Magic: RPG, Revisions - 03

So after talking with a friend about how the system is shaping up, we had a few breakthroughs as to what we envisioned the system. One thing we wanted to be sure of: The game is secondary to the flavor of Magic. We won't compromise on small details like the color distribution of wedge/shards when possible but will definitely let that take a back seat to what makes sense in the Magic game. So, what changes were made? I'll post two pics to go over the schools for each color.

Version 1.0

First I'll go over why I had a few of the colors the way they are so that I can explain what was changed and for what reasons. This is how it initially was:

Red has Temporal Magic: I had counter magic under the temporal domain as well as uncounter-magic. It made sense that to understand counter-magic would allow you to protect yourself from it so Red got it. This could also be a source for haste and first strike in Red as well.

Green has Energy Magic: Energy covered elemental and enchantment. It let you make fire/water/ice elementals and what fueled spells to become temporary and permanent enchantments. Paired up with blue and white, these three deal with enchantment and interact with them the best. Black and red both have a hard time touching enchantments so this made sense.

Having these two there made some sense with these ideas, but a few things were really awkward. Boros has their overlapping schools as Temporal and that just made no sense. Simic has Energy and that was kind of awkward. I could reason that Enchantments is how the Cytoplast works, as a physical manifestation of mana. Izzet has temporal magic which makes sense. Still, Boros was the biggest offender and I had to rethink how this was going to work. After some discussion with a friend, we came up with a good  This is the new chart.

Version 2.0

Red has Energy Magic: What falls under Energy has changed. Enchantments are now part of Temporal magic to make. Energy currently only has 'elemental' which 'kind of' works for blue and red, not so much for white. I'm going to have to revisit what Energy does. The flavor aspect for me needs to be expanded on or changed completely.

Green has Temporal Magic: This was a big change in how I saw things. Temporal magic was used in green as removal for artifacts for accelerated aging and for increasing growth rates. This also gives white/blue/green the combination for having non-threatening removal (pacifism effects, paralyzing grasp, arachnus web) which, for green is kind of a stretch but makes -enough- sense for me to understand.

This makes Boros' overlap Energy which. I don't know what that means anymore. In my mind, direct damage type abilities (Fireball, lightning bolt) is just a manifestation of Physical + Conjure. However, I can argue that can be just for actual solid objects. For things like lightning, where they are not a 'solid' aspect it would make sense. What would that mean for white and blue? This can be part of their warding ability (Sphere of Safety, Hover Barrier). Blue can also use this to create illusions perhaps.

If this is the case, then I can make the argument that Boros uses Energy to throw their lightning helices (apparently that's an acceptable plural for Helix). Selesnya's overlap is now Temporal which works with their removal access and creature growth. Simic touches Temporal now as well and that also makes sense with their belief in manipulating evolution with accellerated eugenics.

The flavor for each guild's overlapping focuses feels MUCH better now. I've also modified some of the keywords in the schools as I feel it is unnecessary or just doesn't fit as well. This is how the current breakdown of each school is:

• Physical
• Living - Affects living creatures only.
• Dead - Affects once living creatures.
• Object - Affects objects that are not living, and has not been living (at least recently)
• Mental
• Skill - Muscle memory, physical skills.
• Emotion - Feels.
• Knowledge - Book smarts.
• Spiritual
• Faith - You know, that stuff. Yeah.
• Empathy - Removed, being merged with Life Force.
• Life Force - This combined with Physical magic can create intelligent living/unliving creatures. It also is used for empathy and can be used to gain/lose life.
• Temporal
• Time - Manipulate time and speed, can counter spells.
• Taxing - Removed, being merged with Time.
• Transport - Used for portals and dimension doors. 
• Enchatnment - Temporal magic now can manipulate magic to be enchantments.
• Astral (Replacement name, temporary placeholder?)
• Energy is used to create walls of force, barriers and energy bolts, and provides illusions with a physical form (though it's fragile).

The second part that requires a lot more work 

Manipulation 1.0

Now don't berate me just yet. There's a lot of work that needs to be done on this one. Red, as always, is a big problem. These are suppose to be manipulations that are easier or more efficient for certain colors. 

