Saturn's Tower CCG

[Wisp]

x's Tower

x's Tower is a sprawling metropolis located within a tower as tall and as deep as infinity, full to the brim with dark alleyways, dark dealings and even darker characters. Densely populated and criss-crossed with filthy canals, stone staircases, epic waterfalls and floating platforms. There is a constant struggle for power between 9 factions.

There are 3 talents: Arcana, Craft and Wisdom. No matter what faction you choose mastery of these talents is essential in victory.

Setting up
To play, each player needs a 55-card deck and a stronghold. The deck may not contain more than 3 copies of any card with the same title.

Seat all players around the table. Agree on the seating order and which player goes first. Each player then searches his deck for a starting location card, places in front of him face down and shuffles their deck. Then they must offer it to be cut by another player.

Winning the Game
The object of the game is to have 15 Power at the end of a turn. You are eliminated from the game if you have no cards in your deck at the end of a turn.

The Cards
There are four card types: Location, Character, Support and Event.
Locations make up the places in the city that are under your caim. They are your primary source of resources and generate power. Stats: Faction, Talents, Trade, Influence, Structure.

Characters are the cards that get things done. They attack locations and other characters. Stats: Influence, Cost, Faction, Talents, Strength, Trade.

Support cards help your characters and hinder your opponent?s characters. Stats: Influence, Faction, Cost, Trade and Talents.

Events: One-off effects on the game that can be played at any time. Cost

Every card has a basic cost, which is paid for with resources. In addition to the basic cost, each card has loyalty and talents. Loyalty and talents are symbols next to their cost. A card costs an additional 1 for each of these symbols, but for every card you caim of the same faction (or with the same talent) you don't have to pay for one of the symbols. So, you can play any card in any deck, but it's going to cost you more if you don't have other cards of the same faction. Talents work like loyalty except they aren't tied to any particular factions. So you could build a deck with two factions or maybe even three, but actually be focusing around one of the talents by having low loyalty but high talent.

The Turn
Each turn consists of 3 phases: Beginning, Middle and End. Players alternate clockwise, taking one action each. The player who?s action it is called the active player.

Beginning Phase
a) Ready: Refresh all your exhausted cards; each player gains one resource for each trade icon they caim. Refill your hand
b) Generate all effects triggered ?before your main phase?

Middle Phase
The Main phase is where most of the actions happen. Starting with the player with the most influence each player alternates being the active player, at which point they can either pass or make an action. When all players pass in succession the phase is over.

End Phase
a) Resolve end of turn abilities
b) Check for victory
c) End the turn

Claims
You can generate power by tapping your locations to make a Claim. Your Claim is the total influence at the location that you are tapping. Your Claim can be general (with no target) or specific (choose an opponent as a target). General claims, if successful, gain you Power equal to the tapped locations Claim value. Specific claims instead seek to steal power from your opponents, and take power from them equal to the claim value if successful. Opponents can challenge Claims by tapping a location of their own. Any opponent may challenge any claim. If the claim value at your locations is higher than theirs you gain power. Otherwise, the claim is defeated and no power is gained.

Battles
Attacks are resolved in the following order:

a) Opponents may join the Attacking side
b) Opponents may join the defending side
c) Take battle actions

If an attackers target changes location, the attack continues at the new location.

[Cyrus]

Yet another refined version of the game we keep trying to make, but never together, haha
The flavor seems well thought out, which may make further developments easier... or possibly harder, but I doubt that.
Gameplay seems straight forward because I know the kind of game you are going for. Care to explain how mastery of each 4 talents pertains to victory?
All in all, keep it up! I've got (yet another) battle system idea that I might implement into my newer ccg idea, and I still really want to finish Kingdom (which at this point only needs beta testing really). One day, either one or both of us will finish and release a game!

[Tokimo]

This sounds very cool.

Strong universe, interesting mechanical possibilities.

[yudencow]

sounds like the MMO the secret world, yet still feels original
hopes to see a noir card game, let the artwork say it!

[Wisp]

Care to explain how mastery of each 4 talents pertains to victory?
All in all, keep it up! I've got (yet another) battle system idea that I might implement into my newer ccg idea, and I still really want to finish Kingdom (which at this point only needs beta testing really). One day, either one or both of us will finish and release a game!

Well, that was actually a bit of hyperbole. The 4 talents are a bit like colours in magic, except they are less restrictive. Basically playing cards in the game works like this. Cards cost gold. Your stronghold determines which clan you are a part of, and any characters not from that clan cozt extra gold (i was thinking either 2 extra gold or some kind of honour system where the more honour they had the more extra gold they would cost). Locations can belong to clans and controlling a locations from a different clan eliminates the extra cost. This system was great, but it was too flexible and didn't really make sense for the event cards. So i devised the talent system to work in tanden with the clan system. All cards you play provide you with talent (probably to be represented by little symbols ate the bottom of the card). As long as a card is in play or in your discard pile, it provides you with talent and talent isn't used up when you play cards that need it, it works like a threshold. Some cards require you to have a certain amount of talent before you can play them.

