Nuklear Power : The Collectable Card Game?

[Bells]

Ok, listen up...

We had a Wiki,
We had a Ragnarok Online server
We had a (albeit brief) WoW Server...
We had fanfiction
We have steam nights
We have streaming seasions
And we have all that stuff that goes on the Gaming sub forum... y'mafia freaks...

...is having our own CCG really that much of a stretch?

While poking around about Magic the Gathering Online, Menarker pointed me towards this "game system" called LackeyCCG.

It's supposed to let you play Any Card game, online, with up to 10 people for free... it's all Plugin based, so, if somebody makes a Plugin of a game, you can play it.

But one little thing that caught my eye is that you can MAKE you own card games using the exact same system. Which is actually pretty cool. So, really... why not?

The official site has a official faq about making plugins (http://lackeyccg.com/tutorialplugin.html) and it all seems pretty straight forward, it actually does not look complex at all. And it works on Linux, Mac and Windows.

And have i mentioned that it is all free? ANd you can play with up to 10 people at the same time?

Actually the engine itself is open ended enough to allow you to make other games aside from cardgames, tabletop or miniature games for example... you just need to learn the language and rules of the engine and build around those guidelines... should require some work, but nothing overly amazing.

And here is the thing... we actually have some quite savvy artists in this forum, and another handful of people who wouldn't bother to poorly use gimp and Ms Paint to make ridiculously bad drawings and illustrations... hell you can even create sound effects for each card.

So, here is my pitch... for you game designers and artists in this here forum, anybody wants to create a NPF-based cardgame to play around for fun? Keeping it free and "in house" maybe we could even ask to use some of the in-house properties for a few cards?

...Draw Warbot: Sacrifice all creatures on the field, Warbot remains misunderstood?

To actually do this though, we need some structure... like, people actually willing to code the pluging, people willing to allow their art to be used for it, or to make new art, people to discuss the actual structure of the game, and of course, people who want to opt out of it...

So, here is the pitch and here is the link!

http://www.lackeyccg.com

[Aldurin]

Dick Chess: NPF Edition

[Fenris]

Dick Chess: NPF Edition

Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyup.

[rpgdemon]

Thing is, you're asking for a lot of legitimate work for something that probably will amount to nothing.

Like, ignoring the scripting, for someone to fully design a game is a lot of effort, and ideas and mechanics are not an inexhaustible resource. You're asking designers not only to fully design a game that might not even get played, but to also burn away some of their good designs on that game, and throw them out into the wild. Like, that's a significant loss, in and of itself.

[synkr0nized]

I've been involved in making joke cards in another community, but nothing was ever done to actually play. So that at least can be amusing.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Thing is, you're asking for a lot of legitimate work for something that probably will amount to nothing.

Like, ignoring the scripting, for someone to fully design a game is a lot of effort, and ideas and mechanics are not an inexhaustible resource. You're asking designers not only to fully design a game that might not even get played, but to also burn away some of their good designs on that game, and throw them out into the wild. Like, that's a significant loss, in and of itself.

Now I'm just spit ball'n here but I actually have a card game idea and mechanics he can use
I just need to replace the theme with NPF.

Regardless though, RPG is right. No point in designing a card game that'll just die in a week.

[Bells]

It's certainly an amount of effort, but actually reading the Plugin faq it really doesn't seem bad at all... more busy work than complex work really.

No doubt something that is only worth doing if there is interest in playing it... which i supposed would only appeal to those here that like to play card games, and in THAT case, this one would have to be actually good to have an appeal...

Although, for me, having a "8 Bit" deck versus a "Dreadful" deck, is amusing on it's own... adding the NPF community would much more be in the spirit of joking around and having fun with it.

Cosnidering what i saw in the FAQ, the work lies much more in penning down the rules of the game and adding a couple hundred cards in a spreadsheet (and art) than actually coding it... it's a pretty straight forward process really.

But, no doubt, something only worth doing if a good dozen people want in on it...

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Let's see how many users are interested in this first. As well as getting permission from Brian and Matt to use their story/characters.

[Aldurin]

Let's see how many users are interested in this first. As well as getting permission from Brian and Matt to use their story/characters.

