Elements of Alchemy: A Blackjack solution

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 A recurring element of many role playing games is crafting systems, whether for alchemy and magic, or more mundane pursuits. These system often end up too simple to capture any interesting nuances of the crafting (spend X worth of "alchemy ingredients" and succeed an alchemy check), or too fiddly to engage with in a game where they are not the main focus (long list of specific ingredients for a long list of exact recipes).

There are of course exceptions to this, where the level of abstraction allows for interesting gameplay while removing excess complication. One example of this is His Majesty the Worm, where monster guts will always yield an alchemical effect thematically appropriate for their origin, or the excellent Scrabblecraft from 400 independent bathrooms (among approximately one billion other blogposts each with their own solution).

In this blogpost, I will attempt another solution to the problem using playing cards and common blackjack mechanics. One of my main inspirations for this is the blackjack dice roll, whose virtues have been extolled time and again by Prismatic Wasteland (who was inspired by its use in Errant), and here I am taking the mechanic full circle back to playing cards.

The core mechanic here is very simple, each ingredient is represented by a playing card, and thus has a suit and a value. Each suit is associated with a different type of effect:

  • Hearts: Healing
  • Diamonds: Buffs
  • Clubs: Damage
  • Spades: Debuffs

If you wish to craft a potion, you will need to combine ingredients such that their total value is higher than a threshold based on the desired potency, however, the total must not exceed 21. The majority of the value must come from ingredients whose suit match the desired effects (e.g. hearts for a healing potion), while any ingredients from different suits will add side effects (e.g. reaching a threshold of 14 for a healing potion using 10 points from hearts and 4 from spades will add a negative debuff effect in addition to the healing). Ingredients with low card values will remain valuable to let the main suit dominate despite the use of powerful off-suit reagents and/or to add a small boost without going over the maximum.

This makes keeping track of ingredients and their use easy, just deal out playing cards! You know exactly what your ingredients can be used for, and they are easily transferable between "recipes", rather than having to keep track with high granularity. It can also create interesting challenges with possible tradeoffs - do you want to make one powerful healing potion with two high-value hearts, or two, combining each with a (potentially negative) side effect?

This system serves as a solid foundation, and can be used, expanded, or modified in several ways:

  • If you wish to include character skill in the crafting process, let the maximum value be set by the skill/attribute level rather than keeping the blackjack default of 21. This would let more skilled alchemists make more potent potions in a natural way, rather than arbitrary stratification, or just a bonus to a roll.
  • Take inspiration from His Majesty the Worm and add an effect to each ingredient based on where it was harvested from: ingredients from a flame drake could give fire resistance or weakness, depending on their suits.
    • One implementation of this would have all ingredients add their special effects, alternatively, use only the effect of the highest individually valued card, or the highest-valued off-suit card.
  • Ingredients can either be predetermined (GM chooses what can be harvested and the cards), or random cards can be drawn whenever ingredients are harvested.
  • The system can be ported directly to other types of crafting - different suits might be different material types for making weapons and armour: Hearts = metal, spades = leather, clubs = fabric, diamonds = gemstones etc.
  • The system could easily be ported to use tarot cards instead, either using only the minor arcana, or giving some special significance to the major arcane ("neutral" ingredients that only add to the total value, or counting always as the desired suit?)

 

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