Larian Studios Forums General Chat RPG Chat Creating an RPG Card Game

Hello peoples,

I know that most of the people here really enjoy RPGs and have a creative spark that wants to be let out. I'd like to invite you to help develop an RPG card game.

I have the beginings of an idea which can be developed in any number of ways. It's single player, maybe an option for multi-player co-operative. The hero or party of heros fight their way through an unknown path of danger to defeat the big boss. The game layout gives the player choices on which way path to take to reach their goal. Equipment and rewards can be found in their travels as well to help them be triumphant at their final encounter. Special powers and skills grow as they defeat more villians and obstacles.

My first thoughts were to release the game as a free PDF download that people can print and cut out themselves, but of course there may be other ways.

I can see openings for designers wanting to expand their ideas. I can see openings for artists who can use this as published folio work or simple enjoyment. I can see openings for web hosts wanting to learn site management or expand their skills. I'm sure there's even more opening I haven't considered.

Are you interested in participating in this project?

Some of the ideas that I have had already:

Each hero has six attributes: Attack, Smarts, Persuade, Defense, Stealth, and Will. Each encounter (villian or obstacle) has most of these attributes. For example, a mysterious phone call wouldn't have and Attack or Defense rating. There's little to gain from shooting your phone in frustration.

The game starts with a grid of cards, all face down. The Boss is at the top-centre of the gird. Your party can enter from either bottom corner. Defeating encounters opens up the encounters adjacent to them, eventually making a path to the Boss.

When you first uncover an encounter, one of your party members sneaks in. You roll a die for your hero and one for the encounter, adding their Stealth skills. If the hero gets a higher score, they can choose to either go first or retreat if it is too dangerous. If the encounter has a higher score, they go first.

Who ever goes first can either Attack, Outsmart or Persuade the opponent, so long as the opponent has a Defense, Smarts or Pursuade skill. Roll a die each for the hero and encounter, adding their skill. If the attacker/outsmarter/persuader rolls higher, the opponent gains a Strike. If an encounter has as many Strikes as they do Will, they are defeated and the party gains experience points stated on the card. If a hero gains Strikes equal to 3 times their Will, they give up on their mission and leave the party.

For example:
Warrior Att: 4, Sma: 2, Per: 1, Def: 3, Ste: 2, Wil: 4
Zombie Att: 3, Sma: 1, Per: –, Def: 4, Ste: 0, Wil: 2, Exp: 2

The Warrior walks to the card, not knowing what it is. Turning it over, he makes a Stealth roll: rolls 2 + 2 Ste = 4, Zombie rolls a 5 + 0 Ste = 5. Zombie goes first.
Zombie attacks and Warrior defends. Zombie rolls 3 + 3 Att = 6, Warrior rolls 5 + 3 Def = 8. No Strike is made.
The Warrior thinks. He can't persuade the Zombie because they can only follow their master's orders. He could attack it, but the zombie's defense is just as good. The zombie being stupid makes outsmarting it the best option. The warrior rolls 4 + 2 Sma = 6, the zombie rolls 4 + 1 Sma = 5. The zombie takes a Strike. Only one more Strike against the zombie is needed to defeat it (2 Wil). The zombie now has another go... When the Warrior finally defeats the Zombie, the party will gain experience as shown of the card. Some cards also reward you with treasure. Now there is up to three more cards available to travel to adjoining this one.

When the party has enough experience, each character gains a pre-determined skill point (in the Warrior's case, Attack, because the card says so) and a special ability. With the Big-Boss being such a tough opponent, your party will need all the equipment and experience they can get to defeat them.

This is just the beginning of ideas for the game.

nice idea.

You say party, but only use a warrior. Can you explain that? is it like only one 'hero' can attack a encounter at a time.

The game could use a party or just one hero. If there was a party, you could select the hero that best suits the encounter. It may not always be the one with the best scores, especially if they've already taken a lot of strikes. So you have a list of options, in the form of party members, and you risk the one that you use. Some heros may have special abilities that affect other heros as well, so you may be able to combine their efforts.

Maybe there's a way for party-vs-party combat. Got any ideas?

Sounds a bit like Blizzard's Lost Vikings (don't know if some other company created the original... I doubt it was totally different though <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />).

Übereil

Do you already have any ideas for some of those special abilities?



One of my ideas: Let's say your party contains 4 heroes, but you decide to only use 3 of them, cause the fourth one has already taken to much damage. Then you first need to take 2 extra cards from a deck. you put those at the card you will attack (the encounter card IIRC), now you can flip all three cards, and you throw with the dice to decide who has the first strike. you need to throw 6 times.(3 times for your heroes, and 3 times for the encounter)
the one with the highest amount can give the first strike to an opponent at will. then the best of the opposing time can strike, then the second best one of the first team, then the second best of the opposing team, the last one of the first team, and the last one of the opposing team.

