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 here 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 somehow put the spatial dimension in the game.
• Avoid hard coded randomness.
• Minimize use of player administration & game variables.
• Maximize strategical depth and game flow.
• Playing time average is 60 min. A >10 rounds game is considered long.

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

• Creatures usually have between 0 to 2 abilities.
• Creatures with more than 2 abilities are a rare exception.
• 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

=Out of faction

• Huge creatures

=Discount

• Defensive