project-irrgarten

[project-irrgarten]

Testing, Testing.

After a lot of butting my head against the wall as to how to add some depth to my old card game rules without making it too baroque, I finally got a semi-workable third 'build' run off and played with a while tonight, and for the most part, it seems <em>ok</em>. Emphasis (literally, there are em tags around it) on the "ok-" the solo run was a bit too easy with a party that wasn't even complete. I was trying out a point-buy sort of party formation this time, and in my randomly slapping numbers on, I actually *couldn't* afford a full team with the starting allotment. I need to be stricter with hand size for items too. Basically, my Hero/Mage/Cleric trio romped through about 20 rooms and only dipped into dangerously low HP once. I'll have to try again with a friend some time to see how the balance is with the added chaos of a second hostile player.

Overall though, it seems like the basics *work,* so I'll start tweaking from there and hopefully have another version to share for download soon. Ish. I won't subject you to the test build this time since I really just printed multiples of the same sheet a few times.

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Picking Away

I’m getting closer to putting together the next demo download, so here’s basically the gist of what’s going into this batch of sausage. Cardstock. Ink. Okay, maybe this wasn’t the best sausage recipe. Maybe it’ll fare better as a game.

The system, as mentioned before is mostly rolled back to the first edition's style of play to speed things up, but character cards are now simplified to avoid confusion with primary/secondary stats.

Gameplay now focuses more on attrition of resources while exploring- Each character's HP gets pooled together with the rest and is gradually depleted from both combat and the environments.

Attack 'types' have now been simplified to Blade, Brawling, Shot, and Magic, and defensive Equipment has been done away with so there's more chance when you get an Item Card, you'll be able to use it.

Two sets of exploration rules- one where you set cards down to build a map and another where you peek at the top three cards in the deck then choose what direction to head. (It's an alternative I'm kicking around to make the game a little less greedy for table space.)

Going to test the "Boss Monster" rules out with a Red Dragon. Boss Monsters are double sided cards that begin the game passively buffing the dungeon (in the case of the sample monster, fire based trap damage is increased) and once the boss battle is 'unlocked' (in this case, conquering 5 Fire Trap Rooms) the card is flipped and they attack the player party that met their requirement.

I've been taking my time with this update, and while it's still going to be pretty basic looking (for the sake of saving your ink!) I hope that it's fairly "complete" in terms of playability. Hopefully I'll knock out a good portion over the weekend since I stopped dragging my feet on making the icon sets and templates. Also note that this will be in black and white, so to accomodate the rules that reference colored borders, the color name will just be printed in the margin. Overall I'm feeling better about this edition than the last. The character cards have been de-cluttered a lot but still accomplish the same basic things, so I can play with layouts more if need be.

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I’ve been working with these dorks again.

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I feel so rusty. >_< I was working on RPG characters and wound up revisiting some old Revolver Knight designs along with Gatty for kicks.

And yes, the sorcerers are named Razel and Dazel.

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This is another of those posts I’m doing more or less to try and psyche myself back into productivity after sinking into another really blase state. The short version of this going to be ‘I’m going to do my damnedest to knock out one of my projects soon so I can legitimately call myself a comic artist again, and also I’d like to get that card thing finished since the rules are basically all there but drawing all the assets myself was a drain so I took a break.’

Keep reading

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Character Notes

Just some trivia while cooking up the next updates:

“Irrgarten” came up when searching for translations of maze or labyrinth in other languages- it specifically refers to hedge mazes and can be broken down to literally mean “lunatic garden.” Fits the theme of a randomly expanding dungeon, don’t you think?

The world the game takes place is actually predominantly non-human, but focused on human settlers scrounging for resources. Not all ‘monster’ races are hostile, either of course.

The blonde cleric, Silvy Whitewing is based on an old Dungeons and Dragons character of mine, and the rogue, Rami Hayami is based off an old Shadowrun character. 

Silvy was originally conceived with Mint Adnade of Tales of Phantasia in mind, but as the campaign wore on and she wound up more battle-worthy than expected, she became more of a paladin instead. If this game progresses, I hope to have several first-wave characters come back in ‘advanced’ classes like this. 

Drake, the “Hero,” was inspired by the lineage of fighters named “Ryu” in the lead role of the Breath of Fire series, with Drake being a more Western dragon-inspired name. His childhood friend/rival Tori comes from ‘tora’ or ‘tiger,’ and is a sort of reference to the tiger vs dragon, yin vs yang balance of power. In the original draft, if they were in the same party, they basically trade a +1 attack bonus between each other every turn as they try to outdo one another.

The male wizard (who has no official art yet) is named Arad after another kind of dragon, and will likely turn out to be Drake’s grandfather or uncle.

Lydia the Sorceress was designed with a middle-aged version of Lina Inverse from Slayers in mind, including the innate skill Sorcery Genius. 

A single character lead to redesigning the item cards completely- Alchemists, to make synthesis attacks easier to read and use.

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Third Revision in the Works

After a bit of time on the back burner and reviewing the older systems, I’m going to be starting work on what should be a step back towards making the dungeon crawling faster paced again.

Leader and Support roles will be returning, and I have an idea as to how to make items and skills easier to manage. To avoid running into stalemates in combat, Defense will act as HP rather than as a number to beat to deal any damage at all. 

