Hello everyone, I'm new here.

I just started playing AGOT:LCG a couple months ago. I play boardgame-style with 5 of my friends.

I'm in the process of learning app development with web-sockets, HTML5 and the like, and thought it a good idea to learn it by doing a web version of AGOT:LCG.

I sketched an alpha version, a "first draft" if you will, you can see it here: javascript:void(0);/*1331923108330*/

So I'm looking forward to see what the guys at FantasyFlight Games think about this. If they would say it's a bad idea, would negatively affect the market for their game, or wouldnt want this to be available online, I'd like to know, in order to proceed accordingly.

I thought maybe in these forums I'd have a chance to communicate with FantastFlightGames staff, so if you know one, please tell them about this post so that they can let me know what they think.

You should check out an existing program that is in common use right now.

http://www.octgn.net/

I would agree with Aceman, OCTGN really isn't missing anything in terms of an interface. However, what it is missing is a way to save the game in case of a server crash. If you do decide to make a tool for playing AGOT, make a save feature your first priority. It will instantly make your program relevant.

Thanks for the hint.

I knew about ocgtn, but thought that it being for Windows only, and requiring the instalation of software, it wouldn't get the kind of traction that web playgrounds get, like -say- dominion.isotropic.org

I though ocgtn didn't "enforce the rules", and took it more for a remoting aid, but I'm gonna reconsider it then, since you speak highly of it, thank you!

I wouldn't completely discount your web-based project as not offering anything better/more than what OCTGN offers. It was painful to do so, but I went ahead and installed Windows for the sole purpose of running OCTGN. I would much rather not have jumped through that hurdle, and while there are promises that in the future a version will run on other platforms (Linux/Mac), it is not the case at this point. Also, the OCTGN interface is nice but it doesn't handle the rules as well as it could and it takes some time to get used to. And part of this is understandable: OCTGN is a gaming framework... not the AGOT online application. Because of this it must handle a wide range of card interactions and be very forgiving regarding what the players want/need to do with their cards. This leaves the door wide open for newer players like myself to make a ton of mistakes.

I checked out your online version and got as far as the lobby where I was able to change my nickname and see other players logged in. I'll be checking back occasionally, and if you do decide to continue development please keep us updated via these forums or some other community site. Thanks!

vuldin said:

Hey, thanks for checking it out. To play against yourself you need two separate browser instances. (for example: open it in firefox and in iexplorer, or open a normal browser window and a privacy/incognito one). This way you can enter as two players and battle against yourself, to test it.

I checked out your site. and let me say that it looks good. The interface is very clean and has a smooth feel to it. One thing I did notice while I was playing around with the cards is that when I chose to play a character it was asking if I wanted to use my location reducers to play the character after the fact. Hopefully, if you keep coding this(which i wish more than anything that you will!) you will fix it to where you have to use the location before playing the character. Just an observation.

I just want to say that this past week I have been playing the Lord of the Rings Decipher TCG online at gempukku.com/gemp-lotr and it is very much like what you have going here. I absolutely LOVE the concept of not having to install a program and then keeping it up to date with all the new sets that come out. It's just such a pain. Also, like many other people here I am a Mac user and (at least for me)simply refuse to install Windows on my computer so if you get this up and running I will definitely be playing online because I don't have access to OCTGN.

in closing, I think you have a winner on your hands. So keep it up!

Agree with Widowmaker on everything- web interface, on a Mac myself, etc. Good work (Also WM we should play on Gemp LOTR)

I just played a portion of game using two browsers as you suggested and the app is in a very good initial state! It seems that the players are always using a Stark deck at the moment, is that right? I'll play through a complete round soon and give more feedback, but I'm impressed so far. It would be great to be able to play this game from any browser, and it looks like this tool may do the trick with a little more work.

vuldin said:

Thay you for trying it out!

Yes, I only added stark cards from the core deck, and I've recently reduced the list to even fewer, because I was testing the workings of Stealth, Deadly and "unique card duplicates", so I reduced the card lis to just two copies of Eddard, Catelyn, Shaggydog, Hodor, Grey Wind, Benjen, Ghost and some locations.

I first need to see if I got right the mechanics for marshalling, challenges, duplicates, stealth, deadly, etc.. this is a very early "alpha", so it only has
* support for two players (joust)
* support for basic "framework" workflow
* no support for "player actions", responses, events, etc. In general, it's as if cards had blank rules text.

Regarding web browsers, I want it to work on everything, I've tested it on chrome, iexplorer and my Playbook's webkit (I'm fond of playing dominion online in the tablet). I'm using a rather novel "push" mechanism to allow for a player to be instantly notified of the actions of other players... that mechanism might pose trouble with some browsers. I've yet to try with safari and android... but I hope it works.

Once I feel I got the basic framework right, with stealth, deadly, etc... I'll move on to implementing passive abilities, responses, events and card rule texts.

widowmaker93 said:

Hi, thanks for the observation. I intended this be very noob friendly, "almost a teaching tool", so I wanted it to do things like "when you marshall, it only offers you the cards from your hand that you can actually pay for", it "reminds you of a discount you could get", "when you include stealth cards in your attacks, it asks you which -eligible- enemy cards you want to apply stealth to", or "when an Ice-bearing character participates in a challenge, it asks you wether you want to use Ice to kill another". I thought this would make the game "easier" by taking out the aspect of "remembering stuff that can be used right now", but I thought that would be a good thing, at least for new players (such as me and my gaming group), and could perhaps make games faster (game length has kindof been an issue for my group)

I wonder if there are negative consecuences of my approach. ¿Could you please elaborate more on the reasoning behind your recommendation of not proactively reminding players of their options?

and thank you for your support!

ill be honest. i immediately didnt like the idea when i read this post because i like the sandbox nature of octgn better than a rules enforcement engine. i also am not sure that it is possible to correctly program all interactions given the optional nature or responses.

however, i did try this out and there does seem to be some promise here. if for nothing else you could treat it like the xbox version of magic where only some of the cards are available to make the interactions easier to manage. i wish you luck and would be happy to provide you any testing assistance that you need (im a professional s/w tester).

I'm gonna try to make a "sandbox style" version, where players have freedom to do whatever they will, and have to care about rules themselves, when I have something I'll post it here

Well, the rules of the locations that reduce cards say that you have to kneel the location or possibly discard it BEFORE playing the card that you want the cost reduced for. There are times when you will kneel a location and your opponent may have a response to the action or a cancel to play such as the new allanys greyjoy. They may also have a card to play from their hand or an action to use before you play a character. Plus, take a card like Val for instance... I would want to kneel maybe a street of steal BEFORE activating Val's effect in the hopes that the top card i draw and play is a character with a military icon. The way you have it does not allow for any of these situations(which arise more often that you might think)

I think it is great to remind players of the possible actions they can take. If you go to gempukku.com/gemp-lotr and look at the way they have their game system set up you will see a good example of how you should be coding the options a player has. Basically every card that is able to be used in a phase, whether it is a legal move or one that would not even make sense has it's border highlighted in blue so that you know what you can use. You aren't reminded or forced to do anything, you still have to make the actions yourself and if you forget to do something then that is on you. Which makes it much better as a learning tool in my opinion. Because if you are constantly reminded to do something, are you really "learning" anything?

Also, i noticed that when using stealth you made it possible to stealth Hodor, but he cannot be bypassed with stealth.

Keep up the good work!

P.S. - I played a game with 2 browsers ... Mozilla Firefox, and Safari and they both worked just fine.

You are right.

I'm trying to figure out a design to reconcile the idea of the multiplayer sandbox with the web/browser paradigm. If I don't give up, I'll post about it here