Talk:Chronogeddon CCG card set

Publicising the Project

Would it be a good idea to put a message on some google or yahoo groups (for example) saying that this project exists and wants input?--James 06:31, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

If you know any good, relevant groups, then go for it, by all means. --Kevan 18:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Is everyone else OK with me doing this? If so, here's a possible wording. Please leave comments here --James 10:39, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

That you even ask???? GO FOR IT!!!!!!!! B-) --Joeyeti 10:51, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

If this idea is acceptable, I'll leave the wording here and a list of where I've put it, so that other people can do the same if they want without people getting it twice. --James 10:53, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Some people on this list [in this group / on this forum] might be interested in this. We've recently started working on a project that, as far as we know, is pretty unique. The idea is to set up a game which works like a collectible card game, but which is 'open-source': free, non-profit, and created entirely by its players. The game will also be multi-genred (like GURPS for example), which will allow people to create decks based around whatever theme they're most interested in. If you're interested, please go to the discussion page for the project, which is http://www.dvorakgame.co.uk/index.php/Talk:History_ReZap_%28ideas%29 . This page is a wiki (like Wikipedia), so while you need to set up an account, you don't need to give your email. Thanks, James.

Actually, people do need to set up an account, I'm afraid - MediaWiki sites get spammed to hell if anonymous IPs can edit pages, so I changed a setting to require account creation. --Kevan 11:06, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I've changed it based on this. --James 12:15, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I suppose we should move this page to a more generic placeholder name, as well, if we're giving the URL out. Feel free to use the "move" tab to retitle it. --Kevan 13:44, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Name

Did "History ReZap" come from anywhere particular? Maybe we should throw some names around. I'm a bit of a sucker for "chrono" prefixes - "Chronopocalypse" and "Chronogeddon" are a bit clunky, but "Chronowar" isn't bad. --Kevan 12:39, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Joe: Nope, it was the third thing that came to my mind after some obvious and cliché names ;-) Chronowar is not bad... until a different suggestion! --Joeyeti 13:09, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Apparently there's an online-only CCG called Chron X, though. --James 06:37, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd like a game that suggests that the theme is 'anything', rather than that the theme is 'time travel'. --James 10:40, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh. How wide are you casting "anything"? Surely it wouldn't be appropriate to insert a load of computer hacking cards, or microbial lifeforms, or city construction mechanics, or chess pieces? "Summoning troops from throughout time" seems enough to keep us going for a very long time.

Or are you seeing this more as sketching out a very generic CCG system (goals, combat, etc) that can be split off into GCCG: Chronowar, GCCG: Microbia and so on? --Kevan 11:19, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking this way: if you're going to start a project like this, I'd imagine that people who are interested in it are likely to have a particular theme that they want to do - maybe they play a particular game and they'd like to do something with all those card ideas they have, or they've always wanted a game based on a particular film, or whatever. So the challenge is to come up with a way that everyone can get what they want.

My suggestion of time/'dimensional' travel was intended to be a way of 'explaining' how these different genres can be interacting. Obviously some people might like the theme of 'time travel' itself, and that's fine, and it does offer ideas for various cards and mechanisms as we've seen here, but if it's presented to people as "this is a game about time travel" then that's just effectively picking a particular theme.

I think that the examples you came up with could easily be integrated into the 'story' as we've come up with it so far. --James 12:42, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

That's fair enough. Having a tighter theme makes design more focused, though, and I'd have thought that was an important thing for the early days of a collaborative CCG. Diversity is fine if there's a tested archetype to work from, but I think we need to work together to build that archetype, first. It's much easier to design solo expansions if you know the basic shape of the game, the stats of an average card, which types of mechanics are and aren't allowed, and what sorts of cards and effects are going to exist in other people's decks.

At the moment we're still sitting around discussing things purely theoretically - we need to start venturing example cards and eventually building enough so that we can playtest the system, playing out a lot of games against each other, building decks from the same small card pool. It seems a bit early to be asking people to write their own personal-favourite expansions. --Kevan 13:38, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Theme

I suppose we should get the theme clear, before going too far anything else. The basic concept of the game is going to be "a war fought by soldiers from different time periods", from what's been said on the list, yes? With the players' characters being some sort of time-controlling generals able to summon forth troops from anywhen in the past or the future? Are we going to worry about the mechanics of time travel between years to fetch things, or are the players just pulling units and buildings straight into existence on the battlefield? --Kevan 17:19, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Joe: Yup, I would see it like that. I guess Time Travel would not need to be involved that much, maybe just as some Actions, affecting the Battlefield or some Things that would be persistent and would be a result of a mishappened Time Travel. So just minor affections. --Joeyeti 08:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Number of players

Basic question: would this game be a "1 on 1" or "1 on many"? --Joeyeti 11:54, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd prefer it to be multi-player. The reason for this is that we all seem to be assuming that there's going to be a 'rock-scissors-paper' element to the game, where decks of one type might tend to beat decks of another, even if the two decks are equally well-constructed. Even if we didn't want to have such an element, it would probably tend to happen anyway.

