One more template available: " Special Spell " (working title)

I know that encounter number filed shouldn't be here ... it's just for preview (it's optional).

Ooh! Ooh! I love these! Thank you!

Since I don't have the Timescape Template being used here (and don't have Photoshop to play around with it anyhow before a Strange Eons version is available - would the current one work with GIMP?), here's my meager contribution for the moment, inspired by Bludgeon's Chainsword. Hopefully it doesn't clash with the intent of those Charges.

I looked at all the Timescape options out there, and now that we have all the expansions, none of them worked really well with them. I looked at all the cards, modified some of them, trimmed some of their numbers and made a deck of 100 Timescape cards. I wanted the expansion to be similar to the original so there was no need to change the board. The Timescape is deadly and you don't want to hang out there - I also don't want it to be a place you can easily jump in and out of - but if you are really so inclined, you can get there.

I think as a community it is time to streamline an option. I read through this thread and I don't see any continuity here. I see some great ideas and I have to be honest, the board being thrown around here does not suit my taste. I want chainswords, powerfists and I want it sci-fi oriented; to me that's the whole point. Azoic ported over a good option from 2E but it is a little out of place and some of the text needs some adjustments to make it congruent with 4E revised.

Let me add a card I have in my set: "The Doctor" Stranger. Time Lord. "The Doctor acts as your follower until an Event is drawn at which point he goes to the discard pile. While he is your follower you may not die: your life may never go below 1."

28 minutes ago, Reedstilt said:

Since I don't have the Timescape Template being used here (and don't have Photoshop to play around with it anyhow before a Strange Eons version is available - would the current one work with GIMP?), here's my meager contribution for the moment, inspired by Bludgeon's Chainsword. Hopefully it doesn't clash with the intent of those Charges.

@Reedstilt There is a Timescape template in Strange Eons. I find strange eons to be fantastic for building decks. My only problem with it is there is no option to make symbols in the corner for the expansions. I have access to PS but I still prefer SE for the most part.

6 hours ago, Reedstilt said:

Here's my meager contribution for the moment, inspired by Bludgeon's Chainsword. Hopefully it doesn't clash with the intent of those Charges.

Ooh! New spell! I like that one! I'm always gathering new things to grow my Timescape set.

5 hours ago, JediKnightAmoeba said:

I think as a community it is time to streamline an option. I read through this thread and I don't see any continuity here. I see some great ideas and I have to be honest, the board being thrown around here does not suit my taste. I want chainswords, powerfists and I want it sci-fi oriented; to me that's the whole point. Azoic ported over a good option from 2E but it is a little out of place and some of the text needs some adjustments to make it congruent with 4E revised.

I like your enthusiasm, but I also like the chaos of inspiration here. We're all working toward something that works for us. I'd be curious to see some of the cards you've put together using SE.

That spell doesn't work with my version for 3 reasons.

- timescape (to me) is not about spells at all, so no new spells

- the way my timescape works, it wouldn't make sense to have this spell with other spells because it would be available also when timescape is not in play

- way to many charge counters, most objects have 3 charges for the reason that they are quite powerful.

Anyway, more goodies

6 hours ago, Bludgeon said:

That spell doesn't work with my version for 3 reasons.

- timescape (to me) is not about spells at all, so no new spells

- the way my timescape works, it wouldn't make sense to have this spell with other spells because it would be available also when timescape is not in play

- way to many charge counters, most objects have 3 charges for the reason that they are quite powerful.

- That's fair. How would you feel about a "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" alternate Spell Deck? Taking a Clarketech view of futuristic technologies from the perspective of a bunch of medieval fantasy characters being thrust into a time warp seems reasonable to me, but not might be everyone's preference.

- Does your Timescape pop in and out of existence during play? It's not a permanent feature like, say, the corner regions are?

- The intent of the Spell is only to recharge items up to their full Charges. You wouldn't be dumping all 1d6 or 2d6 Charges onto one object. I might not have explained that clearly on the card. Or are you saying that any recharges at all would be too much?

Unrelated to the Spell: For the Necron, my first thought was to save it until I've entered the Inner Region and leave it behind for whoever's following me to the Crown. Is that something you'd want to allow?

