Heroes of the Fallen

[Drackthar]

(I'm new to the forum and thought I'd start with a post about my own game)
(Sorry about the wall of text... I get into it when I talk about my game.)
(All art, card design, etc. is very basic and not in any way final. I am no artist.)

Heroes of the Fallen is my CCG that I have been working on alone for the past year or so. Basically I was inspired by MMOs and RPGs to create a card game in which you could create a hero and fight with it. There are Raids (Encounters), dungeons, and Hero vs. Hero combat but I focus most of my efforts on the raids.

The game takes place in a fantasy world of my own creation called Archislan (I might rename it). This world has seemingly been abandoned by its Gods after there was a great war thousands of years ago. While the Elves retreated to their woodland homes the Humans thrived and created the Pyrian Empire. The Empire's prime years have long passed, however, and it is beginning to crumble due to corruption and greed running rampant. As the world begins to plunge into darkness the Gods begin to realize the horrible acts committed in their absence and although they have returned to the world their creations abandoned them long ago. The only way the Gods can regain the faith of their creations is to send heroes, whom they call Harbingers, to do their bidding. At first only a few Harbingers are created; one for each of the 7 Gods. However, some of the Gods begin to feel they deserve more power on Archislan and create more Harbingers. Vying for supremacy, the Gods pit their Heroes against one another.

This is where the game picks up; Heroes are fighting in the name of Gods they often don't believe in. These Heroes are the Heroes of Gods that have fallen from grace...

Races

There are 10 races to choose from (later ones would be added and possibly taken out as the game progresses through the world's story):
- Dark Elf
- Elf
- Highbourne (Halflings)
- Shadowcaste (Halflings)
- Dwarf
- Human
- Undead
- Troll
- Orc
- Goblin

Classes

There are 2 main classes which then branch off into 4 specialty classes (I also have plans to add 2 more main classes, Shaman/Priest, with 4 new specialties each):
Warrior
-Assassin
-Berserker
-Defender
-Monk

Mage
-Air Mage
-Earth Mage
-Fire Mage
-Water Mage

Traits

There are also a multitude of traits to choose from and many more would be added as the game progresses. (I won't list them yet but there are about 23 with more on the way.)

Card Design

                Hero Card                                           Ability                                          Equipment
          
The top left is the class icon. This is mostly used for deck construction, which I will get into later.
top middle is the card name.
Top right is the Memorization cost (then the cast cost under it, if applicable) for Abilites, the Equip cost for Equipment, and the Main class icon for Heroes.
In the middle there is the type of the card.
Under the type is (from left to right) attack, defense, resistance. These are the stats that the Heroes have. Here is a short description of these stats:
- Attack is the amount of damage you do when your Hero attacks directly.
- Whenever your Hero takes physical damage (from a direct attack or from abilities) the amount of damage take is reduced by your defense.
- Resistance reduces the amount of damage you take from magical attacks (mostly Mage abilities).
It is possible for a Hero to have a negative value in any of these three stats. Negative attack means you deal no damage until you add to your attack to make it positive. Negative defense or resistance, however, means you take extra damage from the corresponding damage type.
Under the stats is the card text. This is where all the rules text of the card will be.
At the bottom left is the Life of the card. This is used mostly for Heroes but there are also minions you can summon to the Field that have Life.
The bottom right is reserved solely for Heroes; it is the amount of energy you start the game with.
Between those two numbers is also only for Heroes; it is the Abilty your Hero starts with.
- (I decided to do these two mechanics because when you start an RPG (or game like it) you never start the game with zero mana and no abilities)

Deck construction

Heroes of the Fallen has two separate decks:

- Ability deck -
(minimum 50 cards)
This deck is where all your Ability cards and Energy cards go. It is the deck you draw from each turn.
You may only have a maximum of 3 of any one card. That is unless it has the Master/Mastery type, in which case you may only have a maximum of 2.

- Equipment deck -
(minimum 30 cards)
This is the deck where all your Equipment is. You may only draw from this deck at certain times throughout the game.
There are three types of Equipment: Common, Rare, and Legendary.
You may have a maximum of 2 common Equipment with the same name and only 1 of any Rare equipment. There may only be one legendary Equipment in the entire deck but these are difficult to obtain. (I have tournament plans and stuff for this game that I wont get into here)

To create the deck you must match the icon in the upper left of the cards with either of the icons at the top of your Hero card (i.e. - A fire mage cannot have Air mage abilities in his deck). If a card has no icons it can be in any deck.
Other than that there are several companion cards to choose from. They are simply cards that have abilities to enhance your playstyle. These cards do not go in your deck. Think of them as a mini Hero.

