STAVE a Card Game from Radian-Helix Media

May has been an exciting month! 

After realizing the recurring headaches and chronic fatigue that had been debilitating me over the last several months originated in a black mold infestation from the air conditioner leaking down the wall near my headboard, I left home to do some travelling work and live with friends while trying to find a new place to live. 

One of those jobs was for Blue Mark, delivering promotional materials to businesses across S. Arizona. The boxes were made of these stacks of playing-card sized sheets. As we spent 12 hours a day delivering these boxes and talking business owners into displaying them someplace visible, driving place to place, I began thinking about a card game.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j03n_kTsez8 

Coincidentally, there was also a Tucson Game Developer meeting that week, so I was thinking about this card game for four days planning on making it for the Nano Paper Jam. 

I got to the Nano Paper Jam 30 minutes late, so only had 45 minutes to put the game together, and an hour or so to play it. :p

I came up with this loose idea of making combinations of attacks and defenses based on elements and raw gameplay mechanics. 

Nothing complicated, really simple, just taking the raw mechanics and making some simple art. Not extravagant. Not too complex on the surface, but allowing for a sort of layered level of strategy to emerge as you learn how the cards combine to produce different effects. 

To my surprise, the game worked! 

And it was actually kinda fun! 

I went home, spent two days with a high fever and severe chest infection making this deck of cards and sending it off to The Game Crafters to print. About  days later it arrived!  

I played several dozen rounds of 1.0 with Ali, who also helped assemble the counter cards which track the player's stats, then played with Steven, D, Tara, Tara and Steven's mom, their little sister, and a few random strangers I met at a print shop and grocery store. 

After that I printed out 2.0 at Kinkos on a rough card stock and so far it plays much better than the previous version with a few sight rule adjustments written onto the cards.

(The rules for all these cards I'm about to post are now outdated and old, from 1.0. I haven't been back at my PC for two weeks to upload the new ones while my house is being torn apart and I'm bouncing between friends' houses.)

STAVE is a simple game. 54 cards, including two Counter Cards. It all fits in a box the size of a standard US playing card deck. 

It's a little bit Magic, a little bit Poker.

You have attack cards, called Projections...

Defense Cards...

Then you have Element Cards...

And then Effect Cards...

You combine Projections and Defense Cards with Elements to do damage or protect yourself from damage. You may then attach Effect cards together with your Projection or Defense to enhance those effects.

To play any Card you must spend Passion. Passion is gained by discarding any 1 Card during your turn.

The main objective of the game is to lower your Opponent's Life to 0, therefore winning the game. 

You start with 5 Life, and 0 Passion.

You draw 1 card at the start of your turn and build up a hand of 5. If you draw a 6th card (or 7th or 8th using Shopkeeper) that card must be discarded by the end of your turn.

While the cards and the concepts behind them are very simple, they way you combine them to create different strategies makes the game very complex. 

Very easy to pick up, usually learned after a single playthrough, mastery takes time. 

There is an element of Luck. You're drawing cards from a deck blindly, hoping to make a hand with the ability to defend or attack with the right combination. 

There is also an element of Risk. Do you keep these 3 out of 5 cards in your hand that could be played immediately for 1 or 2 damage, or do you hold onto them trying to get an even more powerful chain of effects and elements?

You can play with Patience or Aggression, biding your time to build a grand strategy or simply play every attack you get to whittle the opponent down quickly. 

And finally there is a social element. Do you know your opponent? What are they planning? What defenses are they hiding? Are they bluffing about that good hand, or do they actually  need more time to look for their next Passion point or that last card for a major combo?

That's why the game feels very similar to Poker, but with a more rich experience that's more akin to Magic. 

The simplicity of it makes it more accessible than both of those games -- the Spades and Aces have been around since the 1400s, and they don't have rules written on the cards, everyone knows how to play so nobody explains it. Magic: The Gathering, try as it might to shake off the stigma of being a game for purely hard core nerds, will never get rid of that association of crowded rooms of hot sweaty teenagers yelling about orcs and dead cats.

STAVE gives the best of both worlds, cleaned of all the bullshit, in a fun but mature presentation. 

You can play with your mom who doesn't get games these days, or pull it out on the back of military vehicle on deployment to play the same game for the 500th time this cycle.

STAVE is very versatile for the experienced and forgiving to newcomers.  

It can accommodate house rules and even remix two decks together for a 3 or 4 player game. 

If you lose your handy counter cards you can still play with 4 d20s, glass beads, poker chips, grains of sand, rocks -- just count Passion and Life on your fingers if you like. 

It has been playtested with people who like to cheat, with anti-cheating measures in mind. (We had a rule for a while where Combine could be played in your hand for a total of 6 cards, combining 2 Elements into 1. We got rid of it to avoid cheating.)

A typical game lasts anywhere from a casual 5 to 15 minutes, but can sometimes go for an hour of reversals of fate before the most complex plays result in nail-biting struggles. 

Poker or Chess is the most common thing I've heard it compared to, followed closely by Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, or Munchkin. It has that element of grand strategy and tit-for-tat react and respond thing going on, with the approachable look of a kids game, but the maturity of a game for adults. 

I've been told that the perfect game is one where a beginner can see the immediate fun, a veteran can see the complexity, and a pro can see the risks and rewards beyond the game itself.

I think STAVE has all that. 

So for May I've spent the last 17 days working on it every day around work, and invested some money in developing it to its most balanced and fun state. 

So for May I've spent the last 17 days working on  it every day around work, and invested some money in developing it to its most balanced and fun state. 

Since it's not terribly expensive to produce and it's a substantial reward, I've decided that Patrons who stick around for more than 50$ will get 1 free STAVE deck just once. 100$ will get two of them, again just once. 

That should give a little more incentive to back Radian-Helix Media! 

And, after a quick crowd funding run this year, we'll do a limited print run as well, and it will be available on the Radian-Helix Media store on our website. 

I'm going to attend a few conventions, meet some pro card players through friends of mine in Reno, and then talk to a publisher about mass distribution later.  

If it's not a massive time sink, it may even become a cell phone game, or a mini-game in Morningstar. (The way Gwent or Pazzak is a game in The Witcher or Knights of the Old Republic.)

I'll update again after we've playtested 3.0 in a week, which I think should be the final version before it's ready to see the public. :)