spirits rising - status : now starting the playtesting

[Ripplez]

i had an old game idea i felt i should pay more attention to. its only an online tcg - you will never see this in real life. but i hope to make it an interesting game

it will use two decks and deck searching alot. luckily a quick look at lackey seems to show that its built for exactly this sort of system. so, wow, preemptive fix

the game has a supernatural theme. it uses horror elements but isnt a horror game as such, its not meant to be creepy. but it does involve ghosts, vampires and so on. the game has a major theme as a gameplay element - houses

you control a clan. warriors, librarians and zombies are a few of them. this clan is divided into an upper and lower house. the lower house is what constitutes the support lineup fro the clan. servants, spirits who are caretakers, old mentors, people who are bound to the clan and to uphold it. the upper house represents things that are far more involved in life in the real world. theyr the masters, the nobles, the warriors, the plotters. not that this wont exist in the lower house, only the upper house can actually do anything about it

this leads to there being two decks. a small 5-15 card lower house(LH) deck and a 30 ~ 40 card upper house(UH) deck (this isnt decided yet). there is a hand, a deck, a permanent graveyard and a temporary graveyard tat serves as a holder for dead and discarded beings until they are cycled back into the clan's assembly(their respective decks). the lower house cards consist of spirits bound to the clan and as such, must return to their netherworld. in the game, this is represented by each lower house card coming into play but one servant having to return at the end of the turn to the LH deck. the UH beings have no such problem, they are truly permanent and remain in play. the LH deck also has other temporary cards that cycle in and out of the game, never disappearing for good but also never staying for too long

costs are paid by tapping into the energy of the clan. in other words, each card already in play maybe be used to play other cards by exhausting (tapping) them. LH beings have alternate casting costs, this is to make up for the fact that they will have to be continuously replayed over the course of the game. there is also a limit on the number of LH beings that can be played in a turn, the lowest limiter printed on a card decides the max. no: summonable that turn. UH beings dont work this way, they must be paid for by the exhaust method. this MIGHT result in LH beings used as a source of mana(to use a m:tg example) as well as participating in a straight up fight. UH beings are the same as creatures in any other card game, its only the LH beings that have any special rules

the temp. death zone is where discarded cards, cards that have been sacrificed for a cost and dead LH beings go. direct attacks made on a player may remove one card from the temp death zone per attack of the attackers choosing. cards still in the temp death zone are put at the bottom of the deck at the end of the opponents turn.

the aim of the game is to reduce the opponents HP to 0. they start off with 20 to 30 HP : 35 - the size of their LH deck. this is to counter the fact they have alot more options with the fact they have to play smarter with them or run the risk of dying faster. a subdivision of ths loss is having a clear field with no more lh cards to play. only one clan can currently still play in this situation(its their speciality), this is a counter-balance to people hoping to have higher starting HP as an advantage - to get this your LH deck must be smaller and so, you run the risk of having no cards to use as lands to play your permanent UH Beings

the 'point' or 'allure' of the game, to mark it as separate from others, is to deal with a relatively open cost system that has inner checks and balances, taxing the players to deal with their opponents development and advantage at all points of the game, from the get-go. you may be able to play Zar'dun The One Eye to win the game next turn but how will you summon it? how will you keep your cards in play with your LH beings bouncing back? how will you handle your opponents combat where a successful hit can cripple your mana production should things turn bad? its meant to be a relatively open and IM-balanced game compared to m:tg and WoW but a completely BALANCED game within its own ruleset. i have been trying to work in playing cards from different clans, this is not a feature yet

there are currently six clans. i might add more; i doubt ill cut any. if there is any interest, ill put down the design notes for them. ill develop it anyway even if noone says anything :S its just nice to have some input

[aardvark]

Will a deck(?) be limited to one clan or will a player be able to construct an alliance deck? What about each of the clans? What are their powers/abilities/etc? I like the idea of a temporary graveyard. How is that gonna work?

And the fluff needs to come out too. Mechanics are important obviously but fluff is always welcome.

