Kintsugijin FIGHT - DRAGONBALLS and Turn Outline

(Warning, I am procrastinating on my PyGotham talk)

So, ten years ago, I played the DBZ and DBGT CCG. This game had some pretty cool mechanics, but it was buried under a bunch of legacy and licensing issues.

Various problems:

• The raw power of personalities was dependent on their in canon power.
• There were some insanely powerful cards that were critical to play that were very hard to get.
• Deck building was pretty bland.
• Blocks were almost always a losing proposition.
• The dragon balls were too complicated

Because a close friend of mine actually likes the game (And I do, too!) I want to pillage the mechanics I like, improve the ones I don't, and trash the rest.

During the design process, I want the escape designing to heavily to the DBZ flavor, and so I had the idea: Why not make Kintsugijin as the characters? Plus you get to give feedback on the game as we go.

Anyone interested in joining in on this adventure in hobby game creation?

EDIT: The in design name for power stages is totally spoons. Just. That's already going to happen.

 

I probably won't actually help, but I can stick around and make funny comments? This sounds cool but I don't know anything about this sort of thing.

 

Sounds interesting!

 

Hello thing I am into! When I still played Magic, I'd get into really involved discussions of mechanics and game play a lot. I am over 9000% interested in helping with this.

#i know that was old meme #but im sorry it was necessary

 

(also I am an art and I have always wanted to get involved in arts for games)

 

This is me as well XD

 

That's an interesting idea! I've honestly never played the DBZ card game myself (it's always been pokemon and yugioh with my friend circle) but I like the idea of tailor making a card system for the forums based off the existing one!

 

Alright, because I need a break, and I'm thinking about it, let's start discussing mechanics of the game I'm pillaging.

We'll start with my favorite asshole, Vegeta:



So, there's a lot going on in the old game, and this is from DBGT, where they cleaned up the template a LOT. This is what we call a Personality card. In this case, a Main Personality card.

Your MP affects your deck building rules in a specific way: It determines your race, which limits some cards (Lots of Saiyan only cards in DBZ) AND it allows you an extra copy of a card named for your MP. If your character is a Namekian, you get the bonus of 15 extra cards in your deck.

Your MP isn't a single card, but is a number of Levels. You need at least 3 levels (1, 2, and 3), but can go up to Level 6 for some Personalities. This example is the strongest card you can get for Vegeta. To level up, you had two options, depending on which rendition of the game you played. In Z, you had Rage. Raise your Rage meter to five, and you powered up and raised to your maximum power level, then reduced your rage to zero. In GT you removed ten cards in your discard pile from the game. In the format where you could play both sets of cards together, you had to pick one.

The right hand side are your power stages. They're a combination resource, life bar, and stat. Not shown is the Physical Attack Table where you compare Power Levels when you hit with an attack. It was a mess. Physical Attacks do Power Stages as default. Energy attacks cost you stages to perform, but did Life Cards of damage.

The number on the left hand side is your Power Up Rating. At the beginning of your turn, you raise your power level a number of stages equal to this number.

The middle, you have either a Power (A one time per combat ability played in place of a non-combat or attack card), a Constant Power, like Vegeta here, or an Attack (Again, once per combat.)

So, explanation of the pieces of a personality, I want to mention the things I want to keep:

Power stages are a cool side resource. Going to keep the PUR because it goes with power stages.
Leveling up is super thematic, want to keep that. I hated Rage as a mechanic (It was really dependent on how you built your deck, and was basically completely excluded for certain deck styles, making the levels mostly pointless.)
Every personality having a power is cool, and will probably stick around.

Things that MUST go:
The PAT needs to die a fiery death. With it the whole idea of Power Level, which is great for DBZ, but shitty for anything that isn't DBZ. Probably replaced with a simple algorithm based on your current power stage to your opponent's power stage. Also consider using stages as cost for blocks.

Things that probably need to change:
Race, combat style, deck building. Not completely, but they need tuning.

Completely new idea:
Instead of every card having a name, your low level characters are an assembly of "parts": A race card, a profession card, and a handful of style cards, and that sets your deck building rules. Your stage two is a "destiny" card which might be limited based on your race or profession, but is largely apart from it. Level 3 is your Hero. It's not named, but it'll have requirements, like a certain race and certain destiny. Then an optional level 4 that is a Legend. It's based directly on your Hero level, but it's a named character with all the awesome you expect from that naming convention.

So, brain dump complete. Y'all may wonder at the way my brain handles design.

 

Oh wow, that is a lot of info, haha. I've been wanting to get more into gaming (MtG, to be specific), lack of irl friends be damned, so it's really neat to see someone talk about mechanics and whatnot.

