The day after Christmas, I’m running a marathon session of Mask of the Pirate Queen. The group will experience all three parts of the adventure over the course of 8 hours. Normally we do 2 separate sessions or a combined 2-team, 2-GM one so that up to 12 people can participate. Since I’m unable to do so for this event, way more people signed up than the slots available.
I thought for a while on how to include spectators for this session, and it finally came to me. I’m a big fan of RPG card games, so why not convert PCs into RPG Hero cards? My players and I hammered out the following details:
Hero Card Guidelines
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Entry Ability
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Passive Buff
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Active Ability
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Exit Ability
And here are a few of the cards we created:
These haven’t been used in play yet, as we're waiting for our group's quarterly "chill session" to discuss card balance. However, I did get some testing in last weekend. When the party helped an injured azuredactyl on Jagomir, they earned this surprise
NPC card
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We’re hoping this allows spectators to RP a bit with a mechanical advantage that complements, rather than replaces members of the party. Plus, it’s nice to have less tokens and stats to track!
Edited by verdantsf