• Negate - Creates wards (absorbs spells), counters magic, and banishes summoned creatures and harms living creatures.
• Physical - Creature destruction (black), Wards (what I was thinking was a ward that prevents specific people from passing by), -X/-X (black).
• Mental - School/skill prohibition (discard, black)
• Spiritual - Ghost removal 
• Temporal - Counterspells (Tax), remove temporal enchantments (haste, slow, stop, etc)
• Astral - Counterspells (hard counter), Remove Illusion (blue)
• Sense - To find something 
• Physical - Search for physical aspects (such as scent), alterations
• Mental - Read minds and traces of memories. Zone of truth, mind censor. 
• Spiritual - Search for a person's spirit or ghost, empathy.
• Temporal - Find time distortions. 
• Astral - Find traces of rifts to the blind eternities, traces of astral magic,
• Conjure - To create something in a specific form, summoning components from the blind eternities.
• Physical - Create a physical object. Can create bodies, but no life (needs Spiritual to give it life essence). This is useful for creating mindless drones that can listen to basic commands.
• Mental - Draws inspiration, tap into additional resources
• Spiritual - Create ghosts, instill hope/dread, 
• Temporal - Create time fields, areas of difficult/easier casting. Long term strengthening of mana bonds.
• Astral - Fast mana tapping into the aether. Lightning bolts, walls of force.
• Alter - To change or modify something. While this is similar to conjure, it's a different form to affect something that already exists.
• Physical - To grow, weaken, or alter something physical. It could be to weaken the foundations to a building, strengthen a person, or grow vines.
• Mental - Enrage, mind control, alter memories, blind.
• Spiritual - Purify/corrupt, heal/harm, shroud, uncounterable creatures.
• Temporal - Growth, aging, freezing time, preservation.
• Astral - Redirect spells, modify spells, splice. 
• Forge - To create something false, deception.
• Physical - Create a false objects that can be interacted with but will not last under investigation. Forge documents, forge your looks, create false walls.
• Mental - Fake memories, trick senses. Difference between forge physical and forge mental is subtle sometimes. Physical can make you look like something else. Mental can be you fooling one person.
• Spiritual - Can fake relationships, impersonate someone's life force. 
• Temporal - No idea. Gotta think this one through.
• Astral - Illusions. Need to think of what else goes in here.

Magic: RPG, Character Attributes and Mana Affinity - 02

Thus far, Characters will have several ability scores (that I have yet to flesh out) as well as scores for how much affinity they have for certain mana colors. Unlike magic creatures (and planeswalkers), everyone has at least some affinity for all five colors. What gives creatures their colors is what aspects they have the most affinity with. Characters are a vessel for mana. While most people will make due with what mana they have access to, mages and other spellcasters instead try to bend mana to do their bidding.

Characters will have many attributes, talents and skills combined with their available mana from their mana affinity which will determine their mana pool along with a few other factors like artifacts and lands.

Mana is both really complicated and simple to understand at the same time. We are all made of mana, and everything we know of is made of mana. Mana is the life force coursing through our veins as well as makes up everything we see. Now, that's really loose so I'll try to get more pesudo-science behind it. Mana is drawn from the Blind Eternities, that space between the planes that we know of. Mana is in a constant state of flux and shifting between the planes. The movement is relatively slow, kind of like the shifting of the continental plates. On the small scale it's almost unnoticeable. Dramatic shifts in the flow of mana can change a plane in drastic ways.

Mana sources otherwise are relatively predictable and those who know where mana streams intersect with points in the plane can find places of power. Over the course of time, these places have become places of worship and power. In card game terms, these are non-basic lands, where basic lands are more 'generic', where mana streams are close to but not a focal point. Players (casters and non-casters alike) can tap into these places and draw power to fuel their abilities and spells.

