Skip to Content
 

My Legend (place-holder name)

4 replies [Last post]
Milevan Faent
Offline
Joined: 04/02/2013

My Legend is an LCG game for 2 to 5 players (but one player must be the NPC). The Core Set has 100 different cards, with 4 copies of each card. Expansion Sets will probably have 25 new cards, with 4 copies of each card.

While I would love to just post the rules straight to here, this forum apparently lacks any formating buttons, so I'm posting a link to the rules on Google Drive (where I keep them anyway), both to keep my own formating and because I then only need to update there. Here's the link.

JustActCasual
JustActCasual's picture
Offline
Joined: 11/20/2012
Some Concerns

Hi! Welcome to BGDF!

I'm not sure the books are the best way to execute this game: it seems like you could just have an 8 card hand and a pile of EX cards. It's never clear what EX cards are: experience? By far the biggest issue with the game right now is that the theme is never explained. I have a vague idea that it involves wizard fighters fighting each other and random monsters to become the best wizard fighter, but I have no idea of the specifics, nor why I would want to play this game rather than a host of other games. What are the mechanics here that make the game unique? What is it about this world that differentiates it from vanilla high fantasy? There seems to be a lot of Ki and Theft...is this a ninja world where they're sneakily stealing things from each other?

I still have no idea what Spell Cards are, or why you need them. The Ki cards seem much more interesting, and I'm not clear why Spell Cards can't just be Ki cards. Similarly, I'm not sure how Power cards are (or should be) any different than Passive Ki cards, or why all items can't be Passive Ki cards (because really, awesome Ki items are what you want to play with). I suppose the item cards have other rules, but it seems like disarm, break, and thievery could just be aspects of a single mechanic removing the card from the game without losing much. Buying items is never explained, nor is the Store. It's never really clear how all the basic stats are being tracked...do we have tokens? Boards? I do not know. It seems unfun to be the NPC player: the fact that you've named them the Non-player character seems to imply that they don't get to play. It also seems like in a 3-5 player game it becomes much more difficult to win as the NPC player.

This looks like the start of a pretty cool game, but it needs to figure out what its focus is and why it exists. Focus on making this a clear and exciting game before trying to work on how to monetize expansions: this needs to be a card game before it is a Living Card Game.

Milevan Faent
Offline
Joined: 04/02/2013
Thanks a lot for responding.

Thanks a lot for responding. I actually hadn't thought much about some of the stuff you mentioned, so that helped me a lot. I thought the Ki stuff was actually clearer than it apparently is, so I'll have to clarify it in the doc when I'm not about to go to sleep.

Ki Cards aren't exactly a type of card. The only actual card types in the game are Items, Monsters, Spells, and Powers, but each of these have either an Offensive, Defensive, or Support Type, and may or may not use Ki as a resource for their effects. For example:

Quote:
Future Sight
Cost - 69
[Active Support Power]
Pay 10 Ki. → Choose 1: Reduce the Power of 1 monster attacking you by 5; Look at the top 3 cards of 1 Deck.

This is an example of a Power. All Powers have an effect that costs or requires having Ki, which is why I say they're all Ki cards.

On the other hand, here's 2 items.

Quote:
Necro Armor
Cost - 55
[Defensive Item - Body]
Armor 5
If the equipped has 0 Endurance, it is not killed while it is equipped with this armor.

Quote:
Dragonscale Armor
Cost - 72
[Active Defensive Item - Body]
Armor 10
Pay Ki equal to the Power of an attacker that is attacking the equipped → The next attack against the equipped that hit a location other than the Body hits the Body instead.

Necro Armor does not use Ki, but Dragonscale Armor does. And yes, I know the names aren't all that imaginative XD

That all said, I haven't really given much thought to why collecting the 20 EX cards wins you the game, nor have I thought too much about the flavor beyond just the fact its suppose to be high fantasy. I started this with the thoughts of making a game that was very much about deck-building and had elements of a dungeon crawl to it.

