A few years ago I made this (which is filled with terrible things and NSFW): playpen.farbs.org It was fun, and for a while it flourished. It currently contains over 8,000 pages of occasionally coherent adventure. More recently I've wondered whether we could do something like this for Card Hunter. Instead of creating an interlinked series of pictures, we would create an interlinked series of custom boards. So, for example, a board might represent a tavern on the outskirts of a town, with the town gates being the next board to the West, and a forest board being to the East. Anybody who wants to GM a campaign can then use these as a world in which to tell their story, hopping between scenarios in quick succession as the player adventures about the place. I have a bunch of ideas about how to set this up, but before I get into details I'd really like to know if there's any interest for it. Hence: The Poll! EDIT: Arg, typo in the poll and I can't change it.
I think something like this would add a lot to the life and color to CardHunter. It might be best to hold off of this until co-op mode is completely fleshed out. GM'n for one player isn't as fun.
Ah, good point. Has anyone tried playing co-op via screen sharing / streaming, or just by having multiple people sit around the same monitor? Even though the game doesn't explicitly support it there's nothing to stop people effectively playing co-op by assigning decisions about two of the three player characters to other people. I'd certainly like to try that some time.
Just had a similar thought, and posted it somewhere else. Mostly copied below: I'm a fan of alternate routes in games, as they can encourage replayability and make you feel a little like you are exploring. Basically, you enter a dungeon and play the first board. Once thats completed you can exit the dungeon by clicking by any of the board edges. Possibly this is done by clicking on door icons, where they are shown on the edge of the board, or on some staircases to descend or ascend a level. When you move to the next board you fight a new batch of monsters. Win and you can continue, and either backtrack (monsters will have respawned in your previous locations and you'll have to fight again), or continue to explore. Difficulty increases, and treasure improves each level you descend (or ascend, if its a wizards tower, or a nobles house), but unless you make it back out to the surface you don't get to keep the treasures you've earned in the dungeon. I figure like the extra campaign challenges, you'd probably want to limit replays to one party wipe (unless players use Pizza to buy a revive - which they might want to if they are about to lose their hard won loot) The "maps" don't need to be symmetrical, and a certain amount of enemy randomisation would also add to the replayability and uncertainty. How far do you go in, before retracing your steps? I dont think you'd need to provide a map to players either, instead leaving it in their hands to map out the route theyve taken. I appreciate that you'd need to make a lot of maps to make this work, and I dont know how easy that would be. In my head its something like 5x5 (25 boards) on each level, with several levels. Which seems like a lot, but I guess if everyone chips in with custom maps it could be very doable!
Seems like this just wouldn't have the same feel. Trying to dictate decisions on movement would be hard, I tried letting my gf play a couple rounds and my cardinal directions were confusing her terribly when she asked me where she should move the character to. And passing a mouse around every few seconds also seems a bit too much. With that being said, I could totally get down on some fun scenarios like this in a co-op mode. I hope this becomes a reality!
I'm trying to understand it still. Do you mean like you would click on the map and it would populate with custom adventures? I can see that being interesting. Maybe if we get tons of adventures it would allow a drop down to pop up and you could select from multiple adventures.
For the pure joy of creating a world, I'd say do it. Just making stuff and having it "be real" by being able to walk from map to map. Of course, as discussed, the gameplay that came out of it might be limited: too much new coding might be required to have a proper GM-and-players experience here. But great things can come out of a "pretty but pointless" beginning.
This is something that I have been thinking about since I started playing Cardhunter. I would love to play a campaign style adventure against a live opponent rather than Gary. Making it an interconnected map or series of adventures would give it some added authenticity and increase the overall experience. With or without co-op, it would be a lot of fun.
http://vanth.pbworks.com/w/page/10255096/FrontPage Thought I'd throw in another approach to world building - there are some references to famous wizards, warriors, and priests in the item naming, and the campaign drops a few map location names. We could do the same for Cardhuntria. This link is a lexicon for the RPG 'Encounter Critical', which is quite cool of itself. http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/encounter-critical.htm
