Cards as alternatives to dice?

[Ogrebear]

Having played and run both versions of SAGA I can recommend it for anyone looking for an alternative way to play D&D.

It's fast, celver, removes a lot of the problems with life/death situations depending on a single roll and best of all Dragonlance has a fully improvisational magic system (players makes up spells as they go along) which is still balenced to fighting!

And if like me you dont like DL as writtern the system ports nicely to home made worlds.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

My experience is that this is fun as long as the player is holding cards in his hands. When you aren't holding any cards, the game is less fun. Just a metagaming concern I thought I'd toss in.

 

[kengar]

Pincale - makers of Deadlands, Hell on Earth and Lost colony... the non D20 versions use playing cards for initiative, determining stats, other weird effects and Deadlands has a poker based spellcasting system. Uses both suit and value...

I really like Deadlands - think it's a lot of fun and is great for playing wild west/horror games - captures the theme well and the rulebooks are quite funny... I'm not so keen on the other 2 systems, have balance/fun problems. YMMV.

Not to mention Pinnacle's Savage Worlds system. I really enjoy the card for initiative aspect of the game. Nothing wakes a table up like seeing that Joker land in front of a player, or the GM!

 

[scourger]

I used Blackjack for initiative in my last d20 D&D game. It was interesting, but overall it was probably more trouble than it was worth. If I did it again, I would just use the card value and count down from 21. I think this is acceptable as DEX is over-valued (affects AC, missile to hit, Ref save, many skills & feats AND Init), but my players didn't like it.

 

[Umbran]

I've seen cards used for a variety of things in a number of games. For my money, the only ones who got it right were the folks who designed Deadlands. The cards actually fit the genre there, and are used in an interesting yet simple way. Usually, though, cards are more trouble than they are worth as a randomiser. They are simply more cumbersome to use than dice.

 

[talinthas]

for a while, Dragonlance fifth age used the woefully ignored SAGA system, which used a cool card based system well suited for the storytelling style of DL.

 

[Acid_crash]

I thought SAGA was cool as well.

The idea of using blackjack is cool, but what could also be cool, at least for initiative, is to have the standard initiative modifier, then each person draws (gets) two cards. If it's red, add that to the modifier, and if black, subtract it.

 

[the Jester]

I like dice too much to switch to cards.

 

[Psion]

I haven't liked any card mechanic that I have ever seen. Some are nice in that they sort of serve as built-in tables with detailed results that are directly displayed to the GM. But the "removal of accessible results when dealt" can be a bit of a problem and many iterations I have seen invite metagaming and distract the focus from the game itself.

 

[diaglo]

I like dice too much to switch to cards.

ditto.

but i did use chits at one time when i played during school. they didn't make noise and were easy to hide. plus i left my dice at home.