This thread is influenced both by Matt Snyder's "Nine Worlds" concept (yes, Matt, someone was paying attention) and the ideas currently be discussed on the thread on "Pre-Game Fortune."

Consider these three points:

1) The one thing that I really liked about Magic:TG and some of the other CCGs from the fad-era was the ability, if you so desired and if you had enough money/cards, was the ability to give a deck a specific personality/feel. People used to (and I assume, still do) talk about "themed" decks or those that used a specific card-combination as the basis of it's killing power.

2) Seperately, the Changeling-based cardgame that White Wolf produced, Arcadia, tried very hard to reproduce tabletop roleplaying by having cards that represented various character traits. Together, a group of cards would repreent a character, their abilities, their magical powers, their weapons and equipment, etc.

3) If you look at Dragon Dice or other similar collectable dice games, often time a single die will represent a character, with each side being a different part of their combat abilities, generally. So, you roll a sword or a boot-to-the-head or fire-breath or whatever.

Now put all this together and consider the possibility of deck-based PCs...

Take several identical decks of playing cards and build a deck of 30+ cards that represents your character. Hearts represent emotional/willpower, Spades represent quickness/wit, Clubs represent brutality/bluntness, Diamonds represent elegance/charm. All Face Cards and Aces have specific meanings. Is your character full of knavery? You might want to take a whole bunch of Jacks. Etc.

Now, during conflict resolution, you simply draw the top card off your shuffled deck and that determines how you handle the situation. So there's Fortune, determined by what card you draw, but all the cards have be predetermined to be appropriate to your character, based on the guidelines layed out for deck-building.

If you think playing cards are too stright-forward, try it with various Tarot decks, or mix in those cards with normal playing cards. Or allow players to choose from different types of playing cards, each deck having slightly different connotations.

You could have predetermined decks for various common NPCs or monsters. You know that the PCs are going to fight a horde of orcs in this session. Prepare an "orc deck" that you can pull out whenever you need to. Otherwise, create custom decks on the fly from a "bank" of cards (pull three 2's, two 4's, a 6, and a 7; shuffle and go).

I've just been thinking about RPGs traditional reliance on dice and how silly it is, when there are so many other ways to deal with Fortune. Is there any real precedent for this kind of thing? What problems do you all forsee in using these kind of systems?

There have been "real" RPGs made of both card and dice collectable games. A somewhat influential one hereabouts was "Throwing Stones". Click here for a review.

None of these has seen great implementations, IMHO. Fang Langford has also mentioned cards as a nifty idea for an RPG to attract new people. I think it's a good idea, and would like to see a really good implementation. I started one myself, but haven't gotten anywhere with it. Lot's of weird technical problems with card appearance.

Mike

Jonathan,

I can relate to everything you've said - and I mean everything.

I love cards. Dice are nice but cards have just so many possibilities. Just think of all the great things you could do with all those Pictures and Numbers. Strategies, suspense, luck, there are just so many typical gaming elements that could make use of cards it's easy to get excited and think "if only".

Jeez, Imagine an Amber game where your "deck" is synonomous with your Trump.

One real BIG practical problem for me was, surprise, surprise, the cards themselves.

Yeah, I could just use normal playing cards. But isn't that limiting? Any game design you work around a normal deck of playing cards is going to be restricted by the fact that they are just that - playing cards.

I always thought the idea to be practical but a bit gimmicky.

The cards NEED to be evocative of the game itself, whatever that may be. They need to make sense. Look good. Feel right. Playing cards just don't cut it really. You need pictures, words and numbers on the cards. Just think what words could liven up player narrative.

I guess you could tweak an existing CCG and with a lot of thought and use those as your cards. Again though, I'd still feel as if it were still a bit of a gimmick and resticted. A bit like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole if you know what I mean.

If I were going to do the idea real justice then I would feel an over-riding need to do it right.

Ideas first. Playtesting with mock cards. More ideas. More playtesting. More ideas.

Eventually with luck you might end up with somethng that actually workable.

