CCG Concept: Battle Maidens

[TheKmank]

Hey guys I have had this idea floating around in my head for some time of a hentai ccg, as a dedicated card game player myself I think it would be an interesting idea and wanted to get opinions etc on what I have so far.
...


Battle Maidens

Theme
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Maidens fighting to defend their town from monsters attempting to spread their seed to the local towns women.

Types of cards
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Battle Maidens (BM) - these are the main cards and represent the players assortment of heroes ready to protect their town.

Monsters - These are the creatures that are trying to seed the women of the town,  but they might have a bit of fun of with  the battle maidens if they get a chance.

Events - During the game certain events may occur to change different aspects of the battle these stay around until the next event is played.

Spells - Certain BM and monsters can cast spells that can change what happens during  the turn.

Special Actions - These cards allow the BM or monster to preform a special action, such as a flying kick to the face, in which  effects the turn.

Equipment - Weapons and armour and other gadgets can be added to monsters and BMs  to boost certain stats and/or give the wielder new abilities.

Objective
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Each town's magical barrier can only take so much punishment before the monsters break through 7 hits from any monster. After the barrier falls the town will be overrunned. Luckely if your neighbours' town falls first, the monsters will divert their attention from your town and go take the easier target. Until then your Battle Maidens must hold out.

More on game play
----------------
Player's BM will have to fight the other player's monsters and vise versa trying to take down each others' barrier. A lot is still in the process of being designed.

Note
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I am basically putting this out there to let the community voice their opinions and ideas as this is still in the concept stage of development. I would most likely get it set up on Lackey CCG as a starting point and for testing.

[MrB]

As a longtime CCG player myself, I'm definitely interested in this. 
 
My first thoughts:
 
- I cannot really picture what you have in mind for the spell cards. Are those cards that can only be used if you have a magic user maiden or monster in play?
If so, you should take care to include enough of those maidens and monsters in the initial set. Otherwise it might be good to not include spell cards right away, but add them later in an expansion (shaking up the game too with new rules, forcing players to rethink strategies and rebuild decks =) )
 
- How will the economy of the game be handled? Or differently said, how will we pay for playing cards? (My first thought would be having something like Magic: the Gathering's land cards. Maybe you could have "location" cards, representing buildings in and around your city? For example, warrior and mage guilds for the maidens and breeding pits and hunting grounds for monsters.
Of course, this would make deckbuilding more difficult, since you'd need to include at least 2 kinds of location cards in your deck, one for the maidens and 1 for the monsters.
(Oh, this all assumes you'll be including different "colors" in the game of course. Are you planning that?)
A different route would be to have a set amount of points to buy/play cards with every turn (and maybe being able to carry over some of them into the next turn, up to a certain maximum?)
 
- One of the biggest aspects of CCGs is of course trading and collecting cards (and subsequently building decks with your hard-earned cards). If you set this up, I think it would be great, maybe even essential, if there's a structure built around it, where this aspect is fleshed out. Maybe a forum where players could trade and set up matches?
As for distribution of the cards, maybe players could get a booster pack for free each week, but only if they posted in a booster pack claiming thread on the forum in that week? (These should contain only few cards of course)
 
- How will the Hentai aspect come into play? If the game is about fighting, I can't really imagine most of the cards having different images than scantily clad maidens fighting (like with the Queen's Blade CCG). Will there be anything in addition to that?
My own initial thoughts, building on the collecting part: maybe you could include rare hentai cards which you can only obtain by winning games? These would probably be event cards, but otherwise maybe also "equipment" cards of the "gadget" variety? =P You'd have to find a way to track wins then of course.