I thought this was going to be themed after US, not the comics we claimed to have flocked here for.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

I think this was aimed towards NPF as a whole. Users and comic characters included.

[Bells]

my first thought was to make a Core set based around the Forum and the base here. Make it fun and interesting and play with the system. If that works, then we can get a "expansion" set out... those can easily be themed around the Nuklear Power creations after proper thought has been give to create the base set and game rules.


Which, by the way... in my head i was thinking as a Mix between Yu Gi Oh and Magic the Gathering... it should be simple, to the point, easy and fast to pick up and play, and still allow for strategy and deck building

[akaSM]

I'd be interested in playing such a thing :3

[rpgdemon]

Cosnidering what i saw in the FAQ, the work lies much more in penning down the rules of the game and adding a couple hundred cards in a spreadsheet (and art) than actually coding it... it's a pretty straight forward process really.

That is what I said. Ignoring the plugin, the actual building of the game is a metric ton of work, but you seem to be under the illusion that it's the easy part.

It is the hard part.

[MSperoni]

If it's based on NPF there needs to be some sorta "Derail" card that you can play which makes all players discard their hands and draw a new hand.

but yeah, Dreadful stuff would be cool. Feel free to use whatever art you want. Not that there's much to use outside of the pages...

I'd like to make some more wallpaper/character art but I have been focused on the pages so I haven't gotten around to it. Who knows, this might give me some incentive :D

[Bells]

Holy crap, thanks Matt that's really awesome!

That is what I said. Ignoring the plugin, the actual building of the game is a metric ton of work, but you seem to be under the illusion that it's the easy part.

It is the hard part.

No, no illusion... i get it that is hard work, but i see it as "doable" work... the thing its that is only worth it if more people are into it, and if more people are into, you can be damn sure it worth doing it for me.

[phil_]

So, what kind of game do you want to make? Is it going to be like Magic, where people fight each other, or the WoW card game where players fight a deck, or Munchkin where players fight each other and a deck, or poker where we all just glare at each other? And what does this game propose to offer that a round of 1000 Blank White Cards: NPF Edition doesn't already?

[Bells]

Well, this is the crude outline of what i had in mind... considering that its a barebones idea since it's best to start simple and get more complex as the game is develop (after all, it must be done in the rules of the engine)

what i REALLY wanted to do is this:


Imagine a Chess board, just a bit smaller. Think Tetra Master on Final Fantasy.

On the center of the map, Players lay 4 cards ( 2 each if it's 2 players, 1 each if it's 4 players) in a cross formation (open up to a diamond formation for more players) , where no card is directly next to the other and nothing is at the center.

each card has 7 parameters

Name: The name of the card
Type: it can be a Spell, Enchantment or a Creature (of 3 kinds)
Cost: How much mana does it cost to put on the table
Rarity: your basic collectable stat
Damage: The attack damage of the creature (same as MGT)
Defense: The defense/Life of the creature (same as MGT)
Movement: how many squares the card can move (1 to 3 would be my best proposal)

At your turn you can:

Move 1 card
Cast as many spells as you can pay
Summon 1 creature
Attack as many times as possible.

To attack one card must be directly next to the target.

Combat is the same as MGT, a card attack with Damage Vs Defense. If Defense is greater than Damage, the creature survives and counters (but the damage stays) and the fight ends if not, the creature dies and the fight ends.

Thing is that if you attack 1 card and there are 2 or more cards next to yours, they all counter together.

To cast anything, you need mana. To get mana you must move your cards into the open spaces in the grid. When your card lands on a space in the grid, it converts that grid into mana (of the color of the card) for you (Maybe it could convert into mana for both players in that color?), so let's say you move a green creature into a red mana square... you take over that square and convert it into green. effectively taking mana away from your opponent and adding to your own pool, so space control is important. And trapping your opponent is a viable strategy.

You get all your mana at the end of the turn and can only spend it in the start of the turn, moving your creature ends the turn, attacking does not (but you can only attack once with each creature).

Once you have the mana, you can summon creatures and they come to play next to one of your creatures already on the field... so any situation can be reverted with a lucky draw, keeping the game a bit more unpredictable.

