11 Mar, 2010, Runter wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Okay. So I've been playing with a CCG styled mud concept. If you're not familiar with that term it's Collectible Card Game or Trading Card Game(TCG). The basic idea I've had is to merge the two concepts together. Giving players a real world to explore, sell, collect, and battle in. The combat system will be turn based.

Some of the things I'm brain storming on is…

* Do I implement a flexible combat system so that it's possible for deck users to battle, say, a wild animal? This could be done by allowing the deck users to go through the normal process of play while the creature is converted to an in play creature card immediately. Or more precisely a party of cards already in play. What I'm afraid of is the game becoming too tedious because of micro conflicts.

* Do I make the player herself involved in combat? Do I make them a real targetable entity within the game board with statistics, equipment, etcetc or do I take the traditional CCG approach and simply make it a default attackable health pool with a stardard amount of health?

* Planning on taking some of the randomness out of the equation by allowing players to set aside a number of cards which they can draw from instead of the shuffled deck at any time.

* Aquiring cards… Maybe from NPC party drops. Perhaps giving each type of creature a common and rare drop tables upon defeat. Could consider some type of crafting system.

* Experience could unlock options which slightly change the rules of the game to better suite the players style of play. Example: If the default rule for putting creatures into play was they cannot attack on the same turn they're summoned then the player could get a talent to remove that.

* Economy will likely be important. Likely should have some gold sinks that are useful to players at any point in the game. Including random "booster set" like items which can be purchased. Gold trade and card train between players will be possible.

* I haven't decided if multi-way battles should be allowed yet. And if not it could be annoying for PVP battle to have to wait 10-20 minutes for your opponents right before you to decide a battle. It may alleviate this problem if all PVP content was in the form of sanctioned fights and tournaments.

* Current idea for displaying game board is something like:

>look
You see…
A Fido
A Fido

Your board…
A Dragon
A Goblin
Enhancement Card
(t) A Golem

Your hand…
[Random Card 1][Random Card 2][Random Card 3][Random Card 4]
[Random Card 5][Random Card 6][Random Card 7]


A player will be able to examine any card in play or in their hand to get something like:

>look dragon
_____________________________________
| Type cost Rarity |
|————————————-|
| ____ |
| ,dP9CGG88@b, |
| "YICCG888@@b, |
| IICGG8888@b |
| d CCGG8888@@b |
| GC CCGGG8888@@@ |
| GGC CCGGG88888@@@ |
| GGGGCCCGGGG88888@@@@ |
| Y8GGGGGG8888888@@@@P |
| Y88888888888@@@@@P |
| `Y8888888@@@@@@@P' |
| `@@@@@@@@@P' |
| """" |
|=====================================|
| A short description of this card |
| and what special properties it may |
| have. |
| |
| "Optional tag line." Power|
|=====================================|


This would be configurable for briefer presentation.


That's all I've got right now but please give me any thought you may have on this topic.
11 Mar, 2010, Runter wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Oh, missed a few topics. :p

I need to decide a resource management system for putting cards into play.

Also need to think about how many cards a players deck should contain minimum and maximum.

Also how many of a specific card can be included in the deck. I was thinking of somewhat simplifying the process of composing a deck by making each card in the deck represent 2 cards in actuality.
11 Mar, 2010, Kline wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
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* Do I implement a flexible combat system so that it's possible for deck users to battle, say, a wild animal? This could be done by allowing the deck users to go through the normal process of play while the creature is converted to an in play creature card immediately. Or more precisely a party of cards already in play. What I'm afraid of is the game becoming too tedious because of micro conflicts.

Will they have to battle all wild animals? If yes, then perhaps scrap the idea. If battling animals is optional, though, then I see no reason not to allow people to fight them in the same manner as the rest of the game (deck style) so they can possibly get a common/rare card drop of that animal, or maybe exp (see next comment).

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* Do I make the player herself involved in combat? Do I make them a real targetable entity within the game board with statistics, equipment, etcetc or do I take the traditional CCG approach and simply make it a default attackable health pool with a stardard amount of health?

