[AE.Gamedev] Playing with the heart (and club, spade, and diamond) of the cards.
Pausing to note in a matter-of-fact and not actually apologetic way that I've been sending this newsletter out late at night this week. Things have been a bit hectic in the house lately. I don't anticipate this disrupted schedule to continue, but I won't sweat it if it does. Shrugging and writing about whatever I have on my mind to write about was a positive step in keeping the newsletter going; being similarly flexible on time might be the next such step. More on that tomorrow, probably.
So, I shared an excerpt from a story on Twitter earlier today, along with some background on how I'm writing it.
I’m writing.
— Alexandra Erin (she/her) (@AlexandraErin) March 15, 2022
This is part of my new writing project, where I’m testing out my TTRPG mechanics using a combination of them and solo RPG games to figure out what happens next. pic.twitter.com/aR8Eko78EX
You can click through the thread to learn more about it, but the long and the short of it is, I spent a couple hours today playtesting RPG mechanics by playing out a fight scene against myself... or against a deck of cards, depending on how you look at it.
This spun out of my email conversation with a reader last week about journal-based solo roleplaying games, which featured in Friday's mailbag. I started playing around with such games pretty much as soon as I was tipped off as to where to find a bunch of them.
Many games in this milieu use a standard deck of playing cards as a tool for randomly determining what happens next. The advantage that cards have over dice in this area is that you can get two different result vectors out of a single operation: any one of 13 different values (10 numbers, including the ace, and 3 face cards) and any one of 4 different suits, plus the option of including jokers for some kind of game-changingly rare drop.
I immediately saw the potential of both the journal games and the general idea of using card draws to determine what happens next in a game as tools for creating writing prompts... but also as a way to run more traditional TTRPGs of the sort usually intended for multiple people either as a solitaire experience, or as a group one without a single person running the game.
And in particular, I saw an opportunity to test out the mechanics I'm developing for my own TTRPG projects in a private setting, where I can adjust on the fly to try different mechanics and figure out what works and what doesn't without having to keep a group of players on the same page with the revisions.
I spent a good portion of the last week threshing out ideas for how it might work and testing them out, and along the way an idea for a larger project that might grow out of it began to take shape. It's still taking shape, so I don't really have much to say about it right now beyond I'm excited about the possibilities.
As for letting a deck of cards play the role of game master...
It's been an interesting experience. I've tried testing my game ideas out solo in small ways, obviously... like rolling dice just to find out if what works on paper works just as well in practice... but trying to run a whole combat against myself always felt a bit like a put-on.
To whatever extent that the game is symmetrical (like chess, where both sides share the same abilities, rules, and goals) then controlling both sides means either choosing the winner or -- given the random elements -- having a tedious, drawn-out battle of attrition where the winner is whichever side happens to pull far enough ahead of the other to reach a tipping point.
And to the extent that the game is asymmetrical -- which is my preferred model for tabletop roleplaying games, as a roleplaying game isn't a contest between the game runner and the players and I don't see why a combat encounter should change that -- then it's hard to strike the right balance in making decisions for both sides where it's unfolding the way an actual game with independent actors on both sides would.
In either case, even if I'm just overthinking the problems, I'm still overthinking, and focusing on how I'm playing rather than how the game is playing.
But using cards to determine what happens next sidesteps all this by off-loading the decision making process to an external force. It requires me to make some creative decisions in terms of interpreting what the tactics indicated by a card draw actually means for the situation... but the model I'm working with right now assumes that the players at the table have some say in how their enemies react to what they're doing, for purposes of storytelling.
I.e., if a player wants to try to drop a net on a patrolling guard as they walk under the spot where the heroes are concealed, their roll for success can allow them to establish that the guard does follow the script in terms of walking beneath them; they don't have to hope that the game runner, knowing full well what the players intend, chooses to go along with their plan.
With the combination of this greater license for the player side of the table to participate in telling the story and the use of cards to decide the general course a scene takes and the general tactics used by any opponents, I find it easier to get out of my head and approach the situation that the cards reveal as a player would.
My first full-scale test session helped me confirm that the stuff I'm testing is not quite ready to share with others, a fact that I was pretty sure of, but it also helped me figure out why not, and how to fix it.
And even with some stuff in there that clearly wasn't working well from a fun gaming perspective, it still gave me the outline of what I think is a fun and exciting fantasy action-adventure story, which I can write out in prose form by expanding on my notes for the session.
If this continues to go well, I will have both a playable TTRPG I can put out on the net, and a new story project to share.
I find both of these prospects very exciting. If only one of them pans out, I'll consider it a win, and if neither does, I'll still have learned a few things.