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Post by Tout-Perd on Nov 1, 2015 21:35:53 GMT -5
As for how a turn progresses: -Resource Step: Draw a card and add the resources your Manipulator gives you. There is no tapping in this game, instead the zone system will replace it. -Planning Step: This is where you play Characters and item cards and the like. -Offense Step: Here you say which characters will attack/meddle with other players and play Offensive Schemes. Only Characters in your Active Zone can act here. -Defense Step: This step actually happens for every player but the attacked player. They can play Defensive Schemes, and declare characters in their Reserve Zone as blockers. -Conclusion Step: A second planning step for wrapping up the turn.
As for zones, there's the following: -Reserve Zone: Where most Characters enter the game. This is where Characters to defend you stay. -Active Zone: Where Characters move to attack. -Sidetrack Zone: Characters go here either because an opponent somehow put them there, or as a cost to use their ability. It forces them to sit out of combat for a turn.
Characters can only be moved between zones once per turn, and can't be moved the turn they come in. So Characters that come in under your Reserve Zone can only defend on their first turn, and Characters that come in under your Active Zone can only attack first turn.
At least that's the gist of what I'm thinking. Simpler for online play, but opens up some interesting design space to toy around with.
If this doesn't make sense with the old manipulator cards, hold on a day or two. I'm going to post some updated ideas soon.
(Also, I have no idea how to handle characters that are Manipulators but also would be Characters. I know it should have some effect, but I'm not sure what yet.)
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Post by Tout-Perd on Nov 1, 2015 21:40:48 GMT -5
I'm thinking 40 card decks with playsets of 3, instead of the 4 from Magic. I think reducing opening hands to 5 may also work; since Manipulators generate your resources, we have no mana screw to worry about. I'm debating really hard if I want opening hand size to vary from Manipulator to Manipulator; it'd be a huge balancing tweak, but it's so strong that I could see people playing certain Manipulators just for the opening hand bonus.
As for the playstyles: -Hope: Hope is the comeback kings. They have the slowest, weakest start, but are the best at pulling themselves together in the long term. -Loyalty: Loyalty is the zerg-rush team. They specialize in putting lots of characters out there, quickly, and going wide enough that the opponent has a hard time dealing with their swarms. -Magic: Magic is the rule-breaking faction. Individually they're a little unwieldy, but get enough casters together and you can start stringing together combos and really messing with your opponent's gameplan. -Truth: Truth is the control color. They specialize in rigging the game, slowly taking over the game through incremental advantages and accruing more knowledge than the opponent, allowing them to make better informed plays. -Wealth: The all-arounders, they're the best at dipping into other resources to supplement their strategies. -Dread: As the game goes on, Dread specializes in slowly restricting the opponent's options, choking off their strategies and limiting what they can do. (For the difference between them and Truth: Truth knows everything the opponent is going to do, whereas Dread doesn't know what they will do for sure, but undercuts all their options)
So, TL;DR version: Hope=Rubber Band Difficulty/Limit Breaks Loyalty=Weenies Magic=Combo Truth=Control Wealth=All Arounders Dread=Prison Deck
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Post by Tout-Perd on Nov 2, 2015 2:47:42 GMT -5