Edit: here's an example of my idea:
you have a party of a Warrior, Wizard, Thief and another Warrior.
You don't wanna use the first warrior cause he hasnt much will left. so your Wizard, thief and other Warrior remain to use as attackers. So you decide to use them all, so you can get a lot of treasure and xp at a time.So the encounter you wish to attack must be joinend by 2 additional cards from a deck.

you throw a dice for your Warrior: 2. His stealth 2+ 2=4
you throw a dice for your Thief : 5. Let's say a thief's stealth is 4.4+5= 9
you throw a dice for your Wizard : 6. Let's say his stealth is 1. 1+6=7

you throw a dice for encounter 1(zombie) :3 Stealth 0+3= 3
you throw a dice for encounter 2(rat) :4 stealth 1+4= 5
you throw a dice for encounter 3(skeleton):1 Stealth 0+1= 1

Your thief has the highest sneak, so he can go first.
Then the opponent may attack. the Rat has 5 so he can go first.
Then your Wizard can attack (7).
After that the Zombie has his turn.
Then your Warrior may hit.
The last one if for the skeleton.
If not all members of a party are defeated, the Thief may go again, then the rat, then the Wizard. When someone dies the place remain as they were. lets say the rat dies, then the Wizard can go directly after the Thief.


Another way is to aid all the Stealth points of one team, and the team with the highest amount can go first.
so your party has: 4+9+7=20
the enemy has: 3+5+1=9
you go first.

Say each hero gains one action point per level (including level 1.)
A Cleric could "use an action point to remove up to 3 strikes from any hero."
A Wizard could "use an action point to add 2 to one skill for one hero for this encounter."
A Bodyguard "may take a strike made against another hero by an attack. (No action point required.)"


I can see that. I'd suggest that each character roll for Stealth individually and let everyone go in order (Thief, Wizard, Rat, Warrior, Zombie, Skeleton). You could just place the cards in order to remind you.
[/quote]
Similar to your idea:

Each encounter calls for X minions as well. So the encounter would be the main feature, such as a squad leader or a trapped escape route. The minions are drawn from a side deck. You can involve as many or as few heros as you like, keeping those you don't involve safe.

So now there's two teams. You determine the order they play in by rolling for Stealth. Heros may choose which opponent to tackle (attack, persuade or outsmart.) Heros may gang up on opponents and opponent can gang up on heros. This way, you can involve lots of heros to defeat a single large opponent.

One big hole in both of our ideas: Which hero does each opponent attack? We need some rule-based AI, even if it's printed differently on each card.
[/quote]
When I first had the idea for this game, I was reading a lot of d20 Modern (Dungeons & Dragons in the modern age) where there was more than death to deter you from your goal, hence "Will" and "Strikes". There's nothing to hold us to that idea.

If the game is mostly combat based, we can change "Will" and "Strikes" to "Health" and "Damage" to simplify things. Would we bother with a Persuade skill? Is only two tackle options enough variety? With special skills, I think it could be.

nice ideas. A suggestion: Thief special power: roll the stealth skill, and if you get higher then the encounter you can just steal the treasure, whitout needing to attack (but you don't get the xp)
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Maybe they all attack who needs the most strikes to kill. (so actually the one with the most health left. that is what would i would do, take out the toughest one first, then go to the second strongest when the first one is defeated.)
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never played the dungeon and dragons games so...
The decision of Will/Health and Strikes/Damage is up to you.
Persuade, well i don't know. But I prefer outsmarting more, so persuade could be more of an option i think.

Maybe a slight reword: "If the thief rolls a higher stealth than all opponents, she can collect and use the treasure before starting this encounter." This would give you a boost for the current encounter that you wouldn't have otherwise, but still requiring you to defeat it.

Another one I thought of for the thief (taken from Dungeons & Dragons): "Use an action point to attack and automatically hit an opponent who has not yet had a turn, giving an additional 1 Strike."

What are your thoughts on those two?


Sounds good. I was thinking that some encounters might not be realistic this way. Perhaps write simple instructions of each card. "Goblin attacks hero with lowest Defense." "Warlock outsmarts hero with highest Attack." Some could be a little more complex. "Trapped Door outsmarts hero with lowest Smarts that tackled it since the Trapped Door's last turn." This means the door can only hurt someone trying to open it, as is realistic. If no one tackles it, it does nothing.

This wouldn't make the game complex. Because this instruction is written on each card, you simply read it as you come to that card in the queue.