[necno]

Sounds very cool. You should write up a design document detailing everything and then pitch it to someone

[TheKmank]

- I cannot really picture what you have in mind for the spell cards. Are those cards that can only be used if you have a magic user maiden or monster in play?
If so, you should take care to include enough of those maidens and monsters in the initial set. Otherwise it might be good to not include spell cards right away, but add them later in an expansion (shaking up the game too with new rules, forcing players to rethink strategies and rebuild decks =) )

Well my original idea was to make them only available to be used by spell casters, I would have about 50% of the BM have this ability in the initial set and at least 25% of the monsters. But my main problem is if this would make the game imbalanced ie why choose a non spell caster? Although I might stick with this idea and just make the spell casters lacking in combat or more "expensive" to play (see bellow)
 

- How will the economy of the game be handled? Or differently said, how will we pay for playing cards? (My first thought would be having something like Magic: the Gathering's land cards. Maybe you could have "location" cards, representing buildings in and around your city? For example, warrior and mage guilds for the maidens and breeding pits and hunting grounds for monsters.
Of course, this would make deckbuilding more difficult, since you'd need to include at least 2 kinds of location cards in your deck, one for the maidens and 1 for the monsters.
(Oh, this all assumes you'll be including different "colors" in the game of course. Are you planning that?)
A different route would be to have a set amount of points to buy/play cards with every turn (and maybe being able to carry over some of them into the next turn, up to a certain maximum?)

I also had the same idea with a mtg style payment system, but I wanted to steer clear of too many similarities to avoid the whole "your game is just like __________" My original idea (one that may definitely be subject to change) is to start with a certain amount of "gold" per turn that is used to play cards from your hand, this gold would be able to be increased by playing certain cards. A side idea was to take the game to a more RPG-esk way and in addition to the above have the Maidens gain gold per turn by defeating monsters or have the monsters gain gold per turn by capturing (a mechanic I will explain later in the development phase) Maidens. If you have any ideas on this I am open to suggestion.

As for colours I was thinking of using a faction system but as I write this I realise that might get a bit complicated, so instead I will be using a "type" system. Eg. a Goblin foot soldier would have the "goblin" type.

- One of the biggest aspects of CCGs is of course trading and collecting cards (and subsequently building decks with your hard-earned cards). If you set this up, I think it would be great, maybe even essential, if there's a structure built around it, where this aspect is fleshed out. Maybe a forum where players could trade and set up matches?
As for distribution of the cards, maybe players could get a booster pack for free each week, but only if they posted in a booster pack claiming thread on the forum in that week? (These should contain only few cards of course)

I like this idea, if the card game takes off this is definitely something I would set up.

- How will the Hentai aspect come into play? If the game is about fighting, I can't really imagine most of the cards having different images than scantily clad maidens fighting (like with the Queen's Blade CCG). Will there be anything in addition to that?
My own initial thoughts, building on the collecting part: maybe you could include rare hentai cards which you can only obtain by winning games? These would probably be event cards, but otherwise maybe also "equipment" cards of the "gadget" variety? =P You'd have to find a way to track wins then of course.

Well besides having the BMs scantily clad, I am going to make almost all the other cards have a hentai flair to them this will include artwork and flavour text, there is also an idea in the mix of having a "rape" event side deck for when a monster defeats a maiden.

Necno-
I was thinking about keeping this non-profit, my vision is to have a game that has its own client that people can run, build their decks and play against each other.

[megamanx]

i could get behind this as i am a big fan of CCG's

[MrB]

Although I might stick with this idea and just make the spell casters lacking in combat or more "expensive" to play (see bellow)

 
That sounds like an excellent idea! I'd vote for making them weaker in combat; after all their combat strength should lie in spells. Also, you'd need money to cast the spells too, so making the mages more expensive might make the deck too expensive. Finding the right balance could be tricky, but that's what playtesting is for. 
 

My original idea (one that may definitely be subject to change) is to start with a certain amount of "gold" per turn that is used to play cards from your hand, this gold would be able to be increased by playing certain cards. A side idea was to take the game to a more RPG-esk way and in addition to the above have the Maidens gain gold per turn by defeating monsters or have the monsters gain gold per turn by capturing (a mechanic I will explain later in the development phase) Maidens. If you have any ideas on this I am open to suggestion.
 
As for colours I was thinking of using a faction system but as I write this I realise that might get a bit complicated, so instead I will be using a "type" system. Eg. a Goblin foot soldier would have the "goblin" type.

Ah, much better than the M:tG land system! Having the same currency pay for both the BMs and the Monsters sidesteps the problem of needing to include multiple land types in every deck really well. 

I would still advocate the use of "colors" though, for strategy options and flavour purposes. The strongest cards in each color would then need you to commit and build a deck around that color, which in turn leads to more flavour in the decks.
 
