Lace & Steel did card-based rpg combat in '89, and I'm not convinced that was the first.
True originality is probably a fools errand. Greg Stafford already had all the ideas before today's designers were born.
I dont think the "first to use cards" it was makes the system special. You can also use cards just as dice replacement which brings pretty much nothing mechanically different.
What makes some card examples special is how they use the cards.
His Majesty the Worm has a very unique card based system. The cards go beyond just replacing dice rolls. It's really cool.
Can you explain it? What is different, how does it work?
Warhammer Fantasy 3e has a very unique system, to the point where most people refused to get their heads round it and it was a commercial flop.
I genuinely believe WFRP 3e was just about 15 years ahead of its time.
I so regret I missed that. I even planned to play with friends this one and then the class I wanted was not available (did not got the components) and then I never played it and I think the friends not long because of all the bad things said about it... And I only really heard much about it after it was no longer available. (I would love to buy PDFs from it or better a digital version!)
I really think that was great and it was (similar to D&D 4e) just too early. Now with more young RPG players and people with experience in other games, people are more open to good components and more modern gamedesign.
I loved 3e, really felt like it was something special, unique and game-changing in the hobby. Rules on cards were a huge hit with my players, even if we had makeshift components.
But the detractors wore me down and eventually soured the game for me. It was very “cool” to hate that system at the time.
A few years later, one of my friends who was a major vocal hater of 3e (he was a Games Workshop employee) gushed about this new fangled Star Wars RPG with cool narrative dice and wondered why I wasn’t open to trying it.
I kind of wanted to punch him.
Even this sounds exactly like what happened with D&D 4E XD
Spellbound Kingdoms uses a literal action grid, where you must activate a series of maneuvers around or across the grid to either take actions, go on the defensive, or use a special combat skill like spell casting.
Fighting grids are on a per-fighting style basis. Enemies get their own fighting styles with special maneuvers, based on whether they are individual enemies or mobs, or can use a PC fighting style grid when appropriate.
Abilities are die-step like Savage Worlds, but have a different scale for advancement and "exploding" dice.
This sounds really cool, can you give some examples in how this might look like? ITs a bit hard to imagine.
Lack of Innovation
Its cool to see some interesting examples, but my impression from the answers kind of just enhances my feeling that most RPG combats are just really really not innovative and mostly just a repetition of the same mechanics.
It mostly just comes down to simple "action selection" + "rolling dice" and then the innovation are mostly really just mini innovation in this. (As can be seen with the answers, even mine with Beacon, its mostly really small things like "you use different dices" or "you only roll once instead of twice" etc.) which for me in the end feels sad. There are soo many mechanics out there (like here:
https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic ) and most RPGs use like the same 4.
Boardgame combat example which could be adapted
I know this is about RPGs, but there are some RPG-near boardgames of which the combat could be adapted to RPGs, similar to what the gloomhaven RPG does. And I would like to mention some really unique combat systems. Some of them might need more adaption (like simplification etc.) but still its things I would love to see in RPGs over "oh just roll these special dice its really easy" kind of "innovation".
Simultaneous action selection
For me, the most innovative is Burning Wheel... script 3 actions each, then resolve with the opposed actions grid. Mouse Guard is a simplified variation....
It's convoluted... and uses a table. But it works really well for certain kinds of melees.
Lets start with this, since this reminded me about Burning Wheel and inspired me to this answer. I do like the idea of simultaneous action selection and then comparing the actions. (I even made once my own game with hidden 3 action selection before I knew Burning wheel for a university class).
For me the masterpiece in this design is the
XCEED System here a short explanation
- Its a dueling system so only 1 vs 1 (so not fit for everything but other RPGs (even the Avatar one...) have also dueling based systems
- You have abstract range between the fighters. So like a 1D line. Both characters can walk forward and back on it. (And with special actions even pass one another), so the distance between you and the enemy character matters and is from 1 to 8 I think
- One player is always the active player and can intiate an attack, if you do both players select hidden an attack
- Attack have iniative values higher initiative goes first.
