Here to help you with TCG design. So many more people are becoming interested in card game design, and video by video I am gathering knowledge to share with you on how to make the best homemade TCG you can. So follow me on my own Homemade TCG journey, and let's see what we learn a long the way.
I only got the email notification of you questioning the missing comments. Sorry about this. I'll have a check to see if they are held for review. That's all I can think to do on my end.
It depends on the mechanics of the game but I don't have an issue with neutral resources. My own TCG uses a neutral resource. If you mean having a neutral resource in a game that commonly uses different resources to target different types or factions then, as you said, keep the cost high because it is a strong resource. You will also likely see a card like that in most decks because of the utility it provides. This means player's decks start to not feel unique and personally customised, which is what you want from a TCG. So keep the cost high enough that it is only usable in select decks that are built to use it.
Factions/colors exist because its harder to balance a game when there is nothing preventing players from playing all the best cards in the same deck. Power creep can kill the creativity aspect of card games where all cards can be played together because it becomes evident that only the stronger cards are worth playing.
This works for online card games, but it's harder to moderate with old-fashioned tabletop card games because you'd have to check the quantity of every card in a deck. But I suppose it is a similar honour system to general card limits of 3 or 4 per deck.
Having crossover is the best idea. I've played games like WWE Raw Deal that did separate many things into itself. Face/Heel, Raw/Smackdown, Cheater/Fan Favorite. All were close one of two and couldn't mix normally. With them using a character system, they did make a character for each that could play both sides of it. But it still makes it harder on players. For my game I'm going to be more going the Star Wars Unlimited direction. When my game includes Styles (technical, Striker, Grappler, etc...) it'll use things like a threshold idea. You need N of the correct symbol in play. Give ways to generate that resource so you can play with multiple if you want to have all the ways to generate it. SWU has multiple types along with Light and Dark, but if you don't have the right symbol the card just costs 2 more. So if you're leader or base (the two things that start in play and give you a symbol in play to start) doesn't include the Aggression or Dark symbol you can still pack that Darth Vader in your Cunning Luke deck, you're just choosing to pay 2 more for it
It depends on the TCG. But the different colours for energy help divide the factions. It is then by adding cards that allow factions to work together through complimentary effects, which spark the creativity for players. It sounds unnecessary, but we need to create obstacles to overcome.
Problem is that if there is no factions/colours then the best decks in the game will almost always just be a mish-mash of the 60 most powerful generic value cards.
2:20 uhh... I disagree with this. As a matter of fact, I feel that many card games are guilt of this already (looking at you, MTG.) There's so many cards that do so much shit I'm personally completely baffled that anyone can follow that game, especially the casuals. I personally believe that the best games *do* have complex systems, though. Humans just tend to have that "herd" mindset with little critical thinking, and once something is "viral" they latch on to it even if they don't really "love" it bc they haven't truly thought about it more than "well, everyone else is doing it!"
I disagree, here's how I'll explain: -As a consumer, I don't by booster packs or loot boxes. It's predatory bullshit cash-grab gambling that I simply despise. -As a business, hell yeah I'm going to make predatory bullshit gambling if it means I can milk millions of dollars from people. Personally, I think it's evil to take advantage of people in this way. Booster packs should be deleted from existence IMO.
Even beyond big numbers being nice for scanning, I do enjoy the granularity they can offer as well! MtG's Lightning Bolt defines balance for 1-cost instant burn spells as 3 dmg being the ceiling without drawbacks, but then Shock at 2 feels like hot garbage. So for games like mine, while it's not a perfect 10:1 scale at 200 starting life (compared to MtG), having life totals in the hundreds allows equivalent cards to be adjusted to 25 instead of 30 or 20 (essentially if MtG could print a 2.5dmg card for 1-cost). It has been lovely to work with! One other comment, the left/right adjusted information statistically works for people because the majority are right handed, but there isn't a "correct" way to hold them, it completely ignores that a chunk of people are lefties 😅 (funny enough for me, I held Magic cards before playing cards, so I actually hold them like a lefthanded person, even though I am right handed. Haven't been able to break that habit. I wanted to see mana costs)
I hold my cards as a left-hander as well. I didn't consider this to be a lefthanded preferred position because you can fan your cards either way when you hold them. So basically, I have always said I hold them wrong. But that is the habit I formed very young. I try to hold them the other way, and it feels so unatural to me. The 2.5 compared to 25 example you gave is good. It is weird how our brain considers decimals to be more complex even though the maths is essentially the same. So MtG could never move to using decimals while you have the freedom to walk that path with 10x values.
