Tarion Chronicles: Playing materials -Part 1-

Well, looks like it's been a while since I bothered to update this blog. Time to do it now, then!

So, what have I been up to in regards my game projects? Well, a bit this and that, but mostly about my RPG system, Tarion Chronicles. The rules themselves are in a workable condition, only in need of testing. I also came to the conclusion that reading text itself from big text files is boring and time-consuming, so I got the idea of making some playing materials that helps both the players and the GM find info faster for specific things. You know, something you can hand out and share without having to dig up the rule files themselves and browse through pages to find what you need.

So, being the creative bugger I am, I made status ailment tokens and spell cards. The former are distributed to player characters whenever they suffer a specific condition or gain an enhancement (or "buff", if you prefer the proper gaming term =P) to something, and the latter are given for spellcasters for quick reference.

STATUS EFFECT TOKENS

From left to right Blind/Deaf, Bleed, Curse, Poison/Disease/Nausea, Charm/Drunk, Stun/Stagger/Fatigue (info in finnish)

The front of the token has the icon itself, and the flipside the needed information on how the status affects the character. As you can see, some of the tokens have more than one status effect on them, the info separated and flipped to avoid confusion.

There will be more tokens than the ones pictured above. These are negative status effects, more of which will come later along with positive effects.

SPELL CARDS

A handful of low-level earth spell cards.

The spell cards were relatively easy to make. Once I got the basic layout of the card down, all I needed to do was to edit the text in each card. The cards are printed on paper and then slipped into card sleeves. Spells of each element will have card sleeves with matching colour. (I couldn't find brown ones for earth spells, so orange will have to do :P).

As for the layout of the cards, there's all the needed info:

Top: The name of the spell on top left, the rune circle (level) and element on top right.

First row: Spell's AP (arcana point) cost, casting time and range.

Second row: Area of effect, duration and required ability check.

Third row: Special effect

The rest of the card is reserved for the spell's description and information other than listed above.

If my calculations are right, there will be around 300 cards for spells in total; Six elements with each containing around 50 spells (And that doesn't include combination spells and priest prayers. Yeesh...^^; )

Myeah, I guess that's all for now. Thanks for reading, if you got this far. More to come later! :D

Tarion Chronicles: Character sheet -PART 2-

Right, so. In an earlier blog post I talked about the development of my RPG system Tarion Chronicles' character sheet. In this post I present you the third (and last) page; Inventory and spells.

Page 3 - Inventory & spells

Page 4 - Spells

There are some major changes I did to the previous, aside from combining inventory spells (see version 2.0 in my earlier post). I gave the page a more visual appearance, separating things like money and wealth, known elements and other spellcasting-related variables, and spells themselves as their own respective areas. 

Money goes into the treasure chest on the upper left corner; known elements, spellcasting ability score, spell failure chance and the amount of known spells are marked on the spellbook under the chest; and spells take up the lower half of the page. Inventory I decided to keep table-like in appearance. I might edit it later to resemble a backpack or something similar, but that isn't a 100% necessary.

Then there's the separate page for spells, if the player ever learns more than the ten on the inventory page.

That's it for now. More updates later. The next one will most likely be about Safe House Blues.

Thanks for your time. :)

Safe House Blues: General rules and Nasty card layout

While still working on Tarion Chronicles' character sheet, here's an update regarding the "smallest" of my projects. In this update you'll get a look on the gameplay in general and what the Nasty (enemies) cards will look like.

Dem rulez

So, as mentioned before, Safe House Blues is a post-apocalyptic survival card game for 2-6 players. Each player strives to be the last one standing after others have perished due to perils of the world torn asunder by nuclear war. In other words, this is a competitive game of cards where players must focus on keeping themselves alive the longest.
Each turn players must decide to do one of the following:

1. Fight Nasties. Creatures of ill will are drawn to Safe Houses like moths to flame, and players must fight off Nasties like bandits, mutants, zombies, and irradiated rat swarms. This is done by using ammunition, mines, chainsaws or other similar Equipment.

2. Clean up Safe House. Dangerous Irradiated Sludge seeps into Safe Houses occasionally, and players must clean up their havens from time to time to prevent precious Rations from spoiling and turning into more Irradiated Sludge. This can be done by using Equipment such as radiation suits, shovels, safety gloves, lead buckets etc.

3 a. Scavenge for supplies. By doing this, players draw Resource cards as a sign of finding supplies to survive another day. Resources include useful items such as Equipment and Rations, but players might also stumble into Irradiated Sludge. Nasties at a scavenging player's Safe House won't deal damage to him during that turn, but Irradiated Sludge can spread and ruin Rations.

3 b. Sabotage other players. This is similar to scavenging for supplies, except the player draws less Resource cards and in return plays a Sabotage card on another player to make his or her life more miserable. The sabotaged player may play a Resource card to prevent a sabotage attempt, possibly even turning the attempt against the saboteur. Example sabotage cards are 5-Finger Discount, Chunk o' Meat, and Sludge-A-Pult.

This process is repeated every turn until all but one player have lost all of their health tokens at the end of the final turn.

Nasty card layout

The monsters of the game will play an important role in the survival of the fittest, attacking players each turn. Here's how such cards will look like. 

