Local design document (ORC)

Under Construction These pages are under heavy construction & only intended for the developers. Notice that most of the info will change. Please contact us if you want to help us out or join the dev. team.

Intro

Welcome to everything you would want to know about the Original Rules Concept for WTactics, or the ORC as we say in short. The ruleset itself is available at the Quick Rules page on the Wiki. If you're interested in development it would be a benefit if you read this document first, read the ORC aterwards, and then re-visit here. While snowdrop is the maintainer of the ORC and currently the benevolent dictator, the development process is transparent and done in public. You are always welcome to become a part of the ORC team or lead your own development of new and different rule system. Either way, please enrich the community with the grace of your presence and feel invited to register in here as well as on the forum to participate in am ongoing discussion or give birth to a new one.

General

• We try to follow all the General Design Document to whatever extent possible.
• Focus on a 2 player game. (We'll adapt it for more players later on.)
• Use the table to put the spatial dimension in the game.
• Avoid hard coded randomness.
• Minimize use of player administration & game variables, balancing that against:
• Maximizing strategical depth and game flow.
• With time, let the player build up the tier level of what can be played.
• Playing time average is 60 - 80 min. A >= 10 rounds game is considered to be long lasting, yet perfectly possible.

Factions

• There are five factions as laid out in the background story. Note that these will perhaps have to reduced down into just four if a clear identity can't be found mechanic wise for each and every one, in which case the fifth would be incorporated into the others, broadening them up while keeping their distinct feeling.
• Factions should be asymmetrical as far as possible.
• New factions won't ever be introduced: Subtypes should be used instead as subfactions if needed. We want broader factions with depth instead of plenty of narrow and over-specialized ones.

Naming

• Card names in general should be 1) Functional 2) Aesthetically appealing 3) Short, in that order of preferences.
• Creatures tend to have generic & functional unit names instead of personal ones.
  • Example: Elvish Ballerina, Guardian of the Empire, Elvish Archer etc.
• Personal creature names are rare and reserved for special and renown high tier creatures.

Creatures

Stats

• Creature's default, printed attack/defence is usually an integer between 1 to 10, where 10 is very rare godlike tier of battle damage reserved for max 1% of the total creature pool, and 5 is considered to be very strong.
  • Creatures can have 0 attack, but not less than 1 DEF as default value.
• Numbers can never be negative, and there's no upper limit for how high ATK/DEF can become while being modified in game.
• ATK/DEF-values are somewhat adjusted in relation to certain attributes, such as species, faction, abilities etc. Please see mindmap for more specifics.

Types

• Each creature card is of the cardtype Creature. This is not written out in clear text. Instead it is indicated by the creature template that differs from all other templates in both colour and layout. In addition it has some two unique containers that are only found on it.
• A creature can be of several subtypes, also known as creature types.
• Number of creature types a creature has should never go beyond four. Typically it would only have one or two.
• A creature always has at least one creature type.
• Creature types should not have any specific rules associated with them in the ruleset. For example, there shouldn't exist a rule that states that "Creatures with the subtype of Goblins can't ever fly." Creature type rules and effects are always written on cards.

Abilities

• When the designing there are two types of abilities: Normal and minor. Minor abilities are the ones that have limited effects, while normal are the rest. Example: "This creature can't be targeted by Enchantments." vs "This creature can't be targeted." The terminology minor and normal abilities won't be made official to the players via the cards. The wording won't be seen in the game and is primarily there to help us as designers to sort abilities into different tiers.
• Creatures usually have between 0 to 2 abilities, with the exception that two minor abilities count as one normal.
• Creatures with more than 2 normal abilities are a rare exception. A creature can't have more than three minor abilities in total.
• Negative abilities - inabilities - can be used for balancing reasons to give a creature a drawback.

Costs

To calculate a creatures cost one has should take the following into account to get a basic idea of what price in gold could be appropriate:

• Number of different positive abilities. +1 gold cost per abillity.
• Number of different negative abilities. -1 gold cost per abillity.
• The following should also be added to the gold cost, rounded to zero decimals correctly: (ATK + DEF)/2. Whenever rounding occurs an additional minor skill will have to be added to make up for the 0.5 extra gold cost.
• Out of faction characteristics according to modifiers: Between +1 to +3.

Faction Modifiers

Gaia

Out of faction

• Huge creatures

Heroes

• Mono-faction heroes normally have a threshold point of 3.
• Multi-faction heroes usually have a total threshold point of 4 or 5.
  • While most do, each doesn't have to have a value of 3 associated with a single faction.
  • Multi faction heroes are subject for stat or ability drawbacks.
  • The faction points for the tertiary faction are always equal to 1.
• A Hero can never be associated with more than 3 factions.
• Hero distribution in total should be around 70% mono, 20% duo-factione and 10% tri-faction.
  • The core is likely to have zero tri-factioned Heroes. It will maybe have 2 duo-faction Heroes, and all the rest will be mono.