Doccit
2015-07-12, 08:05 PM
Hi everyone. I am working on a system that uses cards instead of dice and I'm in the very early stages of development. My motivation was to replace the skill check. Considering that skill checks simulate almost every task players might engage in in most games, a dice roll has always felt a little mechanically light to me. I wanted to create something more gamey. Right now the fun in the roll comes from the suspense primarily, and I wanted to add things like press your luck to supplement that suspense. This lead me to cards. Here is how I think it might work.
The basic mechanic:Every player has their own deck of cards, with ten in their hand at a given time. Lets say one wanted to jump over a gap. The GM might rule that it takes 20 hearts to do so. The player puts down cards from their hand until they've put down a combined value of 20 hearts cards, at which point they succeed. If they don't have enough in their hand to do the task, they can either quit (in which case they never made an attempt in the first place) or discard cards in their hand to draw new ones.
They can discard more than one card at once, but of course the number of cards in a deck are limited and getting your full deck back requires a long rest, and when you have no cards in your deck you are essentially exhausted and useless. Each time you discard (you can discard multiple cards at once) you accumulate a failure point, which you can spend after you've succeeded. In this case it might be things like you clear the gap but you land funny and hurt your ankle, or you clear it but a health potion falls from your belts as you jump and you lose it, or both. The player chooses which penalties they get, and if you accumulate enough failure points you simply fail the task. The number of failure points you can accumulate varies from task to task. Face cards can't be used in skill checks normally, but are used to power spell and spell like abilities.
There would be a book of common tasks with pre-prepared things to buy with failure points and costs, and things which might be considered contests in other games (for example, beat a noble NPC at chess) would just be tasks that work like what I described above. Each suit represents a different attribute: Fitness (hearts; a mix of strength and constitution), Poise (diamonds; charisma), Coordination (clubs; dexterity), and Aptitude (spades; for using tools).
Additional Measures:With the additional complexity of normal skill checks I have taken measures to reduce the amount of skill checks you would make. A common property of a tool or ability from a class would allow you to automatically succeed at certain tasks. Knowledge skills and traditional attributes like intelligence and wisdom have been absorbed into a new knowledge system. Players get areas of knowledge, at different levels. Each level allows them to ask certain questions about objects related to their area of knowledge and have the GM answer truthfully. For example, someone knowledgable about architecture could ask "how old is this building?" or "which of these columns are supporting columns?" This is more flavour than anything but after the GM gives the answer, they should ask the player how their character knows that and they can answer things like "those columns have their paint chipped at the bottom, indicating stress" or "the architectural style matches 100 years ago for this area, and the vines gripping the building have to be at least 80 years old"
The Combat MechanicsEach round everyone puts down two piles of one or more cards face down; an attack pile and a defence pile. When putting down multiple cards in either pile, they must all be of the same suit. The round then proceeds in initiative order, with everyone having the opportunity to declare an attack and change their battlefield position during their turn. When an attack is declared, the attacker flips up their attack pile, and the defender their defence pile. The attacker and defender add up the total value of their cards and the higher one wins, with the defender winning a tie. The loser discards their cards, and the winner returns them to their hand. If the attacker wins they also deal damage. If the defender wins they can put down a new set of defence cards. Instead of putting down number cards, you can put down a face card, which wins automatically against the same suit but loses against other suits. An ace can be played with number cards and adds +1, but adds the automatic-win property of a face card. If the attacker and defender both put down a face card of the same suit, the defender wins.
I like this because it adds a lot of avenues for abilities and items to influence while still being on its face a fairly entertaining card game. Each weapon will have a description for the kind of attack it is making when a different suit is used, which is designed to correspond to the attribute of the suit. So for example, a short sword attacking with diamonds (poise) would feint before attacking, when attacking with clubs (coordination) would do a series of light thrusts, attacking with hearts (fitness) would be a powerful slash, and attacking with spades (aptitude) would involve following up a light slash with an attack using the hilt. I might make it so that armours have descriptions for how you defend when using various suits.
Weapons and armours also provide bonuses specifically to attacking or defending with one or more suits, along the lines of "when attacking with hearts, add +3 to your total attack strength". For example, a warhammer, would probably have a big bonus to a fitness (heart) based attack, but a sizeable penalty to a poise (diamond) based attack. I've never used a warhammer but I imagine faking an attack with one wouldn't be easy.
