Rift: reworking the Jester Cards and other considerations.
There are aspects of Rift that have needed to be reworked.
One thing I've been looking at a while is adding "held" cards to the Jester Cards, the Get Out Of Jail Free sort that you hold until you need them rather than immediately invoking and then discarding them. I have finally come up with a few, but I haven't been sure how to work them into the deck properly. I need to probably redo the entire deck anyway.
But I think I'll be changing the way the Jester Cards are distributed, and by extension how the Jester piece works. As I'm considering at the moment, instead of being drawn from the deck when the Jester invokes a card, the cards will be shuffled and completely dealt in the setup phase, probably by the South player. Each player will receive half the cards before play begins; as it stands, there are 60 cards, so each player would receive 30, but after redoing the deck there will likely be many fewer cards. The cards are dealt face down, but each player can then find out what all of their cards are before play begins. Thus, when the Jester invokes a card, any card in hand can be invoked. After a card is used, it is discarded; used cards do not reenter play. If a player invokes all of their cards, they don't get any new cards; the Jester will be left with some rudimentary effect, I'm thinking like some kind of song that'll affect the opponent's attack or something. If both players use up their cards, both players are stuck with the rudimentary act. In this mechanic, there is no longer any real need to distinguish between friendly and opponent effects, so that'll be one of the major changes in the deck's cards. One major thing is that if your Jester is defeated by the opponent, they win all of your remaining hand of Jester Cards, so this makes quelling the Jester rapidly a more attractive idea; since all cards have positive effects in this system, it's clearly beneficial to win the cards as quickly as possible, if for no other reason than to prevent your opponent from having the opportunity to use them.
There are other things to work on as well. When invoking a Jester Card, you'll place it out in plain view to the opponent; if it's a status effect type, the card will remain in view for the next turn and it will remain in effect until then, after which it will be discarded. I'm thinking of doing a similar thing with other effect type acts, particularly the ones I've currently classified as buffs and debuffs; they'll be reclassified as a single class of acts. There will be tokens supplied to mark that an effect is active when shown. Some tokens will be placed on a piece or on a piece's square to indicate which piece they affect (or the piece from which the effect originates). Other tokens will be placed alongside the board when their effects are active to indicate a global effect. Tokens are removed after the corresponding number of turns, indicating the effect has worn off. This visual reinforcement should make effects a little easier to manage. Effect tokens, unlike Jester Cards, do not embody the effects in themselves but rather represent effects borne out of the pieces' abilities, magically or otherwise, so the tokens are not discarded, just taken back in hand. Each player will basically get 6 tokens for each Enchanter spell and a few more for the on-board effects. There might have to be two tokens for the player with the Cockatrice to mark its hostile debuff, Glare. Otherwise, the effect marked by the on-board tokens will be implied by the associated piece.
The on-board tokens might be tricky. I don't want too much crap to be on a single square. I don't want too much crap to be placed on top of the piece either. An easy way to mark such an effect would be to simply flip the piece over. However, I have to consider another change I want to make. What I used to call Buildup Cards, giving bonuses in the setup phase that are fixed to pieces, are now Trait Tokens. The idea I'd been playing with for a while was flat pieces with two slits on top. To assign a Trait Token to a piece, you place it in one of the piece's slots, so it stands up roughly perpendicular to the piece. You can assign more than two tokens to a piece, but you'd have to stack the rest on top. Maybe I'll change that, but it would require revising the token bonuses. Anyway, if a piece already has two or more Trait Tokens attached to it, it won't be so easy to place effect tokens, at least not unless the squares are quite large. There can be other markers sharing squares with pieces as well, like bunkers or tunneled Sappers or castle wall breaches, so there's enough crap already. In any case, this way of attaching Trait Tokens means flipping pieces to mark effects is not very realistic. Lots to figure out.
In order to facilitate Enchanter effect tokens, I feel like I have to simplify the magic system as well. The change I'm thinking of is pooling magic points; this way, all magic-using pieces will draw from a single pool of magic power. The number of points in the pool could depend on the number of points each piece contributes. The Queen, Princess and Cardinal each contribute 15, while Enchanters, Conjurers and Priests each contribute 5 MP. There are 8 of the latter group, the Magic pieces, so that gives a default pool of 85 points. In this model, when a piece is quelled or dissuaded, its MP contribution is lost, reducing the size of the pool by a corresponding amount. The Imbue ability of the Queen and the Cardinal, which currently restores the MP of any other piece at a 2 MP cost, would instead restore the pool, but at a permanent loss of 2 MP from the pool. The Serpent has the Enlighten ability, which restores 5 MP for an adjacent piece, and I suppose that can stay the same, although maybe I could increase the restoration a smidgen. The Imbue All Jester Card, which restores all MP for all pieces anyway, will remain the unchanged. Is 85 MP too much, though? Maybe instead of giving the Queen and Cardinal any kind of Imbue ability at all, I could just increase the pool to 100 MP; if I retain the ability for those pieces, then I should probably reduce the pool to 50 or even 40 MP. But there's plenty to consider with respect to balance.
