[Homebrew] Cards > dice

[loverdrive]

What it says on the tin.

The inherent issue I see with dicerolls is that they generate randomness after the fact, and, combined with consequences for failing the roll, it makes rolling low stats a bad idea.

A Cutter with 3 Skirmish and 0 Consort is going to avoid ever rolling for Consort unless really hard pressed (which is unlikely, there probably will be someone with better stat around) or it's really low stakes (in which case, who cares anyway). It leads mostly to calcinisation of characters into whatever they are good at. Risk avoidance and all that.

So what I'm proposing: cards! And with just a little elbow grease, dice can be painlessly replaced with cards in almost any system.

UNO cards are great for it — they are already just numbers. Remove all the picture cards (or numbers that can't happen on the dice you are replacing) , shuffle a couple decks together and voila! At least anything up to D10 is emulated one-to-one, D20 would require some workarounds like playing two cards together.

So the advantages:

1. You can strategize around your hand, consider your next move, weight the utility of leaving high cards for defence vs spending them on actions
2. You can play around with simultaneous resolution, to add the component of yomi (reading your opponent) into the game — you can feint an attack and make the opponent waste a high card when a low one would suffice, for instance. I would advise against incorporating suits/colors, unless you make them unequal and orthogonal in effects.
3. You now can attempt actions you wouldn't do otherwise. A Cutter can attempt to diffuse the situation instead of always relying on a specialized Face character for social interactions, for one

The way I adapted it to Blades is very simple: whenever the rules tell you to roll dice, play a card from your hand instead. Then, draw a card for each dice you'd normally roll. Then, discard to four.

Works like damn clockwork. Made the game much, much deeper than it was before, and added nice texture where PCs do their bread-and-butter expected actions to generate resources, and then spend those resources where it matters.

 

[The Firebird]

Fun idea. It seems to me it would increase the power level of the PCs in a significant way. And especially would interact with the push yourself & devil's bargain mechanics, which seem less useful because the benefit is tossing a bad card rather than increasing your odds of success.

In typical play, pushing yourself on a skill of 1 increases your odds more than pushing yourself on a skill of 3. But now the benefit is the same in both cases--you draw more.

 

[Koloth]

I think you left out the part about dealing the cards out to each player to form a supply hand. At least your advantages imply each player has a hand vs drawing the unknown top card for each die 'roll'.

Assuming player hands, interesting idea. One possible downside is if a combat(or other encounter) goes long, players may expend all the good likely to succeed cards and the next several rounds are fail, fail, fail, fail until all the low cards are expended. Could also see a player getting a crap hand and trying to avoid any encounters until the next redraw. If you know all cards left are no higher then a 4, probably a bad idea to engage an encounter if you can avoid.

 

[Deset Gled]

With dice, a proficient player can calculate odds and know something about the probability of a success. But the outcome will always have a randomness to it.

In this system, a proficient player counts cards instead. If they see all the 8s and 9s played early, the know that later tasks will fail until the deck is reshuffled. Other variants of gaming the system abound. For example, one player could intentionally horde 1s to ensure they don't get shuffled back in.

IMNSHO, that kind of prescience and control is not good for the game or the story. YMMV.

 

[loverdrive]

Oh wow I don't remember writing this post. Insomnia, huh.

 

[loverdrive]

Fun idea. It seems to me it would increase the power level of the PCs in a significant way. And especially would interact with the push yourself & devil's bargain mechanics, which seem less useful because the benefit is tossing a bad card rather than increasing your odds of success.

Pushing/taking devil's bargain is much better used on effect under this system, yeah. Although, benefits of pushing yourself for a card with 0D is immense -- it turns going down in cards to staying neutral.

I suppose it's different from normal card game economy, where you probably don't have any bad cards in your deck, but still, having cards is better than not having them.

Assuming player hands, interesting idea. One possible downside is if a combat(or other encounter) goes long, players may expend all the good likely to succeed cards and the next several rounds are fail, fail, fail, fail until all the low cards are expended. Could also see a player getting a crap hand and trying to avoid any encounters until the next redraw. If you know all cards left are no higher then a 4, probably a bad idea to engage an encounter if you can avoid.

I don't find it to be a downside, if anything, that's something I'd explicitly want.

As a player, I feel like my approach to the game barely changes as it goes on, and "oh, now I need to avoid taking risks until I stabilize my hand" feels pretty great.

The thing I'll need to grapple is that right now some cards are just strictly better than the others, and I'd want to give the player a reason some utility for low cards, but jury is out on this one for now.

With dice, a proficient player can calculate odds and know something about the probability of a success. But the outcome will always have a randomness to it.

In this system, a proficient player counts cards instead. If they see all the 8s and 9s played early, the know that later tasks will fail until the deck is reshuffled. Other variants of gaming the system abound. For example, one player could intentionally horde 1s to ensure they don't get shuffled back in.

IMNSHO, that kind of prescience and control is not good for the game or the story. YMMV.

A proficient player should get better results than a non-proficient one. Players engaging with the game and strategizing is good, certainly better than just looping their most likely to succeed action over and over.

And for the story, it allows for interesting character expression that just isn't possible with dice. If I'm sitting on a high card to spend it on, say, impressing my character's love interest, it shows intent. The character deems this important and does her best to succeed. Or vice versa, if I throw out a low card when, say, saving my heirloom relic from being buried under an avalanche, it would strengthen her arc of realizing that family is people and not trinkets.

Also: if we look at the fantasy literature, it mostly revolves around gambits. Hero is biding their time, keeping an ace in the hole, and then dramatic reveal! You are a fool, Prince Gaynor the Damned, you walked into my trap!

Having a literal ace up your sleeve seems to emulate such structure pretty well.