Also notice that specialization might make characters very dependent upon one suit at the expense of others. This makes having more general talents advantageous first of all, which I like, but also there will be plenty of opportunities to take abilities that say things like "when making a check that primarily uses hearts, you may treat one card that isn't a heart as a heart" or "discard three cards; choose a card from your discard pile that is a heart and return it to your hand"
EDIT: I've so far been trying to keep the thread limited to ways in which cards have an effect on gameplay, but I figure that while I'm asking for advice I should run a few of the other mechanics I'm hoping to implement into the game by you guys.
Character CreationRight now I am thinking that fundamentally player abilities will come exclusively through feats. I like the freedom that this offers, but traditionally the problem with such systems is overwhelming the player with choices. I've got a few ways to deal with that. First, at the first level everyone will choose a "path", which determines their starting gear and gives them a few feats. There will be around 6-10 choices and a make your own path option. Presenting creating your own path as an option allows freedom for those that would want it while making setup easier. I am thinking that path will determine almost everything about your character at the first level.
Next, rather than at the second level opening everything up, here is how I will restrict choice: each item/item group (an example of an item group would be claymore, longsword, and flamberge. Relatively similar items.) will have a number of feats associated with it, and you may only select a feat if at the time when you level up, you have one of its associated items on your person. Now, the players don't have to look through books and books to make sure they are making the optimal choice. But it doesn't significantly restrict choice, because you chose to bring the items you did into the dungeon with you. They'll be a somewhat restrictive encumbrance system to support this.
PositionI mentioned earlier that you can alter your position on the battlefield on your turn and I didn't really go into what that meant. I'll start by saying that I prefer gridless combat (it can be a lot simpler to track and in many ways more immersive). I've tried to implement it many times before in different games but I always run into corner-cases that massively inflate the rules. The problem was that I was trying to perfectly emulate combat on a grid without a grid. In this attempt I've been more relaxed about positions being more fluid and less precisely defined. Anyway enough of all that.
The battle has a front line where the melee is happening, and each faction (usually a battle has two factions; the players and the monsters) has a back line. You can't move to a faction's back line while that faction has at least member in the front line (unless you are with that faction of course). You can only attack people on the line that you are in unless you've got some kind of ranged attack, in which case you can attack any line. On your turn you move from the front line to the back line, vice versa, or from the back line to far away from the fighting (you are nolonger in combat)
That is the basics. The rest is handled by abilities or special circumstances. Here is an example of each.
This battle is taking place on a hill. The players are downhill, and the monsters are uphill. This means the monsters get +1 on their attacks and the players get -1 on theirs. The downhill faction by taking some collective action at end of the round (they can all pass their turn, make some kind of skill check, and if they succeed they are now uphill)
A scout has an ability that allows them to sneak to cover in the middle of combat. When they are in cover, ranged attacks against them get -1, right after they make it to cover they can make a ranged sneak attack against anyone they please.
People with leadership abilities might have the ability to move their entire line over to some special kind of terrain. There are lots of avenues for terrain to have an impact, but the ability to use a terrain to your advantage comes from feats. And terrain effects can be present at the beginning of the battle by the GM.
Buyable Experience PointsThe idea is that you can spend a lot of money after an adventure living it up for several days and gain exp for it. This does two things. One, it adds a lot of flavour and sense to the world. No longer will adventurers wear millions of gold worth of armour and sleep in the dirt because they are too cheap to pay for an inn. Some nights they'll be too poor to afford a hotel, but others they'll be downing bottles of twenty year old brandy and hunting foxes with princes. It makes the world make more sense, and wealth seem like a thing worth having in the world. Especially because in the worlds I like to build there aren't going to be troves of magic items littered around for players to purchase. Which brings me to the second function: it is a wealth sink. It is fun in adventures to find lots of treasures, but it is not good to be forced to build worlds where there is always more expensive weapons and armours worth spending your treasure on. Now there is always something to spend it on: frivolous pleasures that for the characters that don't feel pointless to the player. Maybe it doesn't make the most sense that fox hunting and brandy swilling makes you a better adventurer but in my opinion the narrative benefits outweigh the narrative costs.
