I've been thinking about this for the past couple of weeks.

>>44069459
Shonen Final Burst does a lot of weird stuff using suits and straights.

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>>44069459
>Image of dominions.

Anyone want talk about noumenon?

>>44069459
Only interesting mechanic is that drawing cards removes them from the pool of future outcomes.

Otherwise shuffling and drawing is significantly slower than rolling dice.

Just straight up use gambling games in your RPGs. Pretty sure Deadlands used Blackjack for magic.

I actually kinda like the concept that player skill has a small impact on it, in the form of either remembering draws, or if you use a boot, counting cards.

>>44070520
Rolling dice is already gambling. Does Deadlands have some mechanic or something that allow players to influence their odds somehow? Because otherwise, I mean, the house always wins (which is fine, but not my personal preference).

>>44069459
Theres the deck of many things from DND.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/artifacts.htm

Also, in baldurs gate theres a spell book artifact that allows you to cast the opened page a set number of times a day. But if you turn the page, a new random spell appears. Previous and future pages spells aren't known.

You could morph that into a deck of spells where if you lose a card you can't cast it again till you recharge and shuffle up once a session.

Or maybe spellcasting by drawing X cards and the effect is based on combos like pairs or suits

>>44070649
Thinking more about it, you could make deck building like spell casting. Did you ever try Kingdom Hearts chain of memories? You build a deck and your actions and spells require certain combinations of cards. It's abit hard to explain in words. Still, having a artifact as a set of cards that require some deck building to cast spells would be fun.

>>44070726
Take a standard deck, with 2 jokers, and split it in half. Give 1 half for the players to divide among themselves, and keep the other half for the GM.
Anytime a situation needs to be resolved with potential for serious failure, set up a hand of 7 card stud, face down cards are for the GM's cards face up the players.
Regardless of the hand if it match's the suit of the burn card, or if any of the cards are a joker, the action fails. The greater the hand the better the success or failure. Once the action is resolved set aside those cards until both decks are unable to complete a hand (6 hands), then reshuffle and split the deck again as needed, or split and use an alternate deck.
Euchre could also be used, but would need a Trump for failure rather than a burned card.

Meant to reply to OP, sorry. Tired.

>>44070520
There's also the idea of having a set hand size, from which you can use cards to activate different actions, reactions, or other types of abilities/effects.

>>44069459

Go look at Malifaux.

To complete a check based on a stat it's relevant stat + flipped card, trying to reach or better a target number. Stats may have suits associated with them and obviously all cards do. Target numbers can include a required suit or added suits can give extra benefits; this also means that certain can add to or subtract from s model's stats, suits or both. There's also resource management in that each player has a hand of cards which they can use to replace flipped cards.

System's great and I love the game itself, base rules are also available free.

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>>44069459

It's not out yet, but go research Project Dark. (Not to be confused with Theif: The Dark Project, but it latter is largely Theif: The RPG)

Stealth game, players build their characters by taking regular playing cards and building a deck out of them. Different cards can have different effects. Jokers are wild (I think?) but if you use them you're giving fate points to the GM, or whatever

Great looking system, taking nine thousand years to come out

>>44069459
We use a custom deck of cards in our campaigns, with each of them being tied to some concept like "Helpful stranger" "Great Peril" "Death" Or "Upheaval and chaos"

Players who have fate points can spend them to make the DM draw a card from the deck, and no matter what it is, the DM has to work it into the session or current scene.
The deck is not reshuffled until at least 2/3 of the deck has been drawn, because it's really awesome to watch everyone be all "Don't do it man, don't do it man" when they know that sure, the Guardian Angel is still in there, but so is the Nemesis, but at the same time I don't want situations where everyone knows the last 2 cards are both really dangerous and nobody wants to draw.

I had a somewhat basic idea for GURPS which uses 3d6 for almost everything.

I was thinking something like three suits representing each die, the numbers 1-6, four times per suit.

Each player draws five cards at a time, face up so everyone can see them. When a skill roll is required, they must play three cards of three different suits and draw three new cards.

All of that is pretty pedestrian so far, and it basically has all the typical advantages and drawbacks of using a deck as a random number generator, but to spice it up, you could:

Make up a penalty for a "roll" if a player can't play a valid set of three suits.
Have probability altering enchantments that can force a player to play a specific card, or force a trade (for better or for worse) with someone else.
Allow players to buy advantages/disadvantages to load the deck favorably/infavorably.

I just never ran the numbers to figure out what each of those should cost in terms of GURPS character points, though I should think the idea also translates fine to any game that uses 1 type of die... It could "work" for others, but would probably be too cumbersome to have a d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20 deck to be practical.

>>44069459
I once read a short story where wizards cast spells with a deck of cards. Each wizard only got one deck for their entire lifetime, so they had to be careful about when to use magic and how much to use. The different suits were good for different things, and higher = better was in effect. I thought it was an interesting magic system, but I don't know how you'd balance it for an rpg.

Also, there might be some potential in drawing inspiration from tarot.

>>44070566
Short answer, yes. I think it's actually poker, not blackjack though. There was a thing about the dead man's hand being the best.

>>44069459

Cards have many uses.

First, RNG

Second, as reminders and placeholders for stuff like temporary conditions (stunning, nauseated, etc). Or a place to park special rules for items. Essentially rules that don't matter until they're specifically called up. A card gives you empty space to write special rules on.

Third, "weird shit". That's as close as I can come up with. Like in Deadlands how you are trying to create a poker hand in addition to playing a CCG. Cards can be laid out on a table and interact with one another.

Finally, "limited resources". That's because when you pick a card, it changes the probabilities of future outcomes until you replace the card and reshuffle. >>44070520

Cards also lend themselves to complexity balancing mechanics, per >>44071202. Let me give an example here.

In Battlefleet Gothic, a big part of an action was special orders. You make a leadership roll and if you succeed then the ship does something it ordinarily can't do. If you fail, no more special orders *for your fleet* for the rest of the turn. You can also group ships into squadrons; those all go on special orders together but have to stay in formation.

Special orders can mean the difference between winning and losing-- they're very powerful. In a very small fleet, you want to maneuver your ships separately to get the most out of each one. In a very big fleet, you want lots of squadrons so that you don't fail a leadership roll and get fucked for the rest of the turn. So complexity doesn't go up much with fleet size. Small games are tactically rich, and large games remain simple enough to be manageable.

Cards let you put limiting mechanics like that in place, stuff that lets you increase player options without making things exponentially more complicated.