A few off the cuff shots at cards. I've changed the system to be based in 1s instead of 5s, because I feel it reads more easily that way. Telrien Wallen Character-Telrien Cost: 3 Wealth Telrien can't be blocked by Characters with more than 3 Power. Whenever Telrien deals damage to a player's Influence, you may take 1 of any one Resource that player owns and add it to your own resources. 2/2 (Well, what else would you expect Telrien to do?) Blaise Euler Character-Blaise Cost: 2 Truth and 2 Magic Once per turn, you may pay 1 Truth and 1 Magic to gain 3 Magic. 3/2 (Nothing too fancy here; Blaise uses her Empyric Magic for its standard purpose-combining a little science and a little magic to get a LOT of magic.) Renard Rouletabille Character-Renard Cost: 1 Hope, 1 Truth Renard arrives in your Sidetracked Zone. At the start of each player's Resource Step, they gain control of Renard, and he moves to their Sidetracked Zone. Renard can never be moved into a zone other than the Sidetracked Zone. Whenever Renard arrives or is moved into a player's Sidetracked Zone, that player can look at the top card of any deck, and then may choose to shuffle that deck. If he arrives in or is moved into his owner's Sidetracked Zone, they gain 1 Influence. 0/2 (A very nontypical card, but I love the mental image of Renard wandering around the board, taking directions from everybody while investigating everybody's schemes.)(Arrives will be our RP flavored version of "enters play") Dalisay Salazar Character-Dalisay Cost: 2 Loyalty At the start of your resource step, put a 1/1 Scamp Minion into play in the Active Zone of a random player. Dalisay takes no damage from Scamps. 0/1 (Simple enough. Dalisay shows up, and soon there's all sorts of Scamps running around smacking into everything but her.) Esther Damroche Character-Esther Cost: 1 Truth, 1 Magic Once per turn, you may pay 1 Truth and 1 Magic. If you do, you may reveal a card from your hand, and exchange it for a card from outside the game with the same number of letters in its name. 1/2 (I could be wrong on this design, since we haven't seen much from Esther besides that one post and it's hard to gauge her combat abilities. But I like the idea that she can do a (simplified) version of her magic even within the game, leading to interesting deckbuilding opportunities.) And some takes on Manipulators: Commissioner Williams Manipulator-Williams Resources: +2 Hope each turn. Starting Influence: 14 Effect: Whenever a Character is moved into an opponent's Sidetracked Zone, put an Arrest Counter on them. Characters with Arrest Counters can't move between zones. At the end of a player's turn, remove all Arrest Counters from Characters in that player's zones. (I thought it'd be fun if Williams could "jail" people. And since Hope obviously likes killing people the least, there's going to be quite a few schemes and characters that harmlessly shunt opposing characters to the sidelines to get them out of the way and trigger his ability.) (Also, though I didn't think about it while doing the design, I find it kinda adorable that he'll try to tangle a wandering Renard up, but Renard manages to bumble his way through and keep ambling around the board.) Yoon Mangjeol Manipulator-Yoon Resources: +1 Truth and +1 Wealth each turn. Starting Influence: 16 Effect: You may look at the top card of any deck at any time. Any other player may choose to pay 1 of any one Resource and have you gain 1 Wealth in order to look at the top card of a deck when you do. (This was the least complicated way I could figure out to do "Information Merchant", but I think it works. It's limited, but it means that the Yoon player gets to play the game with knowledge a turn ahead of everybody else, unless they're willing to pony up the dough) Lorenna Manipulator-Lorenna Resources: +1 Truth and +1 Loyalty each turn. Starting Influence: 12 Effect: You may pay 1 Loyalty to put a 0/1 Butterfly Minion with Flying into play in your Reserve Zone. Whenever a Character of yours attacks a player and isn't blocked, you may look at that player's hand. (Lorenna doesn't pack much offense unless she calls in outside help, and has very tenuous influence. But she can really slow people down by throwing butterflies in their faces, and provided the opponent doesn't swat them, can actually use them to do some spying.) Massimo Manipulator-Massimo Resources: +1 Wealth and +1 Loyalty each turn. Starting Influence: 16 Whenever any Characters or Minions attack you, their controller has to show you their hand. You may pick a card revealed in this way, and set it aside until the end of their next turn. They can still play that card while it's set aside, but it costs twice as much of each resource. (Thought it'd be interesting to have Massimo extort anybody who has the canolis to mess with him. I'm not too attached to this design, though, as I could see it working better for other characters potentially.)
