Pokemasters

[JonSetanta]

1195033775[/unixtime]]Also, the Joy family just has extremely dominant genes. We've actually met the various fathers that Nurse Joys have had and they are different. However, their mothers were all Nurse Joys. The Nurse Joys we encounter in Pokemon are all first and second cousins. And they aren't all nurses, a few of them are scientists and secret agents and stuff.

If you marry a Nurse Joy you are accepting that your children will probably be girls. They will have pink hair and your wife will insist on naming them Joy. But there are families involved, and Nurse Joys reproduce sexually, and they aren't all exactly the same.

-Username17

Frank, the way you described this creepy process has probably ruined NPCs in RPGs in general for me for a long time.
At least, until I can get over that concept.
Damn.
That's as fucked up as D&D "Medusae" or Nymphs only giving birth to more of their own race.

So, maybe the Joys are actually Pokemon.

Koumei: Tentacool...
or Woopers. Maybe a Mime Junior here and there.
Electrode could have some kinky applications, and many other electric types at that.

One I don't want to see is that monkey thing with the flame-ass having anal with a human. That's just.. ugh.

[Prak]

you don't even have to restrict it that much... I mean, there's a likely (in)famous pic of misty getting off on a starmie...

[CalibronXXX]

Requesting change of topic. STAT!

[Koumei]

1195106239[/unixtime]]
So, maybe the Joys are actually Pokemon.

I ran Pokethulhu at a con, once, and one group ended up attempting (and succeeding. I made the difficulty hard, but ran with it) to capture one of the Librarian Lums (Librarian Lum = Nurse Joy). That game was cool.

Calibron: What an awesome idea. I'll drink to that.

I now wish I was joining a tabletop game so that I could play a Pokemaster and see the reactions of the other players.

"Dude, no. Seriously. What the fuck."

Heck, in one of my old groups over in Melbourne, one of the other players would just say "Awesome! Okay, I'm going to play a Wizard who casts spells from cards, preparing them as decks every morning! And he has lots of money, so he can screw the rules."

[tzor]

1195106239[/unixtime]]That's as fucked up as D&D "Medusae" or Nymphs only giving birth to more of their own race.

I've been working on a filler for my current NaNo that basically makes the argument that the Nymph isn't a "race" but a "gender." It's for NaNo so it's full of more holes than swiss cheese, but it does hand wave the problem if you hand wave enough of the science but not too much of it.

And before you cry that "gender" is determined by the sperm, I will point out that the "environment" plays a significant role in the random selection of who wins the race, and that sperm with male gender DNA can in fact act differently than sperm with female gender DNA in the same environment. So the ability of the female to control which gender her offspring becomes is not some bizzare Bene Gesserit witchcraft.

So therefore if a normal male is XY, and a normal female is XX, a nymph is NX and a satyr would be SX (or SN).

[Fwib]

1195141775[/unixtime]]

1195106239[/unixtime]]That's as fucked up as D&D "Medusae" or Nymphs only giving birth to more of their own race.

I've been working on a filler for my current NaNo that basically makes the argument that the Nymph isn't a "race" but a "gender." It's for NaNo so it's full of more holes than swiss cheese, but it does hand wave the problem if you hand wave enough of the science but not too much of it.

And before you cry that "gender" is determined by the sperm, I will point out that the "environment" plays a significant role in the random selection of who wins the race, and that sperm with male gender DNA can in fact act differently than sperm with female gender DNA in the same environment. So the ability of the female to control which gender her offspring becomes is not some bizzare Bene Gesserit witchcraft.

So therefore if a normal male is XY, and a normal female is XX, a nymph is NX and a satyr would be SX (or SN).

Wouldn't that make Nymph and Satyr templates that could be applied to anything that could breed with a human?

[JonSetanta]

Y'all should see the mess over on the Feybook project so far. We tried to sort out the gender-specific Fey from those that 'breed true', and it opened a whole new can of worms.
I've had to take a break from that project to work a lot, but maybe Pokemon could provide the answer I've been searching for concerning Fey breeding, evolution, and species-interchangeability.