[Ripplez]

im planning to have multiple clans playable in a deck but this is ridiculously tricky to balance cos of how the clans work. so for now, assume theyr played separately

a temporary graveyard is like a placeholder. when a card is discarded or sacrificed or happens to be a LHBeing (for which this is automatic) they go to the temporary graveyard. at the end of the opponents turn, all the cards in your temp graveyard are put at the bottom of your deck. LH Cards are placed in the LH Deck, which is always open to you to use

a clan is a an association, a large collective fmaily, sharing one or more ideals. they strive for dominance because its through their influence that the magical powers and connections to the netherworld grow and intensify, calling upon the spirits and magic at their disposal. there are six clans - Warriors, Puppets, Darkness, Vampire Hunters, Librarians and Zombies. here they are -



Warriors

basic theme - warriors are beings that look over the world with a cruel casual eye and decide that they want to dominate all of it. theyr masters of warfare and strategic planning, assaulting their opponents directly and through combat

theme-to-gameplay translation - warriors excel at combat and dealing direct damage. they posses the burn spells to chip away at the opponents monsters and the clan themselves. but they also exercise a more complete form of combat control. they have mechanics at work like the ability to duel one solitary character. and the ability to fight at the end of the opponents turn. these things, coupled with the fact that direct damage to a clan removes a card from the temp graveyard, makes the warriors very deadly for they can kill and remove your LH Beings unless you plan your combat as well as your cards

balance : theyr a very strong concept but they have a few weaknesses. a direct weakness is that when they would normally return a LH Being to the LH Deck, they sacrifice it instead, having used so much of its power. this leaves a warrior thats focussed solely on attacking at a disadvantage. if they tap to attack, the opponents might break through their defenses and remove the LH Beings and put them in the permanent graveyard, from which there is no cycling back into the LH Deck. this would mean that more UH Beings would need to be used to play cards, so they need to play consistently solidly and have a good backup base of permanents to use to play cards. however, they are good at focussing and keeping pressure on the opponents because of their duelists abilities and their ability to threaten an attack at ANY time. with their offense comes a loss in defense

Puppets

basic theme : the puppets center around manipulation and control. they treat others as they have been treated, with abandon and apathy, callously using their minds and souls as they have been used, denying them their free will and denying them any chance of escape

theme-to-gameplay : they have cards that take control of opposing characters. they also work off of countering the opponents cards and maintaining a steady stream of control options to lock down opposing attacks and offensive options. they dont have alot of offensive capability in themselves. but when combined with their counters and control options, they can possess an enemy card and use it to actually inflict some pain. in some cases, they affect the players head directly, offering a choice which seems deadly, only to strike back with an even worse option

balance : this clan is abit slow at times but has the ability to stall and monitor the opponents options as well as deceive them, playing with their minds. puppets are an attempt to combine two things that under normal logic, just dont work. Control. and Luck. Puppets' control options are somewhat based on coin flips, dice rolls or even card guesses. but this isnt as big a weakness as one would think. no, puppets have a myriad of options, some triggered off of the FAILURE of others. meaning that while their manipulation isnt completely solid, it is always present, always flowing. one of the hardest to keep to the theme for this reason but as a result, their control has different holes that you can try and use to your advantage. they also have the ability to produce mass copies of themselves but puppets beings are very weak, leading to easy kills should they ever lapse and take a hit



Darkness

theme - The Darkness refers to the beings of pure magic and evil that surround the portal leading directly from the real world to the netherworld. feeding off of its energy, they scurry around it like parasits until they find a victim and strike, robbing it of the ability to see, think, feel, forcing them to die a cold black death in their own mind

theme-to-gameplay - the darkness are at once, very simple and very cunning. they have no clan house to speak off, being parasites so they have only LH Magic. but they have only UH Beings in the clan design. or so theyd have you think. every darkness being is a spell-on-legs, a come-into-play ability attachd to a body of reasonable strength and defense. as a result, playing one gives you a bigger bang for your buck, allowing you to simultaneously control the field and press a combat advantage ala green snake from m:tg

balance : the darkness is simple to understand but hard to execute. this is because darkness beings cannot be played by paying a mana value cost. they can only be put into play when a specific situation has occured. when your opponent has more cards than you, when they control only one monster and so on and so forth. what this means is that while the cards are powerful, they take some cunning to know when to properly summon one. because of their come-into-play effects, they are able to modify the zones and thus, the conditions for other darkness beings youd like to play. and since there is no mana value to look out for, they can be summon one after the other if chained in the right order, devastating your opponent with a decisive advantage. however, theyr not without weaknesses. the obvious one is that they must wait for the right conditions. the other? every come-into-play is a one-shot effect by its very nature. if this is tampered with, due to the opponents suddenly playing a card or suchlke, the summoning combo can be cut short. thus the darkness only fears an intelligent opponent willing to observe the darknesses combo and keep the cards to snap the weakest link



