Alignment?

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pennomi
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Alignment?

Post by pennomi » Mon Nov 22, 2010 05:39

Before we make too many cards, should we giving creatures alignment? Elves would be predominantly neutral, Merfolk lawful, Undead chaotic, etc. I know that we don't plan on implementing the day/night cycle, but I think it would give a lot of opportunity to make cards/abilities affecting that variable. Plus, it would simply add one small symbol to the card, perhaps next to the title or subtype. Anyway, just thinking ahead. What do you think?
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Re: Alignment?

Post by Q_x » Mon Nov 22, 2010 09:26

I like the idea, however, Pennomi - my main concern is that it is not suited for the game type we planned to build here.
I see WT to more like "Arcade" game, where the gameplay is fast and easy and most effort goes into fine-tuning deck, not into eyestrain. Single hour of dynamic play, not several hours at 2x2m table full of cards. Simplicity, not fancy stuff. So yes, its a good idea, but may not be for the type of play I imagine ORC to be.
Dunno if we will be able to make marks onto original cards, but if you succeed on forking the rules, and I'll be still here - I can make the graphic stuff for the alignment marks.
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snowdrop
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Re: Alignment?

Post by snowdrop » Mon Nov 22, 2010 09:39

Why would we do that?

Answers I can think of is a) flavour - they're expected to have one in an RPG etc b) more variables on card that we can design around.

I'll go with b) here as a) won't be a valid reason for adding another variable on every card.

This is a creature only suggestion since alignment says something about a personality and psychological predisposition - the good/bad mentality of a beeing. In BfW this is just a way to tell us when in the turn structure a creature gets a bonus or punishment, and in direct relation to it's ToD cycles.
Question is still what would alignment bring that none of the existing variables could?

We get one obvious answer from BfW: There they use it to create some variance within a faction. So, most elves are neutral, but then we have the human mage and wose that are good (? can't remember the wording here.) Thing is that this is, in part, a surrogate for our subtype system: BfW lacks any and all usage of subtypes in the way we will use it. This is a thing that comes close to them, and that is connected to an always present effect/ability that cycles through (the ToD). Also, they way they use ToD and bonus/punishment along with it works in BfW because you can retreat and "hide" your units on such a huge field. You can't do that in a CCG (that's easy to play & doesn't require yet more admin or space).

If we play with the thought that all our creatures have alignment there can only be two scenarios:

1) All in same faction have same alignment. In such a case alignment is not needed. We could just use faction belonging instead since it sends the equal info seen from a logical point of view.

2) There is varied alignment within a faction. If we do this we open a can of worms and also maybe pre-determine deck constructions to a larger extent. Also, how would one go about when designing a card that gives a/all neutral units a +2 attack boost? Any faction that has a unit that is neutral could end up using that card, even if some factions are indeed more bound to use it since they have more neutral units. My point is that alignment system would go so much cross-faction that it would be hard to design around it and still maintain control of what happens / faction identities.

A creature has the following values we can design around:
  • Gold cost
  • Threshold
  • Faction
  • Attack value
  • Defense value
  • 0 to 3 or so subtypes (depending only on space in template, wording etc)
So, that's 5 to 8 different variables. Each and one allows us to create whatever card we can use our imagination for, that somehow involves one of them. Or actually no, we can even combine them all to get even more design space.

Example: "All Gaian creatures with a gold cost of 3 or lower die". Adding alignment would indeed add one more variable, so it goes from 5 to 8 --> 6 to 8 instead. Question is, is that needed? If not, it shouldn't be there as it clutters card and just begs us to create boring bleak copies of cards that already exist.

Example, do we want a game where we have the following three cards: "All creatures that cost 3 gold die" + "All creatures that are Neutral die" + "All creatures that have an attack value of 1 die"? In essence, it's the same card, over and over again. We have just changed it's variable/condition.