I also think I have an interesting idea into how to incorporate floors and level bosses into the flow of things, which was something I always wanted to do, but couldn’t think of a good way to do it. 

I’ll also be adding a couple bonus characters for people who want to test the game out with the next revision. So look forward to that, too, if you plan to print and play when the time comes. 

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Post PAX Thoughts

So, did some testing this weekend. The 'all actions happen at once and nobody is 'dead' until the resolution phase' rule seems to make things a little more harder to track than I like when all party members are active, rather than one 'active' character with the rest buffing them method of v1. I also realized the second I dumped out my coin and wound markers that I did *not* want so many bits and pieces rolling around. So with those two main observations, I'm thinking maybe having dice involved in the game wouldn't be too bad- d6's aren't exactly hard to come by, and a bit of chance does kind of make most games more exciting. I could add initiative rolls for players and assume that monsters attack before or after all the player controlled characters do. I could eliminate the need for coin counters if I make the item cards pull double duty as well- you basically get coins by ditching an item you don't want in the first place, so mechanically it's just an extra step in the way of whatever you'd be spending coins on anyway (basically reviving/replacing heroes at exit points, trading for items at merchants' rooms.) I could probably simplify/balance items a bit more if I attach the Special Attacks to characters and require them to be powered up with an item card rather than the attack being tied to the card. Table space can also get to be an issue, as I saw playing with a friend in the hotel Starbucks. I could keep the room-by-room exploration theme in place if players just keep their explored rooms in a pile and remove them if they need to backtrack. Maybe it could be a deal where you need to clear X number of monsters/hazards to 'claim' a floor of the dungeon then move on, though it would be a better idea for solo than vs play in that case. Any ideas? I'm kind of up in the air here. I went to a couple panels on card game design and board game publishing and I definitely want something more polished before I try showing the game off again.

My main things I want to keep are an emphasis on quick and easy play while keeping room for strategy. I was a big fan of Heroscape a few years back and how easy it was to keep track of even with the variety of characters. The units also played off of each other in interesting ways (like orcs being designed to work en masse with other orc units, or characters supporting each other based on alignment and so on.)

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Give it a try if you like! It’s still a work in progress, mind you, but if you have the time to try it and give me some feedback, it would be a huge help!

(card backs are temporarily cut when I realized they were misaligned)

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Next Release Soon

I've been holding off on updating a while trying to get my templates dressed up a bit and getting as much placeholder art ready as possible before setting off to PAX East. As a consequence my next draft will be uploaded as soon as I finish it and have a new prototype run off. This time, it will be in color with card backs added. Most items have been totally redone and many rooms have been adjusted as well. Not all the artwork is finalized, or there in some cases, but it should be more interesting to look at while testing at least.

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Getting there...

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Dungeoneering music. Finally making myself sit down and make custom damage counters and ordering markers for party organization. 

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Streaming later.

I'll be working on card game stuff tonight since I need to really hustle getting my art assets together if I want to take non plain cards to pax with me. Drop by whether you just want to chat or ask about game stuff.

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I’ve written the second edition (second draft? What do you call a heavy rewrite of a thing that’s not officially ‘done?’) of the rulebook. Is it normal for editing something to take longer than outright writing something? I’m still trying to get some more artwork stuff done before posting another downloadable test version, though if I *wanted* to I could probably just make a few tweaks to the last print n’ play version sooner. And may. 

The main changes in this version:

First and foremost, the new combat rules: Instead of having one directly-controlled character with the rest of the party acting as passive support (basically equipment), each character gets one action and is considered actively in a fight (though the party still navigates around as one unit)

Related to that: weapons and spells will now have effective ranges and areas of effect, and now traps and other hazards might have effects based around what character is standing in which position in line

Item Cards will have a more uniform layout clearly displaying the type, power rating, and more abstract effects of the item. Amusingly this was actually brought about to make certain abilities like the Alchemist's ability to fuse two items less ridiculous and open to interpretation.

In something of a 'duh' move, shields and armor will work by being actually worn. Now they will have their own HP that will soak up damage before the character starts taking on wounds to both cover the bases of wear and tear on gear and make some of the squishier classes more survivable in a setting where there's a chance they might have four opponents wailing on them at once.

Hopefully next time I check in, it’ll be with another test release. Stay tuned!

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I hope this uploads nicer than it previews…

Okay! Still not all the way there, and my printer is kind of on the cheapo side, but I ran off some color character cards finally. I have (probably temporary) card backs for everything but the rooms set, sketches for most of the cards except items, and rough art for a good number of characters, so I ought to at least have something less plain to play with as I pick at it. 

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More work-in-progress Project Irrgarten stuff. Each of the ‘events’ has a sort of splash picture alongside the description of it, and the ‘flip’ side of each is an empty, Zelda-esque room to show that the danger has been cleared and it can be traveled freely now. Off to the side are a couple ideas I had for the Lancer character after attempting to work him into a couple vignettes without a ‘finished’ look. He’s kind of a prettyboy with an arrogant streak not befitting his low hit point total.

Also I may have ‘beachwear’ variant cards as perks as I get further into the actual finishing touches. You might have noticed from some of the recent art that the male and female fighter have kind of a rivalry going on. >:)

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More class doodles and roughly what I want to do for the game’s box cover. Roughly. All I know is I want something involving lots of characters and someone running into the darkness as a floor panel just appears in front of them.