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Post by Beelzebibble on Nov 2, 2015 7:34:44 GMT -5
Dread is a fantastic word, but it seems to limit itself to villains only - or, if there are any possible Dread heroes, they would have to be the GRITTIEST and EDGIEST of anti-heroes, slayin' guards left and right. Maybe that sounds fine to you. I'll say it does bother me a little. I was hoping each value could include both relatively straightforward heroes and relatively straightforward villains. When you first described it as "wants to watch the world burn", I thought we were looking at a red-inspired "just let me do what I want" value, and I figured there were plenty of ways that could be broadened into something that both heroes and villains would fall under - some kind of "Freedom" value. (My favorite one-syllable synonym that I found was "Sweep". It's such a fun word to say.) But then your description of "slowly restricting the options" makes it sound more like the opposite - like a super-authoritarian value that wants to exert as much control as possible. That suggests something like "Command". By the way, I'm glad that you pre-empted one of my upcoming comments by reducing all in-game numbers to their lowest possible values. Having everything in multiples of five was rather needless. It reminded me of the Pokemon TCG, which put everything in multiples of ten. And remember Yugioh, where everything ran into the hundreds and thousands? Talk about insecurity. Magic's economy, where a 3/3 is a good attacking body and doing 1 damage can make a big difference, is much more mature, I think. But as far as the "only one of each character in play" thing goes, I don't know the full details of this, but I imagine there's a reason why MtG settled on its current legend rule (only one in play PER PLAYER) after having already tried a couple of other variants. Might be better play value. Just something to keep in mind. Renard is great, although Renard can never be moved into a zone other than the Sidetracked Zone. Are you sure you weren't designing Garth? Esther's last name is "Damrosch", but you were close. I love the idea, but I've always been a little nervous about "from outside the game" effects in MtG. Maybe it should just let you look at, say, the top eight cards of your library, and then the restriction is a little lighter to match, like "declare a card and a letter of the alphabet, and exchange it for a card whose name contains the same number of occurrences of that letter". That might be too easy to match, but it still encourages a fun Esther-style way of reading the cards. Williams performing arrests is obviously solid, it just depends on how that's converted into game rules, and so far that seems to be a decent translation. Yoon is MEGA flavorful. Love her. Excellent design. Massimo's cool. That works. I'm gonna throw out a design: Misha Kolychev Character - Misha Cost: 1 Loyalty, (1 Sweep would be appropriate here) When Misha arrives, he invites a 2/1 minion named Masha into the same zone. Activate: Put a -1/-1 counter on Misha and a -1/-1 counter on a character not named Misha or Masha. Put a +1/+1 counter on a minion of yours named Masha. Activate this ability only once per turn. Activate: Remove a -1/-1 counter from Misha and a -1/-1 counter from a character not named Misha or Masha. Remove a +1/+1 counter from a minion of yours named Masha. Activate this ability only once per turn. 0/3 I really like the templating of "he invites a minion named Masha" to convey creating tokens, rather than "put a minion named Masha into play". Tying the creation of tokens to specific characters with the flavor "inviting" instead of just making it a generic player action opens up some design space, I think. I assume something like +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters will exist, even if they're not named as such.
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Post by Beelzebibble on Nov 2, 2015 8:23:16 GMT -5
Oh, hell, this is fun.
Channery Keigler Character - Channery Cost: 2 Wealth Whenever Channery deals combat damage to a player, you may put a handprint counter on target item that player controls. Activate: Gain control of target item with a handprint counter on it. 2/2
Channery Keigler Character - Channery Cost: 2 Wealth Whenever Channery deals combat damage to a player, you may put a handprint counter on that player's manipulator. Whenever a manipulator with a handprint counter on him/her adds resources to a player's stockpile, remove the handprint counter and add the same quantity of resources to your stockpile. 2/2
Two versions of Channery. The first design more directly conveys what Channery does, but requires the game to have an equivalent to artifacts, and I'm honestly not sure we have enough notable items for that to be possible without resorting to a lot of hokey "legendary sword" business. The second design tries to achieve a similar effect in an item-less game by copying resource production instead.