Maybe besides gold, you can also have the currency "darkness"? ("The depravity and general ickyness of your city attracts some more unsavoury types of adventurers". Or "well versed in evil magic, you mastered the art of summoning dark monsters to do your bidding".) Then at the beginning of the game, you would have to choose how much of each you will get each turn, and get stuck with that amount for the entire game? Like: "6 gold and no darkness", or "2 gold and 4 darkness" per turn.
That would open up the flavour of certain cities being more evil/depraved while others could be more typical fantasy genre type cities.
 
Darkness bought BMs would maybe be represented with more fetishy artwork, latex and piercings or something. Maybe also torturers and executioners and dark witches? Darkness bought monsters would be of the Vampire/Horror/Tentacle Fiend variety. Of course, dark BMs and Monsters could have access to nasty special abilities as well (more targeted attacks?)
Gold bought BMs would then be the regular mercenary/adventurer types and gold bought monsters could be like the goblins you had planned. Basically "humanoid" monsters that live in a somewhat structured society themselves. Maybe their special abilities would be more suited to working together and giving each other bonuses?
 
Added to this, you can still have the types, like "Goblin", to add another layer of strategy. (Like having goblins both in the gold bought and darkness bought variety, to encourage multi-colour deckbuilding if you want to build a goblin deck)
 

Well besides having the BMs scantily clad, I am going to make almost all the other cards have a hentai flair to them this will include artwork and flavour text, there is also an idea in the mix of having a "rape" event side deck for when a monster defeats a maiden.

A side deck could work very well! Or if not, maybe just a separate type of card for the main deck would be enough? You could call them "Punishment" or "Sentence" cards or something. =P
These cards should give a bonus while played or in play. For example, if you manage to have your monsters rape a BM and play one of these cards, it might increase your monster morale, adding to the combat strength of your monsters in play.
 
Oh, another currency in the game could maybe be "prisoners". Basically, if you capture an opposing battle maiden or monster card, you can keep it in your "dungeon" pile. Then, if you draw a "Sentence" card, you can use those prisoners to pay with.
"Sentence: Bread and games! Cost: one prisoner - Battle Maiden. The prisoner 'performs' with some monsters in your stadium. Gain 6 gold entrance fees. Discard this card."
"Sentence: Filthy little whores! Cost: three prisoners - Battle Maiden. You open a new brothel in your city and these three are the star attraction. Gain 3 gold extra per turn."
 
Ooh, maybe a player could then also pay darkness points to put his own BMs or monsters in his dungeon pile, to pay for a Sentence card he has in his hand? Sacrifice your own people for the greater good/longterm benefit; that could open up some interesting strategy possibilities!
And maybe some rare, high gold cost and low combat power, BMs might have the ability to free cards from your opponent's dungeon too?
 
Hmmm, but all this darkness talk is getting a bit out of hand for something that was just a loose idea of mine. I'll stop for now, before this reply spins off even further. =P Let me know what you think of adding a second/darkness color and if I should try and think of more possibilities for it. 

[DocClox]

I must admit, I like the way this is shaping up. I've never been a big CCG player, so I don't think I have a lot to contribute in that respect, but I'll be interested to see how this one develops.

[Ctwo]

Just some thoughts. Having the Battlemaidens get more defenders during the fight seems counter-intuative. Shouldn't the town start with its best defenders out there already and at full strength?
 
My suggestion would be to alocate so many points total towards a defense team. The entire team starts on the battlefield with full equipment, all spells avaialble and full members. Have spells work a little differently than normal TCGs in that you can choose to use it anytime BUT when you do they become unavailable for X turns afterward. Also give spells a "mana cost" which one single mage has to be able to cast or introduce rules for several spell casters to combine their efforts.
 
I would suggest multiple types of spell casters so peole have to vary their force. Arcane and Divine at a bare minimum. I'd actually suggest you give a school name for each kind of caster so you can add more types as the game progresses.
 
The monster deck should be a more traditional spend limited resources kind of thing. One thing you could do that is different is have a base line resource card (call it a region or location card) which gives the starting coin and any special recruiting bonuses or other special effects for where the monsters come from. Then you can play additional resource cards. The non-location resource cards can be attacked by the defenders, but they risk having the battlemaidens captured, defeated or worse.
 
