Idea for card-based combat mechanic.

[timfire]

I don't know if this is the best place for this post, but oh well, here goes.

I've decided to design a hack-n-slash dungeon-crawl with a card-based resolution system. You can read about the concept here in the indie design forum. (Note that originally I was going to use dice.) I came up with a basic combat mechanic for it and would like to hear some criticism on it, if y'all don't mind.

Basic Rule: Clubs > Diamonds > Spades (> Clubs) has a Rock-Paper-Scissors relationship. Hearts are trump.

When a combatant attacks, they throw down a card, any card. The defender then has a couple of options:

- The defender can defend by throwing a suit that beats the attack's suit. (ie defend against Clubs with Diamonds.) A defense automatically succeeds. However, if the defense is equal or lower than the attack, then the attacker retains initiative and can make another attack. If the defense is higher, the defender steals initiative, and the process starts over with the old defender being the new attacker.
- The defender can immediately counter-attack by throwing a higher card of the same suit. This immediately steals initiative, however, the original attacker gets a chance to respond to the counter (by either defending or counter-attacking himself).
- As I said, Hearts are trump. A Heart beats any other suit, regardless of value. Throwing a Heart is considered a counter-attack and follows the same rules as a normal counter, with the exception that a Heart can only be countered with a higher Heart.

Throwing cards continues until one combatant can no longer defend/counter. Losing a round of combat incurs a Wound. Players will probably have like 5 Wound points. In the event that one player runs out of cards, that player automatically loses. If both players run out at the same time, then they go into sudden death mode. Each player picks one card from the deck and plays it. If by chance the defender defends the attack, then the players pick another card, and so forth until one player loses.

I played a few practice rounds by myself. I gave myself 8 cards for each hand, though in the game the number will probably differ between players. It usually took 4 or 5 attacks before one of the players lost, and 3/2 of the time ended by one or both of the players throwing a Heart.

Things to still be decided:
- How to refresh the Cards. At first I thought about the winner taking all the cards left in the loser's hand. But that might reult in "steam-roller" effect for winners. It might also lead to a built up of low cards in the winner's hand. So I thought maybe Cards will just refresh to a pre-set number each round. I also thought about tying the number of cards to Wound levels.
- How Magic will work.
- How skills/ equipment/ and special maneuvers will effect combat.
- How to resolve non-combat tasks. Non-combat tasks will be kept to a miminal (see my game concept). I thought about the GM assigning a Target number, and then tying suits to task types (Spades = physical, Diamonds = Mental, Clubs = Magical, Hearts = any, maybe?).

Thanks in advance!

[timfire]

BTW, I wanted to thank everyone who posted in the other "What are some RPG's that use playing cards?" thread. Though I didn't get a chance to check out all the games listed, I tried to take into account the issues with card-based mechanics that people brought up.

[Pelinderian]

Kind of reminds me of playing eucher.. and I never did like playing it.

[Harlequin]

Timfire...  have you read Dance of Steel?  It handles a similar situation to your own, and IMO more effectively.  Points I don't like about yours:

1) Having a single trump suit puts a lot onto luck.  The largish hand (eight cards) will have helped minimize that effect, but then you get eight cards which starts to push the decision-making threshold and slow the game down.  Smaller hand sizes will help speed things up (cf. Shannon Appelcline's 'Thinking Virtually'column at RPG.net) in terms of player cognition, if you can counterbalance the increased effect of luck... but IMO a trump suit would make this tricky.

2) Counterattack with trump - even a lower trump - particularly bugs me.  Your counterattack setup makes it actually a parry&riposte combination, because it stops the attack as well as striking back.  Which is fine, but makes it pretty strong in combination with point #1.

One way to reduce this would be to have counterattacks function more like stop-thrusts... they do their damage, and may (but may not) stop the hit from landing due to this.  [Seventh Sea handles this very nicely, in the Vodacce sourcebook, but mangles this by having it limited to only one, generally unavailable, school of the fence.]  A version yours might use:

- Damage = reduced hand size (or, discard N cards), discarding at random.
- A counterattack using a higher card (higher same suit, or higher trump) does its damage first.  Lower cards are slower, whether or not they're trump, and do their damage only after the first one lands, if then.
- As soon as you're hit for damage, pick up your card play and lose the required number of cards at random from your hand.  If that takes away the card you had played, too bad - the attack's been stopped.  Otherwise, your attack follows and the attacker retains the initiative.

