Messages

1

Conventions / Re: Nightmare Nights Dallas 2017

« on: September 10, 2017, 08:06:00 pm »

Okay, I always kind of wondered why some (like Shia LeBouffalo) had a symbol that seemed specific to the convention while others just had the year number on them. Yeah I've never seen an original Queen Bee Sunset Shimmer. I doubt I've seen an original print of any card, since I didn't find TSSSF until long after HPG had stepped down and my first ever convention was in 2016 (Texas Furry Fiesta in Dallas). I've been to very few conventions so far.

2

Making Cards / Normal printing quantities?

« on: September 10, 2017, 08:01:24 pm »

So, here's the deal: I need to print out a small number of cards for myself (such as Grand Creator Fausticorn) as well as several copies of the blank pony cards for commissioning art at cons (or at least at Nightmare Nights this year). I figure that I might as well at the same time print out several copies of some other cards, such as the CofK promo cards, to pass out to people while at the convention space.

Here's the thing: having never done this before and never looked into it, I have no idea what kind of numbers I should be shooting for. Part of me says I should print something like 25 copies of each of the CofK promo cards so that I won't run out of them; part of me says that's a ridiculous number and I'll never find 25 people to hand them out to; then part of me suggests giving my extras at the end of the con to N.A. Larson or whomever might be around.

So is there some number I should shoot for, here? How many do people who sell their cards usually order, and how long do they normally last? If I'm going to hand off my extras at the end of the con to someone who goes to more cons, should I be printing out a few more to help out? I'm kind of lost here.

3

Showcase / Re: Magical Mares

« on: September 09, 2017, 11:54:03 am »

OH GOD I'M NOW IMAGINING SPIKE AS CHUCK WHAT HAVE YOU DONE YOU MONSTER

4

Drawing Board / Re: Workshopping Shipwrecker CMC into ponies.

« on: September 09, 2017, 11:50:15 am »

Well I haven't really played a whole lot of TSSSF games, either, really, so it might be more or less an issue of not having a large enough sample size to accurately judge my needs. There's also the fact that probably more than half of the games I've played have been with my entire collection, first the 300-some-odd collection of official cards and then later the nearly-600 collection after getting a bunch of fan cards at Nightmare Nights. It makes drawing slicers kind of difficult. Luckily, recent games have been more subdued, with the core and one or two expansions instead of the whole dang thing, so I might find it more manageable in the future.

Also, while I always hold onto Love Poisons and the like for big plays and grid reduction, I've found my friends don't always do, which takes away even further avenues of management (the munchkin of my group often even purposefully makes the grid more difficult to destroy).

5

Conventions / Re: Nightmare Nights Dallas 2017

« on: September 09, 2017, 11:34:27 am »

I will be both of those things!

Side Note: I'm still on the hunt for an original Queen Bee Sunset Shimmer card, so if you have one and you want to trade or sell it, maybe we can make a deal!

Define "original". I have the one seen on github from the 2014 Con Exclusives, but I don't know if there's something more you're looking for.

I actually haven't yet ordered prints of the blank pony cards (along with some copies of Bat Romance, Filly Hays, and Fausticorn), so I could just add that into my order and bring that copy to you.

6

Showcase / Re: Magical Mares

« on: September 08, 2017, 06:55:36 pm »

I wouldn't doubt it, coming from you. All the cards I've seen from you have been top-notch quality (and I still adore the flavor text you gave me for the Shipwrecker CMC).

Off the top of my head, I know I did watch Sailor Moon as a child (which I think is the magical girl show for the West), but I can't remember anything about it, Madoka Magica, of which I've only seen the original show and none of the movies and remakes, Princess Tutu, and the smattering of magical girl spoof episodes from various anime like Tenchi Muyo or Excel Saga. I think that's actually about it. By the time I had easy access to anime (i.e. outside of the few that aired on Toonami and the like), I stopped having as much time to watch it, and tended to go for more widely-known or acclaimed titles like Spice & Wolf or Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt.

Wait, does PSG count?

7

Drawing Board / Re: Workshopping Shipwrecker CMC into ponies.

« on: September 08, 2017, 06:46:58 pm »

1) The reason Shipwrecker was its own card type was to get child characters into the game WITHOUT putting them in adult situations. The alternative is to age up the characters as with Tales of Ponyville University, or put them on non-character cards as with Cutie Mark Crusader: Matchmakers! If you're going to redo the Shipwreckers as Pony cards, the characters portrayed must be 18+.

