Talk:Wild Cards: The Gameplay

From 1d4chan

Preliminary Gameplay Ideas

Character Creation

When creating a character, each player is dealt a hand of 10 cards. The player assigns two cards to each of five stats (The S5 System):

Strength (physical power, equivalent to STR and CON in D&D)

Speed (general speed, dodging, quickdrawing, and such)

Skill (in this case, meaning skill with a gun, both accuracy and trickshots)

Smarts (the equivalent of both INT and WIS from D&D, how intelligent you are)

Savvy/Style (the equivalent of CHA from D&D)

Aces are counted as a 1 when counted with a 10 or a face card, otherwise counted as 11. A stat's maximum value is 20. Each stat gives a modifier to certain 'rolls' in the same style as normal d20 games (10-11 = +0, 12-13 = +1, 14-15 = +2, etc.)

Gun Creation

When creating a character's gun, the player draws one card from the deck (Jokers, Aces, and Faces removed, at the Dealer's discretion). Exact details of the creation are yet to be determined, but each gun has stats as well (The PAST System):

Power (strength of the gun)

Accuracy (self-explanatory)

Speed (speed of the bullets themselves and/or the draw and/or the firing, how many bullets the wielder can fire in rapid succession)

Trickplay (Trickshots and such)

Each stat has a maximum value of 20.

For comparison, a slugtosser will generally have values of 6-8 across the board, while a Shooting Iron will have values of 9-11 across the board. Cards are a different matter, and the details thereof have yet to be worked out.

In battle, the only stats usually called into play are Speed (which modifies the Speed of the gun and determines how fast you can move and dodge), Skill (which modifies the Accuracy and partially the Trickplay) and Smarts (which also partially modifies the Trickplay (maybe)). Strength and Savvy generally won't play into a gunfight, but certain circumstances may call for it (say, shoving a heavy barrel over for use as cover, or talking to an opponent to try to get their guard down, or similar).

Exact details of battle are still being decided.

Currently playing around with an idea for character generation and conflict resolution. I'm basing it off of the original here, although I'm reducing the character Traits to four, since Skill seems to be redundant with actual battles:

  • Strength
  • Speed
  • Smarts
  • Savvy

The numbers for these are set via a point spread (6 points for novices, up to 14-15 for high-level folks). Doing non-battle checks with these Traits is easy: for a situation requiring a particular Trait, the player draws a number of cards equal to the Trait's value while The Dealer draws a number of cards based on the difficulty of the action (1=easy, 5=super-hard). Both add their cards (faces=10, aces=11), highest number wins the check.

Meanwhile, the gun Traits remain the same:

  • Power
  • Accuracy
  • Speed
  • Trickplay

Again, numbers are assigned via point spread (7 points for slugtossers, 10 for Smythes, 14 for Guns-with-a-Capital-G). Battles are a bit more complicated though - it's done through three-card draw poker!

Lemme 'splain!

Each participant in a battle gets three cards to start, turn order is based on each participant's gun Speed Trait. Each participant can use a point of a particular Trait per turn to swap out cards and thus take an action. Given my usual emphasis on ROLE-playing versus ROLL-playing, this means that the participant must narrate his move as related to the particular Trait that was used for the draw.

When a participant has a hand he can win with, or if he plain runs out of points, he can go into a Showdown with a target, both the participant and the target showing their hands. If the participant wins, the target is defeated however the Dealer decides it. If the target wins, the remainder of the participants points are gone and can only go through one more Showdown before possibly being defeated himself.

Now, Guns (with a Capital G) are a little different in battle. They have special abilities that can be used in battle. To use an ability, the participant must use a point of the Gun's corresponding Trait and also trade in a card of the Gun's corresponding Suit in the draw:

  • Power/Clubs
  • Accuracy/Hearts
  • Speed/Diamonds
  • Trickplay/Spades

What are these abilities? I don't know yet. Maybe y'all can figure that out!

  • JSCervini 18 Jan 2010; 5:53 AM CST

For myself I designed a system where there were 4 stats: Brawn, Brains, Grit, and Wits, every player would start at 0 (as per a normal human) and be able to buy up their stats per 2 points of xp (With 1 point being given out per session) Players would decide conflict by playing a game of 5 card draw poker or black jack, depending on how quickly they wanted to resolve the conflict. If the conflict was between the players stats, their stats could be added to the cards they drew to create a better hand (Example would be if you were had a brawn of 2 and were in a fist fight you were dealt a 6 of clubs, 6 of hearts, and 4 of diamonds, you would be able to add your 2 brawn to your 4 of hearts giving you a 3 of a kind or to increase your score closer to 21 if the PC decided to go the blackjack route), Cards would have the stats of Power, Accuracy, Speed, and Trickshot. These stats would have a starting value determined by either the game master(The Dealer) or by both the player and the Dealer. These stats would not be able to be increased giving the PC's a reason to go after a "better" card. Each suit had a special ability also, any hand of clubs was treated as one higher when "playing" to determine if an opponent would take damage. Spades were the same only for Accuracy, Hearts for Speed, and Diamonds for Trickshot. Some of the Cards with special abilities (Such as always being drawn first) were given a "wild card" to simulate this, this would be a 6th(or 3rd, depending on the game chosen) that would be used by the PC to make the best possible hand.


Currently trying a whole new idea for the rules, albeit not a completely original one. "Poker mechanics."

Characters are represented as a card pool with one of each suit and a gun, none of which can have the same value. Only one non-gun card may be a face or ace. The gun can't have an identical value, but can also be a face or ace. Presumably, you'd draw these from a deck.

for instance, a sample character would be:

king of hearts 2 of clubs five of diamonds 10 of spades

gun: 9 of spades

Character qualities are derived from the classical associations: hearts = spirituality, resolve, charisma ; spades = strength, force, skill ; clubs = wisdom, intelligence, patience ; diamonds = wealth, well-being, resilience.

For the aforementioned character, you could do attribute qualities like:

Strong-willed, never backs down. Rather persuasive speaker. Intuitively good gunslinger with a sharp eye. He has little training, and isn't the type to train, but he's good with a gun. Stubborn, refuses to learn from mistakes. Not smart at all. Never admits when he's wrong. Always faces his problems head on with no subtlety. Takes care of himself decently enough. Average health.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION:

Players maintain a hand of five cards at all times and play hands to resolve actions. Players may use cards from their hand(which are discarded and replaced from the deck), and are also considered to always have the cards assigned to their stats(including gun) available. If a card in hand matches one with your stats, it is considered a wildcard. If a card in hand matches your Gun's card, you can play it for an automatic success, no questions asked. The GM calls for a minimum hand for the requisite action as a difficulty. "This action requires a ten.", "This requires three of a kind". Epic actions, such as killing another Gun dead in the first round of combat in quickdraw may require a straight flush or something of the like. Out of combat, most tasks are high-card relevant, and have suit requirements and your gun may not be used to qualify for it. Breaking down a door requires a spade of five or higher, for instance. Your character may be able to automatically circumvent such a problem if he has a five or higher in his stats. If you're not fortunate enough for that, you may have to play hands(which aren't locked into suit) which represent creative solutions to a puzzle(such as picking a lock), or can always use a card of higher value from your hand(guess you did have it in you, huh?)

A couple of us are currently working on this on #suptg. Get back to this later. ~para.

Retrieved from "https://1d4chan.org/index.php?title=Talk:Wild_Cards:_The_Gameplay&oldid=54404"