Shandalar Clone

[Bog Wraith]

Ok, as I posted in another thread, I just now today learned about the Quest mode in Forge, as well as this awesome thread discussing a Shandalar like mode that would be added to it! It's as if I have had my wishes come true as I've wanted something very much like what is being discussed here tackled for a very long time.

I have read most of the thread here and will continue later, but I just wanted to throw my hat into the ring as far as contributing anything I can to help with this incredible endeavor. I'm not a graphic's person or a programmer, but I do, as Huggy eluded to in an earlier post, have a hell of allot of screen time devoted to playing within Shandalar.

I also have a habit over the years of adding mechanics to already published games in the way that house rules are created in various play groups. I have thought about this as it applies to Shandalar over the years and will, when time permits me, like to express those here.I just wanted to post here to let you guys know that I am now aware of this exciting project and at how impressed I am with the incredible ideas from all the folks who have shared their insight & ideas in developing the concept.

First thing I want to do is start a fresh game of Shandalar and take notes as I progress from start to finish to:

A) Refresh my memory about certain conditions that apply to the character at the start of his journey with the 10 lives & the deck of cards (depending on the colour of magic he wishes to be his main branch of), that he begins with. The interaction with the map and the creatures that inhabit Shandalar.
BTW, I do agree with doing away with the being chased by any old creature routine that is within Shandalar.

B) The interaction with the villages & cities within the plane. One interesting thing about the two has always been for me, the difference in the buy/sell price between the two sites. Always buy in the villages & sell in the cities as cards cost/sell for less in the rural areas and cost/sell for more in it's urban counterpart!

Also, someone mentioned earlier on in this thread about taking a spell from one geographical area on the map and selling said spell in a different zone as to have the value increase for that spell, i.e take a black spell and sell it in a shop on the Plains. This is in fact what happens in Shandalar. You learn which areas will pay you more for a certain coloured spell, so you hang onto it during your travels until you get to a town or city in that geographic location.

C) The randomization of the risk/reward function of the duels one partakes in, especially the difference between the random duels one gets into as opposed to the set quests that the village or city "elders" proposition you with.

D) One very important function of Shandalar that I think helps are the random "Lairs" that dot themselves around the map that contain, for the most part, Land cards that pertain to that particular Lair's Mana type, but also include some random cards as well, and even the odd "Duel this monster for these cards or you can leave quietly instead" encounter. These Lairs are invisible until you walk up close to one. One can decide from there if they want to enter them. These Lairs also have thieves stealing some of your gold, or you found some of theirs for yourself instead. The same circumstances involving your amulets would sometime present itself too.

Lastly, sometimes there is the "Diamond Mine" where you could trade your amulets for cards, or a "Nomad Bazar" (my personal favorite ) where you could buy cards from the stash of gold you had on you.

There is a ton more I could get into and will later on.

One last thing I wanted to mention is that I agree with the consensus early on in the thread about not using food or some other sustenance mechanic. I have been playing Shandalar for the nearly 15 years that the Microprose game has been extant and not once did the lack of food ever come into play as a factor in game play. In fact, the only time it's ever even an issue is within the first few turns until you sell a couple of cards to get some $.
Just remember to sell your cards in the city and go buy your supplies in the villages.

I also REALLY like the idea of using Vanguard cards in certain circumstances, probably to coincide with a different function within this Quest mode that served as the "Dungeon" mode from within Shandalar. There are other uses for modifiers using other rules, cards etc, that present themselves for this kind of game play.

I will add much more of my thoughts, suggestions and questions to you all after I complete a thorough run through of Shandalar and my notes of the gameplay from within. I hope I can spend some more time on this as my health concerns will let me. I am so impressed and fired up about how awesome this whole project is and the absolutely incredible input from everyone here in it. I'm very proud to be part of this awesome community for all the related MTG games that are here at CCGHQ!

[Jaedayr]

Just want to chime in and express my excitement at this project. I have played Shandalar since it came out and it has migrated to each computer I have had since then. I am not sure how or what I could contribute to the project but for now I will give you my full encouragement!

[Jaedayr]

Some random thoughts along the same lines as Bog Wraith's most recent post in this thread.

Your character always starts with 10 life. The easiest opponents have 4, 6, 8, or 10 life depending on the difficulty level. Other opponent's life also increases with difficulty level.

It seems to me that the clue you can receive after a win about a dungeon is usually for the one geographically closest to you at the time.

It is possible to grab all the rares in a dungeon at the easiest difficulty without fighting a single opponent some of the time.

The World Magic items range from the incredibly valuable Sword of Resistance to the rarely used ones.

I don't know if it is possible to make movement on the overland map turn based or not, but I really hate moving along roads and enemies popping up and ambushing before having a chance to react and change directions.

You are only able to save three decks in Shandalar, it would really help to be able to save more, like already exists in Forge.

Some ideas for World Magics include a horse so you could move faster on plains and a boat to allow you to cross water instead of walking all the way around the bay. Of course if you can move on the water then some of the opponents would also be able to move there as well.

