The Forge Archives

I was curious about games that use playing cards instead of dice. I had a thought about a game that would work exactly like a dice-game except players would choose a card out of their hand instead of rolling a die. (Maybe give the players 5 or so cards, and let them pick a new card after everytime they used one.) I became curious about how other RPG's that used cards worked.

Thanks in advance.

Dragonlance: Fifth Age used cards instead of dice, though I don't think their cards were the same as a standard deck.  The card values represented the numbers off of dice, and the suits represented various kinds of tasks (and thus playing the magic suit on a spell gave some sort of bonus).  You had five cards in your hand at a time, unless you were injured - wounds were represented by reducing the number of cards you could hold until you got to no cards left and couldn't do anything.

Hi Tim,

This is a quick list off the top of my head.

Tarot: Psychosis, and many other free/internet games (do a search)

Playing cards: Castle Falkenstein, Dust Devils, alternate system in Armageddon, Nine Worlds (in development), Criminal Element (in development), La Famiglia (in development)

Customized cards: Everway, Lace & Steel

The "in development" games above have good draft versions available. I suggest a quick run through the games listed at the Resource Library at the Forge as well.

I've probaby missed tons of titles. Anyone else, please help out.

Best,
Ron

Hmm. Savage Worlds uses a poker deck for initiative determination, and so does its parent game, Deadlands.

Best regards,
Grex

Torg used a specialized deck for story/narrative help and initiative & combat resolution (but used a d20 for skill tests etc).

2300AD used a standard deck of cards to determine NPC motivation.

Starchildren uses cards for its main mechanic.  Each player has a hand, and plays suits to activate skill numbers on their character sheet which then get compared to GM played cards which are used at their face value.

Miles Christi (a wonderful French RPG) used a similar system, except that cards were simply added to your skill number like a die roll.  It had an awesome mechanic where you could burn high cards out of your hand (probably failing the current task) placing them into a "miracle pool" which could then be used to produce acts of divine intervention later at moments of great duress.

Starchildren!! I knew that. I am ashamed not to have included it.

Best,
Ron

Heaven & Earth 2nd Edition used a Tri-Stat compatible card-based mechanic.

Best,
Adam

thanks Ron for the mention of my game (Criminal Element).  My game uses a mechanic based on the rules and card-draw systems of Blackjack.  sadly, my previous host has taken the original playtest file off of hiw website and my updated PDF isn't ready for consumption yet.  I should be getting a new website all of my own this week, so i'll hopefully be able to have the original, semi-crappy playtest version up for you in about a week.

the other games mentioned are all quite a lot of fun.  hope you have a good time with your research.

laters.

The original Trystell system used a standard poker deck.  

I find the problem with using a hand of cards as a random number generator in an RPG is that players tend to hoarde high cards in their hands for really big actions.  That and sometimes when players get low cards, they never use the lowest ones and they simply sit in the player's hand taking up space.

Quote from: beholdsaplayers tend to hoarde high cards in their hands for really big actions.

Bug, or feature?  This can be thought of as similar to a "hero point" mechanism, where the players have some power to increase the odds of success for actions they really care about.

QuoteThat and sometimes when players get low cards, they never use the lowest ones and they simply sit in the player's hand taking up space.

This is ultimately self correcting.  If you don't find opportunities to slough your low cards, eventually your hand will fill up, and you'll be stuck with losers when it really matters.  So it forces the players to occasionally deliberately choose to fail if they want better odds later.

And there are games where this isn't an issue... games where each separate task or conflict is a new hand.  Or games where you draw 5 cards, then have to use them all before you can refill...

Quote from: rafial

Quote from: beholdsa

QuoteThat and sometimes when players get low cards, they never use the lowest ones and they simply sit in the player's hand taking up space.

This is ultimately self correcting.  If you don't find opportunities to slough your low cards, eventually your hand will fill up, and you'll be stuck with losers when it really matters.  So it forces the players to occasionally deliberately choose to fail if they want better odds later.

Well...  What happens then is the players start to find ways to perform trivial actions to set down a card, pruposefully failing said trivial actions in order to get rid of unwanted cards.

Easy:  You make sure that not a single action is trivial.  Only resolve an action when it MEANS something.

Shadows in the Fog [no link, because new version coming soon] uses Tarot cards exclusively for everything.

As to the whole low cards problem, if you make it worthwhile not completely to whack every obstacle in your way, then the low cards become useful.  That is, if difficulty is 5 and you have a 3 and a 7, and the 7 will get you critical success (2 over difficulty) while the 3 will get you failure, then the 3 is basically weak.  But if the 3 gets you a success if you pay for it in some cool way, as in Shadows where you essentially have to invent interesting plot elements as a way to pay for success [stolen from lumpley's Chalk Outlines], then players with neat ideas will use the 3 instead of the 7 because the 3 gets success and fun while the 7 is (a) boring and (b) useful for something big.

Don't know if that helps, but a new version of Shadows will arrive soon and you can check it out, or else search the Forge site for the game and read the previous edition and commentaries from brilliant Forgeites (about 8 months back, actually, but a search will find it all).

Chris Lehrich