I just made a thread for a separate mechanic idea for the same potential set around a cycle of waking and dreaming and one of the things I mentioned in my preamble of thematic exploration was the idea of a mechanic that had you do a puzzle of some sort, somehow, and then gave you a reward. Well, I was doing more thinking about possible mechanics and I came back to the puzzle idea and I ended up giving it a shot at how that might actually be implemented. Here's where I got to.
Uncover (When this permanent enters the battlefield, you get a random puzzle.
e.g. Hunter Valuum
Creature- Worm Beast (C)
Flying
Uncover
When you solve ~'s puzzle, draw a card.
2/2
Puzzle token card Puzzle
Select a puzzle at random for this card. This puzzle is solved when you meet its condition.
1. One or more creatures you control deal combat damage to a player or planeswalker, twice.
2. You cast two spells with different, even mana values.
3. You cast two spells with different, odd mana values.
4. At the beginning of the endstep, a creature died this turn, twice.
5. At the beginning of your upkeep, you have an even number of cards in hand.
6. At the beginning of your upkeep, you have an odd number of cards in hand.
This would basically be a full text card with background art. The puzzle itself I think would probably be a new card type that lives in the command zone similar to conspiracies.
A key part of this mechanic idea was having the random part. I started thinking out of having puzzles be more fixed, but that made it feel like more like a trial than a puzzle. You knew what you were getting and you could prepare in advance. There is no mystery. But if the condition is random you have to be prepared for multiple possibilities and adapt on the fly for the ones you get which when you layer onto the strategic complexity of a magic game feels more like a puzzle. I also came up with conditions for the puzzles I thought might be interesting and wouldn't be too hard in terms of time or resources but require you to commit to doing something specific, with the aim of making them feel like a strategic choice of "how do I do this" rather than a resource and/or time hurdle.
I started with the idea of having separate token cards for each puzzle, which makes the puzzle cards less dense and you can give them separate cool names. However, that brings logistical issues in having to collect a bunch of them in order to play any card with Uncover, especially with multiple Uncovers, so I put them all on the one card so you just need a few of these to start with. I imagine you could roll a die and then put the die on the card to indicate which puzzle you got, or something like that.
For the puzzle rewards, my first thought was that the puzzle cards would come inherently with a reward. But unless I gave separate rewards to each puzzle condition, which I think would be a big stretch, that would mean there was only one reward effect, which I think would make the mechanic feel a little bland. Jumping through hoops just to draw some cards or something. So I came up with the permanents with uncover giving you their own reward, allowing for a range of interesting effects and has a nice hint of flavour of the permanent being part in the process. The only issue with this being if your opponent removes your permanent, then you don't get your reward unless you have some other card that can take advantage of any puzzle.
The alternative I am considering is to give puzzles an inherent smaller reward but then uncover cards will commonly, maybe not always, come with an extra reward of their own.
Say puzzles come inbuilt with a draw a card reward, which seems like a strong choice.
You could then have
Hunter Valuum
Creature- Worm Beast (C)
Flying
Uncover
When you solve ~'s puzzle, put a +1/+1 counter on it.
2/1
This would be mean, though, that I would be more limited in the range of effects you could have as individual card rewards without investing more of the card's power specifically in the reward, and I don't want too many uncover cards that are super reliant on solving the puzzle.
Three main questions to answer I think:
1. How much does this mechanic feel like you're solving a puzzle? Is it exciting and fun or tedious?
2. How workable is this as an effect? Is it worth complexity and logistic costs?
3. Should the puzzles have an inbuilt effect or not?
First, if you're going to pick the puzzle at random, make 6 of them so it can be easily randomized with a D6.
As written, I'd avoid the "twice" requirements, so that you don't have to worry about tracking the conditions over multiple turns. This will already be taxing to keep track of multiple random goals for multiple permanents without having to keep track of something being done in multiple steps.
I think this is one you'd really need to playtest to see if it "feels" right. All the pontificating on our part won't determine if it actually seem like you solved something when you trigger one of these.
First, if you're going to pick the puzzle at random, make 6 of them so it can be easily randomized with a D6.
