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Mage Dueling-Card Game

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Fri, 06/24/2011 - 01:27
deFunkt29
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I have an idea for a card game that I've been sitting on for a while. In it, each player plays as a type of mage such as a Wizard, Sorceress, Priest... etc. Your choice of mage will influence certain stats (such as your Will, Stamina etc.) as well as what cards can be contained in your deck (such as fire spells, healing spells, or neutral spells etc.). Also, each mage will have what is called a Spell book, which are 4-6 cards that are always on the playing area for them (can always be played).

Some ideas for the game are that each player has 2 sets of resources, one would be Mental, that you lose over time as you cast spells, though some spells require none, and Physical Fatigue, which increases as you are hit/use certain spells, and will eventually effect your own casting abilities, and if you win or lose the game (possibly!). Another idea is if the abilities of magic as a whole will fluctuate between turns, so that spells will be more powerful certain turns depending on others. This could be described as... a Magical Flux? Or Tides of Magic? Something along those lines.

I would really like there to be a way for certain spells to be in combos that can be used in quick succession against the opponent. I would also like a firm connection between the Mage's resources, and also a possible Life resource. Another note would be that the decks that players draw from wouldn't be overly large, since they can already access their spell book.

Any advice or ideas would be greatly appreciated, as I'm fairly new to game development as a whole!

deFunkt29

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Fri, 06/24/2011 - 15:40
#1
bonsaigames
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Character Boards

You could make a character board for each of your spellcaster types listing their game stats and "spellbook" (spells that are always available). Then you have some decisions to make...
1) Do you want each caster type to have a deck or do you want to make a common deck of cards all players draw from? 2) Is this an exceptions based game or a straight damage game?
3) Will you be using dice to add some randomness?
4) What is the target Age, Time, Player # for the game?
5) How will the combos work?
These are just a few of the dozens of questions you are about to engage in bringing a game from idea to playtesting. Then you will have to engage in playtesting until the game plays right. Then you will most likely need to sell it as a print & play for awhile until you can invest in getting it printed in sufficient quantities for a distributor to carry it, this can also hel pbuild interest in your game.
Most importantly, don't fall so in love with your game that you cannot change it to make it a success.
Every game we have designed has gone through several iterations in both the design and playtesting phases. Listen to your playtesters, but stay true to your vision of the game. Just don't fall in love with a particular mechanic or game state and make sure your math is solid behind the game.
Best of luck and welcome to the Forums!

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Sat, 06/25/2011 - 10:16
#2
larienna
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I just want to warn you about

I just want to warn you about something. I was designing once a small video game where you had a list of spells and you could do duels between sorcerer.

The problem was that there was no reason to use weaker attack spells when you had stronger spells. So it created a dominant strategy where each player played their strongest spell first and then their weakest spell.

Magic the gathering solved this problem by making the cards drawn randomly. It's not very realistic but it works. The other solution I could propose is to use a system of openings and counter maneuvers a bit like chess.

The idea would be to find a way to pass through the player's defense system to be able to attack him. So you would need to set up defense and try to dig into your opponents defense to open a window for your attacks to pass.

Another game you could look, unfortunately it's in french, is Emmerlaus.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7838/emmerlaus-duel-of-mages

The game use a random card system, but could play items that stay almost permanently into play. The basics of the game is play a card roll the dice and assign the damage.

The problems with this game is that a game can take between 10 min and 3 hours, according to the number of players and the expansions you have. The game is really unbalanced and out of control, on the other hand all players have access to the same deck of cards. There is also a lot of dice rolling, for almost each spell cast, you must roll to save the spell and then roll for damage if you fail.

This is some ideas to make sure you do not make the same errors in your game.

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Sat, 06/25/2011 - 15:02
#3
deFunkt29
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Ya I like the character

Ya I like the character boards idea. As for the deck I believe It will have to be two seperate decks. Although it may seem harder to make balanced, I think having one deck would also be unbalanced, as certain players would get more supportive cards, while other players would end up getting all damaging cards. Having two decks would make for more flexbility in this. Sorry, I don't really understand the exceptions/straight damage question!

I think my idea for the "Magical Flux" will provide suitable randomness. This may effect the amount of damage cards will do, as in each turn the number will change, or something along those lines. Still not totally sure for age or time, but player number will be 2, at least to start with... though it would be quite cool to be able to combo with an allies spells. Speaking of combos, still no idea how that'll work!

Thanks for raising all the questions!