If this is true, then you might tend to get situations in a two-player game, where it's obvious who's going to win as soon as you start. "I'm playing superheroes, you're playing ancient Romans, I'm going to lose, how about we save 20 minutes and I just give up now."

A multi-player game would tend to create more complicated, and therefore more interesting situations, and have an evening-out effect where "OK, we're both playing 'rock', and you're playing 'paper', but if we gang up on you we can clip back your advantage". Thus making the game more interesting. --James 10:37, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

When I talked about the rock-paper-scissor thing, I didn't mean that it would lead to foregone conclusions - like the aggro-control-combo trinity in Magic, there'd still be the random element of which cards actually get drawn, and a lot of hybridisation to stop a given deck from being too specialised ("My mediaeval deck can defend very strongly against far-future attackers, but I'd better throw a couple of rayguns in, even if they're tricky for my troops to operate, just in case they come up against a WW2 deck").

I'd like to see a game that worked as both 1-on-1 and 1-on-many. --Kevan 11:31, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Structure

Washing up and listening to Circulus, it struck me that past/present/future makes quite a nice paper/scissor/stone model, which is a good base to build a CCG on. The post-industrial present beats the distant past because it has science and technology, the alien future beats the present by having better science that's geared to defeating or seizing control of puny 20th century weapons, and the mediaeval past beats the future either through its lack of reliance on technology, or (probably more interestingly) through its vague mystic powers. We needn't explicitly define the three eras, but a general tendency for each of them to be vulnerable to the people and artifacts of one other might be a good thing to keep in mind. --Kevan 17:19, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Joe: Question is if only 3 different time Epochs would be sufficient for such a game? Maybe from the Start yes with possible other Epochs coming in after testing the basic Idea first. --Joeyeti 08:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

No, I deliberately avoided the word "Epoch", I just meant that there could be a general tendency for the present to beat the past, the future to beat the present and the past to beat the future. Narrowly-defined Epochs seem like probably the best way of defining who can use which equipment, I'm completely in favour of those. --Kevan 12:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Better science: The alien future could be based on biotech, which is particularly susceptible to mediaeval magic, but highly resilient against industrial attacks. -- Eswald

Joe: Good idea. So Biotech is minor to medieval Magic, medieval Armor and Weapons are minor to present Weapons and Armor and present Weapons and Armor are minor to future Biotech. What about the otherway around? How can present armies beat future, how can medieval fight against present and how would future crush medieval warriors with magic? --Joeyeti 08:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

There could be a card based on the Grandfather Paradox, where if a character is destroyed, then a character from a later era is also destroyed - or which stops an attempt by a character to destroy another from their past. --James 12:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Joe: Good Idea! Of course we have to make the mechanics and dependencies as to which Unit or Thing is depending on what... if that "what" becomes destroyed (and/or possibly otherwise influenced?). --Joeyeti 13:09, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Mechanics

What cards should exist? Troops? Buildings? Weapons? Armour? State-based effects like Fog and Festivals? What's the object of the game? Is there only one way to win? --Kevan 17:19, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Joe: Troops for basic fighting, Buildings for defense, Armour for defense, Weapons for offense, Magic for offense (Medieval), Stand-alone effects (raising attack and/or morale), Time Events (influencing the Battlefield), general Events (influencing certain Rules in the Game or other conditions), Win Conditions (for each Epoch or Army), Lose Conditions (maybe)... Any other Ideas? --Joeyeti 08:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

So tightening that up...

• Troop cards. Which can be generic soldiers, individual heroes, groups, or monsters. Probably lump "vehicles" in here as well.
• Terrain cards. Rather than 'building', it's probably useful to be more generic (and "terrain" could include things like Fog).
• Equipment cards. Any card which gets attached permanently to a troop card. Should we lump weapons and armour and gadgets and everything together? Or at least have them as subtypes. Could treat vehicles as equipment, if we're considering them to be driven or piloted by specific troops.
• Event cards. As standard Dvorak Actions. Subtypes of "Temporal" for cards that delve into timelines, and "Spell" for magical effects, if we're using magic in the game. (Given that only a small percentage of the troops will be capable of magic, spells probably wouldn't merit an entire card type to themselves.)

