Rereading some of the old threads, I got to myself thinking. Seems quite a few want there to be a "Lusternia Collectible Card Game". But I haven't really seen any good suggestions for how to put this through. Collectible cards alone may be easy enough, but then you need all sorts of rules if those games are going to be used in a game of sorts. People generally don't buy M:tG or Pokemon cards just to look at the pretty pictures. And since in a TCG in Lusternia you can't look at any nifty art anyway, you're going to need to have some way to use the cards if you want there to be some interest.

So, I make this thread to brainstorm.

One of the first questions to ask is how to handle the issue of Action Economy. How many actions can you perform in a round? If you have summoned creatures, how many can attack, and how many can act? How many energy cards can you play out? How many spells, and are spells played before or after creatures? The value of a card is dependant on how well it helps you beat the enemy. And how well it helps you beat the enemy depends on how and when you can play it.

Then there needs to be a victory condition. Is victory dependant upon depleting an imaginary HP counter of the opponent? Destroying all his shields? Emptying his deck? Defeating monsters and drawing a prize card until you're all out of prize card? The cards need to be designed around the win condition. All of them have their merits, so this would be a question of flavour I'd say, but still a question that would have to be answered before any card is even made.

Thirdly. Energy. If it's land in M:tG or energy cards in Pokemon, there's always cards which you want a ton of in your deck because they allow you to do pretty much everything. Sure, you could design around it and not have any energy whatsoever, but then again, Lusternia already has the flavour to support energy. Either through nexii power, or the various landscapes the major orgs are based around. So a card could require you to tap a pool of stars and two eternal flames, or require those energy cards attached prior before one can use it. This depends on if you're going the Pokemon route, M:tG route, or something entirely new altogether, but something entirely new may be unneccessarily complicated for a gold sink that's supposed to be fun to play with. Still, the main question is. "Energy? Yes or no?"

Then there are what other types of cards there are. If you have an energy stockpile you want to use it for something, but that something may be anything from monsters to attack for you, to spells that perform an effect instantly. It's every card that isn't an energy type card. What are they?

Those are the four questions I feel should be brainstormed first if there's ever going to be a Lusternia TCG. It's far too early to start talking about letting bookbinders make CCG collection books, or giving artisans trading tables for card trading, or selling boosterpacks for 25k gold a piece before the game itself is developed.

But maybe one day soon, with enough feedback, the card-factory can begin.

I play Fillin, and his entering play effect destroys all other cards on the field. <.<

I play choke as an area effect, it allows me to play the ' on forums until something gets nerfed' card on Fillin

Damn, foiled again. But better to hold the choke until you have P5th. Instant win.

I play willpower drain and stall until I win.
Edit:
I've only ever played Yu-gi-oh/Yugioh extensively(and a new TCG called Shadow Era, but less so), so can't comment exactly on choosing the MtG/Pokemon routes. But I'd prefer a mixture. A hero card(players), allies(denizens/beast/other players), resource for big effects(power), skill cards(abilities), items, etc. Just my few jumbled thoughts on the matter. More when I think some up.

Oh man....

*crack knuckles*



The question will be if you want this IN GAME or out. In game will have to be a little more simplified, so I will assume that one first.



Action Economy Options:
- "Cost" set every turn. For instance lets say you have "nexus power" of 10, every turn it goes back to 10. You could play several small units or one super large one. This would lead into questions of drawing though.
- "Cost" added every turn. You have nexus power 10 but you gain say 2/3 every turn. So if you burn 10 on a super character you are weak next turn.
- One unit per turn (ala yugioh). Super strong units can be limited in some other way like "tributes" or special costs. Evolutions yada yada.
- Your deck is based your units, but your units are all out at the start. For instance the deck could be "swing", "crucify" etc and you need a unit who can use it.



