One of the design pillars for the c22 system is enable creativity. It is often thought that creativity is a boundless unrestrained force that creates something out of nothing. In my work, I have found that creativity often works best bound in constraints. Too many constraints will stifle creativity, while the opposite, extremely open prompts leaves most people floundering without focus.
Good constraints to creativity give an inspiring focus while allowing enough room to explore. That is the sweet spot of creative constraints that I hope to encourage and provide with the mechanics in C22.
The suits of cards are a great catalyst for this; four suits of cards means you can have about 4 choices per turn. For maneuvers and standard attacks, you have 4 options, along with the 1 or 2 raised options provided from the suits. In the case of magic, right now its only two choices, one per card drawn but the effects from each element causes this number of options to grow as the character grows. At levels 2-3 a caster may only be able to slow enemies with ice, but later on they may be able to choose to knockdown or paralyze enemies, or fortify themselves.
The skills are similarly set up to encourage choices. Players are incentivised to choose a skill whose primary attribute matches the suit of the drawn card. Players may want to climb the wall due to their tremendous climbing skill, but the conditions make in unfavorable, forcing them to improvise.
This design pillar is constantly being consider as I continue development and I am continuously on the lookout for more ways to enable players to be creative. Though all and all, I believe this is the pillar that is the most utilized within the system as of this writing.