Extra victory conditions can be attached onto random troops or terrains or anythings, if we need them, although we haven't really discussed victory conditions yet. --Kevan 14:59, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

How are we going to stop cavemen from driving tanks? Give each card a simple Epoch and have a global rule that troops can't operate things that come from a later Epoch? Or give each card a detailed year, and ban a soldier from 1916 from being able to drive a 1941 tank? --Kevan 17:19, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Joe: We should set some basic Rules for the entire game (whether based on the current Card List - with possible Amendments with future development - or set generally independent of the existing Cards) with some Cards influencing those basic Rules. Depends on the Number of different Epochs. --Joeyeti 08:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Victory conditions

Basic question is if Victory Conditions will be set-up for the whole game generally - like obliterate the enemy, or will be Cards with limited amound in each player's deck which he would lay down and try to achieve? Another question would be if they can be influenced somehow by other players or are "invulnerable"? --Joeyeti 15:20, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

If it's a "war" theme, straight obliteration seems best. We could always some bury some weird and difficult victory conditions in the cards, though, the same way the Magic The Gathering does.

"Obliteration" is tricky to quantify, though, as both players should have a chance to build up an army before it can be obliterated (if you play a single troop card on your first turn, and I obliterate it with an action card, that shouldn't mean I've won). Giving the players their own life totals and having them attacked directly when they have nothing to defend themselves is the usual way to go. Might be thematically elegant to use the draw piles for this, with direct player damage translating into cards being discarded from the top of the draw pile - your draw pile would be your "time rift", and when there's no longer anything to come through it, you're eliminated from the game. --Kevan 12:43, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, good idea Kevan! Dont know if any other game uses that, but it is quite original! Thus the player would have no means to prepare any strong cards as he cant see the shuffled deck at the beginning. Only catch would be if he gets only weak or unplayable cards up-front so the opponent can crush him until he catches breath.
Therefore we would need to establish a mechanism maybe for building up the armies... --Joeyeti 13:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

This mechanism is used (and probably patented) by a horrible Harry Potter-themed CCG.

Decipher used a similar system for the original Star Wars CCG (and the similar Wars TCG) - "damage" was dealt through your deck (cards that you play cycle underneath). AnyGould 03:37, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to see some special victory conditions, although there could still be a general one encoded in the rules. A mechanism I was thinking of was a goal which requires you to steal or destroy a particular card or cards, and those cards are in your deck but get played into the control of another player. For example assassinate someone, steal x number of treasures from particular epochs, see x number of wonders of world history, capture villains etc. --James 06:24, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

"Alter the timeline" has some interesting possibilities, but it would be a very different game than "clobber your enemies". AnyGould 03:37, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Banned mechanics

And oh, what format are we developing this for? Apprentice, Gatling, real-pieces-of-cardboard, web-turn-based, or what? We should all be aware of which mechanics and assumptions we can and can't use, accordingly. --Kevan 19:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Joe: Depends. Best thing would be a basic real-piece-of-cardboard game (for me). If anyone would find or make a Web Client for this, it could be modified for it. Again, only my idea ;) --Joeyeti 08:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Card Ideas

Card ideas, based on the info so far:

Card Name: Sea / Land / Air
Card Type: (Thing) Location
Card Text: Sea / Land / Air space is brought into play, a conflict can be forged with aquatic / land / air units.
When this card is destroyed, all remaining aquatic / land / air forces must withdraw to respective player's hand.

Comments: This card could be destroyed with a Victory Condition or another type of Action Card.

I think we need to come up with a few very basic cards to get an idea of their scope, before we start throwing out ideas for special ones. (Nobody had even mentioned "locations" or aquatic/land/air troop types, or even troop types at all, before this!) We should pick a range of card types, back in the Mechanics section, so that we know what scopes we're working in. --Kevan 14:48, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Joe: I know I know :) I just didnt want to lose that Idea that crept into my mind... happens often you know ;) --Joeyeti 15:15, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion

Why don't you do a small deck with what you have and see how it works? Zaratustra 02:44, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we've got enough of a skeleton yet - we need a victory mechanism and presumably some sort of combat system, before we can know what the cards are going to do. --Kevan 12:38, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Small Mechanics Suggestion

• Every Thing has a 'year' which represents 'where' it's meant to be when it comes into play.
• Cards can be said to be 'earlier' or 'later' than each other, and can be said to 'near' each other (eg if they're within 10 years) or not.
• Various cards modify a card's year.

sub-suggestion, based on the film Time Bandits:

• fantasy cards have a year of X, and so are 'near' each other but not earlier or later than any other card.