[Marek14]

Jaedayr: My idea was to "burn" cards for an effect. For example, you could "burn" Fishliver Oil (removing it from your collection) in order to get "islandwalk", i.e. the ability to move through water. By burning "Divination", you would immediately receive two random cards. And so on.

To keep it in check (and also since lots of cards would have the same or similar effects and not every card has effect that could be translated), burning wouldn't be automatic, but old masters could give you the "secret technique" as a quest reward, together with one copy of the relevant card.

[Jaedayr]

Some more thoughts...

Quests for Manalinks should allow the player to decide which specific card to turn in. Losing a rare because the computer selected it rather than a common is frustrating.

Instead of one World Magic that allows every town to offer more cards for sale, perhaps purchase that ability for a specific town with gold/gems/tokens/cards etc. I just thought of this after reading the recent post by Marek14. The expanded marketplace would be for particular types of cards, either color or ability or trait. Other upgrade possibilities would be to offer more rares, ability to port to another town through a portal purchased in both towns, or upgrade the marketplace from commons to commons/uncommons, to c/u/r etc.

A hall of fame that is persistent. It would contain the difficulty, won/lost record, a score based on the outcome of the Arkazon fight, maybe the most favorite (beat the most) and least favorite (beat you the most) opponent.

One week (or some period of time) after visiting a town the cards for sale would be removed and replaced with a new selection. The timing for this would allow time to return to purchase it but also give an incentive to run all over the map to see what new cards have turned up.

[DennisBergkamp]

Awesome, thanks a lot for the input Bog Wraith and Jaedayr

For certain things, I'm thinking of deviating from what Shandalar does:

- Instead of enemies that run around on the map in real-time there will just be random encounters (the chance of a random encounter is calculated each time a different tile is being moved to). Of course, there will be quests also that have stationary (visible) enemies.
- I'm not really sure how to implement Shandalar's "P9" dungeons... instead I was thinking of just having a "dungeon" for each color, gold and colorless, that can be repeated every 24 game hours, and reward a set amount of XP/Gold and 3 - 4 random rares of the dungeon's color (very much like those special quests in quest mode).
- No more manalinks (I seem to remember Shandalar turning into a game of having to run frantically from town to town protecting one's manalinks), instead I'll just give +1 life per level up, and a few shop upgrades that could increase life.

Anyway, more later, I gotta run!
What do you guys think?

[Chris H.]

I never played Shandalar as it was not available for my Mac and running emulator software was to slow for gaming. I think that a real-time quest could become to hectic for most people. I want to be able to take a quick break when it is needed.

I still like the idea of having some opponent decks be randomly generated. We could modify the existing code to make this easy or we could rewrite the code from scratch.

Having ante matches for this third quest mode could give it a different flavor. But it might become too easy to win mox and quickly get rich. We may need to consider this option carefully.

[Marek14]

The dungeons in Shandalar were basically a high-risk/high-reward environment. That could be simulated by, say, a gauntlet match where you have to beat several enemies in the row without saving.

Since I'm playing Disgaea 3 right now, I suddenly had a vision of random dungeons inside your cards

[Jaedayr]

In order to get all the rewards from a dungeon (always tucked away in a far corner of the map, you have to defeat everyone in your path, however many that is, without losing. If you lose inside a dungeon you get kicked out and the dungeon disappears. I think you have to gather more clues to find out its new location.

One other thing about opponents. If you played the same deck/color long enough some of them would add cards to their deck to counter what you were doing, for example adding a Circle of Protection or two. I try to keep two different color decks and switch out every so often to keep them guessing.

Every Shandalar match was an ante match. Of course it seems like the opponent never put up a nice rare whereas my newest and best rares had a very high appearance rate.

Random encounters are fine, except when trying to actually get to someplace specific. Maybe instead of getting ambushed immediately a message to the effect that there is an enemy to the north/east/whichever direction, and if you continue to move in that direction you will have to fight.

[Rob Cashwalker]

As I suggested earlier, dungeons should simply be handled as tournaments in towns. No need to hide them in corners, you will always know where you can go to play in a 3 or 4 round tournament against local color aligned (and allied multi-color) opponents. Pay an entrance fee, win the normal random card(s) or ante or gold for each opponent and hopefully win the tournament pot, which may be more than just gold as the game progresses.

[Marek14]

As for ante play, I think that it needs to be in the game (after all, there are cards that won't work otherwise), but not as the default model. My idea was to have "gambling halls", run by Tempest Efreets and Timmerian Fiends (only encounterable there), where ante cards can be used and ante matches are normal. However, to make them a bit harder, I'd suggest to auto-save the game AFTER every game played there, regardless of whether you win or lose, so a card lost to ante match is really lost. Of course, this would be posted on the door as a warning, but the idea is that players should learn to NOT use their rarest cards in these halls.

As for the tournaments and dungeons, I think there's a fundamental difference. Tournaments are meant to be fair. Everyone obeys the same rules. I see tournaments as a very white concept, and maybe the defining characteristic of tournament might be that it will have special deckbuilding rules. For example, a Knight tournament might require you to play at least twenty creature cards with the type Knight, and no creature without that type. Or the tournament might require that you only play basic Islands as your lands, and all your nonland cards are blue. But those rules would hold equally for you and for the opponents. And the prizes would vary as well... a white-aligned tournament might give you a minor prize even if you lose the final match, and I can envision a black tournament where the "winner" is chosen as a new body of an undead king... so if you win, you have to fight him next as a surprise boss.

