54 Swords

[the_taken]

54 Swords
This is a card based combat system I developed after reading a thread about how many card based battle systems fail. Plenty of hyperbole, but much of the rants are accurate. This one, of my design, is a direct card for battle system, with a very vague similarity to "Yu-Gi-Oh!". Very vague.
It uses two standard decks of 54 cards each, one deck for each side of the battle. You can have complicated three way battles by adding another deck for another side.

When a fight scene begins, draw five cards, look at them and place three face down in front of you as your defence options.
Randomly determine which side goes first by cutting each side's deck. Highest goes first (Joker>A>King). Then have each side determine their order. Alternate having a player from each side go. If your opposing team outnumbers you, pick start the order again and keep alternating.

On your turn you have the must either:

* take a card from your hand and place it face down in front of you as a new defence option* take a card from your hand and place it face up in front of your opponent, to attack them* Draw one or two cards from your team's deck. If your hand is empty, you must draw two cards.

Resolving Attacks: An attack is declared when an opponent places one his cards face up in front of the defender. The defender then either chooses to turn one of his defence options face up, or discard an already face up defence option. If the attacking card is higher, the defender discards a number of cards from his team's deck equal to the difference between the attacking card and the defence option used.
A player leaves the fight scene in defeat (or death) when he is attacked and has no cards in his team's deck, or when his hand is empty and can't draw at least one card.
The face value of Royal Cards is 10, and the Ace is worth 11.

Attack Action: Placing a card face up in front of an enemy.
Defence Option: A face down or face up card infront of the owning player. A defence option is used in response to an attack option. A face down defence option is turned up when used. A face up defence option is discarded when used.

Joker Card: If your playing with Jokers, they perform differently.
As a defence option, you discard a Joker when you turn it face up. You discard no cards when you use a joker, and your opponent discards a number of cards equal to the face value of the card used to attack.
As a attack action, you choose the defence option for your opponent, and they discard a number of cards equal to the face value of the defence option used.
If a player attacks with a joker, and the defence option used is also a joker, both players discard their hands and all their defence options.

Creating a Character: Each character begins play with a number of abilities agreed apon before hand by the gaming group.

Vampiric Heart: When you attack with a Heart, every card the enemy discards is a card you put back into your team's deck from your discard pile.*Stoic Heart: When you use a Heart defence option and discard no cards, put a number of cards from your discard pile back into your team's deck equal the amount your defence beat the attack.*Piercing Spade: When you attack with a Spade, your enemy discards twice as many cards from his team's deck.*Spaded Shield: When you use a Spade defence option and discard no cards, your enemy discards a number of cards from his team's deck equal to the amount your defence beat the attack.*Stunning Club: Immediately after you use a club to attack, your enemy uses up a defence option to do nothing.*Clubbing Shield: Immediately after you use a Club defence option, your enemy discards a card from his hand.*Diamond Strike: When you use a Diamond to attack, you may choose which defence option your enemy will use.*Diamond Shield: Before an ally declares his defence option, you may offer him the use of one of your Diamond defence options, if you have any.

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Since this game resolves the outcome of a fight scene as opposed to any realistic combat, there is no set flavour or setting. This game can support any vague choreography ranging from swashbuckling pirates, to planet smashing super saiyans. Go on, try it!

[the_taken]

[blockquote=Luminous Crayon]Could we get a link to the thread that inspired 54 Swords? The one about why card-based systems fail?[/blockquote]

Oh, where was it. Hmmm... Interesting. It's gone.

Oh well. I'll summarize: Many CCGs, like MtG and Yu-gi-oh, suffer from their fetish with summoning entities that persist until removed. Summoned monster stay until they meat a more powerful monster or a card that makes a monster go away. Remove all the cards that deal only with creatures and you end up with a very bland a predictable game. These games run on the assumption that the controlling character which the deck represents never participates in the conflict, instead directing other creatures and effects. This is reflected in the combat mechanics, as the combat resolution of these entities is extremely basic. In MtG, a the better creature wins every time. This removes the character from the conflict and makes his presence meaningless.

Another problem is the fact that all of these games are supposed to be Trading Card Games first, so there's a near endless desire to create rare and unique card to make people fight over, and hoard for later. Every now and then, a new set of magic cards is released, with a different theme and new rules from the last one.
To have a card based RPG, and follow the same model, you would have to print a card with the rules for the ability on the card, and print a copy of the card for every use of the ability you would want in a deck. Then you need a deck for every entity that would participate. Imagine trying to set up a wandering orc raiding party. You would have to go out and buy a "Orc Raider" deck for every orc raider that would appear in a battle. If you wanted an "Orc Warlord" or a "Blue-eyed Beholder" you would have to either go and buy one of those decks, or buy hundreds of booster back to try and get the cards with he right theme. A good thing is that coming up with new monsters is easy. Just grab a bunch of cards and call it a Smeargle deck.

