Cards as Randomisers

[DungeonDevil]

Forgive my failing grey-matter if I have asked this before here...

I'd like to crowdsource some ideas about how to apply a common Anglo-French (52-card) deck* of playing cards as a randomising agent, in lieu of dice (*gasp* what blasphemy!!!1).
What sundry combinations and their probabilities would you employ besides the following?

* any card of a given suit (1/4), 0.25000000
* any court (3/13), 0.23076923
* any K (or Q or J) (1/13), 0.07692301
* any red (or black) K (or Q or J) (1/26), 0.03846154
* any K or Q (not J) (2/13) 0.15384615
* any even pip (5/13) 0.38461539
* any even pip of 1 suit (5/52) 0.09615385
* any even Black (or Red) pip (5/26) 0.19230769


___________________
* for the benefit of those unfamiliar with cards:

CLUBS: Ace,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, Jack (or Knave), Queen, King.
SPADES: Ace,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, Jack (or Knave), Queen, King.
HEARTS: Ace,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, Jack (or Knave), Queen, King.
DIAMONDS: Ace,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, Jack (or Knave), Queen, King.

[Desparil]

Any card of a suit should be 1/4, not 1/13.
There's the obvious "any red" or "any black" if you want some simple 50-50 odds.
There's the inverse of "any court card" of "any non-court card" for a 10/13.

My other concern would be that the odds will change over time unless you're committed to replacing and reshuffling after every draw. Or I suppose you could minimize the effect by using a 6-deck blackjack shoe.

[DungeonDevil]

Jul 14, 2024 11:31:05 GMT -6 Desparil said:

Any card of a suit should be 1/4, not 1/13.
There's the obvious "any red" or "any black" if you want some simple 50-50 odds.
There's the inverse of "any court card" of "any non-court card" for a 10/13.

My other concern would be that the odds will change over time unless you're committed to replacing and reshuffling after every draw. Or I suppose you could minimize the effect by using a 6-deck blackjack shoe.

Post amended. Thanks for the ideas.
Yes, the deck would have to be reshuffled for every draw, otherwise the maths get much more complicated.

[Finarvyn]

And of course using the Joker(s) would mess up the whole thing.

[hamurai]

Jul 14, 2024 11:31:05 GMT -6 Desparil said:

My other concern would be that the odds will change over time unless you're committed to replacing and reshuffling after every draw.

That could be used for "Drawing with Advantage" - if the needed card is not drawn immediately, you may draw again with slightly better odds.

Maybe your ability modifier is +3 (in 5E, for example), so you can draw 3 cards.

[Finarvyn]

Jul 14, 2024 22:47:58 GMT -6 hamurai said:

Jul 14, 2024 11:31:05 GMT -6 Desparil said:

My other concern would be that the odds will change over time unless you're committed to replacing and reshuffling after every draw.

That could be used for "Drawing with Advantage" - if the needed card is not drawn immediately, you may draw again with slightly better odds.

Maybe your ability modifier is +3 (in 5E, for example), so you can draw 3 cards.

Interesting. I would have ruled things a little differently (I think, this is just off the top of my head and not well thought through or playtested).

"Drawing with Advantage" I would say you draw two cards and use the better one. Drawing at disadvantage would be drawing two cards and using the lesser one. Maybe that is what you are saying? (In 5E technically "advantage" is NOT a re-roll but is supposed to be declared before the roll and one rolls 2d20 and keeps the better one. That's not how most people play it, but I think that is BTB.)

+3 (in your 5E example) would be the value of the card shifted upwards by 3. I.e. drawing a 5, treated like an 8. Draw a 9, treated like a Q.

[hamurai]

Jul 15, 2024 6:27:26 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Jul 14, 2024 22:47:58 GMT -6 hamurai said:

That could be used for "Drawing with Advantage" - if the needed card is not drawn immediately, you may draw again with slightly better odds.

Maybe your ability modifier is +3 (in 5E, for example), so you can draw 3 cards.

