[RULES] Battle Boards V1.218 - Neo Dynasty - Battle Gaiden

So, how do the one type/color (arbiter of the ideal, enchanted evening) achievements work with the likes of monomania vanguard/scheme/planes/etc? Can I spend points on a type and color just to get achievements? I'm not going to as that feels cheap to me, but I wanted to know if I was just missing something.

EDIT: Also, how does getting Cartouche of Zeal work? Does getting to make a drastically new subtype not cost any points for a perk? Do I need to buy it as a new mechanic/keyword? Does it fall under Herald of a New Archetype?

So, I have read the piece that mentions how color mastery cares about color identity, and how something like Extort would be excluded as reminder text. I wasn't trying to get around it or anything, but I have designed a keyword I dub Dawn that gives the Bringer of the _ Dawn/Fist of Suns/Jodah ability, which would make WUBRG reminder text. Would I need multicolor 4 still? Would this been seen as trying to make a loophole?

(He's going to have it by the end for the achievement, I'm just trying to figure out how many points he needs to function from the start.)

You would not need Multicolor 4. I generally try to have interactions in this game at least roughly map to Magic rules and interactions, i.e if Extort doesn't care about color identity the same goes for any color symbol reminder text.

Can you give me an example scenario of this? I'm trying to decide whether this is close enough to "making two cards" that it would ultimately require Tactical Imperator or not.



This on the other hand feels like it'd just fall under requiring you to buy the perk. You could use the Guest system or Call for Aid but their respective restrictions (lack of Valor gain and actual Magic cads only) would apply.

I thought about house ruling this in a variety of ways (such as filing it under the acceptable list of exceptions for multiple cards without Tactical Imperator) but that didn't feel like a very clean solution because it's a weird limbo case of making two cards even if the 'final encounter' is only one card. I think for simplicity's sake I would just require you to either A) buy Tactical Imperator during character creation and use it accordingly or B) design your attacks in a way that they work with the 'free pairings' allowed under "Combat: Let's Battle" (so for example, you technically can exploit the free Equipment + Creature pairing to create an Equipment with a token and a separate Creature).

That said, while I was pondering this, I thought of a potentially more concise and interesting take on the idea: How about folding the choices into an actual Magic mechanic? Specifically, DFCs. You could make an DFC going like:

Guardian of the Pit
Creature - Demon
As you cast ~, your opponent may choose to jump into the pit. If they do, ~ enters the battlefield transformed.
3/3
As you venture into Planeswalker-by-Parasign's Dungeon, the Guardian lets out a loud roar!
//////


I think spoilering the back face of the DFC for free is fair in this context - essentially, it's a DFC with a 'transform mechanic' based on how forums work. You'd still need to buy Twin-Souled during character creation, but this folds the concept of what you're doing into the cards themselves and makes it a bit more clear-cut than "Am I making two cards? Am I battling with one card?" (etc....)

Likewise since the concept of the opponent choosing is generally a drawback you would get to play with a more powerful range of effects on both sides of the card even at a low CMC.

Any suggestions on how to better improve the explanations?

Designs like Hama Pashar, Ruin Seeker are a weird narrow case because usually people buy the mechanic first then make support for it in my experience. I think for something like that you would need to buy the mechanic.

I would consider all of the phase actions a package deal with the Phasing keyword. In the event phases in/phases out becomes evergreen that would change (but to the player's benefit anyway since it means phases in/phases out is now free.)

Had a response typed up and then lost it, sorry. I'll have to stick to a recall of what I was planning to say:

Any question I didn't specifically address: It's funny to me that a lot of what you bring up was actually explained in full on older rules versions (for example, I had a full mock profile in the ruleset for a very long time) as I envisioned the ruleset to look like an "old dungeon master's manual". Much of it was taken out around the time people requested a large number of changes to how Battle Boards worked and one of those changes was that there was too much fat to cut through reading-wise to start playing the game. I think adding some of those explanations back in a more streamlined form would be of help to future players.