Players themselves are made of mana, and can tap into their own mana to activate abilities and spells. For most, natural mana is enough for most things but truly powerful abilities require the player to tap into additional locations of power that they have become familiar with or magical foci such as signets or keyrunes or through rituals and sacrifices. Characters will draw different kinds of mana based on their personality. Characters with high faith and honor will draw white mana energy to themselves. It's just how mana naturally acts, like a moth to a flame. It's not that moths intentionally find flames, that's just what they naturally look for. Mana is the same way in that specific personality traits synchronize with different kinds of mana.

I wanted characters to have several attributes outside of their mana affinities. In Legend of the Five Rings, each ring provided two attributes which had to be leveled up to level up the ring. Levelling up the ring granted additional abilities, generally very powerful ones. For those who haven't played the game, you had Fire, Air, Earth, Water, and Void. Each ring had two attributes in it's domain, one physical and one mental. Earth has Stamina and Willpower. It also determines how many HP you have. Your Earth rating is the lower of the two attributes under it's domain so being well balanced was necessary to increase your ring powers.

While the system has some really interesting concepts, I don't like the idea of forcing characters to have balanced abilities. Characters with high skill and natural talent is linked to the magic affinity but they are not directly linked together. Right now, there's 5 'schools' with several domains in each school as well as five manipulations. Part of me is -really- annoyed at the lack of symmetry in the focuses with each color and the schools they have. Right now there's shards and two wedges. Grixis, Jund, Bant, and WBG with WUR. The ones missing are Naya, Esper, WBR, UBG, and URG. For the manipulations, it's divided evenly with all the shards and no wedges. Is splitting up the schools I have set up worth the effort for trying to get symmetry? Can I redistribute how the schools are? I have them divided up very flavorfully but it can be done in other ways I'm sure. Here's a picture of how the schools are divided up right now among the colors.

So of course, every color (just like every person) interacts with all five of the schools, but I tried to keep each color with the three aspects they are most focused on. I'll go in order and try to explain my choices in my next post as this one is getting just a tad long. Things I am considering tweaking:

• Schools have three shards and two wedges. Is there a way to alter it to have 5 shards or 5 wedges instead? Currently, the 'manipulations' is 5 shards perfectly and switching schools around to match that would be amazing.
• This would create a neat pattern.
• 5 shards in schools and 5 shards in manipulations works, as well as 5 wedges with 5 shards.
• Another option is to divide up the schools into 10 schools and fill in the blanks with the remaining schools. Problem is I have these already divided up very tightly and don't see much wiggle room.
• This would give us all 10 three color combinations.
• It would be a very neat pattern. 
• A third option is to reduce each color's affinity to two aspects. This would lend to an interesting dynamic of checking which guilds work well together based on what colors they are as there would always (in the best case scenario) be one overlap and two (one from each color) that do not overlap.
• That is would clearly demonstrate what is the most important to the two colors and what other two are next most important, and the last 2 that neither color has affinity for would be the lowest tier.
• This would clean up the chart to the right a lot as there is a pattern right now, it's not really easy to see it and it's not a very good pattern. I think simplifying the game would be a good option and this is getting my top vote right now.

Of course, there's always far more to talk about but I'm going to leave it here and think about it some more. I haven't even gone over what (if any) attributes there are and how they work together. A quick version is that I do want characters who do have little mana affinity and high physical attributes and be bruisers or high intelligence and be good spies and not rely on tapping into that aspect of their lives. Perhaps I should write a few short stories with these concepts in mind where I don't have to worry about numbers or specificity that much and see how well that reception gets.

Magic: RPG, Ravnica: City of Guilds - 01

 I just love Ravnica. I want to gush about Ravnica. It's been the focus of many game design ideas between me and my friends. An RPG setting set in Ravnica would be amazing and I don't see anyone else making it, I want to make it to play in it myself. It's a big order to fill. Ravnica is an extremely fleshed out world and has a lot of lore and powers to balance. Ten guilds and the unguilded, five colors, numerous ranks in each guild and the interactions between guilds. Writing about Ravnica and designing for Ravnica gets my muse tingling and my fingers itching to work.

