It is 3 AM and I cannot sleep because I woke up with these random mechanics coming into my head. But one of the reasons you keep a blog is to have a place to dump such intrusive random thoughts.
Let us imagine that you have an RPG with mechanics based on making poker hands, like my colleague Dadstep's in-development Hellbenders or perhaps my Ain't No Grave.
How could we make deckbuilding a form of advancement in such a game?
Constructing Your Deck
Each player plays with their own deck.
To start, buy two poker decks. They're in your local dollar store for $1. One deck will be your active deck and one will be your reserve deck.
Your deck starts with less than 52 cards: ace-10, all four suits, no face cards.
Building your Active Deck
You improve your active deck by moving cards from your reserve deck into your active deck or vice versa.
Perhaps something like:
- Each session, move two cards out of or into your active deck from your reserve deck.
- On a session where you achieve a milestone move two more cards.
I imagine that, over time, your strategy for your deck might change. You'd want to be able to move cards frequently enough that you can see your probabilities change and then tweak and adapt. You could evolve towards builds of mono-color, high value cards (adding in face cards), flushes, straights, X of a kind, etc.
Improved Cards
Another lateral type of advancement could be physically changing your cards to improve them.
For example, if you take a wound and survive, the card that drew to see if you lived or died becomes lucky. Take a hole punch and punch out the number (like a bullet hole). It can be used to represent any number of that suit.
If you defeat a named NPC in a duel, the card you used to kill the varmint becomes wild. Write the name of the defeated NPC on it. That card can be used as any suit.
Or if you pray to the gods and name one card to make a Hail Mary (say, ace of spades) and draw it successfully from the deck, you not only achieve your wild goal but that card becomes blessed. Singe it with a lighter to represent the holy flames. It can be used as any suit, any number.
Talents and Heat Over Time
Whether or not a card is in your active deck or in your discard pile could give you certain benefits.
Take a Sharpee and mark certain cards as a talent card.
If a talent card is in your draw pile, you might be able to use a certain move or perform some feat. For example, you can always whistle and have your horse come to you. After that card is discarded, you can't. This can represent how your character is taking wounds, losing endurance, and losing competency as they spend their resources.
Or invert it. The more cards of X type in your discard pile, the better you are at something. This can represent the powering up you see protagonists do in certain is types of heroic fiction. Every 10 you have in your discard pile, for example, gives you a +2 value to all Horse Riding tests.
Getting Weird with It
Get really Balatro with it by improving your character in other, weirder ways.
Get an upgrade that lets you use poker dice in addition to your cards. Maybe there's a whole class (gambler?) that does that.
Fill your active deck with tarot cards. Maybe tarot cards are...hexes? When you pull them, you can put them in the GM's deck. Each card the GM draws that is a tarot card is a negative card for them.
Anyway. It's 4 AM now. Please enjoy this unmetered braindump.
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