As an example Nasty, I'm using one of the ooziest of creatures, the BOOM Dog. This feisty little puppy has been mutated into a fur(r)ious beast bloated with Irradiated Sludge.

As for the card layout, the idea is that the player is viewing the Nasty from behind a semi-boarded window of his Safe House, the ruined city he struggles to survive in viewed in the background as the Nasty itself prowls at the haven.

At the top the name of the Nasty is located. 

At the bottom are the rules of the creature's behaviour.

Next to the Nasty rules is a symbol of what the creature does. The symbol of radiation represents the spreading of Irradiated Sludge, cards which the player must draw when the creature's effects come into play. Another symbol, open jaws and a splatter of blood, represents damage the Nasty deals. Some Nasties deal either damage or spread Irradiated Sludge, some do both.

Tarion Chronicles: Character sheet

As my first proper update, here's some development on my RPG ruleset's character sheet.

There have been several iterations over time, each different in their own rights. Unfortunately, I don't have all of them saved, but I'll share the ones I managed to dig up from the depths of my RPG folder.

Version 2.0

Page 1 - Statistics

Page 2 - Equipment & Inventory

Page 3 - Spells

Here you see version 2.0. This was done using Microsoft Office Word, a task which almost caused me several nervous breakdowns. The program's table functions were quirky, to say the least, and more than once I had to edit a section I thought was finished to accommodate a completely different change I was originally after.

In the very first version, the page layout was in portrait form (the paper standing on its narrow side). It was a classic alignment and the character sheet worked that way, but I decided to go for something a bit different and made a landscape version of the sheet. I like it this way. :3

Version 3.0

Page 1 - Statistics 

After having had enough of Word's functionality issues, I decided to switch to an actual graphic design program, with what I had complete freedom to make the page layouts as I wished. 

Thus, Word made way to Adobe Illustrator. A choice I should have made from day one...(hindsight is the best sight. Also, the most useless :P). 

As you can see, the results are quite different from before (sure, it doesn't look all fancy and hi-graph, but it was helluva easier to pull this off). At this point, I didn't have the second or third page redone yet, as I focused more on getting the first page look right.

Version 3.1 - Final

 Page 1 - Statistics

Now this here is how the first page looks like currently. The design is pretty much done, and I'm happy with it. Sure, it could use a bit more colour and flair, but I felt like keeping it relatively simple. It's easier on the printer, too. :P Maybe after some test game sessions I'll add more decorations. Who knows.

The overall layout is similar to version 2.0. This is because I liked that layout better than the 3.0 one. The latter is a bit too cramped on the left side, more so than in 3.1. It was worth the try, at least.

Version 3.1 - Final

Page 2 - Equipment & combat statistics

Compare this to the 2.0 version and you can see the similarities and differences. One of the biggest changes was the removal of the inventory part at the bottom, to dedicate the whole page to equipment and combat stats in general. There're places for hit points, magic points (called arcana points, in this system), defense, damage resistances and movement speeds along with a nifty graph for magic item placement.

While I've marked this as the final version, there might be changes to it in the future. It's not very likely, though.

As for the third page, I don't have anything worthy of showing yet. It will be dedicated to inventory, wealth and spells, that much I can tell. I'll post more about that later, when I get the design more or less done.

That oughta be all for now. Thanks for your attention! :D

Mandatory introduction

Mellow greetings to each and all of you, and welcome! ^_^/

This here is a little introduction post where I shall give you a little heads-up on what this blog is about.

*clears throat*

For a while now, I've been thinking about creating a game of my own. For you know, I like games of all kinds and playing games in general. The word "nerd" describes me in that regard, although I do not like to use it myself (out of principal, mostly ;). The idea to make a game was born back in my student years, and the will to make one became stronger while working on my thesis. You see, my thesis was to develope a board game prototype for this finnish company called Skillpixels, of their mobile game Math Elements (back then known as Eedu Elements). Once finished, I became assured that I shall make a game of my own one day. A board or a card game, specifically.
This brings us to this blog. For a couple of years now I've been working on a few game projects, of which I will be posting more information on this blog for all of you to see.

First a foremost, I started on a tabletop roleplaying game ruleset. It was based on my earlier RPG experience, having played games like Dungeons & Dragons since high school. Quite a few years, in other words. The ruleset isn't done yet, but I've got most of the rules and information written down.

My second project is a bit "lighter" board game, which I've been working on on-and-off for about a year now. The idea of the game is to become a adventuring hero in a fantasy world filled with wonder and monsters. The board itself will be modular, meaning it is built from smaller landscape pieces that will create a different board every time, depending on where the players will explore.

And as the saying goes "Third time's the charm"; I've got a third game project under work along with the ones already mentioned. This one is a card game of post-apocalyptic survival, where players try to stay alive for as long as possible. My brain decided not to let me sleep one night, harassing me with the best idea ever until I finally gave up on attempts at sleeping and wrote the idea down. I think I have to thank that creative bastard, because working on the card game has been fun so far. :D *pats himself on the head*

I've posted all kinds of sketches on my Facebook -profile, sketches that I will be posting on this blog also. I also have a DeviantART account where I have posted images I've made during my drawing "career". I've got a self-made comic there, too.

But yeah, I think that's all for starters. To be continued, as they say. Thanks for your time, if you had the interest to read up to this point. :)