What's the Big Deal?

Last Edited: Saturday, August 30th, 7:30 AM, Korean Standard Time

Hi everyone. This is a project Dragonfogel and I have been working on for a little while now. We've finally started solidifying some ideas (though it's still extremely extremely in-progress still), so we figured we would post the rules up here and ask some people if they wanted to try and playtest some parts of it.

This is intended to be a roleplaying game that uses cards instead of the traditional dice mechanics that are seen so often. On top of that, we've added an extra aspect that makes the whole thing seem much more like a normal card game rather than just using cards to determine how well you do at something.

Every class has its own special "draw action" that affects how they can handle cards, decks, or any other crazy thing, and while these actions are thematically appropriate for each class, they don't actually have any effect on the narrative, so they play out more like a meta strategy outside of what the actual character is doing at the time.

Below are the rules, which we've tried to explain as clearly as we could without too much feedback. At the moment, we really only have basic combat mechanics and some class features. We'd love to hear any feedback as well as well as any enthusiastic shouts from volunteers. We're trying to see if the basic system we have in place right now works and feels fun to play with, so the more volunteers for playtesting the better.

New features are in RED

New features that are still in development or not yet being implemented are in BLUE


Basic Rules:

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Basic Conflict Resolution

Everyone has a "playing hand" that he or she can see and choose cards from. This number of cards in this hand is determined by a player's character class.

To do any basic action, play a card from your hand face-down. The GM or the opposing player(s) also plays a card face-down. Then everyone flips his or her card and sees who has the highest card. The highest card wins.

In the event of a tie, trump wins. If no trump was played, each player that tied draws another card from the deck and plays it. The highest card of that card then wins. In addition, Trump changes to the suit of whichever card wins.

If the defender has no cards to play in defense, the action is considered an immediate success.



Trump

To determine which cards are higher than others, the card order usually follows 2 low and Ace high. However, the trump suit follows a slightly modified order. In the trump suit, the 2 and 3s are treated as higher cards than Ace. This means that a 2 of trump can beat an Ace of any suit as well as an Ace of trump, and a 3 of trump can beat a 2 of trump.

At the beginning of the game, the “judge” (for now) flips over the top card from the deck and declares the suit of that card to be Trump. Throughout the game, Trump changes in the event of ties.



Combat Turns

Combat works in rounds, with each player taking a turn before it cycles back around to the first player. As of right now, turn order is decided by the “judge” of the game.

On each player’s turn, he or she begins by either drawing a card from the deck or performing their character class’ special draw action. After doing so, he or she may either attack or rest.

If the player attacks, he or she plays a card and follows all of the basic rules outlined above for basic conflict resolution. If the attack is successful, the attacker deals damage to the defender as per the Health and Damage Rules below.

If the player chooses instead to rest, he or she draws another two cards and forfeits the rest of his or her turn.



Health and Damage

Every player also has a number of cards laid face-down in a row in front of them that they may not look at or play. This "health hand" is used to keep track of wounds taken over the course of the game. Like a player's playing hand, the number of cards is determined by character class.

When a player takes damage from an attack or any other source of damage, he or she may either flip one of the health cards face-up, thereby taking one “point” of damage and moving closer to being wounded, or turn one of the face-up health cards on its side, thereby taking a “wound”. If the player does not have any face-up health cards, he or she must flip one over and cannot take a wound. If the player does not have any more face-down health cards, he or she must take a wound.

If a player has a wound, they are not allowed to play a card of the same number as the health card that represents that wound. If a player runs out of health cards and takes damage, his or her character collapses immediately, loses consciousness, and begins bleeding out. (we don’t have rules for bleeding out yet, so they just die instead)



Skill Actions

When attempting an action other than an attack (or a class ability), the GM must select a target number for the player to beat based on the (as yet not made) chart below. The player then plays a card, flips another card from the deck, and adds their values together. If the sum of the two cards is higher than the target number, the player is successful in his or her action.

If the attempted action is opposed - meaning another character, entity, or force of some sort is actively trying to prevent said action - then the opposing player or the GM plays a card as well. After both cards are played, both parties flip another card from the deck and add their cards’ values together. If the player attempting the action has cards of a combined value that is higher than that of the opposing entity or player, then he or she is successful in his or her action.

Character Classes:

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Every player’s character has a class that determines the number of cards in his or her playing hand, the number of cards in his or her health hand, his or her draw action, various class abilities, and many other special changes that may or may not violate the basic rules.

Later on, classes will also gain a number of specialized actions they can do by utilizing cards in certain ways or in certain combinations.

Thief

Playing hand: 2
Health hand: 3

Draw Action:

Steal

Instead of drawing a card from the deck, you may choose to instead steal a card from another player’s hand (including the GM). You may not look at the cards while attempting to steal and must steal from the last hand a character played from.

ALT:

Instead of drawing a card from the deck, you may choose to instead steal a card from another player’s hand (including the GM). You may not look at the cards while attempting to steal and must steal from the last hand a character played from.

