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Author Topic: Council of the Ring (Second Edition design team)  (Read 6543 times)

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July 10, 2019, 10:21:30 AM
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Chrispy77

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Council of the Ring (Second Edition design team)
« on: July 10, 2019, 10:21:30 AM »
Good day to all of you.

There has been talk of an effort to push an online second edition of this card game. Prior efforts have had small levels of success, but I believe we should intend to learn from past mistakes, as well as look at other "dead games" have successfully continued to put out new widely used product.

Because of this, I intend to unite the community in an agreed-upon counsel responsible for card design and balance. With a community, we will avoid the risk of a project halting when a creator loses interest, or from feeling like one individual determines the fate of Middle Earth.

I would like this thread to be used for nomination purposes. The rules are as follows:

1. You must nominate a member of the community other than yourself.
2. This member of the community must still be somewhat active.
3. Nominations should be of individuals you believe to have a grasp of what makes this game enjoyable, a grasp of what makes a card competitive, and a grasp of what contributed to negative play experience.

As for me, "LlamaHero" (an account that scarcely plays any longer), please do not nominate me. (No Llama for President ((old joke))). I intend to gather two other individuals to determine members of the committee based upon volume of nominations, reasons for those nominations, and overall community status. I truly do not want to lead, I only want to provide the framework for a community that leads.

Let the nominations begin!

July 10, 2019, 10:29:01 AM
Reply #1

MarcinS

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Re: Council of the Ring (Second Edition design team)
« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2019, 10:29:01 AM »
I know we were not supposed to, but I'd like to nominate myself, but only in a very limited capabilities - just an oversight in what would be too complicated to implement on gemp-lotr, or any other technical issues around cards/mechanics.
New/old way to play Lord of the Rings online.
Give Gemp-LotR a try.
All sets are finished

July 10, 2019, 11:25:02 AM
Reply #2

CoS

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Re: Council of the Ring (Second Edition design team)
« Reply #2 on: July 10, 2019, 11:25:02 AM »
I'm happy to nominate MarcinS. I really don't plan on playing as much as I did early in the GEMP project so please do not nominate me. I still will provide moderation services to the GEMP server when I do log on. Good luck folks. I do hope HobbottinLad is nominated as I met Joe at Conventions back when LOTR was still supported by Decipher and he is committed to the game and the player community.

July 10, 2019, 11:59:51 AM
Reply #3

Chrispy77

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Re: Council of the Ring (Second Edition design team)
« Reply #3 on: July 10, 2019, 11:59:51 AM »
MarcinS! I would absolutely love your involvement! You DO own the site, and as creator of the site it wouldn't be right to exclude you from the design/card update process!

July 10, 2019, 01:37:22 PM
Reply #4

Hobbiton Lad

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Re: Council of the Ring (Second Edition design team)
« Reply #4 on: July 10, 2019, 01:37:22 PM »
Obviously MarcinS has to be involved. I think we can all agree on that. :)

July 10, 2019, 07:30:07 PM
Reply #5

Phallen Cassidy

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Re: Council of the Ring (Second Edition design team)
« Reply #5 on: July 10, 2019, 07:30:07 PM »
I'll nominate menace64 and Hobbiton Lad. And Chet, though I doubt he'll accept. This is just for leadership positions? I've said it each time these initiatives pop up and I'll say it again: if you don't intend to lead this thing you're starting, alone if need be, it will die. But hey, I haven't been around as long as most of you folks, I don't know.
« Last Edit: July 10, 2019, 07:33:14 PM by Phallen Cassidy »

July 11, 2019, 08:02:56 AM
Reply #6

ket_the_jet

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Re: Council of the Ring (Second Edition design team)
« Reply #6 on: July 11, 2019, 08:02:56 AM »
And Chet, though I doubt he'll accept.
I love this game and its community, and have even enjoyed the short-lived Second Edition format hosted on Gemp.

But Phallen is right; I am happy to help play test as time permits...but I honestly doubt this takes wings, like the several other previous attempts.

But hey, prove me wrong. Bring in a whole new group of members to this site. Revive activity. Post on the deck builder. Keep the dream cards alive. Even post a trade list or two if you want. Unless there is regular activity on these boards, this is going to be an exercise in futility.

That said, if Phallen wants to participate in a leadership role, he has my nomination.
-wtk

July 11, 2019, 03:44:19 PM
Reply #7

menace64

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Re: Council of the Ring (Second Edition design team)
« Reply #7 on: July 11, 2019, 03:44:19 PM »
I'll nominate menace64 and Hobbiton Lad. And Chet, though I doubt he'll accept. This is just for leadership positions? I've said it each time these initiatives pop up and I'll say it again: if you don't intend to lead this thing you're starting, alone if need be, it will die. But hey, I haven't been around as long as most of you folks, I don't know.


Everyone knows that nothing would excite me more than to be part of a true-blue LotR2E, and if pressed I would accept some form of leadership position as a path appointed. I've kept safe dozens of documents, notes, and design outlines for such an enterprise. I also contacted our dear friends of the Star Trek Continuing Committee last fall with the hopes of securing their stalwart support. They seemed open to the idea of some form of help in doubt and need.

That being said, I don't want to draw too much attention to my slag mounds of ideas this early into whatever comes of our perilous ventures. I've spent years deep in thought concerning what a "Second Age" of the game might look like, but for now I think it'd be better to let everybody else provide unhindered input.