- The first attack happens always, the second only if it was not disrupted.
- Attacks have damage but also defensive values, armor which reduces damage and guard which withstands damage.
- If your damage is higher than the enemy cards armor+guard you disrupt that attack (if you go first)
- Attacks have certain ranges, and when the enemy is too close or too far away they miss.
- And many attacks let you move as part of it. So it can verry well be that a fast attack lets you evade the enemy slower stronger one.
- Combats take a bit long as they are, but the base system could be well adapted to RPGs especially since in swordfighting etc. range also really matters a lot.
And here more details:
A really clever
group vs group simultaneous action selection game is
Guards of Atlantis II:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/267609/guards-of-atlantis-ii
- Each character only has 5 different attacks, but they can be improved/exchanged
- Attacks have initiative and everyone plays their attack hidden at the same time
- Then attacks resolve in initiative order (alternating between teams in case of draw)
- There is no luck involved (except which team originally is first in case of a tie), but cards can be used for several things (as movement or as attack (which might also have movement)
- After 4 turns attacks are returned to hand.
- If you take a hit you need to discard a card (with defense value equal or bigger than the damage) or get KO
- This system would need to be a bit adapted for RPG, but the teamwork to make 1 enemy be in a bad situation where 2 people can easily attack it to make them lose more cards than they have is great gameplay.
Clever use of "hitzones"
One sometimes hears about "hitzones" in deadly RPGs, but one of the clever uses of
enemy hitzones in a combat system I have seen is in
Sleeping Gods:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/255984/sleeping-gods
- Enemies are mostly defined by their hitzones, they have a base damage and a base evasion, but the rest is the hitzones.
- Enemies are dead when all their hearts in the hitzones are gone.
- When you attack an enemy you can "mark" 1 hitzone per damage you deal (you normally deal 2-4 damage so small numbers)
- After you have attacked an enemy, it attacks back, if its still alive.
- Some hitboxes have other symbols than health,
- this could be damage increase ("strike symbol" or status effects/additional effects
- they inflict when attacking (Weaken, envenom, -1 morale etc.)
- or it could be other passive effects (like regen, healing at end of round by that amount, or increased evasion, wings (can only be attacked with ranged weapon) etc)
- Some boxes need 2 or more damage (inflicted in a single attack) when they have 2 symbols, or some symbols need 2 damage by their own.
- Some boxes have small "crystals" which grant you a ressource you can use for special abilities (you can see it as morale if you want)
- When you attack a monster for X damage you start in a box deal damage to it, and then if you have more damage go to a neighbouring box and so on until you have no damage left.
- Here there is a lot of unused gamedesign space, which could be used in an RPG implementation. Like different weapons having different "patterns" like horizontal, vertical or diagonal slashes etc. making weapons/different attacks feel more different.
- And now one really clever part: Monsters are standing next to each other, so the cards are positioned next to each other. When you attack a monster half the damage you inflict must be inflicted on the monster you attack, but you can also deal damage to monsters next to it (like the grids are connected), with this you can weaken some monsters before attacking them. This also means positions of monsters matter
- After each round all monsters would attack. So its important to kill or weaken them effectively.
- Sleeping Gods was a bit too suspectible to the alphaplayer syndrom, however, I think it could be a really cool base for an RPG and this combat can be done GM less and still is interesting without really needing too many special abilities (but there is possibility for many) and even just players deciding in which order they attack makes a big difference.
Simple item based combat with the BEST looking maps
Stuffed fables for me was a real surprise:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/233312/stuffed-fables it is quite
simple so you can play it with people who do not have too much experience playing and even with kids, but it can still be fun with people with experience and it has sooo
good looking maps not just brown top down but colourfull with perspective
And the combat system makes good use of it in a quite novel way which also enforces teamplay:
- At the beginning of every players turn they draw from a bag 5 dice.
