Fortune Cards in gameplay

[thanson02]

What I was thinking might be a MORE interesting card-based mechanism was along the lines of the Despair Deck that WotC published along with Gloomwrought and Beyond. Now, imagine there could be both positive and negative cards, in a sort of continuum, so you could have a beneficial effect, nothing, or a baneful effect at any given time. Maybe you could move down one notch, from beneficial to neutral as a plot coupon. Some situations could also impose a negative shift (like being in the Shadowfell for some period of time). There would obviously be a way to move up as well. Perhaps achieving a milestone, accepting a complication, etc would work that way. When you get a good or bad card, simply draw one from either the despair or inspiration decks, depending. Different decks could be devised for different environments.

I did see a home-brewed website involving the Feywilds that took the idea of the despair deck and came up with a Bright Beauty deck that works the same way. I was also talking to my wife and what we thought was interesting was that since you see the effects of different planes in the books when you read them, like the Abyss, to come up with additional cards (or charts) the can be used to represent the different effects that can happen when player characters get exposed to either those Realms or beings from those realms.

Here's the website for the Feywild home-brewed material if folks are interested:

http://www.neuroglyphgames.com/the-next-dnd-4e-homebrew-bright-beauty

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[thanson02]

The concept of random luck cards that generate unpredictable flavorful effects not just dicey stuff is not bad.

Agreed.

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[AbdulAlhazred]

I did see a home-brewed website involving the Feywilds that took the idea of the despair deck and came up with a Bright Beauty deck that works the same way. I was also talking to my wife and what we thought was interesting was that since you see the effects of different planes in the books when you read them, like the Abyss, to come up with additional cards (or charts) the can be used to represent the different effects that can happen when player characters get exposed to either those Realms or beings from those realms.

Here's the website for the Feywild home-brewed material if folks are interested:

http://www.neuroglyphgames.com/the-next-dnd-4e-homebrew-bright-beauty

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Yeah, I think I remember seeing that once, a while back. Thx.

What I'm thinking is, there's a 'good' effects deck, and a 'bad' effects deck, or at least each plain/region/whatever has a deck that is divided into positive and negative effects. You could pick one randomly every day, as with the Despair Deck (which could be good for you) or, as I outlined, different ones could be acquired via some sort of 'Inspiration' mechanism. Both things could happen too.

A place like the Shadowfell would probably mostly be negative effects, the Feywild might be more mixed, though classically each effect there might be a two-edged sword. Maybe the idea of getting a positive effect could be changed to something like "Draw three cards, replace your current card with whichever one of the three you like" whereas a negative would force a blind draw. It still might actually work out to your benefit at times, but it would be risky.

Anyway, the same sort of options could work with the more tactical cards the OP was talking about too. There's nothing mutually exclusive about these ideas. In fact some of the tactical 'discard this and get a benefit' cards could be perfectly good for "you got something cool just by being here" or accepting some negative consequence of a character quirk or some such.

 

[Kelvor Ravenstar]

I agree the fortune cards weren't enough of an impact to work for anything except Encounters, but for bigger effects you can get a lot of inspiration from this thread:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?271730-Purple-Index-Cards-On-the-Fly-Setting-and-Plot-Collaboration

I have Microsoft Word files for my decks if anyone is interested. I found I could print them fairly well to 3 x 5 " index cards, and then cut them down the middle. My deck files are created with that size in mind.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree the fortune cards weren't enough of an impact to work for anything except Encounters, but for bigger effects you can get a lot of inspiration from this thread:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?271730-Purple-Index-Cards-On-the-Fly-Setting-and-Plot-Collaboration

I have Microsoft Word files for my decks if anyone is interested. I found I could print them fairly well to 3 x 5 " index cards, and then cut them down the middle. My deck files are created with that size in mind.

Cool. Sounds interesting!