Introduction
A spiritual successor to RPG's like Everquest, Might and Magic, Dungeons and Dragons, etc. This can also be thought as a hybrid or cross between card games like magic the gathering mtg and tabletop rpg's like dungeons and dragons dnd.
Play a full RPG (solo if desired) on a tabletop without a computer!
Differs from dungeons and dragons that it has a visual inventory and spell book using Card's and no DM needed.
Differs from Magic in that it is not a card game, it's an RPG that uses cards for items, spells, monsters, etc.
Scalable: 1 player all the way up to as many as you can fit around (or inside!) the map. Its a real MMO tabletop game!
Needs (may be more or less things):
Inventory Board per player
Spell/Skill Book (Board) per player
Zone Board(s)
Card sets, may be specific to the Zone or vendor or class (like spells/skills) or monster class, etc.
Dice
Timers
Music CD or cassette (and player)
pen and paper (for keeping track of rolls and things in battles if needed)
So this game will be quite a job to make and is a true and real solo RPG game you can play by yourself without a GM or DM (no game master or Dungeon Master). It can be played 1 player or any number of players desired but the great thing is it is a pre-made world so you don't need a GM. GM Free tabletop game.
So what is it? Basically it is quite complex and has things like printed gridded map(s), inventory board, Cards that can include items, food and drink, monsters, spells, skills, etc.
Inventory
So everything is in the form of cards. Your inventory board has card slots where each of your inventory slots are. It might look something like this:
This inventory board would be laminated or something so the slots with red handwriting are just written in with dry-erase or similar and updated as needed. Each rectangle represents a slot where a playing card would be placed, whether they are equipped or placed in a stack in the inventory slot.
Also there will not be armor, just resistances to 4 elements earth water wind and fire.
Zone Map(s) and Travel
The adventure map would look something like below (but likely with many more grid squares than this):
And you would have a little character model or something to represent your hero moving around on the map.
Every time you move a certain amount of grid spots you need to eat a food and drink a drink and discard the food/drink cards you used (number of grid spots you can move can depend on what type of food/drink you had last). When you run out of food and drink your stamina starts going down. When you have 0 stamina then you have to take a break from playing. Stamina regen's a certain amount per minute. Also your health and mana regen while you are taking a break as well. Certain races and/or classes could regen faster than others, as well as certain stats could improve regen speed as well. Also things like potions or bandages or skills like meditate or spells can regen faster as well. There could also be taverns which for a certain amount of gold+food+time
(say 1 minute) you can rest for a day and sleep for the night
recharging all your fluid stats (health, mana, stamina). 1 Day would be
added to the tally for every turn, and an extra day added for staying
at a tavern.
Timers and Turns
There would be timers that you set and use to let you know when you can play again and when you are fully regenerated.
Every time you are at the end of your turn (when you use up the spots you can move from the meal you had last) you roll to see if you have to fight a monster (the type of enemy you face and/or the odds of facing an enemy might depend on where your character is located on the map). If you are on land and you are not facing a monster you can choose to dig for a chance to get a random item.
Monster Encounters
You might be able to run from the monster if you use up stamina/food or bargain with the monster depending on charisma and gold you have. Also there may be permanent camps of monsters where if you tread near that area you will always get attacked.
If you fight a monster on the monster card it will say that monsters stats and you would roll for the monsters hits/attacks/spells. If you beat the monster you would roll for an item in the class of items that that monster can drop. These item classes will have stacks of cards to draw from. Mixed in these item classes (or preferably in separate piles, which pile you pick from could be decided by a dice roll) could be common, uncommon, or rare (or more types) items. The items could be food, equippable items, crafting supplies, consumable items, vendor-able items, etc. Of course monster encounters would be similar to turn based RPG games like Dragon Warrior or JRPG's. Can have monster figurines and have a neat looking battle.
Monsters can spawn normal or bosses of a certain level.
Normal mobs should be solo-able by a good player of the same level,
bosses might take more players or lots of luck and skill to defeat.
Vendors and Chests
There also could be places on the map with vendors. These will have a certain item class and will cost the amount written on the card (perhaps more or less depending on your charisma or whatnot). You could buy food from the vendors or other items to use.
Chests might also exist and could be refreshed with loot after a certain number of turns and/or players can place item cards into them from their inventory when they visit the chest.
Death Penalty
If you die you have to remove everything from your inventory and put the stack of cards on the table and knock your character down on the board on the spot you died. You then assume a ghost character and start at the entrance of the zone and have to make your way back to your corpse, if you encounter monsters you have to fight them. If you can't make it back to your corpse, you can wait 1 hr or something and have your character resurrected at the zone entrance. Dying makes you loose the experience of the last 3 monsters you killed. Spells and skills need to be rememorized after death.
Leveling and Experience
Leveling up can give you things like new skill points to spend on either str, int, wis, or cha (or other stats if required). There would be an experience curve where every level takes more experience to level up than the last level. Once your experience reaches the cutff to level up, your experience is made zero and your level is increased by 1. I anticipate 20 levels but any number can be allowed.
Your levels improve your stats but not necessarily your regen rates, so you may have more downtime to regen things like health/mana/stamina as you level up and get higher point caps. Armor, Strength, Wisdom, Intelligence, and charisma (and/or any others) will effect your rolls for certain things from chance to hit or damage of skills or spells to chance of doing all sorts of things. The amount of weight and/or items in your inventory could effect your stamina and/or how many steps you get from a meal.
Classes
A typical starting set of classes that would mesh with the stats could be wizard (intelligence), Cleric (wisdom), Warrior (strength), and Bard (charisma).
Spells and Skills
Spells and skills can be gained (purchased from special "guild" vendor) but only a certain amount (say 7 or whatever) can be memorized at once. Spells/skills take a certain amount of downtime to memorize, say 10 seconds each and not during combat.
Music
Of COURSE we cannot forget the music! Music cd/cassette/record/file would be included with each zone pack.
Conclusion
Anyway that is pretty much it for now. Should feel very similar to games like Dragon Warrior, Everquest, and Might and Magic but single player or multiplayer and no electricity or internet required! My intention is that the player can get all the cards they need and nothing is behind a paywall like opening dozens of packs to get the cards you want. This is not intended to be a a "Trading" Card Game, but it could if desired. One interesting idea is every deck contains the same cards, but you could rarely get one of the rare cards as a foil or other type including alternate artwork. This would make opening a deck exciting but at the same time you always have every card and don't have to struggle to build a deck. It is intended to where all the cards are given with the set and the only luck required is in drawing good ones while you are playing.
Future Development
The game or record keeping can be automated in any way desired including having digital displays of things like stats including health, mana, stamina and anything else. There could be buttons that you hit to make things go up and down. Also the dice could be digital where rolls automatically effect your stats from things like monster hits or whatnot.
