Card RPG game: Fall of Heroes

[Chronologist]

First of all, I'm kinda new to this, so if the game seems like it's less role-play and more TCG-based, don't hesitate to tell me.

I'm trying to build a game similar to Arkham Horror, the Call of Cthulu tabletop game. However, I'm trying to flip around the mechanics. The goal is to kill everyone else's Hero and have yours be the last one alive. Here's how the game starts...

Each player draws a Hero card randomly from all of the Hero cards. Each Hero is an example of a clasic Dungeons and Dragons class and race. For example, a human Paladin, an elven Wizard, and a halfling Rogue. There are 11 Hero cards I'm working on now, and I don't think I'll make more than 20. Each Hero has Life Points and Mana Points; Heroes without spells have Endurance points. Heroes also have statistics like their Combat score, Defense, and any special abilities. They are also ranked from 1 to 11, 1 being the weakest, and 11 being the strongest. Each player then gets a 20-card deck called the Hero Deck, there is a unique deck for each hero.

Next, each player randomly selects 40 cards from the Villain pile. Each type of villain card has a specific color background, so you can choose what kind you want, but not the specific cards themselves. The player with the Hero with the lowest Value chooses first, then the next lowest, and so on.

Villain cards are divided into 6 kinds, Necrotic, Bestial, Demonic, Aberrant, Mercenary, and Trap. There are 60 cards for each category.

Now, the character with the lowest Hero value randomly selects the first Dungeon Location, and the game begins.

Each player draws 3 cards each turn. They can be any combination of cards from his Hero and Villain decks. The player with the lowest Hero value goes first, playing a card from his hand. Play continues clockwise until all players pass their turns.

There are 2 types of most Villain cards. Monsters are creatures that try to kill characters in the partly. You can only play monsters on your turn. You assign each one to a Hero; that is who they fight. In the combat phase, they attack the Hero and he attacks them back, until one side or the other is dead. Necrotic creatures are usually undead and they specialize in coming back from the dead to continue attacking players, Bestial types are, well, beasts that fight with sheer strength, Demonic types are demons and other evil outsiders and flame creatures that are aggressive but not very defensive, Aberrant types are your classic Lovecraftian tentacle-covered gibbering monstrosities with sanity-destroying powers, and Mercenary monsters are "normal" people and human-like races with standard attacks. Trap cards don't have monsters in them.

Effect cards try to indirectly weaken Heroes or strengthen Monsters. necrotic effects generally resurrect weak Necrotic monsters and reduce a Hero's Combat values, Bestial effects usually increase the Combat or Defense values of their own monsters, Demonic cards generally do direct Life Point damage, Aberrant cards generally do direct Mana or Endurance damage, and Trap cards do a variety of functions, usually messing with the Location. Mercenary cards have no Effects in them.

Dungeon Location cards change every turn. Each location has an effect that boosts certain Villain cards. For example, the Sunken Tomb location raises the combat pool of all Undead-type monsters to a minimum of 3. The Dark Doorway might make all Aberrant monsters have +1 Combat and all Bestial monsters have -1 Defense. Using Traps and other cards to change the location can be a devastating bonus to your own side. I'm planning out making 36 different locations, 6 for each Villain type.

Hero cards you draw from the Hero deck function like Effects. Each one is generally unique to a hero, and it gives them a definite boost in a fight. For example, the Paladin's Turn Undead card lets him destroy an undead with less Defense than his Combat score, while the Wizard's Fireball card lets her deal significant damage to all enemies facing her. Generally, these are few and far between, since you only have 20, and you only draw 3 total card per turn.

I've referenced Combat and Defense scores a lot, so this is how they work: you roll a six-sided die (d6) and add your score to that. When you are attacking an enemy, you roll Combat and he rolls Defense, and vice versa. Scores for monsters range from 0 to 5, on heroes, they are usually ranked 2 to 7. In a combat phase, Monsters always attack first, then the Hero. There is only one exchange of attacks each round. If a Hero beast a monster's defense, the monster is destroyed. If a monster beast a Hero's defense, the Hero take 1 point of Life point damage. Aberrant creatures generally deal Mana or Endurance points instead, and some Necrotic effects deal that kind of damage too.

