Realms

Realms are a feature in Collective.

Summary

 * Realms are in the text under a card's name, and read “ from ,” ex: “Spider from Spideropolis.”
 * Realms represent the origin world that cards came from and are a way for players to group together cards thematically and mechanically.
 * Realms have Ages, which are sets of 8 cards. Once there are 8 cards in the Realm, the Age is complete and they can begin planning their next age.
 * Players who have contributed to a Realm are Realm Members; additionally, each Realm has up to two Realm Admins, who make sure the Realm is achieving its stated goals by vetoing cards and updates which they think are inappropriate.

| Official List of Realm Administrators

=Overview=


 * Realms are sets of cards that come from the same world and all landed on Wanderstar. Their type line will say “Tribe from Realm,” ex: “Spider from Spideropolis.”
 * Realms are separated into ages. Each age has 3 commons, 2 uncommons, 2 rares and 1 legendary. Legendary is a new rarity which can have a smaller font for the text box to fit more text in than normal, and can only be made as the last card of an age.
 * You can also make any card fit within a lower rarity than its slot.

Small Realms
"Main article: Small Realms"Some realms may be designed from the beginning to be a smaller scope than this. We call these “Small Realms” and they have to have 8 or fewer cards. The primary use case of “Small Realms” would be to officially group together sets of cards such as the Who/What/Where/When/Why or Nekomancer cycle. Anyone can make a card for a Realm, and when you successfully submit a card belonging to a Realm you become a Realm Member. However, if any of the Realm Admins (max 2) veto the card, it will not get in. Realm Admins also have the power to veto flavor or lore related changes to cards in their Realms.

= Logistics =

Part 1: Realm creation

 * When making a new card, you can choose to say that it came from a currently existing Realm or create your own, or you can simply not pick any Realm if you don’t want to deal with it.
 * Realms are added to the game manually by Nick and Alec. Requests to create a new Realm are handled by directly contacting Nick and Alec.
 * Realms can only be made by a player who has successfully created a card. Realm creators are assigned as a Realm Admin and can optionally assign a second user as a Realm Admin.
 * When you create a new one, you will be asked to give it:
 * A name
 * Short description with bulleted list of things for creators to be aware of, like this
 * “Starting lore”, max 300 characters.
 * Suggested info includes climate, culture, motivations. Supply a piece of art to go along with it, and when your realm’s first age is done, this will show up as a tooltip while players are waiting for games.
 * Make sure your lore conforms to the Lore Limitations.
 * (Optional) Expanded lore (max 1000 words -- that’s a lot)
 * Side note on lore: We have some lore planned that we can’t go into, we may reject your lore if it conflicts with our plans. These rules are not complete but as long as you follow them you should be fine:
 * Your realm is another world that your cards come from, not something which originates on Wanderstar
 * Things cannot go through portals from wanderstar back to their home world -- they are one way
 * Nothing should reference an ability to go backwards in time, this is not possible in Collective
 * What they do once they land on Wanderstar is sort of up to us (and our ability to integrate realms better into the game)
 * (Optional) Design goal
 * (Optional) Mechanical identity
 * (Optional) Affinity identity
 * (Optional) Rough drafts of one common, uncommon, rare, and/or legendary.
 * (Optional) Art design guidelines/suggestions
 * (Optional) Plans for future Ages
 * The above design goals should be written on the wiki so we can link to it from inside the Card Creator.
 * Example:
 * Spideropolis is a jungle + grassland Realm where intelligent spiders rule. They have a simple mission: expand their domain.
 * Design Goal: Create a new tribe “Spiders.”
 * Mechanical synergy: small units with ambush.
 * Affinity: Spirit, mind secondary.
 * Proposed Keyword: Leap (gets flying if it didn’t block this turn)
 * Art Guidelines: Most spiders are green, appear on a green landscape with a blue sky. They are usually cute
 * The developers reserve the right to reject any aspect of your Realm if it conflicts with the planned story or if the keyword is problematic (or possibly other unforeseen reasons).

