/steel-plains-tcg

The home for the trading card game we're building in the Cape Town Clojure User Group

Primary LanguageJavaScriptEclipse Public License 1.0EPL-1.0

Steel Plains

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The home for the trading card game we're building in the Cape Town Clojure User Group.

Join us on #clojure.za at irc.freenode.net!

Getting set up

  1. Clone this repo and cd into it.
  2. Run mkdir -p target/generated. You only need to do this once.
  3. In three different terminal windows, run:
    • lein cljx auto.
    • lein cljsbuild auto.
    • lein run.

You can now browse to http://localhost:8080, and you can modify any cljx/cljs file and have the changes appear when you refresh the browser.

You can press ctrl-esc to see a draggable debug window showing the state of the deck builder.P

About the game

Steel Plains is part Deck Building Collectable Card Game, part strategy board game where players design and vote for up to X new cards to be cycled into the game very month. Up to Y cards can be cycled out of the game each month.

Inspiration for the actual gameplay mechanics are drawn heavily from Dvorak, Magic: The Gathering and Mojang's Scrolls

Overarching Gameplay Goals:

  • A players turn has to be entirely uninterruptible by other players so that games can be played asynchronously and over possibly longer periods of time.
  • Have enough definition in the factions of the game so that players can vote correctly on what cards suit which colours.
  • Hexagonal shared board where pieces get placed and played as time progresses

The setting is general, family friendly, light fantasy.

Some specific plans:

  • Have a three month cycle for cards:

    • In the first month, a card is in concept status, and only the top X voted in (more "in" votes than "out") can make it to the next stage
    • The second month of card cycle is art and coding, and again an "in" or "out" vote applies.
    • The third month is beta testing of all cards that made it in, and again, an "in" or "out" vote applies - this will include any previously removed cards that have regained an "in" vote
    • All cards that made it in at the beta testing stage gets accepted and "printed" into the main game.

  • Card removal cycle:

    • Every month, all cards currently in "print" are available to be voted out, the top Y voted out will be pushed into an area where they can be revoted and third-stage beta tested before possibly bringing it back into the game.

  • Card printing cycles

    • Every card "printed" and handed to a player will have its edition stamped onto it so that it can increase in value over time
    • Still thinking about how to limit print cycles of cards otherwise.

  • Factions

    • Green: Nature
    • Blue: Willpower
    • Red: Chaos
    • White: Light

Primary Card Types:

  • Creature: Summon a movable unit on the board
  • Structure: Summon an unmovable unit on the board
  • Land: Place a land type on a friendly or Steel Plain (unclaimed) hex
  • Spell: A once off effect that changes the state of the world in some way
  • Enchantment: An local or global effect that sticks around as long as the enchantment is in play
  • Equipment: A physical item, placed on a creature and can be moved, dropped and have no specific owner.

Decks & Mechanics:

  • Dual decks:
    • Main deck, minimum 40 cards, limit of 3 per kind
    • Land deck, minimum 30 cards, limit of 4 per non-basic type, no limit for basic land types.
  • Discarded cards get added to the discard pile
  • If you need to draw a card from your deck and there are no cards left, shuffle discard pile and it becomes your deck. Effectively bottomless card pile
  • All cards, when played has an effect and goes to the discard pile, so the card itself is only a 'spell' as such, never the actual artifact.

Land Placement:

  • Inversely proportional to base size:
    • 1 hex : 3 per turn
    • 2-3 hexes: 2 per turn
    • 4-5 hexes: 1 per turn
  • Separate land 'hand' of 4 cards, replenishes to 4 every turn.
  • Each land hex has an amount of space
  • Land types:
    • Plains: White/Green/Fast/Big
    • Mountains: Red/Green/Slow/Small
    • Rivers: Blue/White/Medium/Medium
    • Hills: White/Red/Medium/Medium
    • Swamp: Red/Blue/Slow/Big
    • Tundra: Green/Blue/Fast/Medium
    • Forest: Green/Red/Slow/Medium
    • Mudflats: Blue/White/Slow/Small

Subtypes:

  • Any card can have arbitrary keyworded subtypes that can be referenced by other cards
  • Basic lands implictly have the same subtype as its title, along with 'land'
  • Other lands can optionally share a subtype of a basic land, along with 'land'

Mana:

  • The function of mana is to provide resources for your spells in hand and activated abilities of units on the board.
  • A land can be sapped as a resource for mana, once per game.
  • Sapped mana expands your total accessible mana pool for every round, and doesn't rely on the land any longer.
  • You can only sap a single land per turn.
  • You can only sap lands that you own.

Bases:

  • Players start with a single base and can expand up to 5 blocks (normal 7-sized map)
  • Each expansion costs gold
  • Each base produces a certain amount of gold per turn
  • Each base has its own health counter.
  • Once a base is destroyed, it cannot be rebuilt by normal means.
  • Once all of a player's bases are destroyed, they lose the game.

Gold's function:

  • Gold is consumed by units on the board for various activated abilities.
  • Construct extra bases

License

Copyright © 2013 FIXME

Distributed under the Eclipse Public License, the same as Clojure.