>  > ii) Is there enough interest in trying to start a new CCG / continue
>  the ones that are already there?
>
>  Definitely. It'd be good to see the Guide deck finished, but I'd be up
>  for contributing to any new set, if the theme appealed to me.

I like the Hitchhikers' Guide idea, but it has a few drawbacks:

i) potential (though unlikely) copyright problems.
ii) there's only so many ideas in the series to be turned into cards.
iii) probably the main drawback - not everyone is going to be interested in it.

I'd like to see a theme which is broader and so has more potential for people to
design cards which fit their particular interests.


>  Any thoughts on the best way to develop a set? Maybe have the main CCG
>  set article as the set of "approved" cards, and use the talk page
>  (with sub-pages, if it gets heavy) to propose and discuss possible cards?

yes, I think that's a good idea, with a notice on the main page explaining this.

--- In dvorak-list@yahoogroups.com, "james" <news@...> wrote:
>
> >  > i) Is there enough interest in setting up a system to allow these
> >  games to be played online?
> >
> >  Don't spend too much energy re-inventing the wheel - there's at least
> >  one engine already out there that we could use for this....
>
> I actually meant turn-by-turn rather than in real-time - simply
because that would require less players to work.

Probably. It's balanced by the downsides to turn-by-turn play, though,
which might turn some people away - a CCG set designed for slow play
would have to be quite different to a real-time one; no "in response
to" abilities, no "your opponent must choose" effects, a tendency
towards games that end in a low number of turns (if I'm only getting
one turn a day, I don't want a game to take forty turns), and a very
careful avoidance of drawn-out stalemates (ten turns of "I pass and
draw, hoping for the one card that will turn this game around" is fine
in tabletop, but boring over two weeks of email). Potentially big
sacrifices.

And I think we could arrange enough people for real-time play, if we
got our act together - an "upcoming events" page on the wiki, perhaps,
where people could organise and announce times for tournament games in
the week ahead. Maybe an IRC channel somewhere? (And we could *surely*
tap in to whatever Apprentice/Gatling-using communities already exist...)

Kevan

> (http://www.magic-league.com/download/apprentice.php) to use any set
> There's also the Gatling Engine at http://www.ccgworkshop.com, which

Both Windows only. Where's the OS-agnostic version?

--
Morbus Iff ( a blivet is 11 pounds of manure in a 10 pound sack )
Technical: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779
Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/
aim: akaMorbus / skype: morbusiff / icq: 2927491 / jabber.org: morbus

On Sun, 4 Feb 2007, Morbus Iff wrote:

> > (http://www.magic-league.com/download/apprentice.php) to use any set
> > There's also the Gatling Engine at http://www.ccgworkshop.com, which
>
> Both Windows only. Where's the OS-agnostic version?

There's an Apprentice workalike called Mindless Automaton which is IIRC
released under the GPL.  I know it runs on Linux and connects to
Apprentice, though it occasionally will segfault.  At any rate, I don't
recall whether Mindless Automaton is released for Windows or Mac.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mindless


--
Chris Goodwin
cgoodwin@...

>  Probably. It's balanced by the downsides to turn-by-turn play, though,
>  which might turn some people away - a CCG set designed for slow play
>  would have to be quite different to a real-time one; no "in response
>  to" abilities, no "your opponent must choose" effects, a tendency
>  towards games that end in a low number of turns (if I'm only getting
>  one turn a day, I don't want a game to take forty turns), and a very
>  careful avoidance of drawn-out stalemates (ten turns of "I pass and
>  draw, hoping for the one card that will turn this game around" is fine
>  in tabletop, but boring over two weeks of email). Potentially big
>  sacrifices.

you could have 'reaction' type cards, but they'd have to be triggered
automatically -

for example "put this card in play, face down. Whenever your opponent does x,
this card is revealed and destroyed and they fail to do x".

it'd probably also work better if players tended to take lots of actions per
turn - or if there were minimum things you had to do each turn, or penalties if
you didn't. So yes, relatively few turns with each turn tending to have a big
change in the game, rather than lots of turns any one of which may make little
difference.

A couple of other advantages of turn-by-turn:

* impossible for the game to bog down in rules disputes (which apparently
happens a fair bit, based on my friend who plays VTES online).

