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[piecewise]

Wizard gang wars all the way.  That's closest to my original interpretation, especially if which areas you try to attack or defend are choosable in a strategic fashion.  I do think there should be more than two gangs, as that allows more complex relationships and choices between players (Do we help the Skimmers in their fight against the Artificers, so that the Artificers don't get too strong, despite the cost in resources and risk of the Skimmers betraying us?), but it should probably be limited to no more than four gangs, and it might make sense if joining a team is mandatory.  It doesn't seem like solo players would really fit into the system anyway.  Oh, and no secret turns, so everyone has something to watch.

As for the magic system... well, I've never liked mana costs in Perplexicon, and the modularity of the system is important.  What if you used the full original system, but each word is sorted into one of five or so power brackets, and players get a random selection of words from each power bracket, with fewer strong words and more weak ones?  It would make the game more unfair, since there'd be variation even within brackets and one person with great word synergy would be hard to beat, but it would keep the puzzle aspect of Perplexicon's system, and add the interesting strategic element of targeting wizards with stronger spells.  Could even integrate word count with the stat system, so people with fewer words can cast longer/more spells or something...


...This all being said, is a big PvP magic game really something you should run right now?  You've got four games going, two without a player cap, and one with a complex system.  WIZARDS doesn't seem to need much work, but the other three do, and I know you've got stuff going on IRL as well.  However you run it, I'd expect MMWW to be a big timesink, and you already have a lot of timesinks.

First off, I'm not thinking of running it now. But I can work on the system and ideas in a notebook at lunch or when I have downtime but am not at a computer (least not one I can actually use to do things). And my time working is done in august, at which point I get a lot more free time, comparatively.

See, the problem with multiple gangs is this: The set up is akin to a multiplayer PVP shooter online. That's the way I prevent massive time irregularities; by forcing a universal time scale. What this means is that those 2 or 4 or however many gangs would have a choice: Fight or wait. Because here's the alternative: Two gangs fight on a time scale of seconds while the gangs not fighting work on a completely random timescale, with some people doing huge numbers of things while other people do very little, and by the time the 5 minute fight between gangs is done, the other gangs have done in game months worth of work. We saw this in ER, but it didn't matter as much because it was a single team of players.

The way I intended to handle it is very much like a shooter: you have a hex map. Each Hex is an area with a map. Both teams are placed on the map, told their objective, and then work to do it. The winner then gains control of the hex and gets the things that hex has. Take turns of each gang picking which hex to try and take.  Now, we could instead just have the gangs fight npc opponents till they came into actual conflict with other gangs, however, the issue still remains: Players must either ALL be on the "Ground" level or on the "Overworld" level, or they have to just sit around and wait.

As per your system suggestion, I think its rather backward. I mean, why do we even have the Bloodskimmers if mana is not an issue? No need to get mana if there is none. There has to be some sort of limit on magic or nothing about the game or the setting makes sense.  Now, one way to handle it is the "Deck" method. That would mean that all words would have "uses". Some would be infinite use if they were very weak, others single use if they were very strong, and some with a few uses if they were middling. You'd burn through your decks of words and then replenish them via killing.

[ATHATH]

+1 to the deck idea.

[syvarris]

See, the problem with multiple gangs is this: The set up is akin to a multiplayer PVP shooter online. That's the way I prevent massive time irregularities; by forcing a universal time scale. What this means is that those 2 or 4 or however many gangs would have a choice: Fight or wait. Because here's the alternative: Two gangs fight on a time scale of seconds while the gangs not fighting work on a completely random timescale, with some people doing huge numbers of things while other people do very little, and by the time the 5 minute fight between gangs is done, the other gangs have done in game months worth of work. We saw this in ER, but it didn't matter as much because it was a single team of players.

...Yeah.

I really want to be able to come up with a good solution for this, because having a straightforward 1v1 is so much less interesting and much more likely to be decided early when one team gets a big lead.  It might be possible to split the game into phases of combat and strategy, where each team must decide to attack a certain hex during the combat phase, and nobody can do so during the strategy phase, but that carries the flaw of *everyone* needing opponents, and different teams might take more time during battle.  NPC opponents could solve the former problem, but that increases workload dramatically, especially if only two out of four teams are fighting each other.  Magebreaker response time could solve the latter, I guess?  Give people a time limit to achieve goals, and if they don't succeed within that time then the cops show up?  That means that everyone's goals need to be roughly equivalent, because they necessarily all need to have the same time limit...  I'll think about this more, because those still seem like insufficient solutions...

