So I wanted to give an update on the #grydscaenRPG Trading Card game. Work has been moving along quickly. We started this researching 4 months ago and we already have game rules, strategy, artwork and some cards. And now for the update:
Work is completed on the Major Arcana
All the Major Arcana cards are completed at this time. That is 22 cards with an image and the character name, affiliation/organization with the Roman numeral and designations for the Tarot on front. The back of the cards include the 2 or 4 stats plus a character description and rules.
Already Printed: Starter Booster pack (6 cards) and the Major Arcana Booster pack (6 cards). Beta card testing is underway.
Next to Print: Opponent Booster pack (10 cards) and the Cups Attack pack (13 cards). Going to the printer tomorrow. Ready by 30 December 2016.
Playing the Game
In the character choosing round before game play, you get to pick the character you want to play from the 6 Major Arcana hacker character cards or the 6 Major Arcana opponent cards. And you get one affiliation or partnership with another player character to help you either hack the mainframe or stop the hackers if you are the opponent. You get some credits, reputation and virus tokens before game play begins. After the choosing round and you have your team, cards plus tokens you are ready to play the game using card draws from the go to pile and discarding cards to the graveyard. Dice are used to determine who goes first and some cards use dice rolls to determine skills or other actions in play.
Now it is time to start playing. Pick a card from the go to pile on your turn and follow the rules on the card. You can attack on your turn or save for later. Remember your ultimate goal is to attack the Elite government mainframe if you are playing as the hacker. And if you are the opponent your job is to prevent the hacker from launching their attacks. Pull cards on your turn and add up skills you get and attack/oppose using your virus and reputation tokens along with skill cards and attack and trap cards. If you get a character in a card pull from the go to pile, determine if you can partner with them for a round or foster the affiliation and use it for later to help you to execute a larger attack. Buy drugs and data or steal IDs and password. Bribe a minister or get the Zone Police to raid the hacker’s flat. It is an action packed ride only limited by your imagination. The game cards make up the infrastructure for the game however let your imagination run wild as you come up with the story for your hacker and the cybersecurity opposition/opponent as you play along.
The #grydscaenRPG Rule Book
Currently working on outlining the rules in the game there will be a 20-page rule book provided that tells players the ins and outs of game play. It is a high level explanation of how to choose your player card (hacker and opponent) and how to play. Work with tokens and dice and learn more about each suit of cards as well as get inside into the personalities behind the player cards. The rule book also explains the basics of the grydscaen storyline and the war that is taking place between the Atlantea Federation and the Pacific Territories as well as outlines the cyberterrorist civil war occurring with the Packrats and hacktivists fighting against the Elite government.
Rule Book Next Steps: Rule books are scheduled to print late January 2017. Initial rules are set and working on more cards. Finalization of rules will come before the end of the year 2016. Then we will be proofreading, editing and tweaking the rule book so that it is perfect. There is also an idea rolling around my head to create a second rulebook for the full Tarot Card deck portion of the game which would include divination information and more about each of the characters in the Major Arcana possibly. I am still thinking on that. If that does come to fruition it will be a 20-page #grydscaenTarot deck guide. More to come on that.
What about the rest of the cards?
Now that we have the full Cups Attack cards suit done, it is time to start working on the other suits. At this time we have one card from each suit completed. Each suit has cards numbered 1 – 9 along with Ace, Jack, Queen and King cards.
The Cups Attack card suit which is identified by its yellow colour includes the hacker skill cards like Packrat Underground: Zip the Newsfeed. This is one of my favorite cards because I love the new drawing of Rom on the front where he is hacking the Newsfeed from the roof of their building and directing the satellite to Zip the station and broadcast nonsense images and noise. This is a relatively new drawing with one of the variations of Rom’s redesigned outfit. There are 13 cards in the Cups suit and they range in skill from hard/elite to easy Script Kiddie fare.
These cards can be used by the hacker to attack or the opponent can collect these skills so that the hacker does not have access to them.
The next suit that will be worked on is the Coins Steal cards suit which is identified by its purple colour includes items that can be bought and sold or stolen in the game.
These items can be used by the hacker and the opponent.
The steal cards give you access to items and objects in the game like credits, virus tokens and reputation tokens as well as things like RFID badges, IDs, passwords and financial data. There are some hackers in the Coins suit that you can partner with. Partner with the Jester Hacker Guild to obtain an encryption key or strike up an affiliation with Mage the leader of the Terror Hack to steal IDs and passwords. Work with a Data Messenger to procure Confidential NPI data or with the Jazz Hacker Guild to steal Top Secret information. Or push your luck and try and see if you can convince Gryphon from the Black Holes the elusive high tech data pirates to skim a Top Secret RFID badge from the secure SenseNet development labs. You don’t find the Black Holes, they find you. Be careful if you try to partner with Gryphon, you will need a lot of reputation tokens and credits to even get him half way interesting in you and if you have not done a righteous hack, you will not get his attention.