Part 2: Realm support

 * When adding a card to an existing Realm it will link to the Realm description so you are at least aware if you are designing against its intention. It will also show you the number of ages and the rarities remaining before the Realm’s age is complete.
 * Cards which refer to all denizens of a Realm can be made without having to finish the Realm. The syntax for this should be “All Spideropolis units” if you want to refer to all cards from that Realm, or “All Spideropolis Spiders” if you want to refer to a specific tribe from that Realm. (This is a good reason to give your Realms short names.)

Part 3: Ending the Age

 * Completing a Realm Age awards gold and other perks (detailed below).
 * A Realm Age is complete when the Realm has 8 cards, distributed across the following rarities:
 * 3+ Commons
 * 2+ Uncommons
 * 2+ Rares
 * Possibly one Legendary card
 * Lower rarity cards can make up for higher rarity cards. E.g. an Age with 4 commons and 4 uncommons is considered complete.
 * Once a Realm has all 8 cards added to the game, the Age will be complete. 8000 Gold will be distributed evenly between all players who have created or collaborated on a card in the realm.

Legendaries

 * Can only be submitted when the Realm has completed the other rarity requirements for an age.
 * If a Legendary card is submitted without fulfilling the rarity prerequisites, but is voted into the game, it will be downgraded to a rare.
 * When an age is completed, the realm creators may upgrade a rare in the realm to Legendary.

Rewards for Completing an Age
These rewards are subject to change, as each one has major implications on development. The overall goal is to make each age establish your Realm as an increasingly significant aspect of the game’s world, these are just some of our ideas. In the very long run, we’d like for these to be guaranteed rewards for completing ages, but we’re dubious about some of them, especially the later ones.
 * Age I:
 * "Waiting for game" tip in the loading screen
 * Bullet points in card creator
 * Age II:
 * Realm Members may design and submit a deck as a single player level. Collective Staff will do the final touches on the level to make it balanced and appropriate within the context of the single player content.
 * If you make a hard level, it will be more likely to show up in the Constructed single-player content; if it’s easy, it will probably end up in the Limited/Draft single-player content.
 * We’re hoping to add these in semi-regularly (every month or two) but we cannot guarantee to get this in on a specific schedule because it will involve tweaking/balancing the level as well as updating the game.
 * This whole thing is optional.
 * At the end of Age II, you can add additional information to your Realm’s lore on the wiki. This can include:
 * Where on the world map your Realm has a “base” (hopefully becomes relevant later)
 * Descriptions of your Realm’s relationship with other Realms of age II or higher (Alliances, Rivalries)
 * We are open to changing the mechanics or theme of Core Set cards to tie them in with the lore established thus far.
 * Essentially after age II your Realm is considered a major aspect of the game; what this means exactly is not decided yet but we are open to ideas :)
 * Age III:
 * Official Icon
 * All cards from your Realm get a watermark behind the body text.
 * Additionally, when we add emojis to the game, finishing Age 2 will give all players access to an emoji based on your watermark. This is even more fun than it initially sounds because you can also attach an emoji to your username in game like a “badge” to show your support for your favorite Realm. All Realm Members will get a special golden version of this icon.
 * Creation of your icon will essentially be sent to us and implemented by hand. Realm Administrators will be expected to create a relatively simple, black and white (no grey) icon. From this icon we will create a watermark and a custom emoji as long as it’s not a dick or something. If you tell us what you want it to look like we’ll be happy to do it :)
 * Age ?: (stretch goals)
 * At some point, we may design one of these new features around your Realm and/or with the Realm Members:
 * A new hero from your Realm
 * Card back