Something that could be interesting is allowing the monster player to play cards face down. When you buy monsters you put a number of tokens on the back of the face down card to say how much you spent on it. You can spend more, but if you spend less it is placed on the bottom of the deck after you turn it up. This way the defenders have to guess when they face new monsters. If you allow both sides to start face down, then the monster player has to flip first and the defender doesn't have to flip in response to fakes.
 
Another mechanic you could use is "waves" of attackers. Based on the number of resources the monster player has is how many mosters he can send at once. This way the monster player can't simply save up until he can swamp the defenders in one turn. It also gives a larger reason for the defender to take out monster resources.
 
You should include some cards that specifically allow you to do things with captured maidens that lower the effectiveness of the defenders.
 
For a play order I'd suggest: monster player draws, monster player plays new resources/monsters, defender chooses actions, monster player chooses actions, resolve attacks.

[TheKmank]

Thanks guys for your ideas, I should have the basic mechanics explanation by Tuesday. I will also answer all the questions in due time

MrB-

"Maybe besides gold, you can also have the currency "darkness"? ("The depravity and general ickyness of your city attracts some more unsavoury types of adventurers". Or "well versed in evil magic, you mastered the art of summoning dark monsters to do your bidding".) Then at the beginning of the game, you would have to choose how much of each you will get each turn, and get stuck with that amount for the entire game? Like: "6 gold and no darkness", or "2 gold and 4 darkness" per turn.
That would open up the flavour of certain cities being more evil/depraved while others could be more typical fantasy genre type cities. "

I like the idea of having more then one type of currency (currently I have only decided on gold as being one of 2 or maybe 3 forms of currency) which would be decided by a "Town Card" this would be one card that is chosen by the player to represent the town and would have the base currency per turn as well as any special abilities of that town.

"A side deck could work very well! Or if not, maybe just a separate type of card for the main deck would be enough? You could call them "Punishment" or "Sentence" cards or something. =P
These cards should give a bonus while played or in play. For example, if you manage to have your monsters rape a BM and play one of these cards, it might increase your monster morale, adding to the combat strength of your monsters in play."

I really like that idea as well as the prisoner pile idea in fact I am going to implement the prisoner pile in some form.


Ctwo-

I was more heading towards a having to hire BM's opposed to a war of attrition, although I did have an idea to have the players start the game by playing one low cost BM on the field from their initial hand, this would represent the town's current protector. As the game progresses the town would hire more BM to combat the rising amounts of monsters attacking the town. I think you missed that the player controls both the BM's defending their town and the monster's attacking the other player's town.

EDIT:

Ok I have decided on the 3 types of currency

Gold, Soul Gems and Mana Crystals to play a card the player will be required to spend the amount noted on the card being played.

And now for my prototype properties for each type of card:

Battle Maidens
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Name- The name of the BM
Faction- Every maiden belongs to a faction, this may be targeted by other cards
Class- This represents what kind of combatant the BM is, this may also be targeted by other cards
Cost- This is how much the BM costs to play on the field
Attack- How much damage a BM will do in combat
Armour- How much breakable armour the BM has before she starts taking life damage
Life- How much damage a BM can take before she becomes helpless
Resistance- How much a BM needs to be raped before being taken prisoner
Abilities- Certain BMs have different abilities that can be use as described on the card

Monsters
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Name- ******
Species- Similar to Class and Faction of BMs
Cost- ******
Attack- ******
Armour- ******
Life- Same as BM except when reached the creature is dead
Pleasure- How much resistance is removed from a BM when the creature rapes her
Abilities- ******

Event
-----
Name- ******
Cost- ******
Priority- If an event card is already in play the event being played must have a higher or equal priority to supersede it
Effect- The effect of the card is explained here

Spell
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Name- ******
School- What school of magic the spell is from
Cost- ******
Monster/Battle Maiden/Universal- determines what type of card(s) can use the spell (only spell casters can use spells)
Effect- ******

Special Action
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Name- ******
Cost- ******
Monster/Battle Maiden/Universal- ****** (only non-spell casters can use special attacks)
Effect- ******

