Author Topic: Making an Ars Magica-based tabletop game  (Read 1987 times)

Offline Dictum Mortuum

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Making an Ars Magica-based tabletop game
« on: July 17, 2012, 08:42:21 AM »
So, recently I got into board games and PNP (print and play) games. I've thought about creating a board game myself, based around the Ars Magica spellcasting system.

The setting's spellcasting system in a sentence:

Quote
Ars Magica has a set of 5 techniques (to create, to perceive, to change, to destroy, and to control) and 10 forms (animal, air, water, body, plant, fire, image, mind, earth, and power). You can combine the techniques and the forms to quite literally create effects of that combination on the fly, and then research spells for easier/more powerful spells of a more fixed nature.

What I have so far:

A typical game round would consist of three phases:

a) the form selection phase.
b) the casting phase.
c) the end (cleanup) phase.

In the (a) phase, each player selects a form in clockwise order. The player that starts the phase will be the last to choose a form in the next round, because I'm planning to have a "round leader" token given to players. At the end of each round that player will be giving the token to the player next to him, again clockwise.

In the (b) phase, each player, starting with the "round leader" player and in clockwise order will start to "cast spells", investing "magic points" in one of the five techniques. The technique, combined with the form the player selected and based on how many magic points the player invested will create an effect, possibly with a target. Players will start taking turns until everyone has no "magic points" left (possibly with an upper limit on how many you can have invested in a single go); spells take effect simultaneously, using a magic-the-gathering-like stack to resolve effects.

In the (c) phase, players recover their spell points (quite possibly reduced in value because of spell effects), calculate victory points, etc.

Things I don't like:

a) Random Chance: I know that in games like this, it would be lovely to have some dice rolling, but I want to create a challenging tactical game with minimum random chance. I want players to think carefully before they select a form; I want them to make alliances to defend or to defeat a common enemy.
b) Theme: Actually I like the Ars Magica setting, but for now the theme doesn't matter.
c) Cards: This is more or less the same thing as rolling dice - I'd be great having a deck of cards that you can shuffle and select from that enhance your spellcasting abilities, but it's kind of a stereotype and I want to avoid it like the plague.

Things I'm NOT sure about:

a) Winning System: I know that I want to create a "big wizard fight"-kind of game and that killing opponents suits best to score the winner, but I need help in trying to figure out a Victory Point-awarding system, based on the spells that where successfully casted in the round.
b) Spells: This is a big one. I can either create a difficult spellcasting system with 5*10 = 50 different spells that players need to master before they can play the game tactically or just create a set of spells that do more or less the same thing for different spheres (e.g. create fire and create air do the same damage to their targets, and they do +1 damage to water or earth effects, respectively).
c) Forms: I'm thinking of dropping certain spheres, like Animal and Plant.
Dictum Mortuum's Handbooks: My personal character optimization blog.