Because my initial ideas were sound, and I don’t see any reason I
wouldn’t firmly grasp this sliver of internet relevance, I’m continuing
that project.
Finding the parameters for a game is the most important part of making it work. I've played games with exceptional depth in terms of representing a universe I was already familiar with, but exceptional shittiness in terms of how that game played (Star Trek). I've played games with very sound rules and elements that explored every facet of a game played with cards, but had a threadbare attachment to their theme (it's actually a very popular game). Both games appeal to me equally, but they both fall short of balancing flavor with gameplay. Balances between all the things a game can be and all the things it should never be are the heart of making CCGs good.
I just want to note that I've designed shit for CCGs. I have no experience in the industry. I've never designed a game, published a story, or even pitched a skit (oh wait, I did, but we don't talk about/remember that). I have two You Tube videos. One is a music video I made in six hours on Window's default video editing software featuring an array of friends and set to Piebald's “Karate Chops for Everyone But Us” and it brings a tear to my eye every time I watch it. The other is six seconds of live footage of my friend Terry playing with a house dog that crawled into his shirt and licks him in the face.
Everyone loves the dog video.
My point is that if I speak authoritatively about this, it's because you don't want to read a long-winded (oh, and it will be long-winded) analysis of CCGs where every paragraph has an "I think" or a "from what I've seen" in front of it. It's shit writing to do that (I think), and instead of that I'm going to write like I know what I'm doing and you're going to give me feedback in the comments section because I don't.
Customizable/Equivocal
It's right in the name. Look, Munchkin is great, but it's not mine. I don't feel ownership for my game of Munchkin. Now, look, losing a Magic game (or ten Magic games in a row) with your deck that has your name on it and is yours sucks more than losing a game of rummy, but it's still worth it to play your way.You make the choices, you make the calls, and eventually, you make the decisions that work for you. It increases investment and that increases enjoyment.
However, having dead-end game elements doesn't give me options. It gives me faux-options. Have you ever seen Viashino Skeleton? It's a 2/1 for four mana. But don't worry, if one toughness isn't enough, you can regenerate it by paying half of its cost in another color and discarding a card. This thing doesn't do anything you want to do well well. Poor cards and good cards might be a necessity, but there's no reason for god-awful or ridiculous cards. The value of the cards a player selects for his deck should be based on the other cards he's playing and the victory he's trying to achieve, there shouldn’t be stillborn cards when a player opens a pack.
I know this is a tall, perhaps unreasonable, order as I say it, “For any given victory condition a deck aims for, there should not be a single card or a sliver of cards necessary to reasonably achieve that victory condition.” Some of this gets into my 'variety' point later, but for right now, let's just say that if every archetype that has two staples, and there are hundreds of cards to choose from, then you need several competing archetypes to make your cards useful. There are three ways to change these parameters: diversify the cards capable of carrying an archetype, diversify the archetypes by varying win conditions, and narrowing the card pool. Ideally, you could implement all three (though the third one is most tricky, since you have people owning cards[presumably by buying them], then you declare them off limits). My main approach, equivocation, addresses the first. If all cards have a similar level of utility, then you have quite a bit of variety.
The conflict comes from keeping those cards equivocal without them feeling 'samey.' What's the point of creating a deck if you can throw any forty (fifty. whatever) cards together to make a deck? What's the point of a card that only works in four archetypes instead of six? Not only does equivocation hurt customizablility, but it faces scaling issues that make it a bitch to actually implement (which kinda works out because those scaling issues do make everything distinct again, but let's not pretend we can't make a heap of generic cards of various effectiveness levels. I have played a lot of CCGs and speak from personal experience when I tell you that shit happens).
The second point, that of diversifying archetypes by varying win conditions, is pretty compelling. Sadly, a variety of attack options can lead to degeneracy, which leads me to my next points of balance...tomorrow.
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