I'd say yes, it adds another element of gameplay and avenue for advancement. This lets players not only advance through a better deck or rarer cards, but also by upgrading themselves as a person – maybe a boosted health pool, or the ability to have one extra card in their deck, etc. Depending on how you spin the stats of the player itself you could easily make leveling / character development as important as a strong deck, or not so much. While this does give older players an upper hand (even if all you do is expand their health pool), you could still swing it so it's possible enough for a new player with a decent deck and the skill to use it properly would win despite the handicap.

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* Planning on taking some of the randomness out of the equation by allowing players to set aside a number of cards which they can draw from instead of the shuffled deck at any time.

Why not make this an option per player? A player who sets out 10 cards may have a lowered chance to get rare drops or lower exp gains, while a player who opts to run a fully random deck each fight would have maximum gains. More risk, more reward.

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* Aquiring cards… Maybe from NPC party drops. Perhaps giving each type of creature a common and rare drop tables upon defeat. Could consider some type of crafting system.

See first comment; this would be an excellent thing if you have random PvM battles. Crafting is always a nice bonus, too, or allowing people to win cards from each other in duels or bets.

Quote
* Experience could unlock options which slightly change the rules of the game to better suite the players style of play. Example: If the default rule for putting creatures into play was they cannot attack on the same turn they're summoned then the player could get a talent to remove that.

I like this. See first two comments.

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* Economy will likely be important. Likely should have some gold sinks that are useful to players at any point in the game. Including random "booster set" like items which can be purchased. Gold trade and card train between players will be possible.

Crafting could play here, too. Players buying raw materials from NPC vendors (or 75% from vendor, 25% found/combat) to create "uncommon" cards or such; not rare but better than normal, then sell to each other.

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* I haven't decided if multi-way battles should be allowed yet. And if not it could be annoying for PVP battle to have to wait 10-20 minutes for your opponents right before you to decide a battle. It may alleviate this problem if all PVP content was in the form of sanctioned fights and tournaments.

I don't think I would like a multi-way battle as I've never played a CCG which had that; it's always a 1v1 event. You could always do a gauntlet system of back-to-back 1v1 fights where the player is not allowed to heal/restore cards in-between though.

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* Current idea for displaying game board is something like: <snip>

Looks good; maybe as part of the configuration add on/off to display different pieces of the card: attack, defense, cost, etc. Or if you want to get really fancy allow the entire output to be user-customized with tokens so I can specify the (general) layout of each card to best suit how I want to digest the info.

How far is this MUD; strictly design only, or is there a partly playable game yet? It's a very interesting idea and I do love CCGs, but never really have people to play with so I don't play them very much at all. I think moving it to an online medium would open up a much larger pool of opponents, even if it does lose some of the fun of being there in person.
11 Mar, 2010, Kline wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
Well since you ninja-posted as I crafted that reply…Min/max on a deck could also be a factor determined by player level, so could resources (similar to MTG mana types). Hell, you could even do card types that way to restrict how powerful a deck can be relative to level if you wanted, by limiting people to a maximum number of rare cards, or only 2 rares of the same type, etc.
11 Mar, 2010, Runter wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
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How far is this MUD; strictly design only, or is there a partly playable game yet?


No, there's really no playable game of any kind yet although I expect it to move very quickly now. I've written the core from scratch with a lot of generic concepts fit for a codebase. I hadn't decided until recently the type of game I'd like to construct with it.

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It's a very interesting idea and I do love CCGs, but never really have people to play with so I don't play them very much at all. I think moving it to an online medium would open up a much larger pool of opponents, even if it does lose some of the fun of being there in person.


Yeah, and it's going to be free. :p CCGs get expensive for people really into it.

At some point I'll be working on a semi-graphical web based interface into it through Rails. I'll probably make sure I have a solid game before then, though. It would be interesting to be able to route traffic to the game from sites like kongregate, armorgames and myspace.
11 Mar, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
In a CCG, the player is usually defined by their deck and their current hand. You can sometimes have 'equipment', but only because you've drawn and placed the appropriate card. I'm not sure how well this concept really meshes with a traditional mud.

