Council of the Ring (Second Edition design team)

[Chrispy77]

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!

[MarcinS]

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.

[CoS]

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.

[Chrispy77]

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!

[Hobbiton Lad]

Obviously MarcinS has to be involved. I think we can all agree on that.

[Phallen Cassidy]

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.

[ket_the_jet]

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

[menace64]

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.

[ket_the_jet]

Rabbit stew.

-wtk

[Phallen Cassidy]

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.

[Hobbiton Lad]

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.

[Hobbiton Lad]

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. 

[menace64]

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.

[Hobbiton Lad]

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.

[menace64]

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.

[MarcinS]

For those interested in card design - here is a series of articles on how Magic the Gathering cards are designed:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/nuts-bolts-three-stages-design-2015-03-30

[Hobbiton Lad]

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.

Well, also I'd like to add that this is why we are having a testing phase. I fully expect the cards in this first set to change. I would be disappointed if they didn't. If it helps, just think of them as a starting point. I've done the up-front work of throwing this out there and now the collaborative design team gets to do the work of tweaking and balancing.

While I am very attached to the templates, I am in no way attached to the game text of these 311 cards. Do with them what you will, but I will say that I think the concepts in place are good ones. Will they need revision? Of course. But that's mostly in your guys hands now. All I ask is that we do the work of getting them coded as-is so they can actually be tested in a live environment. Then the team can look at the data and decide what changes need to be made.

Does that sound fair?

EDIT:

Sorry I missed your follow-up question. If we want to assign cultures and sub-cultures to specific people that's totally fine. I'm for whatever. At this point, I'd say that I'm actually more inclined to let the Council be the major force behind the gameplay design and I can just do the graphics, because I think that's what I enjoy the most. Creating beautiful looking cards to give the game a legitimate feel.

[Hobbiton Lad]

Since there's been a lot of talk about design, I want to share some of the concepts that were first discussed when these cards were designed for the first set--most of them some time ago. Feel free to change/expand on these as the Council sees fit.

Dwarves - Strong skirmishers with weapons and events. Stacking cards on conditions. Lore-wise, they are hearty so experimenting with higher vitality. Weak to conditions that play on companions, as well as conditions as a whole.

Elves - Archery and -X skirmish cards. Telepathy. Galadriel/Elrond healing allies or themselves. Condition removal. Arwen/Glorfindel strong against Nazgul.

Gandalf - Bonuses from having initiative. Strong fighter. Condition removal. Card draw. Burden removal. Limited healing. The single strongest FP character.

Gondor - Rangers. Site manipulation. Bonuses from being at sites from your adventure deck. Boromir as a strong fighter who gets stronger when injured/his opponents are injured. No condition removal. Limited archery.

Isengard - Ninja Saruman with threats/wounding. Beat-down Uruk-hai. Battleground mechanics.

Moria - Swarm. Reprints of 1E cards plus some other new mechanics. More stacking on conditions, a shadow counterpart of Dwarves in that respect.

Ringwraith - Black Breath/Blade Tip. Burdens/Resistance/Corruption mechanics. Forest Nazgul.

Sauron - Punish mono-culture decks (i.e. the Free Peoples have to band together). Trackers. Archery. Making the fellowship feel the weight of the quest (effects when moving, when assigned to skirmish).

Shire - Sneaky. Some stealth events. Skirmish cancelling. Pipes. Burden removal.

General considerations:

All skirmishes can be cancelled. Not allowing the Ring-bearer's skirmish to be cancelled was a band-aid fix for bad design in first edition. Skirmish cancelling is a fair mechanic, and it's up to the game designers to make sure that those kinds of effects can't be exploited at later sites. This is totally manageable.

Limited discard and choke to promote a more positive play experience. Players should be able to play their cards. This is a fundamental design philosophy that should be carried out throughout current and future sets.

Keep expansions small to promote a constantly evolving metagame and allow for faster releases of new cards.

[Chrispy77]

It does not appear that there has been much interest overall in the idea of a community driven project. If there are few who are willing to take the ring to mt doom, it must be those few.

Let's create a forum for a 2.0 project where cards are discussed/designed/rebalanced. HobbitLad would you like to get this thing going?

"I wish the Ring had never come to me- I wish none of this had happened."

"So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for you to decide. All that's left for you to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you."

[Hobbiton Lad]

Let's create a forum for a 2.0 project where cards are discussed/designed/rebalanced. HobbitLad would you like to get this thing going?

Are you talking about creating a sub-forum on TLHH or hosting a forum somewhere else?

[ket_the_jet]

On record, there is a board for the development of a players' committee on these forums already. If that doesn't work for you, I'm happy to make you a new sub-forum in the same section. But I think you should fall to the resources already available to you, particularly as this is a maximum of five people with real interest.
-wtk

[Hobbiton Lad]

On record, there is a board for the development of a players' committee on these forums already. If that doesn't work for you, I'm happy to make you a new sub-forum in the same section. But I think you should fall to the resources already available to you, particularly as this is a maximum of five people with real interest.
-wtk

Thanks! I agree we should use what we have. I'll set up a post there later today.

[leokula]

I just took a look at the "2E" cards in page 1.

What is the difference between LOTR TCG and "2E"? I mean, apart from the templates and cultures. It seems like just a virtual expansion of LOTR TCG.

Also what is the purpose of rarity in these? Will there be draft events, or something?

[Hobbiton Lad]

The main purpose was to open a new avenue for the game's development. It was easier to just "start over" rather than try to keep going where Decipher left off, plus there were some different design philosophies in 2E (static site path, for example) that we wanted to go back to.