[Building Character: SWSERPG] Phibt

This is the third article in my Building Character series. I'm continuing to develop characters for the Star Wars Saga Edition Roleplaying Game. You can check out the previous two characters here and here. My latest addition is an Aleena mercenary named Phibt.

[Open Design: Mercenaries #8] Tags on Mercenary and Territory Cards

I’m breaking my usual Monday and Thursday posting schedule again to bring you three articles this week. I’m posting this article a day early, and another Building Character post will be going up Friday.

This is another quick update on our Open Design project. You can read all of our previous project articles here. An important factor to the intractability of cards in Mercenaries is something called Tags. Tags don’t do anything on their own, but they can be referred to by rules on other cards, and allow cards to be grouped into a variety of categories.

Humandisaster suggested that we should have a set list of Tags that can be used. This list should also give general guidelines as to what sort of concepts each individual Tag covers. I’m going to present here all of the Tags that we’ve used so far.

[Stacking the Deck: Mega Man TCG] Shock and Awe

This is the first in a new series of articles called Stacking the Deck. The idea behind these articles is to present deck ideas for various expandable card games that involve building your own deck to play with. This first article will present a team and deck for the Mega Man Trading Card Game. If you’re not familiar with this fun TCG you can read my Design Review here.

[Building Character: SWSERPG] Kaili Sorn

This is the second post in a new series called Building Character. The idea is to take a roleplaying game and build a few different characters for that game, writing about the process and posting the end results. I’ve found this to be a useful exercise for getting myself acquainted with a game’s rules mechanics. Plus, it can be a fun creative activity.

Last week, I posted a character I made for the Star Wars Saga Edition Roleplaying Game. This second one I’ve made is Kaili Sorn, a Jedi healer that’s gone mercenary after Order 66.

[Design Review] Mega Man Trading Card Game

What is the Maga Man Trading Card Game?

This is a trading card game based on the popular Mega Man video game franchise. First released almost a year ago, the game now has literally a few hundred unique cards in circulation, and an eager player base with a strong trading community and organized tournaments. In the interests of full disclosure, this is not an officially licensed game. It is a fan-made product designed and produced by my brother for us and a few of our friends. Nevertheless, I think it’s a pretty well polished design, and one of the best games me or my brother have made. I’m writing this as a Design Review, rather than a Design Journal, because my total input on the design of this game has been very minimal.

[Open Design: Mercenaries #7] Mercenary Cards Round-Up

This is simply a quick round-up of the mercenary cards we've created so far for the game Mercenaries, our Open Design project. We have close to a third of the mercenary cards that we need to get the game to its first playtest. Thanks so much to everyone who has already participated, and I look forward to seeing this project continue to progress. Look over the cards listed below, and feel free to leave any ideas you have for mercenaries in the comments to this post.

Because this is kind of a quick article that didn't take a lot of work to put together, I'll be breaking my usual Monday and Thursday posting schedule to bring you three new articles this week. Check back on Wednesday for a new Design Review, and look for another Building Character post on Friday.

[Building Character: SWSERPG] Shara Koth

Image from Wookieepedia.

This will hopefully be the first post in a new series called Building Character. The idea is to take a roleplaying game and build a few different characters for that game, writing about the process and posting the end results. I’ve found this to be a useful exercise for getting myself acquainted with a game’s rules mechanics. Plus, it can be a fun creative activity.

A while ago, I posted a Design Review about the Star Wars Roleplaying Game Saga Edition. One of the things I talked about in there was the process for creating characters. So, I’ve decided to start this series with making some characters for that game. The first one I’ve made is Shara Koth, a mercenary captain of the Zabrak species.

[Design Journal: Castle Siege] A Game of Medieval Warfare

The armies are gathering beyond the castle wall. You strengthen your fortifications while they gather reinforcements. An arduous battle awaits. It will be their aggression against your persistence. Can you hold out long enough to force them into retreat? Or, will they overrun your battlements and claim the castle for themselves?

[Open Design: Mercenaries #6] Designing Territory Cards

Work is progressing steadily on Mercenaries. We have a working model that should be suitable for our first playtest. We are also making considerable progress on designing the mercenary cards for the game. Let’s mix things up by jumping into the design process for the game’s deck of 15 territory cards. I don’t want to distract everyone from designing mercenaries, but working on the territories simultaneously might create opportunities for the cross pollination of ideas. Also, if you’re burning out on designing the mercenaries, trying your hand at territory cards for a while might be a nice change of pace. Territories should be much simpler to create, because each card only has a couple of substantial features. I’ll explain the format below, and then give a few examples to get us started.

[Design Journal: Terra Machina] Adventure Awaits!

Artwork from the Mega Man Zero video game franchise.

In the year 25XX, humans no longer dominate the Earth. Some believe that they went extinct when the world became so damaged it could no longer support them. Others believe they simple abandoned the planet for more fertile lands elsewhere. Either way, they left in their place a hardier species of mechanical men, dubbed the Progeny. Centuries have passed. The Progeny have multiplied and formed their own cultures. Unity City seeks to forge bonds between disparate nations, but the terrorist acts of those with radical views threaten to tear apart this fragile peace…