Julia Romanesco Character - Julia Cost: 1 Magic, 1 Truth When Julia arrives, exile target character. At your conclusion step, pay 2 Magic and 2 Truth. If you don't, or when Julia leaves play, return the character exiled by Julia to his/her player's reserve zone. 2/1
An attempt to capture Saeptum's flavor.
Vieve Character - Vieve Cost: 1 Magic, (again, 1 Sweep would be appropriate here) While you control a character in the attack zone with higher attack and higher defense than Vieve, Vieve is unblockable. 1/2
She's unblockable... as long as she's got someone's shadow to stand in.
Terrian Brogue Manipulator - Terrian Resources: +1 Wealth and +1 Loyalty each turn. Starting Influence: 11 Activate: Terrian invites X 1/1 minions named Brogue into your reserve zone, where X is your influence minus 10. Activate this ability only once per turn. Whenever a minion of yours named Brogue attacks or blocks, pull the top card of your deck and attach it facedown to that minion. Whenever a minion of yours named Brogue leaves play, add all facedown cards attached to that minion to your hand. Activate: Remove a minion of yours named Brogue from play. Gain 1 influence.
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Shoni
Joyeuse Insurgency
Posts: 191
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Post by Shoni on Nov 2, 2015 12:00:30 GMT -5
I would suggest making Flint a Wealth Ruin instead of Wealth Friendship.
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Post by Tout-Perd on Nov 2, 2015 12:06:43 GMT -5
Hmmm... Maybe not Dread or Ruin then. Chaos kind of works, but not quite. Tumult is a unique word that I think captures both the villainous and heroic side, since it shows them wanting to tear down the establishment. And there should actually be a decent amount of items, when all is said and done. Unlike Magic, where items are generally small things, here we can have vehicles, buildings, armor, mecha, etc. I'm still figuring out how we'll do gear/equipment, since Magic's style doesn't feel quite right (it's seldom in ORP that a character will take up another's weapon) I think the 1st Channery is pretty solid, though we'd have to up her cost by 1. Since if somebody's playing Mono-Wealth, they can drop a 2 Wealth Character turn 1, and that's quite a beating to have a 2/2 right then. Julia is pretty much perfect, though I'd make her put Characters in the "Sidelined Zone" instead of Exile. We'll probably use Exile, but moreso for Flicker effects than removal. It'll be fun to have Masquerade be Character-Julia, so that there's the option to shift between the two. Vieve is perfect. Terrian is... interesting. Very risky, both for and against. I'm not sure how to pare that down to something simpler, but I'm looking into it. I'm really digging how his Brogues dig up info, though. That's an interesting mechanic that might actually be worth designing a few cards around. As for the Legend rule stuff and such, I must be going to class, but I'll talk about it later. I think Shifts is our best bet, but there's some wiggle room to work with.
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Post by Tout-Perd on Nov 2, 2015 12:07:48 GMT -5
Oh, and Shoni: I'm thinking Flint will be either Wealth-Magic or Wealth-Loyalty, and then Zagaroth will be a shift card that runs on Wealth-Tumult.
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Shoni
Joyeuse Insurgency
Posts: 191
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Post by Shoni on Nov 2, 2015 12:42:58 GMT -5
Yes that sounds better
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Post by Beelzebibble on Nov 2, 2015 12:43:20 GMT -5
I know what you mean about Julia, but if you can move a character out of the Sideline Zone at will, then it hardly gets at the feel of permanently containing a magical force.
Oh! Now that I think of it, Julia's power should only work on characters that run on Magic or Tumult. It doesn't make sense for Saeptum to want to contain a Wealth-only character, for instance.
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Post by Tout-Perd on Nov 2, 2015 14:43:26 GMT -5
Ah, true, true. I'd keep her ability working on everything, just because it's better gameplay (and some Truth/Hope/Loyalty characters are paranormal enough to warrant it). For example, Didn't is likely just Loyalty, and Saeptum would detain her in a heartbeat. I've got half a dozen more characters and three more manipulators I've done during class. I'll throw those up here tonight.