A few related threads I found:
A card-style system of spellcasting
and Reposted, because I know Frank could appreciate it a thread about a CCG that failed utterly.

The final inspiration for 54 Swords came from a post by FrankTrollman HERE
[spoiler]

Player characters are like story characters. As such, giving them more than about 10-20 powers is usually counter productive. So you can very easily imagine a system in which characters have 2-4 abilities that they can activate by spending a card of an appropriate type. Players should usually have some kind of choice, and players should definitely have something to do with every kind of card.

Having players able to read their powers all the time by putting them on their character sheets is more valuable than having players able to read the powers they can use next round by having them printed on the cards themselves. As such, putting the abilities onto cards isn't merely expensive and annoying, it's genuinely counter-productive. The hands of players may change several times between their turns, and players should be able to check on what their powers do all the time, not merely when an ability is currently in-hand.

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So every character needs:

* Club Abilities* Diamond Abilities* Heart Abilities* Spade Abilities

Each of those abilities are usable on precisely one fourth of all cards. You could make the game more tactically approachable by having all Club Abilities be force-based, all Diamond abilities be Finesse and so on (so you'd want to load a Giant's hand up with any Diamonds you had, for example).

You can then institute additional cross-suit options for special cards:

* 3/13 (just shy of 1/4) of the cards are Face cards (Jack, Queen, King)* 1/13 of the cards are Aces (or any other specific card you think is important).* If you leave the Jokers in, you can have some Wild cards, which substantially increase the odds of getting whatever it is that you want or need.

As for defenses, I think it best if you set aside a certain number of cards face down as your defense options, and then revealed them when you were attacked. Putting a Diamond there would allow you a Finesse defense, for example, which would tweak off your own agility and be good against certain attack types. If you set aside more defense cards, you'd have more defensive options, but less attack options.

I figure that you should get a new hand at a specific time rather than whenever you burn through your cards. If that leaves you defensively running around or shaking yourself off, so be it.

-Frank

[the_taken]

I've notice a fairly disturbing pattern in my play style. Every card below 8 stays in my hand. I've never used one as an attack or a defence option while I could draw from the deck. They're just too much of a risk.
I don't attack with low card cause I know a high heart or spade will be a defence option. I don't defend with them, cause I know a high will be there, and I won't use the low card. I know that there will be a high card available to my opponent cause; potentially two high cards available to me next time at the cost of not using my low card now.

Another problem is the huge benefits of defence. The solid strategy is to keep drawing cards and putting out 10s and higher out as defence options. If a character chooses any defence ability, it benefits him more to play a defence card, even if he also chose the same offence ability. With club defence, you crush you opponent's hands, with spade defence you punish him for attacking you, and with heart defence, you can just sit there and never run out of cards to draw.

As it stands, there is no reason to ever use low cards or even attack. And this is on top of the large occurrence of 10 (4 10s per deck, plus each Face card is set to value 10)

Possible solution: low cards (2, 3, 4) can be used at the same time as other cards to increase their face value. That is, you can have use an 8 defence option and use a 4 from your hand to get a one up on an Ace. Or throw an 8 and a 2 as an attack action to see if you can beat a 9, or tie with a 10 (which can have a 2, 3, or 4, attacked to it anyway). Alternatively, these low card could only be attached to Face cards, making them a more expensive but more effective option that throwing an Ace out.
In either case, you would normally only use the suite ability of the primary card, not the attached low card.

Thoughts?

[Haphazzard]

I just saw this thread, and I'm very intrigued.  It reminds me a lot of Monster Rancher.  Where, if you run out of cards in your deck to draw from you lose.  However, what they did was have attack cards and defence cards, and at the beginning of your hand you would discard hands and those would count as "guts" (points that would be spent to use cards, stronger cards used more guts).  The catch was that you always had to have 5 cards in your hand at the beginning of your turn.  So, if I discarded 2 and used 1 defence card I would draw 3 cards at the beginning of my next turn.  

Some Ideas

You could do something Monster Rancher, where they have to have a certain number of cards at the beginning of their turn, that way penalizing using multiple cards for an attack ("attacking quickly is taxing on your stamina" or something like that is a good reason).

You could have each player have one defence and one attack ability and make some suits opposites.  That way they gain a bonus for using that ability, but take a small negative for the opposite (an attack with the opposite suit could make them put discard 1/2 as many cards from their deck as normal).  This would make choosing your opponent a little more important, but not vital.

