klokwerkaos

Long Dead
Herald of the Dead
Immemorial
Malleus Monday
OG 2020
Old World
Harbinger
Nov 8, 2020
117
72
63
So I'm still waiting on getting the support pack stuff processed asap. Once done though, there is a digital tarot deck if I'm not mistaken.

These are already owned assets.

In a player hub, head to the creepy undead fortune teller that has a daily reset at "when not most of the player base is online". All effects regardless of timers reset on daily reset. During the final 2 hours before the reset there is a warning to players about time till reset, when they approach the table, when there is less than 30 minutes the reader is on break and has an idle animation.

Players can pay up front for a tarrot reading (minimal fee), view a cinematic of the cards being laid out and the full creep master 5000 experience that is undead tarot.

Then when the cards are laid out, they select a card from those laid out. It's important that the cards are rolled for when laid out, not rolled when the player makes the selection, that way the player is specifically responsible for their own choice, plus it fits thematically with the notion of fate, they have agency, but only so much.

The position of the card denotes the potency of the card, ie, is it in row 1, 2, or 3, greater potencies have less cards in that row. (thinking 5, 3, 2 for numbers of cards)

When the card is revealed the effect is applied that is thematically appropriate for the card.

I haven't see the art yet, but the idea is to use the artwork to inspire the effect.

Some cards are straight buffs. This could be increased %gold found or +X to a specific ability. Generally speaking these buffs will be 2 hours of time IRL so make the most of it.

Some cards are curses. These last 1 hour of playtime outside a hub (ie, it's a countdown), but because the player participated it also has a related upside.

Something like your bleed susceptibility is doubled, but you take half bleed proc damage for a card with a woman weeping blood or something like that.

The last type is encounters. These guarantee an encounter type for a fated reason at a random interval in the next 1 hour of play outside of a hub (though some could be triggered inside a hub pending they are non combat encounters). The encounter doesn't need to be combat oriented, but it can be. Regardless the player receives some kind of possible boon from the encounter, depending on how the encounter is resolved and this can be pseudo random.

Some examples might be "your next purchase from a vendor costs 150% but imbues either double quantity, or increased quality of the item" or alternately "Your next item you sell to a vendor earns you 120% (first item q'd if list of items is sold)". Obviously these are scripted in character however.

Another might be a rare monster attack (that might drop special stuff or kill you, either way), or a the next "chest" you open has a guaranteed extra drop of quality pending the row it was pulled from the table, the potency however doesn't indicate if the item is cursed or not.

Regardless this gives way to helping create some strange activity in the narration of the character's tale, provides some immersion and also gives you a randomized daily log in activity out of the gate.

Additionally players might "find" random tarot cards in the wild as very rare drops and these could provide an instant fortune if picked up and discovered what it is. In this fashion players never have to "open" the card but could collect them and sell them to other players that prefer such sorts of gambles.


Importantly, these are an easy method for micro content updates. Add a new card(s) that depicts a new effect. Having a dozen of these on standby to release in sets of three between content draughts can help minimize the player pain point that occurs when working on larger updates. Throw in a couple deluxe skins, some bug fixes and optimizations and you have yourself a mini update to drop in between a bigger wait for a larger content release.

Also if you want to get crazy with this system you could denote more traditional positions to augment the cards further than just potency and add in star signs and astronomical position for the season based on the weather system, create a different NPC for each hub and have them have various roll rates (better or worse for a particular suit) based on the season, etc.

Additionally players that achieve certain benchmarks could opt to pay to select more than 1 card per cycle (ie, they should be potent enough to bear several curses before this can happen since that's a possibility, it also shows their increased expression of will as they grow in power, but also how they have less agency and are greater controlled by fate as they go up in power, since their choices become less relevant more choices they can make), up to getting a full reading.
 
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