I’m experimenting with playing cards.
When you make a move, play a card. The number on the card determines the outcome of the move. The suit determines the tone of the narration. Some moves also use the suit to determine an outcome.
Kick Their Teeth In
When you attack to cause harm play a card. On a 7-9 you cause harm but you are put in a spot. Your card’s suit determines the extra effect. On a 10+ cause harm, your suit determines an extra effect, and you choose one more extra effect of any suit:
– With a Spades the harm is great.
– With a Clubs they are put in a spot.
– With a Diamonds they are isolated.
– With a Hearts their defense is shattered.
This is really cool! So do face cards do anything special, or do they just count as 11-14?
Sounds awesome. The only thing to note is that drawing a single card is pretty different from 2d6 because you don’t get the bell curve in the middle, so you’re statistically likely to get more failures and more successes than with 2d6, which is weighted towards more 7-9 results.
Giovanni Lanza
At this point they don’t do anything special, but who knows what the future holds.
J. Walton
Ooh, yes. That is an issue. I’m mostly looking at the formal element at the moment, so statistics are somewhat secondary.
Hm. Would ace through 3 = hard move, 4 through 10 = middle, face = hit work out better?
That sounds like a really cool idea. For reference, the +0 odds distribution for 2d6 is Hard Move ~40%, Middle 40% and Hit 20%. If you just run with Ace to 10 cards, it’s a pretty easy conversion; Ace to 4 is Hard move, 4-8 is a middle, 9 and 10 is a hit. This also gives you design space to do special stuff with the face cards, if you want.
Thanks to Sean Gomes for the odds breakdown! And there’s no reason you have to keep the same spread as AW, just something to think about when moving away from 2d6.
I like this idea.
Oh definitely, the spread was only for reference, not a straight-jacket in the least. Also, those numbers go out the window if you add stat bonuses.
I gotta say, this idea of cards rather than dice really got my mind going. Having a consistent tone to each suit is a super cool idea, especially if it’s reflected in the in-Move effects.
Would each player have a hand? Because that would have really interesting design space (saving your Heart card for a challenge involving emotions or interaction, observe/reload/rest/catch your breath style actions allowing you to pitch cards and draw new ones, etc)
I think project dark does something like this — I know a good hand for looting checks isn’t a good one for combat checks. I don’t know the details, though.
The mechanics for Project: Dark are outlined here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wordstudio/project-dark/posts/754738
In Dark each player has their own deck (initially only low numbers), and you spend experience points to improve it by adding higher valued cards or giving cards little bonuses.
For AW style full hit/partial hit/miss, how about full hit if you get 10+ with a single card, partial hit if you get 10+ with multiple cards, miss if you can’t make 10 (or choose not to.) For each card you play after the first, choose from a list of consequences.
Jordon Davidson — hah. And you get to draw more cards when you escalate? (DitV joke)
Jordon Davidson Interesting! In that event, face cards would also count for 10 I guess. You could even have 4 levels of success:
Success And = 1 card at 10+
Success But = 2+ cards at 10+ all same suit
Failure But = 2+ cards at 10+, different suits
Failure And = Cannot hit 10+
Juniper Jazz, this is neat! Various folks up thread already addressed the probability curve issues, which gives your design a different flavor than dice would. I might suggest you look at how we translated some of the ideas in AW to cards in Murderous Ghosts as another possible way of approaching this question. I am following with interest!
Sean Gomes re: individual player hands
That’s the intent. Each playbook has a set of suits (like Hearts, Hearts, Clubs) which they draw by default, and then they draw extra cards from other suits when some condition is met — in the case of the thing I’m working on, relationships with different people each have an associated suit, and whenever they’re in the same scene as you, you get to draw from that suit. Certain moves let you stash cards in a personal deck to retrieve later.
Jordon Davidson
Ooh, there’s something to this. It would mess with the “suit = tone” bit, but that might be desirable. The point of the different tones is to provide a sort of push and pull of tone between narrative beats and to push for a deliberate tonal whiplash in play. Like the Japanese mangas. Multiple suits could actually work for that.
Jesse Cox
Ooh, but that’s cool.
Meguey Baker I will look at Murderous Ghosts. It seems like it will be essential to developing this further.
Sub
Been down with a cold so it took me awhile to respond, but I love this idea. I like face cards as the 10+ for thematic reasons. And I’d give everyone a hand of cards for sure, let them choose what card they want to play. Then you have the suits with different meaning as you detailed for each move.
So the players are making a choice on high card and suit effect. Then throw in the random element with a GM flip card that has to be beaten. If you beat with a non-face card it is like a 7-9. If you beat with a face card, it is like a 10+.
With a hand of cards you can do stuff like track wounds as the hand size. Depending on the effect you are going for. Leads to a death spiral of sorts, but it can be like luck running out.
How is hand size determined? How are cards drawn?
Scott Lorch
Suits are separated when play begins. Leave out Jokers. So you have one deck of Hearts, one deck of Spades, one deck of Diamonds, and one deck of Clubs.
In the case of the hack I’m working on (cosmic mahou shoujo sentai manga themed), each player draws 3 cards based on their playbook (The Outsider draws “Diamonds, Diamonds, Clubs,” for example), and then gets an extra card for each character in the scene, who they have a Relationship with. Relationships each have an associated suit. A Rival gives you a Clubs, while somebody you Love might give you a Hearts.
When a new scene begins you shuffe your cards back into their decks and draw a new hand. When a character comes into the scene and you have a relationship with them, or you establish a relationship with them, you draw from the appropriate suit.