Card Game Update! Challenge Cards!

 With upspikes in covid all over the place, testing of the game has slowed down. Everyone is worried and it makes sense. But today we will still do an update and reveal what challenge cards are like. If you are new to the information on my game Heroic Missions, you only have to back up a few entries to get caught up on it. 

So what are challenge cards? Let's take a look at one.

Challenge cards come from the mission decks just like allies and enemies. There is a time limit of one full round from your turn to complete it before it goes into the fail pile. Remember, 10 cards in the fail pile and you lose the game. Evade capture is a trap and there are special cards in rewards that work specifically on traps. Otherwise, you or an adjacent player must attempt the required roll. In this case, it requires agility. If you remember, you get to roll as many d6 as the level of your stats. So if you have an agility of 6, you will roll 6 dice. For this card, at least 3 of those dice must come up 4-6. If you succeed, you keep the card aside as your personal trophy. If you cannot achieve this because you don't have the agility or fear you will fail even if you exert to say 4 dice, (Exertion adds one dice to your pool and you take one damage) you can have an adjacent player try to help you by taking on the mission him or herself. If they fail, the penalty applies to them. As for adjacency, that means only players to your immediate left and right can help you. A player across from you, cannot. In the case of 3 player games, look at who is across the table from a player and that player is not adjacent. Yes, the rules will use how you sit at the table to decide adjacency. But back to challenge cards.

Some challenges give you more options for winning but higher penalties for failure. In this case, you can use your highest stat of the three mentioned, but you have to score 4 successful dice. Reward cards. You get reward cards every time you successfully defeat an enemy or complete a challenge. All players losing a reward card is a steep price to pay, but it puts the pressure on too. 

This card lets you use any stat that you have enough dice on but if you blow it (pun intended) it affects the whole table. 

That's about it for now on challenge cards. They are pretty straight forward. Thank you for stopping by and stay tuned for more!

Card Game Update: Villainous threats! What are they?

 Welcome back! Time for another preview of my new card game! Recently I received my prototype in the mail from TheGamecrafter.com so I can start really fleshing out the rules with playtesting. This will involve a lot of gaming over here and I will be posting more information as that goes! 

Here is what the game looks like right now!

So exciting!

Today I'm going to tell you about another card type. This would be enemy creatures or characters I just call "threats" or "enemies". When revealed from the deck, you are in combat and must hope that your d6 rolls are better than theirs! Hopefully, you'll have one of those allies from last post to help you out! So let's see what they look like, starting with a generic creature.

As you can see, this is the same layout as your player card, bosses, and allies. The stats mean exactly the same as with all of them. You have the name, affiliation or identification type, the stats, then health and special abilities. 

"Hey, you keep mentioning health, Dave, but how do you track it?"

Glad you asked! Sorry I haven't explained this one yet! See that number in the shield? That is the health points. Damage is tracked consistently with either dice or tokens (however you prefer). Nothing heals without something to trigger the healing effect. So if you hit the Skeleton for 2 damage, it will stay at 2 health until either hit again, or healed by another effect, or its ability kicks in and you have to fight it again. Skeletons are funny that way. You might notice that this enemy has a zero for mentality. That not only means that it cannot use mentality, but that it cannot be controlled. Combat is explained in prior post, so if you are new to this, you may want to go back a bit and read up.

Let's look at an enemy character:

As you can see, Railroad has all the same stats and his affiliation gives him a special ability that is listed on an additional card. They get the same bonuses for additional members being in play as allies do, so +1 to all stats if there are other Foundation members in play. Railroad has a bonus if a certain location is in play that could make him even tougher if another member is around as well. One thing about Railroad however is his drawback. In the novel, Chaos Rising, the hero Nyhtwulf, scrambled Railroad's mind and it took 6 months to recover. He fears Nyhtwulf as a result. Right now, he is the only character with such a drawback, but it may rarely happen in play. We will get to locations more later but I will say, if you choose to make your players face this guy, make sure he gets his trainyard bonus.

Now for a special look at a really nasty enemy who ties down the game:

When building your game, you won't want more than one of this sort of threat for your players because more than one in play at the same time, will definitely end the game. Yes, there is another one. Maniac's attacks count for every player and ally active and all have roll defense against him. Other threats in play remain active, but no more cards can be revealed until Maniac is defeated. He is immune to mentality effects and spells so save them to help your friends. Who knows, maybe you'll have King Falcon for an ally and he'll help you take down that foreboding 15 health. Being immune to mentality and magic also works in your favor because the current boss can't use them on him to buff him either.