 

[Retros_x]

Players engaging with the game and strategizing is good, certainly better than just looping their most likely to succeed action over and over.

I still dont understand how the cards stop a player doing exactly that? A PC that is good at athletic skill and bad at social skills will still choose the athletic action most times, now he just plays a card instead of rolling a dice? But now he can actually count cards and wait to use special actions that deplete resources until he gets a high card... For me its too much meta game if the players do that instead of focusing on roleplay.

I also don't like it from a perspective what the dice represent at least in D&D: They represent circumstances the players cannot influence and randomness. Their own skill is represented by their numbers and ability scores. I assume PCs always try to achieve the best result, but sometimes that is just not enough. With the cards they now can influence destiny, luck and external circumstances to a certain degrees. They know now to not try a risky action if they don't have a good hand too.

Another more practical point to consider: it makes the game more complicated. Now you have your hand of cards to consider too when weighing actions and choices.

But I can see the fun in it, I might be trying it in a beer and bretzel dungeon crawler game. But I expect PCs to get stronger than usual for the reasons the other commentors and me wrote.

 

[loverdrive]

I still dont understand how the cards stop a player doing exactly that? A PC that is good at athletic skill and bad at social skills will still choose the athletic action most times, now he just plays a card instead of rolling a dice?

Because you aren't relying on random chance to succeed, if you have high cards you can spend them on actions that otherwise would probably fail.

It would work even better in a system where stats give bonuses to a roll (as opposed to dice pool size, like in Blades) -- an athletic character will be able to spend low-ish cards to still succeed on athletics checks, and save high cards for stuff they aren't particularly good at.

Like, let's say you have Athletics +7 and Persuasion +0. Against a standard DC 15, any 8+ card would be a success for an Athletics check. Since skill checks are binary pass/fail, using 15 for an athletics check would be a waste: you are losing an option to successfully use Persuasion for no gain whatsoever.

If you have high cards, you have a lot of options, including those that are beyond your normal specialization -- you might try to defuse the situation peacefully, and only resort to showing your brawn when cornered (hold only low-ish cards).

With a normal D20 roll, I personally would avoid ever rolling Persuasion and bank on 25% of success, and let a charismatic bard do the talking, unless really really hard pressed.

But now he can actually count cards and wait to use special actions that deplete resources until he gets a high card... For me its too much meta game if the players do that instead of focusing on roleplay.

I don't think engaging with mechanics of the game and roleplaying are in any tension. One can pretty easily focus on roleplaying while also counting cards. If anything, I myself do a pretty bad job at roleplaying when I'm bored and have nothing to chew on.

I also don't like it from a perspective what the dice represent at least in D&D: They represent circumstances the players cannot influence and randomness. Their own skill is represented by their numbers and ability scores. I assume PCs always try to achieve the best result, but sometimes that is just not enough. With the cards they now can influence destiny, luck and external circumstances to a certain degrees. They know now to not try a risky action if they don't have a good hand too.

Sure. You gain some, you lose some. I think this sense of randomness is a reasonable price to pay for more depth.

On the other hand, cards would allow to model things that are pretty hard to model with dice, like feints. Say, if we replace static AC with some sort of active defense with simultaneous card reveal. I'm a level 5 Fighter with two attacks per turn. I make my first one, you play your high card to defend yourself, but ha! it was a feint, I played a 1, making you waste a good card on a dud!

Is my next attack going to be real? Or maybe I'm bluffing and I don't have any good cards at all, poking and probing at your defenses to create an opening? Keeping your cool and not leaving oneself exposed is an important part of fencing, and there's just no real way to convey such a feeling with dicerolls.

Another more practical point to consider: it makes the game more complicated. Now you have your hand of cards to consider too when weighing actions and choices.

Yes, but I think it's a good kind of complexity. It makes the game deeper, and also isn't particularly taxing. You are literally holding cards in your hand, there's nothing to forget like with some fiddly situational modifier rules.

 

[Retros_x]

Yes, but I think it's a good kind of complexity. It makes the game deeper, and also isn't particularly taxing. You are literally holding cards in your hand, there's nothing to forget like with some fiddly situational modifier rules.

Why would modifier be removed too? I thought we are talking about removing only the dice part of conflict resolution, but now you want to remove modifier too?

Say, if we replace static AC with some sort of active defense with simultaneous card reveal. I'm a level 5 Fighter with two attacks per turn. I make my first one, you play your high card to defend yourself, but ha! it was a feint, I played a 1, making you waste a good card on a dud!

That is indeed a pretty cool idea - for a game where we have both a roll for attack and defense. I tend to not like these games in general, so its not a plus for me. But for those games a cool idea indeed.

I don't think engaging with mechanics of the game and roleplaying are in any tension. One can pretty easily focus on roleplaying while also counting cards. If anything, I

What I mean is that the game is less "what would my character do" and more "Ah finally my barbarian can be eloquent with that 20 I drew" or "I will not cast a spell right now, even if the situation is dire - but I only have low cards". For me the focus switches too much on the meta and game. But I think we just have different preferences in TTRPGs here. I prefer rules light systems where the focus is on the narrative and the roleplay. Introducing more gameplay complexity that pulls away from focusing on "in-narrative decision making" and more into "gameplay decision making" is nothing for me and everybody who consideres this homebrew needs to be aware of this impact.

 

[loverdrive]

Why would modifier be removed too? I thought we are talking about removing only the dice part of conflict resolution, but now you want to remove modifier too?

I mean there's annoying kind of complexity, where rolls have a lot of different small modifiers that constantly change. Oh, you are on a high ground, that's +2, your enemy is a goblin so it's -1, oh, wait it's Tuesday so this -1 doesn't apply....