Have each player choose a suit to be their primary suit (and maybe even a secondary suit) and base more abilities off of that. [spoiler=example]

Attack of Opportunity - Whenever an opponent links multiple cards for an attack and one of them is of your primary suit, you may draw one card off the top of your deck and deal 1/2 of it's value directly as damage.  This ability does not stack with other abilities such as Piercing Spade. [/spoiler] [/list]

Some Questions

When defending, do I get to look at my face down cards before I choose which one to defend with?

[the_taken]

Some Ideas

You could do something Monster Rancher, where they have to have a certain number of cards at the beginning of their turn, that way penalizing using multiple cards for an attack ("attacking quickly is taxing on your stamina" or something like that is a good reason).

Something similar is happening now, if card combos can be used. Remeber, you can choose to draw cards anytime, but you must draw cards if you have an empty hand. So spamming card combos will tax you deck faster. I have a couple of new rule ideas that I think work very well, to both add more tactical complexity and resource managment issues.

You could have each player have one defence and one attack ability and make some suits opposites.  That way they gain a bonus for using that ability, but take a small negative for the opposite (an attack with the opposite suit could make them put discard 1/2 as many cards from their deck as normal).  This would make choosing your opponent a little more important, but not vital.

I'll need to think about this...

Have each player choose a suit to be their primary suit (and maybe even a secondary suit) and base more abilities off of that. [spoiler=example]

Attack of Opportunity - Whenever an opponent links multiple cards for an attack and one of them is of your primary suit, you may draw one card off the top of your deck and deal 1/2 of it's value directly as damage.  This ability does not stack with other abilities such as Piercing Spade. [/spoiler][/list]

The whole point of selecting the abilitites was to create characters that wear relevant Suites. I want to come up with more relevant abilities that you may choose to use that are tied to a suite, gaining more suite releated options as your character becomes more powerful and has the base abilities that a required.

Some Questions

When defending, do I get to look at my face down cards before I choose which one to defend with?

Yes.

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Royal Card (Jack, Queen, King) no longer have a face value of 10. You may use them alone as either a defence option (with a face value of 0) or an attack option that doesn't have your ooponent use a defence option to "Move" your character to a different place. Characters cannot be affected by opponents in a different place. This allows for the tactical option of swahbucklers dueling on a ship's poop deck to jump onto the main deck or try to climb up some ropes. Or whatever.
Royal Cards can also have an additional abiltiy added to them. Select an ability form a list (still in prototype form) and it is now associated with one Royal Card type (J/Q/K). When you use a numbered card (2-A) with the same suite as a Royal Card, you may use them both at the same time and benefit from the special ability. You may only add a Royal Card to an attack action from your hand, and may only add a Royal Card to a defence option used if you have the Royla Card availabe as a defence option.

The abilities:
Strategy: Look at "some" cards at the top of your team's deck and put "some" into you hand and the rest on top of your deck in any order. (I haven't figured out the exact numbers yet)

Seperate Duel: "Move" you and the opponent to a different area.

Perfect Negation: [Defence Only] With the exception of the Royal Card used, all effects of this turn do not occur. The attack card goes back to the hand, the defence option either un-discards or flips face down, and no cards are discarded from decks or put back in.

Synergy: Any card you would discard this turn instead goes into you deck, except the royal card used.

Stunning Performance: The next time the affected opponent has a turn, he does nothing.

Sweet Suite: [Heats, Clubs, Spades only] Double the effect of the suite ability.

Death Blow: [Diamond Attack Only] If this attack beats the defence option used, the opponent is immedietely removed from then fight. No cards are discarded from the opponents deck, and his hand and remaining defence options are returned to it instead.

Calvary: [Diamond Defence Only] If this defence option beats the attack action, a new teammate joins the user's side of the battle. He/she draws 5 cards, as if the fight has just started, and is next in the turn order of your side.
This new teammate is either a player that isn't participating in the battle, or an NPC. A named NPC will probably be pregenerated with abilities, but random namelss NPCs won't have any.

Sneak Attack!: When a teammate uses an attack option with the same suite as the relevant Royal Card, you may use it and a numbered card of the same suite to perform a special attack action aggaint the same opponent your teamamte is attacking. Your opponent doesn't get to use a defence option aggainst this special attack.

[the_taken]

Looks like the movement system I'll be using is Phonelobster's Big Fat Squares.

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Unless you're using a face card, you would normally only use one card at a time, whether it's a defence option or an attack action. As some of you may have noted, really low cards are never used when you have the choice of using the higher cards. Here's some new ability. Quite powerful if you sacrifice your deck drawing many cards.

Gambit: When you use a low card (2,3,4) as an attack action or defence option you may use up to two more low cards from your hand and add their value to the first card used to determine the power of your attack action or defence option respectively.
Alternatively, when you use a medium card (5,6,7) you may use a single low card as above.
In either case, draw another card afterwards.

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Now all I need is a universal method to determine how ranged attacks and area attacks work. Any suggestions?