Another Broken Idea
polycounter lvl 18
Hey, I just wanted to just share some more stupid game ideas I've been playing with lately. I've been evolving a magic skill system idea. It doesn't work or make much logical sense right now, much like the other ones I've made, but they were fun to dream up. I'm hoping to make this at least work as a card or dice game some how and maybe play it with some friends. I am trying to give it rules and stuff so it will eventually make sense and I'm having fun with it. I've always wanted to create a game where I could duel different magic users and this is the result of that. My hopes is to give the game enough rules to where one could attack, counter, defend, and heal. I have no idea what I'm doing, or how I would achieve it, but I don't really care. Right now I'm working on some wacky magic system. My hopes is that, in the end it will be based off of opposites and has an on going spider and web theme, something that felt aesthetically pleasing when associated with magic. Hopefully I can just tweak shit until it becomes functional. *pushes up glasses and breaths heavily through his nose*
So here is what I have so far. I'll show more if I ever make something of it.
These were me imagining some rules for deriving skill points and stuff and just comparing the results of these arbitrary rules I made up. The results seem really erratic, but it seem like a good enough place to start from.
Character 1
Character 2
Character 3
So here is what I have so far. I'll show more if I ever make something of it.
These were me imagining some rules for deriving skill points and stuff and just comparing the results of these arbitrary rules I made up. The results seem really erratic, but it seem like a good enough place to start from.
Character 1
Character 2
Character 3
Replies
damn you
The most crazy complex, simple idea I've seen in a while. Are you thinking this will be a Paper/Pen game or is most of this going to be handled behind the scenes in an MMO or RPG?
Your characters seem kind of watered down, I don't know anything about the stats or what they represent or how they factor into anything, but I'd imagine people would tend to weight their characters more heavily in one or two categories, you seem to kind of spread the points out all over the place?
Can you plug any node into any other node or are there rules?
Random idea: It would kind of cool to have the web come up as part of the UI, kind of like D&D Temple of Elemental Evil. I guess the radial menu is used in more games but that's the only one I can think of right now...
I've loosely defined some stuff, but haven't decided what their stats would represent. It's all rough and very place holder that I am toying with. I'm going at creating a foundation for something at a very relaxed pace, I'm in no hurry and am just having fun.
I am playing a home brew paper/pen game with some old friends of mine again, I've gotten back into that stuff. It's been a lot of fun, and maybe this can become something usable in their game as well. Ultimately, I'd love the idea to evolve into something that would become feasible for a video game. I've been brainstorming some ideas that are not really worth mentioning. I highly doubt it will get to that point but it would be cool. I do think it wouldn't be too impossible to develop the game into a small card or dice game, like I had typed. Even if I wanted to take it further, that wouldn't be a bad place to take it.
Since you guys are curious, I can try to explain a little about what I'm doing - it's really not all that cool or final - it may seem that way, that's kinda what I wanted. I want it to look cool and essentially see if I can't inject some sense, breath some actual life into it. I had this theme for webs, spiders, and the number 8 in mind while creating it, so it seems fitting to create from this idea and spread from it, like a spider bite.
I'm coming up with the numbers in the fields just to see what would result from some arbitrary rules I'd defined in my head.
I decided to make these set "Web" pattern things that were comprised of strings. I decided they would be comprised of 8 strings that would be spun from the start node denoted by color and could branch from another but would need to spin into a node. Each string would have a value of 1 and a branch would combine the value it was branching from; If a thread branched from 2, it would equal 3. Fairly simple. When threads converged into the same node, their values would combine. Threads couldn't cross within the pattern itself and each node would be assigned one Web. All arbitrary rules.
After creating some Web patterns to play with, I'd assign one to each glyph and would enter the step values into the little Weave section, horizontally. Once that was done, I'd reference it vertically and would tally up how many 1,2,3's etc. were in each row in the Arc section, thinking this could be used as number of times a skill could be used, I'm not sure if it would work - I've been changing stuff around looking for different relationships or possible things to do with it, just having some fun, really. It's all very wonky and isn't anything of substance currently.
I started playing with the Word section, it's intended use being to fill holes in your skills or try and stack certain ones. There is much more to do, but maybe that can give you a general sense of what I was doing with all those numbers and stuff. Again, nothing cool, just playing around.
This all reminds me of the talks we used to have regarding the liquid, evolutionary visual path we wanted magic to take - glad to see you're trying to set down some rules and make it have an internal logic.
I reeeeeally like the different ways of interpreting the information you've got down. numbers and grids for precise knowledge for those new to the systems. but you've also got the colored webs, each one unique according to the stat distribution, which can be read by an expert at a glance. the choice of power distribution creates for you a unique sigil that is both awesome looking and informative. I've not seen that done so well anywhere else, and it excites my pants region.
the way i read it, the Line, Word and Arc are different ways of looking at the magic. not different schools, but different vantage points. if magic was a lake in a valley, these would be three different peaks - everyone looks at the same thing, but can have vastly different takes on it. this adds an extra layer of individualism to a character - someone might have the same web loadout as you, but they're under Arc while you're under Word; your magics could be completely unrecognizable.
Bah! anyways. just throwing out what's in my head when i looked at it.
this feels like the sort of thing that needs to be discussed over a beer
Commanding LoreWeaver!
no...
no.
