A common problem with Dungeons&Dragons, and other rpgs... is that they're too God damn complicated. Even people who know the rules, constantly need to go over them, and they need time to set up their character sheets, write down statistics, do a lot of math. I figured, why go through all that trouble?
Do any of you remember the pokemon trading card game? If you do, I decided to use my old pokemon cards to make the entire process of D&D simple as hell so anyone can be in the game. No need to remember a bunch of rules.
How it works is simple, I shuffle cards, and hand out a pokemon card to each player to represent them for the task at hand. I may give them two so they can choose which one they wish to use for the occasion... From there, whether it's a skillcheck task, or a combat situation, I use pokemon cards to represent the opposition.
Firstly, it's decided who goes first. Everyone rolls a d6 to see the order. If people get the same result, the DM chooses who goes first amongst them. Then, the way their pokemon "attack", (which is only combat related if they say it is... otherwise it's just roleplaying and trying to beat the odds) is roll another d6, and that determines which of their pokemon attacks they can use. Consult the card in question.
Colorless energy=1
Colored energy=1.5 (rounded down)
For example, this is muk. His three grass energy means he has to roll a 4 or higher on a d6 to use his one and only attack. His pokepower works for this format, but some wouldn't, and would have to be altered accordingly.
These pokemon "attack" eachother until eventually one wins. When a card is defeated, the task is over. In non-combat situations, this means failure if your pokemon "dies", success if the opponent's "dies", and in combat situation can mean death or at the very least passed out/unable to move.
Because the PC should have some sort of edge over the DM's infinite reserves. The PC's pokemon cards will get an added bonus that they gain additional HP based off retreat cost. So this muk gains +20 HP. If a pokemon has no retreat cost, they just gain +10HP as if retreat cost was one.
If an attack would require a dice check greater then six, it's just treated as six.
Leveling thus, does not exist. Nobody get's powerful based off their own control, but a random card the DM assigns them. If they wish to level, we can implement the ability to gain new cards later. Essentially making them more diverse instead of straight up more powerful. But in order to prevent abuse, there are two stimulations.
Number one: A player cannot use the same pokemon twice in a row. If he used muk this time, he must use a different one next time unless he can't. If he can't, that means...
Number two: Level drain is possible. Level drain allows the DM to "take away" one of your pokemon cards, but every player must have at least one.
This may sound incredibly risky. After all, combat could basically be suicide, even if you DO go first. That's partially the point, to think first. But more importantly, it's under the pretense that you don't have compadres' to help you out. Lets say you're a party of four. That's four pokemon versus whatever the DM pits against them.
The DM may decide to pit you up against more then one pokemon, but it is not recommended. An army of pissed off orcs can be just as well represented as one lone psycho mage with a powerful card.
If you play D&D, or ever thought of... I'd like to hear your thoughts. If you got pokemon cards, and some board game dice, you're more then ready for this game.
No matter what sort of game you do, fluff will have to hold precedence over crunch. And I'm not trying to say fourth edition is flawed, it's actually very balanced. But I feel even with the simplified measures, it's still a lot of work. It's not so much gamers get turned off, as new gamers. It's hard to target an audience that's used to playing a video game rpg where all they have to do is press "auto level" if they don't feel like thinking about it.
In some ways, I think it actually works better too... in 3.5, if I played say... a paladin of slaughter to resemble the sort of "death knight", I was at disadvantages because paladins just are all around not that good, and death knight is just hard to represent in D&D without just settling for tome of battle and refluffing it.
Same goes for fourth edition. Would a death knight be a fighter or paladin? Clearly a death knight would be more of a striker, or controller. Sort of like a melee ranger, who either slays single creatures or annoys many creatures...
The pokemon cards do it for me, where I'll use poison oriented grass types and dark pokemon to represent my power over death and disease... Another reason I did this, was to give me and my friend's old pokemon cards some use. Rather then them collect dust or be sold on Ebay.
From testing, a one on one battle (which is what a skillcheck would look like) takes under a minute, and even a full on battle with multiple pokemon shouldn't take longer then maybe five minutes. With no stats to keep track of other then the ones on your card, it solves itself. HP damage does not carry over after the "battle" is over. Though sometimes the DM may introduce stadium cards to represent harsh terrain. But they usually inhibit everybody. Not just you... For example, Viridian City Gym will now remove twenty damage each pokemon card's turn from that pokemon, not just one's with Giovanni in the name. (As that'd be kind of unfair) It would make sense in a planeswalker type game for such a stadium to be used when traveling on the plane of positive energy or some form of heaven filled with celestials and stuff. But that doesn't mean there won't be wars, they're just longer, and typically soldiers survive to hold grudges which is why there's generally less war, and more diplomatic measures. So I think this system works very well, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.
I have considered the ramifications of mixing newer cards with older ones. The pokemon game's power curve has gone up extremely, so I'm thinking that evolved pokemon from later editions should not get the extra HP boost from retreat cost that the older cards do. As well, in any initiative situations where you decide who goes first, if a newer pokemon card rolls the same result as an older card, the newer one always goes later.
I'll be glad to answer any questions, such as what's to stop a player from using his most powerful pokemon over and over again. And really there isn't anything, but they should use the honor system, and if it doesn't make sense for them, they should use the weaker one. For example, if I got seriously injured, and miracously survived, but have not visited a cleric, or doused a potion, I should be realistic and use say... my Team Rocket edition Koffing instead of Koga's Arbok.
Some abilities as said, will have to be redone. Energy removal should either raise the rate of attacks, or make them have to roll multiple dice and take the lower result to consult what "attacks" they can use that turn.
I intend to implement this into a full fledge game, and hopefully it'll catch on. I got this cool idea when I found my own gameboy game that did the Pokemon tcg. I then thought of other older gameboy games like one of the older Dragonball Z ones (though they were never released in America) that used cards instead of over head view zelda type stuff for combat. I then thought of why not use the pokemon cards, which I'm sure most people have... and combine it with that Dragonball Z card combat?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfDxSEc5mDw&feat...
The music alone is enough to get you in the mood. Now team killing tards cannot hide behind lucky rolls and good builds, they have to fight you on your terms!
I have similar qualms about the number of extraneous attacks each 4e player is supposed to read thru, select, and copy onto their sheet; not everyone has/wants a Windows for Character Builder. Assuming that's your problem, I'd:
1. halve or quarter all monster HP
2. drop all encounter and daily attacks so the players didn't have to select them (I could instead limit the number of encounter and daily attacks one must select and hence copy onto their sheet, but then they'd still have to read thru and judge all of them, which slows down character generation, puzzles new players, and altogether lengthens the start-up time of the most FUN part of the game: playing it!)
Going further, I could also drop all feats other than class ability-granted ones (like Channel Divinity).
(PS: the OP's using Bleach pictures as paragraph markers.)