Something like that.

But I think you could do much, much worse than to use a variant on Dance of Steel, if this is the sort of thing you want.  I've played it, it's very satisfying and clean.  (I play with the timing on parries inverted, though, such that parrying "before" the strike means that it's ready in time, and parrying "after" the strike means that it was a hasty and less effective defense.)  Adding additional reach brackets would be doable, if nasty (no Spiked Chains, or it's broken), as would some option to spend game resource for additional actions (card plays) per round - the latter wouldn't even be hugely overpowered.

- Eric

[Scripty]

At first I was skeptical, but I've come to like this idea. I know a few people who are turned off to rpgs by the use of dice. I like the Castle Falkenstein mechanics, especially those proposed by Christopher Kubasik, but I see a lot of promise here too for a simple, card-based mechanic.

Things to still be decided:
- How to refresh the Cards. At first I thought about the winner taking all the cards left in the loser's hand. But that might reult in "steam-roller" effect for winners. It might also lead to a built up of low cards in the winner's hand. So I thought maybe Cards will just refresh to a pre-set number each round. I also thought about tying the number of cards to Wound levels.

My suggestion: Limit hands to a set number of cards, like 8. Cards refresh at a rate of 1 per "scene" such that a player who uses 6 cards in a contest will only get one back at the beginning of the next scene. Add another rule that a player can opt to critically fail a given conflict or challenge in exchange for refreshing his hand (drawing back up to 8 cards).

Things to still be decided:
- How Magic will work.

I like the Castle Falkenstein way of "powering" magic with specific suits of cards. So, say Necromancy requires Spades, and a PC needs a total of 13 in the Spade suit to power her spell. Well, the PC only has a four of spades in her hand at this time and then lays that down beside her. She's actively casting a spell. Now, she immediately draws another card to replace the one that she just played. If she draws, say, the King of Spades then she can lay it down next to the four and the spell goes off. If not, she can choose to use cards of other suits from her hand, but the GM will be able to generate unpredictable consequences from doing so.

Things to still be decided:
- How skills/ equipment/ and special maneuvers will effect combat.

Skills can boost the number on the card that you're playing. So that, if you had "Sneak Around" at +2, and you played a nine of Clubs, it would count as if you had played an 11 of Clubs and, subsequently, beat every card except for an Ace of Clubs or a Heart.

Things to still be decided:
- How to resolve non-combat tasks. Non-combat tasks will be kept to a miminal (see my game concept). I thought about the GM assigning a Target number, and then tying suits to task types (Spades = physical, Diamonds = Mental, Clubs = Magical, Hearts = any, maybe?).

Why not have the GM have a hand of cards as well? This allows the GM to play cards against players both as an NPC and as random obstacles. In this sense, there isn't a distinction between opposed and non-opposed conflicts. Giving the GM a hand of cards ensures that all conflicts are opposed.

Just food for thought. You have a good thing going here. Let me know how it works out.

Scott

[timfire]

Harlequin brought up issues with the trump suit, and he may have something. I play-tested it a bit more (with myself, again) and I think I made trumps too powerful. I realized that a round ends with throwing a heart like 90% of the time. The general strategy was "play what you can, and when you can't throw a heart." Thus each round was really a test of who had the highest heart. That's no good.

I still like the idea of hearts being special, so maybe, rather than hearts being trump, ie beating all suits, they could simply be wild, meaning you can substitute a heart for any suit. Thus they will still be valuable, but not all powerful. If they're low they won't automatically win.

Harlequin:

...but then you get eight cards which starts to push the decision-making threshold and slow the game down. Smaller hand sizes will help speed things up...