Make a base condition, which could be like the following:
- Running out of "life"
- Losing a special unit (general for instance)
- Winning set battles.
- Clearing enemy field if there is some limit on units in deck etc



Energy options:
- Cards act on their own, depending on the play method labeled above.
- You use nexus power or whatever when you want to attack too.
- You have cards to attack if your units are not played, but you start with them.



This falls back to what kind of play method you have. If your deck has cards for attacks then attack is one card, etc etc.


This depends largely on how readily available you want this, I could list some examples but that could skew your natural urge to design it.

Wasn't this one of my crazy-ass suggestions that everyone ignored (except for like... one or two people)?


Funnily, I knew how it would work...

I think this idea is at least as old as the (now gone) topic on a lusternia rpg.

Still waitin for thoughts on what was bein looked for so we could try to flesh!

Funny you make this thread, take a look here: http://forums.achaea.com/index.php?app=for...amp;pid=1293498

I always believed in you.

In game would be preferred. Hence the rules should be simple enough that if Esty and her crew like the idea and want to make it, it'll be doable without more lines of code than what the whole of Lusty put together. You did give me some ideas though.

Play starts with each player laying out a nexus card of a certain flavour. (Taint/Wyrd/Sea/Forest/Tundra/Desert/Jungle/Mountains?). The nexus starts with X power. Basically health.

A coinflip decides who begins. Turn order goes as such.

Resolve any cards that take effect at the beginning of Player Y's turn.
Player Y draws a card.
Player Y plays essence cards.
Player Y plays permanent spellcards.
Player Y plays creature cards.
Creatures who can attack attacks.
Unused energy from essence cards is added to your nexus.
Resolve any cards that take effect at the end of Player Y's turn.

Whomever drains their opponents nexus to 0 first wins.

Here is the twist though. Nexus power is not just your "health" but also the energy you use to pay for spells. Essence cards are played and add energy to your nexus every round. Your nexus power can be used as "colourless power" or as... well "Jungle power" if you have the Jojobo nexus. But if you have four fire-essence cards in play, you have each round 4 "desert power" as well. That make sense?

Playing like that, all spells and creatures end up essentially costing health, providing an interesting dynamic while still not being overly complicated from a rules-POV.

On the other hand, I wouldn't understand "simple" if it bit me in the nose, so I may be having entirely the wrong idea.

Oi... Great minds think alike?

Not my fault I have the weird hobby of collecting traditional game systems. It is an addiction.

What have I been playing?

An FPS where we act out the cut scenes, as Lendren says.

They wanted a SEPARATE rpg, like separate console application 1 player game.



As to the essence card thing, seems better to have it just auto grow on its own every turn. That way you do not have to

• Keep track of Essence cards per deck.
• Do not have to edit your deck for essence cards.
• The above mean we can have lower deck sizes than most games.

We would want simple, lower memory usage, and customizable. Should be easy to add cards really.

As to the topic on achaeas forums, I would play a CCG but I do not know about trying to make it pay based. I would however think it would attract different demographics and share alot of the same ones. Card games like Tyrant do just fine even with a minor pay (aka pay for perks) model, and I think with a unique design IRE could easily do the same.

While I agree that smaller decks could be interesting, if we don't have essence, how would you track flavour? If one nexus could only ever use one type of spells, it'd shut down creativity with deck building. On the other hand, it would be far easier to balance. Still, I'd prefer it if you could... say, field an archlich while having the Ravenwood as your nexus.

Do you have an idea for how else you can include multi-coloured decks?

Special artifact cards could allow your power to count as something else. But this kind of depends on if you start with units or have to play them too.

I feel like that's contrary to Lusternia's setup; you'd have to 'co-opt' another Nexus to use its abilities.

So, maybe allow you to play more than one nexus, but the amount of essence you get per turn is split equally amongst them. Beyond that it just doesn't make sense to me.

Could make energies into types.


For example, Megalith would have city and tainted while the Moonhart would have nature and pure. Or something like that. It still restricts to types, but you could play anything in those types which allows for more variety.