Magic the Gathering PBEM system

From: pmeyers@omnifest.uwm.edu (Philip G. Meyers)

Date: Sun, 21 Apr 1996 00:00:00 +0000

A SYSTEM FOR PLAYING MAGIC BY EMAIL WITH NO REFEREE

We've been running play by email games of Magic on our local system
for about a year, but up to now one player has served as referee,
sending the players their card draws.  Here's a system for playing
Magic or similar card games with a friend via internet without a
referee.

Each player comes up with a deck and runs it through a pair of simple
computer programs.  The first one randomizes the cards, assigns a number
to each card, and prints out a card list by number.  For example, you
input a new deck by creating a plain/ascii text file in the form:

***
20 swamp
4 hypnotic spectre
4 dark ritual
4 sengir vampire
4 drain life
4 terror
***

The first 2 characters for each card entry must be either numbers or
spaces, and will be read in as the number of copies of that card in
the deck.  The card name then follows.  Be sure to use ***'s before and
after.  The first program reads this text file in, shuffles it, and assigns
a number to each card to create a text file such as follows:

40
Your key number is
3001
1 - swamp
2 - hypnotic spectre
3 - dark ritual
4 - swamp
... (etc. for 5 to 39)
40 - drain life

The lead number is the number of cards, and the third entry is your key
number.

The second program reads in this file and codes it as a long column
of numbers.  The coding algorithm is a simple one that depends on the
Qbasic randomize function, and will yield the same result between different
PC's (conduct a compatibility trial using dummy decks before you start
play if you wish.) It prints a text file of the card list in
encrypted (coded)form using the key (random number seed) selected by
the player.

The player uploads and sends the coded card list to the opponent and
tells the opponent the total number of cards in the deck, but does
not give the opponent the key.  The opponent does the same thing,
so that the players have exchanged coded lists.  Both players have
the same coding and decoding programs.

When it is player #1's turn to draw a card, player #2 tells player
#1 which card number to draw.  Thus, player 2 knows that player 1
has a 65 card deck, and tells player 1 that #1's opening hand is 2,
11, 20, 22, 40, 56, 62 and his first draw is 14.  This prevents
player 1 from knowing what he or she will draw in advance.  As in
a bingo game, each player must keep track of numbers already
called.  This can be done as part of the turn message as shown
below.

During play, requirements for reshuffling the deck are ignored.
Likewise, cards that require altering the library directly may be
troublesome and you may want to not use them.  For the jester
cards and feldon's cane, players may need to reexchange lists
using altered decks to carry out the effects of the spell.  For
a card like demonic tutor, player #1 takes the selected card out of
his or her deck and tells the opponent the card number so that it
won't be called in future.  In a jester's cap situation, the opponent
gets to see the original list with the ***'s, edited by cards already
in play, NOT the one where numbers have been assigned.

When the game ends, the player's exchange keys and run the encoded
lists they received at the start of the game through the decoding
program.  Any cheating that might have gone on is then revealed,
and the apparent winner forfeits the game if cheating is detected.
Hopefully this encourages players to be honest, and reassures a
losing player that the opponent really was lucky enough to get a
black lotus, sol ring and juzam djinn on the first turn.

Players will need to maintain and send each other a status report
showing what cards have been played.  One player can do this for
both/all by creating a summary that gets edited every time a card
is played.  Once created, it's pretty easy to alter and resend the
summary using the email reply/resend/forward functions, getting rid
of those >'s if necessary.  Here is a sample turn summary:

(Message Beast to Rogue:)

You draw 19
GAME # 6      Round  6      Rogue's Turn
*************************************************
PLAYER # 1  - Rogue         Life =  20

CARDS IN HAND: 4

IN PLAY:
Swamp-T  Swamp-T  Swamp-T  Swamp  Strip Mine

Will O' The Wisp  Hypnotic Spectre  Royal Assassin

GRAVEYARD:
Vampire Bats

OPPONENT NUMBERS CALLED:
1 5 11 12 19 21 26 32 35 40 41 44 56

*************************************************
PLAYER # 2  - Beast         Life =  16

CARDS IN HAND: 2

IN PLAY:
Scrubland  Plain-T  Swamp-T  Swamp-T  Plain-T

Black Knight  Order of Leitbur  Black Knight
Bad Moon  Knight of Stromgald

GRAVEYARD:
Dark Ritual

OPPONENT NUMBERS CALLED:
2 4 6 12 17 18 22 24 36 42 48 50 56 60

*************************************************

Use -T or brackets around the card name, if you prefer, to show a
tapped card.  Use notes in parentheses to show counters or enchantments
on another card:

Thallid (4 counters)
Vampire Bats (Unholy Strength)

RULES FOR MAGIC: THE GATHERING BY E-MAIL

This allows you to play a game of Magic without having to be in the same
place at the same time as your opponents, and without wear and tear on your
cards.  Except as listed below, the E-mail game uses the most recent rules in
the Magic: The Gathering Pocket Players Guide.

