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Creating card template around mechanics?

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jedite1000
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Hi i am new here and i am currently working on a new card game TCG/CCG, i have recently finished my first card game called Minimon Fusionz and right now i am creating another game with a total different style and gameplay

so before my question ill just explain the premise of my card game

This is still work in progress

My game revolves around sending troops onto the field to attack the opposing teams each troop cards will belong in a faction which hopefully will make the game more diverse and players will able to mix n match their own deck(been done before i know but hopefully mine will be a little different)

So there are different cards that represent different things. So far there are 5 different card types

first card is called faction card (name is not set) it represents the player and the players lifepoints the different faction cards will have different abilities

the next card is the troop cards which act as a defense wall between the enemy and the players faction card, this card is the one i am having trouble with

3rd card type is the resource card or food which is needed to play troop cards. pretty self explanatory

4th is a region card type, if you are familiar with yu-gi-oh this acts like a field spell card but will only boost your troops side of the field. Example would be a region spell card called swamp, all my ogre troops will gain a attack buff or something

the 5th is a spell card which acts as attachment buff for your troops or counters for your opponent. still not sure if ill add it to the game or not

So that is basically what i have so far, so my question and problem is the troop card template, i have no idea what to put on the card or how it should work, i want the basic attack and hp bar but other then that i am stumped. I planned on having another bar which lets call it boneclub attack which adds an effect to the monster when it attacks, still not sure if it will go well with the mechanics of the game or not but i dont know what else to add. I was planning to have the spell cards act as the monsters ability when it is attached to it, but not sure if having the effect text on the spell card and monster card is needed, maybe have the attack name on the monster card only and the effect of the attack on the spell card i dunno.

Also if this game is about faction wars and each troop belongs to a faction, how could i work the region cards around it

Example all ogre, orcs and goblins will belong to the ogre faction and their natural habitat will be a swamp so the swamp card will work with it but the problem i have some ogres and orcs that wont belong to the swamp as i will have ice orcs or fire orcs which will belong to a snow region or volcano region so the swamp wont work with them. You wont be able to play orcs and ogres if your faction is fire element faction or ice element faction but some ogres and orcs will be fire and ice. so how will i work around that?

Or i could join the region and faction card together and just make the region the players lifepoint card

Sorry for the dumb questions and long texts, i just want this game to be as good as it can be unlike my last game, although fun for me i dont think it will appeal to most people. This game hopefully adds more strategic moves

Daggaz
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jedite1000 wrote:My game

jedite1000 wrote:

My game revolves around sending troops onto the field to attack the opposing teams each troop cards will belong in a faction which hopefully will make the game more diverse and players will able to mix n match their own deck(been done before i know but hopefully mine will be a little different)

The very first thing you should do is define this explicitly. From what I can read of your post, a "faction" is just the player's chosen team. What are the rules for how troops are connected to a faction? What are the limits on mixing and matching? If you want to make something a little bit different, you need to actually work this all out. "Hopefully" isn't going to cut it. You have a bit of a start with ogres and orcs and swamps, etc.. OK fine. Work all the rest of it out. Nobody is going to be able to tell you what to do, unless you want somebody else to design your game for you?

Then you are getting into problems with your troop cards. Well without having well-defined core mechanics, it is going to be impossible to design your troop cards. That said, 1400 hitpoints is ridiculous for a board-game. You need to make everything trackable without using paper and pencil, and you need to minimize and simplify the amount of tracking and math as much as possible for your players, or nobody is going to want to play this. Its a board game, not a computer game. "HP-bars" and the like are not concepts that are easily workable, and certainly not in the 1400-scale range.

But what happens if you implement an HP bar? Put a number line from 1 to 10 on the side of your card. Now you need to move a marker (better to count damage up from zero than down from full hps, this is because having 100% health should be default and require no state holder) and you have to do this for every card that has damage on it. How much math is suddenly involved? What about ALL the other effects that can manipulate this HP marker? Do you have to move the troop cards in any way, or put other cards on top of them? What happens if the table gets jostled and the markers all move out of place???

