Yep, it seems we are now on the right track regarding the core rules. they now play much faster, smoother and are much easier to read and teach. Before I post the rules here, I would like to go into detail about the Elements & Dice found in the game:
- A GENERAL WORD ON DICE
Dice Duelz uses custom dice, so there are no standard pips in the game. It makes use only of d6 (six-sided-dice) in various colors with custom printed sides. Right now I ordered some samples that will feature printed sides, but there is an option to have engraved ones later on as well.
- ELEMENTS
Each die is aligned to one of the elements. The game started with 6 (or even more) elements, but we reduced that now to exactly 5 elements (just like in Magic: The Gathering and many other games). The elements are:
Each element has a different distribution of symbols, as seen below.
- SYMBOLS
The game started with a ton of different symbols but we now reduced it down to just 4. There might be two or three extra symbols in the future but we want to keep the symbol count low.
In addition, the previous version of the game had several identical symbols on each side to represent 4x ATTACK, 2x SHIELD and so on - this has proven to be obsolete and was removed. The die sides are now much easier to read.
The symbols are:
ATTACK symbols are required to deal damage to your opponents Monster. When your Monster has more attack symbols than your opponent's monster has shield symbols, you deal one point of damage to it (regardless of the difference).
SHIELD symbols are used to negate attacks. These symbols stay in play until your next turn, so your Monster can protect itself during the opponent's turn.
ENERGY symbols are used to perform special actions (like re-rolls) and to activate the abilities on your Monster card and upgrade cards. the energy system is the heart of this game actually.
WILD symbols are like jokers and each die features exactly one wild symbol. it allows the player to use the symbol either as ATTACK, SHIELD or ENERGY.
in a previous version we had double symbols like ATTACK/SHIELD etc. It has proven to be much more useful to the players to turn them into WILD (joker) symbols instead.
...
That's it about elements in dice, in short we now have:
- Custom six-sided Dice
- Five different Elements throughout the game
- Four different Symbols throughout the game
- Energy works like a plug-in system that allows future mechanics to be built on-top of it.
thanks for reading!
-Tobias (Fhiz)
Comments
Feedback Request
Did a few more tests by playing against myself and testing the whole thing with Michael again. Now, I have a feedback request to my fellow BGDF members:
right now the game is turn based, where each player takes one turn after another. the game also only features 4 dice symbols.
today, we thought about 2 things: making the game simultaneous turns and adding another die icon to it.
1. Simultaneous
Because the game is now so simple that it should be possible. and this would speed up the game even more.
2. Another Icon
We thought about SPEED to indicate which monster is striking first. otherwise it might be a bit difficult in a simultaneous environment to determine who deals damage first.
Questions:
A. What do you think about this idea in general?
B. (and thats the nut to crack!) What about ACTIVATED ABILITIES?
This really gives me a headache. How to control the activation, timing and resolution of abilities in such a game? Did some research but could not find anything. Without abilities, its not that much of a problem. but when you get to activate abilities using ENERGY symbols, the whole thing becomes quite chaotic.
we thought about using the new SPEED symbol mentioned above also for ability activation order, but still have no clue.
an idea anybody?
EXAMPLE:
I would like to do: "Thunderstruck - Pay 3 energy: force your opponent to re-roll all SHIELD symbols"
and my opponent would like to do: "Earthshaker - Pay 1 energy: Force your opponent to re-roll one of his or her ENERGY symbols".
First, how to decide which ability to activate? By calling it out loud? What if my enemy changes his mind?
Second, imagine that his "Earthshaker" has the possibility to force re-roll that energy symbol I require in order to activate my "Thunderstruck"
So, who would be going first?
Plus: Imagine each one of us wants to activate MORE than just one ability. Like 2 or even 3
determine using SPEED? or else?
thanks for feedback on this!
Resolution
In the other thread, the reason I suggested having default attack dice AND ability dice is so that the ability dice can only target the attack dice (not other ability dice) and order of ability resolution is never an issue.
Abilities that reroll/manipulate your own attack dice always resolve before abilities that force a reroll/remove your opponent's attack dice.
But, my suggested combat system is combat total comparison of attack values instead of symbols.