Games for the Mind

As I start to fiddle with cards, seeing what it looks and feels like to have a hand of cards as a tool for playing Uns, I very quickly find myself wanting the face cards to be more than just another card of some suit or another.  While I think getting too fiddly with card meanings can be distracting, face cards, well, have faces.

At the same time, I don’t like the idea of the explorer having too much narrative freedom, since that feels like it shifts them away from the exploring headspace into a thinky, fiddly headspace.

I thought about just taking the face cards out, having them occupy a separate deck or something, but that feels and looks wrong to me.  As I start to pull face cards out, separate them into a pile, the play space feels too cluttered for my tastes.

I could just have them pulled from the explorer’s deck, letting them remain the property of the guide, but that feels too controlling.  I don’t want the explorer to have no authority for introducing characters, I just don’t want them to have the same authority as the guide.

I’m thinking, instead, to let them be a dual purpose card for the explorer.  The explorer can either treat them as any other card of the suit or use them as an occasion to ask “Is that so and so I see/hear/smell/etc. over at such and such?”  The guide may then take the hook and run with it or spend a card to “no that isn’t so and so, but…”

Tune it to the face cards, too.  Jack can be any young male or female, Queen must be a woman, King must be a male.  Perhaps have module specific connections to the suits and make those requried elements of the character suggested?  In other words, if ‘Diamonds’ relate to the market in a given module, any diamond face card must be tied to the market?

Maybe.  That has the advantage of encouraging descriptions to feed back into the setting…