How will you represent equipment? Skills? Races?

I'm not sure if you ever looked at my war minigame, but I think the same general approach could work here. I give each player a standard deck of 40 cards (4 suits each containing cards valued from 0 to 9), so there's no actual variation in the cards themselves - but players can also choose a faction (each with its own special rule variations) and recruit specialists (eg "merchants" which let you dismiss one resource card for free each turn, a "slave guild" which gives you +1 action the following turn whenever you inflict damage, a "prophet" which lets you see the next 3 cards on your deck, and so on).

This would also make it much easier to get started, as you wouldn't need any special cards initially - just the basic rules. You could then introduce special cards over time to represent skills and equipment, perhaps even giving certain mobs their own "hand" of special cards to differentiate them from each other.

I suppose you could view it as having two decks - one static, representing the core game, and the other dynamic, representing your special abilities and unique combination of cards.
11 Mar, 2010, Runter wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
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I'm not sure how well this concept really meshes with a traditional mud.


Me either, but I'm going to take a leap and try something a little different. :)

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How will you represent equipment? Skills? Races?


I haven't decided about equipment. It could simply be vanity items for out of combat interactions. Or I may simply not have any.

Haven't decided on skills either. Probably will only have configurations that you unlock for customization. Maybe a talent tree. Maybe just a simple "pick 1 out of group a, 1 out of group b, one out of group c". In any event, I don't want them to represent a huge advantage over other players who may not have them all unlocked yet.

Probably a raceless/classless game. As far as options go.
11 Mar, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
I haven't decided about equipment. It could simply be vanity items for out of combat interactions. Or I may simply not have any.

Or you could have special categories of restricted cards. So if you get the rare "chaos greataxe" card and add it to your deck, your character would actually appear to be carrying the chaos greataxe - but that would use your "weapon" slot, meaning you couldn't add any other weapon cards to your deck. You could even have the weapon sheathed initially, and have the player automatically draw it when they draw the appropriate card from their deck, although perhaps that's a little OTT.

This does mean that people could find out certain information about your deck just by looking at you though.

It also raises some questions about combat. Do you need special cards to be able to attack? Do you put down cards to attack, or can you reuse them? What are the standard rules of your game, and what would an example fight look like?

Runter said:
Probably a raceless/classless game. As far as options go.

You could actually represent classes as "suits", like the five colours in M:tG (meaning people could mix and match if they wished, but a certain degree of specialisation would usually be more effective). But that probably wouldn't work out so well for persistent characters.
11 Mar, 2010, Runter wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Or you could have special categories of restricted cards. So if you get the rare "chaos greataxe" card and add it to your deck, your character would actually appear to be carrying the chaos greataxe - but that would use your "weapon" slot, meaning you couldn't add any other weapon cards to your deck. You could even have the weapon sheathed initially, and have the player automatically draw it when they draw the appropriate card from their deck, although perhaps that's a little OTT.

This does mean that people could find out certain information about your deck just by looking at you though.

This might be an interesting idea for epic/rare quality cards.

KaVir said:
It also raises some questions about combat. Do you need special cards to be able to attack? Do you put down cards to attack, or can you reuse them? What are the standard rules of your game, and what would an example fight look like?


The cards won't be consumed. Each time a battle begins the deck resets. (It's possible I won't reset the players health pool or injury.)

From the PvE perspective I think there may be 2 modes of play. A common encounter might be a fight triggering upon entering a room of enemies. Each enemy may correspond to a card and be turned into a card already in play to be dispatched. The second mode would be a PVE battle similar to a standard game vs another player. In any event, the player would have to play out the game according to the rules.

Right now I'm thinking it's going to be turn based and each players turn is broken up into phases. Resource management, Draw cards, Play cards from hand, Attack phase, upkeep phase, discard phase, end turn.

edit: My only concern really is the speed of gameplay for this mode A micro encounters while fighting your way to a boss or more meaningful PvE encounters.
11 Mar, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
The cards won't be consumed. Each time a battle begins the deck resets.

