Here is a question (and I’m shocked I haven’t been able to find an actual answer to this): has anyone messed around with using a standard deck of playing cards instead of dice to run the game? What sort of tweaks did you have to make to do so? Was it successful?
Here is a question (and I’m shocked I haven’t been able to find an actual answer to this): has anyone messed around…
Here is a question (and I’m shocked I haven’t been able to find an actual answer to this): has anyone messed around…
Spitballing:
The GM draws a single card. The player draws 2 + the relevant stat in cards
– If the player has a higher card of the same suit, it’s a 12+
– if the player has a higher card of the same color, it’s a 10+,
– if the player has a higher card, it’s a 7-9
– otherwise, it’s a 6-
If you don’t want GM randomized difficulty, then perhaps:
The player draws 2 + the relevant stat in cards
– if the player has 2 or more red face cards, it’s a 12+
– If the player has a 2 or more face cards, it’s a 10+
– if the player has a 1 face card, it’s a 7-9
– otherwise, it’s a 6-
Brendan Conway and I have been working on a deep hack of AW called Zombie World that uses cards instead of dice. We’ll hopefully have something out this year that should give folks some cool stuff to work with along these lines!
Aaron Griffin Interesting. Why would you go for # of draws vs a straight up value + attribute? I realize that the card value ranges might force a slight modification of the roll ranges, but it seems more intuitive, no?
I ran the numbers on a blackjack based system. Each player has a deck. For any “roll” you draw two cards and then can “hit” as much as you want. Where you stop determines the outcome:
22+ is a failure
21 is a crit
20 is a success
17-19 is complications
16- is surrender (you don’t get what you want, but a softer move from the GM)
Stats reduce the threshold for success, complications and surrender. E.g. a 2 in a stat would mean you could stand at 18 for a success.
I never got further than that, but the stats would have each been linked to a suit and given some additional bonuses if the suit was in your draw. Your health would have been your deck size. When run out of cards you’re down. Taking damage would have burnt cards off your deck, healing allow you to shuffle your spent cards back in.
The interesting thing about this is that single deck blackjack gives you a pretty good opportunity to count cards and judge your relative success chances. If your deck is running high on face cards, it might be a good opportunity to try something far more risky than you would do otherwise. Never got to playtest it but I think it could be made to work. Feel free to use as you wish.
Tom Harrison because cards have multiple features on each card and using just the numeric value is sort of a waste
A modified deck built from two full decks could model it exactly:
36 cards, as follows:
2, Q: 1 each
3, J: 2 each
4, 10: 3 each
5, 9: 4 each
6, 8: 5 each
7: 6 (total)
A real neat way to run the game would be to lay these out in four rows of 9, face up. When you make a move, instead of rolling dice, you choose a face-up card and flip it over.
When the last card is flipped over, turn them all face up again.
If you break for the end of the session, collect up all the cards, keeping the face down ones down and the face up ones up and rubber band them together, with the jokers face up on top of the face up cards so you remember which is which.
Optional Extra Game Wonkery
Instead of simply refreshing… The story ends either when the fiction demands it, or when there are no face-up cards left available.
If it ends when the story demands it, the number of face cards left on the table (Jacks and Queens) is how much bonus XP everyone marks. If the story ends when the cards run out, the GM makes a move after the players have narrated the conclusion.
For Single Short Sessions
Instead of laying all 36 cards on the table, randomly deal four cards per hour of play, so deal eight cards for a two hour one-shot. If they run out, deal four more (repeat as needed).
Thanks for the thoughts everyone. I’ll be straight with you, I have a deep seated love for Castle Falkenstein and TSR’s old SAGA Game System. Given PbtA flat curve, I figured it should be simple to adapt a card-based resolution mechanic to it with minimal changes. I was really surprised when multiple Google searches turned up with nuthin.
Tom Harrison what do you mean with PbtA flat curve? The random distribution is binomial.
In terms of cards I like the Murderous Ghosts variant.
Otherwise, I really like the domino bricks version.
Gerrit Reininghaus Ok, maybe my choice of phrasing is wrong. 2d6 with a bonus/penalty of 1-4 (trait and circumstantial) its a relatively tight range which I suspected could be applied to cards fairly easily. That’s what I meant.
Murderous Ghosts uses a blackjack style system and it’s quite good. Very effective for rising tension.
If you draw from a 52 card deck, the chance to get a face card in 1 draw is about the same as getting a ten plus with a plus 1 pbta roll. 2 draws, same as plus 2 pbta draw, 3 draws, same as plus three. Or close anyway. The 7-9 result is a little trickier. You could revise it to “8-10” number cards. But even then I think your chances of getting a “8-10” result increase too rapidly.
Not sure how to model -1 either.
.
One thing we’ve found is that removing some cards from the deck helps with creating draw probabilities you might like.
I’ve been experimenting with a little something
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bRVxgCQTiU1lmGQSz_izBJh1cILym8Aaiz94pV7pkAI/edit?usp=drivesdk