okay. so. the tabletop rpg where combat is a card game.
i gotta tell you. i want the card game to have magic the gatheringesque creature combat. this is by all accounts a poor decision. do you know how much fucking easier this game would be to both design and play if it was slay the spire-type action cards knocking down a big health bar?? so much easier. and more traditional too! oversimplification alert: dnd is like if slay the spire had player movement and you had your whole deck accessible every turn.
but i fucking yearn for creature combat. i want things to be a little sticky, i want the dm to also play weird, strange little deck of their own. i dont want the players to just draw and use cards representing their characters' actions. i want permanents. and i want players to have to spend a few seconds here and there assigning blockers. i want to play a tabletop rpg where the combat system is magic the gathering.
so, here's a major problem with that: what's the flavor? if the cards all represented the players' actions (as they do in slay the spire), the flavor is simple-- you are a person, and you're doing shit to the opponent. if there's permanent cards in your deck, though, they need to be understood as something in the game world. an artifact card could be the player's physical ring, knife, or helmet. an enchantment card could be a representation of the player's aptitude or menace.
what about creatures? here's my wild idea.
the decks of cards are real, physically in the game world, owned and carried by your characters. your characters, in turn, all use a fundamental low-level magic to manipulate these decks of cards, "playing them" in the world to accomplish things.
your characters, then, are all fundamentally summoner mages. the characters put creature cards into their card decks, and then play those cards in-universe to summon magical and temporary manifestations of those creatures that they can command. this is not some new concept generally but i think it's a strange choice for the game-- "strange" here not having necessarily negative connotations. it's kind of quirky in a way that i like.
by just making the cards represent players' actions, we wouldnt have to have every player be a summoner mage, or use magic at all, and we wouldnt be inclined to make the players' decks an actual in-universe thing either. but i almost prefer it this way, with the awkward justification for creatures being an aspect of the game... is that so strange?
i think there would still be action cards that represent your character kicking something, and there would still be artifact cards that represent your character's actual owned possessions. this is a dissonant choice given that the decks are real objects in the game world-- when you acquire a ring in real life, you don't also acquire an associated game card that allows you to utilize that ring.
this problem can be addressed in two ways. one is to not think about it too hard, and allow that dissonance between what is and is not experienced by your characters to breathe and exist. i don't hate that idea at all. the other way would be to explain this in the game world-- maybe a character can manifest/create new cards based off of actions that they want to perform in combat (kick, use, shout) or items/affects that they want to utilize (magic ring, shield, menacing vibe), and add those cards physically to their deck in order to power up those actions/items magically when they draw and play the card. i think either option works!
even if every character is a summoner mage, that doesn't mean every character is a dnd-type wizard, cleric, or sorceror. i think there's plenty of ways a traditional steel-and-fist soldier or warrior or knight could exist even if they also use summoning magic in combat. this wouldnt be a ttrpg where everyone has to play as a traditional mage-type character in my opinion, and i'd try hard to make a variety of directions for it.
but i dunno. those are just my thoughts. with my limited knowledge of tabletop rpgs and my limited knowledge of card games combining together in this post, i guarantee that something within whatever thoughts you're having is something i haven't considered yet. so id love any ideas anyome has if theyre willing to share :)
janainaart
ellievsbear
tangentwithtanner
baratheonpilled
yousharknotpass
2087
kaledo-art
dailybridgerton
