Hey everybody!
I'm new to BGDF, but I've been following it for a while, and it's a great site. I am designing a deck building game where in order to get basic resources or perform basic actions, you roll dice with a slot machine mechanism. I've designed a lot of cards, and most of them have two abilities: a build ability and a discard ability. You get cards into your deck with an auction mechanism. Most of my cards have cooler/better abilities when they are built (pay the cost, play down). My questions are these: What are the common pitfalls most deck-builders run into? Are there any types of cards that any deck builder needs to function? How many types of cards should I design in order to test the game?
Thanks guys.
Common Deckbuilder Pitfalls
Tue, 11/26/2013 - 15:24
Wed, 11/27/2013 - 13:42
#1
Pitfall: has it been done?
For the last 3 years I was on the Card game Jury for the Origins Awards. There were plenty of deck builders submitted but not a lot of innovation in them. A game where you build a deck to get more cards to make it easier to build a deck to get more cards etc has been done. There are so many clone deck builders that putting deck builder on the box is a good way to steer me away from it not to it.
I’m not sure what you slot machine mechanic entails but make sure you game has something new to offer.
How many cards should you design in order to test it? I would say whatever the bare minimum is for the to actualy function. Keeping the complexity down will speed up testing. Once the core is working well you can add in cards one at a time.
Wed, 11/27/2013 - 22:47
#2
Tradewars - Homeworld
My game is a Deck-Building Game (DBG). Things I see about DBGs is that the original games are TOO LARGE in what they hope to accomplish. Having playtested my own game, I had to cut 15 cards from the game because they were superfluous. I later modified Starship cards to have *abilities* (which were the 15 cards I removed from the game).
So I think one thing to consider is proper playtesting and determining the amount of cards that are needed by your game. In my game the total amount of cards that may be *purchased* is 60. But deck sizes rarely go over the 25 card mark (so almost half the deck).
There is also the concept that your game may feel too LIGHT to be a DBG... And then having the urge to add things to increase the size of the game. Balancing between building your deck and playing cards in the game are essential. You want there to be a REASON people want to build their decks... In my game the concept is around "Space Battles". So it's pretty easy to understand that you want more powerful starships to defeat your opponents. So you can easily understand WHY you are building your deck and what are the cards you would want to be a part of your deck.
One thing your DBG may need is a *recycle pile*: the recycle pile are cards which have been *removed* from the deck you are building. In my game a player may choose to remove cards from his deck. This may be for example weak starting cards the player no longer needs. By recycling those cards, it simply optimizes a player's deck and allows him to draw STRONGER cards when he draws cards from his Draw pile...
Thu, 11/28/2013 - 00:20
#3
1 issue I've run in to is how
1 issue I've run in to is how to get players to buy the mid-range cards instead of saving up for the big powerful cards. In a game like Dominion your 'gold' is wiped every turn, so a lot of times you're not capable of buying the powerful ones until you buy some mid-range gold cards. But in games where you accumulate the currency, I see this as an issue.
Thu, 11/28/2013 - 00:42
#4
Very good point!
1 issue I've run in to is how to get players to buy the mid-range cards instead of saving up for the big powerful cards. In a game like Dominion your 'gold' is wiped every turn, so a lot of times you're not capable of buying the powerful ones until you buy some mid-range gold cards. But in games where you accumulate the currency, I see this as an issue.
This is VERY true. The way I get around this is that you have to BUY the cards to *by-pass* one. But since they are "relatively" cheap (like 2 points) all it takes is one card to buy and then by-pass the cheap card.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread, the need for *recycling* cards, this is another case where you buy a cheap card - but don't want it to be part of your deck. Your only option is to *recycle* it at a later time... And you can do this when it is most advantageous for you (like when you have 3 cheap cards).
The other distinction that I made was that "currency" is used towards END-GAME objectives. You can accumulate as much wealth as you want - buying cards is always done from the cards in your HAND. This means you can use ROLES to your advantage and get extra cards to buy more cards with. And you accumulate as much "currency" you need - until you reach the game's objective (like collect 200 points).
The two go hand-in-hand but are very different: you need to accumulate wealth and you need to buy cards. But both use a different mechanic.
Note: There are additional game rules which prevent cards from being *configured* together. Like for example if you buy the most powerful weapon, you may not be able to configure it to a starship because of the *capacity rule*. Same goes with crews... So you need to mostly mix-and-match cards of medium with the weaker ones until you have stronger starships and then you can move to medium/powerful cards from there onwards.
And so it is a process that takes *time*. During that *time* a player can use smaller starships and attack your homeworld if you are not careful and wipe the cr@p out of you! :) So you need to balance buying and playing (by defending and attacking the enemy).
Sat, 11/30/2013 - 20:55
#6
Slot machine mechanism
The basic slot machine mechanism works like this: You have three dice. 1-2 is one result, say, wood. 3-4 is brick, and 5-6 is wool. You pick the results of one of the dice and then roll the other two. You can use this for getting resources, doing basic actions, etc. If you've played a video game with a slot machine, (e.g. Robotek for iOS) it's similar to that.
Hey, great advice guys. I think I'm confident that I have enough cards designed, my game is innovative enough, and I can start testing. :) I got TONs of stuff done over thanksgiving break so far, and I'm currently working on a prototype. I'll look out for some of those pitfalls while I'm testing. Thanks a bunch!