[Starry Messengers] Fencing with Cards

[Thor]

We had the first playtest of Starry Messengers my clockpunk space game this weekend.

Start scary caveats/We were making up as we went. The rules as such are probably not even IN alpha yet. I am gathering what I want to be a development blog at http://starr-messenger.blogspot.com/.  End Scary caveats/

That said the playtest went well, but I did have one thing I wanted some help on. The game is a renaissance space game. You play people from the Italian city states in space fighting, inventing, wooing and exploring and stuff like that there. The fighting part was supposed to feel like fencing without requiring the players to know anything about fencing. the system we cam up with was thus:

You start with a hand of cards. We used Uno cards with the non numbered cards taken out. You could use playing cards with the face cards removed.  Characters and trained swordsmen get a hand of five and mooks get three. After dealing the cards another card is put face up on the table to represent environmental situations.

The duel starts with the players presenting one card each face down. This is the point of crossed swords and will determine advantage. they turn the cards over. If they tie do it again. which ever one put forth the higher card has the advantage. the other player becomes the defender. If the defender can match the advantage by adding another card they go back to crossed swords. If the defending player can exceed the advantage card with two cards they take the advantage.

Whichever player winds up with the advantage then plays an attack face down and the defender plays a defense face up. If the defense is higher than the attack the defender takes the advantage and becomes the next attacker. If the cards are equal the players return to crossed swords. And if the defense is lower than the attack card the defender is allowed one more card from their hand to meet or exceed the attack card. If they cannot damage is done. What damage is done remains to be determined but is irrelevant to my question.

This seemed to work well for a two player fight but broke down horribly for a three player fight. realizing that three player fights would probably go that way is one option. The type of stories we want to tell however are the sort where one man can take on a couple of ruffians in an alley and expect to win.

In the playtest,  a bunch of mooks attacked a player and we aggregated them and treated them as one thing. Do you have any better ideas?

[Jeff B]

Thor,

First off, I think that card sequence is a terrific way of representing fencing:  back-forth, back-forth...quick...simple...risky...back-forth.  It conveys the feel of that type of swordplay and is extremely easy to understand (a big plus).  I think what you've got is the core of a potentially great conflict system for the play-experience you have in mind.    That said, here's a kink I observe in your text:

The duel starts with the players presenting one card each face down. This is the point of crossed swords and will determine advantage. they turn the cards over. If they tie do it again. which ever one put forth the higher card has the advantage. the other player becomes the defender. If the defender can match the advantage by adding another card they go back to crossed swords. If the defending player can exceed the advantage card with two cards they take the advantage.

Whichever player winds up with the advantage then plays an attack face down and the defender plays a defense face up. If the defense is higher than the attack the defender takes the advantage and becomes the next attacker. If the cards are equal the players return to crossed swords. And if the defense is lower than the attack card the defender is allowed one more card from their hand to meet or exceed the attack card. If they cannot damage is done.

These two paragraphs say the same thing, don't they?  You can reduce this to an extremely simple format by simply defining what it means to take advantage back from the other player, then state that if you're unable to win back the advantage with two cards, damage is then done.  No need for the 2nd paragraph.  Am I missing something?

Second, the numbers can work any way you like.  The game would work perfectly fine with a normal deck of cards.  No need to remove the face cards.  Since both players would have complete, identical, 52-card decks, game balance is preserved.  Face cards could still be worth 10, per normal.  Anyway, that's not a criticism, simply an observation that there is no inherent need to filter the deck.

I can think of some ways to resolve multi-fighter combat.  However, my ideas are totally dependent on what sort of skills, if any, players can have.  Specifically, what kinds of deck or card manipulation do you think will be allowed in the future?  If no manipulation is possible, then the odds will always be 50-50.  I assume you want to simulate that some swordfighters are superior to others.  But I'd like to get your response on that, and more of your thinking, before I go much further.  After that, I'll be glad to go further with my ideas, if you like. 

Allow me also to suggest thinking along the lines of using an ordinary card deck, since other players who read the rules would have easy and cheap access to a normal deck, whereas Uno decks are generally one-per-household, maximum.