DECKS

Type I or Type II tournament rules apply for kinds and numbers of cards.
Players agree in advance whether they wish to play Type I or Type II rules.
Obviously, there is no ante in PBEM games, and you don't need to own a card
to use it, as long as you know its description.  If a player will be gone
for a while, he or she should let the opponent(s) know.  Otherwise, if a
player doesn't respond in 7 days, it will be assumed the player has resigned
and the game goes on (if more than 1 player remains) or ends.

STARTING THE GAME

The game begins with each player exchanging coded decks and opening hand and
draw numbers as described above.  One player prepares the starting summary
and sends it to the other.

ORDER OF PLAY

After each stage in the turn sequence players have the chance to use fast
effects.  For example:

1) Untap, upkeep and draw a card

2) You play a land card, and cast any sorceries, summons, enchantments or
artifacts.  You send this action to the other player(s).

*FAST EFFECTS*

3) You announce your attack, assigning attacking creatures, and send message
to other player(s).

*FAST EFFECTS*

4) Opponent(s)assign blockers, respond by message back.

*FAST EFFECTS*

5) Damage is declared by the attacker; this is tentative because fast effects
can change the result.

*FAST EFFECTS*

6) You cast post-attack sorceries, summons, enchantments or artifacts.

*FAST EFFECTS*

7) Announce discard, if needed; announce your turn is over by a message to
other player(s) saying "Done".  Send draw number to other player.

You can of course cast fast effects during any of the phases of your own turn,
in addition to using them to counter what your opponent is doing in a *FAST
EFFECTS* phase.

FAST EFFECTS

Whenever a fast effect is possible, other players may cast fast effects by the
e
nd of the next
day following your message.  In other words, if you announce your attack on
2/25/95, your opponent has until the end of 2/26/95 to respond with fast
effects.  If he does respond on 2/26, then you have until 2/27 to counter, and
so on until no one responds; then that fast effects phase is over.  One day is
a short deadline, and players can agree on a longer deadline if they prefer.
Apart from fast effects, each player otherwise has 7 days to make a
response, but should try to respond within 3 days if possible.  As a
practical matter, there will be at least two days between each phase of your
turn.  In the event of time zone differences, the date of arrival controls.

GENERALS RULES

Six players, three per team.  Each team is one general and two flanks.
Generals start with 30 life, flanks with 20.  The winning team is the
first to eliminate the opposing general.

At the start, direct creature attacks can only be made between flanks
sitting next to each other:

LF . RF
G1    .    G2
   RF . LF

Flanks are left vs. right, right vs. left.  Generals cannot attack or
be attacked by creatures until one or more flanks are eliminated.
Once a flank is eliminated, the winning flank can then attack the enemy
general directly, and the general can attack him.

Circles of protection are not allowed due to the time these take.

The general can look at the cards in the hands of his flanks and
give advice on what to play, but one flank cannot see the other's
cards.  For convenience, each general can be the keeper of deck lists
for all three players on that team, and sends card draws to his flanks
when required based on numbers provided by the other general.  This
makes it easier for the general to keep track of the game.  A general
may take a turn for one of his flanks if the flank is absent or hasn't
responded to mail within 3 days.  A general can use a fast effect of one
of his flanks within the time limit one of his flank's hasn't responded.

When a player takes a turn, the message may be sent to all players, or
just to the player's general, who then posts it to all players.  This
allows for most of the PBEM busy work to be done by the generals if the
flanks are less experienced with e-mail.

The general can pass a creature to a flank in lieu of attacking with
that creature, and a flank can likewise send a creature back to the
general.  Passing does not tap the creature.  The creature is remains
under its owner's control.

Listings of cardfile, coding and decoding programs in the Qbasic
language (comes with MS-DOS) follow.  The programs could be entered
into Visual Basic with very few changes, and a list generated in Qbasic
can be decoded using a Visual Basic program.  However, it is essential
that the three programs be kept separate and not combined into one,
because the coding and decoding programs depend on synchronized random
number sequences.