Gameplay

The game starts by putting out your Hero, your companion, your starting energy, and your starting ability. The last two cards must be part of your deck. In other words, they count towards the number of cards in your deck and are not separate. (In Lackey I have it so it is a third deck type called "starting")
There are several zones of the game:
The Field is where all your energy cards are played. It is also where tokens and minions do all the fighting.
The Hero Zone is where your Hero and companion are as well as all your Equipped cards. Equipped cards (such as armor and weapons) can be depleted (tapped, bowed, etc.). If that happens the equipped card stops giving any benefits it has until it is replenished (untapped, unbowed, etc.).
The Spellbook is where you have your memorized spells. Each player starts the game with 4 Ability slots in their spellbook, but this number can be increased with certain cards.

Now that the game is all set up it's time to begin. The game starts by all players agreeing on a way to decide which player goes first. After that is decided each player draws the appropriate amount of cards:
Warriors draw 4 Abilities and 2 Equipment
Mages draw 5 Abilities and 1 Equipment
If you don't like your hand you may Mulligan. Mulligans work by discarding your abilities and drawing one less than you had previously (you keep the equipment).
Then the first player takes his turn. The turn order is as follows:

-Replenish step (Skipped on the first turn of the game)
   -Replenish all energy, enchantments, and skills but not Equipment.
   -Draw a card from the ability deck
-Prepare step
   -Memorize Abilities
   -Play Energy (only one per turn)
   -Use skills and abilities
-Battle step (Each player skips the first Battle step)
   -Attack with your hero and/or minions. Minions can only attack heroes if there are no opposing minions, however, heroes can attack any target.
      -Announce attackers
       -Cast spells/actions
      -Deal Damage
      -Use abilities
-Rally Step
   -Summon/Call minions
   -Use Abilities
-End step
   -Discard down to maximum hand size ( 8 ) (The composition of the cards does not matter ie - 8 equipment or 4 equipment and 4 abilities)

That's pretty much it... If you want I have the LackeyCCG plugin file on my computer. It has all the cards for the first set in it (as well as a few Hero cards I was messing with)
While teaching myself C++ I made a Hero creator too. It is only a simple .exe but I can give that out too.

I want to know what people other than friends think of the whole idea of the game first before I go too much into detail... (Although I did go into a lot of detail already in this post...)
Post here with your thoughts and suggestions.
Thanks a bunch!
-Drackthar

[nickyinprogress]

I'm not much of a CCG player, so I can't really say that I know what I'm saying. Just take this as a layman's opinion.

First thing that stuck me was the number of cards needed to play this game. 50 for the equipment deck sounds too much, unless of course a majority of that high number WILL be used (Though this strikes me as a really really long game to play).

Second thing was the equipment rarity. I assume rare equipment will be better than everything else, perhaps enough to turn the tides of play. With only a 2% (1 out of 50) chance of getting it at all, that may leave too much to luck.

Third, a question. Do you get pre-made (from the game) decks for each race (and you can only pick one to play), or do you build your own but only allowed one or two races in the same deck, or a free-for-all?

Fourth thing was, what kinds of strategic decisions you make. MTG has you knowing what to put down at what time, their targets and the lands you must have for mana, for example. Here, the ability memorization is interesting, especially if discarding an ability will have + and - consequences. The rest however, feels just like simple combat, a battle of "who has the better stats".

Hope it helps

[Drackthar]

First of all thanks for the feedback =D
Now on to the meat of it...

First thing that stuck me was the number of cards needed to play this game. 50 for the equipment deck sounds too much, unless of course a majority of that high number WILL be used (Though this strikes me as a really really long game to play).

Second thing was the equipment rarity. I assume rare equipment will be better than everything else, perhaps enough to turn the tides of play. With only a 2% (1 out of 50) chance of getting it at all, that may leave too much to luck.

I think you misread... Equipment decks are 30 cards. Ability decks are 50 (for a total of 80 cards needed to play). The Equipment deck is for certain playstyles to be honest. A mage that uses spells to defeat his enemies wont be using much equipment (at least not the way equipment works right now). But a Warrior on the other hand is generally a Hero that likes to charge head on into combat and will likely be wearing more weapons and armor. Warriors also have more equipment drawing capability while Mages have more Ability drawing.

Third, a question. Do you get pre-made (from the game) decks for each race (and you can only pick one to play), or do you build your own but only allowed one or two races in the same deck, or a free-for-all?

The races are for Hero creation only. There are certain minion cards that can only be used by certain races (there is a "Greenskin" keyword which states that only trolls, orcs, and goblins can use those cards and other such mechanics).
As for deck construction I have around 300 cards for you to choose from to put into your own custom decks or, for beginner players, there would be a starter deck for each class.