As per your system suggestion, I think its rather backward. I mean, why do we even have the Bloodskimmers if mana is not an issue? No need to get mana if there is none. There has to be some sort of limit on magic or nothing about the game or the setting makes sense.

In a setting where gasoline is liquid gold, how does it make any sense that you'd have a guitarist with a flamethrower riding on top of your car, wasting fuel for no reason?  Not to mention the gas spent on lugging those speakers everywhere.

Sure, if it doesn't work for you, don't use the system, but I'm very much gameplay-first.  If trying to emulate scarcity results in an inferior system, I won't try to emulate scarcity--I'll just say the players are powerful because they're the only ones with plenty of resources.

Now, one way to handle it is the "Deck" method. That would mean that all words would have "uses". Some would be infinite use if they were very weak, others single use if they were very strong, and some with a few uses if they were middling. You'd burn through your decks of words and then replenish them via killing.

I like this much much more than the mana system, or even my recommendation.  With the mana system, every player can spam the same cheap, obvious, and effective three-word fireball spell endlessly, which is why I dislike it.  Limited decks would still allow obvious combos, but you'd run out eventually, and be forced to come up with creative spells, since you don't have obvious-use cards left!  Yes, I very much like this idea.

Though, I think it would be more interesting if the cards a gang gets are related to the hexes they invade, defend, or hold, rather than just being randomly replenished upon killing people.  It's an easy way to integrate gameplay abilities with strategic decisions; should we capture the blast forges to get us more metal and fire words, so we can equip our forces better?  Or should we infiltrate the magical menagerie in hopes of obtaining powerful creature words, so we can have cavalry?

It also would naturally theme gangs if their cards are sourced from their territory, which I think is neat.

[piecewise]

See, the problem with multiple gangs is this: The set up is akin to a multiplayer PVP shooter online. That's the way I prevent massive time irregularities; by forcing a universal time scale. What this means is that those 2 or 4 or however many gangs would have a choice: Fight or wait. Because here's the alternative: Two gangs fight on a time scale of seconds while the gangs not fighting work on a completely random timescale, with some people doing huge numbers of things while other people do very little, and by the time the 5 minute fight between gangs is done, the other gangs have done in game months worth of work. We saw this in ER, but it didn't matter as much because it was a single team of players.

...Yeah.

I really want to be able to come up with a good solution for this, because having a straightforward 1v1 is so much less interesting and much more likely to be decided early when one team gets a big lead.  It might be possible to split the game into phases of combat and strategy, where each team must decide to attack a certain hex during the combat phase, and nobody can do so during the strategy phase, but that carries the flaw of *everyone* needing opponents, and different teams might take more time during battle.  NPC opponents could solve the former problem, but that increases workload dramatically, especially if only two out of four teams are fighting each other.  Magebreaker response time could solve the latter, I guess?  Give people a time limit to achieve goals, and if they don't succeed within that time then the cops show up?  That means that everyone's goals need to be roughly equivalent, because they necessarily all need to have the same time limit...  I'll think about this more, because those still seem like insufficient solutions...

As per your system suggestion, I think its rather backward. I mean, why do we even have the Bloodskimmers if mana is not an issue? No need to get mana if there is none. There has to be some sort of limit on magic or nothing about the game or the setting makes sense.

In a setting where gasoline is liquid gold, how does it make any sense that you'd have a guitarist with a flamethrower riding on top of your car, wasting fuel for no reason?  Not to mention the gas spent on lugging those speakers everywhere.

Sure, if it doesn't work for you, don't use the system, but I'm very much gameplay-first.  If trying to emulate scarcity results in an inferior system, I won't try to emulate scarcity--I'll just say the players are powerful because they're the only ones with plenty of resources.

Now, one way to handle it is the "Deck" method. That would mean that all words would have "uses". Some would be infinite use if they were very weak, others single use if they were very strong, and some with a few uses if they were middling. You'd burn through your decks of words and then replenish them via killing.

