balancing act

So this is to be a Deck Building RPG. I don't know if there's many of those. There is a market of card building board games, but the difference between a board game and an RPG is longevity. The rules I've been presenting are definitely meant for a more "one-shot" environment. There's a single deck and everyone draws from it.

RPGs are about progress. Characters starting at a weak point and growing to a strong point. Building a deck based on your battles feels intense.

The desired effect of this game: to add the story/rpg elements of dungeon world/dnd with the deck building aspects of games like MtG or Yugioh.

How to do this? It's simple on paper. The combat is handled with cards, and the rest is handled with dice. But how to make those systems work together? Or is that even necessary?

(This lets PvP be something that is built into the game. Friends build decks to play with each other. Giving this a RPG benefit/consequence will make just playing cards part of the game.)

I think the secret is to have each aspect of the game influence the other, not work together. In Magical Girl anime there's a disconnect between the magical girl powers and their real life, but they both influence each other. A trope of these series is the balancing act of being a normal girl and a magical girl. Perhaps there will be detriments for neglecting either aspect of the game,  adding a sort of balancing act to the two major systems in play.

I was thinking about classes today, and how they are integral to an RPG. There is already a basic class system built into a deck of cards (the suits). And in basic DnD there are 3-4 classes (fighter, magic-user, cleric, rogue).

The idea will be to build a deck of cards that you can draw from in battle. Instead of the randomness of dice being rolled that is present in RPGs, the randomness will be presented by the shuffling of the deck and the drawing of cards. The goal will be to choose your class, to choose your playstyle, and try to collect the cards you need to stack your deck for success.

The course of adventuring will build your arsenal from just one card to an entire deck that you can use.

My goal for myself, my thing to accomplish before even playtesting this, is to have a standard deck of cards named and prepared.

I need to think about the system that I've already presented. If the cards all mean something at different intervals, does that make for an unfair game? What does that even mean?

I'm thinking that the start of each game will be drawing 5 cards, and if you only have 1 card, you just draw that 1 card. That will allow players to choose the suit they want to play (when they have more than 1 card).

Okay, but how do you get cards?

Defeating monsters (I think they're called Liches).

Buying card packs? This can be something for the RPG side of the game. It'll be like a carousing table. You spend the money (much like you spend the gp in dnd) to "carouse" and there will be a list of things that can happen or something. Maybe the cards that they use in battle are special, and it's possible to get them in standard trading card packs. Like Wixoss.

Playing against each other. Players can challenge each other for cards? Idk how this will work because cards won't be added, just traded. Perhaps they give up something from the RPG side, like health or something, to create a card that they then have to play to see who gets.

Going on adventures. Players can opt out of their daily life to go look for cards. They are a power and thus exist like treasure in the DnD world. This would be in detriment to your normal life and consequences will follow.

What benefits could the normal life give to the card battle life? Perhaps different normal life things can give you money to buy cards. I'm really not sure yet.

Going back to class though (I know I'm jumping around a lot), I'm thinking of what system to base it around. I like the Numenera system, or the PbtA system. I need to examine both more closely, but I know that their approach to story gaming, or narrative gaming, is what I want to do more so than DnD's approach.

There's a lot to think about. I tend to do my thinking by asking myself questions, as if in a faux-interview. Maybe I'll do one of those and write another post.