Entangled Souls (working title)

[Dr. Cakey]

I'm in the midst of designing a trading card game (WITH AN [s]ANIME[/s] INTERNET FIC TIE-IN!!), and I wanted to show it off, see what the TCG people thought, etc. This was [i]in no way[/i] inspired by TheblazingMARS's [url="http://forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/topic/250845-%E2%99%A6realm-of-beasts-tcg%E2%99%A6set-4-in-progress%E2%99%A6/"]Realm of Beasts[/url], which I did not just link you to because I've never seen it and even if I did see it, I'm sure it would be terrible. Or something.

[size="7"]Entangled Souls (working title)[/size]
[s]Photoshop[/s] GIMP logo coming soon...

Here is an extremely professional diagram of a player's side of the game field:
[spoiler=''ey'][img]http://www.majhost.com/gallery/matanui0011/EntangledSouls/entangledsoulsfieldv1.jpg[/img][/spoiler]
1. [b]Deck:[/b] I've already made a mistake (whoo!), this should be called the 'Heart'. The Heart is your deck, and consists entirely of creatures, which are called facets. If a player has an empty Heart, they lose immediately. The Heart will consist of either 40 or 50 cards (depending on how fast this game turns out to be).
2. [b]Ether[/b]: The Graveyard. The discard pile.
3. [b]Right Hand Path/Left Hand Path[/b]: 2 decks of 20 cards. Each turn, during Charge Phases 1 and 2, you move the top card of each Path to the Soul/Reverse Soul ("Charge" the Soul/Reverse Soul), as the case may be. The two Paths consist solely of energy cards, which are used to play facets and fulfill costs.
4. [b]Soul[/b]: The Right Hand Path Charges the Soul. The top card of the Right Hand Path is placed face-up up in the Soul (on top of any cards already in the Soul).
5. [b]Reverse Soul[/b]: The Left Hand Path Charges the Reverse Soul. The top card of the Left Hand Path is placed face-[b]down[/b] in the Reverse Soul (on top of any cards already in the Reverse Soul).
6. [b]Frontrow and Backrow, consisting of 4 Zones[/b]: These are where your facets are played. The act of playing a facet from your hand into a zone face-up in the ordinary fashion (i.e. Normal Summoning) is called incarnating. More on how incarnating works a bit later. Each Zone can contain any number of facets in a pile, but only the top-most facet can attack. This top-most facet is called the 'active facet' and those below are it called 'passive facets'. Both active and passive facets can be attacked. You cannot change the order of facets in a Zone. Facets in the backrow cannot be attacked while there are facets in the frontrow, but while there are facets in the frontrow, they cannot attack.
8. [b]Shield[/b]: When you are attacked, the attack must first get through your Shield. Each time you are attacked, you can (but are not required to) take the top card of your Heart and put it face-up in the Shield. Whether you have done this or not, the Defense of all the facets in your Shield is compared to the Offense of the attacker. If the Defense is greater, the attack ends right there, and all the cards in your Shield are discarded to the Ether. If the Offense is greater, the attack continues unabated, and the facets remain in your Shield. Facets in the Shield are only there as meat-shields, so they cannot attack, nor can they activate nor apply their effects.
7. [b]Hand (not pictured)[/b]: Start with five cards in hand. Draw 1 card at the start of your turn.

[size="5"]Cards[/size]
Here's what a Facet Card looks like - [i]in written form![/i]

Card Name
[DAT ART]
ATTRIBUTE Class Archetype
INCARNATION COST: the energy that must be discarded to incarnate the facet.
NATURE: A facets permanent effects (ones that do not 'activate') are referred to as its Nature.
SKILL: Effects that do activate are called Skills, and can only be activated at the appropriate time. The 'ordinary' kind of skill is the Action Skill, which can only be performed during the Action Phase and would be called Spell Speed 1 if this were YGO. I'm still determining the categories of Skills, but others would include Release Skills (activate when released) and Battle Skills (activate when conducting battle).
Offense: A number from 0 to 99 (or higher). Defense: A number from 0 to 99 (or higher). Only applied while in the Shield.

