Friday 28 September 2012

Nor the battle to the strong (2)

Back before 40K was officially cinematic again, I had a discussion with Big Jim - who's just posted the latest update to Killzone, for sixth edition - on the subject of a kind of automatic GM to get more unusual events into games without needing an extra person.

I posted the first three cards for a deck to do this, but for wargaming in general rather than just 40K, possibly also tactical roleplaying. The idea is that the cards interact with and modify various game elements, to set up chains of events. With the first trio - Spill, Spark and Plume - flammability could be added to the table and elements set smoking.

Below are four more - Flaw, Gust, Lapse and Agent - adding new interactions involving smoke, as well as disorientation and the possibility a unit can be seen as compromised.







A general approach to using them is given in the original post. Now there are more, it's worth mentioning the deck can be modified to suggest certain situations, by removing cards or using multiples. For example, more Gusts or Sparks could suggest a storm.

Here are the first three again, for comparison and a fuller sense of the potential links.






As mentioned originally, Spill and Spark are less suitable for games pre-black powder or combustion engine, but Spill can be left out and Spark have its top two targets removed.

As usual, all feedback is welcome. There's a blank card here if you have ideas for more.
_

2 comments:

garrisonjames said...

These cards are a lot of fun. They also port over from Minis to RPGs with no real trouble at all. Do you have any plans to release the set in PDF or some other format sometime in the future?

Porky said...

Putting them in a pdf makes sense and it is at the back of my mind, but it won't be just yet - I'd like to work on a lot more cards, enough to keep the deck surprising from game to game.