Interesting. I would have ruled things a little differently (I think, this is just off the top of my head and not well thought through or playtested).

"Drawing with Advantage" I would say you draw two cards and use the better one. Drawing at disadvantage would be drawing two cards and using the lesser one. Maybe that is what you are saying? (In 5E technically "advantage" is NOT a re-roll but is supposed to be declared before the roll and one rolls 2d20 and keeps the better one. That's not how most people play it, but I think that is BTB.)

That's how I meant it, yes. Drawing one card, then another (no re-shuffling), therefore slightly better odds to get what you need, because 1 card you don't need is already out. Technically, for a 5E equivalent you'd have to use 2 decks to draw at the same time

Jul 15, 2024 6:27:26 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

+3 (in your 5E example) would be the value of the card shifted upwards by 3. I.e. drawing a 5, treated like an 8. Draw a 9, treated like a Q.

I was unclear on this one. Using 5E as an example and then jumping to a completely different idea is confusing. My idea was, to increase the odds (which aren't that high for many cards, see the original post) you could allow players to draw more than 1 card.

That's if you require players to draw specific cards/suits for success.

If you use the card values to beat a target number, a simple +3 modifier would of course increase the effective card value.

[DungeonDevil]

Sooo...no more ideas?
This thread died faster than I would have hoped. :?

[Finarvyn]

I don't know that many games that use cards as their randomizer mechanic. Castle Falkenstein has a card variant. I think I've seen some Western RPGs use cards for the flavor. I can't think of many examples.

[Desparil]

If you want something for 4/13, I can think of two options:
Any prime number
Any card worth 10 points in blackjack (10, J, Q, K)

For 2/13 just pick two convenient cards, say Aces and Kings

Either of those could be done with a specific color for X/52 or a specific suit for X/52, as usual.
Anything else I can think of off-hand would be compound probabilities for more than one draw.

[thecube]

Someone could make a special pack of 120 playing cards, numbered from 1-120, where each card has colored images of all six common D&D dice on them, each die with a number inside.

The D4 image on each card: Cards 1-30 would have a 1, cards 31-60 would have a 2, cards 61-90 would have a 3, cards 91-120 would have a 4.

The D6 image on each card: Cards 1-20 would have a 1, cards 21-40 would have a 2, cards 41-60 would have a 3, cards 61-80 would have a 4, cards 81-100 would have a 5, cards 101-120 would have a 6.

And so on for the D8, D10, D12, and D20 images on each card.

(I wouldn't be surprised if this is already a thing.)

[tkdco2]

I've used a regular deck of cards as an oracle. I used clubs and spades to represent a negative answer, while hearts and diamonds represent a positive answer. I then ask a question in such a way that a positive answer is preferred. So instead of asking if I get lost, I ask if I find my way without a problem. Then I draw 3 cards to determine the result.

3 negative = extreme no
2 negative, 1 positive = no
2 positive, 1 negative = yes
3 positive = extreme yes

[tdenmark]

Jul 21, 2024 13:33:37 GMT -6 thecube said:

Someone could make a special pack of 120 playing cards, numbered from 1-120, where each card has colored images of all six common D&D dice on them, each die with a number inside.

The D4 image on each card: Cards 1-30 would have a 1, cards 31-60 would have a 2, cards 61-90 would have a 3, cards 91-120 would have a 4.

The D6 image on each card: Cards 1-20 would have a 1, cards 21-40 would have a 2, cards 41-60 would have a 3, cards 61-80 would have a 4, cards 81-100 would have a 5, cards 101-120 would have a 6.

And so on for the D8, D10, D12, and D20 images on each card.

(I wouldn't be surprised if this is already a thing.)

One time I started work on making a complete set of polyhedral dice rolls on a deck of cards. I had the math all worked out, and got pretty far with the art. Then I saw someone had already made card-dice and they were pretty slick. But I can't seem to find them on the internet anywhere now.