Oh right. I kind of thought that I did. I had six at one point as I was playing with slightly different versions and I guess I forgot to actually consider how many puzzles I actually had. Will change.
As written, I'd avoid the "twice" requirements, so that you don't have to worry about tracking the conditions over multiple turns. This will already be taxing to keep track of multiple random goals for multiple permanents without having to keep track of something being done in multiple steps.
Yeah I was considering that. A matter of coming up with some good alternatives I guess.
I think this is one you'd really need to playtest to see if it "feels" right. All the pontificating on our part won't determine if it actually seem like you solved something when you trigger one of these.
Yeah definitely want to try playtesting this. Sounds like a fun mechanic to toy with as well actually.
Made a mockup of what the puzzle card might look like.
Was also thinking more about the question of having multiple puzzle cards. I feel like the gameplay having a deck of sorts of puzzle token cards to shuffle up and deal one out probably feels better, including probably feeling less viscerally random, than doing dice rolling for the single card. If there is a way around the logistical issues of having to collect all the tokens or reason to believe it's not that big of an issue my inclination is to do multiple puzzle cards. Currently, I still think the logistics problem is a bigger deal because it could make your cards largely unplayable (you could use proxies or do something with dice rolling maybe to substitute) and objectively affects everyone rather than being a subjective feel thing.
I would try to balance the puzzles around simple, easily accomplished goals. The more difficult they are to "solve" the swingier the pay out ends up needing to be to be worth it. It also means that they are significantly less playable vs control decks than other archetypes.
I would try to balance the puzzles around simple, easily accomplished goals. The more difficult they are to "solve" the swingier the pay out ends up needing to be to be worth it. It also means that they are significantly less playable vs control decks than other archetypes.
Yeah. I don't want to them too easy or it won't feel like your solving a puzzle so much as ticking a box, like with Raid say, but yeah I want them more to be more commitments to specific play patterns than big hoops to jump through. The odd/even hand count conditions for instance I imagine should be reasonably easy to get you just have to commit to playing, drawing, and discarding a certain number of cards.
The different conditions are definitely something that is very open to a bunch of fiddling with options and variables. Important to get all the details right but plenty of room for adjustment to get it there.
Thinking more about potential puzzle conditions. Partly just to consider a broader swath of options but also specifically because of issues with some of the options I came up with, namely, the twice conditions having tracking complexity and the hand size number maybe being a little too incidental (you might just have the right number of cards in hand without doing anything).
- At the beginning of the endstep, sources you control dealt seven or more damage this turn.
I was thinking about doing something similar to the previous saboteur trigger but didn't want it to favour swarm decks too much by just having it be multiple creatures in a turn. So I thought about ways of making the condition doable with other strategies. I realized you could use 'sources' which would include burn for more spell-heavy decks but what I really wanted was for big creature decks and control decks to have a shot. I thought counting the total number of damage was a neat way to do that, such that you could hit it with multiple smaller things or one or two big things. This trigger also allows you to get it off creature combat including blocking. Not very sure about the number. - You cast two spells with the same mana value in a turn.
A fun complement to the cast different mana value conditions. I figure casting any two spells with the same mana value is easier than different ones that are either odd or even, so you have to do it in the same turn. - At the beginning of your upkeep, there are four or more cardtypes among permanents you control and cards in your graveyard.
Delirium but it also lets you look at the battlefield. Enchantment creatures, and enchantments in general, being a theme in the set should help make this possible. Little bit wordy but nicely strategically flexible. - At the beginning of the endstep, two or more creatures died this turn.
Variant of the dies trigger from before. Like before you can kill your or your opponents' creatures or both for flexibility. Might actually be a little easy to do though, especially in the right deck. - At the beginning of your upkeep, three or more nonland permanents were put into the graveyard from the battlefield since the start of your last turn.
Another variant of the dies trigger. This one aims to be a little bit harder but also gives you a little more options for how to do it. Sacrificable noncreature enchantment tokens is planned as a theme and complements this.