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Sat, 06/25/2011 - 15:57
#4
bonsaigames
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Exceptions

Risk is a game of straight up damage; there are specific rules that apply to everyone at all times. Mass your troops, roll your dice, wash, rinse, repeat. The only strategy comes in placement and progression.
Magic: the Gathering is an exceptions based game.; there are basic rules and almost every card in the game breaks those rules. Every card played can change the flow of the game.

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Sat, 06/25/2011 - 17:15
#5
deFunkt29
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Thanks for the input

Thanks for the input Larienna. I know what you mean, it will definately be hard to balance the spells, expecially those found in the spell book. Right now as it stands, the main reason not to used more powerful spells early is due to the risk that they usually involve, as often powerful spells will drop your mental will, and/or increase your physical fatigue, or have another adverse effect. But this has yet to been tested.

Thanks for the definitions Bonsai, I would say that my game would be exception, since many cards shift the rules and effect regular game play.

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Sun, 06/26/2011 - 02:03
#6
deFunkt29
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One of my first points to

One of my first points to deal with was how the whole "Magical Flux" or the way magic will fluctuate every turn. I tried out a couple of scenarios and I don't think this would be possible to balance in the game. I was thinking there would be a deck of 10 cards or so, that you would draw every turn (though I couldn't decide if it would be fairer if it was every players turn, or the start of just one players turn). The cards would change this flux, which would change the amount of damage done on certain spells, ranging from 1 to 5. This just seemed like it would end up favoring one player to much, and also it was hard to decide when this would change.

Thus I have decided that there would just be a fixed amount of damage (probably one "Life") taken off by damage spells. But, if anyone has any ideas as to how to make the above idea work, feel free to contribute :).

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Sun, 06/26/2011 - 04:13
#7
bonsaigames
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SAGA Fate Deck

You might be able to use a mechanic similar to the old Marvel SAGA Fate Deck to simulate the "Magical Flux".

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Sun, 06/26/2011 - 10:10
#8
larienna
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Quote:Right now as it stands,

Quote:
Right now as it stands, the main reason not to used more powerful spells early is due to the risk that they usually involve

You could use a system like Mage the ascencion/ Sorcerer's Crusades. WHen you cast a spell, you can accumulate paradox, when you have paradox, casting spells can make them backfire. So you could have a system where the stronger are your spells the more paradox you accumulate and the easier it is to backfire a spell.

In sorcerer's crusade, the paradox added a wild die that ether could give you boon or bane effects. So more paradox = more random uncontrolled effects. But not necessarily only bad effects.

That could be a good counter mechanism. You only cast powerful spells when you can afford it and then try to drop your paradox with time, items and spell before casting another strong spell.

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Sun, 06/26/2011 - 12:42
#9
deFunkt29
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Hmmm that does look similar

Hmmm that does look similar to what I was trying to achieve (fate deck). I'll keep trying to work it out, but at the moment, it looks like it would be just as easy to scrap it entirely.

I like the paradox system! It actually does sound a lot like the system I was planning on trying, albeit a bit more exciting. In mine it was more like "mental focus". You lose this "focus" through casting certain spells, and more commonly, blocking others. (Sudden idea, what if you lost focus when you switched spell types, such as casting fire one turn, then casting a neutral spell the next! This could also help to reinforce my combo idea....). Anyway haha, as you lost focus, it would make casting simple spells even harder, and eventually nearly impossible. You would have to increase your mental focus again by using support spells, and resting for turns. The system you're talking about also reminds me of Warhammer magic, where as you increase the amount of power dice you use, the risk/reward also increases.

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Sun, 06/26/2011 - 20:07
#10
kos
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Combos and powerful spells

An idea I've been toying around with, which might help you deal with both combos and the "why don't I just cast my most powerful spell every turn" scenario, is that powerful spells require you to chain spells together.

I'll explain via example, assuming that we have spell types of Fire, Healing, and Neutral, and each spell has a power rating from 1 to 5 (5 being the most powerful).

On the first turn, I can play a Power 1 spell of any type. Let's say I play a Power 1 Firebolt. On the second turn, I can play a Power 1 spell of any type OR a Power 2 fire spell (because I played a power 1 fire spell last turn). Let's say I play a Power 2 Fire Blast. As you can see, each turn I can increase the power of the spell type I am currently using, or I can switch back to Power 1 in any other spell type.

Now let's say I keep playing bigger and bigger Fire spells, so my opponent has to come up with a strategy for dealing with it before he gets fried. He decides to switch to Healing (Power 1 Soothing Touch), then plays Power 2 Resist Fire. If I haven't already switched spell types, he next plays Power 3 Fire Immunity, thus making my fire spells useless for direct damage.