@ShardTCG Now, I often fan my cards vertically downwards after my cycles of card flicking so I can get all of the "top of card" information lol.... I also can't do it the statistically normal way. Yeah decimals break people's brains sometimes, and they aren't as clean, so I get it. But I wouldn't mind seeing games on MtG's number scale use them.
one interesting win condition i can remember, is in the now basically dead card game "infinity wars" where unites didnt just have health but morale cost when they died, and a specific color has defensive cards that focus entirely about running your opponent out of morale points, the logic being the enemy lost the war by getting demoralized in the war of attrition, the mechanic also encouraged a winning by defense alone, which isnt common in TCGs
That sounds fun and thematic. I can't remember if it was the old Shogun total war game that also played with the morale of your armies. So there were fun strategies like sneaking in ninjas to assassinate the general the night before you invaded. Then you attacked a low morale army that were likely to flee the lands you were claiming.
I am working on a TCG which has a focus of hero battling, and I have 3 or so main win conditions planned. 1 - Defeat X amount of your opponent Heroes. (Since it is character/hero focused the only planned form of removal is combat which normally would take multiple terms. I haven't decided on how many heroes need to be defeated, will need to do playtesting for that) 2- Your opponent runs out of cards in their deck. 3- If your opponent's field is empty of all Heroes and they are unable to play another Hero before their turn ends, you win the game. All of these things are bound to change as I play test it more, but since you brought up alt win conditions I wanted to talk about it.
I see that 1 and 3 are alternative wins to each other, but they are still tied down to the same target of defeating heroes. So this is intuitive for players who are learning your game.
My favorite gimmick is Link Arrows and pointing in Yugioh. I think it’s a very interesting idea with how you need cards to point physically to other cards due to mechanics or to gain effects. However, I think it can definitely be utilized more and better. (Hopefully a future card game)
I will never see Cardfight Vanguard and not think Cardfight Voldermort for the rest of my life. (Thanks Kohdok) My favorite gimmick is probably Buddyfight's gauge system and weapons.
My favorite is having score based gameplay rather than life total based games. Some games that do score based games are Marvel Snap, Gwent and Altered! (Edit) For Alternate Win Conditions; Marvel Snap has Galactus and instead of having to win 2 out of 3 locations you just have to win one. I personally like playing Galactus!
I found the recent video really interesting and was even more interested and a little surprised when you said you disagreed with the alternate win-cons until you compared it to Civ. I don't think the original commenter meant having 64 different win cons like civ, in the same game, but having a main wincon like life points and one or two specific alternatives, like exodia as they mentioned. Decking out is pretty standard and kind of an unofficial staple of the genre just because it's what happens when a limited resource runs out. If we are comparing to other games, I feel like the angle they were getting at is less like Civ and more like Age of Empires, where the main wincon is conquest with a secondary wincon of a Wonder victory, nothing crazy, just one or two very specific bonus wincons
"I don't really care about story" You and me both brother. I've never really been a story kind of guy, especially in games. But flavor text has always been a way that I've gotten into any stories. Maybe it's while I'm waiting for an opponent to make a play I happen to read it, or while I'm putting together a deck, or just organizing cards. I've played a lot of IP Games too, Star Wars, Trek, LotR, WWE. Those you know their stories before you begin. "Putting in effort for 4 or 5 types" This would also apply to things like keywords. I get designing using a lot of them, but through testing it should reduced for the final set. Push a few forward in sets, especially ones really synergistic because it will let you build to something over the course of multiple sets.
