In the process of continuing to fiddle with making Impulse less shitty, Iāve found out that I really like its basic setup - using cards as game actions, resources, and the map itself. I think thatās cool as hell.
I thought about other things to do with that kind of setup, and then I looked back at some recent comments of mine on /r/tabletopgamedesign, and realized that across 6 or so comments, I have what I think is a coherent idea for a skirmish wargame using cards and dice.
The basic idea is that units have 3 stats represented by different die values. Each stat has two āflavorsā - you pick one for each die, and youāre worse at the other one. You use a roll to determine both success and effect via margin of success, you represent situational advantages and bonuses by incrementing the die values (i.e. take a d8 to a d10), and represent penalties and damage by decrementing dice. Cards are both units (with pre-set values) and terrain, and players set up the game taking turns deciding to put something down as terrain or draft it as a unit to then fight. The whole thing fits into a deck of 54 cards and hypothetically could be accomplished with dry erase markers and two sets of dice from d4 to d12.
The framework is loose enough to adapt to just about any universe with minor nomenclature changes, and if youāre on minigames methadone like I am, it could be a cool way to scratch the minis itch no matter what your particular poison was.
So hereās what Iāve got so far, very creatively named āSkirmish Dice:ā
Feel free to read, critique, try, whatever. I may or may not do anything with it, but I had the idea so I figured Iād at least write it down.
I like the idea of cards as units and terrain. Very cool.
the stepping of dice size up or down feels weird. Iād be worried about confusion of rolling the wrong die but itās also an easy way to check unit strength. Iām interested to see it in action.
Yeah, Iām not sure 100% how to manage it exactly, but I think with some fudging it could be done relatively smoothly. Thatās why Iām also thinking dry erase cards - so you can have a card with the ābaseā stats that change as you take damage or heal, and then you apply Advantage or Disadvantage ad-hoc to change what you actually roll. I have this week off so I can always screw around and see what itās like.
I donāt see how terrain works. I like the idea of terrain cards, especially choosing from a hand whether to lay terrain down or spend the card to get a unit, but how thatās implemented, how unit cards move on terrain cards, what the drafting and choices made are isnāt clear to me yet.
Like base level how do I determine terrain placement? Is there a grid? Is it arbitrary? Im not super familiar with tabletop miniatures wargaming so maybe there is assumed common knowledge there?
Allllso on a larger scale could there not be structure cards in the old C&C sense like ācommand postā that enables extra draws, ātech centerā that upgrades your dice rolling level once per turn, or āguard towerā which can attack incoming units to defend your ābaseā or other such things?
in the Warmahordes scene they printed regular cards and then used clear card sleeves, those pick up dry erase just fine
I didnāt get there yet in the rules but the map is a fixed grid, so youāre putting terrain in prescribed spaces. Itās a hex made of cards, 3-4-5-4-3 staggered. The choice I see is between deploying a unit or picking the terrain, so you could, for example, claim a deployment space, but your opponent could dictate the terrain. Something like that. Itās still a rough idea. Not 100% sure if I want to do it as a proper draft or just as back-and-forth choosing and responding. Also no reason you couldnāt choose to do one or the other.
And yeah, there could definitely be card-based features like that! I started that with the idea of Objectives being placed in Plains, but no reason you couldnāt expand the concept. Objectives that do something besides get points, and so on. Claim a bunch of die upgrades, or salvage a unit, or stuff like that.
EDIT: I think everything is down in the rules now, albeit a bit scattered, but itās not very long so Iāll tidy it up later.
We talked in the other thread about a game where the current score was close to the percentage chance of winning. I suggested a hypothetical game where āpointsā are raffle tickets, and a raffle determines the ultimate victor.
I took that idea as a seed and wrote a very simple game for exactly three players. The players start with 12/36 raffle tickets each. However, they pay each other with raffle tickets in order to gain control of the raffle to tilt the odds in their own favor, hopefully enough to make up for the reduced number of tickets in their possession.
I have no ideas if it works, but it should be very quick to playtest if two other people want to give it a shot.
This Google Doc link should be publicly visible.
Ooh, I like the distributed control elements here. Thatās a neat setup!
I could be convinced to help playtest, but your options are TTS or Tabletopia for me. This would be tricky to do through text.
Itās such a simple thing, maybe I can make an app that does it.
If you can manage that, youād probably have a convenient engine for prototyping just about all kinds of 2D information games. You have cards, boards, and tokens - if you can figure out a flexible way to represent all of those, you could represent just about any kind of game.
Someone in the tabletop design subreddit is working on a card prototyping thing that looks like it uses spreadsheets and recorded macros. Seemed like a nifty idea to me.
(Also lol āyou have 24% of the posts in this thread maybe let someone else talk.ā Yāall get in here and talk about the games youāre making so the forum stops yelling at me.)
The game is only numbers, so no I would not actually have cards, boards or tokens. Just text. Thatās what makes it easy to program.
Hey look a prototype has appeared! Yay for blank erasable cards.
Standees and sleeves would be a dead simple solution to turning the cards into units. Use that vertical space!
I like the way the components work but Iām gonna screw with the dice thing. It occurs to me I have 6 values, and if Iām writing on cards anyway, I can just write a number from 1 - 6 and thatās what you need on a d6 to succeed. Damage increases that number, and if it hits 7 itās gone. Bonuses could just be +1 to the roll because duh.
Less to fiddle with that way.
Iāll probably make the attributes mutually exclusive, because thatās more interesting to me, and also fewer things to remember.
Iām going to ask possibly a stupid question, but it feels like itās close to the game youāre working on. Have you heard of a game called Pixel Tactics? It uses cards as units in a war game. Doesnāt use dice.
Yeah, Iāve heard people talking about it but havenāt checked it out yet. Mostly just felt like futzing with an idea as a thought experiment.
Iāve seen Pixel Tactics before. I think in the PAX library. IIRC itās basically Final Fantasy Tactics: the card game.
I just read the rules and itās cool but definitely not what Iām going for. Might take inspiration from the way the unit cards can be multiply deployed though!
I have an idea for an rpg involving secret societies and exchanging messages. Is the idea of playing as a secret society member too problematic? I like the aesthetic of āfreemasonry crypticismā but Iām afraid it will be interpreted as new world order adjacent.
I like it!
Why did you allow advancing the timer 0 spaces? I get a little antsy about not having a mechanism that forces the game toward the finish.