So I'm going to just write out loud a bit, some thoughts about Ravnica and a look at the system I've been working on. There are five colors in Magic: White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green. Each have proficiency in three of the five major schools of powers. Physical, Mental, Spiritual, Temporal, and Energy. With these, there are five ways to manipulate them: Negate, Sense, Conjure, Alter, and Forge. Each color will use the schools in different ways. If you've ever played Legend of the Five Rings RPG, I'd be hoping to make it similar to that but with more limitations. In L5R, there are no restricted abilities or skills, but they are at a discount or penalty depending on which clan you're from. Crab clan have a history of fighting the Shadowlands so abilities related to that are cheaper. Scorpion are adept at deception so skills relating to those talents are cheaper for them.

In the Ravnica RPG, I wanted the there to be an abundance of magic and to have it be used in a variety of ways. The world is full of magic but not everyone is a wizard. Mana can be tapped by lots of people (and creatures) to help them in different ways. A common soldier may be very emotionally driven and passionate about their duty and access red mana or a studious lawmaker can focus his efforts and be imbued with blue mana. In the system, I wanted each character to have the choice of having access to magic or not. Either way, everyone has attributes (for ability scores like D&D) and mana pools (similar to rings in L5R). Casters are unique in that they focus their effort on manipulating their mana pools or using their mana more efficiently.

White is adept at Spiritual, Temporal, and Energy schools. They are adept at manipulating their magics with Negate, Sense, and Conjure. To throw out some random numbers, it might cost 3 mana to cast a warding spell. If it's of spiritual origin (let's say Divine Ward), it might cost 2. It's also a conjuration spell so it might give a boost of +3 defense instead of +2 defense. Also, the same school/focus may have drastically different spells. In addition, different colors that cast spells from the same school might do it in a different way.

These are the schools and a rough outline of what kind of things these schools affect. Within these schools, each color may only access one or two of them and have unique ones for their color (for instance, counter magic is almost exclusively blue and direct damage is almost exclusively red). Remember, this is a rough fleshing out and everything is subject to change. After each specific aspect of a school will be a few examples of how it works with different colors/manipulations. Here I will try to tie the schools to known magic as much as possible. In future installments, I'll try to link it to more RP related spells and abilities, and go into more depths as to how I'd like the magic system to work. So this will be a somewhat limited because much of MTG doesn't translate to RPG that well. Also I tried to keep examples in Mono-color to really flesh things out without having the issue of multicolor spells mucking it up as to what colors are meant to do.

