A pseudo-TTRPG thrown together in a few hours as a joke that I actually ended up kinda liking (thanks twitter/@husbandgeek for the idea) by Ember Heartshine
(I might actually take this, simplify the rules that are deliberately obtuse, and remove the "marketing" section to make an actual game out of this... Creative Commons the cards and distribute via free PDF download with a POD option? Must explore further)
- Character stats, traits, attributes, etc. are determined using cards available to the player
- Challenge resolution: d6 + specialty die? (borrow SWADE's TN system y/n? Something to think about)
- No grid-based movement (up to GM's discretion, but if a grid is used then hexagons are bestagons)
- Character advancement is in three "tiers" (T1/T2/T3), with four ranks (T1-R1, T1-R2, T1-R3, T1-R4, T2-R1, etc) below each
- Pillars of gameplay to be determined, but should rougly align with the traditional three pillars (exploration, social, combat)
- It's a TTRPG, you already know the drill
- Player chooses "role" (AKA "class") out of the options available and takes that card, then selects from one of three randomly-drawn base attribute cards
- Equipment is drawn from a pile of "equipment cards" equivalent to their tier (see below); each character gets 5 pieces of equipment to start
- Equipment is the only way to modify base stats (so it's very valuable)
- If more than one player wants to choose the same option, they must own more than 1 copy (i.e. 1 copy per player)
- Role "powers"/abilities/class features are selected and given to the player -- a T1-R1 player draws two Tier 1 powers and keeps them
- With each rank advancement the player draws a number of power/advancement cards equal to their rank from the appropriate tier deck (e.g. both T1-R2 and T3-R2 draw two cards, but T1-R2 draws from the Tier 1 deck and T3-R2 draws from the Tier 3 deck) and keeps n-1 of them (minimum of 1)
- Adventures are purchased by the GM in "adventure packs," which contain all the individual encounter cards and module information
- A suggested order of encounters is given with interstitial information in a small informational booklet, but the GM can optionally draw encounters out-of-order instead (except the climactic encounter, which has a different-color backing to distinguish it)
- Adventures can be supplemented with "adventure enhancements" (booster packs) with more encounter cards and creatures
- For longer-running groups, "stories" can be purchased that include several adventures split into "arcs"
- Equipment/loot is drawn from a loot deck at the end of each encounter; the number of cards drawn is equal to the number of players + 1 and each character earns 1 piece of loot (the last one is left behind)
- GM owns all the cards, but players can supplement if they have cards the GM doesn't (up to GM's discretion)
- "Base pack" (or "starter deck"?) includes only three roles, a handful of T1 power cards, 15 pieces of equipment, and a single adventure pack
- Want to play more? Gonna have to pay up to buy those cards!
- Booster packs! Booster packs for everything! 7 cards each with a 4:2:1 ratio of common:uncommon:rare probability; epic and legendary items are only available in GM-specific packs (like loot packs and/or adventures)
- Aggressively take down and litigate against piracy and any potential rip-offs
- Homebrew explicitly discouraged
- Maybe just sell adventure arcs and not entire stories?
- License games to stores such that GMs have to pay a subscription to host games?
Points removed from above that are far too reasonable for a MTX-centric game, but I'm saving them here because I want to come back to this idea later
- Base stat cards are then modified with "heritage" (AKA physical attribute modifier) and "culture" (AKA mental/social attribute modifier) cards out of the options available
- With each tier advancement (e.g. T1-R4 to T2-R1), the player can instead draw from an "attribute bonus" deck. They draw 4 cards from the Attribute deck and choose one of them to permanently apply to their character.