DesignDocument

Overview

Argentum Age is intended to be a digital Collectible Card Game which is built by a community of enthusiasts that love Collectible Card Games and desire to build it for the pure joy of building a CCG. In lieu of sophisticated analysis of a target market, we intend to simply build a game that we love and hope that there are a reasonable amount of people who have similar tastes.

Distinctive Features

• A digital CCG with a tiled board to allow for fun tactical play
• A ruleset designed specifically to make best use of a digital format.
• Caters to lovers of the genre with full "chaining/response" mechanics
• Sharp play with plenty of response spells, ability to cunningly move creatures around the map to dodge spells
• Once on the board, creatures move and behave autonomously. The focus for the player is on summoning creatures and then invoking spells that support those creatures rather than controlling them directly.
• No "pay to win" aspect at all. Not only can you obtain all cards by playing, you cannot obtain more powerful cards by paying money.
• Community-driven. Intended to allow community members to contribute to the game, with curation by project leadership to ensure quality.

Project structure

Argentum Age has both a different structure and different goals to most projects. To begin with, we are most of all interested in people who have a love for Collectible Card Games working on it. There is the potential of generating revenue eventually, but the purpose of revenue would be to sustain the project. To pay people to enable them to work on it more. The ultimate purpose is the project and making it something people love.

The project has a small leadership team which delegates broad responsibility to community members who want to become involved. We value contributors who arrive and identify areas they would like to work, rather than being told what to do -- though asking for suggestions is welcome, of course.

Game modes

Argentum Age is intended to support both single player campaigns and multiplayer with other players. This will include constructed formats, drafts, and other formats we come up with.

Collectibility

As a collectible card game, players will collect cards by playing the game. The collectibility will not be used as a method of raising revenue and so the design and pacing of the card awards will entirely be guided by making an experience that is satisfying and fun for players -- starting off with simpler cards, being awarded more and more complex and interesting cards as they play.

Revenue possibilities

The game will be free to play and players will not pay money to gain an in-game advantage over other players.

However, we hope to raise revenue by selling cosmetic items. Players may pay for cards that are 'premium' versions of basic cards. They will work exactly the same way as their regular counterparts, but may have alternate art, fancy special effects, sound effects, voice overs. They may track stats, and allow special customization by the player.

We might also raise money by charging for access to some game modes, early access to new sets (but no possibility to play with players who don't have the same access), and other features.

Initially, the small budget available for the game is dedicated almost entirely to artwork. However once the game establishes a revenue stream we will become open to the possibility of paying our most valued contributors to enable them to continue working on the project.

Lore / Setting

Argentum Age is set in a multiverse. A linked set of worlds which are all clustered around a central Spire where the powerful Shapers make battle, forming, creating, and battling over different worlds. Our own world, Terra, is quite distant from the Spire, but tales from it leak out as myths and legends. Tales of Zeus and Hercules of Thor and Loki of Kali and the Rain Serpent are all reflections of battles between shapers in the world of the Spire.

When the Spire was first created was the golden, or "gilded" age, a time of perfection. Of peace and prosperity. Perfect worlds were shaped and formed, paradise after paradise coming into being. But after the one known as Pandora opened the Jar, all of the evils within it were let out upon the universe. Many of the shapers turned against each other, instead of collaborating they fought and competed over the worlds they were shaping.

This led to a time of war but also of heroic acts of bravery. Of great giants and creatures, men and women of renown roaming out on adventure, going into battle in the worlds of the Spire. This is the Silver Age. The Argentum Age.

Argentum Age takes place in a slightly surreal fantasy world full of magic, but also with anachronistic steampunk and cyberpunk features. There will be no mundane 'modern' weapons such as guns. There might be computer-like devices, electronic-looking lights, etc.

Character diversity

Human or human-like characters in Argentum Age should be chosen with a diverse range of races and balanced gender ratios. Characters should not be sexualized.

The five schools of Magic

In Brief

School	Description
Aether	Magic of faith and the divine
Entropia	Magic of death and shadows
Gaea	Magic of nature and the wild
Minerva	Arcane magic and magic of the elements
Materia	Magic of wealth and empire

Gameplay

• The following is a description of how the schools play and the strengths and capabilities of them. If a capability is not mentioned it may exist in the school but options in schools that specialize in it will likely be better. If it is mentioned in weak access to, it may exist in a school but as a limited/weak option.