• Physical - The walls of homes and people inside are objects you can interact with. You can reinforce the structure or add additional walls as well as create a pit or harden your skin. 
• Living - You can affect living creatures in some way. Affecting living things are harder than affecting the dead or objects as they have mana coursing through them. This can be used to conjure a homonculus which is living, but without the addition of Spiritual magic to imbue it with life force, it will be without a life force. You can also create walls and elements necessary for chemical reactions (such as gunpowder or water). You can't summon fire or lightning, or things like that. Those are in the school of Energy/Elemental.
• Alter/Green: Giant Growth
• Negate/Black: Dark Banish
• Forge/Red: Surge of Zeal (Haste)
• Dead  - Affecting the dead is easier than the living but residual lifeforce still can make it challenging. Black will often substitute some 
• Conjure/Black: Raise Dead
• Sense/Green: Golgari Grave-Troll's EtB Ability
• Alter/White: Preserve Body
• Object - Bookshelves, walls, armor, scrolls. Objects are the easiest to affect of the physical school.
• Forge/Blue: Etheral Usher's Ability (unblockable)
• Conjure/Green: Summon Food
• Negate/Red: Shattering Spree
• Mental - Of things affecting the mind. Black will pry information, blue will probe and expand their own mental abilities, and red will instill fury and empathy.
• Skill - Grant or remove skills from the target. Enhance their combat capabilities or diminish their memories of such activities. This is mainly for muscle memory rather than physical prowess. So you can be more efficient at combat or improve your posture for running but it won't give you the stamina you need to maintain or strength to act. Most notably, it can grant/remove skills/key words but not enhance power/toughness that much (it can maximize your capabilities but not improve upon what you can naturally attain).
• Conjure/White - Swift Justice
• Negate/Blue - Turn to Frog
• Alter/Red - Fencer's Magemark
• Emotion - The driving force behind many of Ravnica's residents. Manipulation of emotions can lead to terror, lust, and rage. It can be used to help yourself or harm others.
• Conjure/Red - Incite Hysteria
• Sense/White - Zone of Truth (D&D spell, think of a lie detector. But magical)
• Conjure/Black - Smogsteed Rider (Grants fear)
• Knowledge - Manipulation of the Knowledge domain will allow players to delve deep into their minds to find old knowledge as well as in other people. It can conjure fake memories and steal the thoughts of their enemies, as well as put someone into a mental prison if one should desire. (Thoughts of changing the name of this school to something else. Any ideas?)
• Alter/Blue - Psychic Possession
• Conjure/Black - Agonizing Memories
• Alter/Red - Ignorant Bliss
• Spiritual - This school deals with energies that tie directly with mana itself. Through faith one can tap into these powers for their own ends. Empathy between two energies can be a result of empathy. Life force itself which exists as a form of mana can be twisted and improved if one should choose.
• Faith - To go against logic and putting your trust into an often unseen force. Angels, demons, Gaea, whatever it is that drives you can bless you and help you (or harm others). 
• Negate/White - Faith's Fetters
• Conjure/Black - Unholy Strength
• Conjure/Green - Asceticism
• Empathy - This allows you to. in one way or another, touch someone's feelings. This is different from Mental/Emotion in that it's about feeling something that the subjet feels. For those raising animals, tending a garden, consoling victims to a crime, you'd want to use Empathy to understand them (or vice versa) rather than to control/change how they feel. 
• Sense/White - Burden of Guilt
• Conjure/Red - Repercussion
• Conjure/Black - Bond of Agony
• Life Force - 
• Conjure/White - Breath of Life
• Forge/Black - Reanimate
• Sense/Green - Biorhythm
• Temporal - This school manipulates the movement of objects.With an offensive use you can bind a target in a time void or counter spells by inhibiting parts of it so the whole thing doesn't come together. Temporal magic is the 
• Time - Time magic allows you to counter spells, grant haste, bind enemies, and delay spells. In D&D, you are able to delay a fireball and adding Time magic would result in this effect. This is also the school you would tap into if you wish for things to be uncounterable.
• Negate/Red - Overmaster
• Negate/White - Oblivion Ring
• Negate/Blue - Delay
• Taxing - Taxing can be used to interfere with spellcasting or actions. The best way to think about it is that Taxing magic adds a mana cost or stamina cost to perform actions. Spells that are suspended are put on a 'temporal' tax and can be altered with taxing magic.
• Alter/Blue - Mana Leak
• Alter/White - Spelltithe Enforcer
• Alter/Red - Timecrafting
• Transport - The magic of creating and blocking portals. This allows players to move themselves or others as well as summon
• Conjure/Red/Blue - Teleportal
• Conjure/Green - Worldly Tutor
•  
• Energy - 
• Elemental - Fireballs, rock slides, water elementals, walls of ice. Manipulation of the elements. Don't really feel examples are necessary. 
• Enchantment - This is used to make spells permanent ala Enchantments from the game.

Some of you might notice that there are multiple ways to recreate the same spell. Blinding the enemy and hiding yourself can yield the same results just as a strength drain of 2 points is as good s a strength boost of 4 points sometimes. That's one of the great but terribly difficult part of the game to balance and try to keep interesting. I'm sure being able to cast -everything- is a fun prospect but from a gameplay point, it's not good if everyone can do everything. 

I want some spells to be easier to cast depending on what schools and manipulations you have. Sure, there's Lightning Helix at WR, but Essence Drain i also the same effect. Thus, specific schools/colors will be easier and have known spells which will grant you them at a discount or improved effect.

Another thing to consider is that there are a lot of effects that would be useful in an RPG setting that is not used in Magic: The Gathering. Conjuring food, consoling a grieving widow, creating a bond between players/NPCs and invisibility are all much more versatile in a RPG setting. Several spells would be increased/decreased in cost accordingly. Stone Rain is much more powerful and needs to be nerfed (plus the setting would have natural resistance such as anti-magic wards or protection wards), as well as other extremely destructive spells are weakened or omitted (brushfire, acid rain, anarchy, all cards that are too powerful).

