Request for insights and ideas

[Vulpinoid]

New Card Based System.<Part 1.<Part 2.<V

[Ken]

The GM draws a number of cards based on the difficulty; the player draws a number of cards based on their attribute level. High card wins.

Has this system worked well in testing? My concern here would be the possibility of a high card in the smaller of the two hands completely shutting out the contestant with the higher rating (character or task difficulty). For instance (and barring the drawing of any cards of the appropriate suit), if a character is trying something that he is an expert at (say rating of 5) and the difficulty is 2 (for instance; I don't know your system) and one of those two cards is an Ace (assuming aces are the highest card you can get) and the character gets four Kings and a Queen, the character loses. Should he?

I haven't given this a lot of thought, but at first pass my suggestion is to give numeric value to the cards and add them up for effect. Then compare the totals; highest score win the challenge. This system would lean towards the side with the larger hand, but still have plenty of room for an upset, by drawing awesome cards. The points could be:

2-10=1 point, Jack-King=2 points, Ace=3 points

In the case of drawing a card of appropriate suit, the highest card would win. I like that effect, because it totally trumps the system.

Also, have you given any thoughts to bonus effects for pairs or three-of-a-kinds?

Quote from: Vulpinoid on October 04, 2007, 07:54:29 PM

New Card Based System.<

Perhaps, a character draws one less card for each attribute that has been zeroed out; or the value for each card drawn is reduced by one for each zeroed characteristic.

Do character's ever die, or just get knocked out of the scene in some appropriate way?

I like the energy point idea a lot; how do these points regenerate?

This sounds like a pretty fun game. Looking forward to your responses. Keep it up.

Take care,

Ken

[masqueradeball]

I really like the way you have the system laid out, and I'm currently sitting on a project of my own that uses a very similar card mechanic (though in it characters also have hands of cards, but I digress). The only thing I can think of is maybe having a way that players can opt to save cards. My first thought is that lets say I attempt a challenge and I draw my cards and the GM draws his cards and I have a K of clubs, 10 of spades and 4 hearts. Since its a physical/clubs challenge, I beat my GM's highest club, a 2. Since I won the challenge, I can either opt to narrate the outcome of a total sucess (I'm not clear on whether or not margin of success limits what I can narrate) or I can keep the K for later and allow the GM (or the player, if you prefer) to narrate a moderate success or a success that comes with some form of drawback.
Another thought is that since you have a trump mechanic, maybe their could be secondary "trumps" so that the different suits would have ranking values. So instead of clubs automatically win physical challenges, clubs would instead add 10 to the value of the card, and the next most appropriate suit would add 5 and the third 2 and the least appropriate would add nothing. The math might not be worth it, but it makes the face values of the cards more valuable and might be useful...
Also, I would encourage you to find some way to use the cards as a way to track the energy points you mentioned. I think one of the great values that cards have over dice is that they are lot easier to use as markers to represent various mechanical or story elements of the game, like how much energy a character has left.
Hope that helps...

[Vulpinoid]

My original query was for an expanded version of my system on a character sheet.

It was for the "Re-magi-nation" contest.

http://www.angelfire.com/psy/vulpinoid/8Sea2.pdf

In 10 days this is what I ended up with, and it still needs a lot more work...but here's the contest entry as it stood at the closing date.

V