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Post by Tout-Perd on Nov 23, 2015 14:54:47 GMT -5
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Post by Tout-Perd on Nov 23, 2015 14:59:52 GMT -5
I tweaked Terrian a bit, to try to capture the feel of his "Money From Nothing", and the current setup makes him really tactically interesting, since you have to gauge what option is best, and commit to it a few turns in advance (it also stealthily lets you play a multi-Resource deck, since you can use some Wealth cards to generate other resources, and then start doubling your Magic or Hope or the like to bring in other Characters.) To make up for the lack of minion spawning, I incorporated Photu's design into a Brogue minion:
Brogue Minion-Brogue Cost: 1 Wealth or 1 Loyalty If your Manipulator is Terrian, you may play any number of Brogues in your deck. Dossier 1 (When this Minion enters play, exile a card. When this Minion is moved to your Reserve Zone or leaves play, put that card into your hand.)
Next time, I'll upload some templated Character and Minion cards, and maybe a few more Manipulators (I'm thinking Cesare would be Loyalty-Tumult, for one).
Also, Choobs, is there any description of Ysane out there? I wanna make one of her, but have no idea what she'd look like (She'd obviously be Tumult-Magic)
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Shoni
Joyeuse Insurgency
Posts: 191
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Post by Shoni on Dec 2, 2015 15:30:58 GMT -5
Btw Lee you could make void either a spell card or a character. Maybe a hybrid of the two options. Like how Yu-Gi-Oh they have monster cards that can also serve as equip cards.
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Post by Tout-Perd on Dec 2, 2015 15:41:27 GMT -5
I might actually make Void an artifact that either equips to a character and makes them unblockable, or can activate and become a smaller unblockable creature on its own. My current design for baseline Flint actually has him scrounge up equipment from a deck (he can use it to steal cards from an opponent, even!), so Void as Equipment would be kinda flavorful.
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Post by Tout-Perd on Dec 2, 2015 15:44:17 GMT -5
Flint Character-Flint Cost: 2 Wealth, 1 Magic First Strike When Flint arrives, look at the top five cards of any player's deck. You may choose a Gear Relic from among them, and put it into your hand. 2/2
Void Relic-Gear (Basically equipment artifact) Cost: 2 Magic If Void isn't equipped to a Character or Minion, it's instead a 1/1 Character that can't block or be blocked. If Void is equipped to a Character or Minion, they can't be blocked. Equip: Sacrifice a Minion or Character
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Shoni
Joyeuse Insurgency
Posts: 191
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Post by Shoni on Dec 2, 2015 15:55:08 GMT -5
That is actually exactly the effect I was thinking to.
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Shoni
Joyeuse Insurgency
Posts: 191
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Post by Shoni on Dec 3, 2015 11:34:24 GMT -5
It would be interesting if we gave the information brokers an ability that if another information broker is controlled by another player than information brokers gain some stats because of the information war.
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Post by Tout-Perd on Dec 3, 2015 11:46:56 GMT -5
Well, that's not QUITE what would happen, but to a degree, that's what I'm aiming for with Truth characters. Since almost all of them have some aspect of revealing hidden information, it actually creates an info war between players. (For example, if we've got Yoon vs. Marshall both spend the entire game trying to extort info out of eachother, with their minions going and complicating things even further. Yoon knows what everybody's drawing, but Marshall's trying to pressure her into revealing her hand so he knows what she's scheming.)
That said, I now have a cool idea for a cycle of Characters that get bigger (a +1/+1 counter) whenever an opponent spends a specific resource. Could even lead to an archetype where you donate resources to an opponent to encourage them to spend it. (I'm pretty sure Emily would be the one that got bigger whenever Loyalty was spent. Not sure about the other ones yet.)
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Post by ch00beh on Dec 3, 2015 16:18:58 GMT -5
NERDS
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