Ah well. Stuff to review.
One thing I've been looking at a while is adding "held" cards to the Jester Cards, the Get Out Of Jail Free sort that you hold until you need them rather than immediately invoking and then discarding them. I have finally come up with a few, but I haven't been sure how to work them into the deck properly. I need to probably redo the entire deck anyway.
But I think I'll be changing the way the Jester Cards are distributed, and by extension how the Jester piece works. As I'm considering at the moment, instead of being drawn from the deck when the Jester invokes a card, the cards will be shuffled and completely dealt in the setup phase, probably by the South player. Each player will receive half the cards before play begins; as it stands, there are 60 cards, so each player would receive 30, but after redoing the deck there will likely be many fewer cards. The cards are dealt face down, but each player can then find out what all of their cards are before play begins. Thus, when the Jester invokes a card, any card in hand can be invoked. After a card is used, it is discarded; used cards do not reenter play. If a player invokes all of their cards, they don't get any new cards; the Jester will be left with some rudimentary effect, I'm thinking like some kind of song that'll affect the opponent's attack or something. If both players use up their cards, both players are stuck with the rudimentary act. In this mechanic, there is no longer any real need to distinguish between friendly and opponent effects, so that'll be one of the major changes in the deck's cards. One major thing is that if your Jester is defeated by the opponent, they win all of your remaining hand of Jester Cards, so this makes quelling the Jester rapidly a more attractive idea; since all cards have positive effects in this system, it's clearly beneficial to win the cards as quickly as possible, if for no other reason than to prevent your opponent from having the opportunity to use them.
There are other things to work on as well. When invoking a Jester Card, you'll place it out in plain view to the opponent; if it's a status effect type, the card will remain in view for the next turn and it will remain in effect until then, after which it will be discarded. I'm thinking of doing a similar thing with other effect type acts, particularly the ones I've currently classified as buffs and debuffs; they'll be reclassified as a single class of acts. There will be tokens supplied to mark that an effect is active when shown. Some tokens will be placed on a piece or on a piece's square to indicate which piece they affect (or the piece from which the effect originates). Other tokens will be placed alongside the board when their effects are active to indicate a global effect. Tokens are removed after the corresponding number of turns, indicating the effect has worn off. This visual reinforcement should make effects a little easier to manage. Effect tokens, unlike Jester Cards, do not embody the effects in themselves but rather represent effects borne out of the pieces' abilities, magically or otherwise, so the tokens are not discarded, just taken back in hand. Each player will basically get 6 tokens for each Enchanter spell and a few more for the on-board effects. There might have to be two tokens for the player with the Cockatrice to mark its hostile debuff, Glare. Otherwise, the effect marked by the on-board tokens will be implied by the associated piece.
The on-board tokens might be tricky. I don't want too much crap to be on a single square. I don't want too much crap to be placed on top of the piece either. An easy way to mark such an effect would be to simply flip the piece over. However, I have to consider another change I want to make. What I used to call Buildup Cards, giving bonuses in the setup phase that are fixed to pieces, are now Trait Tokens. The idea I'd been playing with for a while was flat pieces with two slits on top. To assign a Trait Token to a piece, you place it in one of the piece's slots, so it stands up roughly perpendicular to the piece. You can assign more than two tokens to a piece, but you'd have to stack the rest on top. Maybe I'll change that, but it would require revising the token bonuses. Anyway, if a piece already has two or more Trait Tokens attached to it, it won't be so easy to place effect tokens, at least not unless the squares are quite large. There can be other markers sharing squares with pieces as well, like bunkers or tunneled Sappers or castle wall breaches, so there's enough crap already. In any case, this way of attaching Trait Tokens means flipping pieces to mark effects is not very realistic. Lots to figure out.
In order to facilitate Enchanter effect tokens, I feel like I have to simplify the magic system as well. The change I'm thinking of is pooling magic points; this way, all magic-using pieces will draw from a single pool of magic power. The number of points in the pool could depend on the number of points each piece contributes. The Queen, Princess and Cardinal each contribute 15, while Enchanters, Conjurers and Priests each contribute 5 MP. There are 8 of the latter group, the Magic pieces, so that gives a default pool of 85 points. In this model, when a piece is quelled or dissuaded, its MP contribution is lost, reducing the size of the pool by a corresponding amount. The Imbue ability of the Queen and the Cardinal, which currently restores the MP of any other piece at a 2 MP cost, would instead restore the pool, but at a permanent loss of 2 MP from the pool. The Serpent has the Enlighten ability, which restores 5 MP for an adjacent piece, and I suppose that can stay the same, although maybe I could increase the restoration a smidgen. The Imbue All Jester Card, which restores all MP for all pieces anyway, will remain the unchanged. Is 85 MP too much, though? Maybe instead of giving the Queen and Cardinal any kind of Imbue ability at all, I could just increase the pool to 100 MP; if I retain the ability for those pieces, then I should probably reduce the pool to 50 or even 40 MP. But there's plenty to consider with respect to balance.
Ah well. Stuff to review.