Hey guys Dan here and after reading the awesome post about how to be taken seriously by producers I started thinking of new game ideas that I've been trying to bury in my mind while I focused on Zodiak.
I've had an idea for a simple card game that sort of takes from Raw Deal's (Man I Feel Old) overall mechanics but I didn't know how to go about executing it. That was unit a few days ago when I read a very awesome post about a very awesome dice mechanic for an RPG game.
MarkKreitler posted on another person's topic a few days ago introducing a theory for a game mechanic where the layout of the card is used to keep track of its own stats, while using Dice to combat.
Here’s a link to that post: http://www.bgdf.com/node/7024
So I'm sitting at my desk at work bored out of my mind and it hits me. I know a great way to use that mechanic and combine it with one of my favorite card games Raw Deal!
Game Summary:
In Raw Deal a player used a "face card" as his/her character and a deck to back up that character. The deck was used as your overall move set and life support. In this game hand size never mattered because you needed "fortitude" in order to play cards and cards are what gave you fortitude.
(I know that’s a terrible explanation but that's the best way I can explain it right now)
In this game (For now lets call it Mystics). A player uses 3 "face cards" choosing from 3 different Types (Mage, Warrior, and Defender). To back up the face cards you would have a deck of 40 cards. Each card in the deck would have 2 numbers on it. 1 for gold (which in this situation would be equivalent to fortitude) and another for XP earned.
How I incorporate the dice mechanic:
So we've discussed how this game is similar to Raw Deal but not how I plan to incorporate the dice mechanic MarkKreitler came up with. His mechanic in theory makes the game more RPG based by allowing you to level up your characters (or face cards) and increasing their stats.
Example:
Xaphan is a mage and begins the game with 1 Red die (attack), 1 Blue die (defense), and 2 Purple die (magic/mana). As Xaphan level’s up I can add a die to one of his classes thus making him stronger and increasing his probability of dealing damage, etc.
How to level up:
There would be a couple of different ways to level up your face cards. One way you could do it is by adding up the XP from all the cards you’ve played equal to your face card’s XP requirements. All you would do is turn all your cards side ways to show the XP on them has been used but the Gold value would still be available to you.
The second way to level up is to purchase the level increase with a card effect.
Example: Troll Catapult says “Add 1 attack dice to a face card” and has a purchase cost of $500G.
You would need to gather all the cards that equal 500G and turn them upside down showing that they had been spent. If a card has been spent it cannot be used for your gold or XP values any longer.
What Happens when you level up?
Add a die to your preferred class.
How to Win:
Defeat your opponent’s 3 face cards or deck them out.
So what now?
This game is very simple and I haven’t been really pondering it for to long because as soon as the Raw Deal aspect popped into my head I started typing this out (which explains why its all over the place…Sorry…). Mystics seems simple enough to get started and I can see it being a lot of fun. I’ve already talked to my Zodiak Developers about it and they seem very excited to get started so I suppose we’ll see where this all goes.
One thing I need help with is the Magic. Attack and Defense are easy to do and figure out but what would magic give to the game? What would it do? Why is it important? How should I use it? I was thinking of a cost system where you could use magic to complete different card effects or negate them and than I started thinking of custom dice where instead of a standard D6, magic dice would have different faces on them tell you…stuff? I’m not sure yet but I was hoping you guys could help me.
Can’t wait to hear form all of you!
Not sure if I'm looking to the route of custom dice yet but I am very interested in the options it gives me.
Also leveling up give you more dice sure but does that mean more damage? Or do that mean you have a higher probability of dealing more damage?
Example: I have 2 defense dice and you rolled a 6 on an attack one. I roll and get a 3 and roll again and get a 1. Does this mean you only do 2 damage to me or do you go 3 damage to me because I go with the higher roll?
If you add the number than face cards need more health or something...
Maybe they need to level up! Not just saying "OK now Xaphan is lv 2" no you put a Lv 2 face card on your Lv 1. Now you have a Vanguard type game!
Sooooo many options!