New game design - seeking comments

Sounds like a very interesting premise... However, given the background you propose, I get a vibe that the game should include some sort of card passing / go fish element... Something to represent the wizards accidentally drawing the wrong pouch and fiddling around with stuff they're not familiar with.

Perhaps instead of drawing from the deck, you can draw from an opponents hand? At the end of the "draw phase" all players need to be back to X cards. So if anyone was targeted with several draws, they'll still get back to a certain minimum hand size.

You can "call for" a type of component. If a player is willing to pass that component to you from his own hand, he gets to draw cards from the deck (so he can clear out cards he doesn't need, but at the risk of passing you something he does need).

Perhaps a trading element, where wizards put components from their hand up for grabs. Say any 2 cards from your hand for 2 cards chosen by their opponents. If an offer is made, the player must accept one of the offers on the table.

Or perhaps a "play order" a la Bohnanza -- cards in your hand must stay in that order, so you want to purge some components that much up the order of the cards to get those big spells off. This would also reflect the "hey, this isn't my bag -- what's that doing in here" feel.

Regdardless, good luck -- it sounds pretty neat. Game on!

I like the idea of some sort of card passing bit. Or what about a bid system, where you could bid "spare" spell componenets (i.e. cards) into a face up bid pile, from which players can then choose to draw from (either the face down pile, or known cards from the face up deck).

Personally I'm not a big fan of this, but that's just me. I don't mind cards or combinations of cards (i.e. spells) that would allow you to look at and/or steal stuff from other people, but I'm not partial to a standard draw from another's hand. Again, that's just me.

Calling or trading could be other spell effects as well. Or alliances could be struck and open trading of cards could be allowed. Hmmm...

A play order isn't my thing either. At least not for this game. But I certainly appreciate all the suggestions. After this one I still have four games "in the pipe". Who knows, maybe I'll use some of the suggestions here that I wont' use on MM.

Thanks!
Ben

The win condition is last man standing. Each player will start of with a certain amount of life (say 10 points) and once that's reduced to 0, they're out of the game. Last wizard standing (er... crouched over their walker) wins.

I was toying with the idea of having characters with different properties. The more I think of it, the more I like it.

Dice however, are out on this game. I'm going to keep it strictly to cards.

Much appreciated!

Cheers,
Ben

Another thing I'm toying with the is the spell construction itself. Spells take time. Since each turn is representative of say 30 seconds worth of fumbling through a bag, mumbling and pushing false teeth back in, etc.

So, a 1 component spell would take 1 turn to cast. (i.e. you can play one card and "activate it".

A 2 component spell would take two turns (lay down 1 card in turn 1, 2nd card in turn 2) to cast, but be more powerful.

However, players will also be able to cast spells to muddle up the construction of other player's spells. So constructing a 23 component spell would not only take a long, long time, but stand an almost certain chance of being blasted by another player before it's complete.

Ben

Instead of having a wizard character, there's the pool of "spellbook" cards that players draw from at the beginning of the game... BEFORE they know the ingredients they'll have to work with. Different spells on each spellbook card, although some, especially the simpler ones, are found repeatedly.

Characters go turn for turn drawing the spellbooks they want until all the spellbooks are gone... spellbooks are lightly "themed" i.e one spellbook is called the "Tome of Time" and has mostly time-related spells, one is called the "Scroll Of Fire" and has mostly Fire-related spells....

By letting the players select their spellsets, they are building a sort of "custom wizard" at the start of each game. Drawing random ingredient cards afterwards creates the necessity for the player to develop a mixing/casting strategy under pressure....

~Josh

An interesting idea - I like it, but I'm not quite sure it fits with the theme of picking up the wrong bag then you're likely to get the wrong spell book(s) too.

I'm mixing this stuff into my brain even now, so my thoughts and opinions may change, but I'm thinking it's just going to be components. Theming this perhaps on the fact that magic is easy, if one has the correct tools, but some of those tools (flying chimpanzee toenail clippings) are harder to come by than others (smashed apple).