1 hour ago, Reedstilt said:

1 That's fair. How would you feel about a "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" alternate Spell Deck? Taking a Clarketech view of futuristic technologies from the perspective of a bunch of medieval fantasy characters being thrust into a time warp seems reasonable to me, but not might be everyone's preference.

2Does your Timescape pop in and out of existence during play? It's not a permanent feature like, say, the corner regions are?

3 The intent of the Spell is only to recharge items up to their full Charges. You wouldn't be dumping all 1d6 or 2d6 Charges onto one object. I might not have explained that clearly on the card. Or are you saying that any recharges at all would be too much?

4 Unrelated to the Spell: For the Necron, my first thought was to save it until I've entered the Inner Region and leave it behind for whoever's following me to the Crown. Is that something you'd want to allow?

1. I wouldnt' use it, and not because I can't stand magic mixing with timescape.

I have more mini-expansions like timescape that work the same way (something happens during the game and a random mini-expansion is added to the game with rules how it and when it ends, this can happen several times during one game). If I want to add a new deck of custom spells, I'd rather develop a new mini-expansion centered on that than add spells to timescape which it doesn't need.

2. Works like this:

- There are three new decks, the Day deck, the Night deck, the Challenge deck, as well as replaced Time Card.

- When an event is drawn (with some exceptions), the time card is flipped.

- When the time card is flipped to night, any player draws a night card, same for day

- several day and night cards will start a new challenge, other will escalate active challenge if there is one

- Timescape is one of several challenges I have

3. The card with most charges is 4 or 5, rolling 2 dice seems unncessary in this context (but you had no way of knowing that). Recharging is not broken, but for some cards it's very powerful.

4. Cards can't stay on spaces in the inner region But if they could, that would be a nice tactic.

Yeah, with that set up, I can understand having very different needs then a "traditional" board-based Timescape set. Might just have to make my own Timescape now, or adopt / adapt someone else's.

Also, I don't think I ever new that Cards couldn't stay on Inner Region spaces. Not that it's really come up in my games.

8 hours ago, Bludgeon said:

I have more mini-expansions like timescape that work the same way (something happens during the game and a random mini-expansion is added to the game with rules how it and when it ends, this can happen several times during one game). If I want to add a new deck of custom spells, I'd rather develop a new mini-expansion centered on that than add spells to timescape which it doesn't need.

2. Works like this:

- There are three new decks, the Day deck, the Night deck, the Challenge deck, as well as replaced Time Card.

- When an event is drawn (with some exceptions), the time card is flipped.

- When the time card is flipped to night, any player draws a night card, same for day

- several day and night cards will start a new challenge, other will escalate active challenge if there is one

- Timescape is one of several challenges I have

That's brilliant! I've agonized for years over how to add new mini expansions to my game, but this solves that problem so sweetly. It seemed like any time I wanted to add a non-corner board expansion, I'd have to add a brand new series of unique "draw from this deck" cards to every single corner board. That isn't tenable in the long term (plus it can get pricey.)

This challenge idea is great, though! Because all you have to do is create one set of challenge-launching cards that tie into individual challenge cards that trigger specific mini decks. Absolutely brilliant! I'm going to have to adapt this mechanic for my set as well, as I've got a ton of mini expansions brewing in my mind that I can finally create and introduce with this mechanic.

I'd love to see more of your challenges!

20 hours ago, Earl Wynn said:

That's brilliant! I've agonized for years over how to add new mini expansions to my game, but this solves that problem so sweetly. It seemed like any time I wanted to add a non-corner board expansion, I'd have to add a brand new series of unique "draw from this deck" cards to every single corner board. That isn't tenable in the long term (plus it can get pricey.)

This challenge idea is great, though! Because all you have to do is create one set of challenge-launching cards that tie into individual challenge cards that trigger specific mini decks. Absolutely brilliant! I'm going to have to adapt this mechanic for my set as well, as I've got a ton of mini expansions brewing in my mind that I can finally create and introduce with this mechanic.

I'd love to see more of your challenges!

