Realm: A Game of Influence by Enkoder Games

[Dragoon]

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTS of dice. Damn, the nightmares about Warlord ccg returned . Sorry, but I don't like this.

[cap.tiny]

yaaaaaaaa...... no ... lots of dice for table top rpg yes but not for a card game

[Dragoon]

Well, if you like dice that much, you can also turn it into a dice based card game

[Cyrus]

I think I'm pretty much scraping this idea for the time anyhow, until I can come up with a combat system that isn't as cut and dry and just comparing some numbers. I've got a deck building game's rules almost full flushed out, I just need to design the cards for it, which shouldn't take all that long. Hopefully I'll have a flash of insight about this game and be able to finish it up sometime

[Wisp]

there was this ccg where combat was handled by playing a hand of poker...

[Cyrus]

there was this ccg where combat was handled by playing a hand of poker...

I'd rather have a dice mini-game than a whole other mini-game to explain, personally. I'm thinkin of a system where the unit cards have no actual combat stat, but all that is taken care of in gametext in the form of Battle Effects. So battles would just be players taking turns playing their unit's battle effects. Thinking thinking thinking...

[Wisp]

interesting... ever plated the pokemon tcg?

[Dragoon]

Hmm, an interesting idea.

You could use some kind of limited dice idea. I didn't had a lot against the dice, but it were just a sick amount. If you, for example, limit the amount of dice to five for each player. And each player in combat throws the dice, then, that player may choose some dice to reroll once. Last result counts. In this way, you could also add an effect icon to the dice, which players can assign to units with that effect. (archers, mages, etc.) You could only assign an effect dice to one unit.

Well, just some idea draft.

[Cyrus]

Working within that idea:

Combat could always be 5 dice per player, no matter how many units are in the battle. Units can have more than 1 die assigned to them, so it would be possible to attack with just one guy, and assign all 5 die to him, gaining each of the matching battle effects (the balance to this would be in the cards, not every unit would have a battle effect for each number). Some units could even require higher numbers than 6 for an effect, meaning they'll need at least 2 dice in order to use that effect. Also, Leader type units would allow you to reroll one die for each point of Leadership they have.

The layout of your attack and defense squads would be very important, you would want every number to be represented, but also with the right mix of effects to win battles.

As far as having icons on the dice, for now I'm going to pass on that idea, even though it is a good one for some applications. I'd rather it just be number based, if not only because it'll make the game much easier to implement into both lackey and real world product (which I do plan to make).

If this were the battle system, would you (anyone) propose using dice outside of battle as well? In one hand it seems like using dice only for battles makes it sort of throw in seeming, but on the other hand using dice in too many aspects of the game will make it too random.

Maybe political cards will work similarly. At the beginning of your Political Step, if you have any units with Political effects, you can roll 3 dice, and the same as combat, assign them to your units to trigger effects. I'd say 3 dice for this because most decks will not have many political effects anyway, and decks intending to abuse them will probably be fairly hard to counter anyway, so this rule inherently promotes attacking over politics.

I could also rework this entire thing to use a Destiny-type system like the one used in Star Wars by Decipher. Instead of die rolls you'd reveal the top card of your deck and take note of some number on the card and use that as the roll amount, basically. In this sort of system you can easily balance cards by giving them higher or lower values for this purpose. So cards that are "worse" than other cards are the only ones with 6s essentially. This encourages a much deeper level of deck-building, as you'd have to make sure you have some crappier cards to trigger the better effects on your good cards. Also clears up the need for dice at all. Hmmm stealing mechanics from dead games... already sort of stealing their Force Drain idea for the entire Influence mechanic, why stop there!?

I gotta say this has got me wanting to work on this more again, so, many thanks Dragoon!

[Typherion]

Just a short comment about dice,

I've played a game called Dungeon Dice Monsters that used special dice. The dice had symbols called crests that were used for movement, attack, defence, and special abilities.

The problem was you couldn't do what you wanted without rolling the right crest. Sure it added tension to the game, but not the good kind.

I think dice can be used effectively, but it's not fun if they just hold you back. Good luck!

[cap.tiny]

well if the game is just played for giggles and not serious tournament type play then it is fine.... can wait to see the finished project

[Dragoon]

You could print the dice on cards, like they did with the warhammer 40k ccg. (Dunno for different versions )

But I agree, having special stuff on cards allows for fun decks

[Cyrus]

For now, the rules have been updated and the combat system uses dice. I just can't get over my love of rolling bones. Hopefully this game will appeal to the few die-rolling card-floppers left out there.

For combat, like I mentioned before, each player rolls 5 combat dice, and then assigns them to their heroes (new term for unit, seemed more appropriate for this game). Most heroes can only be assigned one die, while others will allow you to assign them or others in their battalion extra dice, as well as manipulate the rolls or reroll some dice.

I designed two decks around the idea of the game only having Heroes, Items, and Locations, and while I think the play will already involve a lot of strategy because of hero placement and die assignment, I think there's still room for a few quick-play, action-type effects to be added in there. Will have to make room and see what the decks need in the form of actions to stay competitive with each other.

Starting to get really excited about this game. Time to start photoshopping together the cards so I can get some playtest decks ready (not to mention a lackey plugin, whoo)!

Updated the first post and the title, the game has a work-in-progress name now!

[Dragoon]

For some reason, I really hate the name.

Only 5 dice really helps combat.

[Cyrus]

Tell me how you really feel
...to tell the truth I kinda hate it too haha.
Any suggestions?

I'm glad you think that'll improve combat, I do as well. Sooooon I will have proxies to playtest with!