I wasn't referring to permanent loss. I mean if I use a card to attack you, is it discarded afterwards, or does it stay in my hand so that I can use it next turn as well?

Runter said:
Right now I'm thinking it's going to be turn based and each players turn is broken up into phases. Resource management, Draw cards, Play cards from hand, Attack phase, upkeep phase, discard phase, end turn.

I just combined them - 3 actions per turn, 1 action to discard, 1 action to move a card to your offence or defence pool, 1 action to make an attack. Then at the end of the turn, everyone launches their attacks (if any). It's simple and it works well.

Runter said:
My only concern really is the speed of gameplay for this mode A micro encounters while fighting your way to a boss or more meaningful PvE encounters.

When fighting a mob you could perhaps allow the player to end their turn early. It'll still be annoying having to rebuild your hand each time though, if your deck is reset each time a new battle begins.
11 Mar, 2010, Runter wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
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I wasn't referring to permanent loss. I mean if I use a card to attack you, is it discarded afterwards, or does it stay in my hand so that I can use it next turn as well?


Oh, That depends on the card's type. Specifically I plan to have direct damage attacks you can play and are discarded. Other cards put into play, specifically creatures, can attack on attack phase.

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When fighting a mob you could perhaps allow the player to end their turn early. It'll still be annoying having to rebuild your hand each time though, if your deck is reset each time a new battle begins.


This is something I'll have to put some real though into. I was considering having a small number of cards you can select as an optional "party" that become immediately available at the start of fights if you choose instead of randomly fishing for cards. This could at least ease trivial encounters somewhat.
11 Mar, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
I was considering having a small number of cards you can select as an optional "party" that become immediately available at the start of fights if you choose instead of randomly fishing for cards. This could at least ease trivial encounters somewhat.

The danger is it could also make the encounters too predictable.

I'm not sure that trivial encounters are really that well suited to turn-based combat. Are you definitely planning to have them?
11 Mar, 2010, Runter wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Runter said:
I was considering having a small number of cards you can select as an optional "party" that become immediately available at the start of fights if you choose instead of randomly fishing for cards. This could at least ease trivial encounters somewhat.

The danger is it could also make the encounters too predictable.

I'm not sure that trivial encounters are really that well suited to turn-based combat. Are you definitely planning to have them?


If I can't find a decent way to make it happen I'll drop the idea, but particular I don't want to destroy dungeon crawling.
11 Mar, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
What would it mean for me as the "wielder" of a huge deck of awesome cards to come across a solitary wild animal that doesn't have cards? I'm trying to understand what it means in the first place for there to be people scurrying about using cards as powers. Anyhow this question is to figure out how combat would even happen with the wild animal. Perhaps there should simply be two different modes of combat: the turn-based mode when fighting other creatures with decks of their own, vs. a real-time "quick mode" when fighting what is essentially just a card. When fighting the "card" of the wild animal, you could deploy cards of your own as spells (like your dragon, as a summoning spell) or even fight the card as yourself-as-a-card.

Basically I'd like to get a better understanding of what these cards supposed to represent. You have this in-game person running around collecting in-game cards. When they fight somebody, are they sitting down at a table to fight them in a 'game of chess', or do they throw cards magician-style that turn into lightning bolts or dragons mid-flight?
11 Mar, 2010, Kline wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Basically I'd like to get a better understanding of what these cards supposed to represent. You have this in-game person running around collecting in-game cards. When they fight somebody, are they sitting down at a table to fight them in a 'game of chess', or do they throw cards magician-style that turn into lightning bolts or dragons mid-flight?

