Sometimes I think I’m losing my mind, sometimes I find I’m losing words. I could’ve sworn I wrote this down here, recently, but buggered if I can find it.
Okay, here we go again. In the grand theme of GreyKnight’s “Post to End It“, I’m coming back to my card crawl deck-building exploration game. I’ve got links to some earlier posts below so I don’t misplace them, but on a quick skim they all talk about slightly different aspects of the game that might or might not still fit.
Tonight, I’m thinking mostly about how the game might be structured and, perhaps weirdly, some elements of how it might be packaged for sale. I skimmed the posts above and see some things that align fairly well, and some that don’t, and that’s okay.
- Core game has all the common cards, enough to play at least the base game. Any supplements or expansions will not contain this sort of card, unless there is a significant addition of New Stuff that needs it’s own ‘common cards’.
- Expansions will focus on the elements specific to those expansions. Common utility stuff should be in core.
- I really like the villain + environment mechanism in Sentinels of the Multiverse (Greater Than Games) and the Character + Lineage + Domain decks of the Sorcerer game (Wise Wizard). I see these coming into play in a few ways.
Character Decks
Being a deck builder, a player starts with only a relatively small number of cards, and adds to this as the game progresses. I’ll describe where I think this will go in the end, but I recognize I’ll likely need to scale it back somewhat to start.
- A player starts with a collection of 18 cards, plus 6 common cards from the base game.
- A player’s collection consists of three 6-card sets (or possibly sets of {4, 6, 8}, as long as they add up to 18… but let’s assume {6, 6, 6} for now) representing the character and two aspects of their abilities. Let’s say their starting deck consists of 2 cards from each set, plus their common cards.
- One card represents their character, as with Hero Realms (Wise Wizards). This card stays on the table, since they’re always present as long as they’re in the game.
- The remaining cards from the starting collection are the player’s private market. Anyone can buy from the common market, but each player has some tricks no one else does.
- Players will find useful things (cards representing treasure or usable items) while exploring, and can add these to their decks.
- A player may buy cards from the common market or from their private market. These will be ‘paid for’ with resources gained from cards.
- As with Hero Realms, cards may have a gold value and can be discarded (removed from the hand and placed in discard; can be used again) to pay for new cards.
- Cards picked up while exploring may also have a gold value but must be spent (removed from the player’s hand and returned to the region’s discard, cannot be used unless found again) to pay for new cards.
- I am uncertain if cards can be bought every turn, or only on leaving a dungeon. I am leaning toward ‘any time’, but I can imagine a hard mode where you can only buy when not underground.
- Some cards can be held indefinitely; at the end of a round when they are played, they may be returned to the hand rather than discarded. Of course, this means tying up hand count, but it means certain cards can be sure to be on hand.
- I think there will be a push your luck component, where getting too greedy with treasure can mean being starved of ‘useful’ cards… and I’m quite okay with that.
The construction of a character’s collection, consisting of three sets of cards, can go a long way toward variety in character construction. Assuming each set is 6 cards, a 54-card character expansion could have nine such sets — 3 groups of 3 sets of each type. For instance, a ‘wizard deck’ could have 3 character sets, 3 magical tradition sets, and 3 spells sets. This comes to 27 distinct characters in a 54-card expansion. In a 108-card expansion you could have 216 distinct characters.
Overland Decks
I’m not certain I can see as much variety in the overland regions, but as these should mostly be traversed and used to shape the dungeons, I’m not too concerned. I’m leaning toward something like Mistfall (from NSKN). Cards are drawn for the various regions (either at the start or as they are explored), and the card reveals the type of region.
- In Mistfall, there are three kinds of regions (wildlands, deadlands, and borderlands) that affect the kinds of locations and encounters you’ll find.
- I may have more than three kinds of region.
- I expect the region type to add cards to the dungeon deck: a lost temple in a swamp and a lost temple in a desert could be expected to be different experiences.
- The region type likely affects the encounters present in the region, but perhaps not the locations you can find.
- On exploration, points of interest (‘dungeons’ for simplicity) can be found. Some might be inherent in the region card, others could be randomly drawn as needed.
The overland decks are mostly for navigating between points of interest, but I have the sense they might not be that interesting themselves. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Must ponder.
Dungeon Decks
This is where it gets more interesting, I think. As with Sentinels of the Multiverse, each dungeon is a location (environment) and has a boss (villain). Each dungeon deck also picks up some cards from the overland region.
I imagine the dungeon deck would consist of sets related to:
- Locations (‘rooms’)
- Villain and their minions (and special abilities)
- Monsters (for lack of a better term)
As with the overland map, the dungeon could be laid out ahead of time, or as it’s explored. Being a fan of Fire of Eidolon (from Magic Meeple Games), I’m leaning toward ‘as explored’. Each room can be discovered and explored (possibly scouted — found and recognized without actually entering). As with One Deck Dungeon (from Asmadi Games), a room might define a challenge, or it might have inhabitants (drawn from the dungeon, villain, or overland cards), and so on.
Closing Comments
Not one of my more coherent posts, I think, but I believe valuable for capturing my thoughts.
I see quite a bit of variability coming out of this. By working with the various sets and subsets of cards I believe I can generate a rich volume of characters, overland locations, and dungeon settings to explore.
Now, to make it all work.