There is a song that has been really inspiring me lately, though it is just the song written for the League of Legends world series. Not the song I'd have expected to really speak to me, but there you go. I've been thinking a lot about having a warrior's heart. Pressing on against any opposition. Of becoming unstoppable. This song reminds me of a part of the man I want to become, and the man that I slowly am becoming. Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB8TyLTD7EE
Tuesday, December 18
I are excite for games.
So, I have this friend named Craig, and we ended up becoming friends when we both discovered that we were both independently designing board games with the exact same theme of being Mech pilots. We ended up building some prototypes and testing them out on each other, and have gotten together every once in a while to play games and toss around ideas. Recently though, he's told me about this really cool fantasy setting that he's been developing for the past few years, and we've started brainstorming some ideas for how we could use some of the concepts to create an awesome board game!
The main idea of his setting is that there is this magical dark moon that hangs stationary above one area of the planet. This moon warps everything around it and gives off some sort of magical power that people are able to harness, but it is incredibly volatile and dangerous. And with the moon warping everything near it, the wildlife and even landscape becomes extremely dangerous. So, most of the human population lives outside of the influence of the moon, in the charted lands, but there are some people, either brave or foolhardy, who live in small villages in what is known as the half-moon frontier. Those people will be the main focus of our game. There's a lot more to the lore that is incredibly cool, but it's not super important for gameplay at the moment.
Lies! I forgot that one of the things that the moon sometimes imparts on people is the ability to shape plant life to suit their needs. These growers can use their energy to almost instantly grow a seed into the exact tool they need for any given task. These tools can then later be planted to grow more, which are then traded off to the people in the charted lands. It's only the power of the moon that allows for the sudden growth and shaping. Craig has a few pictures of the kind of aesthetic he wants to go with, and it's lots of intricate wooden buildings, and swords made from hardened leaves. It's super cool!
Anyways, so with the advent of the new Keyforge game, I wanted to do something with it's cool idea. If you haven't already heard, Keyforge is a "unique" card game, which means that every single deck that is sold is completely unique. All the decks are drawn from a set of a few hundred cards, but no two decks have the same combination of cards, and has a unique card back. There is no deck building, you are not allowed to change any of the cards, you just get what you get and play!
So, I love that "unique" idea and was thinking that we could use that for the game in the case of adding packs that would send you on adventures. What I mean by that is... You would start with a starter deck of cards that everyone would have access to, which would represent your village and initial characters in the village that would be able to go on a few simple adventures. But the really exciting bit comes when you introduce packs. Each pack that could be purchased would contain a completely unique adventure, with unique locations to visit, warped monsters to defeat or capture, forgotten treasures and magic seeds, and even objectives drawn from a large list of possibilities.
So you might go out trying to hunt down a monster that was attacking villagers, you may need to make contact with another village, escort an elder to a newly uncovered ruin, search for a lost child, defend your village from waves of enemies, all sorts of things! The top card of each pack would always be a map card, so you would end up exploring during your adventures, never knowing exactly what you might find. I'm not sure exactly how the encounters will work yet, but I want it to be the case that there will always be a few ways to approach things, whether it be in coming across some warped bear and just attacking and killing it, or trying to capture it and eventually tame it, sneak past it, run away, all that good stuff! And with there being a map to explore, it usually won't be the case that you only have one way to go. If you absolutely can't get past that bear, maybe you'll have to see if you can talk your way past a rival group of adventurers by going around.
What I'm working on now is trying to figure out how to make an encounter system that allows for all those different possibilities. I've been studying some other games, particularly the Dark Souls card game and Tainted Grail, which is a new kickstarter game that involves exploring map cards and dealing with encounters through combat or diplomacy. I'm just so excited by the idea of getting basically a new game every time you buy a pack of cards! And by going on these adventures you'll be able to add new cards to your village by finding new blueprints for creating new tools, by capturing monsters that will be warped in unique ways that only you will experience, and by powering up your characters by warping their very essence as they approach the dark moon. I'm so excited!
There's lots more to tell, but I think that's enough for now! It's getting late!
The main idea of his setting is that there is this magical dark moon that hangs stationary above one area of the planet. This moon warps everything around it and gives off some sort of magical power that people are able to harness, but it is incredibly volatile and dangerous. And with the moon warping everything near it, the wildlife and even landscape becomes extremely dangerous. So, most of the human population lives outside of the influence of the moon, in the charted lands, but there are some people, either brave or foolhardy, who live in small villages in what is known as the half-moon frontier. Those people will be the main focus of our game. There's a lot more to the lore that is incredibly cool, but it's not super important for gameplay at the moment.
Lies! I forgot that one of the things that the moon sometimes imparts on people is the ability to shape plant life to suit their needs. These growers can use their energy to almost instantly grow a seed into the exact tool they need for any given task. These tools can then later be planted to grow more, which are then traded off to the people in the charted lands. It's only the power of the moon that allows for the sudden growth and shaping. Craig has a few pictures of the kind of aesthetic he wants to go with, and it's lots of intricate wooden buildings, and swords made from hardened leaves. It's super cool!
Anyways, so with the advent of the new Keyforge game, I wanted to do something with it's cool idea. If you haven't already heard, Keyforge is a "unique" card game, which means that every single deck that is sold is completely unique. All the decks are drawn from a set of a few hundred cards, but no two decks have the same combination of cards, and has a unique card back. There is no deck building, you are not allowed to change any of the cards, you just get what you get and play!
So, I love that "unique" idea and was thinking that we could use that for the game in the case of adding packs that would send you on adventures. What I mean by that is... You would start with a starter deck of cards that everyone would have access to, which would represent your village and initial characters in the village that would be able to go on a few simple adventures. But the really exciting bit comes when you introduce packs. Each pack that could be purchased would contain a completely unique adventure, with unique locations to visit, warped monsters to defeat or capture, forgotten treasures and magic seeds, and even objectives drawn from a large list of possibilities.
So you might go out trying to hunt down a monster that was attacking villagers, you may need to make contact with another village, escort an elder to a newly uncovered ruin, search for a lost child, defend your village from waves of enemies, all sorts of things! The top card of each pack would always be a map card, so you would end up exploring during your adventures, never knowing exactly what you might find. I'm not sure exactly how the encounters will work yet, but I want it to be the case that there will always be a few ways to approach things, whether it be in coming across some warped bear and just attacking and killing it, or trying to capture it and eventually tame it, sneak past it, run away, all that good stuff! And with there being a map to explore, it usually won't be the case that you only have one way to go. If you absolutely can't get past that bear, maybe you'll have to see if you can talk your way past a rival group of adventurers by going around.
What I'm working on now is trying to figure out how to make an encounter system that allows for all those different possibilities. I've been studying some other games, particularly the Dark Souls card game and Tainted Grail, which is a new kickstarter game that involves exploring map cards and dealing with encounters through combat or diplomacy. I'm just so excited by the idea of getting basically a new game every time you buy a pack of cards! And by going on these adventures you'll be able to add new cards to your village by finding new blueprints for creating new tools, by capturing monsters that will be warped in unique ways that only you will experience, and by powering up your characters by warping their very essence as they approach the dark moon. I'm so excited!
There's lots more to tell, but I think that's enough for now! It's getting late!
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