I'm very much enjoying this brainstorming session though!

Ben

Hey Josh,

I'm actually not too worried about the spell combinations.

Every single component will be able to do *something*. Whether it's create a shield that will block 1 point of damage, or singe a single oponent for 1 point, or darn your socks or what have you.

Each component will also have on it a list of componenets it can be combined with to have a specific effect.

So for instance, the component "Shard of Rubie" will allow the Wizard to cast the Singe spell and damage a single opponent (1 point). On it will be the following:

Add Diamond: damage all opponenents 1 point.
Add Sage: Look at one player's hand
Add Diamond and Sage: Damage all opponents for 1 point and each player who receives damage discards a card of their choice.

Then the Diamond card will have similar. So you'll always be able to do something with each individual card. And possibly more if you combine them.

Cheers!
Ben (all spelling mistakes mine :)

There's no distinction between "spells" and "ingredients". Each ingredient is a stand-alone spell, and other ingredients can be added to it for bonus effects... first card laid is the "key" card I suppose... in this way you don't need to reverse-engineer all spells on all cards.

By this I mean

If Ruby does 1 damage to 1 foe, and notes that if you add a Diamond to it, all players are damaged...

Laying a Diamond first and then a Ruby doesn't produce the same effect. The Diamond has its own set of effects noted on its card which might have nothing to do with Rubies.

This is interesting. Different from what I assumed, but interesting.

~Josh

That's pretty close to what I have worked out. Although it's a bit more complex than that. I'm not going to go into details right now because I've still got a few kinks to work out, but certain components are going to be more common than others. (Some represented by 9 cards in the deck, some by 4 and some by only 1).

Plus, each card will have a 'type' that can be matched up with two other types. So it's not as simple as laying down two cards from your hand, you have to build spells out of components that match. But having said that, every single card will allow you to cast a spell, it's just that combinations of the cards will allow the spell of the base component to be more powerful, or have additional effects.

So you could put down a Ruby card (to do 1 damage to 1 other player) and then if you had another card that's compatible (say a Diamond) it may do 1 damage to each player. Add to that a Sage card, which may not be compatible with a Ruby alone, but is compatible with the Diamond, and you'll do 1 damage to each player, plus each player that takes damage must discard 1 card.

Something along those lines. I've got a simple mathematical formula I'm working on that will help the cards even out.

Once I get this worked out I'll throw more details up here.

Ben

Sounds like an awesome idea for a game. You really have a knack for wacky, fun ideas. I'd love to try this out when you have a playable version.

Your game gave me an idea for another game, kind of a "prequel" to your idea, heheh. A "magical" game of poker, where you bet with "mana crystals" and each card in the deck also doubles as a spell card that can be cast using a certain number of crystals. Spells would let you do things like look at an opponents hand, blast cards at random (or not so random), switch cards, and things like that. Other than that, it would play like regular poker.

Kind of like a "Nightmare Chess" take on Poker. :D

And then I'd throw in some ninjas. Cuz all good games need ninjas.

Sorry. 4 hrs of sleep is not enough to post coherent messages.

The ninjas come in to the sequal, where the last wizard standing suddenly has to defend the place from a busload of Ninjas who got off at the wrong game. Of course, all the *really* good spells were just used up in the fracas before so . . . .

I like your idea of the pit trading portion of the game, but I've got to say the real-time and quasi-real-time (and semi-quasi-psudo-real-time) games just aren't my thing. Some of them I think are brilliant , like Falling from Cheapass, but I don't enjoy playing them as much as the old standard of "who's turn is it?" I guess that's why I design turn based games (well, I'm 2 for 2 anyway) because I enjoy playing them more.

Kind of like a "Nightmare Chess" take on Poker. :D

That's a great idea. If you develop it right, will we be seeing "Nightmare Poker" on cable, with stars playing for charities? :)

One potentially powerful spell could be to sift through (and then reshuffle) the deck, searching for a specific card.

Ben