Lotería Cards

Years ago dungeonmum had a blog post about Italian lottery cards.  I can't find it now because her blog is in hibernation.  But I commented at the time about Mexican style bingo cards that seemed similar.  According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, the Mexican Lotería cards actually developed from those Italian ones.

Anyway, I finally got a set of these puppies. They appeal to me in the same way the Rider-Waite tarot does, simple archetypal images boiled down to the essence of a thing, but also attractive and slightly mysterious.  Lotería cards also have little rhyming riddles associated with each which reminds me of runes and rune poems. 

The Lotería cards have become so iconic that, like tarot cards, there are different interpretations of the cards by different artists, including Dia del los Muertos versions and a Star Wars version.

One unfortunate thing about the set I have is that it is a lesser quality version.  Apparently the set I've seen in collages and art boxes, was the Don Clemente set.  The cheaper set doesn't really compare. Here is a comparison, the best version first:

Sorry for the crappy color on the second set, but the color isn't the problem.  Check out Atlas' hair, the parrot's cool stand gets dumbed down, and look at the perspective on the tiles under the drunk.  I might splurge and try to buy the better version.

I think this deck would be perfect for a system of fortune telling or dreams in a D&D game.  Because it is a bingo game, the cards with random assortments of the images could be used some way as well.

The Procedural Dungeon

Take the idea of index card geomorphs, geomorphs that are stencils, dungeons built by certain cultures, and I think you've got a recipe for quick, DIY dungeons with a sense of logic and history.

First, think of a culture that's left structures peppered around your game world.  Let's pick Dwarves.  Second, decide on some features their strongholds/outposts almost always have.  Let's say:

• cave fish pond
• barracks
• smithy
• ore storage
• smelting room with chimney
• throne room
• hidden gem storage
• secret emergency exit/bolt route

Now, decide on the most common design for each of these features-- and they can be tetronimo shaped as long as each fits on a single index card-- and cut them into stencils. I realize that step might be trickier than it sounds but am confident the gross features can be caught even if you have to hand draw in finer details.

Then you should be set for the next time players go off map or an encounter roll calls for creatures to be in lair.  You pull out your stack of stencils for Dwarven Outpost (you can keep different types bundled with rubberbands) roll dice, or shuffle and draw the cards, then trace them on your graph paper.  It might take a few minutes but you'll have a consistent dungeon with a map for your campaign folder.

If it works as I imagine players could learn things about these dungeons that would add a sense of verisimilitude to the imagined world:  "Wait, this looks to be a Dwarven outpost, they almost always have a secret gem room."  Or "These Dwarven outposts tend to have smelting rooms with chimneys, so we might find a small but definite exit to the surface there."

If the stencils work as I hope, the next design challenge would be to make sure all of your recurring dungeons have features that players would find interesting, like the examples above.  maybe cultists have libraries, outposts of the old magic-rich empire always have a brass head mounted somewhere, and tombs of the old empire tend to have map rooms with a diorama display of the surrounding countryside (and the location of more tombs).

(I plan to try to actually produce some of these but I'm currently house sitting for friends so it may be a while.)

Update: I had a hard time titling this, Procedural isn't right.  I think I probably should have called it Template dungeon (but that sounded kind of boring) . Oh, well. That makes me wonder what a true DIY procdeural dungeon would look like, too.

Status Markers

Players running around maimed, drunk, or infused with cheetah DNA?  This might help keep track of all the shenanigans.  This pdf is a sheet of business-card size markers.  Print, cut.

To display in front of players, the two simplest ways I could think of: 1) take an index card.  Fold in half lengthwise like a little tent.  Cut two slots.  Insert relevant markers:

Deaf & Poisoned

Downside is it's limited to two, upside is you can write the PC's name across the bottom.

2)Second option,  just fold the marker in half and put a paper clip on it:

Downside is they might get shuffled around the table, upside is super simple, and your players can have tons in front of them.

I've seen Cyclopeatron use a little yellow slip with a lantern on it to indicate light bearer.  I need to make some of those. 

If you're using minis, Dan C. over at Dungeoneering Dad suggests the little color rings around milk and soda as easy to get, multi-colored markers.

What effects do you need?  I'll try to make them.

Poker Personalities II

Oddysey has a nice post here about the kind of social interaction that happens in her game with Trollsmyth.  I think I first saw this after I had already written my last post, but I realize now that my poker personalities would push players to do what she calls politics.  It's really about discovering the weaknesses and foibles of npcs to use as leverage against them.  Which is fine if that's what you're looking for: intrigue, politics.  But I don't think it would be conducive to the type of play Oddysey mentions enjoying in that post.  So, what mechanics might push players toward that type of play?

I think you could tweak the card suits idea a little and get closer.  Imagine the suits represent similar realms but experiences, skills, and opinions rather than exploitable secrets   For example:

• ♦: Memorable purchases, moments of fame, dreams of success.
• ♥: Lost loves, stories of home and family, nationalism
• ♣: Tales of hardship, monster encounters, war stories
• ♠: Teaching of philosophies, religious doctrines, guild bylaws

You keep the same system I suggested previously: npcs have 1 public, 3 private, and 1 secret bit of information.  Now, give a character experience each time an npc is engaged about one of their bits of information.  Finding out about someone's tragic past is not enough, you need to engage them personally.  So, the discovery of information would only be a part of the process here, you would need to hear it from the horses mouth, sit down to get more details, maybe give them advice.