Sense and Forge are not given a good showcase here as they are less combat oriented schools. Sense allows you to search or hide yourself or spells you cast. For instance, if you summon a fireball, there will be residual magic showing the spell was conjured from the blind eternities and your personal essense shall also be imprinted. With a high forge, you can make it appear to be someone else who cast the spell or hide what spell was summoned. With a sense, you can hide your mark or the spell's mark or make it more apparent (perhaps altering someone else's spell to be very detectable). In addition, sense magic can be used to find stealth or detect forgeries, read minds or emotions, detect temporal displacements. Forge can be used to make copies of a mage's personal mark, copy documents, take on the disguise of another person, or object.

• Fixed Spells - There will be many spells that are -much- easier to cast, as being a powerful caster is really difficult. Creating your own spells reliably is a skill itself and most players don't have the time or experience to dedicate to a cause (most are hypergenius status or book worms stuck in a library). So with some random numbers, trying to cast a Lightning Helix might cost 7 mana, but if are adept at Red/White magic in the schools of Energy and Conjuration, you might have it cost only 4. And if you are part of Boros Legion, you can study their very fine tuned version and have it reduced even further.
• Names and Powers - Many spells will have new names because how they are represented in the card game does not translate well to an RPG. Teleport makes you unblockable, but of course it's far more powerful and different in an RP setting.
• Keywords and Spell Simulation- Tried to make sure every keyword could be represented here. First/Double Strike can easily be represented with speed or skill as a physical or temporal modification. Discard/Draw abilities are attacking or tapping into a knowledge pool. Recursion is a form of reanimation, reinstilling life force or magic into bodies, as bodies are vessels for magic to take form. Creature removal spells can be simulated in 100 ways: Physical combined with negate/conjure/alter, energy to create dis-favorable scenarios (such as a lightning bolt), temporal to rapidly accelerate aging or putting them in a time stasis lock. Trample is probably going to be a modification of Physical form (and can be attained naturally with high strength and stamina), Flying is quite easy to understand, Defender is going to be more of a stance for characters rather than always on, Morph would actually play really well in this system. Landwalk will just give bonuses in certain terrain (or ignore penalties), Flash will just be quickened spells, flanking will be a trained skill, Cumulative upkeep can be a self imposed penalty to maintain a spell. There's a lot to consider and figuring out what needs to be implemented and what doesn't need to be added is a great struggle.
• Lands -  Players form bonds with locations either through interaction or magical binding rituals. Lands are not exclusive to one player unless they decide to break the bonds with other players and ward their runes. For example, several people may have emotional ties to the Sacred Foundry. Having spent much time there, they create a bond with that location and feel empowered when there, granting them Red or White mana.
• Global Enchantments - Most are just local enchantments that affect a specific area. An enchantment of emotional stability at a bar where fights could easily break out. A zone of silence at a place of worship. An emblem of vision to grant guards far vision while manning a tower. A large scale spell is much more difficult and gets exponentially more expensive.
• Summon versus Conjure- I want there to be a drastic difference between real things and conjured things. Conjured things are fabrications created from the blind eternities where Magic is unpredictable and chaotic. You can summon a goblin beast with no soul from there much easier than one with intelligence. The difference is like creating Akroma which has intelligence as well as raw power and a standard goblin is astronomical. However, conjuring a being (with or without a soul) is different than an actual summons. Summoning is taking someone that exists and bringing them to you. It's much easier to summon a real person than conjuring one of equal abilities. However, the target must be willing or the spell is much harder to cast. 
• Top Heavy Game - This is definitely a top heavy game like GURPs is. But once complete, I hope the play sessions are very easy (also like GURPs). Spells are not really made 'on the fly', as you have practiced and trained to learn spells. You can make minor tweaks perhaps to best suite your situation (altering a ward against red to ward against blue) without much busy work, but major changes (turning a shock into a pyroclasm) is drastically different.

