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Starlight Riders

A space western game about heists across the galaxy · By Cezar Capacle

#AMA about the game design!

A topic by Cezar Capacle created Sep 20, 2021 Views: 166 Replies: 4
Viewing posts 1 to 2
Developer

This is your space to ask me anything regarding the system, the gameplay, the theme, the inspiration etc.

Go ahead! What's in your mind?

(+1)

Hey Cezar, I am intrigued but a bit hesitant since it uses cards and I only play online these days. While I can upload a deck to some VTT, there often is not a lot of functionality behind it. Can you maybe elaborate more about how you actually use the cards during play?

Developer(+1)

Sure thing!

TL;DR: cards are pretty central to gameplay, but I plan on having alternate rules with dice only.

So, cards represent the characters you take on heists, their talents, the obstacles you have to face, the complications and twists along the way. Most of those are static during play, so they can easily be replace by post-its or, really, a list of things.

Where it gets trickier is on character talents. There's a deck of character talents, 3 cards for each color-coded archetype, each card with 3 talents on it. So every player starts the round with 3 random cards on their hands, which will inform their decision on which character they want to activate and which action they would like to perform. It's non-diegetic on purpose, it's my way of incentivizing out-of-the-box thinking and whacky solutions for the obstacles. 

After you use that card, you discard it. And bringing it back into play costs HEAT (a form of stress). 

So your VTT should be able to draw from a pile, discard it on another pile, and eventually reshuffle it.

The same effect could be achieved by rolling on a random table, maybe? Although it still feels a little sloppy to me. 

But I'll be working on a card-less version that feels true to the original intent, both for online players and for folks that can't afford to buy or print the cards themselves. 

Let me know if that clarifies a little bit or if you have more questions.

Cheers!

(+1)

That was very informative, thank you! And that is something a VTT can probably handle. Just not sure about pulling from a discard pile to cast again, will have to look into this. Thanks again!

Developer(+1)

My pleasure!