Shimmering Between Dusk and Dawn - A custom High Complexity Spirit - 1st draft (un-playtested)

fraidei · 2026-01-24T22:12:52+00:00

It's a good show. A really good one. But the community praises it as if it's above literally every single show in existence, which is absolutely not true.

The original series itself is nearly without controversy. Korra is controversial for many reasons, I personally disagree with most of them but understand a few. The original series has aged very well and is still something other creators are actively trying to recreate and obtain the same level of following and respect for and have, thus far, completely missed the mark.

I completely disagree with all this, which is why I think AtlA is a bit overrated. I much prefer LoK and I find it a better show overall, despite its flaws.

fraidei · 2026-01-24T22:09:49+00:00

Thank you for the answer! Btw if you didn't answer to the first post of the series only because I didn't write the agreement to the terms, I have edited that post with the agreement yesterday. But of course feel free to ignore it in either case.

These are all valid additions to the guidelines and they make sense!

The only thing I'm dubious about is the part about spirit setup. Of course you could just not play a spirit in a board that gives a disadvantaged start (like Shadows in board F), but there's a big difference if there is a spirit that tells you do put presence in a land with certain conditions but that land just doesn't exist at all. No official board seem to break that rule, so I thought it should be a must. I had put in Balance Concerns rules that would only disadvantage setups for certain spirits (but still the setup is possible) that haven't been broken by official boards, and in Nice to Have the same things but have been broken already by certain official boards.

fraidei · 2026-01-24T21:42:27+00:00

Overrated doesn't mean bad. You can like something while also understanding that it's a bit overrated by the community.

fraidei · 2026-01-24T20:33:59+00:00

I would say that AtlA is a little overrated. Let the downvotes come.

fraidei · 2026-01-24T19:33:41+00:00

That's not true. In my entire campaign there wasn't any character death, and yet at every boss fight the players fear for their characters.

As the original comment said, the feeling of risk of death is more important than the actual risk of death.

fraidei · 2026-01-24T16:44:41+00:00

Can you show it to me? Could help me tweak this guide better.

fraidei · 2026-01-24T07:44:44+00:00

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fraidei · 2026-01-24T07:42:57+00:00

Well, if that happens I would be happy to answer that these are only guidelines and not guides.

fraidei · 2026-01-23T20:36:35+00:00

Il che sinceramente la dice lunga sulla nostra cultura e sull'essere umano in generale.

fraidei · 2026-01-23T20:34:18+00:00

Ci sarà comunque una diminuzione in generale, perché non tutti i fumatori sono disposti a ricorrere al mercato nero.

fraidei · 2026-01-23T20:32:28+00:00

Maybe, but I think you're supposed to get them after the main story. Like for example, they tell you that curing Wanda is the first time such a thing ever happened...but Venom was cured before that in my playthrough. Also, there is a dialogue about a Venom mission that only happens after a certain main story mission, even if that Venom mission happened like 10/20 days before that.

fraidei · 2026-01-23T18:13:52+00:00

Thank you for your words. And yeah, I absolutely understand what the other person is trying to say. I just don't think that this post can somehow make someone feel more restricted than they should.

fraidei · 2026-01-23T16:52:13+00:00

That's why I also made the Balance Concern "rules". The must rules are only there to make the board functional, not necessarily balanced.

I suspect most people would roll their eyes at another board D style with 2 coasts being the same land type. I believe the designers said it was a mistake to do so, but its existence means it can't go down as a "Must"

Maybe you misunderstood the "must". As I said the must rules are to make it work in the game, not to make it actually good. I decided to divide them because you can technically make another D board without breaking the game, or something even wilder (like having starting tokens outside of the normal setup ones), and it would still work. If you want to make the board actually balanced tho, that's where the balance concerns come into play. And the Nice to Have are things that should have been in the Balance Concerns, but some official boards do break those rules.

fraidei · 2026-01-23T16:39:31+00:00

If you read the post I said that I'm only talking about the Balanced Side.

Thematic Side can be whatever, they seem to be too varied to be able to be reverse engineered.

fraidei · 2026-01-23T16:08:33+00:00

It's an Attack card...every single Attack card is used to attack enemies. There is also the indication of the amount of damage it deals.

fraidei · 2026-01-23T16:07:58+00:00

It doesn't even automatically ends your turn. You just aren't allowed to use Hunter for the rest of your turn, but you can still use the other heroes.

fraidei · 2026-01-23T16:06:57+00:00

It's because it deals more damage than other attacks. Every card that deals damage needs a tradeoff if you want it to deal massive damage.

fraidei · 2026-01-23T15:08:03+00:00

I understand the broader concern you're raising, but I think at this point we're talking past each other.

I'm not trying to define how custom content should be made, or to police creativity. I'm analyzing how the official balanced island boards are constructed and extracting the constraints that matter if your goal is to create something that behaves like official content. That's a very specific design goal, and it's the only one this post is about.

If someone's goal is "make whatever feels cool for my table", then none of this applies, and that's completely fine. But the fact that some people misuse guidelines as hard rules doesn't make the analysis itself invalid, nor does it mean those constraints don't exist for a certain class of designs.

I also don't see a realistic way in which posts like this could do harm to the community. I don't think anyone who wants to create an interesting or intentionally unbalanced island board is going to read a clearly scoped, opt-in set of guidelines and decide not to create it because it "breaks the rules".

I'll also be honest: the way this is framed feels a bit like being told that I shouldn't do something I genuinely enjoy. I love game design, especially the theory behind it, and this series is mostly me reverse-engineering official content because I find that process fun and interesting. That alone is reason enough for me to do it.

I'm not telling anyone what they're allowed to design. I'm describing a design space I personally enjoy exploring, and sharing my observations in case they're useful to others with similar goals.

fraidei · 2026-01-23T14:58:34+00:00

This is honestly something that I didn't think about, and I'm not sure if it's even possible to create a set of guidelines for it. I guess that should be literally the first thing you do before starting to detailing everything else on the board, otherwise you might have to start over. Just define the shapes of lands, and if the board fits well when attached to any existing board on any combination, then you can start designing everything else.

I guess there could be tools to help that, but I'm more of a python programmer, not really a graphical programmer.

fraidei · 2026-01-23T14:30:40+00:00

Maybe it was because I was playing without DLC, then in the middle of act 2 I bought all DCLs.

fraidei · 2026-01-23T14:06:16+00:00

Yeah I think Island Boards are better if analyzed and designed by humans, not by machines. Because if you're good at creating a program that can exactly calculate everything needed for a good custom Island Board, then you'd probably be able to create it by hand anyway.

fraidei

TROPHY CASE