Syntax of abilities & keyworded ones

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snowdrop
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Syntax of abilities & keyworded ones

Post by snowdrop » Sat May 14, 2011 18:48

Notice: I copy-pasta here from a private email convo between me and Q_x, in an attempt to make our work more public and inviting for others to participate in: We have had a nasty but comfy habit of keeping to mail for some reason, and I try to break the hex. I post the convo without asking for Q_x consent and hope it's ok to do so, and at the same time I wouldn't recommend anyone to do what I just did. :twisted:

Q_x's mail to snowdrop
2011-05-12 22:17, x wrote
>> The syntax also is
>>
>> unclear - it seems like there could be abilities that have their own
>> magnitude, so you will end up with stuff like:
>> Trumpling 4 2 [m]:
>
> Paying cost of 4 gold and marking 2 cards. There is also a level of
> ability, so that it can be in extreme situation:
>
> Keyword abilitypower goldcost cardcount [m]: description
>
> The syntax you propose is just not clear enough.
> What are possible things to have before :
>
> Keyword
> ability level
> gold cost
> mark sign
> count of cards marked to activate the ability
>
> So you have 3 numbers, each of them can appear or not
> and you can use only [m] as a separator
> so my proposal would be rather:
>
> Keyword (level): cost, count[m] - description
>
> Keyword [m] -
> Keyword: cost, [m] -
> Keyword (level) -
> Keyword: cost -
>
> or, if we will not have cards that need other cards to be marked:
> Keyword (level), cost, [m]:
>
> I just don't get why sometimes : is better to separate stuff and
> sometimes dash...
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Re: Syntax of abilities & keyworded ones

Post by snowdrop » Sat May 14, 2011 19:33

Keyworded abilities

1. Abilities that are, among other things, thought to be re-occurring throughout the game should be keyworded. An ability is keyworded if it gets a short name made up of 1 up to 2 words. Preferably the keyworded abilities are made up of just one word, are short and easy to distinguish from each other.

2. Those cards that have a keyworded ability and also the room for it will have reminder text next to the ability, explaining what it means. Cards that do not have room for it won't have the reminder text there. After all, that's half the point with keywords - to not having to write out full text every time.

3. All keyworded abilities will also be explained in a dedicated part of the core set comprehensive rules, in alphabetical order.

4. Syntax of keyworded abiltiies:

Example of a keyworded ability as mentioned in previous paragraph:
Haste - This creature can attack the same turn it comes into play.

Example of the same without remindertext:
Haste


Example of the same with some kind of variable:
KeywordedName IntegerVariable - Remindertext.

Callback 4 - If the owner of this card pays it's callback cost, instead of being discarded after coming into play it goes back to the owners hand.

5. I prefer it if there are no other syntactical variants beyond these "3" (actually 2) for keyworded abilities. Main reason is that I don't think it is a wise idea to have overly complex abilities keyworded since the more complex an ability is, the more it needs it's full text to be visible, and the less suited it is to be keyworded. In addition, this keeps things very simple. It sets some desired "KISS"-restrictions into place, yet still offers us some flexibility as to what the variable means since it can refer to anything, as defined by us in the explanatory rules associated with the keyword.

Non-keyworded abilities

These can offer a more flexible and complex syntax. Question here is what the best one would be. My suggestion is something along the lines of:

CustomTextRequirement, GoldCost, [o] [m] : Effects

These mean the following:

CustomTextReq: This can be any text we want there that is some kind of stuff that the player has to do in order to trigger the Effect. Example: "Show a card from your hand to all players." In general, this should be avoided and only seen on a minority of cards. Most activated abilities should only cost gold and/or marking.

GoldCost: This is the sum of gold a player has to pay to activate the Effects of the ability. It's always an integer. Example: 4. That would require the player to pay 4 gold. Say the player chooses to do so and that she uses a RP with 10 gold in it. All those 10 are then depleted, as per the rules for how resources work in ORC.

[o]: [o] is the newly invented sign for "mark x target other creatures in your local front". It is the same rectangle we use for [m] but minus the arrow and plus an integer in it. Again, while this was something I originally imagined would be used often in my initial version of ORC, I now see this being used as more sparsely, and maybe mostly by factions that have more of cheap creatures than others.

[m]: This is the good old mark sign, a horizontal rectangle with an arrow in it as designed by Q_x. It means "mark me in order to activate the Effects".

colon: This is a delimiter. Anything to the left of it is some kind of a cost or something else that must happen before whatever is on the right of it can be activated. The text right to it is the card Effect(s). The text to the left of it are costs and pre-requisites. This is the only way the colon will be used in the game, and, it won't be used at all when dealing with keyworded abilities.

Integers
Given the above an integer that is plainly written on the card can have one of three contexts:

a) It is a keyword variable: As such, it can mean anything as defined in that keywords rules.

b) It is a gold cost: Whenever an integer written plainly on the card is to the left of the colon, it is always the gold cost.

c) It is a variable that somehow relates to the cards effect: Whenever it is to the right of the colon or is part of the reminder text of a keyworded ability then it could mean whatever the text defines it as.
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Re: Syntax of abilities & keyworded ones

Post by TorbenBeta » Sun May 15, 2011 11:41

As for the explanation of the keywords, there is the abbreviation-page on the wiki which was created for that.
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