Faith: The Science Fiction RPG (i.e. not the George Michael song)

One of the games our group has recently tried is 'Through the Breach', which uses cards as its randomizing elements instead of dice.

Being laser focused, this post has nothing to do with that, but instead covers another game I had sitting on shelf for over a year that I remembered also used card based mechanics:

Now this is actually the cover of of the 2.0 ruleset, what I had sitting on the shelf was the 1.0 boxset.

The basic conceits of the setting are as follows:

- It is the far future, 'Gods' exist and there are two dominant species vying for control of the galaxy.
- Humans aren't one of the two. Humanity fell back into tribalism and were discovered by one of the species (The Corvo, insectoid adherents to an extreme free market ideology.)
- The Corvo realized that humans are great at war, so in exchange for a bunch of guns traded to Earth warlords, the warlords send humans to act as Black Ops mercenaries.
- A third species, the Ravagers (aka the unifying external threat to all) appears and hilarity ensues.

The base mechanic is very simple, and has some similarities to 'Through the Breach':

- By default any REALISTIC action that the PCs take is assumed to succeed and not require any confrontation. (i.e. if you are an engineer and you want to perform a routine fix, you perform the routine fix.)
- Attribute numbers control the number of cards you can play in an initiative round.
- Skill is added to the total of the cards in an opposed 'confrontation'.
- At the beginning of the confrontation, PCs and the GM draw seven cards (8 for Humans to reflect their incredible endurance.)
- Card suits are Wilderness, Urban, Space and OS.
- Initiative has the PCs and the GM either play a card from their hand (thus decreasing their endurance) or chancing a draw from the top of their deck.
- If a character has 'inferiority' (based on comparing situational advantages) they can play one less card to a minimum of zero.
- If a character plays a card that has a suit that matches his affinity and the areas in which the conflict is taking place he can draw another card into his hand. (i.e. A hacker with an OS affinity drawing an OS suite while hacking in virtual space would refresh his hand.)
- If a character plays a card with a value equal to or less than her skill , she also draws another card. This reflects the fact that adequately skilled characters have to push themselves less to achieve more.

Everything else in the game is built on the framework above.