After coins we will start on the Swords Trap suit cards. These cards are green colour and will get your cybersecurity teams in gear so that you can go after the hackers. Use the Zone Police and order a raid on the hacker’s flat or have an undercover officer infiltrate an affiliate’s hacker guild location and spy on the hackers who are working with you. The one card the opponent wants above all others which has to be won in game play and pulled from the go to pile is the Ace of Swords: Hacker Reveal Identity card. If the opponent gets this card, the opponent wins the game no matter where the game is in game play. All the opponent has to do is play the Hacker Reveal Identity card on their turn and they win the game.
These cards can be used by the opponent. Or the hacker can collect them so they are not available to the opponent.
After the third suit of cards is finished, we move onto the fourth and final suit which is the Wands Skill suit cards. These cards are blue colour and include psychic powers, social engineering abilities and psi inducer drugs. One of the cards you might need in this set is the Lockpicking card which can help you get into an executive’s office to steal Top Secret data. Remember to use your social engineering and get around the Secretary. You will succeed unless you get the Secretary Fail card from the Swords Traps suit. Another card you might want is the Neurocyne card which is a class 6 narcotic psi inducer drug. Take neurocyne to ease the pain of living in the slum-level Echelons and dull the ache you feel due to loneliness and depression as you sit at your terminal all hours of the day hacking your way into the government. It is not all loneliness, partner with the drug dealer Wraith and use the Wraith: Buy Drugs card to get you out of your apartment for an hour and have a chat. Social interaction for a frequent loner hacker can change your perspective on the dreariness, oppression and overreach rained down by the government. Procure drugs and take a hit of neurocyne with the Do Drugs/Drug Overdose card and disappear into the ecstasy of psi space for a few hours. Use your jack. Play the gridscan online virtual reality hologame Omnibus: Darklight with a hit of dylon and revel in the sheer euphoria of game play jacked in. Its Darklight Time!
How about the Printing? When will the Next set of Cards be Ready?
The opponent and attack cards are going to the printer today. They should be ready by end December 2016. They are all proofread and final ready. I had to do two rounds of proofreading to make sure they were perfect. I had some spelling issues with the first round but that should be fixed by now. We will get those 23 cards printed and then move into the next suit. Each suit will be printed one at a time to cut down on cost. The first printing of the cards is for the beta testers and the play testers who will be looking at the art, rules and game dynamics.
Once the rule book is done and printed in January and we get through all the cards and determine if we print a Tarot rule book as well, then we have to look at boxes for the game. The rulebook is 5.5 inches by 8.5 inches which might be a decent size box if I want to put the books in the box along with the cards. I would most likely have to make a dieline for the box and determine how to fold it. I took a packaging class in art school in my last semester and I wasn’t thinking about making a game box at the time but I think that I can find a dieline online that I may be able to use. The box will be more work but if we can get that done then we can have a professional piece and not just a box with a sticker on the top.
We can probably be done with creating and printing cards by end February which is near when we will go into production on the epic dark fantasy novel The Seer of Grace and Fire book 1 so that will halt all work on the grydscaenRPG until that book is published which may take a month.
Musings and Decisions
Now that I think about it, I may actually write up a Tarot guidebook as well since I do have that information. This will cause a longer time for getting the final game design in place. There will also need to be a space in the box for game tokens and I will have to get small size plastic bags or containers to hold the pieces. This may be more a long term goal as I don’t want to have a million plastic bags around my flat right now. I will think about that for later. That part is not crucial. The other thing is credits tokens. Right now we are using Feng Shui coins. I might want to create paper credit tokens which I would need to get printed. This will have to be an executive decision. I am thinking I want a perforated sheet that the player will have to take apart but I don’t know if the printer can print that or the player when they got the set would need to cut out the credits. We will have to research that a little more.
How Is the creation process working for you, Amateur Game Designer?
All in all I am happy where we are in the creation process. The rules are kind of flowing and the stats are working nicely. I still have some tweeks to do on the final attack scores. Currently I have an +800 stats score needed for the hacker to launch the final attack which would be the combined score which I think can be achieved by collecting cards. And the final attack cannot be launched unless the Intrusion combined stat score is +200 of all the cards the hacker wants to play on the final attack. I think that is also achievable but I need to really test that. Because of those two numbers I can’t finalize the rule book just yet. I sent the rule book out to my beta readers for now so we will see how they think the rules and the game works and if the game sounds interesting enough. The play tester phase for the major arcana choosing round is next once the rest of the major arcana cards are printing which should be next week sometime. The holidays will interrupt some of the progress on testing and beta but we will recover in January. We will be following grydscaen closely in January because we have some things in the works. We will definitely be paying close attention.
I hope you have enjoyed my grydscaenRPG update and are interested in learning more. When I have the full suit sets done I will post images of the front of the cards in the blog so you can see them.