I know how much people would love to see Vampire translated to the LCG format, but you likely never will just because of the stranglehold White Wolf has on the entire franchise.  They don't play well with other companies, and likely the intellectual property will only become accessible to FFG if White Wolf is cut loose from the EvE Online guys and they need a new company to buy them out.

Likely if you're ever going to see a new LCG from Fantasy Flight that will have multiplayer conflict, it's going to be with one of their in-house properties, the license they have for Warhammer 40k, or something they can acquire through their relationship with Wizards.  So where would that leave us?

Fireborn - Not likely as an LCG in my opinion, as the setting and story focus is not on factions or defined conflicts.  Would like to see this property see some new life, however.

Grimm (not the same as the NBC show) - Could actually be really interesting, as this one-book RPG does a good job of showing a world with different kingdoms and the re-imagined fairytale concept is trending nicely right now.  Also the twisted fairytales vs. children concept could make for a very unique visual style and identity.

Twilight Imperium - This is what I think is most likely for what you would be wanting.  They just made the Rex board game, have shown they have a real dedication to the setting, and there's the old RPG material and collectable tactics game from wayyyyy back in the day for inspirations.  It also has defined factions that would convert really nicely into strategy styles and deck formats, as well as an established setting where alliances can happen.  I would see it as some sort of "Location Control" mechanic that's present in a lot of the existing games, as well as down and dirty fighting.

Tannhauser - Alternate History Deiselpunk vs. Magic.  What's not to love?  Likely would max out at 4 players battle royale.

I'm sure there are other possibilities, but that's what I can think of right now.

 So looking at the two newest LCGs and seeing that they are two-player only, I'm kind of wondering where FFG seems to be going with this LCG format? I mean who are these games targeted at if they can't even support multi-player? Maybe it's just my play environment, but multi-player is pretty much the rule around here. 2 player games are generally what you play while waiting for the rest of your friends to show up. Hence a two-player only game is generally not going to get a lot of play. As such it's kind of hard to justify the investment in an LCG if you're not going to get a lot of chances to play it with your friends.

I'm not entirely certain if you need a whole new multi-player franchise or if you just need to re-examine the two-player limitation on some of your current franchises. I've heard of multi-player variant for some of them, maybe they just need to be officially supported? Although if you want a new (old) franchise, I would point out that Shadowfist had some of the best multi-player I've seen in a CCG. Just sayin'. :)

KEM said:

Shadowfist is still around and in production. It is already changing now to a non collectible format with non randomized 50 card packs for future expansions after the new starters come out. There is no way it would be a LCG too. 

Toqtamish said:

Toqtamish said:

I need to find out more about this.

skwizzle said:

www.kickstarter.com/projects/2113976333/shadowfist-combat-in-kowloon-card-game

What's next for Shadowfist

Future expansions will be released as non-randomized packs of 50 cards featuring all six factions delving into new themes and conflicts within the game storyline. Existing cards for Shadowfist will always be welcome in open formats, and players are free to engage the new environment in the non-collectable model at their leisure.

Hannibal_pjv said:

This, a thousand times this!

Just to add, we've tried the Cenacle 3p variant for Call of Cthulhu and it works pretty well.  They have a 4p variant as well and it seems to work similarly but honestly we'd typically rather just have two 2p games so we haven't tried it.

I'm OK if another LCG comes out with multiplayer rules so long as it includes 2p rules as well.

I think card games, especially ones which wish to have a competitive enviroment need to be designed inherently for a 1v1 game situation. However, after playing star wars and also my experience with AGoT and TCG's like wow and magic, multiplayer formats are a great way to mix it up and add some fresh play ideas to a game.

I have been told that star wars is going to get a 4 player mode where 3 players are rebels trying to take down a much more powerful empire player, similar to the wow raid decks.

Evazorek said:

In my experience casual play of CCG/LCG's is primarily multiplayer. It's certainly not exclusively multiplayer, obviously, but if you have a group of 3 or more people they are generally going to want to play all together. So if a game is unable to accomodate that, it simply isn't going to be played.

I certainly hope that's true, that may make Star Wars a viable game for me. Of course I'm really hoping they do something like that with Netrunner, 1 megacorp versus 2-3 runners. That would open up all sorts of interesting gameplay, as well as making it much likely that I'll even get a chance to play the game in the first place.

Ken

KEM said:

This hasn't been my experience at all with LCG's.  If there are more people, then we have multiple games going.  Multiplayer is (to me) more of a boardgame thing.  This is a dual, a game where you are clashing head to head with other players.  In that type of game having multiple people tends to destroy the strategy as the game quickly becomes more about ganging up on people and the meta-game of who will or won't attach each other.  Competitive players hate this.  Casual players may not, but they'd still be better off playing a game that was designed for multiplayer - typically one where players are less able to directly attach each other so you have some chance to implement a strategy.

dboeren said:

I don't doubt that's the case at the moment as the majority of LCG's at the moment are restricted to two-player. The only LCG's I personally have played are AGOT and LotR. I've played Cthulhu in the past, although I should point out that was with a multi-player variant. Plus I'm also thinking of all the magic players I see at my FLGS's game night, who are primarily playing multiplayer. So that's my experience, your milage will of course vary.

But I think you're confusing a few things about the type of multiplayer we're talking about and it's potential impact on the current play enviornment.

Despite the title of this thread, the type multiplayer the Evazorak and I are talking about is a 'raid-style' multiplayer, not the 'PvP' multiplayer that you are describing. I think it's been pretty well established that a 'PvP' multiplayer couldn't even work in a game like Netrunner, and there is no reason to believe it would work in Star Wars for most of the same reasons. 'Raid-style' multiplayer on the other hand would fit in perfectly since it is based on a lot of the same basic principles as the 'traditional' two-player game.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that 'raid-style' multiplayer would be additiive to the game, it would not in any way, shape or form alter or change the traditional two-player format. So you're play group could continue to play the game the way you've always played it. But now other groups can come together and play the game in this new format, or your group could decide to take a break and give this raid-thing a try.

I've experienced this myself in the WoT TCG community which had/has a vibrant and very competitive tournament scene. Running concurrantly with that there was/is a very active Raid community. One does not have to limit or restrict the other. While the players may overlap, the formats never do. There are no Raid Tournaments, for example.

I hope that clarifys things.

We already know that Star Wars is getting raid style rules in The Balance of the Force expansion.  2-3 LS against 1 DS. 

Yeah, a raid style game is a different story, and avoids most of the negative points of pvp multiplayer.  Of course, there are also other ways of getting around it such as rules that limit who you can attack like they did in V:TES.

What it does do is create an asymmetry though.  Will it be viewed as more fun to play the juggernaut side versus being one of several "normal" players?  Some of the fan-proposed Netrunner multiplayer variants effectively ask the Runners to take fewer turns:

Corp, Player1, Corp, Player2, Corp, Player3, …  Frankly it doesn't sound like the Runners would have fun with that as they're only doing 1/3rd as much stuff as a normal game.

Or do you avoid that by making it a player vs. environment raid which is effectively what Lord of the Rings is?

dboeren said:

As far as asymmetry goes, when idly thinking about a net-raid system my first thought was to have the runners effectively take their turn simultaneously from a shared pool of clicks. That preserves the symmetry and keeps everyone actively involved. Alternating back and forth between the Corp and the Runners seems to give the Corp way too many turns and makes it feel less like a co-operative raid and more like trying to play 2-3 games simultaneously.

A PvE-style raid deck may be possible, some of the later WoW Raid decks and Dungeon decks are set up to run that way. I can't help but feel though that it would just be better with a live Corp player, though.