Mana Pool and Call for Aid - Unfortunately I think this is just a matter of having to set aside a section to explain how they work but also having to account for them as a stat. I'll consider moving the spoiler under the relevant Basic Perks options but it might look a little ugly (assuming it doesn't break Proboard's BBcode lists - at some point I'll have to axe those just like I did with Challenge Slots so that I'm not constantly fixing issues generated from edited posts.)*

Valor and Score - Re perks like Flusterstorm: I feel this is more an unfortunate coincidence of perks having to be comprehensive before the game's mechanics are fully explained. That said I'm not sure what's so vague about Valor and Score, the instructions are very literal here; you gain Valor in combat, you spend it for Skill points, and Score only accumulates to be checked for Reincarnation. If there was a way to spend Score, a rule would've said so.*

(*In fact, now that I think about it, I did try having these sections before their relevant perks appeared previously - a good chunk of them were Advanced Perks in their heyday and Advanced Perks weren't allowed to be purchased on creation to give people a chance to learn the basics. From what I remember, people didn't like it because it hindered readability and reincarnation starts and it's part of why we have all the perks listed next to each other now and no more Advanced Perk limit-handholding. Flusterstorm in particular started off its lifespan as an Advanced Perk until complaints that it was underpowered pushed it down to Basic Perk.)

---

Combat: I gave this a read over to be sure and here's my thoughts on the matter summed up:

- Combat - Sorry, I really don't see what's confusing here. You attack with posting card ideas on other player's boards, you can attack as many times as you want as long as your last attack isn't waiting on a response, and you coordinate via attacking with your cards together at the risk of all getting blown out by a single card.

- Gifts - Has suffered a bit of patch wear and tear but otherwise the details are likewise all there as well. They're a form of 'attack', they're a card (no idea where you got the perk part from), and responding to them has their own unique sorts of combat-esque restrictions. I can see this being rephrased but I don't think it's lacking on details.

- Allied Defense - I agree that the critical detail of posting in the middle of someone else's combat was lost via patch wear and tear. I'll likely add that back in.

- Judging - This has always been vague because as a forum game Battle Boards judging was generally meant to imitate forum game judging. With rating-based forum games being less popular these days I can understand the suggestion for a more explicit clause though.

---

Tokens: This is is essentially a clause that made an unwritten rule written (made in v1.123) due to the increased presence of 'evergreen' tokens like Gold spawning questions about how Battle Boards would be adapting to their presence. Your interpretation is pretty much correct. More 'softly', said unwritten rule also applies to anything that doesn't fold under an explicit keyword or mechanic covered by MtG or Battle Boards rules (like say, making unkeyworded versions of a mechanic on purpose for cards.)



That said this is pretty much meant to be a polite way of saying don't be rude and spam people's Boards with imbalanced cards that make 90 Treasures, Blue cards that repeatedly bolt people for 5, and so on. Part of the reason soft loopholes like these are allowed is so that players can try to have some flexibility to do something clever even in the scenario where they buy very few or no perks at all (I believe some of our current achievements originated from people wanting to try these challenge runs, no less.), or to surprise opponents with the occasional high profile bend or break like Mana Tithe that gets people's attention. Respect your fellow designers even if your character is dedicated to breaking rules, color pie norms, and the expected design conventions of Magic, basically.

Unfortunately I don't have time to make an update right this moment but these changes will likely become v1.14 once I find the time.

First off: Pretty much everything you've observed in your last post is correct. Part of what I'd like to understand is why you'd feel those observations were potentially wrong and are feeling some amount of frustration over it, so that I can perhaps take what I remember of the old over-explained Battle Boards, and rework this potentially too-slimmed-down set of rules a bit so that it helps encourage more new players of different kinds who discover it whenever they wander across this forum. A lot of is due in part to wording issues from the aforementioned "patch wear and tear" that I can certainly fix, but I'd also like to discuss some other things you brought up (assuming I understood them correctly).



I think it's an appropriate consideration as the experienced players do tend to be Battle Boards' main playerbase and new players generally seemed to pick things up by reading someone else's board, planning out a specific concept, and just rolling with it as mentioned above. I appreciate that you're trying to give me perspective of someone who's looking at the rules with less context and why it's something that might justify a rules rework.