How would this conversation be systematized?  I don't think it needs to be. I think it would become very obvious to a DM if a player was trying to hit on three subjects in quick succession just to rack up experience. It would seem unnatural and might shut off the npc completely. A measure of trust and comfort would need to be achieved to broach more private topics and I think players and DMs would have a natural sense of that.

So, how much experience? I'm not sure. Maybe 100 xp for private ideas, 200-500 xp for secrets. I think it would need to scale with levels though, or you would find going up in level would require conversing with more and more people. Trollsmyth and Oddysey would best have a feel for the pace here: how many conversations feels like enough to go up in level. Perhaps becoming friendly and conversant with 10-20 people would be enough to move the character forward a level.  So, multiply xp awards by level to keep the number of interactions consistent.

I'm having an intuitive tingle that letting players pick five things for themselves might be fruitful too.  Maybe you get twice the experience if you find someone with a similar religious philosophy, or who has had similar traumatic war experiences.  This would push players to explore npcs, searching for those like-minded souls.

I thought about giving experience for sharing information about npcs with other npcs, but I think that would just push towards gossiping.  I think it will be useful enough to find out about person A from person B so that you could confront/or console person A about that subject.

Heck, this might even work for romance.

As far as the cards themselves, this could all work with them being completely discrete: a hand of 5 clubs is five separate experiences/memories of hardship.  I think it could be interesting to make runs of the same suit or same card mean something, though.  Showing similar ideas memories related to each other.  The numerical value of a card could represent chronological sequence-- you discuss memories 3, and 4, before the person will reveal 5, or vice versa.

If you didn't do this and only wanted the bits of info to be discrete, what would the numerical values represent?  They could be how much that person knows/has to say about it, or how willing/unwilling to share about that subject.

Anyway, I think it is possible, with simple, abstracted mechanics to push towards almost any type of play you might think of.

Relationship Record Cards

Here are some 4' x 6' cards to keep track of who's interacting with who in your steamy world of fantasy intrigue.  Here is a pdf.  I realize I was sort of muddling power or decision making structures with personal relationships in my last post (and sure, they are related).  I've made two types of cards the first has a typical pyramid hierarchy like you might expect in a guild or church:

This next one:

 is meant to record things like vendors in a market place, or maybe the players at court, groups of people scheming and interacting but not necessarily in a hierarchy.  Here's the back to record the names of the people involved.  You would probably want individual records for folks if pcs start interacting with them, but this is just meant to be a key to the diagram on the front:

And here is a crude example of how you might use one of these:

I've used playing card suits as per this post.  I drew a few relationships in certain directions and some going both ways. These can mean whatever makes sense to you.  Maybe 6 owes money to the guildmaster.  Maybe 8 and 10 like getting together to debate while 7 is extorting money from some out-of-guild entity, maybe without permission. 

My guess is that, as DMs, you probably would only need these as you generate, we humans seem to be wired to remember this kind of stuff fairly well.  But, these cards could be useful for your players trying to unravel the various power relationships in your world.  And if you want players to engage your world socially, giving them some of these would help send that message to them.

Poker Personalities

Trollsmyth did a few posts recently about how if you want your players to do social interactions in-game you need rules that will push them that way.

I think people commenting on those posts were resistant to the idea that you need any rules to roleplay at all, that it can just happen on top of anything.  That's a post for another day, but I thought I might offer an example of rules that would push players to do more social interactions in-game.

What was really enlightening about Trollsmyth's posts for me, was not that rules shape behavior--that system matters-- but that the rules often shape behavior indirectly.  In other words, if you want players to interact socially you can't just give them XP to do so, it won't work well.  Instead, we need to break down what we mean by "interacting socially" and try to implement rules that will promote, or afford, that behavior.

With the caveat that I've never played any of the World of Darkness games and am very happy with the exploration of old school D&D, I think when people talk about social interactions they mean:

1. learning about npcs and their desires through conversation
2. utilizing information learned from npcs to make things happen
3. investigating npc-npc relationships
4. building a web of npcs to interact with and gain information from
5. joining guilds/factions and climbing up through their hierarchies
6. utilizing guild/faction affiliations to make things happen

Phew, that's a lot of stuff.  But I think we can do this.  

I love using simple materials we all have around the house and have experience with, so we'll use playing cards. I think Zak may have mentioned NPC reactions with cards briefly, but I've been intrigued with the idea since I heard a game used cards to resolve pc/npc interactions (was it Shadowrun?). Last caveat, I know this is a simplistic view of humans and their motivations but we have to start somewhere and hopefully complexity will emerge from the simple system.

Okay, the players want to enter somewhere but Bob the guard is tasked with keeping people out. What to do, what to do? Here's what you do:

Draw 5 cards, 1 up and 4 down.