I like this much much more than the mana system, or even my recommendation.  With the mana system, every player can spam the same cheap, obvious, and effective three-word fireball spell endlessly, which is why I dislike it.  Limited decks would still allow obvious combos, but you'd run out eventually, and be forced to come up with creative spells, since you don't have obvious-use cards left!  Yes, I very much like this idea.

Though, I think it would be more interesting if the cards a gang gets are related to the hexes they invade, defend, or hold, rather than just being randomly replenished upon killing people.  It's an easy way to integrate gameplay abilities with strategic decisions; should we capture the blast forges to get us more metal and fire words, so we can equip our forces better?  Or should we infiltrate the magical menagerie in hopes of obtaining powerful creature words, so we can have cavalry?

It also would naturally theme gangs if their cards are sourced from their territory, which I think is neat.

NPC and the police were actually already part of the plan. Even if there were two gangs, the hex would still have an NPC population that would react normally and straight out obvious fighting would draw their attention and eventually result in bigger and badder police forces (local and then mage breakers) showing up.  My big worry was that players might finish long before another group and gain a time advantage but...well I suppose thats in character and is fine. If one group is fast enough to fight through 2 hexes while another group is stuck on 1, thats just how things go.

I would have to force balance the teams though, so that they were reasonably even. If one team has 10 people and the others have 2, thats no fun.


As per the decks and such, how about this as an idea: Each gang has a "Core" set of words, maybe 10 or so. These will replenish with kills so that they always have SOMETHING to work with. However, each hex has words associated with it and owning that hex means getting those words. Initially you'll get a big wad of them, and then the hex will slowly produce more over time. For instance, capturing the furnaces might give you SteelX10, IronX15, CoalX20, and FireX20 and then produce Steelx1, Iron x2, Fire and Coal x3 per day from then on. So your decks would be reflective of the hexes you control, and continuing to control hexes would be important for keeping your decks diverse and powerful.

The question after that is should decks have a max size per player?

[Devastator]

And a minimum deck size.  Just ask syv.

[OceanSoul]

If you're going to keep calling it a Deck, you may as well consider making the actual words cards in a deck. For the most part, this would mean that you only have assess to 7 or so words, likely overlapping, in the beginning of a battle, and would either regain them at a specific rate (1 per turn, maybe spending an action out of combat to gain an extra that turn) or through a specific action (You draw back up to 7, or draw 4 or so cards unless/until you reach 7, if you cast no magic in a turn). This would provide another balancing factor, as not only would rarer, more powerful cards in your deck be harder to find, but so would the combos. Then again, this would provide a moderate factor of luck to battles, which could end up being unfair/removing skill from battles to some degree. Then again, this is an RTD we're talking about, so it might not matter too much.

Have you considered words/cards that aren't simply concepts usable in spells? For example, one called "Focus" might be usable to strengthen the next magic spell the user casts, maybe in exchange for taking up a turn. There's also the idea of multi-concept words, such as a combination Dragon-fragile word, that could bind weaker words into more usable units and, in this case, provide a debuff to a more powerful word to balance it out? Lastly, is there any way to have a choice in hat words are makable, or otherwise affecting the word output of hexes? For example, forging advanced chemistry sets so that an alchemical hex can better produce its words (Acidic, Vial, and Poison, for example), or maybe allow the production of a new, stronger word (Maybe Transmutation, Fusion, or Homunculus). Ways of upgrading a Hex might be through purchases via currency and/or words (Providing Glass and Pipe words for the alchemic hex), the constant supply of words as a more continual price (Providing an amount of Gold or Wood words on a daily basis, maybe), through a mission of some sort (Steal the secrets from a rival alchemic workshop), or simply via having certain other hexes (That second alchemical hex you got is working with the first one now, and they've figured out more efficient methods).

Lastly, does the mage itself gain any benefit or effect from using the same word/combination of words over an amount of time? If my mage that starter with Wind, Bird, and Spiral, for example, was able to get and use a continuous supply of Wind words, would they get any better at it? If they often used Bird words with Fire words they obtained to summon, well, Firebirds, would they get any better at that? If they often used Spiral, Confusion, or Illusion words to confuse their enemies, would they get better at that?