Now you see why hitpoints are usually kept very low at best, and for many games, you simply win or lose a unit after the conflict resolution. Minimal book-keeping. Remove states instead of implementing state-holders whenever possible.

jedite1000
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What type i attack type do

What type i attack type do you recommend?

i want to try and stay away from my old card game as the hp bar was similar to my design

my old cards had attack damage from 1-10

if 1400+ atk seems to much i could lower it like example 1 card is 250hp and does like 320 atk or something like that. attacks kept under 1000 points

My old card game
http://i.imgur.com/ohpTFBL.png

Daggaz
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Again, you are ahead of

Again, you are ahead of yourself.

Work out the core mechanics first. How are factions special, what makes them different from each other. What makes the troops special. How does everything interact at the most basic level. What is the overall aim of this game, how do all the pieces come together to achieve that goal?

Once you get there, you can start to work on the finer details of conflict resolution.

And again. If your players have to break out a pencil and paper to keep track of just a single troop's hitpoints, and there are multiple troops, then it is already a game that most people are not going to want to play. Simplify more than that, or think about making this a computer game instead if you are able to do so.

X3M
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Start with "1" and work from

Start with "1" and work from there.

Pen and paper is bad if the game is intended to be public.

FrankM
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I'm with Daggaz and X3M

The numbers have too big of a range and will turn into a nightmare of recordkeeping. HP should be more in the range of 1-15, if that.

But if you want to keep a very detailed feel of strength and toughness, you can use some kind of threshold mechanic instead. However, this does have the disadvantage of a lot of counters that could go skittering if the table is bumped.

Every time an attack's Strength exceeds the target's Toughness, the target gets a Wound counter. This might be some splotchy red chit (or even green for the Ogre faction). Accumulate as many wound counters as Health points (which would probably be 2-5), and the unit dies. Healing a unit converts a Wound counter into a Bound Wound counter (a bandage-like chit) which still counts against the Health total until it is removed. Remove one Bound Wound counter from each unit at the start of each turn.

Your decision is then whether there is any natural healing at all (Wounds turning into Bound Wounds on their own).

Potentially lots of counters on the board, but the math is simple "is X greater or equal to Y" comparisons.

X3M
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While it is true that people

While it is true that people don't like to write on paper, besides of the game.

I noticed that your life points is 8000 and your minimum damage is 20. In the examples that is.

If so, than this would leave you with 400 life points and 1 minimum damage after simplification.
I don't see how you can do this with simple stacking counters. It would mean that you need counters of 1, 10, 100??? In any case, this would be a bit to much work. And no overview at all.

For your life points. There are several possibilities:

1. 3D10.

2a. Plastification of the card. You might leave a spot open. Then players can whipe and adjust the number when needed.

2b. Another way is to have little whitebaord pieces as I always call them. They too, can be whiped out. And rewritten. But this is almost the same as writing down pieces of paper.

3. Making your card ugly by adding hit points on the side lines. There are 2 ways in this. One way is just like the 3D10. Having 3 cubes, tracking the health. But this too is vulnerable (to external "wind"). Another way is to have paperclips, or any sort of clips, follow the health numbers.
You can go for, 0-9 with 0-90 and 100-400.

jedite1000
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Ok, with this game this time

Ok, with this game this time i want to try and not use any counters this time as i want the game as compact as possible, just get a deck going and carry it around so you can play anywhere.

As for the mechanics i kind want to get the damage part out first then i can work out how the factions will interact with the damage ect and i can say this faction adds 1 attack or 200 attack to my troops ect.

If the attack system is set then the rest of the mechanics will fall into place

jedite1000
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http://i.imgur.com/s0n7Hpe.pn

http://i.imgur.com/s0n7Hpe.png

Well i made some progress on my card game, i know i said no counters but i think using coins will be ok as you wouldnt need much of them

i am actually sticking with numbered atk and def system as it is rather different from my older game and, adding math into it isnt so bad as the monsters atk/def isnt that high

the effects i have on the cards arnt set, its just examples on what could be on the cards

I still haven't come up with the troopers special effect if i should just add a flavor or backstory text for some troops like (this orc is dumb and cant think much) while other troops have effects like (trade this troop for another troop in your hand)

Still haven't came up with a title for the game yet

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