The first card is public knowledge, the next three are private knowledge and the last card is a deeply held secret.

To get what they want from Bob the players will have to either threaten him, bribe him or convince him with a rational argument.

What is Bob susceptible to you ask? The suits tell the tale:

• ♦: Wealth, power and advantages dealing with acclaim, fame and prestige.
• ♥: Love, lust and approaches to life dealing with the appetites-- but also nostalgia, security, and comfort
• ♣: Threats of violence and harm, fear, dread
• ♠: Reason, rational arguments involving laws, systems, explanations, and examples.

Let's follow peoples' expectations and say low cards are weaker. So, with a two of hearts, it appears Bob is really vulnerable to some aspect of that realm.  Players can determine this by briefly observing him or interacting with him.  Maybe he's a ladies man, checking out every female that walks by.

If players start following him around or asking questions of people that know him, the DM will flip over those private cards.  Maybe one card for each lead investigated. These investigations reveal:

So, after a little poking around it seems Bob is susceptible to rational convincing, but because the 9♠ is the same suit, like a flush, it strengthens his resolve here. The 7♦ offers some possibility of bribing him but it will be more difficult than utilizing his weakness in hearts.

The hole card, that last secret, should be difficult to find. Traditionally it is the npc's diary, maybe they talk to themselves when they believe they are alone, or talk in their sleep.  And in fantasy games these could be discovered through magic or mental powers such as ESP.

The 2♠ probably puts the nail in any attempts at reasoning with Bob.  Perhaps he is affable and listens politely (the appearance of weakness with the discovery of the 3♠), but is just too dumb to understand the players' arguments.  But the knowledge of all his traits does not undermine the idea that he is susceptible to persuasion through hearts.

So, knowing this what do players do?  What is the mechanism for resolving the outcome of interactions?  Two things spring to mind:  First, you could convert player stats to card equivalents.  I think subtracting 5 might work: a pc with an 8 charisma might just be able to personally seduce Bob (8-5 =3♥).  Strength could apply to ♣, Intelligence to ♠.

But what about the guild and faction interactions in our list above?  That's the second thing: give members of organizations certain leverages as they advance through the ranks.   Cutpurses in the Thieves Guild might have access to 3♥, 3♣, and 3♦.  A Mages Guild member accessing their archives might wield a 10♠ in examples and anecdotes.

I think this would push players to investigate people rather than places (discover npc cards), use what they learn to interact with them, get involved in organizations (to have access to powers greater than their stats and personal wealth allow), and continue interacting with npcs even when the short term events are finished (Bob may be useful to apply pressure to another pc in the future, or in advancement in some organization).

I also think the abstraction of the four suits leaves a lot of wiggle room for creative players.  Maybe players think to influence Bob by bringing around one of his old war buddies, this would fall under ♥s as well.

Thoughts?

Old School Combat Cards

In a true old school combat anything is possible. The actions a player might choose to perform, because they are not described, are infinite.

But what do we do for new players who have no idea what could happen in a combat? Or what will we do in a few years when all those entering the hobby will only have had experience with 4e and most likely be looking for explicit action they can take in a battle?

Old School Combat Cards!

Make some cards that have some basic maneuvers a player might make. Include simple instructions on them. Better yet if they all had silhouettes illustrating the maneuver being made for easy identification during play. Also, if you could color code different types of maneuvers. Maybe anything that moves an opponent is green, maneuvers that result in a definite combat advantage in red, etc.

The mechanics you use to determine success are up to you. But for me, I'd use Simple Combat Maneuvers. Every card would have the same mechanic! The idea would be eventually the player would no longer need them-- like training wheels.

So what would be some good cards to have?

Those that Move a Foe

• Push Back
  
• Lead Forward
  
• Trade Positions

Those that Give an Advantage over a Foe

• Trip
• Disarm
• Blind
• Tackle

Others

• Shield Ally
• Slip By

What do you think? Have you had players that might have benefited from something like this? Suggestions for other cards or ways to use them?

Gem Cards

I posted some treasure cards a while back. I still like the idea, especially as it seems like something perfect for sharing-- takes some work to make but then they're useful forever. So, today I ran across a public domain book with color plates of gems and greedily filled my purse. I made a page with labels and one without. Maybe your thieves know the names/values of gems-- give them the first, everyone else has to learn from experience. Pdf here.

Now, give your players some gems!

Simple Card Mechanic

This is probably inanely obvious, but I'm bored. Here is a way to use playing cards to present players with probabilities that have diminishing chances. Get your deck. Take out the jokers. Shuffle. Have your players draw:


Any Number ~70%

Any Heart ~ 25%

A Royal Heart ~6%

The problem is, a deck of cards is more time consuming to shuffle than 7 dominoes. But it's functional. I just stuck with hearts for consistency, but if spades fit your Priest of Dark Fate's petitions better, they would work equally well.

The last probability drops off much faster than the dominoes. You could address this by making the last draw a Red Royal (heart or diamond) which would give you ~ 15%. But I liked the simplicity of going form hearts to hearts.