Home Brewed Amber card game.

[jibbajibba]

I am messing about with an Amber cCG I made a few years back. I made it to run with the Amberites from my campaign at the time but now I want to generize it and add the cannon Amberites.
Each player takes on one of the 'elders' in teh game.
My problem is becuase of this I need to balance them. Its a card game so you can't have massive advantage going to 1 player because they picked Brand or Benedict.

The balance occurs across powers and attributes.Powers have basic and advnced and attributes are ranked 1 - 10
The Powers are - Pattern, Trump, Sorcery, Stamina, Prowess and Will ( a choas expansion adds Shapeshift and logrus)
The attributes are - Tactics, leadership and Influence

I find that the real weak link is Random. I can't justify giving him additional Sorcery or great Willpower and I can't justify giving him high leadership or Influence. The game is meant to capture the mood of the first set of books so I can't fix Random by giving him King Random type attributes.

An option is to drop Random from a startign character to an ally that you could recruit in the game (this is the status of Dierdre, Llewella, Flora and Gerard) but somehow it feels wrong tha the 'winner' from the books can't even play in the game.

Any Ideas ?

[Ivanhoe]

Any Ideas ?

A huge karma ?
A "chosen by the unicorn" victory condition ? I don't know the specifics of your game but if the claimant to the throne withdraws or is killed in the last round, this could be Random's special victory condition.

[ikay]

How about adding a 'Luck' attribute? What with his gambling and being chosen by the Unicorn, he seems to be lucky.

His Pattern and/or Will should be pretty decent as well, as he got a moving car near or into Arden, and his Stamina is good enough to spar with Corwin for, what was it, a day?

Random may not be the bet at anything, but he seems pretty good at everything. He starts drawing Trumps in the 2nd series, so there is potential for that as well...

[jibbajibba]

Hmmm the luck idea is good. I don't have a luck stat but I coudl give him an uber card draw special.

I already have him with pretty good stats but from the first books I really only think Brand and Fiona had Advanced Pattern.

I will play with some sort of uber draw mechanic and see how it goes. When I have somethgin playable I will post a link (although there will be a fiar lot of printing involved)

[Crispy262]

Sounds like a pretty cool idea!  I would be interested in checking this out once it is available.
The ideas mentioned seem good for a Random type.  Adding a character specific card with a limit on how many can be included in the deck or requiring a combination of cards played in order to complete a victory condition would probably work well.

[ikay]

Hmmm the luck idea is good. I don't have a luck stat but I coudl give him an uber card draw special.

I already have him with pretty good stats but from the first books I really only think Brand and Fiona had Advanced Pattern.

I will play with some sort of uber draw mechanic and see how it goes. When I have somethgin playable I will post a link (although there will be a fiar lot of printing involved)

No, advanced Pattern is way too much, I agree. But with extra luck, you could perhaps have the player be able to play or draw extra cards, or you could put Random into play out of turn, sort of an 'being just at the right time at the right place'thing. If it gets too out of hand and it would give the player too much of an edvantage, you could add in a way for it to backfire as well, like: you may draw three extra cards, but you will have to put the first one into play regardless of what it does. That way there is a dangerous, gambling, side.

[jibbajibba]

No, advanced Pattern is way too much, I agree. But with extra luck, you could perhaps have the player be able to play or draw extra cards, or you could put Random into play out of turn, sort of an 'being just at the right time at the right place'thing. If it gets too out of hand and it would give the player too much of an edvantage, you could add in a way for it to backfire as well, like: you may draw three extra cards, but you will have to put the first one into play regardless of what it does. That way there is a dangerous, gambling, side.

I am going to start with him drawing 2 cards when drawing from his Action deck and see how it plays out. The Amberites start in play (they are effectively avatars of the players)  so a card drawing mechanic seems like a sound idea.

[RPGPundit]

Yeah, your problem was you left out "Stuff".

RPGPundit

[jibbajibba]

Yeah, your problem was you left out "Stuff".

RPGPundit

Maybe but its an Amber card game not a ADRPG card game  but a tweak on luck is the solution I think

[RPGPundit]

I'd say so; stuff is a tiebreaker stat, that makes it important.

RPGPundit

[Kyle Necronomicon]

I think maybe your trying to put too much on one card, it would be better if you had each of the Characters at a different level like they did in the original rulebook also I think that maybe you could remove the Powers and turn them into separate cards that you an add to your character later but have a limit of maybe two character cards or something, also you could have racing classes except with characters so original characters could be C middle Characters could be B and final characters could be A.

[jibbajibba]

I think maybe your trying to put too much on one card, it would be better if you had each of the Characters at a different level like they did in the original rulebook also I think that maybe you could remove the Powers and turn them into separate cards that you an add to your character later but have a limit of maybe two character cards or something, also you could have racing classes except with characters so original characters could be C middle Characters could be B and final characters could be A.

Nope the Amberite cards are Avatars of the players so they have to be balanced (though not the same at everything cos that defeats the purpose) and they need to give a good feel of the characters from the books or the game kind of flounders
It's an unusual angle for a CCG type game and as I have been writing up the rules and doing tweaks my corporate head says that if this was a game you were looking to produce comercially you would do it as a Board game that players could bring tailored decks to so a CCG-boardgame hybrid. As well as covering the requirement for Core cards it would simplify play through enforcing layout the the board, enabling armies and characters to be tracked more easily and a couple of timer elements could be added as tracks to the board for ease of use. In addtion from a commercial perspective a game you buy as a playable unit it one chunk but then individual players can add to on their own would have greater penetration. But all that is largely irrelevant as its just a homebrewed card game. But if I ever get through this iteration of card reviews (A game with 250+ cards can be a real arse when you decide you need to change 1 rule and it means changes to 200 of those cards ... ) and still have any interest I may just design a board and produce as a set of pdfs you just print and glue to a sheet of card, but meh .