I know that stats are meant to be tracked using tokens, though I never did put that in the actual document. I wound up putting a lot more of my energy into conceptualizing cards so I could try to playtest the system so I could work out what worked, and what didn't. I've kind of gotten stuck on ideas now, so I'll probably put my energy into fixing up the rules now that I've got people to talk to about it.

I never really was too sure what to actually say about spells in the doc. This is an example spell.

Quote:
Scope Sight
Cost - 40
[Offensive Spell]
You may look at 1 card in a Player’s Free Book Slots, or 2 cards in the NPC’s hand. If the combined cost of those cards is less than 50, you can Steal 1 of those cards, and shuffle it into your Deck.

Spells never have a cost to them aside from buying them, don't stick around, and are basically the game's Instant and Sorcery cards. They also have some of the most generally useful defensive effects.

While I'm showing off card types, I might as well add my favorite monster of the cards I've made to this post too.

Quote:
Dire Wolf
Cost - 35
[Monster]
Power: 3
Speed: 5
Endurance: 6
Ki: 1
Pay 1 Ki. → Search the top 5 cards of your Deck for any Dire Wolf cards and acquire them.

The balance of their stats is still a work in progress. I just put numbers in place for the moment until I can figure out how strong I actually want monsters to be.

I'll go back and clarify the Store and Buying cards more, but could you explain why you feel the NPC would be at a disadvantage against 2+ Players?

Also, I named them the NPC because they themselves are not an active character that can be attacked. They instead control monsters and use them to attack, thus having no way to be attacked directly or to attack directly.

Oh, and in regards to the book thing, I do have several mechanics that play off the cards being in the books. Like for example:

Quote:
Angel’s Embrace
Cost - 99
[Defensive Spell]
Player Only: Choose 1 Page in your Book. For your next 6 turns, that Page cannot be targeted, and no cards on that Page can be targeted. This Spell can only protect 1 Page of a Player’s Book at a time.
NPC Only: For your next 6 turns, target monster you control cannot have its Items or Powers Stolen or Broken, and all damage it takes is halved. This Spell can only protect 1 monster you control at a time.

JustActCasual
JustActCasual's picture
Offline
Joined: 11/20/2012
^

Well, the examples definitely help, and should probably be in the rules.

The reason I thought the NPC would be weaker when the number of players expanded is because it only seems to make the size of library scale (making it harder to lose) while the difficulty of winning is unaddressed. If the number of players is increasing, the win condition of reducing them all to 0 endurance gets more difficult, and there doesn't seem to be additional resources to compensate. I suppose it's also harder for the players to win, as they have to fight for the right to kill the monsters for EX, but this creates more of a lag than actual difficulty. Am I missing something? It seems like the NPC should be able to field monsters at the same rate per player if you want to keep the gameplay consistent.

I would still say that it would be easier if Spells were just a subset of powers (it's a Power that doesn't use Ki), but I can see why you might want to keep them separate for flavour reasons. I would suggest you drop the terminology "Ki Cards", as there doesn't seem to be a functional reason to use it and it is confusing: you can always say something like "cards that use Ki" or the like when you need to refer to them, for example a card that shut down Ki powered abilities could be "you can't play cards with active Ki costs this turn" or "your Ki limit is 20 this turn". Presenting it as a resource rather than a category should forestall confusion.

Milevan Faent
Offline
Joined: 04/02/2013
^

Okay, I've tried to address some of the concerns you've mentioned so far. I added in the examples too. I've been a bit busy with some stuff, but I'll try to think up other stuff I can do later. If you wish, I can share what cards I've made so far with you as well. They're in another Google Drive file. Input on them would be nice too, but they're more works in progress than the rules are so far. I've been pretty satisfied with the rules, aside from the lack of flavor I've been struggling with.

Syndicate content


forum | by Dr. Radut