So, that's the basic gist... you are trying to control the board to acquire mana to cast more powerful spells and summons to drive your opponent away. You win when only your creatures are on the field and the opponent can't cast anything or anywhere.

The mix it up a bit, i thought about adding 2 Class parameters... type and color.

Color is just a straight ripoff of magic, can be changed, but the idea is to have different mana to suit different cards and different colors having different styles of play.

The other is your basic Rock/Paper/Scissor mechanic... each creature is set as Spiritual, Psychic or Physical.

Spiritual Beats Physical who beats psychic who beats spiritual

in game terms it takes the Pokemon route... card with an advantage doubles all damage.

So, those 2 elements add a lot of strategy into your deck building...

So, it's not about just having the better cards or the most rare ones... there is strategy on the field, of where you place the cards and how you move the cards around... so it's a bit, not like chess... but maybe Checkers.

And you have the strategy of deck building, trying to find a balanced build of spells and creatures.

That's what i had in mind for a card game... thing is i'm not 100% sure all can be done in that program... HOWEVER, coming the worst, you can ditch the grid map and keep just the Color and RxPxS system and still have a game to play...

[Pip Boy]

Got bored.

http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd207/bendlee/Magiccard.png

http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd207/bendlee/magiccard2.png

http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd207/bendlee/Smarty-1.png

http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd207/bendlee/Banhammer-1.png

http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd207/bendlee/Steamnight.png

[rpgdemon]

I will play the part of the jerk poking holes in the system, so that said holes can get patched.

What determines the starting card that a player lays down? Is it random? If so, what if they have their biggest creature as their starter?

What if that first creature is killed? You are cut off from more mana sources entirely for the rest of the game, plus you can't play any more creatures based on the rules you outlined, because you do not have a creature to put the new summons next to. (Plus, you straight up lose, but I'm ignoring that for now.) A dominant strategy emerges where the first player just goes and kills their opponent's first creature.

Movement ends your turn? How does one get close to an enemy in order to attack, then? This encourages neither player to approach their enemy, because whoever makes the first advance is the most vulnerable player. You want your mechanics to encourage a game to end, not to encourage a defensive stalemate.

How do you open into a second or third color in your deck? If you start with one card, which can convert spaces that it touches to mana sources of it's color, you will not be able to ever get a second color, because you're required to have a card of a color before you can make mana for it.

The game ending when no creatures are left on the board is interesting, but I ignored that resulting in a loss above, because I don't know that it will lead to games ending in a satisfying manner. Either you'll die because you happened to draw no creatures when you needed just one more dude, of any sort, or (Because of the movement and attacking restrictions), you just play one dude a turn, and manage to string the game along for ages. It also limits the type of creatures you can create, because if you make any creature very durable, casting it means the game will draw on for a long time.

Re: Multiplayer: You're going to need to up the size of the field when you introduce additional players, or it will be a much slower game as you add more people. Mana generation will be halved when you move from two to four players, because each player will have fewer spaces to occupy, and fewer occupied spaces to begin with. You might not even get to play your high cost cards until you knock out a player or two. Because mana is tied directly to board spaces, it's a finite resource that you're dividing amongst the players in the game. If you have an 6x6 grid (Two spaces smaller than a chess board), that gives you 36 available spaces to occupy. In a two player game, each player can reasonably access around 15 of those spaces, let's say. (The missing 6 spaces that neither player can reasonably access are spaces between two high powered creatures, where neither player can go there without dying.) In a four player game, each player can now only access 7 or so spaces, or even fewer. The number of inaccessible spaces go up as you introduce more players, because there are more spaces that are between players.

You have a few options for how you'd like to scale the board up. Either you can alter the dimensions of the board and keep it square, or you can simply plop another board down next to the original one. If you increase from a 6x6 board for two players, to a 9x9 board for four players, you are creating more spaces per player, but if you bare in mind that there are now more unusable border spaces, the scaling might work well.

If you just plop another board down next to it, you now have a strangely dimensioned board, and I'm not sure if you want that, as it introduces a whole new host of questions and problems. The center players would have two enemies next to them, while the edge players have a better defended area, but only have one direction to expand outwards towards.


