Spent Sunday at Lake Artemesia by College Park building up texture and forest pictures for my storybook animation. Spring needs to really kickstart its colors; the lake area was pretty drained of color for the most part.
My card game's rough draft is complete, and I should be playtesting it hopefully over the next few days. It combines that traditional single-player-RPG combat foundation of four party members, and in addition gives the players a deck of cards as well to work with. I went back and played a few minutes of some older RPGs to really get the feel for how combat flows, notably Final Fantasy 3 and 7, Pokemon, and Super Mario RPG. (Side note, Mario RPG's music is fucking boss.) I'll have to play rounds of Magic, VS, and UFS, and see what mechanics are / aren't fun. (Off the top of my head, I will not be adding a mana-screwed feature.)
I'm still trying to figure out whether or not I want this legitimately playable in paper or not. By that I mean, do players make decisions at the same time, or do players take turns with priority which gives one player a potential advantage over the other. This is certainly the case in Magic, where going first can be all the difference between a win and a loss. A lot of RPG combat systems give characters or attacks a designated speed which determines what character attacks first. In paper card game form, it doesn't work so elegantly. ("I'll do attack A on your character." "Then I'll do attack B on your character because it hits him first." "You're a giant asshole." etc) It would, at least, limit options and give faster attacks higher value. Worth doing? We'll see.
I don't think a speed system would work badly.
ReplyDeleteI don't really know how you've set up your card game so for examples sake I'll make some assumptions.
Known: 4 character per player, 2 active characters at a time.
Assume: a mini-deck per character with their abilities, draw 8 cards from the in play decks. WoW resource system.
Set a Speed scale of 1-10. Attack and Defense cards are usable at different times. An attack card can only be played during your turn. A defense card can be played at the beginning of the opponents turn or in response to an attack card. A defense card can only respond to an attack if it has a higher speed than the attack card.
Example:
Player 1 Character 1
Attack card Fireball Speed 5
Magic damage 6
Player 2 Character 1
Defense card Magic Barrier Speed 6
Magic absorb 10
Player 1 Character 2
Attack Card Piercing Strike Speed 8
Defeat a defense card
Alternatively assume Magic Barrier has a speed of 3. It's now a terrible reaction card but can be played at the beginning of the opponents turn (or end of the players w/e) to act as a deterrent.
Your card game might be entirely different, but I think my example shows that speed rating can be given and used to promote strategic decisions in a card game.