What are your thoughts?


Yeah, I agree that pursuasion doesn't fit this idea anymore. Let's drop it. "Health" and "Damage" seem like a better way to go as well. I'm thinking that "Speed" might be a better term to use than "Stealth", especially if it's just to determine who goes first.

And as far as I'm concerned, this is our project (and anyone else's who'd like to join.) <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

What setting do we want to use? There's the obvious choices of fantasy, modern, sci-fi and horror. There's no doubt others too. My vote would go with sci-fi or fantasy, but I'm open to other ideas.

I like them both. Question: do you still need to roll a dice for the extra attack or is it autamaticly a strike?
How many Special abilities should each type of hero have, or does that depends on the hero?
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Nice, it really is realistic if you choose to let a door only attack if it has been attacked. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
Question: would some creatures also have special abilities?
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Yeah, speed sounds better. so Stealth is from now on Speed, Will is Health, and Atttack is Damage right?
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Fine by me.
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I would go for Fantasy(orcs, goblins, traps, that kinda stuff).
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A few more questions:

• When do we start warking on the types of avaible heroes?
  
• Could there be like levels of Mazes? like you have a Deck you use for your first maze. then you have a deck with slightly stronger cards for the second maze. and like in the bottom of the card or so it says:'Maze 1' or 'Maze 2'
  
• Maybe we should start thinking about a 'Possible creatures' list. to know wich ones we can use in the game.(maybe we can start a poll to see wich creatures the people loves most.
  
• How much stronger are bosses?

I still got a lot of questions, but we need to do this step by step so those are for later.





[color:"red"] Anyone who got ideas my post them!!!! [/color]

No roll, you get the hit with extra damage, but at the cost of an action point.


Probably two per hero, but it could depend on the hero. Some I thought of:

Wizard
Great Smarts, poor Speed, bad Attack, Defense and Health.
Magical: Gains 3 Action Points per level, including level 1.
Buff Self: Spend an Action Point to raise one of Wizard's skills by 2 for this encounter.
Buff Other: Spend an Action Point to raise one skill of any hero by 1 for this encounter.

So he needs to rely on his action points to survive most of the time, hence receiving three times as many.

Warrior
Great Attack, good Defense and Health, bad Smarts and Speed.
Power Strike: Gain 2 Attack and lose 2 Defense and 1 Smarts until Warrior's next turn. Use before tackling.
Defensive Stance: Gain 2 Defense and lose 2 Attack and 1 Smarts until Warrior's next turn. Use before tackling.
Critical Hit: Spend an Action Point when your attack hits to give an additional 1 Damage.

He's a character who can mould to the situation. Also, the Critical Hit goes hand-in-hand with Power Strike.


Sure!

Giant Spider
Good Attack, Health and Speed, poor Defense, bad Smarts.
Attacks hero with most Attack.
Poison: When Spider hits, hero loses their next turn. Hero may use Defense and Smarts against tackles as normal.


Right. I also want to rename "Action Point" to "Action". that long name is annoying me.


Done!


Now if you like. Do we want to only give them three or four heros, or should we give them a dozen to choose from? There's 11 classes by default in Dungeon's & Dragons we could use some ideas from, or we could produce our own list.


I had exactly the same idea! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/delight.gif" alt="" />

How do you handle damage between mazes? It's pretty harsh to enter a new maze damaged. Perhaps remove all damage beteen mazes while they rest in town?


Sounds good. [color:"red"]Anyone have ideas for monsters?[/color] One thought I had: divide the encounters into three even categories, monsters, undead, and traps. With the minion deck, make one-third of it undead and the rest monsters. Now we can have specific heros and items that are especially powerful against the undead. They're really good, but only against one-third of your opponents.

What do you think? Can we use something other than undead, like demons perhaps?


Quite strong. Say each hero skill starts between 1 and 4. Boss skills would be between 4 and 7. This way you would need two level-ups plus equipment to challenge them. Is that fair?

Also, with encounters, I think there should be some that are on par with a party of level 1 heros and some for level 2 heros. If your level 1 party finds a level 2 encounter, use your brains and flee. You can always come back later when you've levelled-up. What do you think?


Yes! Please!
[/quote]
One more thing sitting on my mind. Levelling up. Heros level up when the party has x experience; no problem there. What do they gain?