Jeff

[Thor]

I guess I wasn't being clear by trying to be perfectly clear. I wanted to state all possible outcomes in both the start and later steps.

Crossed swords = two cards face down. Advantage = one card face down and defense face up. But I think you got that.

This is the base system. if your character has the Spanish defense then three cards can be used instead of two. Certain attacks can use more than one card for an attack. certain moves will disarm a character if the suit (color) is matched. We don't know all of the permutations yet and the game is at least about inventing new things.

What I completely forgot to mention earlier is that the face up card gives a draw if either player plays the same number. And that a player character can draw one additional card up to their Black Bile Humor (a number between 1 and 5).

I dont think that having that many tens in the mix would be good for the combat.

[tleeuwenburg@gmail.com]

As your characters advance, they could be allowed to remove low-valued cards from their deck.

I think you have an awesome idea for a system. I absolutely love it. I'd buy it.

In terms of representing multiple combatants, aggregation is one way. Another would be to allow the outnumbered opponent effectively fight two people at once by having a combat stack for each opponent. They will draw down their deck quicker (would this result in death?) and have double the chance of being hit by a disarm card or similar.

What a great idea.

-T

[greyorm]

Let us suppose each duel between a PC and an opponent(s) is a conflict. You then run that conflict out until some circumstance ends it (one side falls or runs away or the duel is interrupted). In the case of multi-combatant duels, you have some sort of initiative structure to decide who does what first -- who fights with who, or who gets their choice to fight with who -- and when that is decided, and combatants are paired up, each of those is a conflict. Then each duel is conducted until ended or to an interrupt (a wounding, a pause in the fight, circling for advantage, etc).

So all you ever have is pieces of two-person duels you handle chunk-by-chunk (just like in the movies, you don't see each sword-swing, then the next, from each combatant. You see the fight in chunks, these guys here, then those guys there, then back to these guys here, etc).

However, you then include some sort of "break-in" mechanic, where someone who is not a "part" of each two-person duel can add their numbers to the numbers on one side (or reduce the numbers of the other side?) That way you aren't trying to run two duels at once or playing more than one hand of cards against another hand, just one, even though there may be more than two participants per duel.

You could further limit mooks to cards numbered 1-5 (or something similar) as well as just having a three-card hand in order to reduce the chance of mooks being able to swarm an individual and give it that "skilled hero against canon-fodder minions" feel (though I would leave the possibility for mooks swarming a guy in).

Don't forget about terrain and positioning in the equation, either. Only one or two assailants might be able to come at a given duelist at a time if they're fighting atop a wall, or on a staircase, or if honor prevents it, or etc. (In fact, it is likely that more than two (unskilled) assailants would simply trip one another up, and even four skilled assailants would tend to get in one another's way. Though that many assailants against one character SHOULD present a difficult fight regardless.)

[Ken]

In the playtest,  a bunch of mooks attacked a player and we aggregated them and treated them as one thing. Do you have any better ideas?

This sounds smart, considering your combat mechanic. A hand of cards for each NPC attacker could suck.

Are cards the resolution device for all rules in the game, or just fencing? Is there combat other than fencing: melee, HTH, projectiles, ship-to-ship, etc. that used the same mechanic?

Sounds good so far.

Ken

[Thor]

Cards are the resolution mechanic for the fencing. The system for the game was punted this week to a very simple D10 + the appropriate Humor against a target number. More on that later.

I think that aggregation is the way to go for mooks.  I will try an initiative with multiple combat.

Another Idea that has been floated is that there could be a fight multiple skill which allows you to ignore the lower card of the two the would be arrayed against you. This is like aggregation but allows for the possibility that the players could gang up on one of their own. Each would get to play their own cards and feel like they were contributing and make it hard as can be for the other player.

Another question, This seems like the fencing system we are going with. What do we do for other kinds of combat? I think this could sort of work for other melee combat but not at all for missile combat. I have wanted to have the appropriate mini-game to get the feel of the situation for the different parts of the game. There will be an inventing mini-game and the fencing Mini-game, probably a wooing mini-game and an intrigue type of mini-game that will allow the players to tag certain scenes for future ret-con. I want them all to have unique and appropriate analogs to the actions they represent.