First off, this is where the map grid pieces and whatnot are stored in a handy .zip file
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~acyang/541_Mats.zip
I really should get cranking on the IMD webspace to figure this out.
Anyways, included are all the materials to make extra cards, the map board (which looks really bad to me...I'll try to make a better one), the 2 sample cards in .psd with layers and jpeg (also posted above). I made one really simple change while I was working on these, why not add some education in anyway while we're working on just the USA edition, so I did some history ie flavor text at the bottom, and renamed the cards to be a little more relevant, you'll see as Train I switched to Transcontinental Railroad, and the POWAAAHHHH!!!!! Card ie draw or force 1 card from hand perm. I switched to Grand Canyon, I thought it would be appropriate to set it as one of the most famous US landmarks. Anyways, take a look, below is a list of the rules we came up with. Also if you want to make extra cards yourself, after a crapload of tooling around in Photoshop to blank out a MTG card, you'll find all the parts you need to construct them easily, also the picture window dimensions are exactly 279x204, so that will help out. Heeerree we go! BTW best brainstorm session ever on the beach, we must do that more often, hahaha. Also, we can do archaic transportation or objects, ie Transcont railroad, since it also throws in some history and info that we wanted to integrate with the online database system.
-A.O. Al Out
A->B USA Edition (Domestic)
4 Base Movements
-Train (Transcontinental Railroad)
-Plane (Wright Brothers? Something related since Aviation was invented in the US)
-Boat (Not sure about famous boats, certainly we could do Christopher Columbus but
something more relevant would be nice, any ideas? Like for the global version, in China
boats would be something like Junks or Dragon Boats, maybe Steam Boats since those
seem to be all the rage along the Missisippi in times of yore)
-Car (Model T! Should be suitable)
And we can also add more types of movements depending on the area, like the Off Road Vehicle Card, or Dogsled in like Alaska or Russia.
5 Directionals N,E,S,W and Purple.
Special Moves!
-Switch Positions -> Random City (?)
-Rotate Board -> Rotate City (L.A. Quake! lolol, but seriously Great San Francisco Quake)
-Take an Extra Turn (? Something in US History that was inspiring, emancipation proclamation? eh? hmmm...Industrial Revolution? But that was more prevalent in EU.)
-Block->look at target players hand, remove 1 card. That player draws 2 cards at the end of their turn after they've made their move. [They skip drawing a card at the beginning of their turn.] (hmmm...Cold War?)
-Your Choice->You get to pick either the direction OR form of transportation. Alternate version card allows you to force 1 opponent to a specific direction or form of allowed transportation at their current point. (lolololol Forced Armed Services Draft or er..)
-Draw 3 cards and at the end of your turn discard 2 randomly [opponent randomly picks 2 cards to discard, pc version, comp decides] (WOW, what a power card. Brainstorm anyone? Ice Age, 1 blue? nope? looking at you Mike!, anyways, how about uh Eniac, or something along the invention of the computer, also in the US, or ARPANET, that might be fun)
-Force hand size down 1 for target opponent, or up 1 for you. (Grand Canyon, but just a spec at this point.)
-All Players draw new hands (uh, WWII? Or Vietnam)
-Players swap hands counterclockwise/randomly (Hmm...Summer of Love? hahahahah yeah '69..huh...that one actually makes sense, but lets keep this PG. Can we make an X rated version? Buhahahahahaa)
posted by Butterfly Effect @ 1:19 PM
1 Comments:
After considering last week's playtest and commentary, we decided to focus on making our game less random, and more strategy based. To do so, we switched from a dice-based movement system to a card pool based system. Now, the player has to play two cards from their hand of eight cards; one a cardinal direction to move in, and the other a method of movement(airplane, boat, car or train). The final distance moved will be based on the method of movement and the player's current position. Now instead of trying to reach a board edge, the player has a destination city and a starting city.
Gameplay considerations:
As stated, we felt that a switch to a card based movement model would inject strategy into the gameplay that random dice rolls did not.
We decided to limit (initially, anyway) the player's hand to 8 cards and force them to draw four from the direction pile, and four from the transport pile. This will provide them with a solid foundation to start the game. But because they might need a specific direction or movement type, we allow the player to decide how to split their draws each turn; they can choose two transport cards, two direction cards, or one of each.
But because we liked the combative elements of the game, and felt that it was necessary to be able to change the game radically, we decided to keep the idea of special cards. Some functions like swapping hands or changing destinations can quickly change a player's whole strategy, while others like allowing a player to look at another's hand can help to prepare blocking strategies. The change of hand size card is also intended to further the pvp aspects of the game, and give one player an edge or a disadvantage.
Furthermore, we switched from a blank checkerboard system to a map-based system, mainly so that we can integrate the movement modifiers based on the costs associated with that location.
This is crossposted like 6 billion places.
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