Battle Events - Card System

[TerryTroll]

I spoke in the Better Battles thread about wanting to do a system similar to the Book of Feasts card mechanic but for events in battles. It is still very much a work in progress.

Just wondered if it is something people would be interested in, or want to contribute, suggest ideas and the like?

The rules for using the cards are in this document Battle Cards Rules while the actual cards themselves are currently in a spreadsheet Pendragon Battle Cards which you can import into Nandeck.

The basic idea is you draw an Battle Event card, which sets up a situation (which more often that not will lead to Engaging an Enemy). The event would either award glory or modify the glory of the following engagement. Like the cards from the Book of Feast the event would often involve a test of a skill, passion or trait, this would often be an opposed test.

Ideally I want to keep the glory awards similar to what you would be getting under the existing battle system. What this system doesn't intend to do is actually have any influence on the outcome of the battle as a whole as it is designed for the more scripted battles in GPC where the outcome is already known.

Cards don't have any fancy frames yet so just look like this

 

Edited March 27, 2019 by TerryTroll

[BioKeith]

Great idea - I'd love to see this fleshed out.

[Username]

I'm personally pretty happy with battles as I run them, but I think this could be really good for a full tournament melee and could serve to distinguish tournament melee's from battles. So, I'm interested. I'll think about it and get back to you with some events.

[Ravian]

Love this idea. I feel like the Pendragon battle system is serviceable, but it mostly boils down to just fighting a bunch of enemies with varying degrees of advantage and disadvantage. That does exactly what it needs to, but it doesn't quite capture all the chaos that can occur in the throes of combat and I think this really works well as a concept to capture that.

[Atgxtg]

8 hours ago, Ravian said:

Love this idea. I feel like the Pendragon battle system is serviceable, but it mostly boils down to just fighting a bunch of enemies with varying degrees of advantage and disadvantage. That does exactly what it needs to, but it doesn't quite capture all the chaos that can occur in the throes of combat and I think this really works well as a concept to capture that.

Which Pendragon Battle System are you using?

[TerryTroll]

Just to say the links in the original post allow for comments so if you have any questions or ideas feel free to either use this thread or comment on the actual documents.

[TerryTroll]

On 3/27/2019 at 3:25 PM, Username said:

I'm personally pretty happy with battles as I run them, but I think this could be really good for a full tournament melee and could serve to distinguish tournament melee's from battles. So, I'm interested. I'll think about it and get back to you with some events.

I hadn't thought of that, obviously you'd want to limit the card deck for a grand melee tournament, remove cards related to being on horseback, ranged attacks, and mystical ones. I think the icons I'm including should make it easy to spot most of the ones that wouldn't be suitable for a tournament situation. 

[Atgxtg]

4 hours ago, TerryTroll said:

I hadn't thought of that, obviously you'd want to limit the card deck for a grand melee tournament, remove cards related to being on horseback

Why? Knights fought the grand melee on horse. 

I think the cards are a good idea, although I do think that you might want to include a way for the PKs to influence the outcome of the battle.

Back in the earlier editions, there were scripted battles where much of the battle was fought using the normal rules, with the scripted events kicking in at certain points. I think something like that could work well with the cards.  I also think that something like reducing the intensity or some such makes PK success more important to them, because the players get to see how their actions help (or hinder) their side. 

 

Edited March 29, 2019 by Atgxtg

[TerryTroll]

On 3/29/2019 at 2:38 PM, Atgxtg said:

Why? Knights fought the grand melee on horse. 

I think the cards are a good idea, although I do think that you might want to include a way for the PKs to influence the outcome of the battle.

I wasn't aware of that, although currently most of the mounted cards don't really suit a tournament. They are things like giving up your horse for your Lord, or getting a lance charge against a ranged unit.

I'll have to think about how to influence the battle, with this system I haven't fully worked out the glory awards yet, but it is likely to involve tracking success, failures and criticals which could be used. That or perhaps a modifier to intensity attached to each card.

Edited April 3, 2019 by TerryTroll

[Atgxtg]

5 hours ago, TerryTroll said:

I wasn't aware of that, although currently most of the mounted cards don't really suit a tournament.

What you could do is put a symbol for tournament, maybe with a circle and line through, to show which cards can and cannot be used at a tournament.

For instance you could have some Marshall cards where the marshals are paying close attention to the knight so he should play fair or the marshal will start to  call his wounds. This could be a kept card so a player could use it on someone to put them under the spotlight or catch them cheating. 

Maybe another card where the Marshall is distracted and a PK has the option of ignoring a solid hit (Deceitful check). 

A chance to ham it up and get more glory from a fight.

5 hours ago, TerryTroll said:

They are things like giving up your horse for your Lord, or getting a lance charge against a ranged unit.

Giving up your horse for your lord shouldn't be a big deal. It's the kinda thing that gets you rewarded, and you have a squire on hand for just such an emergency. Not rescuing your lord when he is down is a lot worse than just being selfish, it's borderline treason. Besides, if your lord goes down on the battlefield you side might have just lost the battle. 

The Book of Battle could help for ideas for battle cards. .

5 hours ago, TerryTroll said:

I'll have to think about how to influence the battle, with this system I haven't fully worked out the glory awards yet, but it is likely to involve tracking success, failures and criticals which could be used. That or perhaps a modifier to intensity attached to each card.

Maybe both? You could have a row on the bottom of each card ( like C:+2, S:+1  F: -1, Fum: -2) that could give you the modifiers. That would be easy to track and put the numbers right there for the players. You could also vary the modifiers by the maneuver so the riskier maneuvers might have greater rewards.