Story Cards in a Nutshell
During character creation, a player makes a series of choices concerning who their character is based on a provided set and custom created Story Cards. These cards serve as the main attributes of your player in a Storium game. The main Story Cards that a player should be initially concerned with are Strengths, Weaknesses, Subplots, and Wilds. Stengths represent a character's strongest attributes; weaknesses represent a character's defects that complicate things. Subplots represent character goals the propel them forward to achieve something.
Wilds are the ways in which characters grow during the story and deserve their own mention. Wild Cards are my favorite part of the game. Why? Because they allow ultimate flexibility for players on how they can change their characters on the fly. Want your character to be an expert marksman? Write it in on a wild Strength. Want her to suffer from multiple personalities? Sketch it down on a Wild Weakness. These now become permanent options for your character. Here's the cool part - when you get to eventually refresh your cards (discussed below), you'll be able to choose from any combination of Strengths and Weaknesses you now possess to build your Story Card suite. Cool, huh?
Along with cards that come out of the narrator's scenes (which we'll talk about in another post), players play Story Cards in order to meet challenges set out by the narrator. Challenges have a specific point value - anywhere from 1 or more - and when a player plays a Story Card, he or she brings a challenge closer to completion.
Story Cards a resource that allows players to define their characters and directly affect the narrative of the game. First, Story Cards define characters. If you've chosen the Strength Story Card "Strong," and you play it on a challenge, you would use that guideline to write your character's action as a strong one. You get to define precisely what strong means in the situation, and you have full control over just how that translates with your character.
Second (and maybe more importantly), if you play the "winning" Story Card on a challenge, you have the chance to win control of the narrative. If there are more Strength cards than Weakness cards, it's a strong outcome. If there are more Weakness cards than Strength cards, then it's a weak outcome. (If the Strengths and Weaknesses end up tying, the outcome is "uncertain" and it's left in the narrator's hands.) In either case, you have now earned the right through card play to narrate the outcome of that challenge. Isn't that awesome?!? Some people wait for the narrator to respond with the outcome - but there's really no need. If you've spent your resources at a challenge to complete it, you get to decide the outcome. This is how Storium is built to work!
When You Should Play Story Cards
Here's the short answer: all the time! Seriously - play, play, play Story Cards! You should play them because they allow you to have a mechanical say in the story. You play them because you want to directly interact with obstacles and characters the narrator puts in front of you in a game. You should play them so you can grow your character. Players can play a total of 3 Story Cards in every scene - so use them every chance you get.
I want to take a second to talk about character growth. When a character has played all three of her Stengths, Weaknesses, and written in both of her Wilds, she gets the chance to "refresh" her Story Cards. This allows her to reset her Strengths and Weaknesses and even add in some of the wild ones she wrote into her cards in hand. You want to refresh because it shows how your character has grown and what new skills he's gained in the process.
I hope you've found this helpful. As always, get out there and write!
- mactheterrible
No comments:
Post a Comment