"Earth" is a massive revisioning of the Magic CCG.
Covers all time periods of Earth from pre-human history, to modern human civilization, to hypothetical future. Each time period may be played alone or mashed together.
Paragons are time-travelers. The combat involves beings (creatures) from different time periods. Paragons can bring extinct dinosaurs from the past and supermachines from the future and even fantastical, mythical monsters. In addition to power and toughness, there will be a third attribute for skill.
"Color pie", or how mechanics and flavor are distributed among the alignments are very different than Magic.
Color - Trait - Land
Gold - Community - Plains
Blue - Knowledge - Coast
Sand - Creativity - Desert
Silver - Dominance - Hill
Green - Production - Forest
Ivory - Neutral -
Gradient - Multi -
The revised card types and terms are as follows:
On Earth - In Magic
Land - Land
Being - Creature
Paragon - Planeswalker
Mod - Attachments (i.e. Equipment / Aura / Fortification)
Creations have 2 subtypes: Agenda, Invention.
Mods have 3 subtypes: Equipment, Transformation, Building.
Abilities have to be all rethought to match Earth flavor. For example, flying/flight will probably play a lesser role in low-tech eras. Some abilities and effects will be determined by a creature's skill value.
This is the preliminary outline of Earth: Through the Millennia. Any comments welcome.
Skill is a value to determine the results of some abilities and effects. But first let me show you some more changes to stats offense/defense/skill (ala power/toughness/skill).
O/D/S have corresponding icons that are used in rules text. Here I'll use these forums' smilies.
Let's use an ability that takes a variable. Like Frenzy. Then a creature with "Frenzy " means "Whenever this creature attacks and isn’t blocked, it gets +X/+0 until end of turn, where X is its skill." Like power/toughness, skill can be raised and lowered.
These 3 stats can be individually mentioned using their icons. ex.
Magic's color pie focuses more on antagonism and duality. That makes for great flavor and conflict. However, that doesn't fit Earth's flavor and design goal. Abstract ideas like good vs evil, fire vs ice, nature vs artifice, smart vs dumb, give wrong ideas about earthly beings. Instead, Earth will emphasize the specialities of each alignment and the unions of those alignments. That is, Magic has colors and conflict, whereas Earth has alignments and unions. That said, color and alignment will sometimes be used interchangeably for this project. Moreover, while Earth doesn't play into the allied vs enemy colors, we will still organize them in such a way to allow cycles and half cycles.
Aspire to victory
How to divide the alignments? One influence are civilization simulation games. Civ games basically allow five different paths to victory: domination, technological, cultural, diplomatic, and economic. We translate these to five major traits: dominance, knowledge, creativity, community, and production. This not only fits perfectly for human civilizations, but also for other biological ecosystems. For instance, rats and cockroaches aren't selfish and evil (hence black). They just excel at adapting to their environments (creativity). Magic's red creatures fight because they're dumb and rash. Earth's beings fight because they crave conquest, are territorial in nature, and want to display their superiority (dominance).
This method of division grants depth to each alignment and each alignment is well-defined. Also importantly there is no meta-color. For instance, in Magic, many new unexplored mechanics and abilities are dumped into blue's pie because it is the meta-color. Without such a meta-color, we can avoid situations where one alignment hoards too many abilities while other alignments become too shallow.
Pie chart
The following chart shows the five alignments' central characteristic, as well as their main victory goal and relationships with other alignments.
Knowledge (B)
Potential knowledge
Research (S)
Education (O)
Applied knowledge
Skill (V)
Technology (G)
Production (G)
Physical work
Mechanics (B)
Craftsmanship (S)
Net work
Synergy (O)
Economy (V)
Dominance (V)
Influential prowess
Affluence (G)
Expertise (B)
Competitive prowess
Strategy (S)
Conquest (O)
Community (O)
Integrated group
Uniformity (V)
Teamwork (G)
Extended group
Government (B)
Diplomacy (S)
Creativity (S)
Creative traits
Charisma (O)
Adaptability (V)
Creative process
Invention (G)
Culture (B)
Reading the chart
The 1st layer are the central trait of the alignments and the color shorthand in parentheses. The 2nd layer further divides the traits. The 3rd layer shows the relationships and unions with each of the four other alignments. One of those unions also signify the alignment's victory type. For instance, Knowledge's aspires for a technological victory, which is somewhat influenced by the Production alignment.
There no hard-wired allied or opposing alignments. However, for the sake of visual aid, organization, and cycle design, the order here put the alignments closest to their own ideals. For instance, Creativity are closest to Knowledge and Community, since Creativity's main goal is cultural victory, and that most closely aligns with technological and diplomatic ideals.