And there you have it. Pretty straight forward and next time we will over the challenge cards, the third and finally card type from the event decks! Thanks for joining in!

CARD GAME UPDATE: Get Some Allies!

 If you've been following along with the updates for my new card game, Heroic Missions, you know that it's time to see what allies can do for you in this cooperative card game. If not, you might want to back up a few posts and catch up on the info. I'm currently awaiting my prototype to be shipped to me from TheGameCrafter.com and then I plan to do an unboxing on youtube. So stay tuned. Till then, allies are heroes in the event decks that can boost you or fight for you outright. Each one has special attributes and affiliations to make them even better. And believe this, you will need all the help you and your friends can get. So let's take a look at an example.

You should immediately see some familiar information on Dreamseer's card. She has stats and health just like you or bosses. Those stats do the same thing for allies that they do for you. Having ally give you plus 1 in all your stats. But you can also have an ally go forward to do actions for you including combat. So lets go along with the information on the card. 

Affiliation: Right below her name is Dreamseer's affiliation with her team the Strykeforce Guard. Affiliations are listed on a note card with the game and each has their own special abilities to add to their members. In this case, when a member of this team uses the intercept ability they gain +2 defense. Intercept is a standard game ability that allows you or an ally to get in the way of an attack on another player or ally and take up defending it. That also means taking damage if it doesn't work out. 

Recruit requirement: Where it says REC is where you find out what you have to roll from your mentality dice to gain Dreamseer as an ally. If your mentality doesn't give you enough dice to meet a requirement, you get to roll that as the minimum number of dice. Breaking down the numbers, when you roll your mentality and let's say you have an MNT of 5 (so you roll 5d6) you need to get 3 dice to come up as anything from 2-4 in order to recruit Dreamseer. Unless another ability allows for it, you may only have one ally at a time. If an ally comes up in your assigned missions, you must try to recruit and failure counts against you (see earlier posts). 

Special abilities: Right under her health you see the special abilities she can use (or you can use when it comes to some allies).  As you can read, she has mind control and that is a 7d6 attack for her to take control of an enemy and use them to attack someone or something else. In her next ability she can combine two of her stats for 10 dice total to attack an enemy requiring they use their endurance to defend (even if another of their stats would be stronger or better for defense). Of course, Dreamseer's main drawback is her health. She can only take 4 hits before she's gone. And aside from mentality, her other stats are pretty low and may not defend her that well. So she needs to be used with some tactics in mind.

Past that she can use any abilities her stat levels allow (listed on another note card that we will get to later) or that you could do with the same stats. Now, lets get a peek preview of a couple other allies you'll want to work with.

First, let's check out Halley of the Chessmen. Firs note his recruitment and see how easy it will likely be to get him on your side. You only need 2 dice to come up 4-6 and he's ready to help you out. As soon as you recruit him, he gets an artifact attached to him that will make him even more dangerous. It gives him +3 defense and he cannot be counter attacked. Halley's best attack is only 6 dice, but he can target 2 enemies no matte where they are on the table. Considering he can have up to 9 dice for his defense, Halley can be hard to take down. As a member of the Chessmen, if another member of this team is in play, none of them can be stunned.

Now this is a combatant you want out front taking on threats directly. The Gator is a little harder to recruit, but he's a triple 9. 9 dice for both strength and endurance with 9 health. Even better is his ability to count 3's as successful dice that enemies will have to defend with minimums of 4's. The Southern Watch get +2 defense against spells that applies to the player they ally with. 

Now for the coup de grace that I know my readers want to know about. Yes, it's King Falcon.

Arconians have use of fire and lightning with immunity to both built in. KF gets equipped with 3 fat artifacts that make him a force of terror for any enemy on the table and even the bosses are nervous. It won't be easy to recruit him with low mentality but if you do, he has 12 health and stats that can do nearly anything. He's everything a cosmic hero should be. 

Another point about allies is that they are color coded bright green to their stats and health. While this may be an issue for color blind players, only allies have REC. Anything else is a threat. Next time, we will see what some of those threats look like. 

