If you read my last blog, I explained I'm trying to make a card game that is also a drinking game.
On Friday, my friends sat down to play it. This was intended to be the final internal test before I released the game to some people on TL for alpha testing. Unfortunately, as the game gets more complete, we start finding more flaws.
I will try to explain basically how the game works. It will help a lot if you've played Magic: The Gathering before. Players randomly draw a Hero card at the start of the game. Instead of Mana, players draw a set number of Action Points at the start of each turn. Action Points are used to cast Spells, use abilities, and summon Creatures. Whenever you summon a Creature, cast a spell or kill a Creature, you get experience points. Experience points level up your Hero, making him stronger and giving you more Action Points at the start of every turn.
It's very simply in principle, the problem is that it ends up making players try to add up Experience from multiple sources. On any given turn you might be trying to add 4 or 5 numbers together, counting your experience, and levelling up at the same time (which causes you to subtract Experience). It's just an annoying mechanic. Everyone agreed we need to simplify Experience or get rid of it. However, everyone also agreed they liked the way your Hero levels up and gets stronger throughout the game.
We proposed the following options:
1. The only source of Experience is killing Creatures. This massively simplifies the system and also encourages people to be more aggressive.
2. Delete Experience. When you kill a Creature or cast a Spell, you keep it in your personal Graveyard. When you have X cards in the Graveyard, you level up.
3. Delete Experience. Make levelling up cost a certain number of Action Points. This simplifies the resources in the game. My concern is that when forces with a choice of summoning Creatures or levelling up, they will almost always bring more Creatures out.
I know it's hard to understand without seeing the rules or having played the game, but I'm wondering if people have played any games that they can relate to and maybe offer their thoughts or advice.
Thanks It's really a priority to get a version of the game out to TL members so I can get increased feedback on the rules. I've even thought of making three different rule sets and then comparing the feedback between the different rules to see how the game should work.
Without much experience playing card games, I like 2 the most. Seems to be very reliable (cards aren't too hard to keep track of) and simple to use. I also like 1, but I feel having to keep track of numbers during a card game can become pretty difficult at a certain point.
I'd suggest #2 as well. Out of the three you listed it's the easiest to keep track of as far as I can tell and it's the only one that still takes all cards into account, which is kind of nice.
I don't see why you couldn't just use tokens or a dice to keep track of experience though and keep the mechanic the way it is. To do this I'm heavily assuming all sources give 1 or the same amount of experience. If they don't that's an option you could maybe consider? Then it just becomes another resource to keep track of, like life total in magic, and you can just use a dice or some counters to do so.
Whatever you do I'd strongly suggest steering clear of choice #3, it looks like it would pretty much end up kill the leveling up mechanic. Keep in mind, I haven't seen the game so take this all with a small grain of salt. =D
2 seems like the best option. 1 might cause the game to have less depth by encouraging people to only attack. Completely eliminating a portion of the game as in 3 also might draw away from strategy.
All three systems seem like they would snowball really quickly, especially if some Heroes can accumulate Action Points more quickly than others. Have you considered making your level a function of how many drinks you've taken? That way, the multiplayer dynamic is a bit more interesting - you can only level other people up and not yourself; power levels are self-correcting - I presume that the stronger you get, the more drinks you can give, which in turn makes other people stronger; and it fits in neatly with the flavor of the game.
I agree with Chylith for #2 and to use token which would basically be special experience cards. Make some +1/+5 etc. exp cards that you keep in front of you so everyone can see them. Trade them in to level up, trade small ones in to get bigger ones (like Risk) just to keep clutter down and require less exp cards overall.
I like number 1, as this can reward you for killing tougher creatures (assuming tougher creatures are worth more experience). You can even tie xp to something like hp or monster power, or casting cost of the creature. It should be easy to add these things up as you can basically keep the creatures you've killed as trophies/xp counters. I would also add level up cards in the game, so when you reach a level you can put that on top of the pile of dead creatures so you only need to count the ones above it.
The bottom left number if the Experience you get for summoning the Creature. The number next to it is the Experience you get for killing the Creature.
The problem is, on any given turn you might summon three Creatures and kill two. So now I'm trying to add 250 + 150 + 150 + 100 + 300 in my head, for example. But wait, I just levelled up so I need to subtract 700. It works but it's just tedious. It's all tracked on a separate board with tokens. The problem is that there are too many sources of Experience and too many people getting simultaneous Experience. If it was simpler (#1) or it was just physically taking the cards (#2) then it would be easier.
