Could It Be A Real Card Game With Tools For Calculation?

[TribalTrouble]

April 1st makes me more troublesome than usual, I apologize if that offended anyone. I just wrote what popped into my brain.

No trouble whatsoever I didn't even mean "no you can't" just that I see it difficult without calculating lot of the game activities in an automated way (e.g. with the mentioned device), but I hope you guys come up with something.. it would be for sure be fun to play elements as real card game.

Well so far we made 1 card... Leaf Dragon... time for the other... umm.. others...

[ddevans96]

Here are all the cards in Elements that require randomization, and the smallest dice needed:

Quantum Tower (3d12)

Fog Shield (d5)
Shard of Freedom (d4)

Ice Shield (d10)
Ice Bolt (d20)

Pest (d12)
Dusk Mantle (d2)

Spine Carapace (d4)

Skull Shield (complicated)
Skeleton (complicated)

Fate Egg (complicated)

Dissipation Field (d12)
Chaos Seed (d12)
Chaos Power (2d5)
Singularity (d7)
Mutation (complicated)
Fallen Druid (complicated)
Pandemonium (d12)
Discord (18d12)
SoSe (complicated)

So yeah, entropy has a lot of cards that require randomization, but over half of them are simple. This makes a total of only 6 cards that go beyond a simple dice roll.

Skull Shield has variable percentages. If we remove rounding to a whole percent, because dice can circumvent it, it potentially needs everything from d2, d4, d6, d8, d10...d996, d998. Obviously this doesn't work, so it would have to be simplified to be done without a device.

Skeleton, Fate Egg, Mutation, and Improved Mutation require a d(X-9), where X is the number of creatures in the game. There are nine creatures in the game Fate Egg cannot become, as well as flying weapons, and as far as I know these are also the exceptions for Skeleton, Mutation, and Improved Mutation. I'd prefer removing some of these exceptions, but I'm going by the current game for this purpose.

In this case, X isn't terribly big, hovering somewhere considerably less than 100. There's actually ways to make this work depending on the number.

Mutation and Improved Mutation, after generating a creature, also require 2(d5-1) for stat changes, a d23 for the ability, and a d2 for the ability cost. Furthermore, before even getting to this point, Mutation requires a d10 to determine whether it becomes an abomination, mutant, or dead.

Personally, I don't think a RL CCG should have two versions of a card in the way Elements does, so I'd be for merging them into 60% mutant, 30% abom, and 10% death. But that's just my opinion.

SoSe simply requires a dX, where X is every card in the game that's legally obtainable, except marks, shards, and nymphs. In this case, X is somewhere above 150, and there's probably not a usable die that big.

[Fippe94]

As for skull shield, just round of to whole percents and use a d100 (note that a d100 isn't actually one 100-sided die, but two 10-sided dice)
Same can be done for fate egss and mutants

[ddevans96]

True, but rounding to the nearest whole percent is just odd for dice.

As for fate eggs/mutants/skeletons,something like a d72 would probably be ideal for them, so you have less dead values that would would get with a d100.

[Pella]

(note that a d100 isn't actually one 100-sided die, but two 10-sided dice)

It can be.

[TribalTrouble]

Note: Some card names may have to be changed to prevent things like the sueing of another company against Zanzarino.

From someone else's(not someone here) private message to me about a game he is working on:

"I had a preliminary meeting with a lawyer to avoid getting sued by Hasbro, which is why you will see new names for the card types (Tap -> Shift; Creatures -> Minions, Artifacts -> Battlefields, etc.)."

this means we may have to change the terms of creature to something like minion or creation or something like that.

[Laxadarap]

Just posting to bring something up with Sose.  True, you could add cards to your hand, but you could cheat very easily.  Current mechanics mean that opponent can't look at your cards until you play them, and honestly, unless this was changed, you couldn't guarantee correctness.

[TribalTrouble]

in real play SoSe would make you show your opponent the cards you get in hand unless a referee/spectator is allowed to judge whether it was a fair SoSe. How about that?

There can always be tabletop rules.

[Pineapple]

Or, if we're using d10s, we can as I've said before use a number of d10s equal to the smallest power of 10 larger than the fully reduced denominator with re-rolls.

For example, Skull Shield:

If the creature's HP is 5, then the probability is 1/10. Thus, we can use a d10 where 1=success, 2~10=failure.
If the creature's HP is 6, then the probability is 1/12. Thus, we can use two d10. For the first die: 1~5=continue, 6~10=failure. For the second die: 1=success, 2~6=failure, 7~10=re-roll second die.
If the creature's HP is 7, then the probability is 1/14. Thus, we can use two d10. For the first die: 1~5=continue, 6~10=failure. For the second die: 1=success, 2~7=failure, 8~10=re-roll second die.
If the creature's HP is 8, then the probability is 1/16. Thus, we can use two d10. For the first die: 1~5=continue, 6~10=failure. For the second die: 1=success, 2~8=failure, 9~10=re-roll second die.
If the creature's HP is 11, then the probability is 1/22. Thus we can use two d10. 1=success, 2~22=failure, 23~100=re-roll. (add the second value to ten times one less the first value)
If the creature's HP is 30, then the probability is 1/60. Thus we can use two d10. 1=success, 2~60=failure, 61~100=re-roll. (add the second value to ten times one less the first value)

Anyways, this might be a bit late, but using a "device" imo is out of the question because then we would just create a little video game console to run Elements. ._.

@Laxa: Being able to "see the RNG" is indeed a draw-back of IRL elements...

[TribalTrouble]

but we would have more human interaction. This is currently missing (aside from 2people playing irl with 1 lap top each... which then leaves out the ability to touch and feel the cards.