And an example card:

Magician Juggler
[DAT ART]
DARK Mage
INCARNATION COST: (DARK) or (NULL)
ACTION SKILL: Once per turn, you can Charge your Reverse Soul.
Offense: 16 Defense: 16


(NULL), (WIND), etc. means that kind of energy card. (ANY) means any kind will do. These parentheses are stand-ins for mana-like symbols. And now what an energy card looks like:

Card Name
[DAT ART]
ENERGY COUNT: Which type(s) and how many of each kind of energy the card represents.
NOTES: The first run of Energy Cards will not have any Notes. Notes will list additional effects of the energy card, or limitations on how it can be used (like, it can only be used as the cost to incarnate a facet).
FLAVOR TEXT: The card will have one of several quotes on it.

And the example:

Null Energy
[ART NO JUTSU]
ENERGY COUNT: (NULL)
"When the soul departs, only this remains."

Finally, here's some lists.

Attributes:
DARK
LIGHT
EARTH
WIND
FIRE
WATER
CHAOS (There is no Chaos Energy Card nor any CHAOS facets in the opening run)
NULL (Only for Energy Cards (at least in the opening run), meaning no elemental affiliation)

Classes (like Types):
Human
Mage
Beast
Reptile
Avian
Dragon
Fish
Demon
Spirit
Machine
Angel
Artifact
...and others...

[size="5"]At Last...[/size]
How you actually go about incarnating facets. Let's take that Magician Juggler from the example. It needs 1 (DARK) or (NULL) to incarnate it. So I'd take 1 appropriate energy from my Soul and discard it to the Ether. But let's say I don't have either of those in my Soul for whatever reason. Then I would have to do a Reverse Check. I'd reveal cards from the top of my Reverse Soul until I can fulfill the cost. The needed Energy Cards are discarded, and all the other revealed cards are moved to the Soul (face-up). If I fail the Reverse Check, the facet I was trying to incarnate is released to the Ether. The revealed cards (i.e. all of them) are moved to the Soul.

There is no limit to the number of times you can incarnate, but you can only incarnate in each zone once each turn. If you try to incarnate and fail, you still cannot incarnate in the intended zone for the rest of the turn.

[size="5"]Turn Flow[/size]
Should I have done this earlier?

1. Draw Phase (draw 1 card)
2. Charge Phase 1 (Charge either the Soul or the Reverse Soul)
3. Charge Phase 2 (Charge the other one)
4. Flow Phase 1 (You can offer and swap facets here)
5. Action Phase (Use effects and conduct battle (yes, no separate battle phase))
6. Flow Phase 2 (Offer, swap)
7. Resource Check (if you have no cards on the field, draw 1 card. If you have none in-hand, draw 1 card. These happen simultaneously, so if you have absolutely nothing, you draw 2 cards)
8. End Phase

[size="5"]Battle and Damage[/size]
Each facet can attack once. First, you choose an attack target among your opponent's active facets - if there are frontrow facets, you cannot attack ones in the backrow. There's no specific "step" before the battle takes place, but once both players are both making any kind of response with Battle Skills and whatnot, the battle is conducted. Compare the Offense of the two battling facets - the player controlling the weaker facet burns cards from the top of their Heart equal to the difference in Offense ('burning' is 'taking damage'). Then, the weaker facet is released to the Ether.

If your opponent has no facets, you can attack them directly. In this case, cards are burned from their Heart equal to the number of facets (active and passive) in play, [i]not[/i] the facets Offense.

[size="5"]Special Terms:[/size]
Draw: Add the top card of your deck to your hand.
Release: A type of sending to the Ether (i.e. destroy).
Discard: Send to the Ether as a cost.
Offer: Send an active facet to the Ether as a cost for the controller of that facet to charge their Reverse Soul.
Burn: A type of sending from the top of the Heart to the Ether.
Swap: Take an active facet and move it to another of your Zones. If there is an active facet in that Zone, it takes the place of the other facet.

I think I've covered everything. If you have questions, comments, complaints, suggestions...you know what to do.

[Sleepy]

Took me a while to get the terms....

I like the concept of Soul/Reverse Soul to take away inconsistency issues with Lands that is possible in MTG, but at the same time, doesn't eliminate the need of costs.
Although a counterargument could be that Land inconsistency enforces smart Deck-building. I still like it.

I've been self-editing this comment prior to posting it various times as I am about to formulate a question and then I suddenly find my answer. xD
The term "Swap" took me by surprise at the end. How often can you Swap per turn?

Can Passive Facets still do their Skills?

I get that they are examples but... having from 0 to 99+ and things as specific as 16 might end up in too much of a gap in power from a monster to another.

[Dr. Cakey]

[quote name='sleepy' timestamp='1309488241' post='5324015']
Took me a while to get the terms....