And dude, the battle system of this game is the only thing i'm not decided on, i wanna hear about yours!

Sorry if that was convoluted, i'm tired =] more updates when i have time!

EDIT: Thanks for the kind words about the universe, it's been a brain child of mine for some time. INPUT! =D

[Wisp]

BUMP: update in first post

[Cyrus]

BUMP: update in first post

Was the update just for the movement? You know I can't be bothered to read the entire thing again
Regardless, I like the idea for movement, with one complaint. If both players need to have locations laying out in front of them with enough space for characters from both players on each side, as well as their stronghold closer to them or off to the side, and space for characters from both players at the city centre, do you think only those with really large tables (and appropriately matched arm lengths) could play?

tl;dr: How much space does this board take up?

[Wisp]

Movement and the last half of the how to play section.

Nah wouldn't take up much more space then magic. Strongholds go with the rest of your locations, they just look different so people know they can't move there. Imagine you have 5 locations in front of you, as does your opponent, each with a card space between them. That's probably as wide as it's gonna get, maybe a bit more space between if there is a huge volume of characters. Your character go behind the location they are at when at one of your ones, and they go in front of locations you opponents control. So there is a location card, on the near side of it your character, and on the other side of it you opponents character. In terms on length, you just need to be aware of making sure that there is a clear destinction between the city centre (the area between the players) and characters on the far side of a location. It might take up more space than a typical magic the gathering game but not a huge amount more. I hope.

[Wisp]

Argh i'm so busy!!111!!! 

doing incremental updates to the first post as often as i can.

[Code Money]

I like the concept. I had an idea for a game named Noir too. It was months back & was a role playing game set in a dark alternate past 1930-esque. More of a Film Noir supernatural investigation theme, kind of like Call of Cthulhu meets the Dresden Files. Anyway your mechanics seem interesting and I like the secret world parallel. Best of luck.

[Apathetic]

How about for a battle system: all cards are also attack/defense cards with a primary talent the character must have. It would also use a threshold system. If the card has 1 chi symbol with a 2 on it the max atk or def would be 2. If there are 2 chi symbols, the 1st having a 2 and the 2nd having a 4 you could use it as an atk or def of 4 if you controlled the threshold of 2 chi.  And so on continuing with more symbols with numbers on them. Some cards might have a second type of symbol for example 2 chi symbols and 1 politic symbol with increasing numbers of 2, 4, 5 on the symbols. Is you met the threshold of 2 chi & 1 politic you could use it as a 5 atk or def. There would also be a type of paper, rock, scissors to attacking. The 4 talents would be split into 2 pairs and the pairs could not defend against an attack of it's opposite. For example chi and politics are paired. Of a chi atk is made a politic could not be used to defend it. Combination atk's could be used in one of these 2 ways depending on what works better.  An atk could be considered to have the talent of the 1st symbol of the threshold level required to use it. Or combination atk's can always be blocked by anything. On def it would always be considered the primary trait.

[Wisp]

Mega-update in first post. Minor setting change, title change, victory condition change, resource system change.

Cy, get your ass in here.

[Cyrus]

I'm very into this, however, I'm a little confused on how the turn structure works. First you say there are 4 phases and their names, then you listed 3 phases (with different names even!). Haha, so, clarify that and you have yourself a basic rule set. I'm definitely down to help with factions and mechanics (and playtesting, duh)!

[Wisp]

Ahh that was a typo. I used a rule book for an old game a template and left that in by mistake. All fixed now. Cool, well to inspire you for factions, the feeling I'm going for is quite sort of small. By which i mean, these aren't huge battles with thousands of soldiers fighting and countries and kings and shit. Even though the city is big (possibly infinite no one knows), the feel is much more of small factions vying for power. The battles are small scale in small places. It's all very shady.

Also i'll explain the resource system. Every character has a basic cost, which is payed for with resources. In addition to the basic cost, each character has loyalty and talents. Loyalty and talents are symbols next to their cost. A card costs an additional 1 for each of these symbols, but for every card you control of the same faction (or with the same talent) you don't have to pay for one of the symbols. So, you can play any card in any deck, but it's going to cost you more if you don't have other cards of the same faction. Talents work like loyalty symbols except they aren't tied to any particular factions. So you could build a deck with two factions or maybe even three, but actually be focussing around one of the talents by having low loyalty but high talent.

Also, in case anyone is wondering, saturn is the name of the tower's arbiter. He's a demi-god of sorts. His name is subject to change, saturn is just what i picked up from a list of roman gods (the god of time, he is).

[Dragoon]

Good resource idea. Have been playing with things like that too.