Equipment
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Name- ******
Permanent/Consumable - This dictates weather the equipment stays on the BM/monster or is a one time use
Monster/Battle Maiden/Universal- ******
Cost- ******
Effect- ******

Town
----
Name- ******
Terrain- What environment the town is located in
Barrier- Determines the amount of times the barrier needs to be hit before it is destroyed and the town is overrunned
Income- Determines the amount of gold/soul gems and mana crystals the town gets a turn to spend
Capacity- Determines the maximum amount of gold/soul gems and mana crystals that can be "stored" in the town's vault to be used next turn
Abilities- ******

Conquest
--------
Name- ******
Cost- ******
Requirement- How many BM must be removed from the prison to play the card
Effect- ******

(****** functions the same as previously described)

[MrB]

I like the idea of having more then one type of currency (currently I have only decided on gold as being one of 2 or maybe 3 forms of currency) which would be decided by a "Town Card" this would be one card that is chosen by the player to represent the town and would have the base currency per turn as well as any special abilities of that town.

Having Town Cards is a good idea.    Gives it a bit more flavour to name and see the towns you're fighting with and for. It might be a bit strange flavour-wise if both players picked the same town though, but I guess instead of conquering another town, the players could be nobles fighting for control of their town or something.
I'd suggest a horizontal layout for the Town Cards, to have them stand apart from the normal cards. They probably don't need text anyway. =)
 

Event
-----
Priority- If an event card is already in play the event being played must have a higher or equal priority to supersede it

 
I'm curious as to what this means. Does this mean that you can only have one event in play at all time? If so, I'd advise against the priority system, since that could cause event cards to durn dead/unplayable in your hand for most of the game, if their priority is lower. Or you could include a mechanic (either in the rules or on BMs/monsters) where you can discard cards for effects/currency, of course. =)
Or is the superceding part just to resolve possible conflicting mechanics between event cards?
 
I'm very much looking forward to reading about your game mechanics. 
I'm curious what you have planned for armour and life. I'm guessing only one of the two replenishes at the end of the turn? It would help very nicely with the raping/hentai part if the BMs got weaker over time. =P
Oh, I bet you've been planning to include BMs/monsters/spells/actions that can bypass armour too?

[Ctwo]

Ctwo-

I was more heading towards a having to hire BM's opposed to a war of attrition, although I did have an idea to have the players start the game by playing one low cost BM on the field from their initial hand, this would represent the town's current protector. As the game progresses the town would hire more BM to combat the rising amounts of monsters attacking the town. I think you missed that the player controls both the BM's defending their town and the monster's attacking the other player's town.

I fully realized what you were proposing. I'm thinking more of the meta-game. What I was trying to point out was that your going to have a problem ballancing out the growth of the defensive team VS the growth of the offensive team. Unless the player is playing with 2 different decks, drawing cards from both decks at the same time, and has 2 different pools of currency (one for monsters, one for his own town) then your going to see decks specialized in an all or nothing early game win strategy or an all out defense deck that specializes in an end game lets summon an unstoppable army in 3 turns kind of development. While what your developing is fairly standard for TCG rules builds, it is more complicated than most TCGs and could lead to very long turns with a very long overall game length.

[MrB]

Unless the player is playing with 2 different decks, drawing cards from both decks at the same time, and has 2 different pools of currency (one for monsters, one for his own town) then your going to see decks specialized in an all or nothing early game win strategy or an all out defense deck that specializes in an end game lets summon an unstoppable army in 3 turns kind of development.

I'm not sure this will be that much of a problem, since it should work both ways. If you focus on monsters a lot for a quick assault, then you'll have less BMs to defend with, so your opponent's attacks will get through more often too. And if you just stock up on BMs and don't attack, then your opponent's BM's will pile up too and very possibly be able to gang up on and stop the few powerful monsters you're able to summon at the end.
 
One of the biggest draws in TCGs for me is having options for wildly different strategies, so personally, I'd love to try and build an assault heavy deck and see if I can survive my opponent's counterattacks too. =)
 
But you're right of course that things will have to be balanced well. Especially cheap overpowered monsters would be very bad. That could devolve the game into seeing which player can draw the powerful critter first...