Tournaments can also have extra win/loss conditions. For example, an exhibition match that can be won by having ten nontoken creatures with different names on the battlefield at once. Or tournament that gives both players Leyline of Sanctity... and decrees that the player who removes one of them from the battlefield loses for unsportsmanlike conduct.

Or I can even envision a tournament where both players start with a bunch of lands and creatures already on the battlefield... plus Lich. Ouch.

On the other hand, dungeons are fundamentally UNFAIR. You are an intruder who has to brave everything.

In Shandalar, your life totals were carried over between dungeon matches. I don't see that as such a good idea -- I remember my brother building a deck that abused Spirit Link in order to boost his life as much as possible. The big life total then absorbed damage when he got off to a bad start, so it was almost impossible for him to lose. The idea might still work, but there has to be a rule that if you end the match with more life than your normal maximum, the excess doesn't carry over.

The dungeons would, unlike tournaments, have rules that favor enemies. Extra cards, etc...

[Bog Wraith]

As for the dungeon replacement whatever it might be, this is where Vanguard cards could be used to give the AI player an advantage similar to what was done in Shandalar in that they had the advantage.

One thing to remember is that in your travels in Shandalar, you would get clues as to what was in the dungeon in the form of what colour of magic was being cast within along with other tidbits of information so that you could fine tune your deck at the nearest village before entering the dungeon. Maybe this could be some how implemented via clues given from defeated enemies or from other sources from within the Quest mode.

Knowing what kind of Vanguard card was waiting for you could be earned by the player via a duel or successful quest outcome and have the player given the option to either take the cards won, or get a clue for the Vanguard card, a similar mechanic which is used in Shandalar.

[Rob Cashwalker]

Don't forget, that this is Forge, not Shandalar.... I don't think every detail of Shandalar needs to be replicated. Some concepts, sure, but not a CLONE persay. We have the advantage of a gradual roll-out of this feature, so more of these features can be added later, but the basic functionality of hopping around on a map is intriguing enough for most folks that we don't need all the advanced stuff like dungeons, ante, vanguard, etc. Simply adapting what we have now is more than most of us ever imagined.

One of the things I recently realized one could do with the quest mode right now, is choose your deck based on one of the opponents you're presented with. In simpler terms, you don't have to run through Quest mode with just one deck that you make more and more powerful... make multiple decks, that essentially become pre-sideboarded against specific opponents.

When presented with a random encounter, tournament entrance or "adventure quest match", you should still be able to select your preferred deck. Knowing that you're in a Black-aligned territory, is all you really need to know in order to prepare an anti-black deck.

Also, I think the way our current quests begin with 15 life is a huge handicap. At least it was for me, until I paid my way to 25 life.... Beginning a new match with your previous ending life total is even worse.

[DennisBergkamp]

One of the things I recently realized one could do with the quest mode right now, is choose your deck based on one of the opponents you're presented with. In simpler terms, you don't have to run through Quest mode with just one deck that you make more and more powerful... make multiple decks, that essentially become pre-sideboarded against specific opponents.

Yup, this is exactly how I play quest matches... I build some mean white colorhate decks and play them against the AIs monocolored decks

Anyway, I'd like to make the dungeons in a similar style as in Shandalar... but I'm not sure how to implement them yet exactly, the background would have to change to some interior dungeon view.
Another thought I had was to make the dungeons much bigger, don't have life totals carry over, hide loot all over the place, stuff in random encounters as well as stationary enemies, have the main treasure (which could be some P9 card, like a Mox, or possibly a bunch of rares, ..) in some corner of the dungeon, exiting a dungeon would be fine, and progress in terms of enemies slain would be saved and could be continued at a later point.

[Bog Wraith]

Don't forget, that this is Forge, not Shandalar.... I don't think every detail of Shandalar needs to be replicated. Some concepts, sure, but not a CLONE persay. We have the advantage of a gradual roll-out of this feature, so more of these features can be added later, but the basic functionality of hopping around on a map is intriguing enough for most folks that we don't need all the advanced stuff like dungeons, ante, vanguard, etc. Simply adapting what we have now is more than most of us ever imagined.

I don't mean to clone Shandalar either. I simply am doing what I said I would in my above first post; point out what & how things are done in the original game and relate that to what I have read so far in the posts here. Also, I want to make sure that those who haven't played the Microprose game before are aware of what the gameplay was like and how the mechanics of it were implemented.

I agree with you Rob, I don't want a clone of Shandalar either. When I feel like playing it, I simply fire it up & play. Oh, I wish we in the ManaLink project could have implemented all the new cards to have worked in Shandalar, but that is where that desire to change that game resides, not to bring it to Forge.

I just want to point out all the different and neat features of Shandalar here so that all can see and think about what equivalents and differences that they would like to see. I too want a new experience and as I've said, alot of what I've read in this thread has got me very keen!