The key is to make defenses more powerful than the same level attack spell, so that if you can raise a defense against a spell type you force your opponent to switch attack types.

You could throw in plenty of variations in this basic design, such as interrupt spells that drain your opponent's effective power level in their current spell type, or even a "steal power" that switches your spell type with your opponent. Allow Neutral spells to be played with any spell type, and Neutral spells do not interrupt your current spell type. There's lots of possibilities.

Hope that helps,
kos

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Mon, 06/27/2011 - 02:23
#11
deFunkt29
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Wow, thats a really cool

Wow, thats a really cool idea, and my game actually did already have a spell tier system (letters A-D) being built into it anyway. This could be a really good way to flesh out the deck as well. Instead of having just 5 direct damage fire spell cards, they could build off of each other, in the way you mentioned. Also, perhaps you could play the powerful ones right away still, but not without consequences. This would allow for some flexibility, as well wouldn't mess up players that just have a hand full of very powerful spells. Thank you a ton!!

Also, on a side note, after a long night at work (a.k.a. thinking about this game), I have decided that it will cost one "Mental Will Point" to change to a different type of magic (still would like a better word for type here...). This isn't permanent, but I think it could make for some cool game play. For example, do I stay on the offensive fire type in order to destroy my opponent, or take the penalty and switch to the slightly more defensive Ice type, to defend of his latest combo (thanks again man!). This could actually work really well with that combo system, as you have to know when to switch types. Wow my mind is over-flowing right now...

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Tue, 06/28/2011 - 16:17
#12
deFunkt29
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Thanks again everyone for the

Thanks again everyone for the help, I've decided to start posting the information in a blog just so its easier to organize. I've started making a couple cards, and the game seems to be going pretty good, but that'll be shown in my playtesting. The link to the blog is here: http://www.bgdf.com/node/4989

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Tue, 06/28/2011 - 19:17
#13
Louard
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Combos etc.

Man.. that idea from Kos IS really cool! I'm imagining it as different Kung-Fu styles and you can keep extending your combo as long as you don't switch styles. ^_^

That being said, I think you need to look at combos from another point of view as well. It's cool to have a system like this that really supports combo-ing but if you look at, say, Magic, or Dominion their idea of a combo stems more from core rules... A certain enchantment you have in play may allow you to produce one red mana whenever you deal damage using a red creature, so you attack with a goblin, giving you the red mana you need to cast fireball... You know? You've just made a combo, but nowhere on these cards did it say "Fireball: can only be cast after an attack by goblins." or something of the sort.

The paradox system from Mages is also quite neat, I didn't know about it! Reminds me a bit of the evil points in the old LOTR movie CCG ( I don't remember what the resource was called) But during your Fellowship turn most cards would cause you to have to give your opponent these, like threat tokens or whatever, during your opponent's bad guy turn, he could use those tokens to play bad ass cards against you. Come to think of it, I think Dungeoneer has a similar system. Anywho, just more stuff to munch on.

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Tue, 06/28/2011 - 19:34
#14
deFunkt29
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Your Kung-Fu comment actually

Your Kung-Fu comment actually reallly reminded me of the part of my game where you have to stay on an affinity of magic to combo, and then switch to defend and such, so similarities all over!

Ya I know what you mean. Theres a combo such as what Kos said, where they are very evident and give particular enhancement, but you could really see almost any TCG as a combo system. You require certain cards to do certain tasks, and you have to lay out a plan as to how you will get these cards, power them up, attack with them, etc. In this way, I suppose my game already has a built in combo system :S haha. But I do like the idea of spells powering up over time, not only by using similar spells (Fireball to Fireblast). I also have combos built in that build off certain spells, but not only ones similar to it. For example, the offensive spell "Overheat" can build off more supporting spells such as "Heat-up". Really makes for endless possibilities!

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Thu, 06/30/2011 - 00:28
#15
bonsaigames
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Fluid Talent Trees

Kos' idea reminds me of more Fluid versions of MMORPG Talent Trees.
In fact, that might be a cool mechanic for the game, each character has X Focus to allocate each round to a finite list of "schools" (Maybe each character gets a point or two free in their specialized "school" or some other bonus) and each round there is a phase where you allocate your Focus.
In this way you can have cards that manipulate specific Focus allocations.

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Thu, 06/30/2011 - 00:34
#16
bonsaigames
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Starting Spell Book

Also in your OP, you had mentioned that each character would have a spell book of cards they would always have available. If you want to make it a little less static, MagiNation (a supremely underrated CCG, now OOP) used to have starter spells on all of their Magi and when you revealed that Magi, you would look through your Discard Pile and then your Deck to find those starting spell cards. Although I guess if you aren't cycling Magi that's not such a big deal.
You could just print a power on each card that the character can use without cards.

