Kalimat al-Mutafalsif

So, everyone in this age has heard of the "eeeeeviiiil botnets", yes? They're shown all over the media threatening our livelyhoods, they're written about in the newspapers, and its obvious the world is going to end tomorrow due to these little buggers. Or is it? I for one am quite intriguied by botnets, and the viruses (I was formally corrected this weekend that viruses is the "correct" plural, so there ya go) that form them. In many ways these evil little guys are the best coding we see nowadays when OSes are.... abysmal to say the least. Now, of course I'm not intriguied enough to MAKE a botnet in the wild... that'd be evil and wrong, and obviously I'd be anti-freedom. But I'd still like to play with them, and to that end, I unveil the game Harkins and I were working on this weekend.

Botnet!

Now, that website is nothing more than a placeholder so ya'll don't browse my site... it'll get better I promise, as this game'll be advertised entirely online. Hopefully I can convince the God of CSS (Harkins) to bang out something flashy.

Basically the premise is that you are an upstart botnet mastermind. Your computer might not be the best, and your viruses a tad unstealthy (at first) but you want to make your mark on the world. You move through a "network" of system cards trying to complete missions, or destroy your opponent. Its different from other card games, with some influences showing through. Gameplay is not nailed down yet. So that's all I'll say for now.

One goal we are looking for, however, is to make it somewhat realistic. For instance: the cards all are real-life things, different OSes, ways a cracker might hack something, etc. We don't want to make something that'll just further the fear of teenage punks in dark basements sipping Jolt. Also, we want this to be simple... our first version might have been too simple.

Rules version 1 -

• For this version we did combat as follows: At the end of a turn, whichever side had more viruses on a system won it, and the others were removed. This proved to be a bit... weird... due to modifiers and deciding who was attacking whom. This has been scrapped.
• We did movement by having a limit to how many different viruses one can move, and how far they can move through the network. This slowed things down in the beginning, and is being reworked.
• Income was kept over turn endings, and couldn't be spent quick enough due to a small hand limit. This is definately changing in a few ways, as we'll probably make you clear your income every turn, among other things.
• All in all, it was a tad fun, and should be loads more once the game's sped up a bit, and you actually have to make decisions about spending money or saving it.

Those're my brief and very disorganized (still banging on xorg from my previous post) thoughts on the first system we play tested. Harkins, if you think of anything you'd like to add, feel free.

Current rules will be kept at: Here
Cards can be viewed and printed at: Here
Forums are: Here

Well, I didn't get an update of my weekend last night, was a bit too tired to want to type very much. So, this'll be my last for the weekend, I think. But to understand what I've been wasting my time on, you need some backstory.

Early last semester (Fall '06) I was talking with Malap on IRC and we got on the subject of Collectable Card Games (CCGs) and regular card games. I'd only really played Magic The Gathering at that time, so he had a much wider range experience than me. Anyways, he brought up his desire to make a card game. I thought it was cool, and started thinking about how I'd make one. A week later I pinged him back with some ideas. Unfortunately, since I'd only played one CCG, anything I thought of was along those lines. So, again it faded from my memory for a bit until Christmas Break. And that brings us up to speed.

The main reason I'm up here this weekend is to pick up a monitor he's graciously giving me. Nice 19" LCD that'll double my desktop's desktop space. Well, in addition I asked him to show me some new games, and the first night I was here we got on the topic of the card game we were both interested in making. After an afternoon-long bullsession we'd fleshed out my initial ideas into something that'd be different (aka not M:TG set in cyber-space) as well as fun. Our goals were simple:

1. Simple Game Mechanics - Aka no need for rules lawyers
2. One deck game - Only one player needs to own the game and there'd be no booster packs to make things unfair
3. Strategic - We didn't want something that was all chance, it had to have some thought behind it.

Well, we went to bed with a basic idea of what we wanted in mind, but no actual system. I woke up a bit earlier than malap on Saturday and got to work brainstorming actual mechanics. By the time he was up I had a rough system, which we subsequently touched up into something that looked fun. All that was left was for us to write out, oh, 110+ cards, which took the rest of the day.

In the middle of this time we went out to see my favorite show, Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind. I've written about it a few times before, so go check those descriptions for what it is. All I'll say on it for this trip is it was by far the best I've seen 'em perform (out of about 4 times now). I make sure to catch the show whenever I'm in town, you should too. Seriously, the show covers everything from sheer comedy (opening skit was a guy standing there in only an elephant mask covering his crotch trying to remember his lines... laughed so hard) to real life issues (estrangement from family, implications of sexual abuse). Also, all the plays are written by the actors, sot hey deal with real life events. That estrangement one, the actress who played herself was clearly shaken afterwards, you can tell its real.

As for today, I spent it codifying the rules into a pdf, and Malap's putting up a website so you, my loyal readers, and go playtest it in but hours! More details on teh site, and actual gameplay, will come later.

This whole experience of going from "Hey, it'd be cool to make a game" to actually designing one has been cool. I'm quite surprised at the speed at which we got a viable game, though I know playtesting's gonna take a bit longer as a result. And, since we're using the Internet as a distribution model (unless someone wants to publish it for us) it'll allow for players to make their own cards to submit, as well as create different decks to use in different situations (fast play, large amounts of players, etc).

So, that's my weekend of game design in a nutshell.