I really painstakingly searched through all of the card database for the game to try and make this system work as much as possible. As it is, it's a really loose framework and not a functional system yet. It's easy to say "Sure, a fireball is Conjure - Elemental (Fire)" or "Invisibility is Physical - Sense to blind other people to my presence", but making a system that works well off of it is a tall order. 

This is a big project and it's mostly been a solo one at that. Some insights from friends help out but just talk has made it really hard to keep up. Getting some work done on (digital) paper, some actual content in writing so that it can be worked on and tweaked is really necessary. I've got other documents like every keyword in the game (needs to be updated since AVR/RtR), and lots of unique spells from Ravnica to try to see if it can be properly emulated in this system.

It's taken me almost a week to finally post this and there's still plenty I can edit but you know what they say about art. It also happens to be true about design. It's never finished. So here it is, my work in progress. There's no numbers to or actual mechanics to judge so far but keep an open mind. I have a strong affection towards the source material and wish to be as true to it as I can. Less Tom Hewlett ala Silent Hill, more Firaxis games ala X-Com. And if you don't like the new X-Com, pretend I used an example that you did like. And if you like the new Silent Hill games, then I'm sorry.

Making friends on day one! *sigh*

Game Vivisection - Pandemic

Pandemic is a co-operative board game for 2-4 players where you're part of the CDC trying to eradicate a few deadly diseases from the world. It was featured on Geek and Sundry's Tabletop.

They explain the game pretty well for a brief overview but I wanted to discuss in detail some more of the game's inner-workings. It has a lot of very well designed but simple mechanics that I am completely blown away by. It's a modern game that I am truly happy to have experienced as a player and a designer.

So from here on, I'll assume you've played the game at least a few times or this post will be bogged down trying to explain details. The game has you playing off the top of the deck to find out what locations are being infected. As you play, Epidemic cards from the player deck has you drawing from the bottom and shuffling the location discard pile and putting it back on top. This is really smart on many levels. One: It guarantees that the same locations will repeat themselves and that feels right. The same locations once afflicted continue to be an issue. When there's a new random outbreak, it joins the ranks of the currently afflicted places and drawing from the bottom ensures it's not a repeat of an already visited place. This allows players to build bases with confidence and work within a known parameter of problems to deal with.

Another thing is the way the player deck is divided up and Epidemics are mixed in. It's split up evenly but still shuffled so you could go 10 cards without seeing the Epidemic, and then see them two turns in a row if they are next to each other. Unlikely but possible so you're always on edge (and yes, this has happened to me before. Not two in one flip, but two on back to back turns). Keeping that randomness in the game keeps it from being stale. There's a rule about revealing your hand which I can see why someone would have it in there (some say it's to keep power players from taking over), but with a team you trust it shouldn't be a problem and it'll just be quicker to play with hands revealed.

The game's base mechanics are very simple but leads to very complex actions. This is something that I love about the game. Fantasy Flight Games has amazing products but they fix all their problems with more rules and components. Pandemic is a refreshing change from that with a clean and elegant design. You get four actions and they're all move, treat disease, or cure in one way or another. The difficult part is to decide what the best course of action is and that's where people will spend the majority of their time and mental space. Sure, you can walk two steps and cure that space of 2 tokens, but is that optimal? There will be disagreements I'm sure but I think that's a good part of the game. It's unpredictable and even the 'best' course of action can be the wrong one due to the nature of the game.

This is a game where elegance and randomness create a fun and exciting game. I would recommend this game for anyone who has a reliable playgroup of 3-4 people (you can play it at 2, but it's not nearly as good). I'm running late on time and will edit this or review this again in the future, I'm sure.

Playing with yourself offline

Thorgi assembled.

I wish there was a more elegant way to talk about gaming in more specific ways. Console, PC, tabletop. While console and PC are perfectly fine most of the time, saying tabletop gaming is still pretty vague. Some people think of RPGs (which has to be specified as tabletop RPGs, otherwise many people just think Final Fantasy or WoW), and beyond that there's board games, card games, and social games that use neither boards nor cards (which really don't have a specific name for their category in my mind).

