New ideas, 2013 edition

[Cyrus]

Its been awhile since I've posted any card game related ideas of my own here, so I thought I'd write out something I've been thinking about but haven't had the time to flesh out. This could also be totally ripped off from something I read here months ago when I was more "in the zone" in game design, so if I'm blatantly ripping you off, sorry (especially if you are Wisp).

In a lot of my games I implement a system that was first used in the Star Wars ccg by Decipher, in which you played characters on locations and they could move around and such. While this is cool, it always ends up taking a ton of physical space and creating nightmares in design, not to mention being a basically stolen idea.

SOOOO I was thinking, instead of locations to put your guys on, you have agenda/plot/mission cards that you place in the middle of the table, and players assign characters to these cards from a holding zone that characters are played to.

Basically, on your turn, you can add characters to your headquarters (or whatever it would be called) for free from your hand. Most characters would have no effect from headquarters. If there is an agenda card in play (and usually there would be a few, I imagine), you can then assign characters from your headquarters to any of the available agendas by paying their dispatch cost. I feel like this would make for an interesting economy system, because you get to put characters into play for free, but have to pay each time you want to assign them to a new agenda.

Agendas score you points while you maintain "dominance" or "control" (or some other term) there, meaning you have more characters/more power/something (probably different on each agenda). So an example agenda might read "Dominance: Score 1 if you have more characters with the Diplomacy trait assigned here than each opponent." The rules would make it clear that this meant at the beginning of turn, during the dominance phase.

Some things I'm wondering about...

Resources? What kind of resource system would go well with this? There could be a Worker trait on some characters, and maybe you could only bring one Worker into your headquarters each turn? Or maybe by default you can only put one character into headquarters each turn anyway, so you'd have to balance between stocking up on workers and agenda fulfilling characters? The more I think about it the more rewarding that seems. In this case workers would essentially be "tapped" for income used to dispatch your other characters, and since the workers would mostly stay in hq they would be safe except from resource denial type cards (cards that target cards in hq... these would be expensive).

Battles? I know there definitely needs to be interaction between players besides just stacking characters at agenda cards, but I don't necessarily want battling to be able to take place at any agenda. So maybe battles can only occur at War type agendas, and you have to rely on sneaky tricks or some sort of diplomacy war-of-words type battles at other types of agendas. Basically this ties in to how many and what kinds of agendas will be available and the different ways to score on them. A random idea - maybe espionage agendas could score you a point whenever you look at cards from your opponent's hand using an effect assigned to that agenda, such as spy characters which would allow such peeking.

I was also thinking about the way agendas score, should they allow for any player to score, or just the player who played them? Both seem like viable options. One the one hand, if any player can score on an agenda players may be tempted to hold back their own agenda cards and just swarm their opponent's. On the other hand, it might deter players from assigning characters to an opponent's agenda at all if they can't score there.
I'm also wondering how often/if agendas should leave play, sending all assigned characters back to their owner's hq. I feel like this may be necessary to stop players from winning too often by just assigning all of their characters to one agenda. Maybe agendas come into play with the number of points you're able to score from them on the card as tokens, and when you score from the agenda you physically take one of the tokens off the card. When the tokens are gone the agenda is discarded...?

Oh and also...theme? I feel like this would make more sense in a sci-fi setting, but fantasy/modern or anything in between could be cool too.

Anyway, I'm gonna keep dumping ideas here and use this as my unofficial blog thingy for ideas relating to this concept. As always, any and all feedback is appreciated.

[Malagar]

Have seen a location system like that in the old Star Trek CCG. Not completely the same but its not a completely unique or new idea either.

This is no rant or anything. :-)

[Wisp]

(especially if you are Wisp).

Ain't no thang.

The rest of what you wrote

Well it's always hard to critique ideas in this form, but I'll start my formalising what I understood in terms of flavour.

You go to places/fullfill agendas using Influential Diplomats. Once you do enough influencing, you rule the world! You can foil other players diplomacy by out influencing them, or straight up assassinate their more influential characters. You'll probably want to send bodyguards to look after your diplomats. And you have people working for you who generate resources for you to spend on your whole venture (and to protect your HQ? Influence?).

Sounds pretty neat. Maybe instead of having particular characters exclusively for a particular purpose (worker, diplomat, assassin etc.) maybe a set of versatile stats that would do different things depending on where they are assigned? (If i assign my diplomat at my HQ we'll generate more resources but them he can't go of and influence things. If I assign my assassin here he can' bodyguard over there etc.)

Whats that sound like?