I'm looking to improve these mechanics in any way I can before I move forward with the project, and nothing is sacred. All help is appreciated. Thanks in advance!
The basic mechanic:Every player has their own deck of cards, with ten in their hand at a given time. Lets say one wanted to jump over a gap. The GM might rule that it takes 20 hearts to do so. The player puts down cards from their hand until they've put down a combined value of 20 hearts cards, at which point they succeed. If they don't have enough in their hand to do the task, they can either quit (in which case they never made an attempt in the first place) or discard cards in their hand to draw new ones.
They can discard more than one card at once, but of course the number of cards in a deck are limited and getting your full deck back requires a long rest, and when you have no cards in your deck you are essentially exhausted and useless. Each time you discard (you can discard multiple cards at once) you accumulate a failure point, which you can spend after you've succeeded. In this case it might be things like you clear the gap but you land funny and hurt your ankle, or you clear it but a health potion falls from your belts as you jump and you lose it, or both. The player chooses which penalties they get, and if you accumulate enough failure points you simply fail the task. The number of failure points you can accumulate varies from task to task. Face cards can't be used in skill checks normally, but are used to power spell and spell like abilities.
There would be a book of common tasks with pre-prepared things to buy with failure points and costs, and things which might be considered contests in other games (for example, beat a noble NPC at chess) would just be tasks that work like what I described above. Each suit represents a different attribute: Fitness (hearts; a mix of strength and constitution), Poise (diamonds; charisma), Coordination (clubs; dexterity), and Aptitude (spades; for using tools).
Additional Measures:With the additional complexity of normal skill checks I have taken measures to reduce the amount of skill checks you would make. A common property of a tool or ability from a class would allow you to automatically succeed at certain tasks. Knowledge skills and traditional attributes like intelligence and wisdom have been absorbed into a new knowledge system. Players get areas of knowledge, at different levels. Each level allows them to ask certain questions about objects related to their area of knowledge and have the GM answer truthfully. For example, someone knowledgable about architecture could ask "how old is this building?" or "which of these columns are supporting columns?" This is more flavour than anything but after the GM gives the answer, they should ask the player how their character knows that and they can answer things like "those columns have their paint chipped at the bottom, indicating stress" or "the architectural style matches 100 years ago for this area, and the vines gripping the building have to be at least 80 years old"
The Combat MechanicsEach round everyone puts down two piles of one or more cards face down; an attack pile and a defence pile. When putting down multiple cards in either pile, they must all be of the same suit. The round then proceeds in initiative order, with everyone having the opportunity to declare an attack and change their battlefield position during their turn. When an attack is declared, the attacker flips up their attack pile, and the defender their defence pile. The attacker and defender add up the total value of their cards and the higher one wins, with the defender winning a tie. The loser discards their cards, and the winner returns them to their hand. If the attacker wins they also deal damage. If the defender wins they can put down a new set of defence cards. Instead of putting down number cards, you can put down a face card, which wins automatically against the same suit but loses against other suits. An ace can be played with number cards and adds +1, but adds the automatic-win property of a face card. If the attacker and defender both put down a face card of the same suit, the defender wins.
I like this because it adds a lot of avenues for abilities and items to influence while still being on its face a fairly entertaining card game. Each weapon will have a description for the kind of attack it is making when a different suit is used, which is designed to correspond to the attribute of the suit. So for example, a short sword attacking with diamonds (poise) would feint before attacking, when attacking with clubs (coordination) would do a series of light thrusts, attacking with hearts (fitness) would be a powerful slash, and attacking with spades (aptitude) would involve following up a light slash with an attack using the hilt. I might make it so that armours have descriptions for how you defend when using various suits.
Weapons and armours also provide bonuses specifically to attacking or defending with one or more suits, along the lines of "when attacking with hearts, add +3 to your total attack strength". For example, a warhammer, would probably have a big bonus to a fitness (heart) based attack, but a sizeable penalty to a poise (diamond) based attack. I've never used a warhammer but I imagine faking an attack with one wouldn't be easy.