Basically, Heroes start out pretty strong, but they take damage more and more over time as the odds are stacked against them. The goal of the game is to balance attacking other people's Heroes while defending your own. It's also a social game, since you can form alliances to take out the weaker (or stronger) players.

What do you think?

Chronologist

[greyorm]

I like the idea, but I think you're right about the TCG-bias. In fact, I'm not seeing how role-playing fits into the scheme of play. Can you clarify how, or even if it does?

[Chronologist]

Sorry about the ambiguity, I probably should have specified what I was looking for.

The game is, in the below format, designed for single-session adventuring. A short, 1 to 2 hour long dungeon crawl of sorts. The game format, like Arkham Horror, is not designed for long-term play. I'm looking for help in devising a way of increasing the power of Hero and Villain cards. I honestly have no idea how to do this, so I'm seeing if the Forge community has any ideas.

Seriously, any ideas would help. If no-one can figure out how to make this into a long-term RPG, then I'll keep it in its TCG format.

Thanks for the post,

Chronology

[greyorm]

Seriously, any ideas would help. If no-one can figure out how to make this into a long-term RPG, then I'll keep it in its TCG format.

Ahhh. Unfortunately, I don't really know anything about Arkham Horror, so I'm not sure I can help make it more an RPG. Sorry! It does sound interesting, though. Have you asked for help over on Storygames or RPG.net?

[Vulpinoid]

Seriously, any ideas would help. If no-one can figure out how to make this into a long-term RPG, then I'll keep it in its TCG format.

See if you can get your hands on some cards from the game Arcadia: The Wyld Hunt, published by White Wolf in the mid-to-late 1990s. It's probably going to be impossible to find, so it might be better to find some information on the game.

I bought a decent number of them and there was a bit of a fanatical group dedicated to the game in these parts for a few years...that didn't stop the game from collapsing though.

Basically, each starter deck gave the basics for a character...an archetype,a bunch of merits and flaws, a power or two and maybe some funky equipment.

A player also needed a story deck which provided a few terrain cards, and a bunch of enemies or trials that had to be overcome by the characters.

Using the terrain cards you'd build up a map of an imaginary land, and under those terrain cards you'd place the trials and enemies that would have to be faced as you wandered the land in search of adventure.

Players would exhaust their merits to gain advantages in trials, while opponents could exhaust the character's flaws to make things harder.

Characters would be built up by completing quests within the game, earning points that would let them buy new merits, or buy off their flaws. With more merits and less flaws, they'd be able to challenge tougher trials and engage more difficult/complicated quests.

We used to play it more as a roleplaying game than a pure card-fest, this would be done by offering a sentence or two to explain how the merits and flaws were being invoked, or by setting scenes with evocative language before a trial would be tested with the dice.

It worked fairly well...so I can certainly see the potential for a CCG based RPG.

V

[Chronologist]

The Wyld Hunt sounds pretty cool, but I'm more looking for a casual, one-time session game. That Arcadia game sounds like it's more for the long haul.

I haven't gone to Storygames yet, what is it? (I apologize in advance for my ignorance).

Mostly, it's supposed to be a fun, chaotic game you could finish in about 2 hours or less, something to do before or after a normal RPG session. I have no desire for an extended play system.

Chronology

[greyorm]

Story-games is a forum-based hobby site like the Forge dedicated to discussing RPGs, particularly "story oriented" games, play and design.

[Vulpinoid]

Like many CCGs, Arcadia: the Wyld Hunt was actually designed for single session play (the campaign play we preferred was actually an optional method of play).

Each player would devise a hero according to a set number of points, then purchase merits and abilities using those points, or purchasing a couple of flaws to gain some extra points to play with. Two or more players could go head to head with 10pt characters for a quick game, 15pt characters for a medium length game, 20pts for a long game, etc. Each player would choose a simple quest that might be "visit X number of lands", "kill a number of opponent's worth a total of X points", or "steal X number of items from your opponents", completing that quest would earn you victory points, in addition to gaining points from meeting challenges that were hidden around the land that you explore. Games would continue until one of the players reached a number of points equal to the point score indicated at the start of play...(ie. the first of the 20pt characters to reach 20 victory points is considered the winner).

