1KM1KT Free RPG Community

I'm not a huge fan of universal RPGs but it might not be a bad goal to make a system that is universal but has genre books that describe how to use the system for your chosen setting (a la GURPS).

I was working on a mechanically simple system for an RPG but found out that Fantasy Flight essentially beat me to the punch, while making the system unnecessarily complex. So it was back to the drawing board.

I think I have a kernel of an idea but I'm not there yet. If anyone wants to pipe in if this inspires any ideas, I'm all ears. Here's the system so far.

First of all, I'm trying to get a game with no writing involved. To that end, your character is a deck of cards. It could be as few as one card or as many as ??? (I haven't figured that out yet). But will probably start out at one or two.

To make this a free game, I'm going to constrain the design to a standard card deck. Face cards (J, Q, K, A) are character trait cards.

Having a Jack in your deck means you're a fighter.
A Queen means you can protect/heal
A King means you can manipulate (Drive a car, fly a plane, or maybe persuade NPCs)
An Ace means you're good at stealthily/sneaky things

Normal play goes like this. Each player is dealt a hand (5 cards I think, will have to experiment). The GM turns over a card in the deck to get started. The first player that can place a counting up or down card wins initiative and declares an action. The GM responds by counting up or down from the player's card. If the GM can count up or down from the player's just placed card, the action is blocked. The player gets to try and count up or down from the GM's card and so on.

If the GM cannot block, the player can keep placing cards, counting up and down until their hand is empty. If they can no longer place a consecutive card, their turn is over.

The number of unblocked cards you put down does something (Don't know exactly what yet). If you place all your cards, you get a critical success. Again, I don't exactly know what that means yet but it's a fun mechanic.

If you can't consecutively count up or down with your cards, your turn ends the next player that can place a card gets to go. At the end of a round, the players pick up cards to replenish their hand. The GM keeps picking up whenever he puts down a card. When the deck is exhausted, the discard pile is reshuffled and a new starting card is placed.

So I need to figure out how to measure the effect of each unopposed card. There also has to be an effect of the character's face cards.

Maybe you can use one of your face cards to prevent a block? After a face card is used, it's placed sideways on the table until the next round.

Anyway, I need to have the number of cards you put down mean something. I'm not sure about that yet.

This sounds cool. "Light universal" often means putting more onus on the GM for filling the gaps, where as complex universal means that there is a lot of reading work to do to be able to play a setting.

Can you use the suits to specify some unique aspect. For example, you have Kings as people who affect things (drivers), you can have two kings in your player team but you can't have Kings of the same suit.

How about character progression? How will you improve your character? Will this be a one-shot? How about players sharing the resources in their hands? Could one player type always have an open hand as a drawback?

I think progression takes the form of getting more cards for your deck. I'm open to other avenues if you have ideas.

I've been thinking of the suits and their significance. My thinking is to have a basic game and advanced. In the basic the suits don't mean anything but in the advanced they do. Sure a lot of people will jump to the advanced and that's ok. I need to figure out the basic first and then build on that for the advanced. So yes suits should matter for the advanced game but I'll work on that later.

I think the mental load here is going to be a level of pretty heavy abstraction. That's why different game books would be needed to show how to use the resolution system in each genre. For example, how do you use a king in a fantasy setting? If anything, following the "control" aspect sounds like a mage or even a bard. How to use it? I don't know yet.

Part of this goal is to make the system really really easy to use.

I have a system for successes but I didn't know what those successes did. Do I model hit points? Do enemies have stats or cards?

In the advanced game, I think enemies get their own cards. In the basic game, they get a number. Most enemies are a 1. A tough enemy is a 2, a boss is a 3, a really tough boss is a 4.

This is how resolution works (I think). The GM sets the difficulty for an enemy to 1. All the player has to do is place one sequential card. The GM can block. If the player has a card that applies they can negate the block or play another sequential card.

For a challenge with a 2 difficulty, the player must place two sequential cards in a row (unblocked). Same rules apply as above. 3's and 4's work the same way but harder to get to.

If a player gets a sequence of 5 it's automatically a success. It should also be a critical success, I'm not sure what a critical success means in this context though since it would mechanically beat anything anyway.

The problem here is, if you're up against a boss and can't get the sequence, what do you do? Maybe a poker type pass where you could swap out as many cards as you like? It would be nice if that simulated something in the game.


So how do the players get "hurt"? I think when they are hurt, they flip over one of their trait cards. If all their cards are flipped they start losing cards. Lose all your cards and you die.

So how do the players get hurt in this system? Once a turn (per enemy?), the GM can attack a player by making a sequence. The player can defend by blocking the sequence or using a trait card. I'm not entirely sure how to work this yet.

By the way, the GM should have 7 cards instead of the player's 5. If there are more than 4 players they should get more cards but I don't know how many to add yet.

I think I have a basically functional system here, I'll have to do a rough test to get a feel for things.

Like the idea, and it sounds like things are coming together.

Couple things that popped out to me reading it last night . . .

Jacks = Knaves ; Which are your more roguish types.

Blocking - I feel that it should be more strategic. To block you should have to play a card that breaks the sequence.
Say a player is counting down 5-4-3 to block the sequence I feel I would have to play like a 6 or 7, which in my mind I would play sideways across the sequence to show that it is broken/stopped.

As for damage . . . unless players are filling their hand after every round, it'll be hard to track using the hand size. You may want to look at a token system(ie poker chips) to show "Health", but with that said if damage limits player hand size it would work.

The Jack thing was just some trivia that I felt would be fun to mention.
As it is your system you can have the cards represent whatever you want them to.

The example for blocking was just to use a card value out of sequence with the ones I had listed.
You could simplify the idea by making a "blocking" card having to be 2 points higher or lower than the last card played.
So in my previous example of 5-4-3 a valid blocking card would be either a 5 (2 points higher than the 3) or an Ace (2 points lower than the 3).

You could even possible complicate it with counter-attacks as well as blocking. A counter could be the GM playing a equal card on the last card played (ie a 3 on a 3) breaking the sequence but not blocking the damage and forcing the payer to go from attack to defense to block the counter attack of the NPC.

I feel these options of either to "Block" or "Counter" should be choices as the cards you could use to build a massive damage sequence are also cards that you may need to protect your own character. Maybe the GM will hold a card for an attack by the Main baddie while letting the Players run amok on the minions so that the Boss could have a better chance of causing real damage to resource depleted Players.

Something also to consider is WHEN the re-draws happen. If I was playing and I did my actions for a round do I re-draw right away or do I have to wait until Everyone's actions for that round have been resolved. Waiting gives more weigh to tactical choices of which cards are played; while drawing right away reduces that type of play.

Side note/side thought . . . Blocking should reduce damage, while Counter-Attack should not. So if I "Counter" an NPC who is attacking me after a sequence of 2 cards, they do 2 damage while I get to start damaging them with my sequence, if I chose to block after a 2 card sequence maybe I reduce the damage by half? 1 damage instead of 2?

Anyway looking forward to reading mre on this system. Cheer!

I like threshold type games. RoL was that type of game.
I must admit I am not familiar with Speed as a card game
so please bear with me if I suggest things that do not fit.

I do think that when a sequence is blocked that it should only count upto the blocked card. So if you block a 3 card on the 2nd card if would in my mind/understanding only count as a 1 card sequence. But that is me others may see it differently.

I believe Rob mentioned it first but how do you account for players working together? Can we play cards to help each other build seqences (I play a 3 and 4, Rob plays a 5) or say I get attacked can Rob defend me by playing a block?

This reply took 45 minutes to write with my Kindle.
Anyway the system is sounding like it'll be fun. Good job!