A friend wanted a rules system to go with his concept for magic. The closest I got was pointing him at Houses of the Blooded, but not before I came up with a system using cards
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I have to agree with you (whoever you are but I'm going to assume it's TB). And this actually feeds back into further ideas had about face cards.
When you are choosing your powers (going superhero here), you choose what the face cards actually mean for your character through some mechanism of which some are good, some bad. You could go black/red for bad/good but that clashes if the suits have other meanings. So maybe Jacks are bad, Queens are good, Kings are crazy. Which brings us back to your point: what if you can't just remove the bad effects? When you perform the activity that removes the Jack of Spades, it also removes the Queen of Diamonds? It would certainly suit some types of ability.
Alternatively, removing a face card, as opposed to a number card, always makes you remove one of your perfect numbers from your pack so you can never have complete success if you eliminate the possibility of catastrophe. I think this is probably the 'fairest' system.
I'm still curious about the best method of assigning effects for face cards. I suspect you would end up with lists of possibles of the three categories... ah I think I have it. My problem has been balancing different levels of good or bad. I wandered over the idea of tying it to the number picked but that seemed incongruous. Then:
Many games have "beenies" or equivalent. So what if beenies in this system didn't affect normal activities but any time you trigger a face card the player and ST can spend beenies to dictate how good/bad the effect is. Clearly, ST spends for Bad, player for Good - and either/both for Wild. If both cards are face cards, each effect has 2 free beenies and presumably character creation can give bonuses to certain face cards.
I also like the idea that this could feed into the mythology of the game. Take Kitty Pryde when she couldn't become tangible. That was presumably a level 5 Bad effect which then led to the conclusion that her natural form was intangible. I'm sure there are other examples. Similarly, bonuses could become 'signature moves'.
When you are choosing your powers (going superhero here), you choose what the face cards actually mean for your character through some mechanism of which some are good, some bad. You could go black/red for bad/good but that clashes if the suits have other meanings. So maybe Jacks are bad, Queens are good, Kings are crazy. Which brings us back to your point: what if you can't just remove the bad effects? When you perform the activity that removes the Jack of Spades, it also removes the Queen of Diamonds? It would certainly suit some types of ability.
Alternatively, removing a face card, as opposed to a number card, always makes you remove one of your perfect numbers from your pack so you can never have complete success if you eliminate the possibility of catastrophe. I think this is probably the 'fairest' system.
I'm still curious about the best method of assigning effects for face cards. I suspect you would end up with lists of possibles of the three categories... ah I think I have it. My problem has been balancing different levels of good or bad. I wandered over the idea of tying it to the number picked but that seemed incongruous. Then:
Many games have "beenies" or equivalent. So what if beenies in this system didn't affect normal activities but any time you trigger a face card the player and ST can spend beenies to dictate how good/bad the effect is. Clearly, ST spends for Bad, player for Good - and either/both for Wild. If both cards are face cards, each effect has 2 free beenies and presumably character creation can give bonuses to certain face cards.
I also like the idea that this could feed into the mythology of the game. Take Kitty Pryde when she couldn't become tangible. That was presumably a level 5 Bad effect which then led to the conclusion that her natural form was intangible. I'm sure there are other examples. Similarly, bonuses could become 'signature moves'.
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