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Deck Building Event Deck

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Fri, 03/30/2018 - 07:57
DarkDream
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I have been ruminating for some time on the idea of progressively changing an event deck by seeding it with cards based on player's choices.

Many games have an event deck where typically after a round a new card is drawn that applies to the game world.

Would it not be neat if the events experienced "reacted" to a player's or set of players' choices?

As an example, let's say it is a co-op or semi-cop game where players need to vote on certain events occurring. An event comes up where players need to vote on giving a group of thugs X resources or experience a possible retaliation in the future.

If the players vote to pay the thugs then the thug card can be shuffled back in to the top X cards of the deck (will come back for more money). If the players decide to not pay, then several thug attack events are shuffled into the top X cards of the deck.

My idea is rather half-baked at this time, so I am looking for concrete suggestions on a firm implementation of this idea.

The downside of creating such a mechanism it seems has to do with the seeding element. Players may need to search through a seeding deck (contains just cards that are seeded in to the main event deck) and setup may be a bit laborious with having to sort cards into various seeding decks.

Also in theory, it seems that it may be possible to even dynamically alter the event deck's difficiculty level. For example, if you fail to defeat monster X or do so at a great cost, then a weaker monster can be added to the deck as opposed to a stronger one for defeating it.

If this can be implemented well it would add a lot of variability to the event deck and almost become a story deck where event cards experienced can seem related to what the players are doing.

Any thoughts? Any refinements or further ideas?

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Fri, 03/30/2018 - 08:28
#1
Jay103
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DarkDream wrote:I have been

DarkDream wrote:
I have been ruminating for some time on the idea of progressively changing an event deck by seeding it with cards based on player's choices.

That's a really great idea that would be easy to implement in Hearthstone, but, as you note, is hard to implement with actual cards.

I'd first consider not having it shuffled into the first X cards, but just into the deck as a whole.. don't want to have to count over and over, unless this is a rare thing. If it's not a rare thing, start with a smaller event deck, so the new cards have more impact.

Then I'd think about having more of a general "good vs. evil" mechanic, where there are two extra decks (good and evil), and you take a card or three from the top of one and shuffle it into the main deck based on a player decision.

Not versatile enough for the thug example you gave, but maybe pretty good. Could have more than two decks (but no more than four!) if there was a good plot reason for it.

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Sat, 03/31/2018 - 05:58
#2
DarkDream
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Thanks for the Thoughts

Jay103 wrote:
Then I'd think about having more of a general "good vs. evil" mechanic, where there are two extra decks (good and evil), and you take a card or three from the top of one and shuffle it into the main deck based on a player decision.

Not versatile enough for the thug example you gave, but maybe pretty good. Could have more than two decks (but no more than four!) if there was a good plot reason for it.


Interesting thoughts Jay. I was thinking along the same lines of having more general extra decks where you could draw from instead of having to search for a specific card.

Maybe under certain situations both can be used.

Doing a bit of research, the board game Castaways is interesting in that it has a deck of numbered cards, and based on a choice on an initial seeded adventure card, a card of a specific number is added to an event deck.

Thanks for the thoughts,

--DarkDream

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Sun, 04/08/2018 - 09:36
#3
Paul Ott
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Joined: 01/22/2018
I like this idea a lot. I

I like this idea a lot. I have been considering a similar event system for a game as well.

What I am considering doing, using your example, is having cards in the deck that tell you to do certain things on previous cards. So you draw the thug card and you decide what you're going to do with it: payoff (coin symbol) or ignore (dagger symbol) and that card stays in play with some way of indicating your response.

Mixed in the event deck are coin symbol cards and dagger symbol cards. These cause every active card marked with their symbol to have their response events to happen. My game may be a little different than yours as I plan to have several events each round.

Another way to do it is to roll a die every round and what you roll on the dice determines if any responses happened that turn. For example the payoff could result in collections that happened on a roll of one and two (of six), whereas the ignoring could result in fighting that happens on a roll of one. If you roll the dice and nothing happens, then draw another event card.

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Sun, 04/08/2018 - 15:19
#4
BHFuturist
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I like where you are going with this!

I think this is a great idea. Mixing deck building and an event deck is the natural progression of where the industry is at.

I have been working on just such a thing for my game Crash Landing. I am calling it a "Reactive Game Deck". I also think you hit the main issue with implementing such a system right on the head when you said:

DarkDream wrote:

The downside of creating such a mechanism it seems has to do with the seeding element. Players may need to search through a seeding deck (contains just cards that are seeded into the main event deck) and setup may be a bit laborious with having to sort cards into various seeding decks.

Right now, how I am dealing with the issue is for the Event Deck to start small with "seed cards". Each card gives the players something that they need to deal with and based on what they choose or how well (or poorly) those seed cards will tell the players what "sub-deck" to draw more cards from. I have been trying to find a way to narrow that down to just two sub-decks (the something bad gets added and the something good gets added decks).

With normal deck building, the gameplay is what "sorts" the cards from one main shuffled deck through something like a card market. The players are the intelligent force that builds the decks. In the case of a reactive game deck, this is much harder to do without having the cards pre-sorted by types and having the players add cards based on types.

If you think of a more elegant way to do this "sorting" without needed to pre-sort the deck(s)... be sure to let us know! That will be a very powerful mechanic for building many new types of games in the future.

I hope you have a great time designing your game and I look forward to hearing more about it as you work out how to best pull it off in your game.

@BHFuturist

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Sun, 04/08/2018 - 18:12
#5
RyanRay
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Joined: 03/27/2014
If you haven't already, I

If you haven't already, I STRONGLY suggest playing Robinson Crusoe: Cursed Island asap. One of the primary mechanics is an event deck where cards you draw from other sources either get put into this deck with a (usually) negative effect.

e.g.

"While searching for firewood, you find a nest of snake eggs. Either discard this card (ignore the eggs), or gain 2 food and shuffle this card into the event deck (take the eggs)."

--then the bottom half of the card, if you draw the card later from the event deck--

"The mother snake found and ambushed your camp. Take 1 Wound, then search the animal deck for Boa and fight it."

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