Progressing..

Slowly, but steadily…

Last weekend, a friend of mine came over from the good old Netherlands to see my newborn son, and of course to get a taste of the Wuxia Pian card game. I already mailed him the rules, so I could get an opinion from someone not already ankles deep into the game. There comes a point where you are so “into” the game, that you are not able to see flaws and errors. That’s why an opinion from outside is great every now and then.

The good thing was that he understood the rules, without having seen a single card. That was fantastic news for me. Even though he does have some CCG/TCG background, he immediately understood the goals of the game, and how to get there. :P

Peter and I did not play too many games, just 4 or 5 or so, but he really liked it, and we both felt pretty good about it, even though the demo decks we used were “old” style cards, with some very broken game text on it.

While we were talking about the game, it occurred to me that this game would be awesome with some form of raid decks, just like WOW TCG has. Players would team up with each other to Storm the Evil temple of the Poison Ivy monk, or something like that. I will have to read up on the WOW raid deck rules to see if it is at all possible, but I think it will be. Maybe players will be restricted to just 3 warriors in the “raid” decks, but that is for later. I’ll keep it on the backburner for now.

The first batch of combat cards is finished, and there are a whooping 194 cards so far. It was a pretty difficult task of getting the game text on each card right, without having too much text so that it makes it difficult to understand, and also to keep each card in the same grammar form, so that players will not be confused about cards having different wordings.
It was also difficult to give each warrior type their own playing style. Balancing that was probably the hardest thing to do, and unfortunately, it sometimes just comes down to gut feeling, instead of clear cut numbers to use.
For example, if I give the Monk type the ability to heal, how can you balance that with other warrior types? Does direct damage for example balance healing? Or does discard balance card draw?

I hope they turned out to be somewhat balanced, so that I only need some minor tweaks on the cards itself.

I am sorry I was not able to provide demo decks for you all, but when I get all of the 194 cards into the demo deck template, I will put them all online, so that you can have a go at deck design and make me some very broken decks! (so I can fix some immediate problems). Maybe I will be able to create some form of database where you can select 9 cards that will automatically be printed (so you don’t have to print 194 cards all in once)

I am now working on creating about 50-60 different Warriors, and after that, some 20-30 different element types.

Then I need to buy some 800 protector sleeves, a table cutter (not going to cut it by hand this time), print out all the 194+60+30 cards three times, cut them, put them in sleeves and build some decks to try out.
Peter was nice enough to offer it to their playing group in the Netherlands, so they will have a go at it. I hope we can see this way what cards need fixing.

The demo decks I had were in fact only to see if the rules held up, but I am now confident that they do, so I can skip directly to card balancing.

I have not heard of Cyrus yet, but I expect to see a big update on the card templates that he is making for me. I am exited to see them!

Wuxia Pian card game is still moving forward! The rules are at version 2.0 now, and pretty much each possible thing I could think of, is in it now. I don’t think there will be a version 2.1 soon. All my attention goes to the creation and balancing of the cards now.

On a side note, I still do not have any free time, so the website won’t see any updates soon, unfortunately. But since I am not really on a deadline, I don’t mind to wait a few more months.

Hopefully next Blog entry will see some great downloads with it…

for those not able to wait, here is a screenshot of the first cardbatch, with some gametext to drool over, if you are as geeky as me :P

My own domain!

I never thought it would come this far, but yesterday I managed to register the name wuxiapian.com.

I spent a good 2 hours searching the web for web hosts, but most of them are just bloating with advertisements and empty air.. Some of them over offer a “Free” domain name for lifetime.. until you find out the domain will be put in THEIR name and when you want your site to move, you are major screwed.

And don’t even get me started on so called “webhost review” sites. They are nothing more than advertisement sites for those webhosts. Bleh.

So I just went to namecheap.com and first bought the name. I was actually quite surprised that wuxiapian.com was still free. If that is a sign of things to come, I am happy! I was sure someone would have taken that name already. I was also thinking about taking wuxiapiangame.com, but that is probably for later, if needed…

Next up: Finding a host that is not too expensive, and where I am able to pay on a monthly basis. Cyrus was friendly enough to point me to nearlyfreespeach.net, where it is indeed very cheap to set up a website.
They do not charge a fixed fee, but based on the amount of storage you use and the amount of traffic your page generates.

Yep, I too thought: But what if I get suddenly all the attention and millions of visitors, I will go bankrupt!
Nope. They have something like a bank account, where you can deposit an amount of money into. If you run out of money there, they take your site offline (they wont charge your credit card). Add more money and it comes up again within 20-30 minutes.
This way, I decide how much I am willing to pay for my website.

If the game turns out to be successful and the site becomes very big at one time, I will simply transfer it to a bigger hoster, but for now, I am very happy. From what I heard, small sites could easily stay under 10$ a year. That’s a very good deal. Who wants to pay 50$ for 100Gb traffic when you only get 1Gb of traffic?

