Playing Card Initiative
I have been playing a lot of Arcs recently (including with my colleague, Anne of the DIY & Dragons blog) but have the disease where everything I do or see makes me think about how I can repurpose it to TTRPGs. For those unfamiliar with Arcs (it’s not important for my overall idea here), my colleague at the Ennie-nominated Skeleton Code Machine has a nice write-up of it. Arcs is one of those space games, but that’s not important right now–I need you to focus! What has got my gears a-turnin’ is the trick-taking element discussed in the Skeleton Code Machine piece. It is incredibly elegant and, partially because it is what determines who has “Initiative”, I want to try to steal it for my own D&Dalike purposes.
A design constraint is that I want to use cards that I (and many others) have readily at hand, rather than the bespoke cards from Arcs. So I need to use playing cards. A design goal is that I want players to have to make trade-offs when selecting their card for a round. This is the case in Arcs, where lower value (for initiative trick-taking purposes) cards allow the player with initiative to take more actions than their higher value counterparts. More RPG-based inspirations includes (A) Josh McCrowell’s His Majesty the Worm (which uses the natural enemy of playing cards, the noble Tarot) where players pick a card from their 4-card hand where they must trade off between going first and being harder to hit in combat, and (B) Ava Islam’s Errant where players decide each round whether to trade off between going quickly or taking more actions that turn. However, after consulting the definitive catalog of Initiative Methods from colleague Dwiz of A Knight at the Opera, I have developed a hitherto undiscovered (discovery because all platonic initiative methods exist already) method for initiative.
The Base Mechanism
At the start of combat, each player (referee included) draws 4 cards into their hand. Players must keep their hand of cards confidential. Each round of combat, every player plays one of their cards face-down. Players draw a new card after playing one, such that their hand always includes 4 cards. If you run out of cards in a combat, shuffle the cards that have been played thus far for a new deck.
After all players have played a card, the referee rolls the Risk Die (1d10) and everyone flips their cards face-up. If the Risk Die rolls a 1, anyone who used a weapon requiring ammo on the prior round must reduce their ammo, any effects with a Duration, such as light sources, have their Duration reduced by 1, and spellcasters who are maintaining an ongoing spell must spend 1 Intelligence or allow the spell to end.
Turn order is established in reverse numerical order (with a 10 going before a 9, etc.), with any ties broken by the character with the higher Dexterity. Any “face” cards (king, queen, jack, joker) counts as an 11 and aces count as 1s. All of the enemies act on the order established by the referee’s card, but if any player played a card of the same suit (e.g., hearts or clubs), the referee can choose to have one enemy act on that turn instead immediately before that player character. Player’s flunkies, sidekicks or what-have-you all act on the same turn as that player’s character.
The number of actions each combatant takes is determined by the relation of your card and the Risk Die. If the number of your card is lower than the Risk Die, your character takes 2 actions on your turn that round. If your card is higher than the Risk Die, your character only takes 1 action that round. If your card is equal to the Risk Die, your character takes 3 actions. If the referee allowed an enemy to act based on another player’s card, that enemy takes the number of actions based on the player’s card, not the referee’s. All other enemies act based on the referee’s card.
This method now not only satisfies the goal of an initiative (tells you who goes when), but also involves randomness (the hands you’re dealt and the result of the Risk Die), player agency (choosing which card to play each round with inherent trade-offs to the choice. Note that face cards are basically always a choice to “act quickly” as in Errant), and even player skill (card counting is possible and could even give players an edge). It is certainly a bit more fiddly than other methods, but I am not against crunch if it tastes good.
Possible Add-ons
I don’t want to overcomplicate the above base method, but with cards (relatively information dense compared to dice), the possibilities are endless, and I simply cannot help but tinker even more with my machinery.
The first element you could add is action-locking for non-referee players. This makes use of the suit of the card played. For this element, I would make two changes to the base mechanism: have each player draw 5 cards instead of 4 and remove the bit about the referee getting to act on the player’s turn if they play the same suit as the referee. For this add-on, the suit of the card played determines the player’s action. If they can take more than one action on their turn, only one action has to match the suit and the other actions can be spent on any type of action. This not only more closely resembles Arcs, where your potential actions are dictated by your suit, but also avoids the “McDonalds Problem” that many initiative systems fall prey to.
Luckily, His Majesty the Worm has already trod this ground before me, to the extent worms can trod ground and not just wriggle through it. In that game, you play a card to take an action and the suit (Swords, Wands, Pentacles or Cups) determines your action. My choices of what action types below to what suit will largely mirror the divisions in that game:
| Clubs (♣) | Diamonds (♦) | Hearts (♥) | Spades (♠) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attack | Magic | Help | Dash |
| Riposte | Study | Influence | Dodge |
| Roughhouse | Utilize | Recover | Hide |
This add-on is so good it comes with its own add-ons. If you use this, you may want to allow certain characters to circumvent it. For instance, perhaps they can “spend” an ability score (a mechanic I discuss in my treatise on ability scores) to be able to treat their card as a different suit. I would map Strength to Clubs, Intelligence to Diamonds, Charisma to Hearts and Dexterity to Spades for using this tweak. You could also limit that ability to only certain classes or feats (e.g., only a fighter can spend Strength to treat any card as a Clubs and same with wizards and Intelligence for Diamonds), or even get rid of the spending element and just say that, e.g., Fighters can always treat any suit as if it were Clubs, that’s what makes them a fighter–they fight!
There are also just endless possibilities for using the cards (in conjunction with the risk die or not) to help the referee determine monster actions. One of my favorite aspects of Trespasser is its monster tactics: Every round the referee rolls 2d6 in secret and the result determines what kind of actions the monsters take. For instance, a harpy can only use their piercing screech if the 2d6 rolls a 10 or higher, a flyby attack on a 7 or higher and otherwise uses their basic attack of talons. But with the cards, there are many more possibilities: perhaps each monster has a different base action for each suit based on what the referee plays and special actions they can take based on if anyone at the table played a specific face card. Or maybe each monster’s tactics interact entirely differently with the cards, like perhaps relatively simple monsters just hit harder the higher the GM’s card while boss monsters take a set of actions based on not only the card’s number and suit but on the Risk Die too. You could also give hyper intelligent or mind-reading monsters the ability, once per combat, to look at another player’s hand and swap out one of the referee’s cards for one of theirs. The possibilities are easily enough to fill several manuals of monsters, more than I could possibly detail in this paragraph, but I’m sure your wheels are turning just like mine.
You can also use the Risk Die for morale tracking. This is a modification of a simple rule I have been using, and it assumes that enemies have a Charisma stat (where higher is better) just like the player characters. Enemies have a collective “panic” which starts at 0 when combat begins. Whenever any enemy flees, is killed or captured during a Turn, increase their panic by the amount rolled on the Risk Die. If the panic is ever above an enemy’s Charisma score, they lose their morale and attempt to flee, surrender or commit honorable sacrifice, based on their disposition.
Some other bloggers have tried similar experiments with pretty different proposals. See the versions from The Alexandrian and Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque.