This sounds like a fun and interesting idea. My one concern is that it will be near impossible to get it to actually play well in both constructed and limited. Looking at the first set of "puzzles" I can easily be locked out of multiple options at the deckbuilding stage in either constructed or limited. The second round addresses a number of problems but still makes it really difficult for these to matter before turn 4 and I just don't know how to make the mechanic worth using.
This sounds like a fun and interesting idea. My one concern is that it will be near impossible to get it to actually play well in both constructed and limited. Looking at the first set of "puzzles" I can easily be locked out of multiple options at the deckbuilding stage in either constructed or limited. The second round addresses a number of problems but still makes it really difficult for these to matter before turn 4 and I just don't know how to make the mechanic worth using.
Yeah, the conditions locking you out at deckbuilding is definitely something I am trying to avoid. There's a delicate balance with making the conditions easier to do early on in that it's important for the whole feel of the mechanic that the conditions require some work to achieve.
I share your concern for balance but hopefully the open endedness of what conditions to use gives enough room to fiddle with specifics to get it in the right place.
So I had a thought that’s a little more out there but might be cool.
Rather that on reminder card, you have a predetermined deck of cards with one of each of the six (or whatever) puzzles on them. When you choose a puzzle, the puzzle card is exiled face down so your opponent won’t know what you are trying to accomplish until you reveal you have completed it like a Hidden Agenda from Conspiracy.
So I had a thought that’s a little more out there but might be cool.
Rather that on reminder card, you have a predetermined deck of cards with one of each of the six (or whatever) puzzles on them.
I mentioned in my original post that I started with this implementation of having a minideck of puzzles. The problem with that version is that you are not just encouraged, but required, to collect all the puzzle cards to make the mechanic work. This would work better if you chose what puzzle you got so you could still play without all of them and just choose from whatever ones you had but with random puzzles it would be cheating as you could fix your odds. I have considered that you could encourage players to use dice like with the current version as a substitute if you don't have all of the cards but then you have to know and remember what all the conditions are without a reminder.
When you choose a puzzle, the puzzle card is exiled face down so your opponent won’t know what you are trying to accomplish until you reveal you have completed it like a Hidden Agenda from Conspiracy.
Interesting idea. Don't know if you could do that with a single puzzle card and dice though as keeping the result of a die roll hidden from one player has cheating issues.
Yeah, hidden goals definitely wouldn’t work with the due roll except casually.
Like I said, it would be more involved, but dungeons technically required you to have all three dungeon cards and WotC packaged them as a set in Prerelease kits so this is not outside the realm of reasonableness.
Yeah, hidden goals definitely wouldn’t work with the due roll except casually.
Like I said, it would be more involved, but dungeons technically required you to have all three dungeon cards and WotC packaged them as a set in Prerelease kits so this is not outside the realm of reasonableness.
No, but dungeons you got to pick which one you used. Like I said, if you get to pick you can just 'choose' the one/s you have. There were also only three dungeons whereas I have six puzzle conditions planned. I could do less; I'm pretty sure five would work and four sounds possible, but three I think is too little, so that's at least one up on dungeons.
Play components are the sort of thing you can handwave the logistics on within reason. It would be easy enough for someone to write each of the 6 or whatever goals on a basic land and use those as a deck in a pinch.
Relevant point of consideration: apparently venture into the dungeon mechanic was tried with a version that used a mini-deck rather than picking from three trackways. https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/679537403936063488/hello-yesterday-was-my-birthday-i-tried-asking#notes
Now, it's possible they didn't go with this version because the current version gave you more choice (depending on how the deck version worked), which wouldn't be much of a problem here because I want puzzles to be a little random. But otherwise I wonder what the issues with it were as they would give a sense of what challenges puzzles would have to overcome if I wanted to do a minideck version of the mechanic.
Uncover (When this permanent enters the battlefield, you get a random puzzle.
e.g.
Hunter Valuum
Creature- Worm Beast (C)
Flying
Uncover
When you solve ~'s puzzle, draw a card.
2/2
Puzzle token card
Puzzle
Select a puzzle at random for this card. This puzzle is solved when you meet its condition.