So the Domain is set, I am hosted and Dreamweaver is all set up to go.. Hopefully I can up a basic site quickly, with the Demo decks and Rules for download. I sure have some read up on webpage design to do.

Going forward!

The Rules are done. Finished. Ready to be melted into gold. Bring out the chisels. Etc, etc..

Last weekend, we had 2 birthdays we needed to go to, but due to bad weather, we opted to held the “party” at our home (not very wise to take a 2.5 month old infant into the cold + rain just to get to a party), and since one of the persons getting a year older was Vicente, it was a very convenient way for us to be able to play test more on the Wuxia Pian card game.

I had already designed three different Demo decks, but due to low ink in my printer, we could only test 2 of them. Due to the increased graphical nature of the Demo decks, we actually felt like we were playing an almost finished product already. In the end of the play test, we even forgot about “testing” and were really trying to win the game, great!

The good:

The rules held up.. again. The only thing we changed was to change the way to decide who received Liú first. No rule questions came up, and no dead ends were noted, except this.
We actually had great fun playing just the Demo decks. Play was fast, we both went through a lot of cards and even found some nice combos.. with vanilla cards! Not to mention we really got the feeling we could win, even though it sometimes looked grim. The best out of 5 rule of Wuxia Pian is the best thing I came up with, I think, hahaha..
It was balanced. We both won 2 times with our decks, even after swapping. Great! Some cards were obviously good, but no card was over the top, and only a few cards felt far below the curve..
Due to the layout of the Demo decks, it was very easy to calculate each player’s Attack and Defense, and we never had to calculate beyond 15. I think this will be doable for each level of player who dives into the Wuxia Pian game.

The not so good:
Going first in the game was sometimes not so nice, and felt like a penalty most of the times. This made the player with the higher speed feel strange, because even though his or her warrior has a higher speed, it did not felt like an advantage. Luckily, this is easily solved by changing the rule for who begins first into:””The warrior with the highest speed decides which player receives Liú first this combat round.”” Problem solved. This way, a player can decide for himself if he or she wants to go first.
Reversing cards and Discarding cards were a bit overpowered, especially in the beginning of the game: I play 2 cards, you make me discard those and pound in my head. We will need to split these cards into special targets for Reverse and Discard. Example: “”Discard target 3 cost card””, “”Your opponent must choose and reverse one of his cards”” etc.. Making it more specific prevents the cards from getting too powerful (which we found out during the game)
Sustain. The sustain rule is golden, but because of the huge amount and easiness of Discarding and reversing combat cards, Vicente and I never really needed to follow the sustain rule. Only in one game it came up.. Solution: Reduce the sustain value on Warriors, but be careful NOT to increase the power of the Reverse and Discard cards through this reduction.. Needs more play test.
Since there were no combat cards in the Demo decks that handled speed, it was sometimes a very one way street game. More cards and abilities that target Speed are needed.

The Bad:
NONE! I just need to implement some minor changes in the Rules, change some cards in the Demo decks (split up Discard and Reverse effects, decrease sustain), and it’s good to go.

This really gets me exited. Now I know the rules hold up, it’s on to the best part of card game design: the real cards itself. Hopefully the Demo decks will be up this week, so we will get some feedback from players around the world.

Maybe I can begin to set up the website, with a message board, so players and designers can discuss the rules and provide insights and ideas for cards..

I have uploaded the new rulebook, version 1.8 you can download it on the right.

I want to Welcome and express my thanks for Cyrus from the
http://www.anarchycap.com/kingdom/
Card game for jumping in and helping me design the card templates. The first wip (work in progress) already looks great!

During the last few months, work on Wuxia Pian really went to an all time high, and I must say, I am very happy how it is becoming.
During play testing, there were moments when I was not too happy about some cards I had in my hand, because they could not help me at that time, or I faced a grim outlook with the cards my opponent had in play. In most card games, this means game over or a very tedious game, where you are forced to play, but unable to get back in. Not in Wuxia Pian. I just shrugged it off and prepared for combat # 2… I do not want to boast, but not often you find a game where you get 5 opportunities to get into the game and win.. In Wuxia Pian, you can! The rule where your opponent is forced to play his Warrior first if he won a victory point, works like a charm, because I get to choose a warrior who can defeat that warrior (e.g. has an advantage over) more easily, bringing me back into the game, but not automatically, since I still need to win that combat…

What to do next? A checklist:
• Finish making revisions on the rules and let someone (native English) proof read it.
• Finalise the Demo decks and put them online
• Start working on the Website
• Finalise the Demo rules sheet
• Begin work on the final cards for the first set
• Determine the size of the first set
• Supervise the creation of the card templates.
• Start working on pictures from the movies to include
• create a big list of names from the movies, plus possible card names
• Combine the Final templates with the rulebook and finalise it
• Investigate into a stand alone application for online play…
• Play, play and play the game.

So first on my list: Finish the Demo decks and put it online.

Expect to see a big post coming up this week about the Demo decks!