After much debate, I have decided that "Plains of Aria" (PoA) should be a game in and of itself. There was some planning that was leading in the general direction of a Magic: the Gathering (MtG) Format... But I just wasn't feeling the overall concept and thinking it would NOT work for a MtG crowd.
What I did is re-read some of Steven's Diary about "Four Corners of the Earth" (FCE) and got me re-thinking the "core" game experience and what I wanted from PoA.
Number #1: No Plains Tiles, Desert Instead.
Plains are boring and the Desert went along better with the SUN Icon on the PoA Custom Dice. Desert Tiles were part of the FCE "core". Enough said!
Number #2: Each second row is dis-aligned by 50%.
Instead of full congruence, this is the sort of alignment seen in FCE. This has multiple benefits in that it makes the "Planes" more varied and allows me to circumvent some legal issues with the tiles (Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks). Again, enough said!
Those are the two (2) key take-aways from the direction of this DESIGN IDEA. It is very much a Work-In-Progress (WIP) and with the Planar Deck which contains the rules about HOW you can build planes and make them grow has taken on a NEW "lease" on life with this CLOSER to FCE adaptation. I think FCE had some good ideas and Steven was onto something. He just said it was a BORING game and I've gone through hoops to keep the game FOCUSED on Game Tiles as opposed to chipboard or chitz... The Game Tiles with the expensive Crystals that make this game a "Black Label" Game for a crowd with more impressive off-line construction of their Planar Deck and Tiles...
This is definitely a NEW direction ... But I think it's COOL. I know now that the issue at hand will be: "How the heck do I make a Deck and Tiles to match???" This will be tricky but for NOW let's just focus on the POSITIVE changes and the fact that PoA will be a game in and of itself!
Cheers all.
