Category Archives: Activities

Combined TCG, Take 2

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The CTCG site has been updated with a new “minimal translation” format.

I realized today, looking over my card games, that most games are already based around some sort of battle system. Therefore, linking games together should be as simple as providing a way for these different combat systems to work together. At least, this should work for games that are primarily battle-based… notsomuch for exploration-based things like Star Trek CCG.

The goal of the minimal translations is to allow you to play your turns normally as your game would define (play Pokemon and Energy and Trainers, power up your DBZ fighter and play Supports, play a storable Monster or hidden card or PC equipment or PC, etc). The only time the rules need to step in is during an attack to define how the attack is handled across game boundaries.

The translations for the three existing games so far seem to make sense in my mind, but perhaps I missed something. As always, feedback is appreciated.

More Student Wars v2 CCG

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You can download the cards here.

Worked some more on Alliances today. Yearbook got a couple interesting cards that let you basically treat the top card of your discard pile as in-play (attacking it, spotting it, whatever). All the keyword-based sub-factions got a helpful Persist Event that will make building decks based around them easier. Also dealt another blow against attackers with new “characters may not be damaged” powers and cards.

Did some general cleaning up so that cards are slightly less cluttered… mainly eliminated the across-the-board sub-faction abilities and stuck them on one character each instead. Still looking for ways to clean up cards further. Using symbols for some common terms and actions isn’t out of the question, but I have to be sure to not overdo it like my last attempt.

Also generally did some strengthening of GPA. I’m not sure if it’s enough.

If anyone has time and would like to playtest, I would be eternally grateful. The game needs a lot of testing and balancing (the Humanities faction, in particular).

Card games, work, and thou

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This weekend was the Salesforce 156 Sandbox release. It was the first release I was working for, and it was pretty exciting. Friday night there was downtime and I got to monitor application errors and such after the upgrade. Then I went into work Saturday and Sunday (I live so close I figured it was easier to do that than stay at home and use VPN) in case I was needed for bug fixes.
Fortunately, the release seemed to go well. My team didn’t get any bugs and the e-release that went out yesterday seemed fairly straightforward.

In the meantime, I’ve been playing Vegas Showdown online with Tim, Greg, Mars, Dan, and Keith (though not all at the same time). Managed to win for the first time today… it came down to the last renovate where I was able to move the Space Age Sports Book next to the Fancy Lounge and score an additional 6 fame from completed diamonds… won over Tim by 1 point.

Besides that, I’ve been working a bit on the RPG Get! Card Game. The first set is going to be PSO Episode 1. I’m rather excited about it… most of the basic spells and weapons now have cards (I need to get screenshots of a couple more weapons, but then I should be good) and I have monsters up through Mines complete. I need to work on Mission and Character cards though. If I continue working at this pace, I should have a tenative base set posted for playtesting sometime next weekend.

I’ve also been sporatically opening DBZ TCG boosters (7 boxes left, which will be opened next month). The distribution overall seems rather skewed. It’s not unexpected that, out of the 36 boosters I’ve opened, I have duplicates of some rares (despite the fact that I’m still missing over 2/3 of the rares) and uncommons… but the fact that I have 6 copies of some of the common cards while I have none of some other commons and that I have 4 copies of some uncommon cards while I’m still missing about 1/4 of them makes me feel like they purposely skew towards the basic attacks (Blue, Black, Red) and certain characters (the humans, mostly) while skimping on the more interesting cards (Saiyan, Namekian, Orange attacks and non-human characters).
I suppose we’ll see how the overall distribution ends up after 10 boxes.

I need to revisit Student Wars v2 and rebalance GPA. The game still seems incredibly skewed towards kill-counter win, and that needs to be fixed. Has anyone besides me actually tried it yet?

Games!

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So despite most of today’s plans falling through (people coming up and/or heading down to San Mateo for fondue), it was still awesome and fun.

Matt came up from Sunnyvale and we soon collected a Dan, Gopi, Tao, and Raphael. Went to the mall and had tasty Chinese food and green tea smoothie, then watched Raphael play around with the projected stompy ad games, then went to the Metreon for some DDR and Beatmania.
Then we lost everyone but Dan but gained a Justin and played card games… Hecatomb (first time playing… seems like an awesome game), World of Warcraft TCG (which I think I like… but ugh, I really do not want to pick up a mainstream TCG), 3-player DBZ TCG (which gave off the impression that the game isn’t as well designed as it could be, possibly due to it not being built for multiplayer), and Race for the Galaxy (which is awesome and has elements in common with Puerto Rico/San Juan).

There should be people and games more often. Today was fun.

Also, Tim… again the issue with buying a new computer is with the amount. Over a period of a few months I undoubtedly spend the $700 or so it would cost to buy a new computer… but spending it all at once just makes it seem like a much bigger deal than it is. Also, the cards I just received were $117, but that cost is being spread out over 3 months so it’s not as bad.