Then the practical bit. I need my own cards. I just would. Proper cards, that look great and that are pertinent to the game. That would mean a great deal of time spent designing some on my PC. Again feasible, (i've tweaked some LOTR cards in one of my more deluded moments) but it's bloody time-consuming. Print them out on card, good stock card. Colour print cartridges. Cut them to size. Put them in little plastic sleeves and away you go. Playtime.

Time spent thus far? Dunno, lets be optimistic and say 6 months assuming that it's a part-time thing, a labour of love as it were.

Probably cost about $150, for a do-it-yourself print run of say about 500 cards?

That's a lot of time spent (and some money) creating a game that's likely to be played only by my group. Much as I love my hobby the investment in time and effort would be far too much even IF the game was a resounding success among the players.

However, if I were looking at this as a commericial venture with the aim being to produce a viable retail product then the effort might be financially very rewarding.

I'd love to be able to do something like that. While I'm not short on ideas I have the Storyteller equivalent of 2 dots in resources and 1 dot in time.

Jonathan Walton wrote:
1) The one thing that I really liked about Magic:TG and some of the other CCGs from the fad-era was the ability, if you so desired and if you had enough money/cards, was the ability to give a deck a specific personality/feel. People used to (and I assume, still do) talk about "themed" decks or those that used a specific card-combination as the basis of it's killing power.

Now, during conflict resolution, you simply draw the top card off your shuffled deck and that determines how you handle the situation. So there's Fortune, determined by what card you draw, but all the cards have be predetermined to be appropriate to your character, based on the guidelines layed out for deck-building.

I've just been thinking about RPGs traditional reliance on dice and how silly it is, when there are so many other ways to deal with Fortune. Is there any real precedent for this kind of thing? What problems do you all forsee in using these kind of systems?

bluegargantua wrote:
Note -- I soured on CCGs real fast (much to my wallet's relief) so I'm probably somewhat biased.

bluegargantua wrote:
I've already mentioned that people may not like having their responses determined at random. This may be less of a factor under the right circumstances. The game's premise may support characters who behave in somewhat random ways. It might be better to have a hand of cards so the player has some options.

bluegargantua wrote:
I'm not sure here because the logical next step is to have people play cards against the GM and "take tricks" with some sort of benefit for those who take the most, a penalty for those who lose and a big penalty for people who won the bid but couldn't cover it. I'm just composing as I go so I don't know how it would all work out, but it's an idea.

That's it. I'm going to do this. I am good at CCG and RPG design. I've toyed with this before, but I think that I can go through with it. Think about it. I'll use a generic fantasy setting (I mean a setting that is new and not clique but doesn't entail any unique premise), and the card game will symbolize duels. I will report when I can ;).

Mike Holmes wrote: Fang Langford has also mentioned cards as a nifty idea for an RPG to attract new people.

Hi there,

One of the most interesting developments in the hobby in the mid-90s was the subtle shift in the meaning of the first "C" in "CCG." Do we mean ... collectable? ... or customizable?

I think the latter is a wonderful thing. I also love the idea of a character - or better, a whole bevy of "play-action options," ranging from character actions to metagame events - defined as a deck, expressed time-unit by time-unit as a hand of cards. I'd play a game like that in a shot.

But the former? We have a solid decade, now, of belly-up projects to look back upon.

I wouldn't want this discussion to get off track by any confusion of collectable vs. customizable. I trust we're talking about "customizable" specifically? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Best,
Ron

P.S. I think that both Throwing Stones and Dragon Dice were fascinating game designs; the latter, in fact, is one of the few wargames that I've ever liked. But I also think that their collectable aspect was disastrous, in terms of both design and marketing.

Total agreement with Ron, here.

The whole "collectability" issue is what turns games from something you enjoy playing into something you enjoy owning. Not interested in the latter, personally. While the original CCG craze did see some latecomers (like Chaosium's Lovecraft-based card game) that emphasized deck-building over card-buying, it was woefully absent from much of what went on. Only people with a ton of money to invest in a game could actually do serious deck-building.

The whole reason I started by talking about using multiple decks of standard playing cards is because they're cheap and easy to obtain. Honestly, the whole concept of "indie CCGs" is flawed unless the first C means "customizable." "Collectibility" only works when there are a bunch of other people interested in the game and there is a standard stream of new cards coming out, both of which are going to be hard for indie publishers to come by.

