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The Sims + Magic the gathering: Creativity in game to improve immersion

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larienna
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I am meditating on an idea and I just want some insight.

When I first played magic the gathering, I was amazed by the game like any other game when you first play it. When I played with my friends, I was basically building decks randomly on the spot to play with the cards I found cool mostly for their look and sometimes their abilities. Making combos and strategy was not part of the design. I never put duplicates in my deck (besides land)

I later played Master of Magic which has basically the same theme and I am a huge fan of the game. So I am a very good fan of the Almighty sorcerer theme.

Then I played the video game and fight some opponents with strategy deck, I realized that Hey, I could make combinations and strategy deck. This is where I became more experienced with the game and start to look at a game from a mechanic point of view, which destroyed the original amazement. Normally all game expert lose this initial amazement.

Then I played Duel Masters, which was mechanically better than magic, but thematically worse. In fact, I had so little attachment to the cards, that the only amazement I got was for the mechanics, and I never took a look at the theme. Even MTG has sometimes similar effect, for example there was a spell called "Feast of the Unicorn" that featured a banquet table with a unicorn head. The card boosted a creature, but there was no connection between the theme and the effect. Why does eating a unicorn boost a creature, what kind of spell is that?

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Now you'll say, why am I bringing the sims into this. Well the sims has some sort of mechanics in the game, but the core of the game is creativity, and I think (I'll have to confirm with my girlfriend) that even if you are an expert at the game, and could design in optimization with the mechanics of the game, you will always need creativity which should give a certain level of amazement.

So what if I want to keep the original amazement of Magic all the time, maybe the solution could be to add more creativity. The deck building is a form of creativity in magic, but it has it's limits. Now one thing I did once is card design, with a card making software, it was really fun and ended up making cards too powerful. But I am wondering if that could not be the solution to amazement.

First, allow people to make their own cards. Sure, they can design from a mechanic point of view, but they still have to give it a name and a picture. But I would push further, design a card during game play. Yes, that is weird, and would require a computer game, but what if you could unlock abilities and level of strength to design cards. I might require do design a monster in game to face an upcoming threat like it would be the case in a "Real" fantasy life game.

Would it not increase the immersion and amazement of the game? There is still the risk, that when you are very experienced with the process of creating cards, that you are going to see again everything from a mechanical point of view. So the end the amazement will reach a limit.

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In order to try simulating this, I am thinking to first find or design a solitaire rule of MTG, try to pre-design cards and see how the game goes. See if the experience is better and for how long. I am not sure if there is a card balancing guide for homemade cards to simplify the design process.

Else I could use blank cards, and write directly on the cards on demand to simulate in game design.

ElKobold
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Joined: 04/10/2015
Game like this already
larienna
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Yes I have heard of that

Yes I have heard of that game. The mechnism does look pretty neat and promising.

From from the reviews I have seen the theme ends up beign very thin to the players when designing cards.

saluk
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The Sims is non-competitive,

The Sims is non-competitive, and provides players a framework to create stories. You design characters according to whatever story or personality you hope to include in your world. There are mechanics, but like in a D+D session with a strong GM, the mechanics are there to give shape to the intent of the storytellers.

In games like magic this is not the case at all. It is the other way around. The story and theme are there as a way to give some meaning behind the mechanics, and to provide a certain feel to the gameplay.

In magic the mechanics are the meat. In The Sims, the creativity is.

I think that trying to blend those two goals well in a game is always going to be a tough challenge. Pushing creativity too hard almost necessarily weakens the mechanics, and pushing mechanics too hard clearly hampers creativity. A game that was equal parts of each would have trouble satisfying either audience. Both competitive players and creative players would abandon it for better alternatives.

There are of course a some tabletop games that push the creative aspects more than the mechanics. Arabian Knights, Once upon a time, all of the variants of werewolf, etc.

And people have made games where you make your own cards before. Here is an interesting (if crazy) one: http://www.wall.org/~aron/cardgame.htm Another classic game with a similar idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic

But hey, feel free to create your own "design your own magic cards" type system. There is always new ground to be covered. If, for example, your cards are essentially a set of value modifications (such as -2gold +5 health) and you have 10 such possible variables with a range of 10 modifiers each (say, each modifier can be -5 to 5, or not included which amounts to zero), then you have many trillions of possible cards. You could let players design their own modifiers freeform, and then have some cost, where you add all of the modifiers together. My example card above would be worth 3 units. Then make sure the deck adds up to a certain number of units.

But wow, I just got very mechanical there in an attempt to enable creativity :)

What about an apples-to-apples style game where the cards are modifiers like above, and then players submit theme ideas that fit the mechanics? So you play a round of that, and then you play the more mechanical game afterwards using the crazy cards that were generated by the game and then themed by the players?

larienna
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The "big idea" is also a game

The "big idea" is also a game with a separate creation and economical phase.

On another thread, somebody posted that creativity increase attachment between the player and his creation, but not necessarily immersion.

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