Here is an example of the cards I made:

[thecube]

Beautiful, tdenmark. That's very similar to how I pictured it. You're way ahead of me.

[Parzival]

Savage Worlds uses a standard card deck for individual Initiative, with Jokers as an auto-win that also grants the side “Bennies” (re-rolls that can be used at any time). A Joker also triggers a reshuffle— otherwise the deck is reduced until combat ends. What’s good about it— we used it in a Deadlands game (Weird Steampunk Wild West), where it was nicely thematic. Certain abilities also allowed for an advantage situation (draw two, choose best), or a redraw. So you could kind of watch the deck and know when, as Rain Man said, “Lots of queens” left to draw.

What I didn’t like was that ability to count cards so as to “bet” on when you might get an advantage in initiative. And I argue that card decks are not actually random— a deck always has a pattern; shuffling changes the pattern. But that also depends on the effectiveness of the shuffle, and the number of shuffles. If you shuffle only once (as most people do), you actually don’t break the pattern much at all. Most of the cards will remain in their relative position in the pattern, which someone who pays attention can base their planning on. Three shuffles is then the next typical stopping point, but even that is not truly an effective breaking of a pattern. For one thing, you can potentially know where any given card is likely to appear in the deck— top third, middle third and bottom third are relatively easy guesses.

People who study this things suggest that in order to break a deck’s pattern and distribute the cards in a manner unlikely to be guessed at requires anywhere from 7 to 15 shuffles— the most recent studies suggest that 7 is too few, and 11 is a minimum.

And note those are actual “riffle” shuffles, as done by an experienced shuffler (divide deck in half, press each half against table, use thumbs to cause them to fan into each other, then cup hands to cause the deck to fall together). The typical “multi-cut” slap around thing? You’ve made no significant alteration of the pattern at all.

So, yes, you can use cards. But to really get the same level of randomness as dice, you will spend a lot of time shuffling. To me, it’s not worth it, and it breaks up the game and really slows combat down.

[tdenmark]

Jul 23, 2024 11:04:13 GMT -6 thecube said:

Beautiful, tdenmark. That's very similar to how I pictured it. You're way ahead of me.

I abandoned the project long ago when I saw someone else had already done it, and much better than me. But now I can't seem to find card-dice for sale anywhere. Has anyone seen them?

[tkdco2]

I just had a wild idea of using cards to "roll" stats. Use the number of pips on a card, where an ace equals 1. Jack is 11, queen is 12, and king is 13. Add 5 to the value. This will give you a range of from 6-18.

For example: I drew six cards with the values 3, 6, K, 9, 5, K. This translates to STR 8, INT 11, WIS 18, CON 14, DEX 10, CHA 18. This character will probably be a cleric who won't be great at combat but will gain a lot of followers.

[hamurai]

I remember Deadlands used cards to generate attributes. This added to the flavour of a weird west game.

[terje]

When using cards instead of dice you could either draw a card from the deck when you perform a check, or you could draw a hand of cards and choose what card to play when making a check. The second variant will of course lead to a very different kind of game, with a kind of metaperspective for the player.

[Zenopus]

In the manuscript for Basic, Holmes suggests in four different places to use playing cards if dice are not available. This is his method for generating 1-20:

Red and black suit playing cards, from Ace to 10 in each color, could be used instead with a card drawn each time a number is generated.

So Red Ace to 10 would be 1-10, and Black Ace to 10 would be 11-20.

Using playing cards in this manner would have been more obvious to players back when 20-sided dice were all numbered 0-9 twice.

Each of Holmes' references to playing cards was excised from the rulebook as published, presumably because TSR had decided to include dice in the set and/or because TSR was selling dice so they wanted to encourage their use. I wish they had kept the reference to using cards in to provide more flexibility for players without dice; for example, they also sold the rulebook separately and those players would not necessarily have dice and could have benefited from a backup way of generating numbers.

[DungeonDevil]

Shame that EGG removed the card references.