1. One or more creatures you control deal combat damage to a player or planeswalker, twice.
2. You cast two spells with different, even mana values.
3. You cast two spells with different, odd mana values.
4. At the beginning of the endstep, a creature died this turn, twice.
5. At the beginning of your upkeep, you have an even number of cards in hand.
6. At the beginning of your upkeep, you have an odd number of cards in hand.
This would basically be a full text card with background art. The puzzle itself I think would probably be a new card type that lives in the command zone similar to conspiracies.
A key part of this mechanic idea was having the random part. I started thinking out of having puzzles be more fixed, but that made it feel like more like a trial than a puzzle. You knew what you were getting and you could prepare in advance. There is no mystery. But if the condition is random you have to be prepared for multiple possibilities and adapt on the fly for the ones you get which when you layer onto the strategic complexity of a magic game feels more like a puzzle. I also came up with conditions for the puzzles I thought might be interesting and wouldn't be too hard in terms of time or resources but require you to commit to doing something specific, with the aim of making them feel like a strategic choice of "how do I do this" rather than a resource and/or time hurdle.
I started with the idea of having separate token cards for each puzzle, which makes the puzzle cards less dense and you can give them separate cool names. However, that brings logistical issues in having to collect a bunch of them in order to play any card with Uncover, especially with multiple Uncovers, so I put them all on the one card so you just need a few of these to start with. I imagine you could roll a die and then put the die on the card to indicate which puzzle you got, or something like that.
For the puzzle rewards, my first thought was that the puzzle cards would come inherently with a reward. But unless I gave separate rewards to each puzzle condition, which I think would be a big stretch, that would mean there was only one reward effect, which I think would make the mechanic feel a little bland. Jumping through hoops just to draw some cards or something. So I came up with the permanents with uncover giving you their own reward, allowing for a range of interesting effects and has a nice hint of flavour of the permanent being part in the process. The only issue with this being if your opponent removes your permanent, then you don't get your reward unless you have some other card that can take advantage of any puzzle.
The alternative I am considering is to give puzzles an inherent smaller reward but then uncover cards will commonly, maybe not always, come with an extra reward of their own.
Say puzzles come inbuilt with a draw a card reward, which seems like a strong choice.
You could then have
Hunter Valuum
Creature- Worm Beast (C)
Flying
Uncover
When you solve ~'s puzzle, put a +1/+1 counter on it.
2/1
This would be mean, though, that I would be more limited in the range of effects you could have as individual card rewards without investing more of the card's power specifically in the reward, and I don't want too many uncover cards that are super reliant on solving the puzzle.
Three main questions to answer I think:
1. How much does this mechanic feel like you're solving a puzzle? Is it exciting and fun or tedious?
2. How workable is this as an effect? Is it worth complexity and logistic costs?
3. Should the puzzles have an inbuilt effect or not?
Thanks for reading!
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
As written, I'd avoid the "twice" requirements, so that you don't have to worry about tracking the conditions over multiple turns. This will already be taxing to keep track of multiple random goals for multiple permanents without having to keep track of something being done in multiple steps.
I think this is one you'd really need to playtest to see if it "feels" right. All the pontificating on our part won't determine if it actually seem like you solved something when you trigger one of these.
Oh right. I kind of thought that I did. I had six at one point as I was playing with slightly different versions and I guess I forgot to actually consider how many puzzles I actually had. Will change.
Yeah I was considering that. A matter of coming up with some good alternatives I guess.
Yeah definitely want to try playtesting this. Sounds like a fun mechanic to toy with as well actually.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Was also thinking more about the question of having multiple puzzle cards. I feel like the gameplay having a deck of sorts of puzzle token cards to shuffle up and deal one out probably feels better, including probably feeling less viscerally random, than doing dice rolling for the single card. If there is a way around the logistical issues of having to collect all the tokens or reason to believe it's not that big of an issue my inclination is to do multiple puzzle cards. Currently, I still think the logistics problem is a bigger deal because it could make your cards largely unplayable (you could use proxies or do something with dice rolling maybe to substitute) and objectively affects everyone rather than being a subjective feel thing.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Yeah. I don't want to them too easy or it won't feel like your solving a puzzle so much as ticking a box, like with Raid say, but yeah I want them more to be more commitments to specific play patterns than big hoops to jump through. The odd/even hand count conditions for instance I imagine should be reasonably easy to get you just have to commit to playing, drawing, and discarding a certain number of cards.
