Realm: A Game of Influence by Enkoder Games

[Wisp]

shit just got real

[Cyrus]

shit just got real

I think you mean that in a good way... can that phrase be meant in a bad way?
Played a solitaire game in a lackey plugin I made up real quick, rules seem to work decently. My only worry is that food is too precious a resource while materials are plentiful. This may be remedied by making items more powerful, or adding battle effects to them as well (they would use the same die as the bearer, adding another level to assigning combat dice). In a way items already make a lot more sense than they do in most games, since you only have 5 die to assign, its nice to have a way to add to your combat total without needing to assign any dice.

Anyway, that's what early playtesting lead me to. I've got a couple of people here in my town interested in helping me playtest at our weekly game night, so developments should be quick in terms of my lackey based projects haha

[Dragoon]

In every game I play I have a shortage of food at all times. ALWAYS. Maybe you should add a market card, which you can use to buy/sell stuff.

name stuff:
- Heritage of Kings
- Lords of War
- Rebellion

If you have more background lore, I might be able to think up more names

[Wisp]

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=85&esem=4 this game looks epic. steal from it.

edit: the stole a lot of my ideas when are you around to test your game out?

[Cyrus]

After playing a couple games I've found that the food thing hasn't been too big a deal, and it adds a natural element of balance. For the most part, people will only be playing one hero a turn because they are only generating one food. Even with extra food production, however, you are only able to bring 2 smaller heroes into play in the same turn because of the general cost of heroes. Regardless, a resource trading card is definitely something that will happen eventually, if not in the base set.

One thing that did change after the first game was the way that Workers...uh...work. The way it was in the rules, a lone worker could sit on a location and 1) influence at the location each turn and 2) only be attacked to drain 1 influence (as long as they have a Hero on each of their other locations, at least), which you had to pay to start the attack anyway. So, I added a "+1 Influence if all opponent's Heroes at the battleground are Workers" to the influenced-gained-from-battles chart. So, now attacking a lone worker can drain 2 influence even if the rest of the opponent's territory is controlled, netting you 1 influence overall. This also adds an element of strategy to protecting your Workers that should have been there from the beginning.
The strategy that I was using with one deck that abused the old way the rules worked was to play 1 location (so I have 4 in my territory) and then stack 2 of them with my warriors, and 2 with workers. So they (or me operating another deck) couldn't gain influence through attacking my pile of warriors, and could only break even by attacking the worker locations. The new rule balances this strategy. It is still playable, but your warriors are going to have to work even harder to break even.

While playtesting I did notice one pretty important thing. Even while playing against myself in lackey (which I'm fairly bad at using in general) I was having a good time playing! The combat dice system definitely makes you think before attacking someone, as you have to judge their general ability to get high combat totals instead of having the number right there for you. I'm designing the first set to be a 160 card, 4-player starter box, so the cards are all fairly simple, but when playing the game you can really tell that there is a lot of design space, and that one day decks could be much more brutal to play with or against. Pretty exciting stuff for a game designer :S

Just printed out some b&w proxies to sleeve up and I'm supposed to meet a friend tomorrow for some playtesting, so here's hoping all goes well when teaching my first pupil!

[Wisp]

Where do i get my plugin from?

[Dragoon]

Is there a beta plugin already, or is it only for you personally?

[Cyrus]

So far its just for me, I was waiting to do some first round playtesting irl to fix the plug-in up and share it. Unfortunately, this morning the power cable to my laptop was severed in half, rendering my laptop useless until I can replace the cord, which may be awhile, depending on how much they are.

On the brighter side of things I did get to do some playtesting today with a friend. The rules seem to work well for 2-player, but we can already really tell that they'll shine in multiplayer. Can't wait to have a couple more decks ready to play. Gonna be writing down ideas on napkins like the good ol' days til I can get that cable replaced!

[Wisp]

Woop. I'm excited PS. ignore my PM i've changed a lot since I playtested yesterday.

[Cyrus]

A new laptop cable has been purchased!
Updates should be plentiful again

[Wisp]

=D can't wait

[Cyrus]

Hey buuuuuddies....wanna help?

I think a 'key' thing my game is missing is some more keywords (see what I did there?)
Right now I only have four, and three of them (unique, loyalty, and diplomatic immunity) are more like game rules than actual keyword mechanics. So, if you've read the rules, do you happen to have any suggestions for keywords?

Here's what I've got so far:

Loyalty: X – “You can only play this card if you have a card that is a X in play”
The X can be any type of card, such as Human, Warrior, Item, etc. If a card has Loyalty: Elf it means you can only play the card if you have an Elf in play.

