Arcane Trickery UPick
Pitch:
Tournament for 8 players. 1v1, single elimination. You play a game with cards and dice, that is very simple at a baseline. The hook is that every player gets to privately design their own unique magical way of cheating in the game. Imagine Kakegurui, but less anime lesbians and more magic. There will be a design stage where you go back-and-forth with me where we work together to make your power balanced and to your liking. Once you defeat an opponent, you obtain all of their powers. Meaning, at the finals, the two players will have the powers of 4 people each.
The Baseline Game:
At the start of the game, you draw 6 cards from the deck in the middle - 2 copies of Rock, 2 copies of Paper, 2 copies of Scissors. You also start with 3 dice. 2 of those dice have normal faces, the last one will have other faces and be fully unique for each player. It will be designed by me as an extra way to balance your build (or by you, if your magical power is dice-related).
The Gameplay Loop:
Both players submit their actions privately and simultaneously by default, however, your magical power can alter this, and give you an advantage (use your imagination!)
- Place 2 cards from your hand face-down on the table in front of you (Left and Right, their position matters). You can’t place two copies of the same card, unless you have no other choice.
- Then, both players flip up their cards. Cards facing opposite of each other battle each other. Rock beats Scissors, Scissors beats Paper, Paper beats Rock. In the event of a tie between cards, both players choose one of their dice, and roll it. Higher number wins, however, a roll of 1 beats a roll of 6. In case of a tie between these dice rolls, I will continue rolling these dice until the tie breaks.
- The player who wins the current round temporarily takes one die of their choice from the opponent. Then, continue playing doing these steps
- Once a player has 0 dice left, they lose the current game. However, it’s Bo3, so they will play another game (or two), and they will get back their dice at the start of those games
- At the end of Round X in the current game, the player who has won more dice wins the current game, to avoid stalling. When there are 8 players in the tournament - X is 9. When there are 4 players - X is 13. When there are 2 players - X is 17
- When a player runs out of cards, they draw a fresh hand of 2 Rocks, 2 Scissors, 2 Papers
- When you beat a player in the Bo3, you take all of their magical powers and unique dices (including those they’ve won from others), and move further in the tournament
24 hour submission period for actions
Magic Detection:
Each player passively has the ability to slightly detect magic. When you temporarily lose a die in a game, your magic detection ability triggers, giving you a small hint about the power that your opponent used in this game (if they used multiple, it will be randed which ability you are hinted about). You can get an increasing number of hints about the same ability, that give you more and more information about it, if it the hint rand lands on the same ability. As follows:
Hint 1) vague hint that relates to where the magical energy is coming from (dices, table, cards, body, eyes, the whole room, hands, etc.)
Hint 2) a more detailed hint that hints at the benefit of the ability
Hint 3) the ability is fully revealed, with the exact parameters that the owner knows
The hints will be pre-determined during the design stage of the ability and be known to the owner of the ability. You won’t get a hint if the enemy didn’t use any magic this game. They will be told privately to you only, not posted publicly.
Some rules will be set in stone and won’t be able to be manipulated by your magical powers:
Rules Set in Stone:
- If the baseline rules of the game are to be changed with magic (for example a die roll of 4 beating a die roll of 5), this needs to be public, and the opponent must be given at least the minimum possible time to react to the change
- You can’t interfere with the opponents’ Magic Detection ability
- You can’t collude with other players or form alliances or exchange information. Dead players can’t talk to living players
This is the setting of the duel: you and your opponent are sitting on chairs, facing each other, on a table. There is a deck of cards in the middle that has an infinite amount of Rocks, Papers and Scissors, that you both draw from. Your dice rest on the table in front of you. Feel free to use your imagination to come up with a creative power. I’ll work together with all of you to try to make the 8 powers be possible to coexist
Signups:
- Squirrel2412
I will also make a private spectator thread for anyone interested. I will ask players to not talk about their powers during the game and after they die, they need to remain hidden, since the winner will take them. But there will be a private thread with spoilers for dead players and anyone interested to chit chat about the game