How can I add a taste of adventure games to my game?

Question

I'm designing a card game based on an ancient fairy tale book. So far my game consists of some hero or character cards with 3 attribute: coins, strength and intelligence. And there are quest cards with the same 3 attributes and what you do is to pick character cards and when you reach to a quest card level, make it complete and then you do that card's actions.

My game at this time is basically a hand management game and somewhat similar to games like splendor and "Quests of Valeria".

But what if I want to add a taste of adventure games to the game with heroes, quests, items, treasures and so on? I still insist on it being a card game without a board.

How can I make my game a little bit more adventur"ish"?

Answer 1

D&D's Lords of Waterdeep board game has a similar mechanic - you draw a quest card, then 'withdraw' coloured blocks which represent quest characters; white for priests, orange for warriors, etc. You collect the blocks and spend them on completing the quests, gaining the rewards from the card. I believe a similar mechanic could be implemented, though of course instead of flat-identity blocks, you have differentiating characters with varieties of attributes. I would say that it would be important to balance the ratio of attribute variety for a start - be sure that there's plenty of average characters, with some rare, and some 'elite'-standard characters, just to bring some excitement into the luck of the draw.

Coin-use is an interesting "attribute" to give a character - this could be used as bartering power for your more wiley character. They are able to bribe characters or get discounts for being economy-savvy or some sort of styling.

You say you want items and adventure and such - perhaps part of the quest rewards could include items which could be traded for cash your gold hoard (if that's part of your gameplan) or if kept, provide bonuses to your characters individually or as a general positive effect.

Answer 2

This is an interesting scenario. The first idea that sprung to mind would be to have a set of cards that relate to each other specifically. Each card in the set needs a certain criteria to be met to allow you to then search the deck for another card in the set. The harder the "quest" is the more cards there are in the set that you need to complete the adventure.

On reflection, this seems more like a lore issue than a mechanical issue. The wording on the "adventure cards" may be the best place to include your adventuring aspects. Maybe have "Scenario" cards that explain a certain journey and need choices to be made at certain points (Maybe drawing from two separate decks that accompany the scenario cards?). These choices determine the outcome of the adventure.

This is only a brainstorm. I'd like to think I could come up with more ideas. If so I will update the answer.

Answer 3

Eldritch Horror has several types of complex encounters like this, where you usually have a characteristic test (or a decision to make) and then it splits to "pass" and "fail" sections with another test or decision, so there are up to 4 different outcomes with different measures of success. This system feels very "adventury" to me.

Another thing that adds to adventurous feeling is uncertainty of outcome. Having deterministic outcome for each pair of quest+character(or set of characters) just adds unexciting extra step here, so you want some kind of randomization for this to work. In Eldritch Horror it is achieved with rolling dice, but if you want to keep it cards only, I think push-your-luck based skill test is a good alternative.