Mark Rosewater spoke about adding new keywords/mechanics to MTG. Basically, one per set was ideal to playtest properly with their team. So yes, use keywords sparingly.
7:09 For a card game I am working on for a game jam, there are two main win conditions. The first is to complete your monument by sending agents on missions. The other is for your opponent to accumulate 25 Paradox, causing them to lose.
I only just thought of a gimmick I enjoyed, though I'm not sure if it's technically a "gimmick". In Shadowverse, a digital CCG, you can only have 5 permanents (as in, things that stay on the board) in play at any time. If you already have 5, you can't play any more permanents. At the start, this didn't really matter because those permanents would typically be creatures that smacked you for a load of damage if they were left alive. But especially as Shadowverse decks took on a more "quest"-like playstyle, board-locking opponents became a common strategy. For instance, the Chess archetype had a card called Mystic King, who starts as a 13 cost, but at the end of your turn, if at least 8 tokens named "Magical Pawn" have died this game, it would reduce its cost by 8. Then when it came down it was a 13/13 with a few protections, that also summon four 3/2s that could instantly smack the enemy face (your starting life total is 20). However, these "Magical Pawn" tokens were merely 1/1s, so you could easily boardlock a Chess player and only take a small amount of damage each turn. A card meant to support the Chess archetype by dealing 1 to the entire enemy board each time you summon a Magical Pawn was sometimes dropped because you could end up killing the enemies you would've wanted to suicide your Pawns into. And there was exactly 1 spell in the game that was in rotation that could destroy your own board and gave a bigger benefit the more allies you destroyed, and it was sometimes played in the Chess archetype to unclog your own board (it did other things besides clearing your own board, but that was one of the reasons why it was played). It's really interesting to see something that would typically be regarded as an advantage - cards on board - be turned into a disadvantage.
I love flipping a typical game on its head. I always thought about making a card game where your goal is to deck out yourself. But you and your opponent would use cards that constantly add cards back to your deck. But the more cards you have in your deck, the more options you have to add cards to your opponent's deck and also help deck out yourself. It sounds wacky, and I have no idea if it would be fun or even work. But it sounds so unusually interesting.
@@ShardTCG That sounds a bit like Forgetful Fish aka Dandan. Okay not really, but Dandan's gimmick is sharing a deck and returning cards to said deck, so there's a bit of similarity
I appreciate how charitable you were with the submissions!! Obviously, a pithy RU-vid comment is going to be unconcise, but you took the time to really consider the intent behind them!! Shows great integrity on your part from my perspective!!
So many people have helped inspire videos with their comments. And I love that I can ask this community anything and receive so much feedback. Thank you.
I'm still scared every time I make a change to my TCG or make a new video. You don't want to let people down. It's okay to feel that way. To risk showing your work and who you are is to risk offending someone or disappointing someone. But we do it anyway because the alternative of living in fear and silence is not a real option we can take and still expect to live a happy and fulfilling life.
How big are the cards? Have some boxes on the way, wondering if you have a suggestion on binders or penny sleeves that fit. They look like pretty big cards
I have put mine in a regular binder. I think they appear bigger because the corners aren't curved. I may be wrong, but I can't check as I am at work right now.