--James 06:13, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Simpler version of the above, based on the Dream Park role-playing game:

• Things have one of a few tags, for example Ancient, Historical, Modern, Futuristic, or Magical. --James 07:03, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Tags seem easier and make more sense, I think; there's no reason why a soldier from 1945 couldn't drive an SUV from 2003. Having to pay careful attention to years seems like it'd make deck building more arbitrarily restrictive, and gameplay too easy to make tiny mistakes with.

Might be nice to use years and tags at the same time (maybe an Epoch symbol in the corner, with the year printed underneath); years would mostly be an aesthetic detail, but could be invoked for occasional cards like Grandfather Paradox. --Kevan 12:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I would also vote for more general Epoch distinction than with years, as 5 or 6 different Epochs are more distinguishable than years. --Joeyeti 13:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, so perhaps something like this:

• All Things have two Epoch values: Current Epoch (C.E.), and Originating Epoch (O.E.).

• C.E. represents where in time the Thing is 'now'. O.E. represents where the Thing comes from.

• When a card comes into play, its C.E. and O.E. are the same, and are taken from what's printed on the card.

• Both C.E. and O.E. must always be one of Ancient, Historical, Modern, Futuristic, or Legendary(?)

• Things are near each other if they have the same C.E.

• If there are two Things, and neither of them have an O.E. of Legendary, and their O.E.s are different, if Thing A is from an earlier Epoch than Thing B then Thing A is earlier than Thing B, and Thing B is later than Thing A. Note that earlier and later are based on O.E. whereas near is based on C.E. --James 17:49, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Interesting; how are you keeping track of CE during the course of a game? You could split the table into physical "zones" and have cards moved between them. Could mark the zones by having "Epoch" cards as part of the game - players can choose up to three to have in their deck, and both players put all their Epoch cards on the table at the start of the game, to divide it up into 3-6 Epochs. --Kevan 18:24, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking of having cards, which aren't part of the deck but just used as markers, which have the name of an Epoch on them, and they're put under a Thing if that Thing isn't in its original Epoch. --James 06:04, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Moving units around through time opens up some new ideas, and might make for some neat game balance - a Mecha-Colossus is invulnerable in the Future, but if your opponent can force you to fight on his home turf in the Ancient Epoch, there's no electricity to power it and it just gets dismantled by stone axes. --Kevan 18:17, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Which, hm, maybe suggests a victory mechanism similar to the Provinces in Legend of the Five Rings; there could be some way for Epochs to be won or lost, and if you lose X of your Epochs, you lose the game. Maybe some mechanic for "closing a rift" if you've achieved supremacy within that Epoch, however we define that - the Epoch card gets flipped over, and you leave your troops trapped in that Epoch to show that you've won it. First to claim more than half the Epochs on the table wins the game. --Kevan 18:24, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Having looked at my suggestion again, Current Epoch and Originating Epoch could become Location and Origin. The downside being that some games use 'Location' to mean a type of Thing (eg cities or bases), so that type of Thing would need to be called something else.

The earlier/later mechanism might be a bit complicated. Although it suggests some interesting cards. --James 06:02, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Joe: I would say it is enough to mark the Cards with Origin. As they will be played they could be collected in front of the player above a Supplemental Current Epoch Card as you suggested above. Then all players would battle in various Epochs (if they would have the Cards in that Epoch - marked with their Supplemental Cards) with the units they have in that Epoch. If none, then a player would not participate in that Epoch Battle. --Joeyeti 10:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I think if we use Epoch marker cards to divide the table up, it'll be easy enough to see which are earlier and later - we can put the actual years on the marker cards, since the cards are only aesthetic, and players would only have to arrange them in the right order once, at the beginning of the game. Once you're playing, it's easy enough to see that all the cards to the right of the "Mediaeval" battlefield are in its future. (Although I'm not sure how weird it'll be to have one player viewing the timeline from the wrong side, if they're facing each other across a table. It'd be fine in online engines, though.) --Kevan 13:24, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Joe: Or the Epoch cards could be of a different Colour to be distinguishable, with a possible small Patch of the Colour of the Epoch that is "inferior" to that one. Say, Future is Dark Blue and Present is Dark Green. Then Future would have a patch of Dark Green on the right side of the Title to indicate it "can" beat the Present (or is in some cases stronger against it). --Joeyeti 13:34, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

That would limit the insertion of later Epochs, which seems needlessly restrictive. If we give them start years and end years, it's easy enough to sort them by "start year" when playing them out across the table. --Kevan 11:09, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Joe: Maybe giving Centuries rather than start and end Years.... I dont think that much things change in a Century ;) --Joeyeti 12:59, 9 February 2007 (UTC)