Three thoughts:

1. The hero gains 1 Skill as designated on the card (eg. Wizard always gets Smarts).
   Problem: Once they reach maze 2, the Wizard's Defense will be so low he'll be pulverised.
2. The hero gains 1 Skill of their choice.
   Problem: Record keeping. This is a card game, not pen-and-paper. Which skill did I boost back at level 1?
3. All skills rise each level or two. Some go up every level, others every other level. eg.
   Warrior: Att: 4+1 Sma: 1+½ Def: 3+1 Spe: 1+½ Hea: 3+1
   Problem: Too much maths. Keeping track of this plus item bonuses plus whatever else could be more maths than fun. Also, because so many skills increase, the experience needed should be greater than the other options.

[/quote]
What we need to know to continue:

• Who are our opponents?
• How many heros are there?
• What is the range for each skill (eg. from 1 to 4)? Remember we're using 6-sided dice so 7 Speed vs. 2 Speed is rather one-sided. Should encounters be able to bend this rule (eg. from 0 to 5)?
• How do heros level up?

that's a lot to swallow, HEF. plus i've yet to play card-based RPG nor tabletop, os i am very unfamiliar to the systems. but your ideas are very interesting. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

i'm producing all the information. ill post my toughts and answers soon. (i don't got much time now)

I think 11 would be a little to many. 6 or so would be good.



you could add like a 'Town card' or something. if you visit it, damage is removed by going to the chapel or so. You also can have like a Blaksmith and a pub to buy potions wich removes damage. maybe something else to (its in idea, and i would only put in the game if we really feel positive about it) example:
__________________________________
Aleroth

Chapel
Blacksmith
here comes the equipment you can buy here from the blacksmith
Pub
here comes the avaible potions you can buy
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You could also have towns that don't have a chapel or a blacksmith or a pub.
also this would require to add gold into the game.


I would pick Undead, cause you can place Demons and stuff in the Undead catagory.

exactly, you can always try to flee. that makes me think about an other point: what if all the heroes who are attacking the current encouner die, but you still have living heroes in your party? do they need to continu the fight?



Well, i figure that to make it easiest, it would be best to just upgrade all skills one point when leveling up. the warrior still would be bad in speed, and also good in attack. the only math would be to add up your level to the base skill.



Opponents: Level 1 maze i would place Skeletons, Rats/Goblins and there would like only 1 or 2 traps or so(or none).
Maze 2: Greater Skeletons/Lesser Zombie, Wolf/Lion and 3-5 traps max.
and so on

Heroes: i think that you would only be able to party up with at max 5 heroes.
also how do you plan to use partying, cause i think it isn't a good idea to let all 5 heroes start from the beginning.
1 like you start with 2 heroes, and maybe some creatures have on their card: If desired, Another Hero may be added. so if they defeat the encounter they can let a hero join there party.
2 or maybe after defeating a boss you may add one to your party.

Speed: I don't completly understand that. Could you try to rephrase it?(its only my first year of english at school so...)

Leveling: that would depend on how you are planning to let them level up. I assume you would level up all heroes at the same time, what would be easiest.
It would be more realistic to level up heroes one by one, but that would be a little to much thinking. (like: my warrior is level 3, no wait thats my mage, or was it my thief?)

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Also: it would be best if we could start a thread somewhere, so people can post types of heroes they like, and types of creatures they like.
then we make a list of them, and the most picked ones we could add to the game.

i was also thinking of starting to create our heroes first, when we finished that, we start the creation of the first maze, if it looks good we could make a file of it. and some people could test it and if they like it we start with Maze 2. if they don't like it we rebuild or Maze.

ow, yeah there is a browser-based game i used to play, where you could get some ideas. look for the 'classes and abilities' button on the left: www.sdegames.com
There are some ideas for the special powers and heroes we could use there. (i always played a druid, named Isorun)

Six does sound good. I'm sure we can work with that.


I think having several cards dedicated to towns isn't necessary. I suggest that all towns be the same, and there's a set of rules for healing and trading. Perhaps we can print these rules on one or two cards for easy access. Also, I think you should only be able to access the town between mazes. It'd be too easy if you could buy healing and weapons mid-maze.


Demons aren't relly Undead. Demons are from another plane of existence. They often like to make undead. Some monsters fit in both categories, like Vampires.

On second thought, that's someone elses interpretation of "Undead" and "Demons". We can do this however we like! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />


Speaking of which, how do you flee and what's the consequense? How about each hero can only flee on their turn, so if they're slow, they may be tackled first. Once everyone flees, all minions in the encounter remain there and lose all damage. Is that too safe? To make it more harsh, when you flee, the hero stays there and can still be tackled until their next turn, after which they successfully escape. Also, if you leave a hero out of combat, you can bring them in at any time, rolling for Speed and inserting them into the order.


I'd say no, but all treasure the dead heros were carrying stays at the encounter until it's defeated.