"Earth" is a massive revisioning of the Magic CCG.
Covers all time periods of Earth from pre-human history, to modern human civilization, to hypothetical future. Each time period may be played alone or mashed together.
Paragons are time-travelers. The combat involves beings (creatures) from different time periods. Paragons can bring extinct dinosaurs from the past and supermachines from the future and even fantastical, mythical monsters. In addition to power and toughness, there will be a third attribute for skill.
"Color pie", or how mechanics and flavor are distributed among the alignments are very different than Magic.
The revised card types and terms are as follows:
Creations have 2 subtypes: Agenda, Invention.
Mods have 3 subtypes: Equipment, Transformation, Building.
Abilities have to be all rethought to match Earth flavor. For example, flying/flight will probably play a lesser role in low-tech eras. Some abilities and effects will be determined by a creature's skill value.
This is the preliminary outline of Earth: Through the Millennia. Any comments welcome.
........................
O/D/S have corresponding icons that are used in rules text. Here I'll use these forums' smilies.
Offense ( : tommy : )
Defense ( : heart : )
Skill ( : teach : )
Let's use an ability that takes a variable. Like Frenzy. Then a creature with "Frenzy " means "Whenever this creature attacks and isn’t blocked, it gets +X/+0 until end of turn, where X is its skill." Like power/toughness, skill can be raised and lowered.
These 3 stats can be individually mentioned using their icons. ex.
Target creature gets +3/+0. => Target creature gets +3
Target creature gets +3/+1. => Target creature gets +3 +1
Target creature gets +3/+3. => Target creature gets +3
Target creature gets +3 skill. => Target creature gets +3
Then instead of +1/+1 counters or -1/-1, we use +1 stat counters or -1 stat counters. These counters affects all three stats.
........................
Magic vs Earth
Magic's color pie focuses more on antagonism and duality. That makes for great flavor and conflict. However, that doesn't fit Earth's flavor and design goal. Abstract ideas like good vs evil, fire vs ice, nature vs artifice, smart vs dumb, give wrong ideas about earthly beings. Instead, Earth will emphasize the specialities of each alignment and the unions of those alignments. That is, Magic has colors and conflict, whereas Earth has alignments and unions. That said, color and alignment will sometimes be used interchangeably for this project. Moreover, while Earth doesn't play into the allied vs enemy colors, we will still organize them in such a way to allow cycles and half cycles.
Aspire to victory
How to divide the alignments? One influence are civilization simulation games. Civ games basically allow five different paths to victory: domination, technological, cultural, diplomatic, and economic. We translate these to five major traits: dominance, knowledge, creativity, community, and production. This not only fits perfectly for human civilizations, but also for other biological ecosystems. For instance, rats and cockroaches aren't selfish and evil (hence black). They just excel at adapting to their environments (creativity). Magic's red creatures fight because they're dumb and rash. Earth's beings fight because they crave conquest, are territorial in nature, and want to display their superiority (dominance).
This method of division grants depth to each alignment and each alignment is well-defined. Also importantly there is no meta-color. For instance, in Magic, many new unexplored mechanics and abilities are dumped into blue's pie because it is the meta-color. Without such a meta-color, we can avoid situations where one alignment hoards too many abilities while other alignments become too shallow.
Pie chart
The following chart shows the five alignments' central characteristic, as well as their main victory goal and relationships with other alignments.
Knowledge (B)
Potential knowledge
Research (S)
Applied knowledgeEducation (O)
Skill (V)
Technology (G)
Production (G)
Physical work
Mechanics (B)
Net workCraftsmanship (S)
Synergy (O)
Economy (V)
Dominance (V)
Influential prowess
Affluence (G)
Competitive prowessExpertise (B)
Strategy (S)
Conquest (O)
Community (O)
Integrated group
Uniformity (V)
Extended groupTeamwork (G)
Government (B)
Diplomacy (S)
Creativity (S)
Creative traits
Charisma (O)
Creative processAdaptability (V)
Invention (G)
Culture (B)
Reading the chart
The 1st layer are the central trait of the alignments and the color shorthand in parentheses. The 2nd layer further divides the traits. The 3rd layer shows the relationships and unions with each of the four other alignments. One of those unions also signify the alignment's victory type. For instance, Knowledge's aspires for a technological victory, which is somewhat influenced by the Production alignment.
There no hard-wired allied or opposing alignments. However, for the sake of visual aid, organization, and cycle design, the order here put the alignments closest to their own ideals. For instance, Creativity are closest to Knowledge and Community, since Creativity's main goal is cultural victory, and that most closely aligns with technological and diplomatic ideals.
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