* easy to keep track of how well different decks / players / cards do. This has
two results - 1, you can have tables and ranks which gamers love, and 2, you can
easily notice if a card is under-powered or over-powered, and thus be able to
change it easily (eg you could flag any card which appears in winning decks
twice as often as in losing ones, or vice-versa).

Just thought of another thing, which is probably more important -

a lot of people can't use software like the Gatling Engine because they access
the internet mostly at work.

HI,

I also quite like the CCG idea because it is a deeper game than a
standard DVORAK deck. And of course customisable.

Therefore I am eager to see what comes out of Hitchhiker's Guide (I
have seen the film and read the books, but that is quite a time ago...)
though if I get an Idea I may also contribute ;)

But as for another CCG deck, I guess the theme must be set first -
like, would it be a HORROR, a SCIFI, a FANTASY, a REALWORLD or a
HISTORY thing?

As Hitchhiker is a scifi, we could go towards either a Fantasy or a
Horror thing for a change. Anyone some basic idea?

J.

> you could have 'reaction' type cards, but they'd have to be
triggered automatically -
>
> for example "put this card in play, face down. Whenever your
opponent does x, this card is revealed and destroyed and they fail to
do x".

Aha, nice idea. Potentially a game of building little machines to deal
with whatever happens on your opponent's turn, which sounds like fun.

> * impossible for the game to bog down in rules disputes (which
apparently happens a fair bit, based on my friend who plays VTES online).

Good point, that a weird game situation can be taken to discussion on
the wiki before play continues (Apprentice is actually quite annoying
for having no "save game" feature, so if something weird came up
halfway through a game, you couldn't pause and come back to it).

Real-time play seems more useful for *developing* a CCG, though, I
think. That if we want to try out some new cards or a rule change, we
can make fresh decks and get the community to play a dozen or so games
*in one evening*, rather than having to wait a week to see what's
happened.

But using Apprentice or Gatling to test and develop a turn-based CCG,
and your online engine to play it afterwards would work, of course.

> * easy to keep track of how well different decks / players / cards
do. This has two results - 1, you can have tables and ranks which
gamers love, and 2, you can easily notice if a card is under-powered
or over-powered, and thus be able to change it easily (eg you could
flag any card which appears in winning decks twice as often as in
losing ones, or vice-versa).

All good fun. I'd hope that any Dvorak-CCG set got its own community
somewhere, though, irrespective of the engine it was being played with.

> * a lot of people can't use software like the Gatling Engine because
they access the internet mostly at work.

Yes, absolutely. Or would just prefer to play something casual for
five minutes a day rather than sitting down for hours at a stretch
(which I know a lot about, it's a niche that Urban Dead's been
thriving in).

I'd love to see an online Dvorak Engine - I was considering writing
one myself, back in the day, but ended up doing a MUSH version instead
because the benefits of real-time play seemed more immediately useful.
  But having both would be great, particularly as the real-time engines
can subsume the turn-based one. I just thought I'd sound some notes of
warning, having been there before, and not knowing how aware you were
of Apprentice and Gatling...

Kevan

>  I also quite like the CCG idea because it is a deeper game than a
>  standard DVORAK deck. And of course customisable.
>
>  Therefore I am eager to see what comes out of Hitchhiker's Guide (I
>  have seen the film and read the books, but that is quite a time ago...)
>  though if I get an Idea I may also contribute ;)
>
>  But as for another CCG deck, I guess the theme must be set first -
>  like, would it be a HORROR, a SCIFI, a FANTASY, a REALWORLD or a
>  HISTORY thing?


I like the idea of a theme that allows people to put in what they're most
interested in.

Some kind of time travel / parallel universe theme perhaps? That would allow
everything you've listed here.

> A couple of other advantages of turn-by-turn:

I've been drafting a game engine, inside Drupal, for a turn-by-turn
game, solely because it's difficult to do instants/interrupts/reactions
in an AJAX environment cleanly (one day I'll try it, but not this
version). I've also been doing a lot of playing of other games - ones
I'd never play. Interestingly, I played my first few rounds of Pokemon
last night, and it's strictly turn-by-turn too.

--
Morbus Iff ( softcore vulcan pr0n rulezzzzz )
Technical: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779
Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/
aim: akaMorbus / skype: morbusiff / icq: 2927491 / jabber.org: morbus

>  Indeed, but would it not be a HUGE deck then? Or... maybe just the Base
>  Deck would be big and the individual decks would be of a "standard"
>  size..

I was thinking normal-sized decks, made out of a relatively large set of cards.