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Thu, 06/30/2011 - 01:06
#17
deFunkt29
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Ya, although I do like the

Ya, although I do like the idea of having physical cards on your spell book. I think its cooler, and makes it less static, as it can add customizability before the game begins. I think I'll be using cards, there will just be a list somewhere saying which cards which mages can include in their spell books. As for your comment on skill trees, that would be really cool. Some character in growth would be really neat, as in perhaps after a couple turns, your skilll level (A-D) in a particular "affinity" (my word for schools, but same general idea I presumer) would increase. This could make for some interesting tactics, as characters would possibly use one affinity to level up, and then unleash the level A affinity when they have the correct cards in their hand.

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Thu, 06/30/2011 - 05:16
#18
bonsaigames
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Example

Here is a link to a VERY quick example of what I was talking about.
http://www.bgdf.com/node/5016

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Thu, 06/30/2011 - 13:50
#19
deFunkt29
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Wow, that's really cool.

Wow, that's really cool. Thanks for making that to show me what you mean, that is perfect for showing what each class is capable of, and you seem to actually know something about my game, which I am quite frankly flattered by haha. As for the skill trees, at the moment I'm on the fence. Just that my current version of the game works quite well without the need for this, although I do think it would be kind of neat to add on in some way, but not exactly make it a primary focus in the game. For example, you could have an in play spell that allows you to use Level A fire spells for 3 turns, or you could play a spell that lets you use an upgraded skill for the rest of the game, or something like that.

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Fri, 07/01/2011 - 01:46
#20
deFunkt29
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Name problems...

Based on my above comments and blogs, does anyone have any questions or other ideas about the game? If not thats fine, just wondering if anythig seemed very unclear. I'm working on some proto-type cards right now, and fine tuning some rules before I man-up and find some playtesters.

One last note, does anyone have ANY ideas at all for a name for my game? I've just really hit a wall at the moment for a name. So far I've been calling it Mage Duels, but this is just really generic, and reminds me of both Magic: The Gathering and Duel Masters. Thanks!

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Fri, 07/01/2011 - 21:44
#21
larienna
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One thing to not is the

One thing to not is the difference between direct and indirect CCG. I talked partially about it in this article

http://bgd.lariennalibrary.com/index.php?n=DesignArticle.Article20090610...

Here is an extract

Quote:

Direct VS Indirect: Cards can be played either directly or indirectly. Playing a card directly means placing a card in play where it's effect occurs immediately. This could be the case of a fireball spell. Playing cards indirectly consist in placing a card in play which will then be used later as a tool to fulfill your objective. For example: summon a creature in play that will be used on the next turn to attack your opponent.

One thing to note, 99% of CCG are either Indirect card games or an Hybrid of direct and indirect games. There is really few Direct only CCG. This is because a direct only game would have a smaller area of effect since there would be fewer cards that stay into play. This is no suitable for a CCG where you need a lot of unique abilities that can affect various things in the game. The only direct only CCG I know is "WWF Raw deal".

The idea is that when designing direct CCG, it is that you need very innotive ways to make the game more playable.

Speaking of "Raw deal", in that game, each card played increase your strength which allowed you to play stronger cards. Some cards could make the player lose cards from his strength pile. I this case, the more the game progressed, the stronger the moves played where.

ANyway, I have to go.

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Sat, 07/02/2011 - 22:26
#22
deFunkt29
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The interesting thing is I

The interesting thing is I was thinking about this the other day. My game does not play into the traditional sense that you mentioned, such as summoning monsters to wait to attack your opponent. But, I still wouldn't call it Direct. Yes there is a lot of direct elements (most ways to do damage is simply to play an offense spell), but the underlying strategy makes it rather indirect as well. Some examples of indirect game play in "Magic Arena" (possible title haha) would be the status effects, in play spells, and the combo system. The combo system especially shows of the games indirect potential, as you gain stronger simply from playing spells that already damage in a direct way (though this may be similar to Raw). Another reason as to why my game plays more indirect is because of the resource system. Although using a spell to lower someones Focus may not gain any immediate effects in the early game, it's indirect advantage is near the end, the enemy won't be able to defend from your spells as well, and might not even be able to play some of their own.

I see my game as a hybrid of the two, although some may disagree. I think just because most of the cards are "instant" or "one-time use", this doesn't exactly make it a "direct" ccg. Thanks again for showing the article! I've already started reading more of the site as well!

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