BEAR GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES

Dear Bearmasters,

The concept of this game is, to put it mildly, ridiculous. Bears? I mean, come on. Who the heck would suspend their disbelief so far as to accept that hundreds of god-powered bears are plaguing humanity and are tearing them limb from limb to gain their powers? So since this is so far beyond the realm of belief, I might as well make it a little silly. And what else could be sillier than bears with class levels?

“Gwuh?” you may sputter. “Isn’t the primal power of bears enough without letting them learn our ways?” The answer is no. No f-word-ing way. “Why?” you query, your voice laden with incredulity. I respond succinctly: because it’s cool.

Yeah. Bears gain class levels. These will likely be the only cards in your deck that are not Adventurers. Each class will have three different levels of power, ascending in ability. The first class in a tree will likely be more of a nature than a class. For example, the first level of the BarBEARian class tree might be called “Ill-Tempered”. This would be followed by BarBEARian, and finally Berserker (I am trying my hardest to avoid puns, as those will rapidly grow tiresome). Each class level will provide stat boosts and additional or improved skills.

Each class will have a prerequisite Body Count cost. Unlike with Adventurer cards , which do not remove cards from the Body Count, leveling up your class will actually expend cards in the Count, removing them from the game. Thus you will need to balance your class leveling with your Adventurer usage. Multiclassing is also an option. The Berserker class might sharply boost your attack power, but slightly lower your defense and special defense, but if you take a level in a class that increases those deficit stats, you can balance your Bear out that much more. Other classes might have synergies. For example, a Defender Tree class could normally have a high physical defense but be lacking in attack power. But using a special ability called Phalanx on your level 2-3 Defender might boost the attack of all Bears with levels in that tree.

The neat thing is, in my opinion, is that you don’t need to rely on both Classes and Adventurers to win the game. Each player can pick their preferential play style and card ratio and still have the same odds.

Aaaaand that just about wraps up the core rules. Next on the to-do list is to organize my ramblings into a succinct, coherent document that outlines them. Apart from that, I’ve just got to start pumping out different cards. After that is just far too many hours of Alpha testing. I’m hoping to get Alpha out of the way and get a Kickstarter funding drive started by early to late summer. I’ll be sure to keep you posted on the progress. Most everything from here on out will likely be spotlights on individual card ideas or themes.

Until next time, Bearmasters!