The problem with #2 is that a 0/1 Peon then is worth the same Experience as a 10/6 Gold Dragon. I'm not sure if that's a problem or not yet.
number 1 definitely works (used in other games; notably munchkin I guess if anyone has played that which is very fun) but if the game revolves around spells and summoning as well then 2 is probably more interesting to design to balance the spellcasting and all.
munchkin has some balance issues though between classes
The bottom left number if the Experience you get for summoning the Creature. The number next to it is the Experience you get for killing the Creature.
The problem is, on any given turn you might summon three Creatures and kill two. So now I'm trying to add 250 + 150 + 150 + 100 + 300 in my head, for example. But wait, I just levelled up so I need to subtract 700. It works but it's just tedious. It's all tracked on a separate board with tokens. The problem is that there are too many sources of Experience and too many people getting simultaneous Experience. If it was simpler (#1) or it was just physically taking the cards (#2) then it would be easier.
The problem with #2 is that a 0/1 Peon then is worth the same Experience as a 10/6 Gold Dragon. I'm not sure if that's a problem or not yet.
Rather than taking the actual card you kill (Peon, Dragon whatever) when you kill it you could just get some exp cards. Same deal with casting something, just take the exp cards to keep track. Looks like a +50/+100/+200/+500 would work ok. It's like having a bank in monopoly where you take money from. You keep the exp cards in front of you so it's easier to keep track of.
In you example, as you go through your turn: - Kill some creatures that give you +250, thats 2 cards, +200 and +50. - Kill another +150 another 2 cards +100 and +50 but when you go to grab them it's easy to add up the +50's into +100's and the +100's into +200's etc. And so on and so on until you find you have enough to level up then it's super easy to remove 700 from the total of cards you have.
It does add more cards to your game, but they are pretty simple cards.
Well, one way to make the math easier is to just use small numbers. If you need to add 1+2+2+4+5, that goes a lot quicker. Although if the game is similar to magic and gameplay mostly revolves around creatures, then xp only for killing creatures seems fine.
On February 11 2013 06:15 Chill wrote: So for the existing system, look at this card:
The bottom left number if the Experience you get for summoning the Creature. The number next to it is the Experience you get for killing the Creature.
The problem is, on any given turn you might summon three Creatures and kill two. So now I'm trying to add 250 + 150 + 150 + 100 + 300 in my head, for example. But wait, I just levelled up so I need to subtract 700. It works but it's just tedious. It's all tracked on a separate board with tokens. The problem is that there are too many sources of Experience and too many people getting simultaneous Experience. If it was simpler (#1) or it was just physically taking the cards (#2) then it would be easier.
The problem with #2 is that a 0/1 Peon then is worth the same Experience as a 10/6 Gold Dragon. I'm not sure if that's a problem or not yet.
Another vote for system 2. Maybe you could label cards with amount of experience, since yeah then one might be motivated to kill many weak creatures. You could also add special rewards for killing better creatures.
The bottom left number if the Experience you get for summoning the Creature. The number next to it is the Experience you get for killing the Creature.
The problem is, on any given turn you might summon three Creatures and kill two. So now I'm trying to add 250 + 150 + 150 + 100 + 300 in my head, for example. But wait, I just levelled up so I need to subtract 700. It works but it's just tedious. It's all tracked on a separate board with tokens. The problem is that there are too many sources of Experience and too many people getting simultaneous Experience. If it was simpler (#1) or it was just physically taking the cards (#2) then it would be easier.
The problem with #2 is that a 0/1 Peon then is worth the same Experience as a 10/6 Gold Dragon. I'm not sure if that's a problem or not yet.
Rather than taking the actual card you kill (Peon, Dragon whatever) when you kill it you could just get some exp cards. Same deal with casting something, just take the exp cards to keep track. Looks like a +50/+100/+200/+500 would work ok. It's like having a bank in monopoly where you take money from. You keep the exp cards in front of you so it's easier to keep track of.
In you example, as you go through your turn: - Kill some creatures that give you +250, thats 2 cards, +200 and +50. - Kill another +150 another 2 cards +100 and +50 but when you go to grab them it's easy to add up the +50's into +100's and the +100's into +200's etc. And so on and so on until you find you have enough to level up then it's super easy to remove 700 from the total of cards you have.