A final point to think on: You might be too focused on Magic right now. You're trying to make a game that's Magic with a board, but you're not thinking about what the board really adds to the experience. You open up a lot of new design space, some of which you've explored with the mana system, but a lot of which you're ignoring entirely. Maybe each player starts with territories, and loses if they lose all of it. Or, maybe you can win when you occupy a certain percentage of the board. There's a lot you can do, and I'm not sure if the board is being used to full effect under the current system.

[Bells]

Thanks! That actually helps develop things along... just try not to keep those too large, so others can join in more easily



What determines the starting card that a player lays down? Is it random? If so, what if they have their biggest creature as their starter?

What if that first creature is killed? You are cut off from more mana sources entirely for the rest of the game, plus you can't play any more creatures based on the rules you outlined, because you do not have a creature to put the new summons next to. (Plus, you straight up lose, but I'm ignoring that for now.) A dominant strategy emerges where the first player just goes and kills their opponent's first creature.

Since the deck is fairly creature intensive i thought of a few pointers

1- First draw goes to table with zero cost, It's just luck, but doesn't allow you to make a deck full of big creatures cause damage is not easy to regenerate, powerful creatures would tend to be slower (move less) and the high mana cost would make your game super slow, allowing a fast deck to quickly surround you. you can have a big powerfull creature on the table early on, but that creature can still be easily taken down if the enemy gets around to "zerg rush" you with fast summons while you have to slumber around with just one attack against several and slow build up.

2- Since everybody starts fairly close together, it is a totally valid strategy to go in for an early kill. But the chances of that strategy working are very slim in most cenarios. Just like in checkers, you can pick up a piece, but you can also get boxed in easy if you don't pick your moves right. For most games you should be able to start with 2 creatures on the table though... you can play full out offense, you can play build up fast mana running around with them, or you can go the middle road having one creature fend off the enemy while the other goes the other way building up mana to summon more creatures.

3- The playing field grid i was thinking would be around 12x12 or 24x24 so, at least early on, it's very difficult to not have space around to put another creature down. As the game goes on it is possible. And boxing an opponent in the corner killing off his chances of summoning anything is a viable strategy to win. means you can win even with just a strong defense... so it's not all about who has the more damage.

It certainly better to have 2 summons on the beginning of the game though, it makes an early kill very unlikely... but in every card game, if it so happens that you get a lucky killer hand, you are totally allowed to use it.

Movement ends your turn? How does one get close to an enemy in order to attack, then? This encourages neither player to approach their enemy, because whoever makes the first advance is the most vulnerable player. You want your mechanics to encourage a game to end, not to encourage a defensive stalemate.

Maybe i misspoke there, but what i wanted to emphasize is that you should only move one card per turn, but you are bot obligated to attack. You can park your card next to the enemy and not attack, but in your turn if you have 4 cards next to 4 enemies you can trigger all those attacks. The idea being that you are constantly chasing your enemy, trying to control the field and not letting him box you into a corner or trap you around multiple creatures. You can park a weaker creature next to a stronger one, and the summon a more powerful creature right there to surprise your attacker, so there is timing... if you just run away, the enemy is going to surround you, if you charge in blindly he can trap you.

How do you open into a second or third color in your deck? If you start with one card, which can convert spaces that it touches to mana sources of it's color, you will not be able to ever get a second color, because you're required to have a card of a color before you can make mana for it.

That is totally true. I was thinking of solving that with neutral summons or spell cards though...

The game ending when no creatures are left on the board is interesting, but I ignored that resulting in a loss above, because I don't know that it will lead to games ending in a satisfying manner. Either you'll die because you happened to draw no creatures when you needed just one more dude, of any sort, or (Because of the movement and attacking restrictions), you just play one dude a turn, and manage to string the game along for ages. It also limits the type of creatures you can create, because if you make any creature very durable, casting it means the game will draw on for a long time.

Not having creatures in your hand is really not possible, since at first i was thinking of just 3 types of cards

Summons
Item spells (Equipment to improve a summon)
and Effect spells (your Fireballs, Draw a Card, Convert land, etc...)

