Background

Difficult to start a blog about the design process when you are already far in it.. where to begin?

I think it all started when the Rage ccg died.. I really loved the combat mechanic (for those of you who do not know how it went, both players chose a card from hand and played it face down in play) and ever since I looked for a similar mechanic in a ccg/tcg or card game...

I always hated the idea of playing an epic character, and to see it being dragged away in blood a single turn later in games (magic for example). I wanted to have a game where my "hero" would stand up and face battle each turn, without bending over too quickly. I thought WOW was the way to go, but the absolute NEED to get your curve right (same as in VS) made deck building and lucky draws too bothersome for me.
Got some kicks from online gaming (magic, AATCG, SWGTCG), but the absolute money grabbing from SOE made me realise that most online tcg/ccg´s are nothing more than quick money making schemes.

I did (and still do) play an online ccg, although there is also a big board element involved: starchamber (http://starchamber.station.sony.com/), sadly also taken over by SOE..
SOE has the superb ability to take over (or create) a great online ccg/tcg, investing a lot of resources to it the first 2 month of the game, and then let it drop like an old hag.. Take a look at Auto assault, Stargate, Legends of norrath, Starchamber and now also SW:G CCG.. it’s a shame people still want to invest money in it. I´ll post a blog about this later on… we are talking about the beginning of Wuxia Pian here..

After having created a lot of dreamcards for both Lotr: ccg and starchamber online card game, I finally thought it was time to put a long time wish back on paper. A game that implements the mechanic from Rage.. but with a new setting, new style and of course, new cards.. just borrowing the combat mechanic.

The very first thing I made myself do was to create the rules beforehand. I cannot stress this enough. Card creating is great and so much fun (both creating the text as creating the card layouts), but it is NOTHING without a proper set of rules.
I too fell into this trap a few times before creating Wuxia Pian. I designed some great cards for a future card game, only to get stuck at creating the rules. I had many so many cool things going on on cards, that it was impossible to implement it all back into a rulebook without going over a 1000 pages.. I forced myself NOT to create cards until the core rules were set in stone.
I have to say, this really helped me getting as far as I am now, ready to create cards and not worry about the rules anymore.

The first steps into creating the Wuxia game was a fixed set of goals I wanted my game to have. I wanted to bypass the pitfall of mana/resource based games, and also create a rule where players behind would get a “step up” to be able to get back into the game.

The list was like this:

1. No screw/flood based resource system. Magic is a prime example where all your changes of winning can be poured down the drain because simply put; the resource system is flawed in magic. Some might say it is part of the game, some might say it can be overcome with good deck building skills. I never liked the system, since once in a while, you end up screwed and won’t enjoy the game as much as you would like. I wanted to come up with a way where there would be limited costs, or having a base resource to start with, just like life is in magic. Having a too balanced resource system is not a lot of fun as well, knowing that both players can play the same cards, why have a resource system at all? Take a look at WOW and VS for example? The first 4-5 turns, both players WILL play resources.. bringing in another nastiness: the need to get your curve drops.. ugh. I wanted to keep this to a minimum and if possible, remove a resource based game.

2. Ability to improve the chances of the player in losing position.Ever got a bad hand in a ccg? How many times did you recover from that? How difficult was it? If your answers were: yes, not a lot, very: I know your pain. Especially ccg´s that do not have a starting set-up already in play suffer from this. Mulligans can only save you a few times, and even then you are typically a card down. I wanted to improve on this by “resetting” the game a few times during play.

3. Fast play with little to no downtime. Old card floppers might remember the days of startrek 1st edition, where players could just think about an action for minutes and minutes because of the sheer amount of possibilities by the zillion of different cards in play. I wanted to minimize this, but not too much that it cripples the game.

4. Players share a game-turn, not like star trek ccg. I think we can all agree that a strickt turn structure like startrek had, made games very boring, since you would usually had little to no interaction during an opponents turn. This I luckily have not encountered anymore in newer card games, but still a point on my list to take notice of.

5. Minimize the amount of different card types. Did you know that the old star-trek first edition ccg had like 14 different card types? Even magic now has like 6 or 7.. Too much for my taste.. Wuxia Pian has 3, with a possible option to 4 (still work in progress). I hate having too many different card types in my deck. I can only hope 3 (possible 4) wont make the game too dull.. time will tell. BTW, I am NOT bashing on startrek 1st edition, I loved the game to the heart! Its just that after 14/15 years, it serves as a good example for points to improve on.

6. Multiple “reset” points in the game to prevent a runaway leader from happening, thus resulting in a lost game early on.. Something that Magic really has.. Just 2 bad turns in magic and your chances to win are slim already, with no way to even-up in the short run. Also other card games without a starting set-up at the start of a game suffer from this. Why do you think most card games are won or lost of who can draw the most (and thus best) cards? I wanted to minimise this by having some form of reset in the game.

7. A starting position already on the board, to minimize the dreadful hand screw. Like lord of the rings did/does. You always had a fighting chance in the beginning of the game, since the “core” of your deck was already in play. Rage had this too, and some other games as well. Having a part of your deck already in play is a great way to battle resource screw/flood and hand screw. These 7 points were vital for the design of Wuxia Pian, and hopefully I am successful in implementing them into the game. Next thing to do was to set a style, a “world” where the game would take place. The game still had no name back then, but since the concept of fighters taking on other fighters was already in my head, I began to think about unexplored “worlds” where I could dive in with my card game.

First (and still high) on my list of worlds is the Matrix (from the movies). I tried to implement the combat style from rage into a matrix world, but it just did not fit. The matrix is not about constantly fighting, and the idea was quickly dismissed. I tried 300 (the movie) as well, but its very hard to implement a fighting mechanic on grand scale, without going over the top.. Dismissed as well. Finally, while travelling on a train from the south of Spain to Barcelona, I saw the movie: House of flying daggers (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0385004/), and it immediately fitted right into it. At first I wanted to make the card game of the movie alone, but the movie hosts too few characters to create a game from. I started to google a lot of stuff about this movie, and finally found the true home: Wuxia Pian. (http://journeyeast.tripod.com/wuxia_pian.html). The Set of goals were there, the setting was there, on to the cards! Or not?