I played a few rounds with 4 cards, 6 cards, and even 10 cards. With only 4 cards, the luck factor was really high. Most of the time you only had 2 suits, and only occasionally 3. This meant that the defender either had a card to defend with or didn't. A couple times the defender could do nothing. A couple times he stole initiative but then the attacker couldn't respond. There wasn't much back and forth. Using six cards better, but still only went 2 or 3 attacks/round. Using 10 rounds went kinda long, averaging 6 or 7 attacks. 8 cards felt like a good balance to me personally, averaging 4 or 5 attacks/round.

This brings up an unintentional feature that I like about my system. I liked the back-and-forth aspect. I think if it was coupled with some sort of descriptive feature, it would make for a good "cinematic" battle.

Finally on the refresh issue, I realized that if I want to keep the back-and-forth feature the players are going to be burning alot of cards each round. That proably means that cards should just refresh to a set amount each round. (That's how I play-tested it, anyway.) Maybe I could say that each player just receives X number of cards each round? Like players start with 8, but only receive 4 each round? That could create a fatigue/endurane-type phenomonan. Only used 3 cards, well now you have 9 this round (8-3+4)! Used 6, ohh, now you only have 6 (8-6+4)! Of course players could then just hold back a round or two and "charge-up" before a fight. But so would their opponents...

[M. J. Young]

Forgive me if I duplicate someone else's comments; it's a longish thread, and I don't want to forget things so I'm starting to write while I read.

Question: why are the suits in that order? There was a thread here long ago in which we old-time cards players questioned the issue in another game. The traditional suit order is Spades>Hearts>Diamonds>Clubs, and if you tamper with that order, you should have 1) a good reason and 2) a good mnemonic, because otherwise your card players are going to get messed up and blame the game for it.

Question: how can both players run out at the same time? It seems to me that I don't play a card until I see what card you've played, and you don't play a card until you see what card I've played, and thus when I play my last card, you either have another card or you don't. If you do, I lose; if you don't, I win. So either you weren't thinking clearly about how it works when you wrote that, or I didn't get how card play progressed.

Hope that helps.

--M. J. Young

[Hereward The Wake]

I've spent a lot of time looking at card based ideas for combat, as I have found that dice systems do not reflect the realities of combat in a satisfactory manner, for me at least.

I started looking at using a regular card deck, and have now moved away from it. And am now using illustrated cards, similar to an old GW game that never went beyond appearing in WD, called "Chivalry"

Some points based on what you have,
You currently don't have any avoidance/dodge movements. That has the potential to allow a breaking away of the combat at which point one could refresh the deck. In this situation the more skilled fighter would seek to keep the fight going longer to force the oppoenet to run ot of cards and then be stuck with only being able to draw random cards off the deck. The weaker fighter would be looking to use the dodge to get the hand refreshed.

Another point, you don't deferentiate between attacks, are they cuts, thrusts, grapples, punches, knees, hitting with the hilt of the weapon etc. It is the choive of attack and reaction that creates an enjoyable tactical game and it is this that make the real leap away from dice driven mechaincs. This was my main reason for moving away from regular cards as I was having to adapt my ideas to fit with the cards rather than being able to come to a satifying solution based pon what i wanted.

All the best
JW

[Hereward The Wake]

I just looked at the Damce of Steel rules. They were good for what they did, but are too based in fencing, I know that is what the author says they are for that is fine. But they rely too much on only movement forward and back. This doesn't really work for weapons 0r rather styles that he mentions. Even then during the periods when the use of the rapier and small sword were being used, off line and other forms fo of non liner movement were incorperated.

JW

[timfire]

Question: why are the suits in that order?

I simply picked that order randomly, I didn't realize that there was a traditional suit order. So you think it would be better make it Spades =  Wild, Hearts>Diamonds>Clubs(>Hearts)?

Question: how can both players run out at the same time? It seems to me that I don't play a card until I see what card you've played, and you don't play a card until you see what card I've played, and thus when I play my last card, you either have another card or you don't. If you do, I lose; if you don't, I win. So either you weren't thinking clearly about how it works when you wrote that, or I didn't get how card play progressed.

I probably did a bad job explaining. You can only win a round of combat if you throw an attack. Thus, if both players only have 1 card left, and the attacker throws his card and the defender defends by throwing a different suit, then that isn't considered a win. (However, if the defender responds with a counter-attack, ie throwing a higher card of the  same suit, then that would be considered a win.)