I created this thread to discuss how specially-crafted decks/hands of cards could be used to simulate in-game entities (specifically, characters, but, like Ron said, it could include other things as well).

Another issue... I think it's a shame that most CCGs are designed to be competative, with a clear winner and loser (because "that's the way card games work") while most RPGs are designed to be cooperative, with no clear winner or loser (because "that's the way roleplaying works"). Things like Rune have shown that it's okay for RPGs to be competative (though few have followed its lead), but I can't recall many non-competative card games.

My game will primarilly be gamist, and I think that I've coming along nicelley.

Jonathan Walton wrote: while most RPGs are designed to be cooperative, with no clear winner or loser (because "that's the way roleplaying works").

Le Joueur wrote: p. s. As far as 'describing a character with cards' goes, in Scattershot's CCG you play a base card (just Stats and a few skills/Advantages/Disadvantages) along with Martial Art style cards, Magical Specialization cards, Disguise cards, Equipment cards, and even single skill cards. Many of these can be 'held back' and only revealed as needed. Is that what you were thinking of?

Mike Holmes wrote: All the most basic options seem broken to me. There has to be something much more complex about how it works for such a game to take advantage of the design of cards, and to enumerate characters effectively.

This starts to solve the problem, Jared, but only partially. The only advantage to this method is that the unused cards become something else. Which is cool as far as it goes, but ceases to be interesting as soon as you start playing. Now, if the resources could become part of the character on the table, somehow....

Mike

Hey Mike,

You make some excellent points, let me clarify.

Mike Holmes wrote:

Le Joueur wrote: As far as 'describing a character with cards' goes, in Scattershot's CCG you play a base card (just Stats and a few skills/Advantages/Disadvantages) along with Martial Art style cards, Magical Specialization cards, Disguise cards, Equipment cards, and even single skill cards. Many of these can be 'held back' and only revealed as needed. Is that what you were thinking of?

Um, why bother? That is, in my first stab at the idea, I started going along with something like this. But very quickly I realized that I was just creating a way to record a character, and a poor one at that. I mean, cards are just clumsy. They have certain advantages, but if they are just enumerating a character, that's not taking advantage of any of them. Enumeration in the traditional manner, writing on a page, is much more efficient (don't have to search for he card you need) and effective (finding the stat you need is as simple as looking at a sheet, as opposed to having to sort through cards that, even if laid out neatly can get disturbed).

Mike Holmes wrote: Patently the cards need to do something else. The traditional use of cards is to have a "hand" of them drawn from the deck. But that leads to weird assumptions as well. If you only have access to a few cards at a time, and the deck is the totality of the character, then you don't have access to all the character's resources at once. Which can be rationalized to an extent, but not to the extent that most hand constructions would indicate.

Mike Holmes wrote: The whole "hold back" option sounds like Gamism to me, possibly Sim. In the latter case, however, the enumeration problem springs up in spades. Shouldn't the player have access to all their abilities at once? If so, isn't it easier to just list them on a page? The Gamist option may work, however. But it's not what I'd be looking for, personally.

Mike Holmes wrote: All the most basic options seem broken to me. There has to be something much more complex about how it works for such a game to take advantage of the design of cards, and to enumerate characters effectively.

Mike Holmes wrote: This starts to solve the problem, Jared, but only partially. The only advantage to this method is that the unused cards become something else. Which is cool as far as it goes, but ceases to be interesting as soon as you start playing. Now, if the resources could become part of the character on the table, somehow....

Le Joueur wrote: Hey Jonathan? What is the "Deck-Based Character" supposed to be doing in the game? That will incredibly slant both the efficacy and utility of cards in a CCG role-playing game. I'm not sure there are any approaches to role-playing games that couldn't be done with CCGs.... [snip]

So what'll it be?

I get your design Fang. What I'm saying is in part that a cool enumeration would involve meore than a single card defining the majority of your ability. Way too old-school. Like D&D classes, but perhaps worse. In any case, as you admit, the more cards that become neccessary, or the more customization that you require, the more a piece of paper becomes the better option, given this style. What I'm looking for is a way to use the advantages of cards to make a better enumeration in some way.