You doing very well with English for such a short time!

What I'm talking about is all of the skills. When we create heros and encounters, we should make a limit on how high or low a skill can be. For example: if a Warrior had 7 Attack and a Warlock had 2 Defense, it would be impossible for the Warlock to ever avoid the Warrior's attack. If we rate each skill (Attack, Defense, Smarts, Speed, Health) for each hero from 1 to 4, this will prevent combat from being too easy or hard. Some encounters may have a skill that is higher or lower to add variety and excitement.


That does sound good. So simple and it works!


Okay, so how about we pick a theme for each maze? How about:
Maze 1, Tomb Raider: Skeletons, rats, spiders and ghosts. An evil Mummy has cursed the graveyard and must be vanquished!
Maze 2, Graxor's Tower: Golems, zombies, animals and orcs. An evil Warlock has oppressed the town and must be defeated!

I suggest that we can use more traps. They don't have to be difficult at first. A trap lets the party take a controlled risk. Also, we could say that as soon as you defeat a trap, you gain the treasure, even if there's other minions left to defeat. It's incentive to take the risk and beat the trap.

One thought, how do you see the map? Is it pre-made or random? What I see is a grid of encounters. The boss is always in the same position (centre-top), but the rest of the cards are random. The players can enter from the bottom corners.


I was thinking three or four heros (more towards four.) Perhaps we can include optional rules where you can use less or more heros, but the experience needed to level-up changes.


I thought about that. I think that searching for heros is a very risky way to play. For all you know, they may all be right at the end of the maze. Having one less turn every round in combat is a major penalty. I suggest that you start with a party of four, and you can replace dead heros when you complete a maze (but you can't use the ones that died.) The new heros are already the same level as the rest of the party, but have no equipment.


Definately have them all level at the same time. I meant "what to you gain from levelling", but we've worked that out above. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />


Okay. Do you want to do it? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />


Okay, I'll start a file. What's your e-mail? Mine is hand_e_food@hotmail.com. I'll use RTF (Rich Text File, opens in WordPad) to write our card ideas in, unless you have something else you prefer.


Looks cool! I think I'll play that for a couple of weeks. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I think we should certainly have Fighter, Mage, Cleric and Thief. Psion looks too close to Mage to be worth while. I'm not sure if Druid would work either. Got any ideas for those two? Other popular classes are Paladin (Holy Warrior, strong leader), Monk (Martial Artist with great self-discipline), Bard (team boosting all-rounder) and Ranger (nature-loving hunter).

Oke then, six it is.


allright, so we add a towncard between each maze.(that was what i actually meant, cause (like you said) it would be to easy.



I tottaly agree.


Oke then. question: is there a way to bring dead heroes back to life?



thanks. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> i'm the best one of my class, cause i play a lot of english games. but this is <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/offtopic.gif" alt="" />


if i'm understanding this right, you mean the base skills of a hero varie between 1 to 4. (sounds fine) but don't the creatures get stronger how higher the maze level is? like in maze one the encounters have 0 to 5 for skills, while in maze 2 1 to 7 or so.


well that's the way i handle things: i try to keep everything simple, and it works



well, i think you would better choose most of the monsters and themes and such cause like i would only scr*w it up.
we could already choose the 'themes', and wait a bit for the monsterlist to choose wich ones we use where.


oke, fine by me. this would require you to make choses wich heroes you want in your pary and wich ones you will have to miss.


to keep the required maths at a minimum!


i'll be right on it. i will create a thread in the all languages chat named something like 'monsterslist/poll for an rpg'.


no its fine by me.


i you send me a PM with your name as you use it in the game, i can give you some extra gold to start with. (and also say if you want some pocketmoney, how much you want)




yeah the four basic ones sound good. and indeed psion and mage are closly linked, and i think a druid would be too much work cause druids relly on their pets.
i think a Bard would be good cause hes like the balanced one and (like you said) the all-rounder. the sixth one, i dont know, you may pick one you prefer.




Question: Are you planing on using images on the cards?

That's right. I was just thinking of maze 1 at the time. Maze 2 and higher will have more difficult monsters, more of which will have special powers.


That's the idea. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />


I tried the game out. It plays too slowly for my liking. But thanks. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />


I'd say Paladin for the last one. He's a mix between fighter and cleric and a popular choice for many players.


Yes! Know any artists?

oke, Paladin is the last one!
Warrior
Mage
Thief
Cleric
Bard
Paladin
next step: their skill distrubution.


No, sorry, but we could ask around the forum.

i've gotten your mail, wo we just work out only six of the ten right?
i see you already spent a lot of time distrubiting the skillpoints and special powers.