I realise that I might sound like I'm harping on about this game, when there might be a lot of other potential options around, but I think it was a highly under-rated game that deserved a better run. If I remember correctly, it also ran off a simple system of d6+stat versus d6+difficulty (or d6+stat vs d6+stat when players went head to head). Challenges would have specific stats that needed to be used in order for confrontation to occur, physical, mental or social...(you might need mental to evade a random trap that gets revealed, you might need social to convince a travelling merchant to give you an item, etc.)

Some advantages would give you stat bonus in certain circumstances, or when facing specific types of enemies.

You can probably start to see why your ideas are reminding me of that game.

Not exactly the same, but certainly enough that it's worth looking at things that game got right or wrong...

I'll stop my rant now, and let you get back to your own game design...

V

[Chronologist]

Arcadia: The Wyld Hunt sounds great, actually. I just have a couple of questions:

1. Is the game quick to set up and play? I want a game that can start up in less that 10 minutes,

2. Are the players usually playing against the field or other players? I definitely want a game where players try to kill each other in addition to questing.

3. Does it require a lot of cards? My game has about 360 Villain cards in 6 piles, plus 220 Hero cards in 11 piles, and the 11 Heroes themselves (probably 4 by 6 inches). I figure, with nearly 600 cards, every game will be very different than the last, so there's practically no need for expansions, plus, since they all have different backs, they won't be that difficult to sort after the game. It seems like the Wyld Hunt requires a LOT of packs of cards, and I'm trying for a simpler approach. Is there a "core" set I can find, one that doesn't require any expansion cards?

4. Where can I buy it?

Chronology

[B. Charles Reynolds]

Cronologist:

Essentially, what you have described is a sort of mashup of Hero Quest and old-style Illuminati (before the TCG). Is that about right?

[Vulpinoid]

1. Is the game quick to set up and play? I want a game that can start up in less that 10 minutes,

Yes, it's quick start, because most characters start with a single pop-up template, and a half dozen or so bunch of two sided cards. One one side of the card there is a coloured image, a descriptive name and a sentence or two describing how this card influences play...on the back of the card is a black-n-white version of the image and the word "exhausted" to represent that this cards features have been used and will need refreshing (at a waypoint, or after successfully overcoming certain obstacles). As long as your players don't angst to much about what abilities would be the best, then you can generate a character in a few minutes, and create the play area in a few minutes.

2. Are the players usually playing against the field or other players? I definitely want a game where players try to kill each other in addition to questing.

Both apply. A character can win through eliminating their opponents, or by accumulating enough points from completing missions.

3. Does it require a lot of cards? My game has about 360 Villain cards in 6 piles, plus 220 Hero cards in 11 piles, and the 11 Heroes themselves (probably 4 by 6 inches). I figure, with nearly 600 cards, every game will be very different than the last, so there's practically no need for expansions, plus, since they all have different backs, they won't be that difficult to sort after the game. It seems like the Wyld Hunt requires a LOT of packs of cards, and I'm trying for a simpler approach. Is there a "core" set I can find, one that doesn't require any expansion cards?

As I said in an earlier post, each player only required a starter character deck and a starter story deck to get a game going. Each of these decks had 12-15 cards (sorry I can't remember specifics). There were 200-300 cards in the original release, and there was at least one expansion set containing another 100 or so cards with a clockwork theme.

4. Where can I buy it?

That's the catch. I don't know where you'd be able to track any of these down. Globally, the game wasn't that popular and many people say that this was through the way White Wolf marketed it at the time. Occasionally, some near complete sets come up on eBay...you've just gotta be lucky.

V

[Chronologist]

Thanks for all of your support, I think I'm going to just tinker with it for a while. It certainly isn't ready for playtesting yet. Thank you again for your opinions and the reference to Arcadia, I'll try and find some of those cards.