 

At some point I intend to start a thread strictly for mechanics discussion because I have a problem.

 

I love this idea and I think it will be really cool. I'm not great at mechanics, but I'm decent at brainstorming, so I'll lurk and occasionally add to the discussion ... :D

 

Added a poll, you can pick as many items as you like, when I'm ready to do my next write up, whichever choice has the most votes is what I'll do it on. Y'all vote now.

 

Bumping to get a few more votes before I do a write up later today when I need a break from engineering this solution at work.

 

And we're back to our regularly scheduled game analysis.

Today we're doing:

DRAGONBALLS

So, anyone who knows the dragonball universe knows what the dragonballs are: Seven powerful artifacts that can be brought together to summon a dragon, who grants powerful wishes.


Note the "This is not a black style card." I'll get to styles in a future write up, but that's there because style in the CCG was determined by the first word of the card. These black star balls are special, though, and aren't black style. They're also not Earth Dragon balls, which is important.

The first thing to know about the dragonballs: If you control them all, you win. If you gain the last ball by playing it from your hand, you win immediately. If you capture the last dragonball, you need to hold on to all of them for a full turn before you can win.

So Dragonballs are played from your hand during the Non-Combat step, like other non-combat cards. When you play it, you get the effect immediately. Then it stays face up in front of you.

During combat, if you take 5 or more life cards of damage, your opponent can capture one of your dragonballs. When you capture a dragonball, you ALSO get its effect.

Dragonballs are totally unique. Both in deck building and during play. You may only have one set of dragonballs in your deck (Earth, Namek, Black Star, and Cracked), and you may only have one of each dragonball.

When in play, if a dragonball is already in play, you can't play another copy of it. (Like if your opponent is playing with the same set.) If you ever discard a dragonball while taking life cards of damage, you first check to see if that dragonball is in play, if so, you remove the discarded copy from the game, if not, you place the dragonball at the bottom of the deck, and continue taking damage.



If you're paying attention, you can technically end up in an infinite loop, where you are cycling through only dragonballs in your life deck. This is called a Dragonball Loop and if it happens, you lose.



The Good:

Dragonballs are actually a really interesting mechanic, and the idea of this sub control game really appeals to the tactical player in me.

Having the battlefield shift as players steal dragonballs back and for was fun.

The Bad:

But as I'm sure you've noticed, the dragonballs range in power from VERY GOOD (Black Star Ball 3 is incredibly powerful and would see play in every deck) to pretty bad. (Black Star 2 is very weak.)

The Ugly:

Dragonball victories were fucking difficult. You had to control seven of the SAME SET, you could only put one of each in your deck, and dragonball decks were usually about getting through your deck quickly to get the balls out. Which also means you were usually getting pummeled and therefore losing the dragonballs. And your opponent might not be running any!

Worse, neither player could be using the dragonballs, and a whole element of the game is lost.


What I want:

I want to keep the tactical element. But whatever card replaces dragonballs shouldn't go in the deck. They should be on the table from the start, and the back and forth should create interesting game play choices. Also, their powers need to be leveled out. 3 Stars are WAY TOO POWERFUL. But I don't think 2 star ball is the right power level. Things like 4 and 5 are probably going to be the right feel.

So card types: Non-Combat Set-Ups, Non-combat Drills, Allies, Combat Attacks, Combat Blocks, Combat Events, Sensei, Masteries left to do. Will put a poll up, new write up Saturday night!

 

May not be putting the poll up, the software won't let me delete the poll and make a new one. Will find a new solution.

 

Okay, this may just be the way my brain works, but I think I'd have an easier time processing the card type mechanics if you walked me through a typical turn - not even necessarily actions you would take, but the order of the steps and such. Like, in Magic, you have beginning - first main - combat - second main - end (not counting all the steps within those >_<). What are the steps to a typical turn?

 

I was kind of not getting into this until all the basic card types are in order. But I can put that up in the write up options as well. Really need to find a way to do the poll thing.

 

Short version of turn order until I can do full write ups on the DBZ/GT games rules:

1. Draw
2. Non-Combat
3. Power-up
4. Combat Step
5. Rejuvenate Step

In general, you play all your cards in either the Non-Combat step or the Combat step.

Power-Up is when you level up and increase your power stages.

Rejuvenate is basically the Magic end step, with some extra rules.

Draw is what it says on the tin. (And I'll cover the draw mechanic later.)

 

jesse or seebs has to reset te poll :c

 

@ADigitalMagician thanks! That helps :)