Entropia

Style

• Entropia has a theme of power at a price, and frequently the price is the players own life or sacrifice of creatures.
• Entropia has the most abilities of any school revolving around creatures dieing/being sacrificed and recovering dead creatures.
• If anything in Entropia gains life, it's likely at the expense of something else.
• Entropia spells are much more likely to cause things to lose life or directly destroy them than to deal damage.
• Entropia generally has poor combat stats for the cost, particularly in the life department but benefits from trading.

Strong Access to:

• Hard Removal
• Poison and disabling effects
• Effects that directly damage the other player

Weak Access to:

• Individual creature buffs that do not require some sacrifice
• Efficient Trading Mechanisms (First strike, range) except for drain life.
• Mobility
• Counter Magic (dodges, counterspells, reversals, applyable cover, ect.)

Aether

Style

• Aether has great ability to control the field and keep their creatures alive at the expense of having limited ability to press their advantage.
• Aether will tend much more towards creatures with high life and low attack and effects that give life than which deal damage.
• Aether tends to use efficient trading mechanisms on their creatures to deal with small threats and effects on their spells to deal with large threats.
• Aether has very limited ability to win quickly or suddenly.

Strong Access to:

• Life gain (both player and creatures) and other individual creature buffs.
• The ability to remove abilities/buffs and/or blunt enemy offenses.
• Efficient trading mechanisms particularly first strike.

Weak Access to:

• Damage
• Speed boosts
• Creatures with high stats for their price
• Direct Damage to the other player (to the point of being nearly forbidden)

Gaea

Style

• Gaea is partially focused on gaining control of the board through quantity and size/speed of its creatures.
• Gaea invocations are heavily focused on helping them push their creatures forward and through their enemies.
• Gaea is much more likely to have effects that give temporary bursts of mana than sustained mana over time.
• Gaea has access to many effects that benefit from lands particularly terrain

Strong Access to:

• Creature buffs, particularly bursty aggressive ones and speed boosts.
• Creatures that get stronger as they stay on the board.
• Creatures that are strong and/or fast.
• Effects which allow them to put many creatures on the field at a time.
• Spells which destroy lands and/or buildings

Weak Access to:

• Spells that directly damage or remove creatures (to the point of being nearly forbidden)
• Spells that directly deal damage to players (to the point of being forbidden)
• Efficient trading mechanisms
• Buildings

Materia

Style

• Materia isn't fast (in terms of style, creatures may move extra and cards may move creatures but material as a whole doesn't lend itself to lots of pressure early). and rarely does damage in any unconventional way and mostly relies on being able to be tougher than anyone else to crush through in the end.
• Like Gaea, Materia is very much focused on controlling the board with efficient creatures but with an emphasis on durability and staying power over aggression.
• Materia is exceptionally resistant to conventional damage but somewhat vulnerable to other methods of removal.
• Materia has strong permanent mana gain in its lands and options to protect it.
• Materia is much more likely to give permanent creature buffs than temporary ones.

Strong Access to:

• Permanent mana gain.
• Creature Buffs
• Buildings
• Armor

Weak Access to:

• Removal or disabling effects of any kind.
• Counter Magic Effects
• Card Draw

Minerva

Style

• Minerva has the weakest ability to efficiently put power on the board in the form of creatures but makes up for it by having by far the most versatile, varied, and powerful set of evocations of any school and the card draw to help them have just the effect they need in their hand at any time.
• Minerva is more likely to transform or deal direct damage with their invocations than they are to have access to hard removal.
• Minerva relies on trickery to protect its creatures from their generally higher stat counter parts and to keep them alive long enough to cross the enemy finish line.
• Minerva is much more likely to decrease the price of their cards than to gain mana.
• Minerva creatures are more likely than any school to have activated abilities and/or abilities that you actively have to pay attention to in your planning.

Strong Access to:

• Card Draw/Deck Manipulation/Permanent hand size bonuses
• Counter Magic Effects
• Creature Relocation
• Direct damage spells (to both creatures and players)
• Transformation and other ability nullifying effects.

Weak Access to:

• Creature buffs
• Efficient creatures
• Large creatures

Colorless:

Colorless cards should be rare and follow these style specifications.

• A colorless card should not be a card that would work well in any deck.
• Colorless cards should work around a specific mechanic or gimmick but not one that is a specific strength or weakness of any particular school.