Although the base deck of 'real' CCG's are also very large anyway.

>  1. Question: Would the whole game need to be monothematic - I mean
>  would every player need to create a monothematic Time Period deck out
>  from the HUGE base deck?

All CCG's seem to have some kind of system of dividing cards into different
'types', and then setting the game up so that decks tend to work best with a
concentration on a particular type.

For example you might have cards representing characters that are elves, and
then cards representing spells, that elves can play but World War Two soldiers
can't. But then presumably elves can't use machine-guns.

For this reason, I don't forsee a need to have a *rule* that says you have to
have one type of card; the card designs would tend towards making it happen
anyway.


>  2. Would it be playable for instance if players would have decks from
>  different Time Periods?

You'd have to have some kind of mechanism to make them equally competitive,
otherwise the game would be a depressing re-run of actual history. For example
maybe less-advanced groups have goals that are easier to acheive.

Or maybe magic is assumed to work, so that that a 'medieval' deck includes such
things as witches that actually can curse people.

Or if you go with time travel, maybe more ancient periods can easily influence
more modern ones.

I'm assuming this was meant to go to the list, rather than just to me:

>  -------Original Message-------
>  From: ingjozefkundlak <ingjozefkundlak@...>
>  Subject: Re: CCG?
>  Sent: 05 Feb '07 13:22
>
>  James,
>
>  good ideas.
>
>  Until now I see it like this:
>
>  General CCG Deck Idea - Timetravel, in that Decks from various Time
>  Periods can be constructed. Each period has its own "residents" (for
>  things and structures and so on...) and typical weapons, actions,
>  buildings etc.
>
>  Things (not DVORAK "Things") CAN be usable by residents of other Time
>  Period, though limitedly (e.g. you can not expect Elves to fire Machine
>  Guns straight away). That way you could for instance let WW2 Soldiers
>  ride a prehistoric Whale to crush some structures or prehistoric apemen
>  could hide in a Bunker to prevent themselves being destroyed.
>
>  Another thing that just crossed my mind would be Cards, that could
>  CHANGE these Time-Period-specific-rulings - e.g. grant those Elves
>  the "magical wisdom" to be able to understand the machine gun usage
>  through some "Higher Blessing" or a "Spatial Rift of Knowledge".
>
>
>  Then the basic question is - would this CCG be a "Fight for the winner"
>  deck - as perhaps the Medieval Warfare - or some other basic theme?
>  What would be the Goal of this game?
>
>  J.

James and all,

yup, sorry, did do something weird inside Yahoo, so here it is again
in the topic:


> good ideas.
>
> Until now I see it like this:
>
> General CCG Deck Idea - Timetravel, in that Decks from various Time
> Periods can be constructed. Each period has its own "residents" (for
> things and structures and so on...) and typical weapons, actions,
> buildings etc.
>
> Things (not DVORAK "Things") CAN be usable by residents of other
Time
> Period, though limitedly (e.g. you can not expect Elves to fire
Machine
> Guns straight away). That way you could for instance let WW2
Soldiers
> ride a prehistoric Whale to crush some structures or prehistoric
apemen
> could hide in a Bunker to prevent themselves being destroyed.
>
> Another thing that just crossed my mind would be Cards, that could
> CHANGE these Time-Period-specific-rulings - e.g. grant those Elves
> the "magical wisdom" to be able to understand the machine gun usage
> through some "Higher Blessing" or a "Spatial Rift of Knowledge".
>
>
> Then the basic question is - would this CCG be a "Fight for the
winner"
> deck - as perhaps the Medieval Warfare - or some other basic theme?
> What would be the Goal of this game?
>
> J.

Yup, reposted to correct topic.

If an Admin or Moderator (exists here?) stumbles here, he can delete
these two messages here. THX!