And i was thinking of a 30 card deck with a 5 card hand at first... to keep all matches fast paced.

Aboute size field and multiplayer


The beauty of it is that making the playfield larger is a very simple solution... Granted though that right now i do not know how the game engine handles THAT..

Although changing it up to the corners might be a good solution too...

Aboute the board

Territory control might also be good... i'm trying to downplay the board right now cause i'm not sure of just how much work will be to make it that simple... but adding a "War" element to it, would certainly be interesting if possible.

[Arcanum]

Was brainstorming last night while sleep eluded me. This is the shit I came up with (note, it's completely 100% different from anything Bells said).

I thought of using Rep as a resource, and it led to a crazy idea that's just so batshit it has to work (read: fail horribly, but I'm pretty sure that's the NPF way so it fits).

Basically you have two decks for the two common types of Rep, a Neutral Deck and a Basic Deck. You start by drawing five "Neutral" cards, and at the beginning of every turn you have the choice to draw two cards from your Neutral deck or a single card from your Basic Deck.

Most Neutral cards will have a very low Rep cost, or none at all (I'm thinking the zero-cost neutral cards will be isolated into a single category where you can only cast one per turn to avoid the Black Lotus problem of MTG). Every turn you naturally gain one Rep, this includes your very first turn. There will also be cards that give you bonus Rep (off the top of my head "Funny Picture / Cost: 1 Rep / Effect: +1 Rep" or "Rep War / Cost: 6 Rep / Effect: All players gain 4 Rep. After three turns all players sacrifice 6 Rep as the mods step in and clean up this shitstorm"). When you spend Rep you just tap it, and it untaps at the beginning of your next turn. Sacrificed Rep is exiled from play, and this will also play into Nega-Rep cards that require you to sacrifice Rep in order to play them (I'm thinking Otaku Son (or other famously banned forumers) or other cards with devastating effects).

Anyway the idea is to have an early game where the players harass eachother with low cost cards, while trying to bolster their own Rep pile enough so that they can start drawing more powerful cards from their Basic deck, where the game will shift to more powerful and hard-hitting tactics. The reason for two decks and guaranteed resource gain is to prevent the biggest gripe I have with Magic, which is getting fucked over by constantly drawing lands and no creatures, or creatures too powerful for you to play because you aren't drawing lands. Obviously it's a very rough outline right now, but with work it can mean a tense fight throughout the game.

And speaking of fighting, I'm still not 100% on how combat should work. The end goal is to deplete your opponent's life, but I'm debating on how creatures will interact with eachother. Here are the ideas I considered:
A) Classic MTG style. You attack with whatever cards you want, your opponent blocks, and damage is dealt simultaneously with offense compared to the defense stats for damage/survival/etc.
B) Fucking with the system again. Attacking player has full reign of targets. He/she can attack a player, or target a specific creature. Once the target is set then the defender has a choice to block, with whatever creature he wants. Blocking will tend to take priority, so if an attacker targets a weak creature, your block will save that weakling. This will open the field to special effects like "First Post" that allows an attacker to hit his target before the defender blocks him (however, the defender will still deal damage after the attacker, so you might lose your attacker anyway). Another ability could be "Appear offline" that makes a creature unable to be the target of an attack. I think there are a lot of ways we can play with this combat system, but I would like to hear some input from you folks.

Okay, akaSM and Aldurin are harassing the fuck out of me to play SMNC with them, so I'm going to go do that. I'm sure I've forgotten to type out some of my ideas, but whatever. Let me know what you guys think.

[Bells]

it seems to me you have 2 ideas glued together really, one is your regular MGT the other is a separate system design to replace mana.

Although a more lighthearte, tongue-in-cheek tone is certainly very welcomed (i sure as hell wouldn't want to be "only super serious children's card games here!!!!!!!" ) i dunno if it would make the hassle of creating all of this worth it for anything beyond a joke session or two...

Mind you that my own idea is far from perfect, but is this is worth doing at all, i supposed it should be something everybody here can get into and get at least as much satisfaction as most get from Leveling up in a MMO...

...or Casting Krylo to block Fenris that is trying to rush Mauve... the silly possibilities are endless!