[syvarris]

Deck-based Perplexicon is... interesting, to say the least.  Hmm.  I think it would be far too luck based, because a good three-card combo when your opponent has nothing wins the game instantly.  "Break held flesh", bam.  Limiting cards to weak things would help that, but also makes the game much lower power in general.  I kinda wanna try running an IRC game like that, though.

I, personally, don't generally like focus actions in P--the game is better when chaos is the norm.  Being able to trade time for reliablity just breaks the spirit in my opinion.  I feel similarly about getting bonuses with theme words.  People tend to theme anyway, and it's relatively boring play, I'd rather not encourage it.  Beyond that, keeping track of what words which people tend to use is a lot of bookkeeping.

I do like the idea of upgrading hexes, or feeding resources from one hex into others.  Summoning wood to burn, in order to produce fire words, is a clever and interesting idea.  Alternatively, burning a forest to get a whole glut of fire words, but changing production from animals and wood to ash and coal.

[OceanSoul]

Deck-based Perplexicon is... interesting, to say the least.  Hmm.  I think it would be far too luck based, because a good three-card combo when your opponent has nothing wins the game instantly.  "Break held flesh", bam.  Limiting cards to weak things would help that, but also makes the game much lower power in general.  I kinda wanna try running an IRC game like that, though.

I, personally, don't generally like focus actions in P--the game is better when chaos is the norm.  Being able to trade time for reliablity just breaks the spirit in my opinion.  I feel similarly about getting bonuses with theme words.  People tend to theme anyway, and it's relatively boring play, I'd rather not encourage it.  Beyond that, keeping track of what words which people tend to use is a lot of bookkeeping.

I do like the idea of upgrading hexes, or feeding resources from one hex into others.  Summoning wood to burn, in order to produce fire words, is a clever and interesting idea.  Alternatively, burning a forest to get a whole glut of fire words, but changing production from animals and wood to ash and coal.

"Break held Flesh" seems like it would just cause notable tears and such in whatever body part you held. Plus, there's the roll for it's potency, and you'd have to actually reach melee range and hold on to the body itself, with contested rolls against whoever you're holding, possibly requiring you to get past armor or such. Quite a physical detriment, good chance of being lethal if untreated. I'd say it's balanced.

In that last scenario you mentioned, with the forest burning down, chances are that the total amount of ash and coal words harvestable would be limited to some degree. Once that's all harvested, it's basically plain, possibly haunted land. Oh, Piece, you may want to consider letting a gang destroy/disrupt a Hex rather than claiming it for themselves.

Lastly, I have put a lot of consideration into a card-based Perplexicon, though I would likely have to remove or tone back the Perplex part. It'd be more of a Dexicon, though there wouldn't be a lexicon, either. So never mind the name. Anyway, new players would get a varied deck of cards, each card consisting of one or more words/aspects. To cast a spell, use an amount of cards in your hand, and their aspects make up the spell, and potency is rolled on a d6. Cards with just one word would be named the word itself, and some cards would have multiple aspects and/or an amount of effects, such as "If used with Forward or Sphere, add the other aspect to the spell", "+1 potency to spell if you discard another card in your hand", or "You may add Poison to your spell; if you do, you take a minor wound". Stuff like that. Innately strong aspects, such as Dragon, might have cards with hindering effects, such as "When cast, discard two cards from your hand; if you don't or cannot, this card's aspect becomes Lizard" or "-1 potency to roll". Depending on what your character does/what happens to them, they can get cards based off of it. Additionally, there may be ways to take cards from people/NPCs you defeat, buy/trade them with PC/NPCs, or simply find them in the arena.

Of course, I wouldn't have the skill/confidence to run it for a while.

[Glass]

Deck-based Perplexicon is... interesting, to say the least.  Hmm.  I think it would be far too luck based, because a good three-card combo when your opponent has nothing wins the game instantly.  "Break held flesh", bam.  Limiting cards to weak things would help that, but also makes the game much lower power in general.  I kinda wanna try running an IRC game like that, though.

I, personally, don't generally like focus actions in P--the game is better when chaos is the norm.  Being able to trade time for reliablity just breaks the spirit in my opinion.  I feel similarly about getting bonuses with theme words.  People tend to theme anyway, and it's relatively boring play, I'd rather not encourage it.  Beyond that, keeping track of what words which people tend to use is a lot of bookkeeping.