That was the basic idea - to have a mechanic that manages all mini expansions without having to deal with them entire game. Despite having additional rules, it actually simplifies the game because you never have to deal with dragons, harbinger, firelands, and the reaper at the same time.

Yesterday I playtested this challenge. It needs some tweaking but mostly it works.

I'm so excited about the potential for this mechanic that it feels like Christmas morning. I felt like I'd hit the upper limit of customizability with my set (having 8 corner boards and ~1500 ADV cards, etc.) but with this single mechanic, there's no limit to the mini-expansions and little scenarios I can add. Absolutely brilliant. My mind is bubbling with all kinds of ideas! Thank you!

13 minutes ago, Earl Wynn said:

I'm so excited about the potential for this mechanic that it feels like Christmas morning. I felt like I'd hit the upper limit of customizability with my set (having 8 corner boards and ~1500 ADV cards, etc.) but with this single mechanic, there's no limit to the mini-expansions and little scenarios I can add. Absolutely brilliant. My mind is bubbling with all kinds of ideas! Thank you!

Possibilities are certainly there! So far I have 12 challenges:

- remakes of alt endings: a hero rises, crown of flame, domain of dragons, end of days

- remakes of expansions: dragon lords, firelands, grim reaper, harbinger, nether realm, werewolf

- new stuff: black knight, timescape

I'm definitely curious about the remakes of expansions challenge cards! I removed most the of Grim Reaper, Harbinger, Werewolf and Dragon Lord bits from my set and I'm excited about the opportunity to possibly add them back in through the Challenge system.

Some are fairly simple, others move complex.

The Grim Reaper challenge for example only requires the challenge card, the grim reaper card (unchanged from original) and figure. No other rules beyond those.

I've been tinkering with my own modified version of your challenge rules and so far have generated up only a few cards. I'm bypassing the day/night deck by putting the trigger cards directly into the encounter decks and merging the challenge instigators with the challenge escalators into a single card (see below.) Also, instead of using the really big cards, I've worked each Ripple in Reality (what I'm calling Challenges in my deck) into a pair of smaller poker-size cards. One of the pair goes into a deck that just has titles and pictures. That's the deck for random drawing. The second of the pair goes into a deck that serves as a rules reference library. Both cards are put side by side when the Ripple comes into play, giving both an image and a set of rules for the players. Here are my example cards thus far:

Here's another fun Challenge for the players to encounter. Basically, it's a pyramid that bounces around the board and every time you explore it, you get a better result on the roll table, though it is possible to find the treasure on the first try. The working parts (besides the cards) are a little wooden pyramid I found at Goodwill and some crown tokens from a crushed-box Game of Thrones game I parted out (also found at Goodwill.)

My plan is to do a couple of moving location ones like this. I've got a little hut one that I'm going to use as "The Witch House" which will be configured similarly.

Nice, I like it. It's like a super-place. I was thinking about an egyptian-themed challenge myself but had no concrete ideas, but your card inspired me So here it is.

It's similar to yours, but doesn't move and players will spend multiple turns exploring it.

Haven't made the terrain card yet, so text version only:

PYRAMID

You may not encounter other characters while on this space.

To encounter the Pyramid, roll 3 dice on the Pyramid chart and add 1 for each time token you have.

.

Ooh! I like that! Very nicely done! Ooh! And you integrated Charms! Excellent!

I'm excited about brainstroming new challenges and exploring ways that the mechanic can be explored and utilized! Thank you for sharing your ideas!

36 minutes ago, Earl Wynn said:

Ooh! I like that! Very nicely done! Ooh! And you integrated Charms! Excellent!

I'm excited about brainstroming new challenges and exploring ways that the mechanic can be explored and utilized! Thank you for sharing your ideas!

Charms seemed like a natural fit

I'm excited too. I know 100% I will be making a dream world in the future.

With the Omnipotent Being, do you use something to signify that your Life and Fate Values are at a +1 after that encounter? I can imagine that sort of information could get lost in the shuffle if the player isn't holding onto a card that indicates that.

No I don't. I'm gonna need to look into making tokens.