Hyper Galactic Reaction Team Force 5! (or whatever)

Spanning the galaxy, great armadas clash, reigning destruction on all that surrounds; from mighty warships stretching miles in length to tiny single seat fighter-craft, to even 40 foot tall humanoid mechs, each launching a series of death inducing particle beams and self guided missiles in an attempt to obliterate the opposing forces.

And yet, not a single life is lost.

Eons ago, the great races which inhabited the galaxy did away with bloodshed, believing that even in victory, the loss of life was too high. And so, they developed robotic technology and artificial intelligence to fight these wars. But, a mind, a sentient mind, was still required to command, for a computer brain was too linear, unable to come up with the unexpected, unable to change tactics in mid formation.

Seated light years away from the conflict, these Admirals would gather, the only face-to-face meetings between factions. And though they shared an interest in sparing life, such honor could not be expected to continue onto the actual field between men. Each strove to achieve the upper hand, to find a way to claim total victory. By stealth , intelligence, or even through underhanded means, they attempted various ways to learn the secrets and tactics of the enemy.

To prevent such devious ploys from becoming the norm, specially encrypted key cards were created. Each card contained the information of a particular battle formation, movement, weapon statistics, vehicle commands, and so much more. Only the commanding Admiral knew what was to transpire, in what order the actions were to occur. The enemy may see the keycards, but without proper encryption tools he would be unable to determine what was to happen.

And to ensure that no single armada could gain control of these keycards, they employed a neutral carrier, who would deliver safe guard and deliver these keycards to the meeting ground. All parties respected this arrangement, and all parties adhered to need.

But, as is the way of things, these races passed into distant history, replaced by younger species. However, their armies remain, waiting for commands that haven’t been issued for centuries…

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Hyper Galactic Hyper-Reaction Team Force Five (now doesn’t that sound Japanese?) is a card game where you blah blah blah. Read the above.

Shadowcrunch came to be yesterday to brainstorm card games, and how the Japanese market has a greater, if not better, CCG system. Forget the artwork, or the outrageous damage points (ie, Magic has 4/3… we have 2576/4500!). I reasoned the Japanese have things that are all encompassing: anime tie-ins, movies, toys. They have a developed background, a story, a reason for the game!

Now read the above again. See the gaming elements? Encrypted keycards which relay orders! Great battles involving spacecraft of all sizes and mechs! A background story, and a way to incorporate the here and now into that!

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I don’t want to fill this initial post with a bunch of stuff, as this was a “group” discussion between Shadowcrunch and myself, and I just want to quickly put things down before things are forgotten… but I want to touch on a few things real quick (I gave this thought on the way home last night!):

1. The Reactor.

This card game doesn’t use mana or taxes or any other cost system. Instead, to keep things within the vein of the story, we have a reactor.

Each force has a power source (the reactor). The Admiral can do as many maneuvers or attacks or whatever as he wants per turn as long as his reactor has enough energy to perform those tasks. The reactor will recharge a specific number of energy levels each turn. Each keycard uses a specific amount of energy.

Simple enough, right?

2. Life

The way I see it, every successful attack on the admiral actually destroys a portion of the reactor matrix… it won’t be able to FULLY charge. It can still charge normally, but it wouldn’t be able to achieve max levels. When the reactor is unable to recharge at all, when the Admiral is unable to perform any action, he losses.

Okay now, to make things simple, we have a round counter, looks like an old boiler glass. It’s pretty much three cardboard circles, one atop the other, the bottom being bigger than the top one. The top will have one of those trapezoid / rectangular windows to show the current energy levels. The middle circle shows energy capacity limits… this is the “life points”. The top circle CANNOT go beyond the second! The bottom circle is pretty much nothing, just a base for the other two.

3. Game play

There is no discard pile! When a movement or attack occurs, that card is placed on the bottom of the deck… the time it takes for it to resurface would be considered the cool down phase for that vehicle or weapon used. The only thing that ever really gets discarded are the cards depicting vehicles or mechs… those are removed from the game upon their destruction.

But how do you explain the summoning of vehicles and mech? You can’t summon what’s already there, silly! You are merely bringing them online!

Vehicles will have a weak against / strong against portion on them. Think about it, a hell-blast vorpal cannon of a destroyer class ship is designed to punch through another vessel… it isn’t meant to target something small like a simple fighter.

4. Gimmick

Every Japanese related CCG has a gimmick, something that makes it stand apart from each other. This one? Encryption and decoders!

Maybe not every card because that would be a hassle… but a good number of cards will have secret text that can only be read when using a decoder! This information “unlocks” a special tactic or attack. The text is hidden by a pattern of colored squiggly lines, and the decoder is just cellophane that is the same color of the lines.

An idea about the colors: red for attacks, green for energy boosts / cost reduction/ blue foe reactor matrix repairs?

Anyway…

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As you can see, some thinking last night about this! This thread is now open for discussion… hopefully more than us two will discuss.

I've been thinking about this game a lot lately. I've pretty much fleshed out my Conquest game as far as I can go without actually making cards and play-testing it, and I don't know... there's just something here, something about this particular game system.

Dear gawd, if only there was a way we could copy write ideas or something, and then try to promote or sell them to a company.

In all honesty, I think I missed the last 2 posts. I mean, I remember the night I came down to the shack, barely, cuz it was forever ago. I remember you posting about hyperactive academy blaster force go alpha six team sigma, but I don't remember the parts about the round reactor spinny thing or the codes, but going over it tonight, thinking about your mention of Japanese games having gimmicks and being based on mangas or animes or whatnot, I had a flash of something involving your red cellophane. Yes, the age old secret codes for kids, with the red cellophane hyper decoder unit or whatever that particular cereal box called it...

I thought of the Japanese subculture, the games meaning more to them, the cosplay. Like the article I read about Japanese video game culture compared to ours, where knowing every single detail of Solid Snake's life would get your ass beat and your undies on a flagpole here, but in Japan you would be weird if you didn't know his age, height, weight, blood type, favorite food.... Geekdom is real there. I pictured your gimmick, but those Japanese cosplayers take it one step further, and make a pair of special glasses your admiral would wear to read incoming encrypted messages... yes, glasses with red cellophane. BUT WAIT! There it is... the anime.... each faction's admiral has to run a different code to protect his messages from being intercepted by the enemy, so Hiramo Legate trasmits it's codes on the LaserCom Yellow frequency, and wears glasses with special yellow crystal lenses. The Free Jupiter Combine transmits on LaserCom Red (Jupiter being the red giant... "JUPITER!"...wait, it's just the giant red eye isn't it? Mars is the red planet.... I forget...anyway). Each faction runs it's own color, which I seem to remember some toys from the 80s using different colors for the stats or something on the backs of the packaging, and having a little decoded "screen" inside. And of course, starter card sets would have the little decoder, but the glasses gimmick could be an added bonus or something! Like, send in 20 UPCs from booster packs plus shipping and get a free pair of admiral decryption glasses just like Admiral Toonutty wears in the show!

Obviously this skips the entire point of brainstorming the game itself, like mechanics or making it work in the first place, but when I went over your posts, those glasses were the first thing that popped in my head, so I had to share.