Okay, there's a theme currently in my life, and it's called "reworking".
We reorganized how we displayed/sold MtG singles at the store, and from an organizational standpoint, it worked beautifully for us who work here. From a sales standpoint, it has cost us. See, we pretty much did away with all binders but Standard, and threw the rest into 4-slot boxes in alphabetical order to make it easier for us to search for something. You ask us for a specific card, we check and see if we have any in relatively short order. That's great, but it pretty much leaves the browser/impulse buyers out in the cold, and we have noticed the drop in sales.
So, we are in the middle of a revision. We're still going to have the 4-slot boxes with alphabetical stock for overstock, but we are also putting together a series of binders that will have rare cards in alphabetical order. If we have the card, it will be in the binder. If you need more than one, we'll check back stock to see if we have them. If we don't have the card, we'll have a placeholder card in the binder pocket that let's us know that we are out, and if you have something, we'd be interested in trading for and/or buying it from you.
We are also going to combine the common and uncommon cards into one big alphabetical mess. In addition, we are getting rid of the idea of selling common/uncommon cards just in playsets, and going to a slightly different pricing structure for them. That part is still in the works, though, and having the kinks kicked out the door as fast as I can find them and deal with them. Stay tuned for that one. It's proving tougher than it should be.
The next thing I've been reworking is the magic system for Dicebag/Tai'eres. This will be the third one I've done, but probably the first one that actually jibes with the world background. None of the systems have been all that different in how they work, just how they were presented and implemented.
Magic in Tai'eres is controlled and channeled through the use of "spell shards". Don't have a shard for a specific spell, then you cannot cast it. Simple.
Initially, I had divided up the spells into three different "schools", mana-shards (magical), god-shards (divine), and spirit-shards (nature). Using any of them required specific gifts and skills, but kept things relatively controllable and flavorful from a world standpoint.
Eventually, I added two more "schools" in void-shards (darkness) and blood-shards (blood magic), and I had various enchantments doing the "cross-class" thing where, for example, there were healing shards available for all schools, but if it was a god-shard it would be easier to use than if it were a mana-shard or blood-shard, and void-users had no hope of all of healing. Again, flavorful, and let folks focus on their magic-type, but I had forgotten one core concept of the setting... All of the shards came from the same place and all were absorbing the same type of background energy used to power their effects.
Hence, there should only be "shards". No void-shards, or mana-shards, or what not... Just spell-shards. So I found some older notes when I first wrote the system, compared them to what I had currently, and dove-tailed it all together into fitting that core concept.
Finally, I'm at the store where I am waiting for FedEx to bring us a lost box they say they have for one of our shipments. When that gets here, I'll need to change some item properties in the POS system to make sure things jibe with the stop-gaps I put in place for this particular order where we received one half, but not the other. Sigh...
It never ends until your dead, and I woke up on the correct side of the dirt today, so...
Toodles...
-- GopherDave