Thank you for all your support and sharing the news. Stay tuned for more GZ information and follow me!

Card Game Update: Who's the Boss?

 For those who have been following along, I am currently awaiting the delivery of my new prototype of my cooperative card game that you build to challenge 3 to 4 of your friends. So if you aren't up to date on the info, you might want to back up a couple posts and check it all out.

Today I'm introducing you to what the bosses are like. I'll go with what I see as the easiest or beginner's boss to put up against your players. The boss is the end goal to defeat and each one comes with their own deck of 18 cards to threaten players with. I know I haven't gone into the total setup of the game yet, but that is for later on.

So, here is Prof. Zombie.

First thing to note is how he has stats just like player characters do. They work for him the exact same way they work for players ( and other threats from event decks). The Prof. has 20 total health and a couple of interesting abilities that cannot be countered (bosses cannot be controlled, instantly defeated, or have their abilities countered). The first ability grants any threat with the word 'zombie' in its name bonuses of +1 to all stats and health. This does not amplify Prof. Zombie as he counts as a boss and can only amplify deck threats. He does have a card that comes out making all threats in the deck count as zombies.

Every time a player completes a "mission" (more on that later), the boss reacts and reveals a card from their personal deck. Let's take a look at a couple of Prof. Zombie's cards.

Yep, players can turn traitor, but only one player can be a traitor at any one time. You can fix it too if you don't mind beating up your friend a little bit. This card takes effect as soon as it is revealed and Prof. Zombie rolls 7d6 against someone. If 3 or more hits are left undefended, then that player will turn on his buddies. Yes, being a traitor means using your turn to attack your friends. 

Talk about raising the stakes. But what does this mean? Well, the player with the lowest endurance is considered captured and can take no actions until rescued. Any player may use their turn to attempt that rescue. A round is the time period for all players to take one turn from the time this card comes into play. You will want to use the highest of your personal stats from the ones required on the card. If your strength is highest you will roll d6 equal to your strength and hope that four dice come up as 4-6. If they don't, you failed and your turn is over. But don't fret. Death is not necessarily the end. If a player can use magic or has the right powers, they can revive a player at half health to jump back into the game.

Just in case anyone wonders, all of these effects are story accurate to the books based on the characters. You don't have to read them to enjoy the game, but the lore is cool to know.

Let's look at one more of his cards.

Any player may have up to two threats in front of them at any time, but no more than that. Still, the ability to put "from the deck" threats into front of players adds to the danger. Of course, when you build up your game for your players, you can leave the cards that match up to a card like this off to the side so they are easy to find when called for.  And these are just three examples of  many. Each boss has their own specific effects that match up to them and each has their own special abilities and health. The highest health for a boss? 50. You'll want to get some play experience before you try that on. 

Next time, I will show you what allies are like. Be sure to follow and always be up to date on GZ. If you want to find the books, check out the links section. Thanks for reading and roll those dice high.

Card Game Update: What's Your Character?

 Today I'm going to give you some insight to how my new upcoming game, GZ: Heroic Missions plays by showing you who or what you get to be. That's right, you get to be one of several character types, best selected at random. If you've been paying attention, I've teased two of them in the past; the warrior and the speedster. Today, we'll take a look at the warrior again. Let's see what the items on this card mean and how they work for you in the game!

So right from the top we have the name of the character type. This is the warrior. Below the name we have a set of 5 red stars with stat names next to them. As you can read, they are strength, speed, mentality, agility, and endurance. The first important thing about these are the numbers next to them. HM uses a great deal of dice combat with standard six sided dice (not included) and you need a lot of them for a host and 3 or 4 players. The top three stats are attack stats and the bottom two are almost entirely for defense. Mentality can go both ways. The numeric level of the stat indicates how many dice you get to roll when taking an action that involves it. 

So, if the warrior makes a strength attack, she will roll 5d6, but how do you know what hits? The standard for what I call a "successful dice" is a roll of 4-6. So the warrior will keep all dice that come up 4-6 and discard the rest. The warrior's target may then make a defense roll with the dice for the appropriate stat and try to roll numbers to cancel out any potential hits against them. Canceling out an attack dice means rolling a defense of equal or greater than that dice's roll. So a 4 can be eliminated as a hit by any rolls of 4-6. After seeing how many dice are eliminated, any left count as damage at the rate of 1 per dice. 