I do like the idea of upgrading hexes, or feeding resources from one hex into others.  Summoning wood to burn, in order to produce fire words, is a clever and interesting idea.  Alternatively, burning a forest to get a whole glut of fire words, but changing production from animals and wood to ash and coal.

"Break held Flesh" seems like it would just cause notable tears and such in whatever body part you held. Plus, there's the roll for it's potency, and you'd have to actually reach melee range and hold on to the body itself, with contested rolls against whoever you're holding, possibly requiring you to get past armor or such. Quite a physical detriment, good chance of being lethal if untreated. I'd say it's balanced.

In that last scenario you mentioned, with the forest burning down, chances are that the total amount of ash and coal words harvestable would be limited to some degree. Once that's all harvested, it's basically plain, possibly haunted land. Oh, Piece, you may want to consider letting a gang destroy/disrupt a Hex rather than claiming it for themselves.

Lastly, I have put a lot of consideration into a card-based Perplexicon, though I would likely have to remove or tone back the Perplex part. It'd be more of a Dexicon, though there wouldn't be a lexicon, either. So never mind the name. Anyway, new players would get a varied deck of cards, each card consisting of one or more words/aspects. To cast a spell, use an amount of cards in your hand, and their aspects make up the spell, and potency is rolled on a d6. Cards with just one word would be named the word itself, and some cards would have multiple aspects and/or an amount of effects, such as "If used with Forward or Sphere, add the other aspect to the spell", "+1 potency to spell if you discard another card in your hand", or "You may add Poison to your spell; if you do, you take a minor wound". Stuff like that. Innately strong aspects, such as Dragon, might have cards with hindering effects, such as "When cast, discard two cards from your hand; if you don't or cannot, this card's aspect becomes Lizard" or "-1 potency to roll". Depending on what your character does/what happens to them, they can get cards based off of it. Additionally, there may be ways to take cards from people/NPCs you defeat, buy/trade them with PC/NPCs, or simply find them in the arena.

Of course, I wouldn't have the skill/confidence to run it for a while.

Yugioh!
(Regrets of unusual size? I do not believe they exist.)

[ATHATH]

Question: Is the big wad of bonus cards only given to the first gang that takes over that territory, or can both gangs gain ludicrous amounts of cards  by repeatedly taking that territory from each other?

[piecewise]

If you're going to keep calling it a Deck, you may as well consider making the actual words cards in a deck. For the most part, this would mean that you only have assess to 7 or so words, likely overlapping, in the beginning of a battle, and would either regain them at a specific rate (1 per turn, maybe spending an action out of combat to gain an extra that turn) or through a specific action (You draw back up to 7, or draw 4 or so cards unless/until you reach 7, if you cast no magic in a turn). This would provide another balancing factor, as not only would rarer, more powerful cards in your deck be harder to find, but so would the combos. Then again, this would provide a moderate factor of luck to battles, which could end up being unfair/removing skill from battles to some degree. Then again, this is an RTD we're talking about, so it might not matter too much.

Have you considered words/cards that aren't simply concepts usable in spells? For example, one called "Focus" might be usable to strengthen the next magic spell the user casts, maybe in exchange for taking up a turn. There's also the idea of multi-concept words, such as a combination Dragon-fragile word, that could bind weaker words into more usable units and, in this case, provide a debuff to a more powerful word to balance it out? Lastly, is there any way to have a choice in hat words are makable, or otherwise affecting the word output of hexes? For example, forging advanced chemistry sets so that an alchemical hex can better produce its words (Acidic, Vial, and Poison, for example), or maybe allow the production of a new, stronger word (Maybe Transmutation, Fusion, or Homunculus). Ways of upgrading a Hex might be through purchases via currency and/or words (Providing Glass and Pipe words for the alchemic hex), the constant supply of words as a more continual price (Providing an amount of Gold or Wood words on a daily basis, maybe), through a mission of some sort (Steal the secrets from a rival alchemic workshop), or simply via having certain other hexes (That second alchemical hex you got is working with the first one now, and they've figured out more efficient methods).

