An Idea for a Game: Story Deck // Thoughts

Story Deck

A game by Colin Gray and Ryan McConnell

Origin

This idea occurred to me the other day (about a month ago): could a Magic the Gathering kind-of deck-builder be adapted to the tabletop role-playing-game genre? I searched around and found relatively little activity around this idea… which could mean it was tried and abandoned, but having tried my hand at creating a few prototype decks, I must say it seems like a great idea. Actually I know it’s a good idea because it’s really similar to Gloomhaven, and that game is a ton of fun.

I called up one of my best friends, and long-time board game buddy, Ryan McConnell, to toss the idea back and forth, and we agreed that there is something here. We’re excited to build this thing, and see what people think!

In fact, for a long time I’ve used a variation of this idea to teach new players and to organize my own character. I create index cards with all my abilities (or ability combinations I want to remember) and ogranize them into social and combat. During a game, I can easily flip through the cards, and they are a really good mnemonic.

This game takes that idea further, into a full-blown deck-builder. Here’s what we’ve got so far:

Social

Social actions (taken outside of combat) can be played pretty much “anything goes”. I hesitate to make a rule about turn order, I would rather have a guideline like “don’t take more than two actions in a row without pausing to see what other people are thinking”.

Your hand consists of SWAG cards that all characters can do, plus special abilities granted by your class. These make up most of the cards in your hand, but you might also gain cards from items or feats.

When attempting a difficult action, the DM sets a difficulty target that you need to beat. But instead of rolling a D20 and adding a modifier, you’ll draw a card from your modifier deck and add any bonuses (this is very similar to the modifier mechanic in Gloomhaven). Since your modifier deck is unique to your character, it provides another place where you can level-up and modify. You might choose to add more good cards, at the cost of one critical failure, for example.

Story

The DM can make use of “story decks”, which are based on the classic “Choose your own Adventure” model of providing branching storylines. These stories can be loose and open (relying more heavily on DM’s discretion and imagination) or they can be on-the-rails, tightly controlled sandboxes. In the latter case, it’s possible to run a story without a DM, either solo or with a small group.

Combat

When combat begins, you’ll draw 4 or 5 cards (4, I think, though some classes and feats could grant more) that make up your options for this turn. So unlike most TTRPGs where the options are pretty much anything your character is capable of doing, this mechanic enforces choice restrictions.

This is also a way to decrease complexity! A new player can look at their hand, ask questions about the available actions, and need not be bogged down with every single thing that they’re allowed to do.

When I was sketching these cards, I realized just how smart the “pick top/bottom” mechanic of Gloomhaven is. Instead of the “pick two” mechanic, I’ve adopted an action points mechanic, and each action is given a cost. At level 1, everyone has 3 action points. At level 5, when a fighter would be granted extra attack, instead everyone gets a fourth action point, and the fighter deck would have options like “Attack: 1 action point if you took another attack action this turn.”

I also want to introduce a small set of abilities that are always available but limited used. For instance, a Fighter might have a once-per-long-rest ability to “rally”, granting them another chance to land their attack. Or Barbarian might have an option to restock their hand in order to further fuel their rage attack.

Spell Casting

Ryan and I are not completely aligned on this idea, but I’ll share it anyway because it’s my blog so there. 🤣

Spell casters will have cards like “Cast an Nth-level spell, exhausting this card” in their hand. This can replace the idea of spell slots or spell points. They would then need to go through their available spells to find the spell they want to cast. Alternatively, the spells could be part of the deck… but I don’t see that working out. You’ll end up with a hand full of all spells, hardly anything else.

Plus the spells are a shared pool of cards, so unless they were reprinted for each class (what a waste) you would have lots of cards with the wrong back.

Not that that’s to be completely avoided! In fact I want to lean into the creative possibilities of having cards with many different backs in your deck. This will give you a “peek” into what’s happening - in real life, this would be like your character thinking ahead about their options.

Class themes

I’ll share my notes about what each class would “feel” like.

Fighter

Of course we start with Fighter because they’re simple: they would have classic options like attack, parry a nearby attack (protecting yourself and allies), dodge incoming blows, and the card mechanics would be very simple.

Abilities like Second Wind from Dungeons and Dragons would play well here - either as an “always availabile” ability or as a card that gets exhausted (reset on long rest).

Rogue

I have a really fun mechanic in mind for Rogues. Playing off the idea that “sneak attack” is triggered by having an ally in range, I wanted to create a mechanic where the rogue has cards that are placed on top of a teammate’s deck. This would require that drawing your hand only happens at the start of your turn - but that’s OK, because there are probably reaction cards that you could take during another character’s action, so drawing at the start makes sense.

OK so imagine the rogue puts their attack on the barbarian’s deck. It would be worded as something like “if you make an attack this round, the rogue can attack the same enemy using their sneak attack damage.” Does this mean the barbarian would have less cards in their hand than usual? No! Because the card includes “and draw one extra card when played”.

Wizard

Credit to Ryan for this one, and I love it: wizards would be all about planning and knowledge. They would have cards in their hand like “search your deck to any card and add it to your hand, or to the top of your deck.” Or “Draw 3, keep 1, discard 1, place another on top of your deck.”

Warlock

How about this: leaning into the “pact” storyline, warlocks can choose to overpower their spell, but in trade they get a “curse” card added to their deck, which is basically a do nothing card that they are required to play (hat tip to Slay the Spire for this “curse card” idea)

Summoner

I think a summoner would have a really good time in this format. Cards would summon creatures into battle, probably ethereal animal spirits (low HP, limited number of rounds). As long as the summoned creature is in play, that card remains out, and limits the number of cards the player can draw.

Monk

Punchy, dodgy, quick-moving, lots of reaction. I sketched out a variation that has not two but three options on some cards, with the third option being either free (move 10 feet: 0 action points) or free if triggered (unarmed attack if a previous attack was successful: 0 points). These cards play super fast and light.

Barbarian

We haven’t entirely sketched this one out, but the hand wavy idea is that rage attacks could be “fueled” by discarding cards from your hand, adding them to the attack. This could be a zero point option on the card. “Add +1 damage: 0 points” or “Add +1 bonus modifier: 0 points”.

Artificer

I’m really not sure how to do this, but I want to have a deck of cards that plays like Dominion, so the artificer would feel like you were constructing something on each turn. For instance, instead of “cast a spell” maybe it’s “add acid damage” and “create vessle” and “throw it” could be combined to throw acid at a creature. I dunno, I’m still workshopping this one…

Tell me what you think!

Just kidding I’m not adding comments to this blog. Maybe you can guess my email address.

Published: 2025-03-29