I envisioned things happing in a Pokemon sort of style, combat wise.
11 Mar, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
The cards could also be treated as an "OOC" abstraction. For example in M:tG the players represent powerful mages, and their decks represent the spells, artifacts, lands and creatures under their control.
11 Mar, 2010, Runter wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
What would it mean for me as the "wielder" of a huge deck of awesome cards to come across a solitary wild animal that doesn't have cards? I'm trying to understand what it means in the first place for there to be people scurrying about using cards as powers. Anyhow this question is to figure out how combat would even happen with the wild animal. Perhaps there should simply be two different modes of combat: the turn-based mode when fighting other creatures with decks of their own, vs. a real-time "quick mode" when fighting what is essentially just a card. When fighting the "card" of the wild animal, you could deploy cards of your own as spells (like your dragon, as a summoning spell) or even fight the card as yourself-as-a-card.

Basically I'd like to get a better understanding of what these cards supposed to represent. You have this in-game person running around collecting in-game cards. When they fight somebody, are they sitting down at a table to fight them in a 'game of chess', or do they throw cards magician-style that turn into lightning bolts or dragons mid-flight?


As I'm sure you well know mechanics in a game don't actually have to be representing in the game itself. I.e. If I had a di roll to determine hit/miss I'm pretty sure my characters would be oblivious to that. Maybe you just skimmed over what was said, or you just haven't ever played a CCG like MTG. In any event, the one avenue I am not considering is anything resembling traditional MUD style combat. Even for part of the game. Everything will be built into the CCG combat system. I don't think it really matters that I determine what exactly they represent because I completely am against having anything resembling a generic MUD combat systems with the CCG system packed on top, but no. They're not actually sitting down and playing a game of chess. KaVir's example of the cards in your deck possibly effecting your description I thought was a good one. If a crafting system was used I wouldn't have players crafting cards. They'd craft items that would be represented by cards.
11 Mar, 2010, Runter wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
The cards could also be treated as an "OOC" abstraction. For example in M:tG the players represent powerful mages, and their decks represent the spells, artifacts, lands and creatures under their control.


That's pretty much the direction I want to go. The resource management system is something I'm not sure if I want to do like they did though. Particularly I'm not sure about the multiple colors. Always seemed like a huge incentive in MTG to do pure or nearly-pure colored decks. And I really don't want it to end up being a complex game of rock paper scissors.

edit: Then again I was also toying with the idea of having races determining natural ability in certain colors as well as the starter deck they receive.
11 Mar, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
No, I played M:TG quite a bit in the day actually so I know how it works. (Never played Pokemon, sorry Kline. :wink:) My point is that if the cards are just treated as abstractions of a mage's power (as indeed M:TG tries to fiddle away) then encounters with individual creatures – who are not "card-carrying mages" (hurr durr) – could be handled without turn-based combat. After all, the animal would have no cards to play! (Except for, I suppose, the individual card representing itself, and some could have additional abilities based on that card.)

Anyhow, the point of my previous comment was not to say that people are literally sitting down playing chess (that was meant as a joke), it was to say that there should be a strong differentiation between mages dueling and mages fighting "random encounters" – unless the random encounters are themselves "card-carrying creatures".

The reason I say this is because it sounds exceedingly tedious to have to go through an entire card game every time you bump into some random orc. To take the M:TG analogy, you would start drawing your cards, lay down your lands, summon some creatures, bla bla bla, all that to defeat some silly goblin you could presumably bonk on the head as your character anyhow.

If you really want to have characters running around the realm, then you need to have some mechanism for them to represent themselves as cards – that was the point of my post. For after all, unlike in M:TG where the "wizards" are just some funny story layered on top of the card game, in your world they will be extremely tangible beings. And that is the crux of the issue.
11 Mar, 2010, Runter wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
I disagree that you have to fight things which have cards to play. We've already established that the cards represent other things. I don't see why these micro battles could represent specific challenges put together in a certain way. These battles could be quite a bit more interesting than what I think is being represented here—sentiments equivalent of killing a fido. It's likely they'd be more like fighting a formation of enemies that interact in a particular way. Like bandits at a road block.


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If you really want to have characters running around the realm, then you need to have some mechanism for them to represent themselves as cards – that was the point of my post. For after all, unlike in M:TG where the "wizards" are just some funny story layered on top of the card game, in your world they will be extremely tangible beings. And that is the crux of the issue.


Would that reduce the tediousness of trivial encounters?
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