-tangent below-

Break that down even further, and you have Dixit which is a 'board game', but not what people think of. It's not Risk or Monopoly, which is traditionally what I think of when I hear 'board game'. Dixit, for those who haven't played it is sort of an art game mixed with a mind game. The tl;dr version is that you try to get people to guess the card art you played secretly without being blatant or explicit. The more people who guess right the better. Unless everyone guessed right, then you lose points. So the trick is to try and get a few people on the right track but be vague enough that not everyone will. Oh, the other part is that everyone else also secretly plays a card they think can match your description to try to get votes to gain themselves some points. Everyone votes on which one they think is yours (nobody can vote on their own and you don't vote). It sounds kind of convoluted when written out and not seeing the cards laid out, but it makes sense. Anyways, it uses cards and a board but I'd hardly consider it a board game. 

What about games that use tiles? Betrayal at the House on the Hill uses tiles to design a house. Do I count that as a board game? It uses cards too but those are really just a small component of the game. What games that use game pieces and props? Are those board games? The point is that the vernacular that most people use when talking about board/card/tabletop gaming is really vague at times. Board Game Geek has lots of categories, too many to list. I don't really have dexterity games in the same category as a game like Fluxx or Monopoly. I wish I had an answer for this but I don't. I hope to think up of something and use it on this blog hoping it gets popular.

Tangent aside, I wanted to talk about single player offline table top games. They're rare and I don't really know of any off the top of my head except if they are part of a multiplayer game like Arkham Horror. There was a contest on BGG that ended recently but I was unable to finish my game in time for that contest. Still, I think it's a really interesting untapped market. Most single player games can easily be turned into multiplayer games but not the other way around. Many multiplayer games depend on other players to be functional

Single player board/card games seem kind of forever aloneish, yet in video games single player games are perfectly normal. Part of the reason is because there's a set of rules you have to follow in video games and a narrative that can drive you. In a board/card game, the rules are there but you have to enforce them yourself. It's busy work that really gets in the way of the playing. The busywork that can be found in a lot of board games and card games can be mitigated with friends to help handle the pieces and remember the rules. If it's just you by yourself, it's a lot less fun I think. A big part of making a single player board game work would to keep it from becoming unfun by cluttering it with rules and objects. A single player game of Pandemic works but is a lot less fun. The game is pretty elegantly designed and has a minimum of components to manage. Arkham Horror on the other hand has a hundred moving parts that becomes a real pain to manage if you play by yourself (which I have done, and it is a big hassle). 

I should probably revisit this at a later time when I actually have the time to make edits rather than just a stream of consciousness spewed onto the screen.

Journey of a thousand steps

"Yeah, I'm a classy son of a bitch.", he said Smugly.

So this is the beginning of my Nth attempt at creating a blog. This time with a bit more aim and purpose. In the past, it's always been random ramblings or just silly images. These days, those are much easier to come by and work better in a lot more sites like tumblr and pintrest that really work well with that kind of post.

So this time, my random ramblings will be about something that really matters to me. This is not so much for me to preach or teach but just to get down on paper a place for me to actually have some history in my thoughts instead of having it end up in a doc or e-mail to be forgotten.

So really quickly, a list of things I'll talk about (but not limited to): Magic: The Gathering, board games, card games, video games, social games, and lots of other things but mostly about games. Game rambles. Grambles. I'll probably change it when I find something more appropriate, or maybe I'll change it periodically. Who knows? I sure don't. I love writing and want to get better at it. I love game design and want to get better at that too. I don't do nearly enough of either so here's me trying to get better at both at the same time.

Things I need to work on? Editing, keeping it short and on topic. As Blaise Pascal is famous for saying, ""I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." It's a quote I really enjoy, and one I wish I had more time to take into consideration when I write. It's more like, I have too much time and and don't ever get around to editing and lack focus. Adam Savage has been known to live off of deadlines and fictional deadlines. I feel I'm kind of the same way and really need to give myself rewards/punishment for succeeding/failing.

So, here's me with my hat on hoping that I can stick with this. Cheers.