[Ctwo]

I'm not sure this will be that much of a problem, since it should work both ways. If you focus on monsters a lot for a quick assault, then you'll have less BMs to defend with, so your opponent's attacks will get through more often too. And if you just stock up on BMs and don't attack, then your opponent's BM's will pile up too and very possibly be able to gang up on and stop the few powerful monsters you're able to summon at the end.
 
One of the biggest draws in TCGs for me is having options for wildly different strategies, so personally, I'd love to try and build an assault heavy deck and see if I can survive my opponent's counterattacks too. =)
 
But you're right of course that things will have to be balanced well. Especially cheap overpowered monsters would be very bad. That could devolve the game into seeing which player can draw the powerful critter first...

When your making a game, you make it with an idea play style in mind. A sort of "this is how I want the game to be played, and a match should take about this long to play". I'm worried about the match either being too short to be satisfying or worse, getting drawn out so long it becomes booring. The game really should favor a ballanced deck, with people trying more extreme decks because they are technically possible even if not fully supported with enough cards to carry out the stratigy. I'm hoping an early warning will save time in later development without having to tweak the rules too much after they have begun to be tested.

[MrB]

@CTwo
I fully agree that balanced decks should be the starting point and goal for the design. I'm not convinced though that to help facilitate that, the game should have separate rules for playing BMs and monsters. I think (or I hope) having the same rules should be enough.
 
Especially in TCGs, it pays off to have as simple core rules as possible. If the core rules are solid, you can then always expand on that and add new rules in expansions to shake things up. As such, I'd vote for having both BMs and monsters working with the same rules as much as possible.
For example, you can have the 3 currencies in the game pay for both BMs and monsters instead of a possible separate 3 currencies for BMs and 3 currencies for monsters. (I realize you proposed the BM force to be already deployed at the start of the game, which would avoid separate currencies, but if TheKmank goes the route of playing BMs during the game, I think it would be best to have the same currencies apply to BMs and monsters.)
 
But playtesting would have to be done well to avoid favouring the extreme decks you mentioned. I'm hoping those deck ideas will be self-limiting though. As I said, I expect an agressive deck to take more than normal damage as well because its defenses are weak. (If it still proves to be overpowered, maybe TheKmank could include a cost for attacking? Something like "1 mana crystal, gold or soul gem per attacking monster" or something.)
A defensive, boring, deck could be a greater problem. The prisoner pile/conquest cards should combat that though. If you only play BMs to try to create a lock down, you're not attacking, and as such, you won't take any prisoners. Your opponent however will take prisoners, and during the game, with a few conquest cards, he could gain the advantage he needs to then break through your defenses.
Or at least I hope so. =P Again, playtesting should prove whether this is viable or not. =)
 
If not, then having a deployed BM force at the beginning of the game could be the answer (maybe somehow with limited playing during the game?). Somehow, I like the idea of building up your BM force during the game better though. I dunno. Maybe because having fixed defenses takes out a bit of unpredictability? It could be exciting to hope to draw a much needed BM next turn. =)
(That's not to say I dislike your ideas with a fixed starting BM force and monster summoning through attackable resources. That would certainly be a unique design for a TCG. =) It reminds me a bit of the Star Trek and Battletech TCGs. Have you played those?)

[Begferdeth]

Have you ever played the Werewolf the Apocalypse card game? (I believe it was called Rage or something like that). It that one, both players played a pack of werewolves. They started with their full pack (Max number determined by a total point value, kind of like Warhammer or Battletech), and then could play monsters into the middle to attack for victory points. You could do something similar, with both players having a bunch of battle maidens, then playing tentacle monsters into the middle to attack/be attacked by. Defeating them gives victory points or whatever, but losing ends up with your Maidens captured and tentacled.


The monsters are mostly independent once played (Both sides have Battle Maidens, and I don't think tentacle monsters would be picky!) so balance would take care of itself. Play a small goomba, and easy points for the other side. Play a giant rape-beast, and it could take you out too.




Also, you could easily start with hometowns in play too. Make them generic, so that its not odd when both sides start in the City of Townsville. Like, "City: 100 women before they are all tentacle-surprise-sexed, but monsters get one extra surprise attack before all the BM can cross the whole city to fight it" or "Small house in the dark scary woods: 2 women, but you can attack one more monster a turn because you live so close to them".