Now is where I mention that all players start with 10 health. More on that later. 

Next over to the right we have the warrior's abilities. As you read, the warrior gets to draw 2 reward cards for the beginning of the game. Reward cards give additional support in the way of all sorts of items and abilities so starting out with 2 right away is pretty awesome. The warrior may also may use weapons regardless of any special requirements they might have and can even equip an extra weapon. Weapons often add to your stats and give you extra dice to roll. Each player character has its own special abilities. 

That's pretty much all there is to the player character card and the game will come with 12 different characters to play. Each one adding their own special flavor to the game.

Next time we will take a look at the threats you face as in the bosses themselves! 

Please remember to follow me here, on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and google Galaxy Zento. It's a universe that only comes to life because of you.

Galaxy Zento: Heroic Missions: New Cooperative Card Game!

 As many of you know, I have been hard at work with new GZ art and plugging into card making for this new game. Well, now that I am ordering my prototype, it's time to hit you with some juicy details about what this game has in store!

Mind you, a great deal of testing will be underway when I get my prototype, so official rules have not been written! So let's dig into what is settled!

Game Builder! I'm calling this a game builder because it's the kind of game that you, as the host, will build to challenge 3-4 players with a villainous boss and all sorts of terrible threats. You choose what challenges your players will face in the 3 event decks they will play through. You will also choose allies for them to meet and recruit for extra assistance. There will also be additional game play alternatives to change things up and make the replay value even higher. 

Did I mention the word 'cooperative'? That's right, 3-4 players will work together on missions to break down the plans of an evil boss (one of 5 currently available). Beware failing missions! 10 missions in the failed pile and your team loses! You will be able to assist each other in missions and gain allies to help and boost you further. And for every mission you complete, you get a reward card and sometimes special powers. 

In coming posts I will get into various game functions in detail, but for now you can check out a few game examples.

Player Character: Assigned to you at random with special abilities and stats to play from.

Bosses: The villain you are working to take down in the game with varied levels of difficulty.

Challenge cards that you complete as you reveal them (counting as your missions) by rolls of 6 sided dice. 

Enemies you have to fight with lots of dice rolling. 

Allies you can recruit to boost and assist you.

But what are all those numbers for? That's for another entry, for now you get this sneak peek into what the game looks like and you're only scratching the surface of what will be GZ: Heroic Missions! Keep following for more information that will come very soon. 

The Power of NOT Giving Up

Sometimes I feel like I’m putting out content no one cares about. Do you know what I do then? I keep going. I keep creating and I don’t give up.

One of the hardest things on anyone who puts out content is silence. It’s worse than low book sales or even long periods of low sales and lack of reviews. It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to sit on the corner with a tin cup with the work “likes” on the side.

In reality, it is just another obstacle. It gives me cause to regroup and refocus on my goals and remind myself why I’m posting that content in the first place. Yes, I want my audience to see it. I want to grow that audience for the art, the stories, and everything else. The only way I can do that, is to keep building first and foremost.

That isn’t to say I’m not looking for new ways to market myself. I’m a one man band still and marketing is the hardest part of the job. It requires people and I’m incredibly thankful for the few I have. It requires advertising, and that is the one major budget issue I lack.

The simple truth is, if I don’t build and hopefully improve what people see, there won’t be anything to market in the first place.

And there are a hundred more creators, thousands, just like me. The competition is staggering and getting people into new characters and stories isn’t as easy as it sounds.

There there’s my health. With my new diagnosis of diabetes that doesn’t play well with Multiple Sclerosis, I’m challenged even further in my abilities to continue. To say that I work through adversity is putting it lightly. Some days, I can’t create at all and it always feels like a major setback when I don’t get any of it done because I’m laid up recuperating from an MS flare up. And now you might wonder if this is all I have to contend with in my path. It isn’t.

Because I am published through Amazon (yes self published) there is a terrible conception that a self published author isn’t a real author. And yes, that statement has been delivered to me more than once. I brush it off and keep going. When that person goes, “Oh, you’re self published” with that slight expression of disdain; I just smile and nod.

I keep a list of reasons not to give up. And I value those reasons more than I give credence to my obstacles. As I keep teaching my son, attitude is everything.

