Story Based Duel RPG Ideas (Not Advertising)

[NeoTwice]

I just wanted to throw some ideas around, as I plan on setting up a Yu-Gi-Oh! RPG site. Please note I'm not trying to advertise my site (as it doesn't even exist yet, so there's really nothing to advertise), and am simply looking for peoples opinions on my idea.

Most RPG sites like this use actual dueling, and while I'm all for actual dueling, there's not a lot of need for an RPG if that's what you're going to do, because you might as well just go jump on DN or YVD. I will of course include a section to set up real duels with other members, and possibly even host some tournaments from time to time, but otherwise, I plan on using the following system for IC duels:


The plan of this system is to make duels more like those seen in the Anime, where characters have 1 deck that is capable of competing in all situations, and that at the pivotal point in the duel, they always manage to get out of a scrape.

I realize that the way this happens is through scripting, but that's hardly fair in an RPG situation, so I though that maybe it could be semi-scripted to the point where the players get some degree of choice in the cards they get. I thought that perhaps if each turn the moderators of the RPG drew 3 cards from their deck at random, and the player could then choose which one they actually draw IC. In the same approach, the opening 5-card hand would be selected from 8 or so cards, drawn at random from the deck.

What I then thought was that this could easily make a lot of decks overpowered, and therefore decided that perhaps deck size restrictions and card use restrictions would have to be altered. I thought about increasing the minimum deck size (say to 50 cards) to force less consistent draws, and also thought about limiting the number of duplicate or triplicate cards were allowed in a deck (i.e. a 40 card deck must have at least 25 unique cards). I thought that these 2 methods would force players decks to be more varied, and therefore less predictable, leading to more exciting duels.


Anyway, I'm very interested in your thoughts on this, so please reply.

[Catterjune]

I used to have (and still do, I guess) a Yu-Gi-Oh RP site that I'm also not advertising.

What we did was just not give a damn, and let the players in the duel decide everything. If they want to duel, how they duel, and they decide how they want to duel. Scripting was fine if necessary, and the group of people I RP-ed with were mature enough to realize "Hey! I probably shouldn't win if I'm the first guy the main villain is dueling".

tl;dr - Focus more on the RP, not on the dueling.

[NeoTwice]

I did think about that doing it like that, but at the same time, I wanted to keep a consistent method of dueling throughout the game and still let it be fair in PvP matches. This method allows that, as there's still enough luck involved that you could possibly end up with nothing you can do to win, but players are also given the chance to have a heart-of-the-cards-esque draw right when they need it.

This way they don't have to remember rules for dueling NPCs, and alternate rules for dueling other members.