For my "Illegal Gods" game, I'm playing with the idea of using your typical 52-card deck for resolutions, but I don't want just a high-card, low-card solution.
My first thought was that the type of God one was working for might be relevant to the suit. Love, peace, and harmony Gods would be represented by Hearts. Wealth and power Gods would be represented by Diamonds. War and implements of destruction Gods would be Clubs (knocking people over the head), and of course you'd have your agricultural Gods because you need to call a spade a Spade.
I didn't like that, because, frankly, the God of Runny Cheese ("I think the cat's got at et,") doesn't really fit into those categories. So I thought maybe I could set the suits into being active Churches of their own, maybe some sort of anti- or competitive-to-the-PC NPC organizations. Unfortunately, that took away the whole idea of using the deck for resolutions, unless it's a, "You try to do X. Draw a card. If you draw for example an 8 of Spades, the Church of the Outie Bellybutton has sent 8 minion squads against your cadre..." So that's out.
I could do it semi-Tarot style, ala a number of homebrews or even Everway, but that's not quite what I want, either. Lazy (Okay... let's call it, "Negotiable"?) arbitration is OK to play, but it's not good design.
Any thoughts?
Comments (1)
Actually, the god of runny cheese sounds agricultural to me...
On a more useful note, though, you could improve on In Nomine's d666 concept -- red cards could be good for "good" gods and bad for "evil" gods, and black cards vice-versa. You could possibly expand it so that, say, diamonds and spades (the `pointy' ones) are good for hostile/competitive actions, while hearts and clubs are good for helpful/cooperative actions...with that in, though, I'd deal each player a small hand of cards they can use to modify (or perhaps even replace) the per-action draws. (Hand cards should probably come from a separate deck...) But they'd have to use their whole hand before they could get new cards, so if Sweeney, the evil God of Revenge, gets a fistful of hearts, he's looking at a rough session...he doesn't have to use them, of course, but that leaves him running on pure luck the whole session.
Depending on how solid, numbers-wise, character creation is going to be, you could alternately inverse the Deadlands cards...ie. if someone has a very high combat attribute or power, they just start with a high diamond/spade as appropriate, to ensure that the players' own cards are always beneficial to them, and only draw cards can mess them up. This negates the "just one of those days" possibility, which I think is kind of a shame, but it fits better with most games "karma/fate point" type rules, and has the beneficial side-effect of giving the GM (you, I believe) better fore-warning what each player has available to them.
Posted by Lintking | May 15, 2003 12:18 PM
Posted on May 15, 2003 12:18