Play a card from your hand and draw another card from the deck just as you would for a skill check. If the combined total of both cards is higher than the card you attempt to steal, then you get to keep that card and you return the card you played to your hand. The extra card from the deck goes to the discard pile. If the combined total is less than the card you attempt to steal, then you lose your played card. It goes to the hand of the player (or GM) that you tried to steal from, and the extra card from the deck goes to the discard pile. In addition, you lose your draw action for this turn.

Class Abilities:

Poison

During your turn, you may set aside cards into a separate "poison hand". This hand may be made up of any number of cards, but cannot be put into play until it has at least three cards in it.

In place of an attack, you may apply this poison hand to any other entity in range (kinda not a real thing yet). Every turn, this entity must play a card higher than the lowest card in the poison hand or else he or she or it loses a card that round. This effect lasts for a number of rounds equal to the amount of cards in the poison hand.



Fighter (currently a stand-in)

Playing hand: 5
Health hand: 4

Draw Action:

None (yet)



Priest

Playing hand: 4
Health hand: 3

Draw Action:

Pray

By forfeiting your right to draw a card on your next turn, you may at any time draw and subsequently play a card on top of another card that has been played on the table. If the card is higher than the previous one, treat it as the new card for that attack, defense, or action.

Class Abilities:

Shield

During your turn, you may set aside cards into a separate "shield hand". This hand may be made up of any number of cards, but cannot be put into play until it has at least two cards in it.

In place of an attack, you may apply this shield hand to any other entity in range (kinda not a real thing yet). For a number of rounds equal to the amount of cards in the shield hand, the entity is protected by a heavenly force. Any attack against the entity that does not equal or beat the lowest card in the shield hand is treated as a successful defense.

Experimental Classes:

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Gunslinger

Playing hand: 2 hands of 3 each | alternate between them each round of combat / each test
Health hand: 3

Draw Action:

Reload

Instead of drawing at the end of your turn, you may discard all of the cards from both of your hands and redraw the same number (the number in each hand must remain the same as well).



Wizard

Playing hand: 3
Health hand: 2

Draw Action:

Study

Instead of drawing a card on a turn, you may delay your draw until the next turn. On that subsequent turn, you may draw a total of three cards that must be played on the same turn they are drawn.

Class Abilities:

---

Desperate Action:

???

By flipping a health card, you may draw 4 cards.



Duelist

Playing hand: 4
Health hand: 3

Draw Action:

???

By discarding a card and forfeiting his or her next draw, a duelist may instead draw the last card that he or she lost against from the discard pile.

ALT:

By discarding a card and forfeiting his or her next draw, a duelist may instead draw the last card played of the same suit from the discard pile.



Seer

Playing hand: one normal hand of 3 cards, one "prediction" hand of 6 cards
Health hand: 3

Draw Action:

???

THIS

THING

YES

IT'S HERE. is there a designated time for the next playtest? No? Sign me up!

We're basically going to run playtests when we actually have people available.

Also, "The Big Deal" is a placeholder name, if someone comes up with a better pun for a card-based RPG we'll use that.

I will sign up as well.

I sign upp

If the playing hand is fixed, what does resting do?

It's not fixed, the hand size is the number of cards the class starts with.

Then couldn't resting accumulate into ridiculously large hand sizes? All the other actions seem to involve zero-sum changes in hand size.

You use up cards when you get attacked as well as when you attack. So on a single round, even if there are only two players, if both attack then each loses two cards but only draws one on their own turns.

Also as we develop things more, there will be ways to use up more cards in one turn.

There's probably going to be a hand size limit too, but that didn't really come up in our one playtest so we haven't thought about it much so far.

Color me curious.

If the health cards themselves have value, a let's-say-berserker class might work by self-wounding to use the value of the inflicted wound in some way. Maybe similar to the Priest's Pray skill? Not totally sure.

One thing we've been contemplating (but haven't tested yet) is allowing classes to use health cards for special abilities. We're mostly focused on getting the basics down first, though - the mechanics of the classes and how they fight.

(And at some point we hope to come up with rules for how they don't fight. We want to work actual adventuring into this system, too!)

For fighter's ability I suggest taking a page out of Munchkins book and giving it trumping powers. (nontrumps count as trumps)

Attention!

Scott and I are planning a playtest again this Friday evening at 7 PM Mountain time. That's 10 AM Saturday morning for him (he's in South Korea), in case it's easier for you to work out what that is on your local time.

So if you want to test, let us know if you'll be around for that.

It is possible that I will be.

We already had the playtest, maybe next time I should put a specific date on to reduce confusion.

We'll keep you in mind next time we schedule a test, though!

Wups!
I could have sworn I checked the post date.

oh yeah i missed that didn't i? dang.

i'd still like to be in the next playtest, though. maybe a PM as a reminder would be nice.

7 pmmmountain time is pretty dang inconvenient for me, so I didn't come. Should've sent a pm tho, sorry