Rune Masters

The Journey So Far

This page represents a product currently in development.

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A deeply strategic trading card game with elements of turn based strategies.

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Project Type: Individual/Team

Platform: Physical

Timeframe: 2017-2022

Position: Everything except artist.

Tools Used: Photoshop, Gamecrafter

Overview

     Rune Masters is a turn-based strategy trading card game I developed at Champlain College. I had the idea brewing in my mind for a while, and finally got the chance to start making it in my Advanced Seminar in Game Design in early 2017.

     Since then, I have polished the rules and created a 200 card Alpha set mostly by myself.

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     The game features two players facing each other over a gridded board. Each player has a single, powerful creature leading their army, their Avatar. The main win condition of the game is to defeat the opponent's Avatar. Players can summon monsters and cast powerful spells to help turn the tides of battle. More information on the specifics can be found in the Rules document at the end of this section.

The Original Idea

     The original idea for Rune Masters was a trading card game that was somewhere between Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. Not as complex as D&D, but more so than Magic, but not as long as D&D either. Just a happy medium.

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     In general, players would have a single, powerful creature, and Avatar, to lead their armies. Defeating your opponent's Avatar was how you won. Players would also be able to summon creatures to their side and cast spells. Everything took place on a gridded battlefield, making positioning important.

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     The first problem I ran into was even with being a halfway point, things were still way to complex for a trading card game. There simply wasn't enough room on the creature cards for all the information each needed to convey. Hit Rates, Crit Rates, Dodge Rates, not to mention staples like Health and Damage, and so many more. I could have just increased the size of the cards, but I felt there was just to much information for people to be able to sit down and play.

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     The next iteration of the game got rid of some of the extraneous stats and systems, just having Health, Mana, Movement Speed, Armor and Damage Die. However, with this version, I felt things were too random. Rolling a 20 sided die to hit is fine for D&D, where characters are more resilient. However, in this game, bad rolls could mean your entire board getting wiped out. It was just against everything a TCG tried to be: strategy, with some controlled luck.

Where We Are Now

     Enter the third, and current, version of the game. There are still Avatars, spells, and creatures, but things are much simpler. Creatures only have 4 stats to worry about: Health, Damage, Mana, and Movement. Anything else special is handled with Special Abilities in their text box, much like in Magic. Creatures still move around a gridded battlefield. There's less information to flood the payer with, but still the core combination of TCG controlled luck and tabletop positioning and working together. 

What's Next

     While I do have things mostly worked out, there are still a few things I want to test before going into full production mode. First and foremost is the way in which you summon creatures. Currently, you gain a fixed amount of a resource each turn for summoning. Once you use it, you have to wait to get more again. While there are ways to accelerate this process, it requires already having a presence on the board. Essentially, if your team gets wiped out while you don't have any of this resource saved up, there's basically no way to get back in the game.

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     My alternative to this is based of a different TCG called Kaijudo. Similar to Magic, creatures needed to be summoned by paying Mana. Mana in each game is generated by tapping mana sources. The thing is, while these sources could only be used once per turn, they can be used once every turn. Players would build up the total mana they had access to by playing more of these sources. While Magic has a specific mana generating card know as a Land, in Kaijudo, players could player creatures as a creature or as a mana source. This meant you could never have to much or to little mana.

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     I want to emulate this by allowing Creatures and Spells to be played as Runes, which would then be able to produce one Energy of their type each turn. Playing one Rune per turn to build up energy, and being able to rebuild quickly after a board wipe would enable players who fall behind to still be able to catch back up.

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     The second, smaller thing I want to test is changing the area where you can summon creatures. Currently, you can only summon them in the back two rows of squares on your side of the board. This makes clashes with the opponent slow, and reduces the time that reinforcement can join your front line creatures. I'm looking at changing it to be the back two rows or the row your Avatar is in and behind. This means players can push the line where they can summon creatures forwards, allowing for more aggressive play, but at the cost of putting their Avatar in danger.

6/16/2021 Update

     With the latest version of the rules finalized, testing can begin in earnest. Or at least, that's what it should have been a while ago. I came across an unexpected problem: testing with physical mediums is incredibly difficult, and I didn't have the technical experience to create a digital playing field. But now, I have solved the issue! Using Microsoft Excel of all things, I have a viable way of testing the cards and rules in actual games as many times as I want, beyond what I was able to accomplish during my in-class testing.

In more minor updates, I finally have some terminology that I actually like. Instead of Awake and Rested, it is now Ready and Rested.

August 2022 Update

With other projects taking priority for me, I am officially putting Rune Masters on the back burner. I still plan to continue working on it now and then, but more of a hobby than something I want to actively develop, at least for now.

April 2024 Update

As intended, I have continued to think about Rune Masters in my free time and have come to a crossroads of sorts. The current iteration still feels a bit too much in the shadow of Magic: The Gathering, in particular, with its approach to card colors. While I tried to differentiate the different Rune types from Magic's colors, Order, Chaos, Natural, Unnatural, Mystic, and Neutral are still basically just White, Red, Green, Black, Blue and Colorless with some minor variations. So I decided to try and tie the rune types more closely with the narrative of the world. The Runes that fuel everything are the language of the world, after all, so where did those languages come from? I have two potential sets of sources, both of which would require massive overhauling of the card pool, but I think it would be worth it in the end. The first set of Rune types are as follows: Giant Runes, Dragon Runes, Celestial Runes, Humanoid Runes (Neutral), Mystic Runes, Natural Runes, and Aberrant Runes. Of course, that's a lot of types, so the second variation cut down that number and consists of Mystic Runes, Natural Runes, Celestial Runes, Chaos Runes, and Neutral Runes.

Of course, that first set then prompted the issue of multi-typed decks and how powerful they can be. I currently have 3 solutions:

1) Have no limit to the number of rune types in a deck, but do NOT make multi-type cards in order to limit energy fixing.

2) A deck can only have 2 rune types flat out. 

3) A deck can only have runes matching the type of their avatar, and minimize multi-typed avatars (most likely one).

Rulebook

And finally, here's the rulebook. This is NOT meant to be a comprehensive breakdown of every single rule, more of a how-to-play guide to show you the general gist of how the game is run.