Vampire Hunters

theme : the closest thing to a 'good' clan the world has, theyr bounty hunters who happen to be vampires. however, they treat it only partly seriously; they do their job with enthusiasm but happen to think of it like a big game hunt, having clubs and talking about their trophies amongst each other. however, this doesnt detract from their determination and resourcefulness

theme-to-gameplay : vampire hunters employ the use of marks, special enchantments that come into play and attach to beings. when a hunter comes into play, they can put into play a mark from any zone specified on the vampire itself. these marks produce a variety of effects from discard a card to weakening the attached being. some of the vampires can rise from the dead, making sure you have a chance at having field presence

balance : marks are the meat of the vampire hunters arsenal, which are single-being attachments. what this means is that a vampire hunter deck uses control on beings but only one at a time. against a swarm deck, a hunter deck has a much harder time because they need to carefully juggle their marks and other effects to make sure they dont have a hard time after they destroy the monster the mark was attached to (thus getting rid of the mark as well). as a result, vampire hunters need to carefully monitor their own decks and zones, watching out for the cards they discard and use, always setting up and making available more marks in case of a sudden reversal pulled by their opponents. vampire hunters are meant to keep tabs on all the cards that come through, pulling out the perfect card for the perfect situation. however if they DO do so, then theyr rightfully rewarded with dominating the field as well as affecting other zones in the game



Zombies

going for zombies before librarians -

theme - zombies are..... zombies. they shambling unearthly abominations that are a shell of their former selves. they keep a few memories of the people they once were. but now, they have lost all control and hope, leaving destruction and chaos in their wake

theme-to-gameplay - zombies are a very simple clan. they have a keyword called recur - this basiclly makes them return to your hand from the temp graveyard, rather than being added to the field. this simple effect makes zombies vastly more powerful. they are able to sacrifice and discard themselves for powers that would make other clans cringe, all safe in the knowledge that theyll be re-added to your hand, ready to be played once again and maybe re-sacrificed. they are adept at negating the opponents beings effects, turning this into a contest of pure power. one at which zombies arent entirely bad at

balance - zombies use their massive hand advantage to impose a constant stream of pressure. however the low defense of some of their forces means that they will have to make a decision between pure power and sacrificing their low hp zombies. this cuts down on the offensive capabilities of the zombies, along with the fact that a zombie horde that needs to keep replaying itself every turn drains alot of your mana production and makes it that much harder to play any new cards to attack with. this doesnt belittle their power, they can play a mean offensive stall game and they can forgo all of their defense once theyve amassed a big enough army. however theyr main advantage isnt as overpowering as it might appear to be



Librarians

theme - this clan is composed of scholars, tapping into the mysteries and dark secrets of the world as well as the nether, researching lost myths, crafting new spells and dealing with the dark knowledge of the forsaken gods that lie beyond this realm

theme-to-gameplay - the librarians are masters at card advantage. drawing, searching, recycling, they excel at all of them. their ability to cast metamagic on their spells also provides strong support as does their variety of curses, limiting the opponets options and sometimes locking them down altogether. however their biggest strength is their connection to the dark lords, summoning them or their agents to fight alongside them and crush the opposition

balance - the librarians have very weak beings and little in the way of damaging the opponents or their beings. instead they rely on quickly amassing cards in their hand and playing combinations of cards, where each card backs each other up, leading to a pressing advantage, be it a simple lockdown to destruction of beings. this means that there are periods of a lack of defense, making the start of a librarian clan deck a real challenge. however their offense starts to build once they collect and amass more cards until they play their bomb cards. the permanents they possess also double as mana production (since thats how the mana value cost system works) making them constantly need to monitor their defense so that they will keep enough permanents to actualy pay their bombs cards. making the librarians very quick to die if played badly with no thought to what the opponent is doing, putting a twist on the stereotypical combo deck-type in general



thats the lineup so far. its been really REALLY hard to build cards to do these themes justice but iv been sticking to it, taking it slow but making sure that the themes and balance comes out. any input on the theme, problems you might find with the clan balance and so on would be appreciated. im also busying my thoughts on this game with figuring out how the different matchups would work - zombies vs librarians, puppets vs warriors and so on. any input, thoughts, comments, applause and criticism would be appreciated i know its alot of text, sorry about that. ill most likely never have to post so much again though

[aardvark]

Everything looks real good. I'd probably want to test out the vampyres and the librarians first. (btw, sheer awesomeness that they're called librarians, imHOLYo )

The puppets seem like they could be pretty nasty if played right. The zombies will probably be the only ones I win with until I know what I'm doing and the darkness, well that's just some crazy <insert expletive> that I don't wanna mess with.

On the other hand, I must admit that the warriors don't seem like much. Keyword is seem, however. It's probably just my mind associating them with big dumb meatshield types, all brawn no brains. I'd probably have to see you get all devious with them before it clicks.