Calibron: Coward.

Koumei: That's rich... did the caster have split personality that effectively gave him a permanent Schism enchantment too?? Maybe Mind Blast his foe whenever he's about to lose?

tzor: there are many factors at play determining gender. Heritage (King Henry the 8th and his many daughters, heh), parasites, temperature, diet, maternal hormone levels....
So for Fey, which maybe don't even have DNA but operate on principle of something closer to Elder God RNA/immortal proteinless cell structure, reproduction can only occur when they slip the bonds of reality as we know it.
They could then spontaneously form from 'dreamstuff', or by freaky amorphous swarm-orgies in which they become immaterial energy.
Inter-Fey breeding would become simple, since gender nor shape nor size would matter, only the property of there being at least 2 Fey involved. A good restriction would be that such a breeding method could only work in certain areas or conditions, such as a mushroom ring, standing stone, or tree grove.
We're working on that; maybe too many options.
I'd love to read your writing, maybe even just a small sample, but paying for NaNo is a bit too far. T_T

Fwib: that possibility was mentioned for the Feybook but.... well... time will tell if such an idea makes it in.
Template-Nymph is easy to do, and I believe someone did take a crack at it, but I believe a better way would be to use a single scaling feat that provides access to a small number of appropriate SLAs and slap that on an elflike being. Massive CHA scores n all that aren't really necessary but other feats/abilities could cover.

EDIT: found it
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Feybook/ind ... owtopic=71

[Koumei]

No, I'm just saying that *if* I did head over there (it's only what, 600 miles?) and present the concept of a Pokemaster, she would try to play a Yu-Gi-Oh! character.

And my guess is she'd choose Seto Kaiba. Kaiba doesn't have the Pharaoh and Mind Crush.

[Crissa]

I once bought a Seto Kaiba deck (when they were brand new) for Frank.

-Crissa

[Prak]

When I got a demo of Yu-Gi-Oh for the first time the guy giving it lost the Yugi deck so we split the Seto deck... I got the Blue Eyes...

[JonSetanta]

I tried YuGiOh with my little brother once, he's just beginning middle school.
It was interesting in that the games were fast, but eventually I saw so many broken cards, power abuse, and pure cheese that I can confidently sum the game as a cheap Japanese imitation of Magic TG (which is far superior)

[Prak]

it's actually a lot worse. when you sit down to play yugioh, you could seriously skip the game and open your wallet, whoever has the biggest bank roll wins. In magic it's at least theoretically possible for a broke player to win.

[CalibronXXX]

I played yugioh for a few months half a dozen years ago...maybe it was 5 years ago.

[Koumei]

I couldn't possibly play it seriously. I'd be required to over-dramatise it like in the anime.

"Now, feel the wrath of my incredible BLUE EYES ULTIMATE DRAGON!.... IN AMERICA!"

[JonSetanta]

1195227788[/unixtime]]it's actually a lot worse. when you sit down to play yugioh, you could seriously skip the game and open your wallet, whoever has the biggest bank roll wins. In magic it's at least theoretically possible for a broke player to win.

QFT.
A friend proved to me that validity half a lifetime ago, and I continue the practice of "peasant decks" to this day.
Not very popular in the local gaming store near me, but it's funny to see the fuming rage some older players stew up when their rare-crammed deck lose to a deck made entirely out of commons.

[Neeek]

1195227788[/unixtime]]it's actually a lot worse. when you sit down to play yugioh, you could seriously skip the game and open your wallet, whoever has the biggest bank roll wins. In magic it's at least theoretically possible for a broke player to win.

There are interesting difference between the two.

