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I really enjoy RPGs that use decks of cards, but there's a big difference vs dice I've not seen unpacked so I'm going to do it, and how I might utilise it.
With dice, they're swingy to varying degrees and that is determined at the moment of the roll. Chance at it's finest.
With dice, they're swingy to varying degrees and that is determined at the moment of the roll. Chance at it's finest.
With a deck, every time you shuffle it, you create a preordained order that is decided at the moment of the shuffle and exists until you reshuffle it. It's hidden from the players and that is generally fine. It's a feature, not a bug.
The Wretched & Alone engine actually uses this to its advantage. When you shuffle the deck you do essentially seal your fate. That's totally fine because W&A games generally are fated to failure from the start, and it's about your version of that story.
This might not work so well if you use a deck for say, a combat system because you *might* schedule a predictable, but hidden, anticlimactic moment in when you shuffle. I'll do a worked example of this using a made up basic system for this thread.
Your swashbuckling fighter goes to attack the big bad boss, and he needs a high draw to hit and this is a pivotal fight scene. A swingy D20 brings its own problems here, but it does decide in the moment and that's its own problem.
A deck where the low cards are stacked at this point is even worse, because it's predecided that your fight will fail. This, and his next three attacks. The deck isn't really serving the design goal of fun there. The deterministic shuffle becomes a bug.
This is totally addressable, and I think it can be more fun. You build your randomised deck of four suits, but you pull out all the face cards, and divide them amongst the players (fairly, randomly, whatever). The players keep these and have them ready for when the PCs need them.
In a moment of great need, where success matters a player can call upon a stored face card. These are painfully finite, so the decision to use one is fun, its dramatic, it encourages strategic thought. You take the top two cards of the deck, unseen, and shuffle your face card in.
Maybe those two cards were good, maybe they weren't you won't know until those cards are used. You put the three cards back on top of the deck, and then take your action and draw a card. It could still go wrong, there is tension in the draw but you've stacked the deck for you.
But what's key in my thinking here is that if you do fail, you have still sown success for the other players. You didn't draw the king you added, but one of them will in the next two actions. So maybe your fighter fluffs it and drops his sword by drawing a 2.
That doesn't matter because then when the wizard casts a spell to save your ass, their chances of success are greatly increased. I think this is fun because rather than a random swingy effect, it is more of a see-saw effect that creates predictability.
I'd love to hear what people think about this btw.
(plus I should thank @infinite_mao for sparking this train of thought on my walk to work. I respond to a lot of your tweets with quips and shitposting, but you do make me think good stuff)