However, I admit this is something I'd really like to understand - you seem to be seeking some sort of concrete 'set in stone' motivation for players to card design, roleplay, or perform the actions they do, when the game's general draw has often been about making those goals and reasons yourself. It interests me because it seems like the one constant I have across the 6-7 years of Battle Boards' existence is that when new players usually ask for help it's usually still related to some sort of character-specific plan (flavorful or mechanical) they intended to demonstrate with their character that seems to sort of streamline the process of taking the rules in and and just diving in to play a bit in the continuing roleplay-design-sandbox or sorts. Things like alliance systems, raid storylines, various one-off story-mechanic-blended gimmicks by players, and the like have (metaphorically) risen and fallen over the Boards' lifespan in various efforts to make this experience be deeper or have some curveballs, but the Boards themselves continue to be the same base sandbox game system that could chug along even if only two people are playing.

Your concerns on the other hand come off to me as someone more interested in the game system itself and their general lack of holding up in terms of explanation if they're read strictly as game rules. Like I was saying before it reminds me of the mindset I originally had when designing the rules, where I tried to make an effort to explain things as much as possible and ensure that everything was learned in its own time and pace, and with some hindsight the game has clearly dropped some of those restrictions in favor of being a more open-ended experience where players usually dive in with some kind of idea ready. I am interested in trying to better streamline and clarify those rules if it helps the new player experience, but at the same time I want to be certain of how much I should actually rework and how much of this is the game's intended design coming off as unintuitive.

As for Score being a marker for Reincarnation, well, yes, that's exactly what it's meant to be and always has been. While I had been curious many years ago if it'd mutate into something else at one point, it's ultimately just there to remind people to bookkeep.

---

I want to answer this point specifically because I feel like I can least partially see where the skepticism of what seems to be arbitrary judging comes from; there's no challenge prompt, competing players, or overarching guidelines to root said judging in, and on paper, that probably makes Battle Boards seem like a free for all in terms of judging standards. You seem to be frustrated that there aren't more explicit/stricter judging standards that all players would have to abide by and follow, and in a different forum game, I would certainly agree.

What I'd like to suggest is to perhaps consider what a card design game typically has - there's a prompt, there's a judge with bias, and that judge generally tries to make a judgement based on some mix of personal bias and logic relative to the prompt they gave. Judging is not always perfect, but on average people will try to do their best and give some kind of meaningful response because trashing everyone's cards out of spite just wastes time and air.

In Battle Boards, the prompts are just card-attacks instead and the number of participants to be judged is just 1 instead of 1-<number of people entering in a few weeks/months>. Likewise, one of the core unwritten rules of this game really has been to just not be a jerk to other people. Everyone's here to try out some kind of character or idea or mechanic they've had in their heads usually; there's no real benefit to going around ruining someone else's experience with zero-effort cards or mean-spirited judging. If someone is trying to roleplay/design something with you it usually benefits you to work with what they've got and vice versa.

To phrase it another way: Every attack can be thought of as its own individual round of a 'forum game', where the game's overarching rules are stipulated by the character profile and whatever functional/roleplay restrictions they've imposed on themselves. Battle Boards is more like the base system that allows these many individual instances of character-profiles/forum games to happen whenever the player of that character wants them to.

---

To make a long story short, Jester roughly originates from an era where the only silver border things Unglued and Unhinged, potentially with Unstable freshly announced and on the way. (If crossover silver border cards had come out yet, they weren't really on anyone's radar here.) So "obvious joke cards and weirdo mechanics like involving people outside the game, and caring about non-mechanical aspects of the card" is probably the most faithful interpretation of the perk, but like many "spirit of the rule" interpretations here that could easily extend to Playtest Cards or even said crossover cards now if the designer using them provided a solid reason for doing so. (Keeping in mind that making your cards fit your character restrictions and flavor is often part of the ongoing 'challenge' of the boards). I think that while the letter of the law is important to some degree in this game, there is a general emphasis on the spirit of the law as well that allows it to be the aforementioned ongoing open-ended roleplay/design sandbox people have used it as. (Otherwise, I'd probably have to edit Jester to include a considerably longer explanation to describe WoTC's various levels of 'non-canon' Magic content that would probably still not cover everything and get holes poked it in anyway - for example, where do digital exclusive cards fall? They range from obscure video game cards to clearly canon depictions of Planeswalkers in Arena now, and that's just a fairly obvious example of something that would end up in a long-winded explanation if I have zero faith in a player's ability to handle a 'spirit of the law' situation.)

(That said, I will consider updating Jester to say silver border and 'non-canon'-style cards like Playtest Cards, with the hope that covers WoTC's newest various releases of bizarre cards well enough.)