In Magic, the most popular tournament format is draft, which costs ~$10 to play. Theoretically, given a typical prize structure, you could sell what you win for enough to play forever and still profit. Further, the more common cards aren't necessarily strictly worse than the rarer cards. In Magic, the interaction between cards leads to occasionally surprising cards being useful. For two anecdotal accounts, both me and Frank have shown up at a Magic tournament, despite not playing for years, and won the whole thing, for less than $20 total.

In Yu-Gi-Oh, on the other hand, AFAIK, has two formats: Constructed and Constructed with restricted cards. And in that game, the vast majority of cards are monster cards, and the costs of those cards are divided into 3 categories: Free, cost 1 other monster, and costs 2 other monsters. Really, that's it. And since the vast majority of Yu-Gi-Oh monsters *don't* have special abilities, their stats (there are 2 of them) encompass the entirety of their benefit. And the better monsters are often the rarest cards.

[CalibronXXX]

Hmm...I remember I had this one five star monster called Patrician of the Dark that let you choose which monster your opponent had to attack. I liked to use him in conjunction with Labyrinth Wall and consistently piss my friends off. If I could I would add Fairy Box for added fun and profit(monsters attacking you had a 50% chance of being destroyed before the attack was even resolved).

Odd that I still remember all this crap. For instance I still remember that Harpy's Brother was one of the best 4 star monster cards because he had an 1800 attack and could seriously ruin your opponents day if you got him out early.

[Manxome]

I really like the idea of collectible card games. You get a strategy game with player customization (deck building), random variation in play (deck shuffling), a wide variety of interesting effects to combine in clever ways (potentially), and (generally) with very fast gameplay compared to the number of options and potential complexity.

Unfortunately, the economic model royally screws everyone except the publisher. The publisher actually spends extra effort performing a task (randomizing booster packs) that reduces the objective utility of their product (makes it harder for any customer to get what they want), and consumers pay them more money as a result. That's quite perverse. If anyone needed an example to show that ideal economics don't govern the real world, this would be it.

I'd really like to see a CCG where all cards are individually purchasble from the publisher for an equal (low) cost per card (which would actually give the publisher valuable balance feedback, in the form of number of each card sold and the "used" value of individual cards). Or, better yet, an electronic version where all "cards" are totally free after you buy the software (which could give even better feedback).

Unfortunately, as long as players are willing to pay money for randomized assortments of cards they don't want and a long shot at a rare, and as long as players will let you use a card you bought off ebay for a gazillion dollars but not the mechanically equivalent card you printed on your home computer--in other words, as long as players believe that the person with the larger wallet ought to win--I'm sure publishers will be happy to think of their booster packs as slot machines.

And yes, I'm very glad there's a standardized tournament structure for Magic where you can't buy a victory, but the basic sale model of the cards still sucks.

[Username17]

If I were to redesign Magic from the beginning, I would make all the cards inherently restricted to one per deck, and have a large card set with basic utility cards like forests and orcs repeated several times over with slightly different names and art.

I would standardize all the "tribes" before printing a single card, and I would have the name of the card be composed of game relevant information. The Zombie Master is a Zombie, the Goblin King is a Goblin.

I would have each land come with stats and abilities, meaning that "non basic land" wouldn't be such a fucking no-brainer. I would use the Shadowfist method of land attacking/conquering. And the entire game would be about winning rather than forcing enemies to lose the game (this inherently makes multiplayer games work better).

----

So in the end, the system would eliminate the "junk common effect" while still encouraging people to purchase packs and trade. When the set is 1200 cards, it'll take an unreasonable amount of packs to get all of them by purchasing alone. At the same time, no matter how good the Death Slaad is (or appears to be) there's no compelling reason that you would need to have four of them. With all rarities identical the inherent worth of "a card" would always be the same.

Also the game would work better as a multiplayer game as players wouldn't have to manfully slaughter their way through 3 separate enemies - a 4 player game would take the same number of turns as a 2 player game (or only slightly more), causing the game to go no more than 2 or 3 times as long.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

I've designed a few card games in the mold of a CCG (but not actually collectible, of course), and I've decided that in most cases it is actually better for the game if instead of drawing from the top, you just go through the deck and pick the card you want.