It does add more cards to your game, but they are pretty simple cards.
We're already tracking experience on a board, so it's not that different. In theory it sounds like it would be easy but in practise when there are 10 beers around the table and you're trying to manage experience for 6 people it just doesn't work. I don't think tokens or cards would help.
hey Chill, as someone who does a bit of cardgame and boardgame design myself I'll just say that the kinaesthetics of analogue games are perhaps the most important and most overlooked feature of their design. The term refers to the physical aesthetics of play, the materials and weight of play pieces, the way pieces interact with each other and so forth. Mousetrap is an example of a very interesting game, kinaesthetically.
For card games kinaesthetics are admittedly more limited than most analogue games, but nevertheless appreciating what sort of things you can do with a small rectangle of cardboard- flip, spin, invert, stack, make a house of cards, balance on nose and on and on into absurdity- might help you solve some of these issues and make your game more fun too. Many of the best game systems physically represent their play rather than only relying on abstracted rulesets, and for a game I presume to be designed to be a good drinking game, this would go double.
Kinaesthetics also involves the visual design of your cards, and how that design allows them to interact. I see you're going for a magic parody, but don't restrict yourself too heavily to the magic style of card design. If cards are going to interact with each other (eg. creatures give experience when killed) hard code that into the card design and use the cards for multiple purposes. This requires a little more cunning on the design front, but isn't overly difficult.
In that sense for me 1) seems the most attractive option, as creature cards can double as experience tokens when defeated, attached to the hero that defeated them. When you consider this mechanic, you can also perhaps have spell cards that act like a creature card for the purpose of being an experience token and so forth by having them mimic the 'experience counter' area on the card.
As an example of this process/design logic, I'm currently enjoying the task of cardgamifying league of legends. Stat tracking in any kind of reasonable moba analogy is naturally going to be a nightmare, one I attempted to simplify through this sort of thinking. My hero cards are double size cards (like magic promo cards) and they have their stats listed along the bottom of the card, which is the same width as the height of a normal poker or collectible card. Item cards which modify stats have a similar stat profile along what would normally be the side of the card, but is actually their bottom since they are printed longside up. The item cards are simply slotted under the hero card's bottom edge and act as an extension to that section, increasing the listed statistics. No tokens, no dice, no markers, no bookkeeping, visually simple for both player and opponent to keep track of.
On February 11 2013 05:14 Chill wrote: 2. Delete Experience. When you kill a Creature or cast a Spell, you keep it in your personal Graveyard. When you have X cards in the Graveyard, you level up.
This mechanic would be similar to the leveling-up mechanic in the OoTS Adventure game, where you put defeated monsters in your graveyard (worth 1 or 2 exp each) and every time you had 3 exp in your graveyard, you removed the cards from the game and leveled up. It works fairly well, but doesn't offer the diversity of experience values that a point-based system works. I think it's a good tradeoff for making the game more understandable.
You could try using poker chips and something similar to the pot mechanic in poker, where every player puts in some chips the pot when they play some card and when another player kills it, they take that card (it goes into their graveyard?) and some chips, while some remain. Now the remaining chips go to the summoner or are contested over by other players (or it's decided by some rule). You can stack chips like in poker and when you get a big enough stack of some color/number you exchange it for a drink (can be used with drinks of different "strength"). Or you can make it so that players can't drink unless they get hit by a "drink card" (played by them or other players) that forces them to drink, so people can stack chips for multiple drinks and then someone plays multiple "drink cards" and makes them drink a lot at once (giving bonus xp/chips). That could make people hide drink cards sometimes and maybe provide some strategy.
Yea I guess that's what tokens are, but it's more tactile and visible with big/colored poker chips and it's a good feeling (hence people will be more eager to hoard the chips and will find it less tedious). I don't know... I'm just throwing various (good/bad) ideas around (haven't really thought it out), so you might take some or it might spark some other idea, I know some of it is silly.
Edit: oh lol didn't read trough the whole post of the person two posts above, I agree, making stacks is awesome :D
EPT
It's really a priority to get a version of the game out to TL members so I can get increased feedback on the rules. I've even thought of making three different rule sets and then comparing the feedback between the different rules to see how the game should work.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/TLUIcU4.png)
