Thanks to my new card game website, I’ve been getting more interested in working on games.

I spent some of today looking back over cards from Student Wars, and it’s actually really fun going back and seeing all the people I knew and all the things I did. The game itself is amusing too… I came across things like rlambert’s “Math Math Math” attack: “Look at the top 3 cards of your deck. If all are characters with ‘Math’, deal 150 damage. Otherwise, deal 20 damage.”

Spent the rest of my time at home today continuing work on RPG Get and tweaking the card templates and rules for People Wars, with feedback from Ian.

The main difference is that the traits have been moved to the right-hand side of the card, instead of being along the bottom. This was primarily motivated by my desire to stop tying trait groups together (see the People Wars page, if you’re actually interested). The HP and retreat elements have also been tweaked so the card isn’t just all colored boxes. I think it looks quite nice.

One thing that seemed to make sense with RPG Get! is to have some fixed “starter” cards… for example, starting a game with a Fomar as your main character should automatically give you Foie Lv. 1, whereas starting with a Hucast should give you a Saber. It also seemed to make sense to limit starting characters to level 1. Therefore, there’s a new “Starter” bar in the upper right of the card with this information (starting number of reward counters, as well as a list of starting cards).
I’m not sure how I feel about its current position and size (although I think it makes sense to keep it small, since it’s only used for deck construction and in the setup step, before the game starts). I considered making it part of the rules (listing all the characters that could be starting characters, along with what they start with), but it seems to make much more sense as part of the actual card.
Thoughts from any design-minded folk would be useful.

Yay card games.

I like working on card games. A lot. I thought it would be interesting to add a site with a history of all the card games I’ve worked on.

The result is tcgs.alanv.org, which has information, rules, sample cards, and even full game downloads for the various card games I’ve created over the years.

It’s interesting to see how my cards have grown gradually more complex over the years.

My first really developed card game, the Starcraft card game, had rather unreadable (and low-res) cards. The game was also rather unplayable.

The Website Card Game had low-res cards that were at least somewhat legible, but it’s rather obvious I had no idea I what I was doing in Photoshop.

The cards from The PSO TCG Version 2 are still small, but are actually readable and reasonable.

PPA TCG Version 2 cards are still among my favorite card designs. They’re simple, but I like the way they came out.

Student Wars has one of the more complicated card layouts (and are also text-heavy), but I think they look quite nice. Downside is the smaller card photo.

The cards of Zeke’s Nose were very basic, but I like the art style.

I like the cards I’m currently working on, for RPG Get Version 2.

The card games themselves have also evolved quite a bit, although that’s more difficult to depict visually. It’s interesting to see how my game design went from unfocused and unplayable (Starcraft card game) to unfocused and reasonable (PPA TCG and PPA TCG Version 2, which was also my most successful card game) to focused and reasonable (Student Wars, which was also my largest card game) to too focused and uninteresting (Student Wars Version 2, which was overengineered to a fault). Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned in that.

Yay card games.