The different conditions are definitely something that is very open to a bunch of fiddling with options and variables. Important to get all the details right but plenty of room for adjustment to get it there.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
- At the beginning of the endstep, sources you control dealt seven or more damage this turn.
I was thinking about doing something similar to the previous saboteur trigger but didn't want it to favour swarm decks too much by just having it be multiple creatures in a turn. So I thought about ways of making the condition doable with other strategies. I realized you could use 'sources' which would include burn for more spell-heavy decks but what I really wanted was for big creature decks and control decks to have a shot. I thought counting the total number of damage was a neat way to do that, such that you could hit it with multiple smaller things or one or two big things. This trigger also allows you to get it off creature combat including blocking. Not very sure about the number.
- You cast two spells with the same mana value in a turn.
A fun complement to the cast different mana value conditions. I figure casting any two spells with the same mana value is easier than different ones that are either odd or even, so you have to do it in the same turn.
- At the beginning of your upkeep, there are four or more cardtypes among permanents you control and cards in your graveyard.
Delirium but it also lets you look at the battlefield. Enchantment creatures, and enchantments in general, being a theme in the set should help make this possible. Little bit wordy but nicely strategically flexible.
- At the beginning of the endstep, two or more creatures died this turn.
Variant of the dies trigger from before. Like before you can kill your or your opponents' creatures or both for flexibility. Might actually be a little easy to do though, especially in the right deck.
- At the beginning of your upkeep, three or more nonland permanents were put into the graveyard from the battlefield since the start of your last turn.
Another variant of the dies trigger. This one aims to be a little bit harder but also gives you a little more options for how to do it. Sacrificable noncreature enchantment tokens is planned as a theme and complements this.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Yeah, the conditions locking you out at deckbuilding is definitely something I am trying to avoid. There's a delicate balance with making the conditions easier to do early on in that it's important for the whole feel of the mechanic that the conditions require some work to achieve.
I share your concern for balance but hopefully the open endedness of what conditions to use gives enough room to fiddle with specifics to get it in the right place.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Rather that on reminder card, you have a predetermined deck of cards with one of each of the six (or whatever) puzzles on them. When you choose a puzzle, the puzzle card is exiled face down so your opponent won’t know what you are trying to accomplish until you reveal you have completed it like a Hidden Agenda from Conspiracy.
I mentioned in my original post that I started with this implementation of having a minideck of puzzles. The problem with that version is that you are not just encouraged, but required, to collect all the puzzle cards to make the mechanic work. This would work better if you chose what puzzle you got so you could still play without all of them and just choose from whatever ones you had but with random puzzles it would be cheating as you could fix your odds. I have considered that you could encourage players to use dice like with the current version as a substitute if you don't have all of the cards but then you have to know and remember what all the conditions are without a reminder.
Interesting idea. Don't know if you could do that with a single puzzle card and dice though as keeping the result of a die roll hidden from one player has cheating issues.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Like I said, it would be more involved, but dungeons technically required you to have all three dungeon cards and WotC packaged them as a set in Prerelease kits so this is not outside the realm of reasonableness.
No, but dungeons you got to pick which one you used. Like I said, if you get to pick you can just 'choose' the one/s you have. There were also only three dungeons whereas I have six puzzle conditions planned. I could do less; I'm pretty sure five would work and four sounds possible, but three I think is too little, so that's at least one up on dungeons.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/679537403936063488/hello-yesterday-was-my-birthday-i-tried-asking#notes
Now, it's possible they didn't go with this version because the current version gave you more choice (depending on how the deck version worked), which wouldn't be much of a problem here because I want puzzles to be a little random. But otherwise I wonder what the issues with it were as they would give a sense of what challenges puzzles would have to overcome if I wanted to do a minideck version of the mechanic.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice