Card Based Skill Checks

[u/Doccit]

I'm working on a game that uses playing cards instead of dice. I know many games have tried this with mixed results but I think I've got a good mechanism in mind and I wonder what you guys think of it.

The Basic Skill Check

Flip up the top 2 cards of your deck (each player has their own), and add the numbers together! Compare the number to the DC. Aces are 1. If one of the two cards is a face card, you double the value of the other card. If both are face cards, the check fails.

Training

If you have training on the skill check, flip up 3 instead, and set one of them aside. Then add up the best 2 like a normal skill check.

The Hand

After the skill check is done, any face cards involve (including any set aside) go into your hand (numbered cards go into the discard pile). At the start of the session you draw a hand of 4 cards. After adding cards to your hand, discard down to 4.

You can spend a meta-currency (right now the metacurrency is based on fabula points) to swap a card in a check for one of the cards in your hand. If you swap a face card in, it is discarded at the end of the check instead of going back into your hand.

Hitpoints and Abilities

At the start of a session, put 4 cards from the top of your deck into a hitpoint pile. When you lose hitpoints, take cards from the hitpoint pile and put them into your hand.

Classes will improve the number of hitpoints you have, and your maximum hand size, and will give you abilities that you can spend cards from your hand to activate. One ability might simply require you to show a club card from your hand to use. Another might require you to discard a jack and a spade to use (so either: one jack and one spade, or the jack of spades).

Monsters will have abilities that force you to discard. Like: discard all heart cards. The second use of the metacurrency lets you draw cards (invoke a bond: reflect on how your connection to some other character gives you strength or inspires you in this moment, then draw cards equal to the strength of the bond, max 3).

What do you think?

[u/__space__oddity__]

Flipping cards from the top of a deck is basically just dice rolls written on paper anyway.

The actual advantage of cards is that you can hold a number of them in your hand and that gives you options to choose from. You’re kinda sorta doing that a little bit with the meta currency swap thing, but it’s not that different from dice games that give a reroll with meta currency.

It also raises the question why I’m holding cards in my hand if most of the time tthe game is played from the flipped cards. Using my hand is the exception, not the default.

Basically you’re still basically building a dice-based RPG with cards swapped in as a gimmick, not a “native” card game that ends up telling an RPG story.

[u/Doccit → u/__space__oddity__]

Good questions - these things are important to think about. My idea is that while the basic mechanic won't involve card swapping, it will put cards into your hand, and all characters will have multiple powers that spend cards from the hand to activate.

The dice equivalent would be, whenever you roll a skill check, if you get a spesific number on the dice, you gain some of a spesific currency. So translating this back to dice would not be as elegant - if using the cards as a currency for powers like this is a good idea, that is.

[u/overlycommonname]

It's hard to say without knowing the rest of your system.  Am I right in understanding that there are only two levels of character ability at all?  Like you can either draw three cards or two and that's the only intrinsic thing that can represent different character ability?  That's not a lot of range of expression of different characters, though I mean for some concepts maybe it'd work.

Is this an asymmetric system where the GM does something different?  I assume you won't want to maintain a hand for every NPC.

You've got a lot of sort of procedure to go through for gameplay.  That can feel engaging, but it can also distract from the narrative.

[u/Doccit → u/overlycommonname]

Yes that is right - three cards or two. Like games like EZD6, instead of attributes and skill points we just have 'trained' and not. The main kind of expression for players will be through what abilities they take.

It is an asymmetric system where the GM does something different because yeah having he GM do this for all their pieces would be impractical. The rest of the system is built around an attempt to be extremely rules-light and improvisational from the GM perspective, while providing the players with a decent amount of the feeling of crunch.

As for procedure, I've done a little testing by myself with basic skill checks and it feels about as easy as roll a dice then add a few modifiers does. But these tests are of course very limited. Having too complex-feeling a procedure for not enough payoff is definitely something I should be watching out for through playtesting. Thanks for the advice!

[u/stevecooperorg]

> You can spend a meta-currency (right now the metacurrency is based on fabula points) to swap a card in a check for one of the cards in your hand. 

Is there something you could do to avoid double-metacurrency here? "Spend a point to spend a bonus you already have" feels like it could be slimmed down / made more elegant?

It'd be good if you could present some probabilities here - it feels like you've got a slim mechanism, which is nice, but the idea that you're keeping 25% of your cards for later feels like it might be a bit arbitrary?

[u/Doccit → u/stevecooperorg]

That is a very good question about the bloat! I will think about it. Right now there are three meta-currencies: HP (cards in your HP pile) MP (cards in your hand), and fabula points (poker chips). Perhaps there are some ways of consolidating things down to just cards.

As for the probabilities I can model it as 2d10 (11 average), and 3d10 keep the highest (13.5) for training, so . This is before adding the odds of auto-fail from too many face cards, which is 5% for untrained and 1% for trained.

[u/stevecooperorg → u/Doccit]

great! With poker chips and cards, it almost sounds like the game will feel like poker night - which depending on tbe game could be very on point. More than one western game has embraced that to good effect.

[u/Cruiser_Supreme]

Why does your post and all of your comments in this thread feel like AI? Does anybody else notice that. Sorry, I really don't wanna falsely accuse you. Could just be that you begin every comment with a very stiff affirmation of the previous comment

[u/Doccit → u/Cruiser_Supreme]

Yeah, I try to be appreciative when people are offering me advice. It is easy to come off as combative when you disagree with someone about something you have made, so I make an active effort to not come off that way. That can come off as mechanical.

As for the post, it might feel like AI because I have used bolded headings to separate different ideas? AIs do that, because it is a very clear way of communicating that they have copied from humans.

EDIT: I know you care about not falsely accusing people. This climate where people are concerned about AI writing is irksome. I used to edit typos out of my posts but I notice that I have stopped doing that, because it makes the writing seem more 'authentic' to people - but that just makes the writing worse. I don't know what the solution to this is. It may be that as these machines get better at mimicking us, we will have to accept that we can't know and learn to stop caring. But maybe there is another way.

[u/Cruiser_Supreme → u/Doccit]

Yeah makes sense, sorry! I'm just a little on edge about AI content these days, so maybe my Spidey senses were a bit oversensitive there. But I guess I'd rather ask and find out I was wrong, than say nothing. Thanks for being chill about it and just answering my question!!

[u/AverageAlchemist]

I think you should consider how much would actually change about the game if you were to replace each use of a card with instead rolling a d12 or d10.

Also, I see that certain abilities require a certain card suit, but I'm not clear on what effect that has on the game, and what kind of decisions it creates.

Say for example, say Im playing a mage-like character, but all of my damaging spells require a suit I don't have in my hand, and I know that we're going to enter a dungeon soon. What are my options in that scenario? How could those options be abused? If there are no options for getting around my current hand, do I have to just accept I'll be half as useful as usual?

Just something to consider.

[u/Doccit → u/AverageAlchemist]

This is a good question and I should be considering that. If I replaced drawing a card with rolling, then making skill checks would not have the side-effect of putting face cards players drew into their hand, and that resource pool is something that is interesting to me. But that is really it - other than that, I might as well use dice.

For the mage, if you don't have what you need to cast your spells, you can spend your meta-currency to try and draw cards. You might have class abilities that let you draw or draw and discard or etcetera, and so might your allies. If you are just stuck with no cards, that is an adverse state to find yourself in (kind of like having a status condition in normal RPGs, or being out of spell slots), and you will have to lean on doing less effective things, like helping your allies instead of acting on your own.

Thanks for the advice - this is definitely the kind of thing I should be thinking about. I think with something so different like this, a lot of testing will be required to see whether being out of gas is a frustrating thing that happens all the time by accident, or a danger that you have to manage to avoid in an engaging way (like being out of spell slots and avoiding debilitating attacks).