Joe


>
> I'm assuming this was meant to go to the list, rather than just to
me:
>
> >  -------Original Message-------
> >  From: ingjozefkundlak <ingjozefkundlak@...>
> >  Subject: Re: CCG?
> >  Sent: 05 Feb '07 13:22
> >
> >  James,
> >
> >  good ideas.
> >
> >  Until now I see it like this:
> >
> >  General CCG Deck Idea - Timetravel, in that Decks from various
Time
> >  Periods can be constructed. Each period has its own "residents"
(for
> >  things and structures and so on...) and typical weapons, actions,
> >  buildings etc.
> >
> >  Things (not DVORAK "Things") CAN be usable by residents of other
Time
> >  Period, though limitedly (e.g. you can not expect Elves to fire
Machine
> >  Guns straight away). That way you could for instance let WW2
Soldiers
> >  ride a prehistoric Whale to crush some structures or prehistoric
apemen
> >  could hide in a Bunker to prevent themselves being destroyed.
> >
> >  Another thing that just crossed my mind would be Cards, that
could
> >  CHANGE these Time-Period-specific-rulings - e.g. grant those
Elves
> >  the "magical wisdom" to be able to understand the machine gun
usage
> >  through some "Higher Blessing" or a "Spatial Rift of Knowledge".
> >
> >
> >  Then the basic question is - would this CCG be a "Fight for the
winner"
> >  deck - as perhaps the Medieval Warfare - or some other basic
theme?
> >  What would be the Goal of this game?
> >
> >  J.
>

On 2/4/07, Morbus Iff wrote:
> > (http://www.magic-league.com/download/apprentice.php) to use any set
> > There's also the Gatling Engine at http://www.ccgworkshop.com, which
>
> Both Windows only. Where's the OS-agnostic version?

Gccg has been mentioned earlier on this list: http://gccg.sf.net/

- Eric

james wrote:
>
> > Indeed, but would it not be a HUGE deck then? Or... maybe just the Base
> > Deck would be big and the individual decks would be of a "standard"
> > size..
>
> I was thinking normal-sized decks, made out of a relatively large set
> of cards.
>
> Although the base deck of 'real' CCG's are also very large anyway.
>
Normally, the base set will be ~360 cards, subsets ~120 (numbers vary,
but those tend to match up with printer's sheets). I suspect those
numbers also match up nicely to the mass needed to support multiple
strategies.

> > 1. Question: Would the whole game need to be monothematic - I mean
> > would every player need to create a monothematic Time Period deck out
> > from the HUGE base deck?
>
> All CCG's seem to have some kind of system of dividing cards into
> different 'types', and then setting the game up so that decks tend to
> work best with a concentration on a particular type.
>
> For example you might have cards representing characters that are
> elves, and then cards representing spells, that elves can play but
> World War Two soldiers can't. But then presumably elves can't use
> machine-guns.
>
> For this reason, I don't forsee a need to have a *rule* that says you
> have to have one type of card; the card designs would tend towards
> making it happen anyway.
>
I agree - the trick is to make sure your "groups" are flexible enough to
allow some cross pollination (So that elves and say.. druids have some
nature abilities they can both use). Nothing worse than cards that are
over specific.

How about an "Urban Dead" CCG for Dvorak?
I would bet that we would easily be able to get the authors
permission so we could avoid any copyright infringement issues! :)

It could have locations (building), characters (humans & zombies),
barricades, weapons, events (supply drops, etc), reviv. syringes,
special abilities/training/etc, health packs, ...

But what would the goal be??????

- Isaac


> -----Original Message-----
> From: james
>
> Hi,
>    There've been some discussions on this list about making a CCG.
>
> So far this has generated some good ideas, but hasn't resulted in
> a complete game ( the results may be seen here -
> http://www.dvorakgame.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Category:CCG_sets ).

I guess the main Goal would be prosaic - obliterate the enemy
(enemies) ;)

But subsequent Time Epoch Goals would be in place - for each group a
different one(s).

Dont know about Urban Dead, I guess (from the first look) it is
narrower than our intended Setting...

But feel free to discuss this here:
http://www.dvorakgame.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Talk:History_ReZap_(ideas)

Joe

> How about an "Urban Dead" CCG for Dvorak?
> I would bet that we would easily be able to get the authors
> permission so we could avoid any copyright infringement issues! :)
>
> It could have locations (building), characters (humans & zombies),
> barricades, weapons, events (supply drops, etc), reviv. syringes,
> special abilities/training/etc, health packs, ...
>
> But what would the goal be??????
>
> - Isaac

--- In dvorak-list@yahoogroups.com, "Dan Isaac 2" <disaac2@...> wrote:
>
> How about an "Urban Dead" CCG for Dvorak?
> I would bet that we would easily be able to get the authors
> permission so we could avoid any copyright infringement issues! :)

I've actually had some sketched ideas for a proper, marketable zombie
CCG sitting around for years, pre-dating Urban Dead but using some of
its framing, so I should probably sit out the brainstorming, and maybe
close my eyes in case yours develops along similar lines and I can't
avoid including similar ideas, if I ever finish it.

