Would this work as a system?
Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
I played with the idea of something similar, even to the idea of Stress that are do-nothing cards that take up your deck. I had problems integrating "I want to run up the chair+table to jump up and swing on the chandelier to land at the top of the stairs blocking them."
Having a deck like that seems great for a boardgame type, but with the freedom of RPGs I think it constricts play. There was a feel sometimes in earlier editions that you could only do something special if you had a power/feat/feature that allowed it, and I feel a deck of "everything they can DO" would be an even stronger block against an "off-book", improvised, non-standard, move.
In the end, for me I determined it would work better for a boardgame type then for an RPG and put it into that design notebook instead.
One of the big advantages of the deck idea was that you didn't always have to opportunity to pull various tricks and such. For example, in 3.5 you could make a tripper who was amazing at tripping, and could trip at any time. The idea that it's only sometimes you have the opportunity when someone isn't watching their footwork to easily trip, or throw sand in their eye, or something else was an idea I liked that the cards seemed to handle in psychologically acceptable ways.
I have experimented with ideas about a deck as a random number generator, where you are choosing you card(s) and playing facedown, and then both side reveal at the same time. Do you want to bring out your highest, etc. "Passive" checks were against a random draw, so no control but didn't deplete your hand. With the suits representing certain types of approaches (sneaky, flashy, etc.) that if they matched how the character's action there was a bonus of some sort - another reason not to always pick your highest. The advantage here was that the approaches were the types you could use in all pillars of play so the cards were not limited to combat.
I also thought about the face cards representing opportunities, so they were currency to unlock special moves like tripping and the like.
Having a deck like that seems great for a boardgame type, but with the freedom of RPGs I think it constricts play. There was a feel sometimes in earlier editions that you could only do something special if you had a power/feat/feature that allowed it, and I feel a deck of "everything they can DO" would be an even stronger block against an "off-book", improvised, non-standard, move.
In the end, for me I determined it would work better for a boardgame type then for an RPG and put it into that design notebook instead.
One of the big advantages of the deck idea was that you didn't always have to opportunity to pull various tricks and such. For example, in 3.5 you could make a tripper who was amazing at tripping, and could trip at any time. The idea that it's only sometimes you have the opportunity when someone isn't watching their footwork to easily trip, or throw sand in their eye, or something else was an idea I liked that the cards seemed to handle in psychologically acceptable ways.
I have experimented with ideas about a deck as a random number generator, where you are choosing you card(s) and playing facedown, and then both side reveal at the same time. Do you want to bring out your highest, etc. "Passive" checks were against a random draw, so no control but didn't deplete your hand. With the suits representing certain types of approaches (sneaky, flashy, etc.) that if they matched how the character's action there was a bonus of some sort - another reason not to always pick your highest. The advantage here was that the approaches were the types you could use in all pillars of play so the cards were not limited to combat.
I also thought about the face cards representing opportunities, so they were currency to unlock special moves like tripping and the like.
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