HINTS FOR USING QBASIC

Load this entire message into Qbasic (save it as a .BAS file first).
Use shift-down arrow to highlight text, then [del] to block delete.  By
loading the message 3 times, you can then selectively delete at the clip
here marks to save the three programs.  You can also use Qbasic to create
the deck file, but remember it will give it a .bas extension.  If you use
a word processing program to create the text file, remember to save as
plain or ascii text.  Please copy and edit these programs as needed; they
are shareware.  You might, for example, want to have several key numbers
instead of one.

**** CLIP HERE ****

'Qbasic cardshuffler - CARDFILE.BAS shareware by Phil Meyers
DIM SHARED CENTRY(100) AS STRING 'text as entered in deck
DIM SHARED CDS(120) AS STRING 'text as printed to card list
CLS
'Read in deck information
INPUT "Name of deck file"; NI$
OPEN NI$ FOR INPUT AS #1
DO
   INPUT #1, x$
LOOP UNTIL x$ = "***"
DO
   INPUT #1, x$
   CN = CN + 1
   CENTRY(CN) = x$
LOOP UNTIL x$ = "***"
CLOSE
FOR x = 1 TO CN
   C$ = CENTRY(x)
   CNUM = VAL(LEFT$(C$, 2))
   C$ = RIGHT$(C$, LEN(C$) - 2)
   C$ = LTRIM$(C$)
   C$ = RTRIM$(C$)
   FOR Y = 1 TO CNUM
      cdn = cdn + 1
      CDS(cdn) = C$
      PRINT CDS(cdn)
      NEXT
NEXT
PRINT cdn; "cards"
'Shuffle cards and assign numbers
INPUT "Key number (1 to 32000)"; RN
RANDOMIZE RN
M = 17 * cdn
FOR x = 1 TO M
Q1 = INT(RND(RN) * cdn) + 1
Q2 = INT(RND(RN) * cdn) + 1
N$ = CDS(Q1)
CDS(Q1) = CDS(Q2)
CDS(Q2) = N$
NEXT
'show and save as text file
CLS
PRINT "Order of appearance:"
OPEN "mycards.txt" FOR OUTPUT AS #1
PRINT #1, cdn
PRINT #1, "Your key number is "
PRINT #1, RN
FOR x = 1 TO cdn
PRINT x; " - "; CDS(x)
PRINT #1, x; " - "; CDS(x)
IF INT(x / 20) = x / 20 THEN
        DO
        x$ = INKEY$
        LOOP UNTIL x$ <> ""
        END IF
NEXT
CLOSE
END

**** CLIP HERE ****

'Second program CODE.BAS - encodes deck file
'Shareware by Phil Meyers, 1996
DIM CENTRY(100) AS STRING 'text as entered in deck
DIM CDS(120) AS STRING 'text as printed to card list
OPEN "MYCARDS.TXT" FOR INPUT AS #1
OPEN "MYCARDS.COD" FOR OUTPUT AS #2
INPUT #1, cdn
INPUT #1, D$
INPUT #1, D$
K = VAL(D$)
RANDOMIZE K
PRINT #2, cdn
FOR x = 1 TO cdn
INPUT #1, CDS(x)
L = LEN(CDS(x))
w$ = ""
   FOR Y = 1 TO L
   R = INT(RND * 15) - 7
   Z = ASC(MID$(CDS(x), Y, 1)) + R
   PRINT #2, Z
   PRINT Z;
   NEXT
R = INT(RND * 15) - 7
PRINT #2, ASC(CHR$(13)) + R
NEXT
CLOSE
PRINT "Coded deck saved as mycards.cod."
END

**** CLIP HERE ****

'Third program - decode a coded deck, if you know the key number
'Shareware by Phil Meyers
DIM SHARED cdn AS INTEGER  'number of cards in current player deck
DIM SHARED CENTRY(100) AS STRING 'text as entered in deck
DIM SHARED CDS(120) AS STRING 'text as printed to card list
CLS
INPUT "Enter the name of the file to decode, or [ret] for mycards.cod"; f$
IF f$ = "" THEN f$ = "mycards.cod"
OPEN f$ FOR INPUT AS #1
INPUT "Enter key for this file"; K
RANDOMIZE K
OPEN "UNCODE.TXT" FOR OUTPUT AS #2
INPUT #1, cdn
PRINT cdn
DO
INPUT #1, CN
R = INT(RND * 15) - 7
w$ = CHR$(CN - R)
PRINT #2, w$;
PRINT w$;
LOOP UNTIL EOF(1)
CLOSE
PRINT
PRINT "Done - decoded file has been printed to uncode.txt."
DO
LOOP UNTIL INKEY$ <> ""
END

**** CLIP HERE ****