That's fair. I was still thinking about it from a mechanical point of view because, perhaps surprisingly considering how we joke around in other games, my friends and I never seem to go blue when playing TSSSF. It might be best I drop this line of thinking, then.

2) You are correct: Copy, like all powers that doesn't say otherwise, activates on the grid (Style Guide 2.6.10), by which point it is useless to copy Replace. I once asked the same question of HPG: They said they kept getting asked if Copy could copy Replace, so that's why the text is there.

I actually had a suspicion that might be the case. Never underestimate the thickness of John Q. Public. I've dug into too many design documents to not suspect that clause was included because someone asked whether they could do that.

I'm still not a fan of this mechanic. It's just too easy to destroy the grid (think of much Cheerilee, who's power is activated the same way, gets recurred).

To be honest, the way my games tend to go, we usually need more grid-destruction options. For one thing, we rarely have a table large enough to support more than about a 5x5 grid (measured in ponies) before it starts getting really crowded. For another, Search powers are more useful when you've got more than five cards in the discard, and it can often be a while before we even get a single card in the discard from a replace effect. I like the constantly-cycling nature of the game, where things have much less permanency to them and are not as important to track as something like Munchkin.

8

Site Updates / Re: Design Article #4: Keywords and Their Applications

« on: September 08, 2017, 06:25:34 pm »

Which fan cards were you talking about with respect to keywords? If any happen to be mine, I can comment on those or speculate on others.

I don't think I own any cards you've designed as of yet (though if any show up at this year's Nightmare Nights I'm totally going to grab them). I dug through my collection to pick out a few examples, though this isn't the full extent of them:

Discord, Jelly Filled from I think the Fan Pon expansion (one of many that has no watermark and no set name on the card) has the Draconequus, Elder, and Villain keywords but not his name keyword for some reason. Similarly, I have a Princess Ember card from a... rated T for Teen expansion that has the Ember keyword (and somewhat surprisingly, no Princess keyword).

King "Kingsley" Sombra from the Fan Pon expansion has the King Sombra keyword where others, like King Sombra, Resurrected from the Alternate Universe expansion has the Sombra keyword (without the royalty). "Kingsley" also has the OC keyword and that bugs me a little.

Rock Breaker Pinkie from the Alternate Universe expansion doesn't have the Mane 6 keyword. All the other Mane 6 from that expansion do have the Mane 6 keyword.

Con Dorks from the Fan Pon expansion has Earth Pony and Unicorn as keywords, while the ability states it can count for either for all Goals, Ships, and Powers.

Connie from the Gem Ponies expansion has no keywords, even for her race which appears to be Griffin.

I can understand a lot of these are just basically "bugs not caught in development", but I'm kind of anal retentive and these things and it makes them seem kind of sloppy. Others, like the Con Dorks, seem innocent but unnecessary.

9

Showcase / Re: Magical Mares

« on: September 07, 2017, 10:24:21 pm »

I literally just saw those on Shipficbooru like an hour ago. These make me so happy even though I've never seen those specific anime. Maybe precisely because I've never seen them and still know about them: more recognizable as classics rather than some sort of pandering if they were, for instance, Madoka Magica.

I would comment about hoping for a specific magical girl, but I don't think I've seen a whole lot of magical girl anime and nothing comes immediately to mind.

10

Drawing Board / Workshopping Shipwrecker CMC into ponies.

« on: September 07, 2017, 10:16:54 pm »

So, I think that the Shipwrecker CMC that I had people help me put together last year might just work better as Pony cards rather than their own special card type that needs explaining, buuuuuuuut I think the current way I have it worded is unnecessarily clunky.

[Ability name] (Shipwreck): While this card is in your hand, you may discard this card to discard one Ship from the grid. If you use 3 Shipwrecker cards in the same turn, discard every card from the grid except the start card. This power cannot be copied.

I modeled the wording after the guide for Replace, but there's a few things I feel don't work. Firstly, is there any reason to keep the "cannot be copied" clause? I may have misunderstood how Copy works if this line is necessary, because I always thought the pony had to be on the grid for it to copy another card. Alternatively, if the copy ability is technically active while in your hand, would the Shipwreck ability be too powerful if it could be copied? (That last one might be something I should test.)

Secondly, wouldn't it be more elegant to say "Discard this card from your hand to X" without the "While this card is in your hand" clause? As long as "from your hand" is specified, that explicitly means you cannot use it from the grid, and it cuts out a lot of what seems to me unnecessary wording.

