The Following Ruleset is a work in progress, and mostly just a place for me to note my thoughts. Things will be rough around the edges. Feel free to contact GamersGonnaGame for further clarification or feedback.
WildCard is a TTRPG that uses deck building mechanics in place of a typical character sheet. The actions and abilities available to your character are determined by the deck of cards which represents them. A player’s deck should consist of around 10 cards, and they will have a hand of 3 cards throughout most of a play-session.
Cards consist of 4 parts: A Cost, An Action, An Emotion, and A Skill. The Cost determines how much Iniative is spent when performing the Action. The Action describes what happens when you play the card. The Emotion gives you a bonus to that action when your character is Driven by the Emotion. The Skill gives you bonuses on certain checks you may make throughout the game.
Any time you need to keep track of the in-game time, The Dealer can call to start an initiative. At the start of initiative give every player 10 initiative points (IP). I recommend tracking this on a clock with 2 layers, each ten units long. The Dealer should also determine how long 1 IP is going to represent within the encounter. For combat, 1 IP could be 1 second, but at a party, it could be 10 minutes, or if you really wanted to abstract out a time period, you could make 1IP a whole day if you see fit.
The player who has the most IP gets to take their turn. In the case of tied IP, the player with the smallest deck gets to go first. If this is still tied, let the players decide who acts first.
On a players turn, they take 1 action. Almost all actions cost some amount of initiative points. After their action is fully resolved, see who has the most IP and start their turn. If this is the same player who just ended their turn, they can still take a second turn. At the end of a players turn, they always draw back up to 3 cards if they have fewer.
Actions can be 1 of three things: Passing, Moving, or Playing Cards. When a player Passes, they can discard any number of standard action cards from their hand and spend 1 IP for each. Then, they may redraw back up to 3 cards. If a player wishes to move, they can move up to one range band. Range Bands are a way of tracking relative distance between creatures and objects, and go as follows: Melee, Close, Medium Far, and Sight. Melee means you can reach a target in that space, Close means you’d only need a couple steps to do so, Medium suggests you could throw something at them, Far would require a tool or weapon to hit them, and Sight is anywhere beyond Far where you can still make out a creatures form. Range bands are relatively easy to use with Theatre of the Mind, but a large hex grid can help track these distances for more complex situations. Additionally, like initiative the Dealer may alter the specifics of these ranges should it be appropriate. If a player wants to Play their Cards, they can play any number of standard cards with matching Actions from their hand and spend the total initiative cost to resolve all of them. So, if a player has 2 Club cards, which each cost 2 IP, they’d spend 4 IP, make two attacks, and then end their turn. Players can also Play their Cards to make Skill Checks with some other goal in mind, which isn’t clearly deliniated by the actions.
To perform a Skill Check, state the Emotion and Skill you wish to use, and what your desired outcome is. The Dealer will then state a Target Number (TN). You can then discard any number of cards with the relevent Emotion or Skill. If you have a card with both the matching emotion and skill, then discarding that card counts as two points towards the TN. If you’re able to discard enough cards to match the TN, then you are successful.
Other players can also help you in your check, by discarding their own cards, but only if they have the matching Emotion. Discarding a card with a matching skill provides no benefit to the check.
Multitasking is an optional rule the Dealer may include in their game which allows a player to take multiple actions at once when it’s deemed appropriate by the Dealer. If you wish to multitask, Play all relevant cards, and resolve the actions in your decided order. The player then spends IP equal to the highest cost action.
Whilst what can or can’t be multitasked is up to the Dealer, here are some guidelines for what multitasking could or shouldn’t enable:
Your characters health is represented by the size of your deck. The bigger your deck is, the longer you’ll be able to survive. Unlike most other games however, your health is not a fixed number, and the amount of hits you can take before being taken out of the game may vary.
When you get hit by an enemy, you’ll draw one or more Wound card(s) into your hand. These don’t do anything by themselves, but if your hand is ever full of Wound Cards, your character is unable to overcome the pain of the wounds and may fall unconscious, or even die should it be appropriate for the game and story. For your hand to be full of Wounds, you must have at least 3 Wounds in your hand, and no standard cards.
When you have a Wound in your hand, you can use your Action to play the Wound to your Discard pile for 1 IP. This represents your character pushing through the pain, and fighting on. If you discard a Wound card in this way, you cannot play or discard any other cards from your hands, including other Wound cards. Addtionally, if you Pass your turn, you cannot discard Wounds from your hand.