Announcement Spiral Arena Card Game

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    • Spiral Arena Card Game

      As you all know, the world of the SHARD RPG employs martial arts as one of the staple elements of its cinematic combat. Since it's always been my desire to create a fun, more "easily accessible" way for folks to check out SHARD (there are quite a few gamers out there who don't have the time or inclination to devote to running, or even playing, an RPG), and since I've always enjoyed sitting down with friends for small table-top type games such as cards and board games, I figure it's finally time to make a cool card-game that really tries to capture the wild and deadly aspects of Shard martial arts....

      Check out our Facebook page, "Like" us, and keep up with my friend Denis and I as we develop the game in preparation for a Kickstarter that's soon to come! This development cycle will correspond with our continuing work on the "Magic and Martial Arts" book, and if all goes well, we'll be able to publish them both within the next eight months!

      With the Spiral Arena card game, we will be attempting to create an experience that replicates the action-packed concept of the martial arts "honor duels" that occur within the ritualized combat areas of Dárdünah called Spiral Arenas. Unlike a great many card games that allow players to oppose one another with tactics and attacks whose game effects can be constantly undone or altered (thus making a single game last hours), those of you who are familiar with SHARD as a RPG know that sudden death is ALWAYS possible, and this card game will DEPEND on it!

      The idea with our card game is that, once the players sit down and familiarize themselves with the rules (learning them is EASY if you're already familiar with the SHARD RPG combat system), have picked one of the pre-generated characters that come with each deck, and have set that character up with all their pre-assigned attributes, then martial arts duels can be fast, furious, and playable again and again (like "hands" of poker)... The losers crushed during one battle might be glorious winners in the next!

      If all goes well with the Kickstarter, then we'll be trying to include things like colorful little crystal "dalán" pieces used as tokens to represent Stamina which you win from your fellow players as you successfully strike their characters with your maneuvers, play mats adorned with lush artwork to define your playing area, a special boxed edition, cool "Spiral Symbol" cloth patches, and more!

      Just to whet your appetite, on our Facebook page for the game, we've posted an example of what the final "polished" look of the cards might be. There, flanking the current concept for the back of the card, you'll see examples of two of the four basic types of cards the game will use; a Character Card and a Maneuver Card.

      We'll post some more snippets concerning our creative process on Facebook as we go!

      Scottie ^^
    • RE: Spiral Arena Card Game

      People are going to DIG this excellent game. The pacing is fantastic, the violence is gratuitous, the concept is rich and full bodied with inspiring ideas you keep thinking about after all the cards have fallen. I really like this tournament card game.
      "Daggra" means "Enemy" in Tibetan.
      "Chora" means "Thief" in Sanskrit.
    • Oh, that's a pretty aweseome idea!
      I had already thought of suggesting the production of a Shard card game, but I had rather thought of "Devah's Doctrine" as described in the Basic Compendium, so you'd even be able to tie the cards into RPG sessions.

      This is very awesome as well, however!
      I'd love to hear some more information on how the game will work!

      I hope this gets enough support to be kickstarted!
    • We've finally put together the total numbers of all the assets required to produce the game (and some of its stretch goals) and we've sent correspondence to the vendors asking for quote requests so we can get a handle on final production costs!

      Once we have the cost quotes, we can then assemble the Kickstarter with real dollar values for all the backer levels and stretch goals!

      It's finally starting to shape up!

      Scottie ^^
    • I am really excited to hear about this! As you may of may not know from our show (2 GMs, 1 Mic), my group usually uses cards in our roleplaying to add excitement and inspiration to the game.

      So, although I'll be abcking the Kickstarter and playing this game, how close is the card game system to the RPG system? Could I use bonuses from cards straight with the RPG?
      -JFC Wolz
      HISTORIAN
    • Stamina Tokens!

      If you haven't had a chance to visit and "like" our Facebook page for the Spiral Arean Card Game, please do! http://www.facebook.com/SHARDSpiralArena

      Denis has recently created a cool render of what our crystal "dalán" tokens might look like, assuming we reach our eventualy stretch goals for our Kickstarter (not published yet)... For those of you familiar with the game, these are directly based on the original painting I did awile back to show you guys what Dardunah's money looks like!

      Fun stuff!

      [Blocked Image: http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q305/Jadugara/TokenPile.jpg]
    • Hey Joe!!!

      I noticed I failed to respond to your last question! Sorry about that...

      I answered a similar question on the Facebook page, when a fellow asked whether the cards could be used to resolve combat in the game...

      Essentially, here's how it works... The deck will be composed of four different kinds of cards, 112 of which are called Maneuver Cards, and represent all the types of attacks that you can normally achieve (assuming you have the Martial Arts Skill) when using the Maneuver Location Table... The info on the Maneuver Cards (which you can see an example of if you look at the card on the right in the image of some of them we uploaded) contains not only the maneuver the card allows you to use and its effects, it ALSO contains the mechanism we use to generate diceless "successes" (the basis for comparison when pitting one warrior's skill against another to determine who hits who and when).

      As long as you learn how to use the Maneuver Cards to resolve rounds of combat, you could easily employ them using the basic stats of your SHARD RPG character... This would be fun to try for a laugh, but would probably not quite be as efficient as simply using the dice if you like sitting comfortably around a large living room instead of a table...

      The cool thing about the card game is, once you play it, you really start to see the value of using many of the Maneuvers on the Maneuver Location Table more often... The card game forces you to focus on the combat alone, and it enables you to do so without worrying about a character you may have devoted months and months (if not years) of your time to... Using the cards to substitute for dice, and to limit the choices of the special maneuvers you can try that round might be novel, but it can seem even MORE brutal and deadly than the RPG combat, which is something that may or may not please you when you're talking about a character you love, instead of a random one picked from a deck of cards...

      Does that info answer your question?

      Scottie ^^