It always bothered me that some of the otherwise more strategic games were hobbled into randomness by the draw mechanic.

[Manxome]

1195290661[/unixtime]]And the entire game would be about winning rather than forcing enemies to lose the game (this inherently makes multiplayer games work better).

I'm not a regular player of magic, but from my current understanding of the rules, I have difficulty imagining how that would work without fairly sweeping changes to the basic play mechanics. Or is that the point?

Still, it's not much of a competitive game unless your actions can interfere with your opponents' attempts to win (rather than just promote your own), and as long as that's the case, everyone in a FFA game will gang up on the person who looks like he's about to win in order to try and stop him, so I suspect average game time would still rise fairly steadily with the number of players.

Alternately, you could assume that every game has exactly 2 teams but an arbitrary number of players per team, and that might give a more consistent game dynamic and playing time across different numbers of players. For maximum flexibility, figure out how to balance things in a way that doesn't require the opposing teams to be equal size.

1195305179[/unixtime]]I've designed a few card games in the mold of a CCG (but not actually collectible, of course), and I've decided that in most cases it is actually better for the game if instead of drawing from the top, you just go through the deck and pick the card you want.

It always bothered me that some of the otherwise more strategic games were hobbled into randomness by the draw mechanic.

You actually usually want at least some randomness, for fixing quantization error and preventing two games from playing out exactly the same. You can use die rolls or something and give players access to all their "cards" at all times, but at that point I hesitate to describe it as a "card game," simply due to the traditional implications of that term.

Having a huge number of cards available every turn also tends to slow games down, especially with novice players.

[Neeek]

1195357326[/unixtime]]
Still, it's not much of a competitive game unless your actions can interfere with your opponents' attempts to win (rather than just promote your own), and as long as that's the case, everyone in a FFA game will gang up on the person who looks like he's about to win in order to try and stop him, so I suspect average game time would still rise fairly steadily with the number of players.

The distinction that Frank is trying to make is between having a victory condition and having a loss condition. Magic has a loss condition as the main way to end the game (a player hits 0 life). Consequently, in Magic, you generally cause your opponent to lose, rather than achieve a condition which cause you to win. In a two-player game, the distinction is usually academic, in games with multiple players, this is not the case.

[Manxome]

Yes, I understood the distinction. However, Frank suggested that one of the key benefits of making this change is that large multi-player games wouldn't take substantially more turns to complete than 2-player games; I was suggesting that this is probably not the case for most plausible win conditions.

[Username17]

Examples of this in practice:

In Magic you "win" by reducing all opponents to zero life. 3+ player games are frustrating, take forever, and some players are no longer playing long before the game is over.

In L5R you "win" by getting to 40 honor or reducing all opponents to zero provinces. In multiplayer games many factions are completely unplayable (Shadowlands, I'm looking at you).

In Shadowfist you "win" by successfully taking a fifth site from another player. The game becomes unmanageable at sizes larger than 5 only because a round of turns takes too long to go around and the board is too confusing.

---

Obviously, having "lose" conditions makes your game worse for multiplayer and no better for duels. If you were going to do something like L5R, you should make someone win when they've conquered a certain number of provinces.

Something simple like "you win if you can hold ten lands until the beginning of one of your turns or conquer five lands of your opponents" would probably be best.

-Username17

[Neeek]

1195376819[/unixtime]]
In L5R you "win" by getting to 40 honor or reducing all opponents to zero provinces. In multiplayer games many factions are completely unplayable (Shadowlands, I'm looking at you).

That's not actually true. L5R multiplayer games quickly turn into "kill the guy who is about to win", so if things go just right, you can win with Shadowlands. Plus there's that utterly broken card that give all non-SL guys -1/-1 and all SL guys +1/+1. You wait until you have all 3, then kill almost everything else on the board.