Time.. is not on my hands.

I have this little nagging feeling that I took more Hay on my pitchfork than I can carry… Wuxia Pian is coming along great; I am very busy with filling in temporal templates for the 3 demo decks to try out. The names and numbers are all ready, the template for the Combat cards is ready, and it is all a matter of filling the numbers and making some PDF´s to put up for download… The truth is, being a father and husband with a full time job takes away a looooot of my free time, more than I had anticipated before we chose to get a child. Most of my free time is spend with my son and wife, placing work I can do on Wuxia Pian to the free minutes in-between diaper changes and quick naps on the sofa.

I am now fully aware that this project will take a much longer time than originally planned. This is not a problem for me, but I think it will be a strain on my creativity and stamina to keep up with the game, and not get “fed-up” with it. I am thinking about getting some help from people on the net for Template design (the final graphical template) because I think that will be a big hurdle for me to cross. I can design it myself, but it will take too long I think..

I know for sure if the Wuxia Pian game is finished, the next game I will design will be of a much smaller scale.

So, where are we at?

The cost matrix for all 5 different warrior types is finished, and I think I am far enough to be able to make a list of things still to do, without being too long to read, haha:

Creating good names for combat cards, not so corny like they are in the demo decks
Finish the demo decks and place it online for download.
Create the “final” rulebook with lore and card anatomy for download.
Get started on the final templates or ask for help to do it.
Determine the final size of the set and distribution.
Get all the Wuxia Pian films I can get my hands on for pictures.
Play test more and more.
Make plug in for Lackey.
Make free to play downloads (print and play) available.
Play the game!

Maybe I should indeed include more people to help.. this list will take forever to finish, and I am afraid interests might have gone off to another direction..

EPIC TCG

So I stumbled upon a new C/TCG in card land: Epic tcg (http://www.epictcg.com/)

They are bound to go live around the end of January, I think, and rules + demo decks are up for download on their site.

So after downloading the rules and demo decks, I just have to say: ugh.. absolutely no inspiration at all. It is a trimmed down version from magic, without mana, just one card a turn play (magic type 4). 99% of the rules are directly taken from magic, without a single intend to try to create ones of their own, or combine some rules from other card games that proved successful.

The game looks actually fun to play, but the randomness (and power) of the cards makes it a little bit too much a normal rock/paper/scissors game. There is no restriction in which cards can work together, meaning that we will all end up stacking the same cards in our decks, since they are the most powerful, and don’t have any “costs” assigned to them. If I only get to play one powerful card each turn, I better make sure it IS the most powerful card, right?

They DO have a restriction in place: deckbuilding. If anything you need to keep your hands off, that’s deckbuilding. You are only allowed 18 "free" cards in your deck and 9 so called "gift" cards. Who will check that before I sit down to play each time? I think Young jedi deckbuilding rules taught us designers all a lesson to keep away from a player’s possibility to deckbuild.

You should restrict a player in playing all types of cards, like a player playing all rock/paper and scissors cards. Each deck should have its counterpart/opposite. Since there are currently no restrictions in playing cards, we will all end up with pretty much the same cards, and no real strategy or style to the deck and it will end up being the luck of the draw for the winner.

The rest is all familiar to magic players:
15 card sideboard, tapping, trample, flying, Att/Def stats, Life points, the Stack, etc, etc. Its all there with just a new name..

Too bad, the game actually looks kinda fun, but as I already commented on their message boards, it just does not stand out enough to do it for me.. Sealed and draft might sound like fun though..

I am glad that Wuxia Pian cannot be mentioned in the same sentence as Magic.. oops, I just did :P

After I saw the huge similarities that EPIC tcg has to Magic, I tried to find any similarities Wuxia Pian has with Magic:

1. 5 different warrior types in Wuxia Pian, 5 colors in magic (not counting colorless).
2. Starting hand size is the same.

And that’s it. I am actually pretty proud of that. Only two things similar to magic. Not that I hate magic that much, but I prefer to see new designs over old, proven ones.

I don’t care if Wuxia Pian never makes it past the lackey (lackeyccg.com) stage; at least I know I designed something “original”.

