For example: Bob is a computer tech person. He’s very good at it, as represented by his 8 of diamonds in tech skills. He encounters a numeric combination lock which would be exceedingly difficult to crack. This would normally require something like a 32 result to guess the right combination (that is about 4 doubles, or 3 doubles plus his tech card 8D). Fortunately, he happens to have a decryption device (8 of Spades). At this point he’s got a pair of 8’s, but he still needs like 16 on his 2d6 (at least one double). But if he hits an 8 off the bat, then he’s got 3 of a kind which should work despite it only totaling 24.

Situational cards should probably be expended upon use, but skill/ability cards would remain. So in that case, maybe the decrypting device really just burns out the circuitry on the lock or something. Or maybe it wasn’t a decrypter (8D) maybe it was the passcard Bob snuck out of the receptionist’s purse earlier (8H).

Its all about how you implement your particular hand of cards.

So, something relatively easy, even for a total novice may require a 6. Meanwhile, something moderately difficult may need an 11. Possible as an unskilled person, but a real pro (with an appropriate king) would find it child’s play.

The ‘Exploring the Solar System’ era would have a different set of niches that need to be filled. The ‘Leap to the Stars’ era has still other niches. These niches need to be sufficiently broad that the results of prior eras don’t eliminate the succeeding eras. So, if space exploration is hindered in the Rise of the Megacorps, it should still exist in a smaller way. Possibly just unmanned probes. If that gets tanked, the leap to the stars may require ‘friendly’ alien interference, or uncovering stargates or something. The niches have to get filled somehow, and if you don’t want to rely on deus ex machina, then the final era with time travel could explain how the niches get filled and why there is an intelligence behind WHY they need to be filled.

From a gaming stand point, the players can be a team trying to fill a niche. When they are done, they could then play another team, in the same era, filling another niche or even a rival. They could then see how their actions in the first niche affect their current niche filling role. The meta assumption here is that at some point far into the future, someone with time travel has pushed an agenda to fill a niche in a certain way. The players don’t need to be the time travelers themselves, but the GM could provide nudges in some direction. Time travel and manipulating the past is a tricky thing, you don’t always get the results you expect.

Assuming that the important thing for the player is that the plot gets driven in his desired direction, for example he may want a specific technology available later, then he can be very heroic in his attempts to aid that cause. Sacrifice is likely and probably encouraged, but if your character doesn’t succeed in his mission, that sacrifice would be in vain. Mechanically speaking, in an episodic game like that, you need a very fast character generation method. Perhaps even a generation on the fly type character where he has two minor traits that are not defined until he needs them and one greater trait, also not defined. Then you cash in these traits to gain advantages in the situation beyond the baseline abilities. Alternatively, you might deal out a poker hand and the cards are then played during the episode in some manner or as a whole hand. The suits of the card could relate to some aspect of the character or the situation while the value tells you how good you are.

Anyway, the idea there is that character generation is accomplished in seconds or even on the fly.