[Cyrus]

I probably should have called the thread "new ideas (for me)," as I didn't mean ground breaking new ideas or anything, just stuff I've been thinking about. A key difference between what I'm thinking here and the star trek game is that agendas don't make up a line of locations that can be moved about by characters. Instead you assign characters from your hq to various agendas, and they have to come back to hq and be assigned to a new agenda that way, paying their cost each time. Meaning characters can be wherever you need them, but it'll cost you.

Your close with What you're saying there wisp, but diplomacy is just one of many traits that only certain agendas will require. A "large scale war" agenda might require 2 power worth of diplomacy, but it will Also require 10 power worth of warrior. So a 2 power character with warrior and diplomat would be a good character to assign there (if one exists, this is all hypothetical and generally those two traits specifically will be separate ).

Also, hq is not a place where you can assign characters. Characters there are, in fact, unassigned. Only some characters will have abilities that can be played from hq, mostly workers. Other characters may help generate income from the field (ie, while assigned).

I'm thinking you'll be able to start skirmishes at agendas that both players have characters on, and they will be a straight power vs power comparison, but the only reward is triggering "when you win a skirmish" abilities on your cards, so skirmishing will be something you can build your deck to do or not worry about trying to win, or a little of both.

Also thanks for comments! I know its just a brainstorm so its hard to really comment on

[Wisp]

Give me a gameplay scenario!

[Cyrus]

Okay, Jack vs Jill

Jack has an agenda in play called "raze village" in play. It has 2 points on it and no characters assigned to it. Its text reads "to score: 3 explosives, 1 spy. When scored, destroy up to one structure or one worker-typecharacter."
Jack has 5 characters and 2 structures in his headquarters (which I think im going to start calling village and go fantasy theme...).
Two of the characters are Miners, which read "worker - action: gain 3 gold. When used, gain 1 gold for each other miner in your hq."
Another character, dwarven explosives team, has a dispatch cost of 2, a power of 2, and reads "explosives."
His last character is silent arsonist, who has a dispatch of 3, a power of 1, and reads "spy, explosives."

For this example Jill isn't going to do anything cuz I'm at work and on a time limit.
Instead of turns, actions are taken back and forth one at a time between players. For an action, players may:
-draw a card
-gain 2 gold
-play a card
-dispatch a character or bring a character back to hq
-use a character ability
-score a point
-start a skirmish

It is Jack's action. He chooses to use his miner's ability and gain 4 gold. He had 2 from a previous action, so he now has 6 gold.
Jill draws a card or something
Jack then pays 2 to dispatch his dwarves to his agenda.
Jill farts
Jack can't score off of the agenda yet because he only has 2 power worth of the explosives trait at that agenda, from his dwarves, and the agenda requires 3 power of explosives and 1 of spy. So, he dispatches his silent arsonist for 3, placing that character at the agenda with his dwarves.
Jill poops
Jack can now use his action to score a point off of his agenda, and destroy some of Jill's stuff, assuming she has any. [EDIT: I thought for clarity I would explain why he could do this, even though I sorta touched on it earlier. You can only take a point from an agenda when you meet its "to score:" requirements. The requirements are listed in "X This, X That" format, with X being power and This or That being traits. You only count characters assigned to the agenda's power when checking to score]. He does this, and after Jill does something again, he scores the last point off his agenda. When this happens the agenda is discarded, and both of his characters there are returned to his hq. To dispatch them he'll need to pay their cost again, and there will need to be another agenda in play.

In a better example Jill would be playing cards that return characters to hq, kill characters, or maybe start skirmishes or score her own points with some bonuses as well. I'll work on some more examples tonight! 

[Wisp]

Intuitively, the only thing that seems wrong is that the method of scoring points doesn't rely on interacting with your opponent. It might end up too much like 2 combo decks playing against each other in M:tG...

[Cyrus]

This is true. In designing the quests themselves I want to make them painful enough for your opponent that they have to interact with you, and vica versa. Some characters and other cards could deter from shelling up as well. I don't necessarily mind having solitaire races be an obvious strategy, as long as it can be punished. Races like that cqn often lead to overextending, and a decent opponent could capitalize on that.

I've been making some test cards so I'll be able to do some testing soon, and I'll focus on if There's enough incentive to interact early on and try to design some cards to counteract that

[Cyrus]

Some more idea dumping, for the sake not forgetting

WARNING: I'll clean this post up eventually, this is definitely a late-night wall of text that no one should have to read through!!!!!!

I'm thinking of actually doing factions for this game, which I haven't done in a game in awhile, but only doing 3, so there is less variety of factions and more variety IN factions. If that makes sense.