Keep it coming Ripz, this is good stuff. Or are you just showing a lil' leg to tease? For shame. 

[Ripplez]

now that the test set for nakama is made and im just waiting for playtesters, iv gone back to finishing the playtest set for this game

i probably need some help making cards for the playtest set though. making cards is definitely NOT my strong suit. if anyones interested in sharing my notes, send me a pm, id like to chat in the ajax chatroom about it

iv done three clans so far. im starting on vampire hunters now and have zombies and librarians left. personaly, i cant wait to do the librarian clan, theyr the most awesome to make the cards for since their whole clan is based on the fact that their cards are broken as heck

[aardvark]

I've already stated that I wanna pt this thing. If I hafta remind you. Well, for shame.

And regarding the card making, if you trust me not to steal the rules I'll go ahead and help out.

[Ripplez]

who would be interested in playing the game once i finished? so that i know who i should try and contact

the test set is over. i just have to lackeyise it (someone to instruct in person the steps woud be appreciated)

there is no card art. just the image of the cards themselves to use to playtest the mechanics and see if they work. i thought ill put the card art after i see how the game flows and fix it and so on - towards the end of the stuf

idk how to put images in my post sorry

[picks-at-flies]

The guide is mostly accurate.  There's really only 4 files that matter:

setinfo.txt :: This is your card database, in a tab-deliminated file.  Only the first 3 columns are critical (see the guide), so it should look like:
Name<tab>Set<tab>Image<tab>Other headings ......
Most spreadsheets allow you to export in the right format.
Note that the image name doesn't include the .jpg extension.

setlist.txt :: This isn't important until you have multiple formats.  For now, just leave it as:
1
setinfo.txt

updatelist.txt :: You actually make this file last since it contains a link to every necessary file except card images.  It basically this looks like:

Code Select Expand


Rage<tab>date*
plugins/rage/plugininfo.txt http://www.werepenguin.com/rage/lackey/plugininfo.txt 178575
[target location]<tab>[source location]<tab>[checksum]
...
CardGeneralURLs:
[image location]

* yy-mm-dd
target location:  where it's stored on your hard disk in relation to the lackeyccg directory.  So for most it's plugins/pluginname/filename.txt;  see the Rage plugin, for instance, for examples since it's fairly simple and contains different files.

source location:  wherever you've put the files online

image location:  put all your images in one folder on the web.  Lackey will automatically download them into a subfolder matching the Set in the database (which is why Set names cannot have spaces).

Finally, plugininfo.txt which defines the custom fields available in the game.  Note that plugininfo format has changed since the guide.  Again, copy from another game.
Globalstat:  If you have stats independent of players (e.g. Babylon 5 Influence in B5);  not all games have these.
Playerstat:  Stats that each player has (e.g. life in magic)
Superzone:  Piles/decks that players start with (e.g. deck and sideboard in magic)
Zone:  Any pile that gets used in the game which isn't a superzone.  Includes discard piles and hands. NOTE zone1 is always superzone0 and zone0 the default hand.
(the two columns of 1s and 0s here refer to visible to owner/others).
Phase:  Define these as convenient
Generalfunction:  These are the only complicated part.  There are definitions on the guide, otherwise see if there's a similar function you can copy.  The first 1/0 here refers to whether it appears on the quick function buttons.
Cardfunction:  these are pretty standard.  1/0 same as above.
Column:  these should exactly match the columns in your database.
cardback: the image file for your cardback (again, with .jpg removed).

Hope that helps.

[Ripplez]

plugin is made!!! whoo whoo whoo whoo

so if anyoen wants to help playtest/learn the rules from me, pm me, say in shoutbox or if im on lackey, enter my game and ask (mightnt be in spirits rising plugin, if im playing magic or something, youll have to message me and hope i see it or enter the game and ask me quickly)

i havent written up the rules, mostly cos the basic outline is already in the first few posts, i just ddnt write the formal version. besides, itd be more fun learning it form someone else huh :O

ill have to make some basic decks tho so that you can pick up and learn to play. ill get on that just as soon as i uncork this bottle of champagne

[aardvark]

berry gut Rippah-san! Ju haf dun well.

<_<

>_>

Mwahahahaha!!!

You made the plugin? Way to go!
Can't wait to see it.
Congrat Ripz.

[Ripplez]

since you volunteered early, i already sent a copy to you. ill send it again

[Sahaen]

Extremely interested! Puppets ftw! I'll love to help just that I might not be able to always/give alot of response cause i'm a student and my schedules keep shifting.

[magekirbys]

I'd like to try this if thats ok with you.