So I hope you enjoy these black and whites of characters that I recently finished and maybe can apply this to your own goals in creativity or whatever. Meanwhile, I have more creating to do. How about you?

UPDATE: The GZ 2020 Project!

Kinjite 2020

For those who have been following my pages, you have probably noticed the new black and white artwork posted with character names followed by 2020. This is the GZ 2020 project and I'm here to tell you what that is going to pertain to.

First and foremost, I am taking on the vast challenge to redraw almost all my characters in sharp updated scale. This is no small feat as we start with heroes and progress to villains. And while I'm doing all black and white right now, I will soon be starting in on digital coloring. But what else is happening?

This art is not only going to provide fresh new views of my best characters but apply to a couple of other projects:

NEW GAME: I'm working on a new cooperative card game that will allow up to 4 players (as heroes) with one player acting as host for the threats (that can be a 5th player if you wish). These threats will be none other than the best and worst GZ has to offer with new fantastic monsters (hint, you've already seen them) and villains with henchmen. There will be diabolical traps and incidents you must overcome in order to thwart your main villains master plot. This will utilize character building and multi-d6 combat. Recent game testing  has been very good to us so it's exciting to dig in on building this game!

NEW DATABASE: I'm working on plans for a new database that will also feature the art and details about all the characters. There is a possibility of this coming to book format through Amazon. You can learn all there is to learn about the GZ universe (well almost).

NEW COLORING BOOK: As a follow up to my coloring book Amazing Characters, you will get your own chance to color in these pictures. There will be at least 50 pics to color and enjoy.

And that isn't all. I stopped on work for GZ Tales vol 3 last year because of a number of issues that we don't need to revisit. The important thing is that I will be bringing it back to the front burner and working on new stories. As before these tales will tie in with novels and previous shorts from volumes 1 and 2. You know what that means? If you haven't yet, you need to dive into this universe a and get some experience with it! As always, there is the link in the upper right that leads to my Amazon author's page, but I'll give you a couple of the best links right here to get you started. The best part about this, is that you can read digitally (no waiting for delayed shipments) for just 99 cents! Super cheap!

GZ Tales Vol 1

Chessmen  Opening Moves

But do peruse the authors page HERE for ebooks that are all super affordable and fun to read.

So do stay tuned to my twitter and facebook because there are lots of update posts to come! It's going to be a wild year and I'm busting but to make it happen! Stay safe and healthy out there!

Two Projects coming to a slow down, Fallout76, however...

There is so much going on and I need to touch on all of it. I have greatly enjoyed bringing happiness to the Fallout community with my new scale of Fallout art that you get to color yourself; that was 100% supported by you the player with your submissions of in game photos. Your support past that has been wonderful too. Unfortunately, this is not meeting my new need of groceries and medications. Those cost. So I will have to do more toward efforts that I can be paid for and less on the freebie work.

I've done enough of the FCCP art and Chef adventures to fill 6 coloring books and you can download and print all of it for free. Other artist friends think I've gone completely insane. Who does that much free work? Well, for the joy it brings and hopefully will continue to bring, it's worth it in these trying times. People who are stuck at home can print out and color pages for that added distraction and relaxation with a side dish of silliness. Just what the doctor ordered. I did it for you.

That doesn't mean I'm not going to draw anymore of them. But there won't be near as big of releases as before and they will be released on a more spontaneous schedule. Kind of as I do them.

Now, if people want to ORDER a page from me I am happy to do custom work for a minimal charge. I will even drop the price to 7 dollars a page via paypal. I was doing 15. So hit me up if you want something special done that is just for you and will only be released to the public by you. That puts you at the head of the line because I always do paid work first. Like I said, I find myself in a need of groceries and meds for my MS.

You see, since moving to a new state and having everything shut down, I haven't been able to get a new doctor for me or my son. We are running out of important medications. So I have to put efforts into these things and try to push for what we need.

I am working on two new coloring book projects that I have posted teasers to so I hope you will be watching. I also have new character work coming for GZ with the 2020 project.

So there we are. I hope to still see you at my page!

