"Chance Cards" Topic

How do you feel about the use of chance cards to determine random events in miniature wargaming?

I like them.

I like them as long as they don't overwhelm the game. When the game turns into 'what's the best card I can get?' instead of 'what's the best tactic I can use?' then I don't care for them.

+1 to the above posts.

+1 to the above posts

+1 Dn Jackson

+1 Dn Jackson

Yep

Don't like them but accept the "Dn Jackson" logic.

No, a good scenario will have lots of twists and turns if the rule set is good. Adding ill conceived generic events is a definite no for me. To me they take away the fundamental concentration on tactics. You don't see football games having an "event card", there are enough dramatic relevant events happening.

I have a sci-fi skirmish game in the design stage. It has 1001 random events that can be rolled for (1/3rd are good, 1/3rd are bad, the rest can be taken either way. ;-) But, the players decide if they want to risk bringing any into play (remember that 'bad' thing above, and some of them really are ;-), so the game can be played without them. I'll eventually go through them to make them fit in with the game mechanics I'm revising…

+1 Dn Jackson

I prefer Community Chest cards.

My main issue with them is they happen too frequently. Especially if they have some particularly niche event which seems to happen in alternate games.

Make them optional.

Cards are just equipment, like dice. Some of the ways they are used, I like, some not. Cards, as chance generators and random events do provide game mechanics options that dice or other chance mechanism don't.

1. Cards, because they can be any number, can provide a '1-6' or even '1 in 20'chance of something happening, but with a lot less predictability.
2. Card can carry a lot of information, including event rationale, CRTs and the game mechanics to be used, which can enhance play.
3. They can provide story narrative as well as random events.
Several low-level tactical boardgaames have used a card to provide several pieces of information, and as a combat result randomizer all in one.

It isn't the dice or cards that are the issue, but how they are employed in the game system. Several folks have mentioned some poorer uses or play results for cards. Dice can and do create the same problems, depending on the design.

Cards can't be less predictable than dice. However, their value is that they can be more predictable than dice.

Taking n cards, drawing one for a result, then reshuffling before the next draw is probability wise identical to rolling an n-sided die.

Taking n cards, drawing one, not reshuffling and drawing for a second result is different than rolling an n-sided die twice. To simulate that with dice you would have to have one n-sided die and n (n-1)-sided dice and a deliberate selection process. And n x (n-1) (n-2)-sided dice and a time consuming or rigorous (you could, say, build a device to select the subsequent dice when prior rolls are input) dice selection process.

"Draw-down" is a common method for multi-player games where you want a random order, but don't want someone to have their next turn until everyone has caught up to their number of turns. And for a four-player game you could have A-4 of spades and A-4 of clubs, shuffle and have the evening of the number of turns happen every two turns instead of one.

Instead of having a set number of draws, but reshuffle when a certain card, like a joker, comes up. This gives you increasing certainty like a draw-down, but you reset back to the pure uniform random differently.

But you can (awkwardly) do that with dice. What you can't do with dice, is you can't stack the faces. But you can stack the cards in a deck. Sure, but where's the random in that? Well, instead of shuffling, you can cut the cards or riffle the cards (or both) which mix them, but preserve the order.

You can also combine stacking, drawing, cutting, and shuffling to produce all kinds of useful non-uniform distributions of cards. This is really nice, since the real world tends to not to have IID distributions.

etotheipi:
Yep, what you say is true, which is another set of advantages to cards. I was thinking that the best one can do with dice is have two ten-sided or twenty-sided dice and come up with 100 or more discrete chances of any one result. But you need a chart, CRT or list of results described someplace else.

Not so with cards. With a deck of cards, the results rather than a table is on the card. The number of cards and their configuration in a deck is unlimited as well as the variety of things that can be done with them, which you point out. The non-uniform distributions of cards as in Pandemic is a good example. How disease cards are placed in the deck creates the behavior of viruses, popping up in the same place repeatedly, though randomly.

In GMT's Combat Commander the cards provide more than five different benefits/random events/combat resolutions on a single card.

I don't think that the many uses of cards has not been explored with table top rules to the extent it has with board games. The closest are some of Sam Mustafa's rules, but even there that is just scratching the surface. In those games, the games revolve around card play, which is only one way they can be used…

I was originally not a fan of cards in a game, I was convinced to try out a card based ad-hoc scenario generation system and I am sold. This video provides an overview of the idea.
youtu.be/7MJhdAlhsA4
As for using cards in a game, instead of a dice, that could work, but it depends on what die roil its replacing. I think it works better for random events, but not so good for combat.

I don't use cards for rules in QILS, but most of the scenarios use them. For example A Season in Hel uses the non-uniform properties of cards to create a useful weather system that behaves semi-predictably, Like actual weather.

I do have Path of Bones, which uses dominoes for a simultaneous combat system. Hand size, drawing and shuffling rules reflect capabilities and flow of battle. So, you can get a bad hand, but you can dig yourself out. There's only one 0/0 in the set, but you can roll a whole string of 1's. (DOM famously rolled three triple 1's in a row during MechWarrior tourney that she won.)