/logout
Making the game work with the D20 system was a priority of mine. I have a group of high school friends that are playing a home-brew pen/paper game (It's a dumbed-down version of D&D my friend has been developing for a few years) if it would be okay with him, we could try and incorporate it into his campaign game. If it were functional enough, I feel certain it could be, I could use those gaming sessions as free think-tanks. With these awesome dorks "anything" and "everything" does, and can happen. *nerd-snort/chuckle*
We have a boardgame night every other Friday night with another group of dudes from college and I'm hoping we can take a pause from playing Munchkin or BattleTech or Killer Bunnies or whatever, to present to them a draft of my game we could try playing and see what input they might have. I'm interested to see how it fairs with 4 players. There were times, while playing tonight, we had to stop and discuss things to clarify stuff and discuss new ideas, and I'm hoping for more of that x4. Ultimately, this approach has made way for some welcomed progress on the idea.
We decided to focus on roughly framing the game parameters and define the battle actions for this portion of the game. I'm hoping to later create a way the leveling can work by creating a scenario where low level characters depend on each other to progress forward but shifts as they all grow in levels and their win states conflict in order to win the game (Essentially encouraging the players to stroke their ego and confide in their Narcissistic ways *nudges John Warner*). The goal, for this mock-playtest was to dispose of your opponent, simple as that. To tie the game into the D20 system, we used the initiative system as a cornerstone.
We used Character 1 and Character 2 sheets I had shared earlier.
We focused on developing the actions we would need to battle and chose to use the Arch as our playground and ignored the other numerical fields.
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These are the rules we roughed out tonight:
Whomever kills the other, wins.
We start by rolling initiative (D20), the highest roll wins.
Whomever wins initiative, begins the round. Each player has 3 actions per round. We used the tallies in the Arch field as ability tokens and the 8 verbs that run the side of the field as our choice of actions. The Rune-like words that run the top of the field defined the Glyph association, which would determine it's effects and usefulness.
Once the opponent has completed declaring his actions, the next player takes his turn to perform his 3 actions.
When a player is successfully harmed, they lose an action. Once you lose all 3 of your actions, you are dead. The remaining player, wins the game. Healing or reviving a dead player grants them an additional action with the original base-maximum of 3 actions.
Actions:
1. Channel
Essentially this is the ability to cast an attack of energy that if a player is successfully hit with, they lose 1 round-action. Di Channeling restores lost actions.
2. Protect
This ability strengthens the defense of a spell, making it 1 time harder to disrupt. The defense must be destroyed before it can be neutralized or altered. You can remove it with a Weaken or Channel of the same Glyph.
3. Add
This enables the caster to inject a spell with another, potentially causing the spell to do 1 additional damage per child spell. It will cost 1 additional Channel Arc token. The child spell is dependent on the parent's defense and will be destroyed if its parent spell is destroyed. Adding Di to a spell heals on contact.
4. Reflect
This ability Reflects a spell to a chosen target, the original target is unharmed.
5. Weaken
This ability negates a protection spell.
6. Take
This ability enables a player to absorb a spell, withholding it and after the round has ended, he has fully absorbed it and can cast it as a free action whenever they chose to.
7. Alter
This grants the ability to change the Glyph class of a spell, turning a heal into an attack, or the other way around. But unlike the Add ability, it doesn't cost an additional Arch Token.
8. Cancel
This will dis-spell ALL magic being cast from a single caster, including multiple Protections.
Counter-Actions:
You can only make a Counter-Action against a spell so long as they share the same Glyph. A Counter-Channel of the same Glyph neutralizes the other, "Fighting KIR with KIR". You can, however, neutralize a spell by Adding a Channel of the Spell's opposing Glyph. Countering by Adding a KOR-Channel spell to an attacker's KIR-Channel attack, for example, would negate the attack. Just KOR-Channeling will not negate the spell, it requires an Add.
There is more stuff I'm missing but plan to write it all out eventually so we can play here soon.
Some cool stuff happened. Evan attempted creating what we dubbed a "Sun" to lob at me. He used his 3 turns to Channel a MZI ball, Take it (storing it as a free action after this round), and Add by Channel, a NON ball. He risked a hit in order to try it. He won initiative for the next round and on his next turn, he was able to Protect the outer MZI ball and then Add another KIR ball in the next round (His hit caused him to loose an action) None of the Glyphs in this "Sun" where opposites so it was legal by our rules. It would be interesting to see if 4 players could contribute as many spells as they could into two large Suns and make them collide.
Here is an illustration of the first 2 rounds of 10:
We are wearing beautiful wizard dresses. So how it played out was the blue player won initiative and got to attack, and did so by hurling 3 KIR attacks. Green responded with a variety of counter attacks; Reflecting one back, "Fighting KIR with KIR", and Adding DI to the 3rd, which does hit, but received an instant Heal on impact.
In round 2, the reflected KIR attack is carried over. Blue wins initiative. Blue reflects the KIR back again! Then chucks 2 OD at green. Green responses by neutralizing The reflected KIR with an Add-KOR, "Fights OD with OD", and Takes the final attack and stores it as a free action for the coming rounds.
Using these basic rules, we seemed to be able hobble along and we were able to laugh and enjoy ourselves. Being drunk and naked always helps, of course, but in the end we were able to play some form of a game from start to finish that ended up being 10 rounds before Character 2 prevailed victoriously. I'd say it was an invaluable play test for the idea.
So that's where it's at hopefully that makes some sense. It's still broken. *grin*
Dookie's "Commanding LoreWeaver" will be taken into serious consideration. *smashes ipod in fist*
pliang: One word pitch, hmm? ... and an opening for a real horoscope? .... *bites tongue*
You have a gift. That seems like a real slow-ball; Low-hanging fruit. I'll just be going this way, you can go that way.
And YES Ian! All that stuff we thought about back in the day is a far off goal and there are those old lingering intentions in the mix here. Thanks a lot for throwing me those words they were really encouraging.