Lastly, does the mage itself gain any benefit or effect from using the same word/combination of words over an amount of time? If my mage that starter with Wind, Bird, and Spiral, for example, was able to get and use a continuous supply of Wind words, would they get any better at it? If they often used Bird words with Fire words they obtained to summon, well, Firebirds, would they get any better at that? If they often used Spiral, Confusion, or Illusion words to confuse their enemies, would they get better at that?

I'm not sure how many people are aware of this but part of the gypsy curse which keeps me from ascending my throne as the one and true king of the skeletons is that I shall not be free until I create the perfect magic system. In search of that system I have considered perplexicon as a card game, however there are a few problems with that.

1. The way perplexicon is set up, its difficult to create meaningful spells with nothing but a hand of between 5 and 10 random elements. I've run a few tests on it, drawing random hands, and more often than not you're left sitting there, discarding cards or cobbling together some half formed nonsense in the hopes of getting something good. I remedied this with individual stacks of different components (Draw 2 materials, 2 forms, 2 modifiers, etc) but it still didn't feel quite right. It was always a game of "This is the best I got so whatever" rather than anything truly strategic 95% of the time.

2. A card game version is easy in person, with some juryrigged cards, but online it becomes very annoying to handle the mechanics of randomized draw, tracking hands, decks, discards, etc. In a large game It would more than likely result in a great deal of the kind of menial tasks that bore me stiff. And would also mean that at least a few people very turn would forget or make mistakes with their decks.


I prefer a game much more like "mage wars" than "magic the gathering" if we're staying with the card theme. Where you would build a deck but then simply select the cards to use as you like.

Deck-based Perplexicon is... interesting, to say the least.  Hmm.  I think it would be far too luck based, because a good three-card combo when your opponent has nothing wins the game instantly.  "Break held flesh", bam.  Limiting cards to weak things would help that, but also makes the game much lower power in general.  I kinda wanna try running an IRC game like that, though.

I, personally, don't generally like focus actions in P--the game is better when chaos is the norm.  Being able to trade time for reliablity just breaks the spirit in my opinion.  I feel similarly about getting bonuses with theme words.  People tend to theme anyway, and it's relatively boring play, I'd rather not encourage it.  Beyond that, keeping track of what words which people tend to use is a lot of bookkeeping.

I do like the idea of upgrading hexes, or feeding resources from one hex into others.  Summoning wood to burn, in order to produce fire words, is a clever and interesting idea.  Alternatively, burning a forest to get a whole glut of fire words, but changing production from animals and wood to ash and coal.

I'm with sy in that I dislike letting people sit and waste time to get powerful. I'm ok with it in player vs NPC stuff because I can make NPCS force them to stop (usually with violence) but in pvp doing that just means creating DBZ powering up pauses as everyone waits for their bonuses to proc.

The idea of upgrading hexes is...ok how should I put this: Its a good idea but I think it would be really difficult to do mechanically and kind of undermine the idea of different hexes that you have to own to get different things.

Question: Is the big wad of bonus cards only given to the first gang that takes over that territory, or can both gangs gain ludicrous amounts of cards  by repeatedly taking that territory from each other?

Well, that would probably depend. If the territory was lost to the NPCs in it or other NPCS, and given some time as a free territory to replenish, it might have a big wad of words to give, but if a place is changing hands back and forth, with players siphoning its words constantly, then they're not gonna build a surplus.

[Empiricist]

I'm not sure how many people are aware of this but part of the gypsy curse which keeps me from ascending my throne as the one and true king of the skeletons is that I shall not be free until I create the perfect magic system.

Have you considered murdering gypsies until you become the Skeleton King of Gypsies? You know, as a way to pass the time and ensure that you don't get cursed again?

[syvarris]

I ran a couple testing rounds of Dexicon in IRC, and I have to say that I agree with PW.  You'd either need a massive hand, or very few words in each category--else most turns are just spent with a bunch of useless cards.

It also seems really unbalanced, as giant steel ungulates won both rounds, rather than any players.

[Egan_BW]

It seems that I'm the only person who actually wants wizards riding junky cars through the desert more than wizard gang wars. huh.

[Devastator]

Hey, I liked riding cars through the desert, but if you're the Road Wizard why would you drive a junky car?