For instance, to make the game as good as Hero Wars, you'd need at least a Cultural Keyword card (and I'd want racial ones as well), an Occupation keyword card, a Magic keyword card, and ten assorted abilities (perhaps these can be made into "background" cards where you get several on one card. So we're looking at quite a few cards. Say at least six. At which point a sheet is looking quite nice, unless there's something else cool going on with the cards. So, what can we do to make cards a viable option for this sort of depth?

INWO does some cool things. The relationship of the cards to each other on the table says something about them. Those close to the center are more important. Something like that could be useful in making the cards matter (record keeping between sessions could be nasty, however). Also, in that game, the "hands" that you have represent a substantial portion of your total cards. As such, the "inaccessibility" to certain abilities, or even "Combos" as you call em, Fang, is lessened.

My point is that there are neat things you can do with cards. As such, they could be made into a cool and unique form of character enumeration. But simply using them to list single abilities or sets of abilities just seems like a waste of cards to me.

Mike

Jonathan Walton wrote: How about we limit discussion in this thread...to games that...are something more than just a conflict simulation; Gamism is okay, but I'm looking for at least some exploration of Setting, Character, or Theme rather than players simply hurling rules at each other.

Is that specific enough, or should I narrow it down more?

Jonathan Walton wrote: Both Mike and Fang's comments on character representation were very interesting, I thought. Mike's thoughts on how hands/decks are limited views of characters (since not all options are available at once) was a good one, but Fang's counter that they represent opportunities also seems valid. Another option would be to consider the hand to be the possibilities that the character is able to think of at that moment. Hindsight might reveal better choices, but often times you can overlook some things.

Le Joueur wrote:

Jonathan Walton wrote: Is that specific enough, or should I narrow it down more?

More, more, all this says to me is any 'role-playing game' not heavily into conflict simulation.

Mike Holmes wrote: ...What I'm looking for is a way to use the advantages of cards to make a better enumeration in some way.

For instance, to make the game as good as Hero Wars, you'd need at least a Cultural Keyword card (and I'd want racial ones as well), an Occupation keyword card, a Magic keyword card, and ten assorted abilities (perhaps these can be made into "background" cards where you get several on one card. So we're looking at quite a few cards. Say at least six. At which point a sheet is looking quite nice, unless there's something else cool going on with the cards. So, what can we do to make cards a viable option for this sort of depth?

INWO does some cool things. The relationship of the cards to each other on the table says something about them....

My point is that there are neat things you can do with cards. As such, they could be made into a cool and unique form of character enumeration. But simply using them to list single abilities or sets of abilities just seems like a waste of cards to me.

Yep, Fang, I think that's where we're at. Can be done, but needs a vision.

MODE: Narrativism, with a little Sim thrown in (and probably, like Fang described, supported by a fairly Gamist foundation of card mechanics)

Jonathan Walton wrote:

MODE:

Narrativism, with a little [Simulationism] thrown in (and probably, like Fang described, supported by a fairly Gamist foundation of card mechanics)

...or the players could simply share narrative power over the entire story (with no GM), or both.

Is that better? Worse?

Changing the interpretation of cards from characteristics to opportunities makes sense, but at the same time it gets away from the core idea of representing characters with card decks. That's because opportunities are akin to situations, and cards representing situations are a natural and commonplace mechanism. (Situations are usually perceived as serial, like draws from a deck; characteristics tend to be seen in parallel, like the stats on a character sheet.)

A tableau of cards looks like a fertile middle ground between the serial and the parallel cases, but there are some issues. If the tableu can only change by means of individual card draws (whether directly or channeled through a buffer i.e. a hand), then really it's become a serial situation again. And the timing seems odd: if the cards in the tableau represent options, the change seems too slow ("My character should be able to __ but the card hasn't come up") and if they represent characteristics, it seems too fast (Munchkin, anyone?).