Also notice that specialization might make characters very dependent upon one suit at the expense of others. This makes having more general talents advantageous first of all, which I like, but also there will be plenty of opportunities to take abilities that say things like "when making a check that primarily uses hearts, you may treat one card that isn't a heart as a heart" or "discard three cards; choose a card from your discard pile that is a heart and return it to your hand"
EDIT: I've so far been trying to keep the thread limited to ways in which cards have an effect on gameplay, but I figure that while I'm asking for advice I should run a few of the other mechanics I'm hoping to implement into the game by you guys.
Character CreationRight now I am thinking that fundamentally player abilities will come exclusively through feats. I like the freedom that this offers, but traditionally the problem with such systems is overwhelming the player with choices. I've got a few ways to deal with that. First, at the first level everyone will choose a "path", which determines their starting gear and gives them a few feats. There will be around 6-10 choices and a make your own path option. Presenting creating your own path as an option allows freedom for those that would want it while making setup easier. I am thinking that path will determine almost everything about your character at the first level.
Next, rather than at the second level opening everything up, here is how I will restrict choice: each item/item group (an example of an item group would be claymore, longsword, and flamberge. Relatively similar items.) will have a number of feats associated with it, and you may only select a feat if at the time when you level up, you have one of its associated items on your person. Now, the players don't have to look through books and books to make sure they are making the optimal choice. But it doesn't significantly restrict choice, because you chose to bring the items you did into the dungeon with you. They'll be a somewhat restrictive encumbrance system to support this.
PositionI mentioned earlier that you can alter your position on the battlefield on your turn and I didn't really go into what that meant. I'll start by saying that I prefer gridless combat (it can be a lot simpler to track and in many ways more immersive). I've tried to implement it many times before in different games but I always run into corner-cases that massively inflate the rules. The problem was that I was trying to perfectly emulate combat on a grid without a grid. In this attempt I've been more relaxed about positions being more fluid and less precisely defined. Anyway enough of all that.
The battle has a front line where the melee is happening, and each faction (usually a battle has two factions; the players and the monsters) has a back line. You can't move to a faction's back line while that faction has at least member in the front line (unless you are with that faction of course). You can only attack people on the line that you are in unless you've got some kind of ranged attack, in which case you can attack any line. On your turn you move from the front line to the back line, vice versa, or from the back line to far away from the fighting (you are nolonger in combat)
That is the basics. The rest is handled by abilities or special circumstances. Here is an example of each.
This battle is taking place on a hill. The players are downhill, and the monsters are uphill. This means the monsters get +1 on their attacks and the players get -1 on theirs. The downhill faction by taking some collective action at end of the round (they can all pass their turn, make some kind of skill check, and if they succeed they are now uphill)
A scout has an ability that allows them to sneak to cover in the middle of combat. When they are in cover, ranged attacks against them get -1, right after they make it to cover they can make a ranged sneak attack against anyone they please.
People with leadership abilities might have the ability to move their entire line over to some special kind of terrain. There are lots of avenues for terrain to have an impact, but the ability to use a terrain to your advantage comes from feats. And terrain effects can be present at the beginning of the battle by the GM.
Buyable Experience PointsThe idea is that you can spend a lot of money after an adventure living it up for several days and gain exp for it. This does two things. One, it adds a lot of flavour and sense to the world. No longer will adventurers wear millions of gold worth of armour and sleep in the dirt because they are too cheap to pay for an inn. Some nights they'll be too poor to afford a hotel, but others they'll be downing bottles of twenty year old brandy and hunting foxes with princes. It makes the world make more sense, and wealth seem like a thing worth having in the world. Especially because in the worlds I like to build there aren't going to be troves of magic items littered around for players to purchase. Which brings me to the second function: it is a wealth sink. It is fun in adventures to find lots of treasures, but it is not good to be forced to build worlds where there is always more expensive weapons and armours worth spending your treasure on. Now there is always something to spend it on: frivolous pleasures that for the characters that don't feel pointless to the player. Maybe it doesn't make the most sense that fox hunting and brandy swilling makes you a better adventurer but in my opinion the narrative benefits outweigh the narrative costs.
I'm looking to improve these mechanics in any way I can before I move forward with the project, and nothing is sacred. All help is appreciated. Thanks in advance!