(correct me if I'm wrong on any of this)

Is there an established setting? Kinda. I think really the only information set in stone is that the plane we're on is called "The Arena" because planeswalkers would come fight here so as to not hurt bystanders, and that the plane is currently sparsely populated with a few villages (I think all the "NPCs" are human), and that it's currently early winter (and parts of the Arena are cold enough to get snow) There's no map, and the only specific locations are ones that players have come up with. It's been described as "there is what you need there to be." i.e. no one really knew or cared whether there were oceans on the Arena until someone started playing as a pirate, and decided there were seas worth sailing in. I'm definitely not the expert about the "Battle Boards Lore" tho, so feel free to ask questions in the battle boards channel of the MSE Discord

Any restrictions or requirements? Not really. We've had robots, cats, humans, at least one angel etc. You would technically need a way to get to the plane, so if you're not playing a planeswalker it might need a bit of creativity to explain how you got here, though we have had non-planeswalkers who used portals akin to the Planar Bridge from Kaladesh.

What's motivating characters? So that is the one "requirement." We're all being motivated by our own characters motivation. For example, my character's here because she knows there are planeswalkers here and wants to fight them to get stronger. Other characters are here for economic, diplomatic, and exploratory reasons. No external force of the game is motivating characters. Sometimes people will have more than one "character" using the same "stat block", because they'll be playing as both a character and an "antagonist" for that character, which makes it easier to start conflict, though there's enough stuff going on that it's easy enough to end up involved in an interesting conflict. 

Is there a standard template for characters? Not officially, but general information is name, picture, what color you're using for their voice (character dialogue is usually in a corresponding color. People playing more than one character will have one color for each character), Valor/Score, and then whatever you spent skill points on (what colors can you use, etc). Personally I think Popcornia/Kadri's is a good example, though of course I will also recommend mine, since both having little "who is this character" bits.

How should you make/judge cards? If you're attacking, then make whatever card you want. It's usually easier if the card you make has something to do with the roleplay of the attack (I teleported away, so the card I make returns a creature to my hand), but that's a suggestion more than a rule. If you're defending, then make whatever card you want, but it should interact with the card you're being attacked by. (I'm being attacked by a creature so I'm defending with a kill spell). My personal rules for judging cards is that a well balanced but boring card like Grizzly Bears would get an 8, and then I'd give more points for being interesting and take points away for being poorly made. I think of it like grading in school.

How to make sure your character fits in? This is kinda more writing than gameplay, but so long as your character isn't purely a joke then its fine. We have had talking cats, but they took themselves seriously and it worked, we currently have Anne, who is an ant, but that seems to be working too. 

I'd be extremely flattered if you did. I'll echo cajun, too: If you want my help with anything, let me know.

Sure thing and thanks. I'll probably open up a Google Doc or something like it eventually for ease of getting everyone editing the same rough ruleset - expect that later this week

At this point I'm comfortable enough with the ongoing state of the rework to talk a bit about how things are going:

1) So while there will still be a "Joining" section I find the currently-WIP Getting Started thread is covering a lot well enough on its own that I feel it will mostly involve linking to this thread and providing a few small extra details (mostly the ones already listed plus a few tidibits there.)

2) Skill Point Spending will remain as a repository of all the possible things you can buy. The actual 'practical' details of earning Valor and spending it will be covered in Getting Started.

3) The Combat Section should be the meat of the rework here, basically being reworked to match how Battle Boards works as of today as opposed to Battle Boards on its conception a whole forum and over half a decade ago. I would advise against spending any Valor on Call for Aid or Mana Pool in the near future, as Mana Pool will likely be eliminated as a resource (with refunds) due to the current pace of Battle Boards.

4) Earning Skill Points and Refunding Skills/Second Character/Achievements will likely stay the same due to being simpler sections.

5) This rework doesn't really focus on the Tavern or any larger group features due to them not really being the current game's high priority, but I will streamline them in a future update if demand is sufficiently high. For now I've lowered the recommended number of players for Tavern events to fire to 3-4 (host included).

6) Patch Notes are getting their own section from here on out because if there's anything I need less of for efficiently updating this game, it's things clogging up the main post and increasing the chance of massive formatting errors.

My current ETA for 1.2 (I consider reworks big enough to nudge up the needle that far) is end of October/early November.