I should say that in the simulations I ran, the situation where both players ran out at the same time never came up. Sometimes one player ran out, but never both. But I can see that theorectical both could, so that's why I added that rule.

You currently don't have any avoidance/dodge movements. That has the potential to allow a breaking away of the combat at which point one could refresh the deck.

Good point. I was thinking I might add some special maneuvers that required a face card to perform. Maybe a disengage movement could be one of those special moves.

you don't deferentiate between attacks, are they cuts, thrusts, grapples, punches, knees, hitting with the hilt of the weapon etc. It is the choive of attack and reaction that creates an enjoyable tactical game and it is this that make the real leap away from dice driven mechaincs.

I will add some moves, like grappling, and I will probably add a "range" feature. But you're right that I don't have a provision for different weapons. But it's interesting that you bring up "leap[ing] away from dice driven mechaincs." Not wanting to derail this thread, I think I may start a new thread on that topic.

[Hereward The Wake]

In my rules I have a leap back which can be used to break combat, if the defender does this, the attacker can beat the move and follow up with another attack. I also use a dodge move, which can be used to gain a break or an advantage, it is more of an off line movement to the side in this case of the defender succeeds and has cads in hand they can launch a counter attack. If they don't have the cards in hand then they can a tempt to break distance to allow a refreshing of the hand.

I only asked as different attack can require different reactions to counter them, and you therefore can develop a stratergy. you can also develop different "styles" favoured by fighters working with mainly thrusts/cuts etc.

Don't get me wrong, I think that there is a place for dice in RP, but I think that cards work just as well, on their own and in other situations with dice. I also make sure that the players descibe what they are going to do and how they are going to do it, that combined with a card will help modify the chances of success for the action

JW

You currently don't have any avoidance/dodge movements. That has the potential to allow a breaking away of the combat at which point one could refresh the deck.

Good point. I was thinking I might add some special maneuvers that required a face card to perform. Maybe a disengage movement could be one of those special moves.

you don't deferentiate between attacks, are they cuts, thrusts, grapples, punches, knees, hitting with the hilt of the weapon etc. It is the choive of attack and reaction that creates an enjoyable tactical game and it is this that make the real leap away from dice driven mechaincs.

I will add some moves, like grappling, and I will probably add a "range" feature. But you're right that I don't have a provision for different weapons. But it's interesting that you bring up "leap[ing] away from dice driven mechaincs." Not wanting to derail this thread, I think I may start a new thread on that topic.

[M. J. Young]

So you think it would be better make it Spades =  Wild, Hearts>Diamonds>Clubs(>Hearts)?

Yes, but just because people who play card games will expect that and be thrown by a change.

For that, making Hearts trump (particularly if you had an inherent reason to do so) and ordering the other suits Spades>Diamonds>Clubs(>Spades) works as well; just as long as trump is clearly identified and the remaining suits are in traditional order, you're all right. I had the impression from an earlier post that there was a reason you liked hearts for trump, and if it has to do with the color in the game I can see that being significant.

I could also see changing the order of the cards if all of these things were true:

[*]The suits were connected to particular kinds of moves;[*]There was an obvious connection between them (e.g., clubs connects to heavy force strikes);[*]There was an inherent behind each type of maneuver defeating the one below.[/list:u]That would create a rather narrower concept of combat, though, quite apart from the fact that I'm sure it's not true.

You can only win a round of combat if you throw an attack. Thus, if both players only have 1 card left, and the attacker throws his card and the defender defends by throwing a different suit, then that isn't considered a win. (However, if the defender responds with a counter-attack, ie throwing a higher card of the  same suit, then that would be considered a win.)

I see. I'm not sure that really changes things too much, though.

You throw your last card to attack me; my last card is thrown in response.

If my card is a defense, then it's over--we're both out of cards, but neither of us is obliged to play another.

If my card is a counterattack, then I won because you don't have a defense.

Your rule seems to say no, if the last card is a defense, the fight is not over--in desperation the combatants continue drawing from their reserves to keep going until there is a clear victor.