(Red) One faction would focus on skirmish rewards, a type of character ability that awards combating your opponents. The inherent power in skirmish rewards is that you can trigger multiples of them at a time (if you have 3 characters with skirmish rewards at a quest at you win a skirmish there you would end up getting a big bonus). (Also: better term than skirmish reward? Honor? Victory? Something.)
Basically this faction would win by keeping their opponents off of their own quests, and score using high-point value quests that they can stack huge groups of dudes on.

(Tan) Another faction would be a more tricky, spy-driven team. Instead of focusing on winning skirmishes and using big groups of dudes to get big rewards, they have more slight-of-hand ways of gaining an advantage. Specializing in disabling character abilities, changing scoring conditions, and the most robust selection of tools to destroy cards in their opponent's kingdom (headquarters).
This is essentially the tempo faction, who tries to win with small advantages over time. I can see this being harder to design correctly with the one action at a time turn structure, but I think I have a few ideas. These guys will probably end up having the most "instant" cards of the factions.

(White) Lastly is the noble and proud quest scoring faction. Their focus is on chaining quests from one to another to efficiently score points with the least actions possible. These guys basically "play by the rules," and this mirror-match could end up fairly solitaire-feeling... will have to think on that.
This faction will act as the combo faction, with many quests allowing you to search for others, characters with a wider variety of skill sets, and cards that let you dispatch them in larger numbers.

I think there's a sort of natural rock-paper-scissors there, but one that I think would be good for deckbuilding. Most games have these sorts of interactions, and I think they add a lot to the meta-game possibilities for a game.

Red vs Tan: Red's typical strategy would be to stack guys at a quest with a lot of points on it and score whenever possible between using actions to send more dudes to opponent's quests, making it impossible to score there by constantly skirmishing and reaping the rewards (such as discarding opponent's characters). Tan makes this much more difficult with cards and abilities that send characters back to their kingdoms, and negate character's effects. Tan loves to make the opponent feel like they are one step behind where they need to be, and this is amplified against an opponent that needs time to get big squads together in order to be effective.

Red vs White: Unfortunately for White, Red's strategy works very well here. White's general tactics against Red is to try and score as quickly as possible, probably forgoing getting all of the points off of their quests, which is a huge part of how White tends to chain their actions together. Since White's characters generally lack the tricks or strength to match their Red counterparts in the same dispatch cost range, Red can focus on using a small band of characters to block White from scoring their essential quests. These matches will come down to if Red can effectively lock down White's combo quests while maintaining enough power on their own quests to score points. They'll also have to make cost/risk assessment when White plays new quests, if they can score it fast enough, is it even worth dispatching characters to?

White vs Tan: White has a lot more ways to do multiple things in one action, and although the things they get to do aren't typically threatening (multiple-character dispatch to their own quests, move characters between quests without re-dispatch, etc), they become harder to tie down for Tan. If Tan can't keep White from chaining their quests together they won't have time to dispatch their tricky spies before White scores and moves on.

Gotta clean this post up, but writing this sort of stuff out gets the design juices flowing, hopefully I can get some test decks made up soon

[Wisp]

That hurt my brain.

[Cyrus]

That hurt my brain.

The funny thing is how perfectly it makes sense to me

[Dan55]

A better term than skirmish reward:  spoils?

[Wisp]

Instead of turns, actions are taken back and forth one at a time between players. For an action, players may:

This is what I find most interesting right now. I had the idea of simultaneous turns, but this is a very elegant and natural evolution of it. I think any game you make should use this as its basis and be tuned around it, because it is unique and has a large impact of gameplay. The key resource in the game becomes time.

It does make the game harder to learn though...

[Cyrus]

@Wisp - The actions back-and-forth thing is probably a more innovative idea than the entire rest of the project, as simple as it is. I think it can fit this theme pretty well, and I'm definitely willing to bend the rest of the game and use the action system as the basis.
It does kind of change the initial difficulty because I think often new players will find themselves many steps "behind" their opponent and it may feel completely helpless once you've made a few wrong moves. I'm designing with this in mind though. I want to make the resources available from cards fairly scarce, so both players will have to take actions gaining gold regardless of anything else, giving their opponent some time to either do the same or gain an advantage elsewhere. I do, however, want to award a player's skill over anything else, so it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to have a little more steep learning curve.

@Dan55 - Spoils is perfect! Thanks for the suggestion!

[Wisp]

One simultaneous turns mechanic I developed was the 'Trap' mechanic as a way to make instants fair in this kind of turn format. One of your available action is to "set a trap" which lets you play a card face down for 1 gold. You can later activate it in response to something. This way you have to sacrifice time now (playing a card face down doesn't progress your game) for time later.

Anyway that was just a random idea. You're game is pretty tough for me to get to grips with.