I like the concept of Soul/Reverse Soul to take away inconsistency issues with Lands that is possible in MTG, but at the same time, doesn't eliminate the need of costs.
Although a counterargument could be that Land inconsistency enforces smart Deck-building. I still like it.
[b]My goal was to make the game somewhat natural-seeming. I mean, seriously, how does physical land get lost in my deck? Why is my army of monsters not in-hand? How did a bunch of intangible spells take their place?[/b]

I've been self-editing this comment prior to posting it various times as I am about to formulate a question and then I suddenly find my answer. xD
The term "Swap" took me by surprise at the end. How often can you Swap per turn?
[b]Any number of times.You can only do it in the Flow Phase, so there's not really any way to abuse it, unless I made a card with an effect each time it was swapped, which, you know, would be stupid.[/b]

Can Passive Facets still do their Skills?
[b]Yes, they just can't attack.[/b]

I get that they are examples but... having from 0 to 99+ and things as specific as 16 might end up in too much of a gap in power from a monster to another.
[b]To do my calculations, I essentially put everything in terms of YGO and divided by 100. A 16 is equivalent to a 1600 ATK monster. So there probably won't actually be an Offense 99 facet, unless it's something as absurd(ly stupid) as Armityle.[/b]
[/quote]

Just realized I forgot to mention what happens when you attack directly. Gotta fix that.

[King of Nothing]

I can't understand a card game until I see it, could you possibly do some form of Example Duel, or maybe just a few turns of the game?

[Sleepy]

I can't seem to be able to quote without turning everything into an unreadable wall of text at the time of editing. I'll have to answer the hard way D=
That's because quotes inside quotes don't appear damn >.<"

@[i]Swap[/i] part:
True.
Although with this mechanic, I can see complete control over what's where since having 5+ cards in play seems like an unusual scenario for some reason. The backrow in this case would outclass Underlapped positions as cards there won't be hit by attacks very often and still will be able to use effects.

My guess is that some Skills will only work when Under another card (because [i]underlapped[/i] is not a real word xD ). Or maybe it could be that all cards in a certain pile could be treated as "in battle" when one of them is attacked or when the top card attacks. Not that they are actually attacking, but that that pile is "in battle" just for the sake of their effects.... or something along the lines.

@Last part:
Its a good idea to use YGO ATK as a direct reference instead of hitting around the bush until you make an average, but just keep in mind the small conflicts it makes.

Remembering how Life = Deck here, it seems like the size of the Deck needs to be taken into account when designing the ATK stats. Also, looking at the optional Shield mechanic and the YGO-like initial hand-size+draw pace, I wouldn't say that 40 is the ideal.
Probably 50 at least (leaning towards 60). This comes along with probably a low-ATK stat average and the decision on how long should a game be #Turn-wise.

Card Skills and Defensive stuff should even out so, lets not account for them yet...

Sounds like a fun idea for a game once I get how it works.
Just some things to keep in mind in case =D



[quote name='King of Nothing' timestamp='1309494948' post='5324257']
I can't understand a card game until I see it, could you possibly do some form of Example Duel, or maybe just a few turns of the game?
[/quote]

It sort of follows YGO-like turn structure, except for the Soul and Reverse Soul Zones charging energy cards each turn (look at it as their Standby Phase)
The [i]Reverse Soul[/i] card(s) goes face-down though.

Cards have a cost (like in MTG) which is payed using the Energy Cards accumulated in your Soul Zone. The Energy Cards though (unlike Lands in MTG) get sent to the Graveyard after used. Prior to use, Soul Zone is like a reserve.

When you don't have the appropiate Energy Card(s) or you don't have enough, you reveal Energies among the accumulated Reverse Soul until you have what you need to play your card.
Whatever Energies revealed that you didn't use go to your Soul (your reserve of energy that if face-up) for future usage whether you were able to play your card or not.
If your intended card couldn't be played anyways, you discard it.
I like how that can get you instant extra Energy access when you need it but at the cost of a card from your hand.

You can play multiple cards in each of the 4 Zones, but only the top of the pile can attack. Also, the backrow can't attack or be attacked when there's frontrow because its in the way.
All your cards under the top of the pile can't attack but can still use effects.
You can rearrange them as you please during the equivalent to the Main Phase in this game.

Damage = the number of cards you lose from your Deck.
No Deck = Only Win Condition so far.

I guess Direct attack work the same as YGO, but that has yet to be confirmed.

^I hope this wasn't horribly confusing xD