter arguments going back and forth thus the players would choose more cards. I did not think that there would be any tactical benefits of opting for more cards,  it would simply be best out of five instead of best out of one.
This is how I thought:
Lets say one player has a stat of 6 the other has a stat of 4. Statistically the stat 6 guy would be able to use his cards in 6 out of ten times regardless of how many cards he has on his hand, similar the stat 4 guy can use his card 4 out of ten regardless of how many cards he has. A longer conflict would give room for more tactical thinking but it would not mean that the chance of winning is greater with many cards for a high stat guy.

But after you're comments I started thinking:
The 6 stat guy will have a greater number of cards over 4 the more cards he gets meaning that he would have a higher chance of having cards which the 4 stat guy cannot meet or exceed.

I cannot get my head around this so please help me, is having more or less cards a strategic issue, depending on you're stats?

Perhaps the best thing is to let the GM decide how many cards should be used?

I will comment on the rest of you're comments soon. (Im thinking you're answers through right now)

Cheers and thank you

[Mattias]

Hi again

Regarding the mechanical benefits of each suit.

I personally do not like systems that rewards descriptions mechanically (ala stunt dice Exalted) because my experience is that some players do not/are to shy to describe a lot. Letting the GM be the judge of who is the best talker often creates a bad gaming atmosphere were people mentioned above feels uncomfortable. Even worse is when the other players are aloud to give points, dices etc to the one they think gave a good description.

The thought behind the system was to make the system objective and also to prove basic input to how to describe something. People that do not like to describe would be encouraged by having to use at least a little bit very clearly defined extra info in their description I.e. "I hit him...with a jug of beer".

Does this make sense?

Having said that, I like Simon Cs  suggestions because they do not refrain from these issues that I have with rewarding creativity, but they do make the descriptions have different mechanical meanings.

You need to make the different suits mechanically beneficial, and you need a better way to decide how many cards to use.  This will make your basic mechanic more robust, and support more tactical play, while not detracting from the descriptive style you want.

The reason why I wanted the suits to have no actual mechanical effect is because I wanted the system to be very quick and give the players power to describe the environment. Assigning different mechanical meanings of the suits could mean that the GM would have to give each environment this aspect, instead of the player making it up. And it would possibly also make the tactical parts of it to complicated making the system slower.
My thought was that if the player wanted his extra description to give some actual mechanical benefits he would have to sacrifice a card. The mechanical benefits would be the same for all actions making it very easy and very quick, i.e. one does not have to decide whether jumping on the table or throwing sand in someone's face is more distracting to the opponent, no long tables of modifiers or difficult choices for GMs - no disagreements between what throwing sand in someone's face means mechanically.

Does this make sense?

I think that "Clubs" has an advantage over other suits.  It lets you use a different skill.  

Well my thought was actually the opposite.
For example when they use any other suit than Clubs in an trying- to- convince- the- lady- to- dance- Conflict the players would be free to use any skill they feel could be applicable (singing a song, quoting a poem etc). On Clubs you would have to use a different skill.

None the less youre (Simon C) comment is correct in the sense that clubs is different than the other suits (which is what is important) it actually has a mechanical effect (which i did not think about). I need to work this out. 

Another problem is,  if Clubs meaning that you can or have to use another skill, how do you decide which is the default skill, and which is other skills?


Hearts - Maybe every scene could have an "Aspect" of the environment, which you can use for a small bonus when you use a heart. Like, a ballroom could have a big stairway, or a ship could have rigging (ropes overhead).  You can only use each "aspect" once".

Spades - You could use a similar "aspect" system.  Maybe every character has a secret weakness or vulnerability.  If you can invoke that, you can get a bonus for one card.  Like, the lady is maybe trying to protect her father (if you offer to help her father, she'll like you more), or the cliff has a small crack that makes climbing easier.

Diamonds - Maybe each character could have an "Aspect" as well, which they can use for a bonus if they can describe it in the scene.

I have a system for aspects similar to FATE (You get points when a aspect is negative in the scene and you pay points to use aspects In a positive way) my thought was that people could use the aspects on which ever suite they wanted to when the wanted to boost the skill.

For example, with the lady example: A player has Large nice moustache as an aspect and lays hearts, he would then say "I twin my large moustache to impress her(getting a bonus) while asking her if she wants to dance and offering her a beer(because he laid hearts)"

With aspects assigned to different suits it would mean that the GM explicitly would have to mention those instead of letting the player make them up during the scene.
Id like to give each suit a mechanical benefit (as you said), so perhaps someone with experience in a similar system could enlighten me, Is it complicated?

What it all boils down to as I see it is:
What is the pros and cons of using the suits as merely a way of encouraging creativity compared to also giving them a mechanical effect?

As I see it the pros of giving them a mechanical meaning is that players feels it more worthwhile and more fun giving a description if it also have a mechanical effect. 

Thanks for reading, cheers

[Simon C]

More cards versus fewer cards:

If someone has a greater skill than someone else, on average, they'll win.  With more cards, the odds become closer to the average result, favouring the character with the higher skill.  With fewer cards, the odds are less predictable, less average, and this favours characters with lower skill.  If I'm better at fighting than you, I'll want to use as many cards as possible, so that luck plays a smaller role in the combat.  If I'm worse at fighting than you, I'll want to use just one card, and hope I get a good one. 

This effect is more pronounced with cards than with dice, becasue drawing cards ensures that once you've drawn the whole deck, you'll have a completely average spread.  Rolling dice, you can get a non-average result no matter how many dice you roll. 

Does this make sense to you?

[Mattias]

Does this make sense to you?

Absolutely thanks a lot. I will dump that idea however i would still like to make it possible for players to choose how long they want to make a conflict. So i will continue working on that idea. If anyone has any ideas in relation to this comments are welcome.


Thanks again