Although they've both been called away, I nominate Dain Ironfoot and Thranduil, if either of them can be contacted.

Rabbit stew.

July 11, 2019, 03:51:23 PM
Reply #8

ket_the_jet

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July 11, 2019, 06:16:22 PM
Reply #9

Phallen Cassidy

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Re: Council of the Ring (Second Edition design team)
« Reply #9 on: July 11, 2019, 06:16:22 PM »
At the moment, I don't believe I'll be able to take any sort of core position on this. I completely agree that an essential first step towards any remake/revival is building a community: activity on these boards and a long list of names in Gemp's chat.

As I think about the things I'd have to get done first, I'm reminded that Durin's Heir and Enola need something to keep themselves busy ;) They've proven an ability to create and balance cards. I nominate them too, if I haven't run out of votes yet.

July 11, 2019, 07:38:02 PM
Reply #10

Hobbiton Lad

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Re: Council of the Ring (Second Edition design team)
« Reply #10 on: July 11, 2019, 07:38:02 PM »
Just an update. I'm working with MarcinS to get 311 cards of the proposed Core Set into GEMP. All of the images are already hosted on the Wiki--something Kralik and I took care of last year in the hopes I might eventually be able to get this off the ground. I've provided MarcinS with links to all of the images and I'm providing him with raw text of all the cards. Once I've done that, he will start coding a few at a time and (hopefully) we can begin some early-phase alpha testing.

July 12, 2019, 08:04:25 AM
Reply #11

Hobbiton Lad

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Re: Council of the Ring (Second Edition design team)
« Reply #11 on: July 12, 2019, 08:04:25 AM »
Also, if you guys want to see the cards that are being coded for the Premiere set, here's a gallery:

https://postimg.cc/gallery/1m2dwqkr4/

These are all hosted on the Wiki as well. So we don't have to worry about losing the images.

You'll notice that many of these cards are...strong. That's by design. I'm well aware that there will definitely need to be nerfs to some of these. But the best design philosophy I've found with games is to start out with things being to strong and tune them downward, rather than vice-versa. It's often much easier to see how to scale something down rather than trying to figure out how to beef it up.

That's where the Council will come in. I feel like I'm relatively creative but I'm also an echo chamber and we need more people involved in the card creation/tuning process. 

July 12, 2019, 10:05:17 AM
Reply #12

menace64

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Re: Council of the Ring (Second Edition design team)
« Reply #12 on: July 12, 2019, 10:05:17 AM »
Could we make these new templates open-source? It's awesome that you've written so many cards already but that does put a heavy damper on the rest of us providing equal input. Additionally, I think it'd be healthier for us to start by discussing the basics of design rather than jumping straight-away into playtesting for balance.

For instance, do we want to introduce anything genuinely new beyond fresh templates? New card types? New mechanics? How far do we want to push this reset button? I'm not sure any of these questions have been adequately addressed "in council" and without having done that much, everything else seems indulgent, more akin to solo DC set design than something truly unified. Not to take anything at all away from the joy of card-writing though; and I'll admit that more than half of my desire for open-sourcing the templates is to write a few DC-ish cards of my own.  :hey:

Tertiary thought: Would we like to "assign" various cultures/sub-cultures to 1-X person teams of designers? That might be an interesting way of rapidly injecting fresh ideas into this forthcoming environment.

July 12, 2019, 10:26:45 AM
Reply #13

Hobbiton Lad

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Re: Council of the Ring (Second Edition design team)
« Reply #13 on: July 12, 2019, 10:26:45 AM »
Could we make these new templates open-source? It's awesome that you've written so many cards already but that does put a heavy damper on the rest of us providing equal input.

...Not to take anything at all away from the joy of card-writing though; and I'll admit that more than half of my desire for open-sourcing the templates is to write a few DC-ish cards of my own.  :hey:

I'm all for making the design process open-source. That's exactly how it should be. There just had to be someone to do a lot of the heavy lifting up front. And it wasn't done in a vacuum. There was a collaborative process with some people who have moved on to other things.

But the thing you touch on is the entire point of not making the templates open source. There can't be all these dream cards out there running in the wild, because with a community-driven project it would create confusion as to what is "official" and what isn't. Also, I worked really damned hard on these templates, so I'm really not inclined to just throw them out there willy-nilly, either. I know that probably sounds harsh, but I think it's an important line to keep.

July 12, 2019, 10:57:36 AM
Reply #14

menace64

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Re: Council of the Ring (Second Edition design team)
« Reply #14 on: July 12, 2019, 10:57:36 AM »
I 100% understand, and I fully respect your decision to withhold the templates. That's fine! We can always circle back around to graphic mock-ups later on; and if you're cool with being the sole graphic artist in this project that'd be your right, I suppose. But, again, I'd like to reiterate that focusing on putting graphical cards into playtesting without a detailed design process is coming at this project backwards. I believe you when you say your cards were written in collaboration, but if those other parties aren't here and aren't prepared to share a design space, then everything should stay open to continuing innovation.

I'd still appreciate an answer to my tertiary question regarding the assignment of specific cultures/sub-cultures to individuals or groups of designers, with the expectation that after a certain period of time we'd all reconvene to share/critique/playtest what's been produced. That'd give everybody a horse in this race, but I'll refrain from further opining until others have a chance to swing by.