[Design] New Base Mechanic

[Curufea]

Did I mention my card mechanic?

The cards - http://curufea.livejournal.com/268636.html#cutid1

>From my blog - 
I had another idea this morning about a roleplaying system. I
recently looked at the Masterbook series and it's use of cards (the
MasterDeck) and dice. Also some reviews as to why it failed - the
mixture of cards and dice being a prime reason, as well as the
confusion of cards.
So I thought maybe it would work if it was more like Fudge and didn't
use any dice at all.

Then I came up with the concept that a card should have at least two
skill categories on it, a big advantage for one, and a minor for the
other.

And only cards are used for the system - no dice.

What we have is a classification for skills and skill difficulties
based on level, and success is determined by the character's skill
and a card played.

Skill levels-
Unskilled, Amateur, Skilled, Professional, Advanced, Elite, Olympic,
Superhuman, Godlike

The difficulties would be expressed in the same way (ie doing the
electrics for a house would be Professional, but soldering together a
kit would be skilled or amateur, whereas changing a lightbulb would
be unskilled).

Compare your skill to that needed to get the success level. I figure
the levels should probably be-
0 - Bare minimum success with side effects (ie shorts the electrics
and overloads a component or two)
1 - Bare minimum success (takes the largest time to do)
2 - Average success (in the average time, with average result)
3 - Good success (reduced time or resources)
4 - Very Good success (very reduced)
5 - Excellent success (almost supernatural)
6+ - Supernatural success (not used in many genres, but could be
applicable to some).

I'm assuming that a card will always be played if the person has one
available, and the minimum card is a +1
So, an Amateur doing an Amateur (or Elite doing Elite etc) job would
get a 0 level success (bare minimum with side effects) - unless they
play at least one card on it.

The skill categories are :
Social - for interaction, communication, leadership and other social
skills
Athletic - for climbing, dancing, combat, jumping etc.
Academic - for the sciences, puzzle solving, programming etc.
Combined - for skills that combine more than one of the above types
(such as many professional skills) and misceleanous skills.

So it's just necessary to give a broad category to the skills you
want to use, and a level at which the character has it.

I figure the cards would have two parts, except for a wild card which
has four.
In general a card will list the category, and the plus. There are two
specials though-
Heroic - if played for that skill, you achieve an Excellent success
(level 5) no matter what the difficulty was, or your skill (unless it
is a different genre, where you may get either a level 3 or level 6+
success)
Auto - if played for that skill, you achieve a Bare Minimum (1)
success, no matter what the difficulty or skill level.

The cards would have 12 combinations-
Soc/Ath, Soc/Aca, Soc/Comb, Ath/Soc, Ath/Aca, Ath/Com, Aca/Soc,
Aca/Ath, Aca/Com, Com/Soc, Com/Ath, Com/Aca

And there would be 10 cards for each combination.

The cards would be-
# of cards	Skill Category 1	Skill Category 2
1	Heroic	+1
2	Auto	+1
3	+4	+1
4	+3	+2


Wild card: +2 Soc, +2 Ath, +2 Aca and +2 Com - there would be 12 Wild
cards (probably).

It also brings in some metarules-
The more experienced your character, the more cards you should be
able to have in your hand (ie if using a level based system, the
higher the overall level of the character).
The better your teamwork or leadership skill, the more you should be
able to trade cards with other players (ie for every point in the
skill, you can trade 1 card per scene).
The more specialised your character, the more cards you can play at
the same time on the same task resolution (ie if you have a
specialisation in swords for the rapier, if using a rapier you could
play two cards for task resolution).

Cards are only redrawn once per scene - because it then becomes a
question for the player of when they should expend their resources.
Rather than relying on luck (ie, a plot won't be ruinded by
exceptionally bad, or exceptionally good rolls - luck is no longer a
factor).

I've only got a few problems with this-
1) It is a level of abstraction that would require a great deal of
work to write up case applications for it. For example, you would
need to write up what level of success equals what type of wounding
in combat. Or what level of success (and what level of skill) is
needed to lift a car, or other very heavy object (if it fits the
genre)
2) I haven't got a name for the system.
3) I probably need to look at the system longer than one really
boring meeting of doodling the initial ideas down.

Peter Cobcroft
curufea at yahoo.com
Main: http://www.curufea.com/


		
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