Overwhelm – “Drain 1 Influence from the defending player for every 2 points of Combat Total this battalion has greater the defending battalion.”
Cards with Overwhelm can help you take advantage of having significantly higher combat totals than your opponents by awarding you a drain of 1 Influence for every 2 points of Combat Total you have exceeding the defending player’s Combat Total. Overwhelm is an ability granted to a battalion when a hero in the battalion has the Overwhelm keyword in their game text.

Unique – “You may only have 1 copy of this card in play. This card is excluded from battles at battlegrounds where an opponent has the same card.”
Each player may only have 1 copy of each unique card in play at any given time. You cannot play a unique card if you already have the unique card in play. Also, unique cards are excluded from battles in which both players have the same unique card at the battleground.

Diplomatic Immunity – “If all heroes at same location have Diplomatic Immunity, the location is a Demilitarized Zone.”
Having only heroes with Diplomatic Immunity at a location turns that location into a Demilitarized Zone (it is still a location).

Overwhelm is really the only one that feels like a keyword ability to me. I want each of the four starter decks to be centered around a race, that is in turn centered around a playstyle, which is then in turn centered around one or two keyword mechanics. A lot of the 'feel' of a deck is made up of their hero's combat/political effects, but I'd like a couple more things like Overwhelm to really show player's what the deck is trying to do.
For example, Overwhelm is mostly featured on cards in the Orc starter deck, and most of the orc heroes have fairly plain combat effects, mostly adding high amounts to your combat total. A player that has played a game or two should easily be able to figure out that the key to winning with that deck is to stack a high combat total rolling crew and somehow give the battalion Overwhelm (there's an item and a react in the orc deck that already do this, but I was thinking of adding the ability to one of the higher costed orcs as well).

The orc deck seems fairly fleshed out and I can really start thinking of new cards to add to it in the future just by having these base mechanics for the deck. So, here's the decks I'm working on, as well as whatever brainstorming I have had up til now. Any input is greatly appreciated.

Elf Deck - The most balanced of the races. The elves have fairly good offensive and defensive combat effects and other abilities, as well as decent political effects to spice things up. One mechanic idea that comes to mind would be to somehow increase the importance of having a full-fledged 'community' in the elf deck "with all things living in harmony" (as an elf might say). So perhaps a keyword that awards influence drain bonuses based on the amount of hero classes (warrior, diplomat, worker, etc) at the location. This would make future sets always be exciting to elf players, because if there's ever a new class printed for the elves, their old cards would become stronger in general.

Human Deck - The human deck is going to focus on defense, politics, and "bombs," and thus play as a control deck. For this I really just need more ideas on how political effects can affect the game. An obvious one is adding to combat total at other locations, but during the political step, so everyone will know about it before they attack you. Most of the heroes will be guard-like, and have exclusion effects to stop early enemy onslaught. Loyalty is already a keyword associated with the human deck (mostly), as they are a proud race. I want to keep the control oriented cards feeling more separated from the rest of the pack, because look what happens when you make blue so easy to splash (mtg reference...)

Undead Deck - The swarm deck, the undead will rely on sheer numbers to win the game. They also have help from evil necromancers who have the power of black magic, giving this deck the most power in terms of select elimination. Basically you'll play the deck by training up a ton of simple, combat total adding skeletons, and clear the path for them with necromancers. Just off the top of my head, it seems like a good balancing keyword that could also be used on lots of cards in the future (or now even) would read "Fragile: At the end of a battle you lost, dismiss one hero at the battleground with Fragile." That's probably a horrible name for the keyword though, any ideas?

So that's my big wall-of-text update/brainstorm session. Even if I don't get any outside input I think it helped just writing it all out. But as always any input is appreciated. Thanks!

EDIT: I also still want to rename this, and probably call it an Expanding Card Game instead of Living, since that's sorta Fantasy Flight's deal

[Dragoon]

Overwhelm and Dimplomatic Immumity are the only ones that could be keywordized (With reminder and stuff) While the others feel more like traits/normal text.

As for the elf keyword, I would make it an pseudo keyword. I.E. One with All - Draw a card for each class among characters you control.

Fragile... Is a horrible name. Let me think about a different one. 'Shambling Remains'? Rotting? Decaying Bones?

[Cyrus]

Yeah fragile hurt to use even as an example. The word has to apply to non-undead cards as well for future use... Expendable is a way better placeholder term.

[Dragoon]

Expendable is indeed a better term. While I would go for 'cannon fodder' in design term and expendable in the game.