Realistically newer players have one of two ways of learning. A friend, or some friends teach them. Other than that it really is kitchentop friends reading the rules and replayhing their first game halfway through
Mmm. I do like the idea that the simpler the basic system is, the easier it is to design ways to alter or even break that system. Consider Magic's one card per turn. We immediately throw a wrench into that by having cards that draw cards for a mana cost - now you have the option to spend a resource to get more cards, but in a limited way, only when you happen to have drawn the card that does it. We further stretch the limits by making cards that persist - a card that stays in play and lets you (or everyone) draw more than one card a turn, or can cause a bonus draw on demand (for some cost, or under some limit). Now you have a way to set up a method to make cards easier to get. We also have a card economy idea, often called 'card advantage', where having one card deal with multiple cards of an opponent puts you 'ahead' in the game; if my spell destroys three on your creatures but costs me the one card that does it, that functionally means you my opponent have two fewer cards total cards worth of value than I do, which I can assign a very consistent value to in my head. This also makes cards or combinations of cards that let you shatter that cost very valuable; a card that let you pay life points to draw cards can quickly become insane on its own, and some of the better combos in Magic's history have involve forming loops of card effects that continually let you get extra draws. The initial simplicity of the mechanic opens up the possibility of complexity in the game state that allows for strange and fun things to happen, and allows players to strive to make those crazy plays.
I think the reason why support becomes difficult is the mass of keywords and types that gets exponentially larger. I'm building Zimone from the new mtg Duskmorn set. Commander is 100 card singleton format (deck limit of one card, excluding basic lands) with a "commander", a card you can play like it is in your hand, but goes back to it's special zone when it leaves play and becomes more expensive each time it does so. The recursion and accessibility allows you to build around it. My commander uses a new mechanic. This new mechanic may see little to no support in future mtg sets. They have a tenancy to print new cards with the mechanic, but they are often just intentionally bad cards for draft and design space, even then good support may not be in the colours I'm allowed to play. The set has some exceptional support for this mechanic in Zimone's colours, but some are rather pricey as they are good cards for the rotation format. It's a strange mechanic and I had to read the card multiple times before I started playing it properly and stopped pseudo-cheating and playing myself (though the commander is one of the few cards that tells you what the mechanic does, as you always have access to it and your opponents can read it at any time during the game (unless you decide to shuffle it into your deck), you always have access to read the mechanic you;re playing around. However the mechanic is caused by a triggering ability "landfall" that triggers whenever you play a land. In mtg you can play a land once per turn (typically) and these are cards that make up roughly 34-36% of your deck (typically). There's a myriad of ways in the structure deck, the set, and prior sets, and it's something that will see in future printing no doubt. This means that although I'm limited to cards that interact with the mechanic specifically and enable it... because the mechanic is tied to a core mechanic, unconventional support is something i can always rely on. No commander deck (to my knowledge) runs no lands at all, so new lands will always be printed. The mechanic "manifest dread" involves looking at your top two cards, putting one face-down in play as a moderately weak creature with predetermined name/stats/type. The other goes into your graveyard. The face-down card can always be turned face-up if it is a creature card by paying the creature cards mana cost, all manifested cards can do this and this ability is tied to the new creature, not my commander, so even if my commander is not in play I still have agency. My commander lets me turn any face-down permanent card, face-up for free (this is not just creatures) if I manage to get any land out for the second time in one turn (many cards since magics creation enables this). So the mechanic is tied to my commander, I have more agency with my commander and a stable source of the mechanic, but without the commander any face-down cards I do have still have some agency. This is a card built around a mechanic, but won't require specific support, making it future-proof. This to me is pinnacle design.
No, trash cards should not exists. Cards intended to teach players to deckbuild by throwing some underperformers into starter decks or to stuff packs with, should be the engine building cards that have underperforming stats on their own but played together create incremental advantage. Creating cards that are porposefully unplayable is pollution, consumer deception and a show of disrespect towards your artists and designers.
I think there are non toxic ways of making trash cards. Perhaps cards that are under powered but with a comical element to them? So they do fill the purpose of showing off stronger cards but also you can build a fun non typical strategy with silly gimmicky results and more randomness tied into the effects, big risk, bigger payoff.
It is a modern thing to include rarity. It is your choice at the end of the day, but fans will appreciate the convenience of a small non intrusive symbol or lettering i.e. C/UC/R/UR.
@ShardTCG what is its purpose other than the obvious of differentiating value? Game doesn't change. But is it more of an aesthetic change? Or is it something to factor into actual gameplay?