Lastly, the secondary ability of nuking the board if you play 3 of them probably needs to be slightly rephrased to refer to the Shipwreck ability rather than the Shipwrecker card names since that limits future Shipwrecker ponies to always need that title.

11

Site Updates / Re: Design Article #4: Keywords and Their Applications

« on: September 07, 2017, 09:13:53 am »

Sorry, had some computer troubles last week (which involved taking it apart) so I was somewhat incapacitated.

I hate to sound so egocentric, but the main thing that popped into my mind when reading this was that time I was trying to design the Shipwrecker CMC cards as ponies; one of the problems I had been running into was the length of all the keywords I thought I needed to include. Apple Bloom was the worst offender, since she seemed to need the Apple family keyword, her own name keyword, the CMC keyword, and of course the Shipwrecker keyword. I'm left wondering if the name keyword couldn't have been left out, since their names would have been in the card title, though as I think about the utitlity of the cards in pony form, I think maybe the Shipwrecker keyword is extraneous?

But I digress. This article leaves me puzzling over a few specific instances (mostly on fan cards, mind you), but overall is very clear as to the purpose and design considerations of keywords. I think the Race Keyword section is the most salient, honestly; I tend to think that designing for "outsiders" is one of the most important things a game should do.

12

Website Issues / Re: [Issue]Murder Turns Me On not in TSSSF spreadsheet

« on: August 26, 2017, 10:07:36 pm »

Dang, I thought I could edit my message before anyone read it.

But I can never keep the name straight in my head, for some reason. I think it's because of the IGG expansion name on the bottom of the cards. While the most relevant place I can recall seeing the title "Going Too Far" is the final episode of Excel Saga, I'm reasonably certain I've heard it in other contexts, possibly as a descriptor or the internal code name for one of Magic: the Gathering's Un- sets.

Thanks for addressing it, though! Would you like me to delete the thread, to reflect the PG nature of the boards?

13

Shipfic Q&A / Re: Used and Unused Assets

« on: August 26, 2017, 08:25:58 pm »

Well, ships are done. 2/3 of the way through the master folder now. Well, considering the size of the Ponies pile maybe more like 5/8. Ponies, too, so the master folder is all done.

Name	Found under	Finished/Sketch?	url
Chemistry Lab Experiment	ship	sketch, early idea for Chemistry Lab Explosion!	here
Extra Credit	ship	finished	here
Freaky Friday	ship	rough version, no background	here
On Probation	ship	sketch	here
Rush Week	ship	finished, art for the photo in Rush Week	here
Uprising Against the Robot Uprising	ship	finished	here
Wacky Tragic Circumstances	ship	finished, early version of Wacky Tragic Circumstances	here
Cheese Sandwich	pony	finished	here
Fashion Forward Pound Cake	pony	sketch	here
Flufflepuff	pony	finished, different art than the Fluffle Puff card	here
Flutter*****	pony	finished	here
I'm So Alone Twilight Sparkle	pony	finished	here
Musical Mischief Mando	pony	finished	here
Rebel Without a Cause Scootaloo	pony	sketch	here
Shrekicorn	pony	finished, OHGODWHY	here
Sonic the Hedgehog	pony	finished, GOODGODNO	here
Super Diva Sweetie Belle	pony	sketch	here

14

Website Issues / [Addressed]Murder Turns Me On not in TSSSF spreadsheet

« on: August 26, 2017, 07:56:37 pm »

The Ship card Murder Turns Me On from the No Holds Barred expansion is not in the TSSSF card spreadsheet. Just a note for whenever that gets updated.

15

Shipfic Q&A / Re: Used and Unused Assets

« on: August 26, 2017, 07:21:44 pm »

I mean, if I make or have someone make a card, I definitely want finished art, but my main purpose here was to go through the ENTIRE database to see what wasn't used, so that it becomes a known quantity (or whatever the proper term is).

I definitely missed Cutie Mark Crusaders Matchmakers because I was only looking through the goals, when the art got put on a ship, but after a while I just wasn't being super observant; as long as I didn't recognize the art (and it didn't show up after a CTRL+F), it went in the list.

That said, I'm not surprised that I missed a few in the text database, and I'd be grateful to anyone able to whittle down the list which I've already pulled out. After that, then I'll see about contacting Horrible People to see if they can confirm usage of the (hopefully only a handful of remaining unclaimed art).

I'll be tackling the Ships next, because that's the smaller stack and I've already got five art from Goals or Actions that became Ships.