Let me propose that this is wonderfully cinematic and tactically insane; but that it might be good to change the rule slighty such that it is permissive rather than required. Thus if we have both played our last cards, and however it went you now have the right to attack me but don't have any cards, you can decide not to attack me, or you can decide to attack me with whatever card is on the top of the deck; if you attack, I must respond with the next card in the deck, whatever it is. If you decide not to attack, I have the option to take the desperate action and attack you with the top card from the deck, and you must respond with the top card. This will continue until there is a victory, or both sides stop attacking.

That way you can have the scene in which both fighters are exhausted, and the battle ends in a draw, and you can have the scene in which, exhausted, both push forward to try to defeat the other with seemingly random attacks and defenses as they stumble on in the fight.

It's just an idea.

--M. J. Young

[Hereward The Wake]

This is why I believe that you need, moves that can break the passage, a jump away, or dodge move that you can try to carry out to get free and take a short beather and in game terms refresh the hand.

Also with counter attacks. Theoretically any parry can be tuened into a counter attack. Like wise a counter attack 'action' is not sure to work. My feeling with my system now is that their is no specific counter attack card.
it is rather something that you can try to do with any parry.

I feel that you have to have some form of extra affect to the cards, based upon the skill of fighter. otherwise the drawing of the cards deteremines too much nad largely make the situation rather too random.
I use a combat pol of dice, these are used to beef up an attack parry etc. to increse it chances of success.

All the best
JW

[timfire]

Hereward, and everyone else, thanks for the advice.

This is why I believe that you need, moves ... that you can try to carry out to get free and take a short beather and in game terms refresh the hand.

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.

Also with counter attacks. Theoretically any parry can be tuened into a counter attack. Like wise a counter attack 'action' is not sure to work. My feeling with my system now is that their is no specific counter attack card. it is rather something that you can try to do with any parry.

Normally I would agree with you, but with this game I'm not terribly concerned with realistic mechanics. I'm trying to go for a "cinematic" feel. But my "counter" option actually has a mechanical advantage, it lets combatants save a card. Let me see if I can show you with a diagram.

Player A - Player B
Attack     > Defense
Attack     > Defense
Attack     > Counter >
Defense

See, Player A had to play 1 more card than Player B. I think that's a valuable tactic, since it allows one combatant to "wear down" another.

I feel that you have to have some form of extra affect to the cards, based upon the skill of fighter. otherwise the drawing of the cards deteremines too much nad largely make the situation rather too random.

Hmm, a few things. Way back in my first post I stated that different players would have different sized hands, which will largely be based on skill. Since hand size affects the number of options a player has available, its more likely that a player with a bigger hand will be able to correspond to a given attack. I think this is roughly similiar to a dice pool mechanic. Second, I haven't found randomness to be a problem. I think this is because its REALLY easy to defend/counter an attack. You can play the same suit but higher, you can throw a better suit, or you can play the wild suit. That gives alot of options. The only time it starts causing issues is when players start getting below 3 or 4 cards. The effect this has is that the "real fight" doesn't start until the players only have a few cards left. The start of a fight just wears combatants down.

How you play your hand also has a big effect. A Player with mostly high cards can control most of the fight, with the other player simply defending with low cards. Then, at the end of the round, the second Player can gain control with his one good card, and then win with a low card that the other player simply can't respond to. This situation happened a number of times in the simulations I ran.

[timfire]

Hmm, I was originally hoping that this thread would turn into a more general discussion about card-mechanics.

If I may drift my own thread, I find designing mechanics around cards to be interesting. The suit dimension has me thinking about more than just numbers. (I could use the cards as simple random number generation, but I don't think that would fully utilize the potenial of the card medium.)

I also have to find ways to make all the cards valuable, or at least useful, due to the well documented phenomonon that you will run out of "good" cards unless you reshuffle. This is why I'm trying NOT to correspond certain actions with specific suits. For example, if Spades = attack (ala Dance of Steel), than that would obviously make Spades extremely important. This is also why I said you can defend with low cards. High cards are obviously more valuable, but low cards are useful as well.

BTW, can anyone tell me where I can a summary of Castle Falkenstein's rules? I was unable to find one in my web search.