Enterplay’s official MLPCCG is out, so I’ve been busy with that, moving when I really shouldn’t have, and figuring out how to pay the bills. RL stuff still means I can’t take donations.
There will be a review of the game when the dust starts to settle on it. The game’s meta is rapidly changing as people with skill start breaking into it, and people without get extremely lucky and stumble onto something overpowered. Double T1 Yellow Parasprite, who knew?
At this point my MLPDCG is now unavailable to download from my site. It is still playable over OCTGN but good luck finding someone to play.
Anyway, LoLDCG has hit a bit of a snag with it’s deckbuilding requirement of seven cards (five champs, two Summoner Spells) and a 60-card deck, which isn’t going to fly at all. And as it would be such a major change, I have to figure out how skills in particular are going to work. Interestingly, Gold = Items = Level works out way better than expected.
I am also going to see if I can get the oldest fleshed-out concept, Bliss Stage RPCG, into a playable but artless state just for the portfolio. You -could- play it but the content is NOT for everyone. I just want to get the sexuality mechanic done and out of my head; I’m not even sure if it’s tasteful. It works in context but without it it’s the elephant in the room.
Seriously, if you’re offended by it,
stop reading now.
It’s after the break.
Bliss Stage was created by Ben Lehman of TAO Games, and is an 18+ tabletop roleplaying game heavily influenced by the like of Neo Genesis Evangelion and RahXephon (and coincidentally takes a much bleaker look at what Gurren Lagann could’ve been). In this setting, a race of unknown aliens have successfully invaded Earth through our dreams: anyone generally over the age of 18, or has gone through immense stress, is permanently and immortally asleep. Only a few pockets of humanity remain, and there’s very few adults (who are insomniacs at best) so the kids have inherited the Earth. One day, a group finds a mysterious black box that allows the group to fight back by creating the ANIMa, a literal weapon of love that takes the form of a giant mecha to fight the aliens on their own turf. The relationships the Pilot has with their Anchors enable the mecha to power up and better protect the remainder of humanity.
They are doomed to fail.
the RPCG (Role-Playing Card Game) aims to take this concept and turn it into a contest of “stories”; whoever loses last is declared the better hope for humanity. In the context of the game, the Pilot provides the ANIMa and his or her Anchors give the mecha its weapons and special moves. A player can lose under the following conditions:
- The Pilot reaches a pre-determined amount of Bliss, which is gained through negative actions and some costs. Bliss can NEVER be lost.
- The Pilot reaches Six Stress. Stress is gained as the result of the game moving forward, through the currently Active Threat, and through certain negative actions (it’s your deck that measures it). Stress is a “Time Lock” cost in that some cards will require a high amount of Stress to play.
- All the Anchors die. The Pilot is constantly under assault by your opponent’s Threat, and if the Threat does enough damage, it will backlash to one of your Anchors and kill him or her permanently. Anchors can also commit Suicide by reaching zero Intimacy through Events, to the same effect.
The sexuality mechanic mentioned earlier determines how effective the Anchor is at providing points to the Pilot to fight off the Threat. A incompatible connection means that Intimacy can’t be raised to more than 3, but a compatible connection can max out at 5, unlocking powerful effects and being that much more effective against the Threat.
- Heterosexual connections are between oppositely-gendered Pilots and Anchors, and has the largest amount of in-game support but doesn’t do anything particularly powerful without combos.
- Homosexual connections are between same-gendered Pilots and Anchors, and has the second highest amount of support. Intimacy is kept a bit higher than the usual through effects (so the Anchors won’t be dying as often), but they have a higher Bliss cost (so humanity loses just that much sooner).
- Bisexual connections adapt to either gender equally, and as such are able to consistently hit Intimacy 5… but have little unique support. Somewhat uncommon and had some of the more odd ANIMa boosts.
- Asexual connections limit that connection to an unsuccessful 3, and are fairly rare to even encounter. However, they make up for it by having very unique abilities, and are the only ones to have a Passive ability (it doesn’t affect the Pilot, but rather another mechanic).
See what I mean by content?