- There are 4 colours + joker (+ white + black dice in the bag)
- Black dice is to activate enemies (which could be left away in a game with a GM) and white dice provide healing, this could also be left away
- On your turn you can use the dice you have in order to do actions.
- Each player can store 1 dice on their character sheet, so that one could also be used in addition to the up to 5
- The 4 colours of dices stand for the 4 different stats and certain actions require a certain colour dice, but all can be used for moving or for defense
- You can gift dices to other players (they have the 1 spot to store it) in case they need specific colours
- For tasks with difficulties (Doing a skill check, or attacking) you can use several dice at the same time and roll them together.
- Moving can be done 1 by 1 with dices
- Certain obstacles have colours and need coloured dices to go over them (like red for strength to climb or often green for agility for jumping etc.)
- For attacking you use a weapon you have, which has a colour (normally red for melee or green for range) and use dices of that colour (or joker) to attack and the weapon normally gives a bonus to hit roll (and has range and or other special abilities)
- Defense is active, if you are attacked you can roll a dice you have stored and reduce damage by the rolled amount, if you have no dice you take full damage, so its good to give other players dices to defend themselves)
- There are several successors like https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/281946/aftermath which uses cards from a deck instead of dices. Here you can gift cards to others and keep cards for other turns, but you only draw up to 5 with the cards (but this also means less black cards drawn for enemy attacks).
- So there are several improvements/variants one could use. One could even use customized decks etc.
Push your luck
There are some RPGs which use
push your luck, like using black jack as resolution mechanic, but I think the clever system from
Living Forest could be really well adapted into an RPG
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/328479/living-forest even though its not used as a combat mechanic in the original game:
- In the game you reveal cards with 5 different symbols on them until you have 2 black cards. Then you can decide to take a risk (and reveal more cards 1 by 1) or stop.
- If you draw a 3rd black card then you pushed too far. And you can only do 1 action in your turn instead of the normal 2, however, the symbols from the 3rd black card still counts and black cards have normally more symbols than normal cards.
- Here how cards look: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/6445332/living-forest
- The more symbols of the same kind you have the stronger the action associated with the symbols.
- However, you can only do 1 action per type in your turn. So if you only have many symbols from 1 type, well them the 2nd action might not be too useful anyway.
- One of the symbols stands also for defense, and when your defense is too low (when an "attack" happens at the end of the round) you take 1 or more "wounds". A black card with no symbols which get mixed into your deck the next time you reshuffle.
- You can only get rid of a wound by using a specific "luck token" which costs 1 action to get. And they can also be used to discard black cards.
- I think this system could be really cool in an RPG having 4 symbols standing for Fire, Water, Wind and Earth and 1 Symbol for initiative (and maybe another or the same symbol also for concentration)
- At the beginning of the fight the GM says the initiative of the enemies. Each round if you beat the initiative (have more symbols) you get your turn before the enemies, else after them.
- The nice thing is that the push your luck/preparing can all players do at the same time so no downtime here.
- Each element stands for certain types of attacks. And the more you have the stronger the attack you can do. For magic this is clear, but you could even use these elements for a sword fighter. Wind is fast attacks, Earth is heavy attacks, Fire is risky attacks and water is flexible attacks.
- Leveling up would mean customizing/improving your deck. (This is a deckbuilder there you improve your deck as you play, but in an RPG this could be over several games).
- You could have also a "buff" action using focus symbol, which would allow you to put a strong card (many symbols) on the top of your deck, preparing for the next turn and improving you for the whole fight. (The decks are not too big / not too many black cards (5) so you get every 2-3 turns through your deck)
- Different enemy attacks could need different elements to defend (normal attacks need earth (armor), but some might target reflex (wind) or will (water) or fortitude (fire))
- Items could get improvement like permanent symbols, or new attacks or improve damage of specific elements etc.
I think this could be a really really cool combat system! And in general I think many boardgames could be great inspirations for RPG combat, finding new mechanics not just "roll dice to see if success/how good success".
