I currently work on a system that gives every player their own deck of cards. The idea being that rhe player draw instead of roll. Every player gets their own favourite cards and abilities that trigger on specific cards or card types. For example every Ace is a critical success, every club (if that’s your color) deals double it’s value.
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Have you looked at Deadlands? It’s a Western RPG system that uses playing cards. That works great for Deadlands because playing cards fit the setting, but I don’t know if that would apply to a fantasy system. Have you thought about using a Tarot deck instead to be more thematic and offer some interesting opportunities with the trump suit?
Being able to build up hands would be a plus, maybe through some kind of rummy-style mechanism where you can pick up others’ discards, etc.
Suits having areas of coverage: hearts are for physical well-being, for example, or clubs for violence, or whatever. You get the value of the card only in the area of coverage, otherwise you get a reduced value (say 1) for each card no matter what the value.
Going back to the rummy-style hand-building, combos of cards have special effects. Triples/quadruples. Runs (both in-suit or out-of-suit).
Maybe some assistance mechanism where physical cards are swapped/gifted/whatever.
That’s a great idea!
I think I’ll write down the basics of Tokyo Nova and see what I might add and change. A hand system is pretty high on that list. I am not sure if I’ll add a Blackjack mechanic for skill checks against others, what do you think?
Hmmm… Closest to but not over a target number would be entertaining, yes.
Oh fun! Push your luck maybe? Tricks? Building a specific set to build up to something big?
My basic idea is that every player plays poker with themselves in a passive way, ie every time they draw a card, they add it to their open ones and when they have 5 open cards, they get an advantage depending on their best combination, like in poker
It could be cool to use poker hands as a replacement for dice rolls in a fantasy rpg. Like instead of rolling to attack, you “attack” by having a hand which is better than three 2’s. Like the “hand to beat” acts as a difficulty class. And then you could have certain game mechanics that key off of the suits or ranks in your hand, like you crit if your poker hand includes an ace or something like that.
Edit: another option, as my card game of choice is actually Cribbage, could be to use Cribbage hand scores as a sort of roll. They already use numerical points which are distributed around 0-20 (higher for really good hands). Then you could key mechanics off of number of 15’s, whether or not someone gets the Jack of the suit, etc.