Personally I don't think it's always the right things to keep adding variables. Current system already gives us a guaranteed of 5 variables already, and it allows us to max it out to 8 using subtypes. That is enough for any design desire really ;) and I don't see alignment bringing anything new at all beyond just being yet another variable. (Also, if we accept the argument that more is better for some reason, then why not add yet another one as well, like sex for example? We could design around that as well...but, all I wrote still applies to that as well.)
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Re: Alignment?

Post by Erundil » Sat Jan 22, 2011 04:47

I was thinking why the day/night thing was not implemented in WTactics and found this topic.

I think that alignment should be cross faction, each unit has its own alignment. Displaying this in card could be done adding a colored circle to the left of attack/defense.

How it should work?
A game starts with neutral (neither day or night, don't know how to say better). Only abilities, events, or spells can change this, eg. a player plays a spell to have the daylight.

There are 3 types of alignment: neutral. day, night.

Creatures of neutral take +1/+0 when it's neutral
Creatures of day take +1/+0 when it's day
Creatures of night take +1/+0 whent it's nigth

This is very simple to manage and to understand and can give the possibility to develop night/day/neutral armies regardless of faction or spells/abilities that works only in a determined time eg. "this ability works only on night".
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Re: Alignment?

Post by snowdrop » Mon Jan 24, 2011 11:21

Erundil wrote:I was thinking why the day/night thing was not implemented in WTactics and found this topic.
Think about why it (or anything, really) should be implemented - not why it isn't. ;)

(Using "why is it not implemented" as the centerpoint in the discussion gives the impression that it should, for some reason, have been implemented. Usually that reason is just resemblance to BfW, which in turn isn't a valid one since we're not trying to make BfW playable on the table.)

Everything I wrote in my reply in here 22 Nov 2010, 09:39 seems to still be valid objections against adding further more variables.

I think that alignment should be cross faction, each unit has its own alignment.
I agree it should work that way if it existed, else it would be less meaningful having it and even more limiting for multifactioned decks.

How it should work?
A game starts with neutral (neither day or night, don't know how to say better). Only abilities, events, or spells can change this, eg. a player plays a spell to have the daylight.
If a game starts with x and that is put into the rules, then any player with a faction built around x would have the advantage the first turn (or, even disadvantage since it will take to more turns for that player to properly utilize his forces - first turn is one where nobody can attack).

I'd rather go with a random time of day if alignment would be used, and even that is a bad solution.

There are 3 types of alignment: neutral. day, night.

Creatures of neutral take +1/+0 when it's neutral
Creatures of day take +1/+0 when it's day
Creatures of night take +1/+0 whent it's nigth
Alignments aren't same as ToD: They're the personality and tendency of a creature, like Chaotic, Good, Neutral, Evil, etc etc. Time of day is day, night, noon, etc. In your suggestion you mix alignments with ToD ;)

On another note: Neutral getting +1 when it's "neutral-time" sounds very non-neutral. Typically neutral is not affected, as the name suggests. They also lose some - but not all - of their existential justification since night creatures are not punished when it is day, else neutral would be +0 +0 no matter what time it was.

If a game used ToD it would be cooler if the benefits of the ToD combined with proper alignment were indivudal instead of hard coded in the basic rules. For example, a Bat could get an ability that was activated only during NIGHT since the bat is CHAOTIC (or evil, or whatever, just examples).

That would be far more interesting and dynamic. It would also suddenly create a game where creatrues can be at their peak or bottom every third or so round.

While that may sound as a nice concept, it makes the game have a certain 3-round-flow. It maybe also makes it harder to play the game since one has to keep track of all creatures on all sides and take into account what they can or will potentially be able to do in this or coming round. If this is false and I'm mistaken, and i very well could be, and the game isn't much harder to play or plan, then one of the main objections against such a solution would be gone. Question that would have to be answered then is what such a setup brings to the game - does it bring anything that isn't there already (e.g. this flow of 3-round importance, how would that play out?).
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