If the cards represent opportunities entirely in the metagame (that is, with no mechanism to match them to a current game state), then a Donjon-like game should be possible in which the situation must be narrated to retroactively justify the opportunity. For example playing a "cliff climbing" ability (really, an opportunity) it means a cliff must be narrated into existence. The difference from a Whimsy card or a Once Upon A Time card is that the opportunity is resolved for success or failure. Perhaps stakes cards must be played simultaneously with the opportunity card. Stakes could be just about any kind of card -- a resource, a relationship, or perhaps even another opportunity, as long as the narration justifies it/them as such. Then other players could play cards (and narrate appropriately) to add their own stakes, or to influence the resolution. Ah, I see the Universalis connection more clearly now.

- Walt

Hey Walt,

wfreitag wrote: Changing the interpretation of cards from characteristics to opportunities makes sense, but at the same time it gets away from the core idea of representing characters with card decks. That's because opportunities are akin to situations, and cards representing situations are a natural and commonplace mechanism. (Situations are usually perceived as serial, like draws from a deck; characteristics tend to be seen in parallel, like the stats on a character sheet.)

A tableau of cards looks like a fertile middle ground between the serial and the parallel cases, but there are some issues. If the tableu can only change by means of individual card draws (whether directly or channeled through a buffer i.e. a hand), then really it's become a serial situation again.

I did it this way:

There is your deck, your hand, the field, the discard pile, and your little pile if front of you. That consists of cards that work with the cards with your deck. It is your equipment, basically. There is a row for weapons, armor, and equipment. Obviously this could be manipulated, by summoning a flame dagger, having that sword kicked out of your hand, or that quill destroyed etc. ( I have no idea how this is going to work.) These cards will be Role Playing derived, and will have specific rules for interacting with other cards.

I think that the first part of the duel will be setting up your stats. Then there will be the battle between decks, and then the resoluiton. It should be fully funcitonal as a CCG, without any RPG elements, also.

Jonathan Walton wrote: Consider these three points:

1) The one thing that I really liked about Magic:TG and some of the other CCGs from the fad-era was the ability, if you so desired and if you had enough money/cards, was the ability to give a deck a specific personality/feel. People used to (and I assume, still do) talk about "themed" decks or those that used a specific card-combination as the basis of it's killing power.

2) Seperately, the Changeling-based cardgame that White Wolf produced, Arcadia, tried very hard to reproduce tabletop roleplaying by having cards that represented various character traits. Together, a group of cards would repreent a character, their abilities, their magical powers, their weapons and equipment, etc.

3) If you look at Dragon Dice or other similar collectable dice games, often time a single die will represent a character, with each side being a different part of their combat abilities, generally. So, you roll a sword or a boot-to-the-head or fire-breath or whatever.

Dragonstorm looks pretty interesting, although I have only had the time to scan it today.

How 'bout this idea, to tie in to some self expression. you character is a deck, you draw 6 cards at the start of the session; the six aspects detailed on them are the powers available to your character in that session. (... or that scene... hmm).

Or, a character has categorised abilities - physical mental etc. at the most basic, tune to genre taste. The player deals a number of cards into these slots, depending on a rating (say rating 3 puts three cards in the draw) and get to choose which slot in which category a drawn card fills.

Variations: functionally different types of cards, sub-decks, draw a card as conflict turn structure, introducing and removing cards from play etc etc. Could enslave the Cash Cow to RPG, one set of card RULES could be used with more than one set of printed cards. Hell, rules could be ON cards.

The downsides: takes up a lot of space if laid out which is Bad; this also mitigates potential portability which derived from physical form. Characters may not behave consistently in sequential sessions; breaking sessions would need to be consciously controlled.

sorry, typing too fast to be coherent, but I do think this idea has potential.

DragonStorm is a brilliant example of a poorly-designed card-based RPG. (I say this from a fair amount of Actual Play experience.) The cards are simply used as a substitute for a character sheet; in fact, a miniature character sheet is a necessary supplement to the cards, so it's not even a complete substitute.

The only function of the cards is to constrain the elements that may be incorporated into a character (or a scenario--there are GM cards as well) to those cards that you have purchased, i.e., to suck money out of the players.

Thanks Seth.

This has been my point all along. This is exactly how not to do a CCG RPG. The cards must be used in some fashion that makes it useful for the enumeration to take the form of cards. Gareth and Walt both have some ideas that start down the right sort of roads.

Mike