A note on your comment on pain. Perhaps the best example I have seen comes from pen and paper roleplaying games. At least 2 games I recall(shadowrun and star wars from west end games) used a penalty system for levels of damage. In effect they reflected the damage pain can cause to a characters performance.

I might have to look at those two... I have played shadowrun before, but don''t remember the damage thing. Now is it just for having a large amount of damage on you(or a low life... whichever) that causes something to go down(your skills I guess), or is it based upon -where- the damage is... I would think that just being hit in the arm wouldn''t cause you to kick weaker...(just an example).

They didn''t have hit locations, or for that matter hit points, it used a series of damage levels, light, moderate, serious. Each level had corresponding penalties

Interesting... There''s a swedish roleplaying game Drakar & Demoner that uses a pretty clever pain system. I''ll talk about the skill system first, though. To calculate success of an action you roll a d20 and if you roll lower or equal to the skill value you succeed.

Example 1:
If my character with skill value 15 in lockpicking is to pick a lock he must roll 15 or lower to succeed. Know that i didn''t take into account any penalties like if it''s a very hard lock to pick or anything... Anyway...

Example 2:
My character will now attempt at picking the same lock, yet this time his right arm is wounded (he lost 3 hp in it). To calculate the effect of damage on a limb with a skill you subtract damage*2 from the skill. Ie: 15-3*2. Now you must roll 9 or less to succeed.

I must also tell that this system uses a much lower hp scale than example Dungeons & Dragons. Having a character with 16-18 hp is VERY unusual and a fresh character has usually around 14-15 hp. Also if you take into account that a longsword deals d10 in damage you can see that it''s VERY easy to die as opposed to many other systems.

i thought up a game system while walking down the street. its basically completely new so bare with me. its inspired by "Lets do Magic the Gathering Real time"

thats to say if i were playing magic the gathering real time what would that mean? then i started thinking bout role playing games and this is what i came up with.

"a card" does something specific. the card is the random element. its the casting from diablo 2.

you can store 7 cards at a time. they are replaced every 10 seconds from your deck. you can play them once ever 5 seconds. you can burn cards if you want to just keep working your deck. but notice you can burn them twice as fast as you get them. so burn them all at once and for a long fight youll be playing off the top of the deck.

you might have mana im not sure.

the deck is formed by your skills and some player selection. a character with a different skill tree can create a different deck. a healers skill tree will pop things you would associate with casting heals. the warriors tree would pop things related to combat and strikes.

The fun and varied situations come becuase you can tweak your deck via your skills and selection but you cant control the way it comes out.

so picture it.

your party interface on the right the current cards available to this character at the bottom right. you got 7 up the most you can have. you got a warrior a paladin in front a cleric and wizard in back a mentalist is also in the back. a warrior has a deck but relys on hack and slash. a paladin is half deck and half hack and slash. a cleric is all deck defense and healing. a wizard is all deck damage and offense. the mentalist is all deck of types involving helping other people deal with their deck


so your party meets up with a pack of 7 goblins. charge. the warrior pops his defense posture card. 10 seconds of extra defense. the paladin just lays in. the cleric burns a bad card cause she dont got anything yet. the wizard notices he only has a light AE up. he uses it at a point where it wont hurt his own people. he gets a 3.

the battle progresses. the warriors cards are pretty simple so he has burned alot. the paladin did some minor healing. the cleric is out of heals and hoping to draw one before the tank dies. the wizard is mostly out of cards. so the mentalist plays "wash of insight" everyone in an AE gets to draw 2 cards. ahh theres that heal the cleric was looking for. at this point the wizard decides this battle is won and starts tweaking his draws via discards to have a good start for the next battle.

i mean clearly there is alot of tweaking here and new thinking but its very very different. the idea that perfect control over your character doesnt equate to a script is new. also i originally imagined all combat running through cards but i thought the hybrid system all magic (diablo 2 style) runs through cards instead of mana management would be more fun.

an astute observer notes that a player could sit and discard to the perfect hand before fighting. ya and so can the bad guys =) it will balance out with tweaking.

also note i ended up deciding that if you introduced mana for card casting then let the player burn as fast as they want. if you do it without mana then let the player burn cards at a rate thats less then they can draw them. timing to be detirmined.



[edited by - declspec on May 11, 2002 3:48:29 PM]

That was a pretty interesting idea... Don''t know if it''ll really work, though. Just imagine how one-sided the warriors deck would be. They would all be "Blah blah deals X damage to target creature"... Not much variety in that

It could be implemented so that any used skills and abilities go to the "graveyard", so after using a lot of cards you have to rest to restore them to your deck.

Also i don''t think you should be able to burn cards during battle.

A few connections with Magic:
Red Magic = Wizard (direct damage, burn)
Blue Magic = Mentalist (card drawing)
White Magic = Healer (damage prevention)
Black Magic = ???
Green Magic = ???

well its 2 potential systems:
1) one thats all random "card" based upon your choices/class/level/skills.

2) one thats only part "card" but still random roll hack and slash. with "cards" being battle shaping abilities. like diablo 2s magic. only more random forcing you to deal with less then perfect draws.

about the colors. move away from that. i just used the magic the gathering cause the idea has no vocabulary.

the real idea presented is "random selections available to the user based upon the character and the players pre-battle strategy tweaking"






[edited by - declspec on May 11, 2002 4:24:47 PM]

Gack... card systems... I played magic and liked it, but you have to be able to customize your -deck- otherwise it won''t be any fun. Also sometimes card games can be unrealistic... when have you seen a wizard(of standard experience, not a new one) not have a fireball when he needs one(if he has it, and needs it). Level 40 Wizard who dies because he didn''t have a fireball... all his cards were Level 1 burning hands.... rofl

"Practice means good, Perfect Practice means Perfect"

remember were just marrying abstractions to get ideas till the end.
you could tweak your deck between encounters based upon your character. my mental picture imagines something like diablo 2s skill tree and a little of ADDs spell book. both effect how many and what kinds of cards the _player_ can put on the character's "stack". from there its odds that youll draw anyone card.

for your second point dying due to burning hands. i think it would play out. dont remember too many times in MtG where i was pissed that i drew 4 lightning bolts.

whats at work here. why do i think this would be "fun". Random elements via an Ad&d system average to 10.5. (for 1 to 20) i once had the discussion what was the most underrated spell and it was Horror cause blasted off by the pairs and x3 everything of any level that didnt have magic resistance ran simply because of averages. It was predicatble: you could count on it. so in BG2 first thing i ever did was blast 3 magic users off with horror.Same tactice for every battle gave success. Averages in weapons swings is Predicatable too its a pretty steady DPS. predicatable is good to a point.

but random cards has a more blockly- force you to think thing going. hrmmm (use pause *imagining baulders gate*) its half way through the battle and these are crappy redraws whats my plan. thats where the fun factor is.



[edited by - declspec on May 12, 2002 10:46:39 AM]

Hehehe 4 bolts in a row... that has actually happened to me, and I won because of it(the deck was shuffled, just had good luck). On another topic, can you run out of cards? what happens if you do? Is there a limit on how many cards of a single type can be in a deck(4?)?. I am assuming there are class specific cards right? or is it based upon the system of stats, like diablo 1, anyone can use any armor, weapon, or spell(thus cards) if they had high enough stats...? blah blah blah.... at least my discussion was over before this started...

"Practice means good, Perfect Practice means Perfect"