Feel free, though.

Kevan

For those that may not know, there's a fairly productive-seeming discussion
going on re making a CCG, on the wiki:

http://www.dvorakgame.co.uk/index.php/Talk:History_ReZap_(ideas)

This was something I wanted to try a few years ago, but couldn't
without writing a system to automate it. Now that we've got a wiki,
though...

        http://www.dvorakgame.co.uk/index.php/Infinite_Dvorak_deck

It's an endless and themeless Dvorak deck, where any site visitor can
add new cards to the pile. If you're a Dvorak player who's not been
brave enough to sign up to the wiki yet, now's a good time to jump in.

Kevan

Dvorak now has its own dedicated MUSH server at
telnet://dvorakgame.co.uk:6250, where you can play the game against
online opponents, using only a telnet window. By giving Dvorak its own
MUSH, it'll hopefully make it easier for players to find one another
and get games started - anyone connected to that MUSH will definitely
be a Dvorak player.

For further details, see http://dvorakgame.co.uk/index.php/DvorakMUSH

Kevan

On Wed, Nov 21, 2007 at 10:23:22PM -0500, nevthederanged@... wrote:
> If a program like this exists, surely someone here knows of it: I'm looking
> for a program or web app where I can enter values for cards in a deck and have
> them dealt randomly one at a time, while keeping track of the deck contents.

I wrote a program a couple of years back to simulate card draws for a
CCG I was playing.  The perl to draw a card from the deck was:-

sub get_next_card {
         my $deck=shift;
         return splice(@$deck,rand(@$deck),1)
}

$deck is an (possibly ordered) array of cards.

TTFN
--
Roger. 	                        Home| http://www.sandman.uklinux.net/
Master of Peng Shui.      (Ancient oriental art of Penguin Arranging)
Work|Independent Sys Consultant | http://www.computer-surgery.co.uk/
  New key Fpr: 72AF 0ACC 9A53 E59F B1B6  DC14 1983 A13E 5C3D 3CEB

I've been on hiatus for a while and noticed that the Dvorak decks are
now Wikified.  I just signed up and I was wondering what I need to do
to be able to unlock/edit the deck I created way back in 2004 (Florida
Vacations)?  I saw the slick card designs in the rules section and may
have to come up with some neat card designs and artwork for my deck.

--- In dvorak-list@yahoogroups.com, "Doc Immortal" <docimmortal@...>
wrote:
>
> I've been on hiatus for a while and noticed that the Dvorak decks are
> now Wikified.  I just signed up and I was wondering what I need to do
> to be able to unlock/edit the deck I created way back in 2004 (Florida
> Vacations)?  I saw the slick card designs in the rules section and may
> have to come up with some neat card designs and artwork for my deck.

Welcome back. Just click "log in / create account" in the top-right
corner to register with the site, then click "edit" on the page you
want to change.

The padlock icon is just an aesthetic warning to other users - it
won't stop you from being able to edit the page.

Kevan

I can't upload an image...

To the wiki? What happens when you try to?

Kevan

--- In dvorak-list@yahoogroups.com, "Polocatfan" <polocatfan@...> wrote:
>
> I can't upload an image...
>

The file has no extension (like ".jpg"). It has an extension

--- In dvorak-list@yahoogroups.com, "kevandavis" <yahoo@...> wrote:
>
> To the wiki? What happens when you try to?
>
> Kevan
>
> --- In dvorak-list@yahoogroups.com, "Polocatfan" <polocatfan@> wrote:
> >
> > I can't upload an image...
> >
>

Not sure what the problem could be. Might be worth raising it at
http://dvorakgame.co.uk/index.php/Talk:Main_Page
where some wiki users can see the problem.

Kevan

--- In dvorak-list@yahoogroups.com, "Polocatfan" <polocatfan@...> wrote:
>
> The file has no extension (like ".jpg"). It has an extension
>
> --- In dvorak-list@yahoogroups.com, "kevandavis" <yahoo@> wrote:
> >
> > To the wiki? What happens when you try to?
> >
> > Kevan
> >
> > --- In dvorak-list@yahoogroups.com, "Polocatfan" <polocatfan@> wrote:
> > >
> > > I can't upload an image...
> > >
> >
>