FCCP Behind the scenes: Making pictures fit (Fallout 76 coloring pages)

If you've been following along, you know that I'm the artist who started the Fallout Community Coloring Project (FCCP). I've drawn well over 70 free coloring pages so far with requests to compile into a coloring book. The community response has been awesome and lots of people have contributed their in game photos for me to potentially draw.

Most of what I get I can draw and fit in the frame for a coloring page pretty easily. Sometimes, however, the best results come from a few alterations of space and detail. Today I'm going to give you a couple of examples. Let's start here:

BEFORE

AFTER

Whoa! There are some major changes going on there. I draw in photoshop and utilize tricks to bring things together. I brought everyone closer, added some baubles to the tree, omitted suit guy's backpack, and corrected her wardrobe malfunction. Click on images for closer view. To break those down on the last two, the seated guy in a suit had a backpack on that was digitally  merging with the couch. The lady's hand was merging through her dress into her lap. That's just how Fallout objects go when they are close to each other. It's not a perfect system. It's easy enough to correct when drawing the picture. 

BEFORE

AFTER

As you can see, after I drew in our dancing couple, I zoomed in on the tent and made for more active background to color. The giant rock is nice and all, but comes across as blank ground after you draw it in and thus dead space.  So now there is something active to color in the background without losing the action of the scene.

I have to say the community has been wonderful and I am still working on the ways one or more coloring books may happen. The update on that is that I am in process of moving across states, doing the FCCP coloring book will have to wait until I finish moving. I will update on that more as time draws near. Hopefully you will have a book by this summer. 

As for the rest of the images, if you have not seen them all, you can view them at my page HERE. Just click on PHOTOS and there are two albums. 

If you really love my work and want to help me keep it going, consider ways to support your favorite artists HERE. 

Until next time... thanks for reading and I am still accepting new images, just know that it takes about 3 weeks to get to a new person on the list. In about 3 weeks I will be restarting on my list of people unless new folks add in.

UPDATE: An open letter to Bethesda Games and call out to fans

Dear Bethesda,

I have made attempts to contact you and even emailed your marketing head directly. I want it understood in an open and public place where the world is my witness. I am doing something positive and good for a community I care about. The response of the community has been overwhelmingly positive and while I've done all these hours of work for free (you know full well what artwork costs, just ask your budget department) the fans of the work asked for a compilation of those works in book form, IE coloring book.

I am of course talking about the Fallout Community Coloring Project (FCCP) where I take player submitted photos of Fallout 76 and draw them into highly detailed high resolution coloring pages. I currently have over 400 submissions by a total of 107 players. I have completed over 70 of said images and I release new ones every Saturday. I do not ask for any payment for that work but I do offer 7 other coloring books on Amazon as well as novels and compilations.

So what am I asking you for. Essentially your blessing to give your fans what they want of this project and nothing more. I am not asking you to pay me for my artwork, sales in coloring books have no chance of hurting you in any fashion nor could they compete with your bottom line. And finally, the public relations could only serve to help you and boost you by giving said blessing to put out these books. Yes, there are enough submissions to make two or three at this point.

Being that this is 100% community supported with players sending their personal experiences to the project and that they get image credit listed on every image used; it seems to me there is a niche to fair use that might cover this. But who wants to argue over that?  I'm asking for your support because it can only make you look good. You will give players a whole new reason to play. You will show new players what they are missing in a market you scarcely exist in. And best of all, you have zero financial risk in the matter. If I put out coloring books that I make a total of a dollar fifty a book on and only 20 books ever sell, that loss is 100% mine. Furthermore, people who video their game play arguably make way more than that on monetized accounts, and since that is allowed I would  think me getting a buck a book would pale in comparison.

I hope you can see that this is not just "fan art", it is a collection of actual player experiences put to use for all of them to enjoy. I'm asking you to support that. I'm also asking those same fans to tell you as well I'm doing right now. I'm asking all the fans of this project to share it with you directly to show you how the unique interest in this works.

Since I have your emailed permission to at least continue drawing... that  exactly what I will do. If 70 pictures doesn't move you, I'll aim for 700. Why? Because there is another side to this. An outlet allowing me to use what is left of my artistic ability as Multiple sclerosis slowly destroys my nervous system. So I'm doing something big and this is where I chose to do it. So please, can we have your blessing?  You can email me at Galaxyzento@gmail.com anytime to talk.

Yours truly
A real fan
DJ Wilde