Fourth thing was, what kinds of strategic decisions you make. MTG has you knowing what to put down at what time, their targets and the lands you must have for mana, for example. Here, the ability memorization is interesting, especially if discarding an ability will have + and - consequences. The rest however, feels just like simple combat, a battle of "who has the better stats".

Well this kind of depends on your playstyle; for the most part Mages don't even care about stats. Mages rely on drawing their powerful spells and using their memorized abilities and coordinating them with their effects. I like to think that the abilities being visible to everyone adds strategy rather than removing it.

That being said I probably should have clarified in the main post:
There are 2 types of abilities; memorized abilities and effects. The memorized abilities are in your spellbook and visible to every player. The effects are played from your hand at strategic moments.
For instance if there is a warrior attacking you with his Big Sword of Killing that gives him +10 attack (not an actual card) there are effects to deal with that equipment to buy you at least another turn.

All this being said the focus on the game is not on Hero versus Hero combat. Or at least I prefer it wasn't. The focus is more on the Raid mechanic in which 3-5 players fight one powerful player (think of archenemy in MTG). I just didn't go into much detail in this first post is all. I just want to gauge peoples reactions to the basic mechanics first

Hope it helps

It does... thank you very much! =D
Any feedback at all makes me think of my game in a light that I never have before.

[nickyinprogress]

I said the memorizing system is most interesting, you should exploit that. Strategic decisions makes a game interesting, and having pros and cons to learning and unlearning skills MUST be one of the key elements.

Equipment
Okay, then the amount of abilities are a bit much. 50 is not a small number, considering it's only one of two decks, unless you plan on making a game that's very long to play. That depends on you, and testing should show you what's the optimal amount of cards. You may only need 30 cards to win.

As for 30 equipment, that still means rare equipment has a 3.3% chance of appearing. The problem isn't the amount of cards, just that rare cards are left to chance. Most games allow players to use better equipment by making it cost more, or only come out at certain times of the game (e.g. after you level up).

Also, mentioning mages that don't really need equipment. That makes mage-based decks be forced to use a needless amount of equipment. I don't know if that's a problem yet though, just bringing it up.

A game called Super Dungeon Explore lets you get loot after certain points in combat. Maybe look it up for inspiration.

Raids, not battles
if you hadn't mentioned it, I wouldn't notice. Yes, I did think it was a hero vs. hero thing, where you pick one hero and just attack with him.

If you really want a raid theme, break it down and you'll get a game out of it.

Raids involve a group, not just a single man (most of the time anyway)
Raids get loot, even taking it from the opponent
Raids may involve sneaking

You could make a whole system from just this. Here's a random idea, instead of just using equipment you have, you steal your opponents equipment as well. That way, you could fill your equipment deck with rare cards, but it could be stolen. Abilities though, are exclusive to you (since you can't steal skills now can you?)

Hero creation & limited range of minion types
Good, I like this idea
That way, a berserker type Orc hero for example, can be supported by even more berserker Orcs, or be slightly defensive with the help of trolls, or even sneaky with goblins. Adds to the archetypes.

Buying another turn against the Big Sword of Killing
Buying another turn needs to have a cost/risk to it, or else there's no strategy in it. It becomes "Just keep a block handy and we'll be invincible". For example, you could block the sword using a memorized skill, but something should be there to prevent you spamming that skill (or other skills with the same effect). Perhaps implement what video games have, a cooldown system.

Conclusion
I love the memorization system, make sure there's strategy in choosing what skills to keep and what to forget
If you want a raid theme, stick to it. I especially like the equipment stealing aspect.
Good luck

[Drackthar]

Well the way the raid system works is there is a card called "Loot" (and one called "epic loot") that lets you draw an equipment when you kill an Enemy minion (epic loot allows you to search your equipment deck for a rare for a much higher energy price). The actual raid decks (the boss' deck) actually have no equipment other than the equipment they start with. The loot system allows the players to actually obtain the equipment they need while still allowing them to save energy to deal damage.

I see your issue now with the rare equipment... I currently have ways to search for common equipment but there is no way to search for rare equipment. Legendary cards aren't a problem because the way it works is you can start with one if you have one (once you beat the raid boss that has the legendary card you get that card. It's the only way to get it). The Legendary Equipment is just the way I implemented a progression.

As for the strategy I was exaggerating so you could get the basics of it but there are ones with strategy (pros and cons) but the ones without costs significantly more. There's one where you have to deal damage directly first, there are ones that you have to deplete one of your equipment to deplete one of theirs, etc. It was just a basic example. There are also counterspell mechanics available to all classes. Although some classes are better equipped for dealing with mages and have better counterspells. It really all depends on the players preference.

I'll start to think of ways to take more advantage of the memorization mechanic.
I'm really liking the feedback =D
Thanks again!