Post originally by Jack Holcomb at 2003-07-09 08:26:02
Converted from Phorums BB System

Here's an example of how *I* use the cards, which is pretty much the same as what is described in the rules. This happened in play.

I was introducing the game to a new group of players. They were playing the "Journey to Stonedeep" adventure, included with the basic set. They'd just stepped out of a gate into a sphere that'd been cut off for hundreds of years; the gate was in the middle of a ruined city, and they were exploring it when they were attacked by a band of ghouls. The ghouls, as I recall, were Fire 5 creatures--very strong and fast.

One of the characters (played by my wife) is a witchy type who goes through the aspects of the triple goddess through the course of the day. She has an Element point that shifts around depending on whether she's the Maiden (in the morning--the point adds to Fire), the Mother (in the afternoon--the point adds to Earth), or the Crone (at night--the point adds to Air). She's also a pretty good user of magic, as you might expect. It's around midnight, so she's the Crone and her Fire is 3--human average, low for a hero.

Ghoul attacks witch; we shift into task resolution mode.

The first consideration is always Karma--the numbers. The Ghoul's Fire is 5, the witch's is 3; the witch is clearly outclassed. She's going to lose this fight unless she's very, very clever. She shifts into a bird form, but then ATTACKS the ghoul, which is the opposite of clever, so she's definitely going to lose, and it makes sense that she'll be wounded.

The second consideration--Drama--then comes in. I'd like the characters to be motivated to seek out the locals, and an injured character can be a strong motivation. It makes sense, then, both in terms of karma and drama, for the wound not to be something they can ignore.

Then the third consideration kicks in--Fortune. Fortune plays two roles. The first is to break ties in Karma. The meanings of the cards aren't really as fluid as the review seems to imply; on every card there's a clear opposition, and so the card acts just fine as a coin flip. This is not a tied situation, of course; it's obvious that the character is getting hurt. So Fortune only fills the second role, which is to color the results and provide complications. I have Melissa (the player) flip the card, and we read it from her perspective. (I think it's important to have players make the flip and to read it from their perspective--they are the heroes, after all.) She draws the Cockatrice upright. The meanings for the Cockatrice are Corruption (upright) and Recovery (reversed). This is NOT a good draw!

So the ghoul's claws rake across her; she falls to the earth, shifting back to human form as she loses consciousness. Once the other heroes have dispatched the ghouls, they race over to her--and discover that her wounds have already started to stink and fester. (Ghouls + Cockatrice/Corruption = nasty, nasty wound).

Note that what's taken four paragraphs to explain actually happens in a couple of seconds--this takes about as long as it takes a player to roll dice and for a good GM to describe the results. This is not a slow and meditative process; it's at least as fast as task resolution in most games, and it's a good deal faster than *combat* in most games--which may be its cardinal virtue.

Now, not every draw will be this easy to apply; I encourage my players to suggest interpretations of the cards, and often they can come up with interesting interpretations when I'm stuck. I see this as a feature, not a bug; too often diceless games get accused of relying on GM fiat, but I think dicelessness sometimes (not always, by any means) lets the GM share the authority for the narrative with the players. I've had a lot of good games with this system.

Jack