A corner of the room blurs, and in trots a pony, Followed by another. And another.

The ponies don't like the room, so they leave to go back to freedom. They do not take you with them.

You are in a room. There are four white walls, a white ceiling, and a white floor.

It's boring.

Make a wish.

Um, yes, if we make a digital product we can automate things like Magicka automates things. But like the Magicka devs, we still need to define those things ourselves. Just in case, I might not be understanding your point exactly, as it sounded to me like you were conflating resolving what happened during a game with initial design of mechanics, so I'm a bit confused.

There will be a slight delay.

That's basically what I said in post #24. The way I went was to define how two elements react, and how two runes react, but not how a rune and element reacts. But what you're saying is you want to go further? Really not sure how we could.

Unfortunately, there is no way to automate what happen when 2 elements mix, If you want a unique effect when fire meets water (steam), then you have to manually state what that effect is. Hmm, well, I suppose you could give each element a trait, and when you play them you add the traits together, and that's the effect. Would be hard to figure out though.

As to which wins, well, maybe you could use stats, but we'd probably end up putting more effort into that trying to tweak the numbers to get the same results.

Of course, I'm not sure about some of the effects I've got there, but I don't have better right now.

Logic and systems are my thing. If I can get started, I can probably build some nice digital games someday. It's just that whole, time, thing.

Not sure I'd say debris, as that would suggest something that remains and builds up over time, which would be difficult to incorporate, but I'm assuming you've got the right idea.

Not sure whether to bother with the no lightning when wet thing from Magicka, unless we need to nerf it.

Elemental effects: Fire burns, 2 turns, causing 1 damage a turn. Cancelled by wet
Water wets, 2 turns, Lightning does double damage. Cancelled by burn.
Lightning stuns, 2 turns, draw 1 less card.

Having a hard time with lightning. Maybe I should add another element.

Unfortunately, yes, everything comes back to rock paper scissors, it is, after all, the gold standard in balanced randomness. Well, the spell combinations are where the fun is probably going to be, but you don't want a constant stream of effects with no damage dealt.

Okay, here's what I'm thinking. We do Ball, Beam and Wall.

2 balls collide and explode creating a combination effect.

2 beams collide and backfire. Or maybe one element overpowers the other and hits.

a ball and beam will hit their targets.

a ball hits a wall and may destroy it depening on the elements.

a beam hits a wall and will destroy it, and may effect the target depending on elements.

Walls last 2 turns unless destroyed.

As for elements, Fire, Water and.......um, Lightning, I guess, so being wet has a downside.

True, that would be a rather interesting book.

"The global economy will suffer a slight turndown." Probably some guy a few years ago.

Hmm, environmental? That would be, what? Forced status effects? Hmm, tough call.

Actually, I'm wondering if we should do 4 runes, 3 elements, instead. Just have a feeling the runes are going to be more integral to how things work, though at the same time, they'll be slightly harder to do.

Something occured to me, 3 x 4 is 12 possible spells a player can cast, 12 x 12 is 144 possible combinations of spells, ignoring lingering effects. We really aren't going to want to make specific outcomes to each combination, and if we did, then it would pretty much need to be digital. So, I think we're going to have to come up with some more general rules on how things react..

I have two thoughts. We can have the two elements decide what is generated (steam/explosion), and the runes decide where it occurs (in your face/not in your face). So we'd need to figure out 9 + 16 = 25 outcomes, then just make sure they play nice together.

Or we could do a highest points wins thing, with each card getting +1 against several other cards.

What? An understatement for the record books?