Creative Ideas

ROLE PLAYING AID

It has been brought to our attention that both the Combat Cards & the Fantasy Cards can serve as useful aids in running role-playing campaigns - especially to resolve combats that do not directly involve the player characters, but may still have an important bearing on the campaign.

Who hasn't played in a role playing campaign where the heroes set out on a mission or quest along with a company of the king's guard or a platoon of colonial marines escorting them?

The extra troops are not there do the heroes' work for them, but rather to support the heroes in some important role - such as keeping the escape route open from marauding orcs while the heroes explore, or by holding the alien monstrosities at bay while the heroes search a wreck site.

Unfortunately, playing out a side battle that doesn't involve the heroes, at the level of detail that most role playing games do, may prove impractical and tedious - and result in too much precious game time being taken away from the action involving the characters.

Yet the success of these troops and their mission is important to the story line and will eventually affect the heroes, so some attention should be given to their struggle and its outcome.

That is where the Combat Cards & Fantasy Cards can really be a life saver. With the simplicity of generic unit types, the speed of play, and the ease of teaching the rules to newbies, they can be an efficient and effective way to resolve those important side battles - without taking too much time away from the main adventure.

The narrative nature of the Cards also allow game masters flexibility in determining how important aspect of the battle will mesh with the role playing action as well with the role playing system being used.

(Some examples being: How many rounds went by before that alien nasty broke through the marines' lines and went for the heroes? Has an Eliminated unit truly lost all of its "damage points" or is just unconscious and clinging to life?).

Combine the core games with the appropriate expansion sets, and the feel and flavor of  just about any role playing system can be emulated on the Combat Cards or Fantasy Cards battlefield.

So the next time your heroes are about to set out with an escort in tow, give some thought to how the Combat Cards or the Fantasy Cards just might prove to be a real help to you the beleaguered game master...