= Administration =
 * The first creator of the Realm is an Admin and can optionally provide another user to be the second Admin.
 * The main power of the Admin is to veto cards.
 * It’s the responsibility of an Admin to contact us if they’d like to veto a card that gets in the week’s cards.
 * If they didn’t notice that a card got in and they want to veto, they have 24 hours after the card is accepted to contact us and have us remove the card. Everyone will be annoyed with you if you do this though.
 * This should probably be obvious but the veto power is best handled by managing your Realm closely while people are suggesting cards. We’re expecting that very, very few cards will be vetoed, and we’ll be sad if this isn’t the case.
 * Admins can’t veto cards that aren’t submitted as part of their Realm. If someone makes a card that infringes on your Realm’s design space, even if it only affects cards from your realm (“Destroy all Spideropolis Units”), Admins cannot veto it.
 * If an admin is being a total ass for no reason we’ll ban them, but they’d really have to be awful.
 * Cosmetic Updates of Flavor Text or other non-art aspects can be vetoed by the Realm Administrator. To do this, message us before we do card review on friday.
 * Realms cannot have more than two Admins. Neither of them can remove each other as Admins. They can, however, give up their own seat at any time, and if they do so the other Admin can choose another one.
 * A list of Realm Admins will be provided as a google doc that only Nick and Alec control. This list, not whatever Admins say, is the only official source for who is an Admin. If you’d like to remove yourself as an Admin or add another user as an Admin you will have to contact us directly. This list should also include links to side discord servers if the Admins wish.
 * If all Admins have not logged into the game for 30 days, someone else can take the Realm over. It’s up to users to identify missing Admins and tell us if they want us to pass the Realm to them; for new Admins, we will always give preference to players who have contributed more cards to the Realms.
 * Nobody can administrate multiple Realms.
 * Admins of a Realm should ideally not feel as if they are the “leaders” as much as the maintainers of the Realm. No special rewards are given to Admins to place them above other contributors.

= Possible Goals =
 * Establishing lore behind a tribe, or a specific subgroup within a tribe. Mind aliens vs. Spirit aliens seem to be on a path towards having two separate Realms, for example.
 * Establishing a deck archetype or gameplay mechanic. The “sacrifice” group is an example of this. Mechanical themes requiring some thematic tie-in is important for the game’s health but it can be limited if the creators want it to be.
 * Establishing a setting with a detailed history and theme. Hearthstone and Magic always do this with expansions, showing multiple facets and factions from a single location. If you want to make a prehistoric themed Realm, you could have dinosaurs as well as rainforest locations and big bugs, for example.
 * This is a good time to explain a bit about how Ages can show different periods in a Realm’s history. Ages represent a specific time period that these cards came from in their original world. Future ages may change the idea behind the Realm, but need a lore justification. For example, if Age III of Spideropolis is entirely Birds, it may be because for the first few hundreds of years of Spideropolis, spiders ruled the world, then after some global event in Spideropolis a bunch of huge birds became the apex predators of their world. This would not mean that spiders from the first couple ages are “extinct,” they still came from their own time period and due to time differences in the Portals, new ones are still coming in from their original time while their future usurpers also arrive on Wanderstar.

= Updates =
 * We are expecting that it will be very common for someone to make a card without thinking of a Realm, and when it gets in, desire to make an entire Realm. Hopefully these rules will make sure nothing goes awry:
 * We will only allow Realm updates from the original submitter of the card being updated, and only if the card has no existing Realm. (Once you’ve established that a card comes from a particular Realm, it cannot be changed.)
 * Cards cannot be added to an Age which is already completed, or an Age without enough rarity spots for the existing card.
 * Realm updates will be treated as cosmetic, even if changing the Realm of a card has small gameplay implications.
 * Traditional Updates have always been intended to rebalance cards, not redesign them. As a result, no cards in Realms, even in finished Ages, have any sort of special protection against balance updates; all the same rules apply.
 * Cosmetic Updates of Flavor Text or other non-art aspects can be vetoed by the Realm Administrator, just like new Card entries for a realm can be vetoed.
 * Cosmetic Updates of art are always allowed, but may be denied if the Realm Administrator makes a good argument that they violate lore. “I like the old art and the voters were wrong to upvote this update” is not a good enough reason to reject a cosmetic update to art. Deciding what is a “good argument that the art change violates lore” is ultimately up to Alec and Nick, and hopefully it never comes to this.
 * In the extremely rare and hopefully nonexistant case of an Update or Cosmetic Update changing multiple things about a card and being contested by the Realm Administrator, such as an Update which changes art, effect, and flavor text, each aspect will be handled separately.

= List of Realms = Also refer to the | Official List of Realm Administrators to see a list of all Realm Admins.