“original” in brackets, because I did take a lot of stuff from other ccg´s out there to improve upon (read: not literally copied).

I really feel sad for some new C/TCG´s out there in card land, why not create something new? Take a look at Dominion for example.

There is your design wonder. Something completely new, something fresh and fun to play. Why do we game designers get stuck on Tapping, att/def, stack and sideboard when designing a card game? Are all options already tried and died? Or do we all just want to ride on the same money bus that Magic is on, for example?

I surely do not (being not in it for the money surely helps), and I think that the rules so far for Wuxia Pian are standing out from other card games enough to be mentioned (and played!)

After all, in the end, I just want people playing Wuxia Pian, not wonder about its marvel (ahem..)

In Sickness and Health

Well, to be very short: I am sick. I am coughing up my lungs, have random headaches every few hours, have snot coming out of places I didn’t even know snot could come out, and feeling feverish as well. That means its just me lying on the sofa, a little reading, a little zapping and a lot of sleep and nothing else.. well.. nothing…

“Luckily” I started feeling sick Sunday afternoon, which means I did some serious play testing with Vicente this weekend before the snot bomb hit me..

Play testing results:

First: the good:

The rules are solid and fun. Play was very fast but still we both needed to think over our moves. The best part was that even though some hands and cards were not so “good” game-play wise, knowing that the next warrior would have a fresh, clean shot at winning a VP (victory point) was good enough to continue play each time.
I bet you all know that feeling when playing a Magic, WOW or any other CCG: Knowing you are losing from the first of second turn onwards. Vicente and I never had this feeling while play testing, simply because we both had FIVE opportunities to win.
Even though the cards were very vanilla, they played out nicely and no rule questions came up during play testing. Also there were no Timing issues and loops detected. Hurray!

The not so good:
This is probably due to lack of game text on cards, but when each players has their maximum # of cards in their combat zone (Sustain number), game play got very slow. It was very hard to turn a defensive combat zone into an offensive one, for example. The card flow on the table was too slow. This needs to change (see point A). Since most of the cards were played in the first few turns (thus filling up the combat zone very fast), it was a bit slow afterwards to see any real change in both our combat zones.

Card options in hand was a little too low, but this was easily corrected by increasing a players hand size to 7 (+2 cards extra).

The card flow was ok, but we both felt a little increase wouldn’t hurt. This needs to change as well (see point B).

Reposing. This needs to go. We both were doing our utmost best to at least be able to Repose (read: gain 1 Chi) each turn. This makes no fun and I think it is best to change the drawing rule as well (see point C.)

Lastly, gameplay was alittle too long, with us going to more than an hour for each game. Easy fix: increase damage output or decrease life on warriors. (i´ll choice the first, see point D.).

The Bad:
None. There was nothing pointing out to a serious problem with the game and after a few minor changes (see points below) I think the game is ready to be filled in with real cards.
The changes:

First of all, to battle the problem with a filled up combat zone not changing so much, Vicente came up with an idea:

Remove the combat zone (cards played gets discarded at the end of turn) and introduce a new card type: fighting styles.

Normally, a player with Liú gets to play cards until they lose Liú or they choose not to play more cards. This quickly ended up in a filled up combat zone and warriors with very little Chi and cards in hand. Fighting Style cards could change that.

Fighting style cards simply increase card flow and makes you keep Liú no matter what cards you play (even if playing Liú (X) cards).

Example:
Praying Mantis Style:

Gain 3 Chi
3 cards, 5 Chi
Convert 2.

You would put your Fighting Style cards just as combat card into your combat deck. Fighting style cards are free to play and using the example above, would do the following:
Your warrior gains 3 chi for using the Praying Mantis style.
He may play any 3 combat cards from hand, up to a maximum of 5 chi cost combined, OR he may play it for free to convert 2.

What does it do? It helps players creating their combat deck (deck building) and it helps you get rid of all those cards that make you lose Liú.
It still allows you to play combat cards without having a fighting style card.

When we used these fighting Style cards, we both pretty much kept our warrior filled up with cards and Chi, but it also came with a few downsides:

It really felt again like a “I play cards”, “you play cards” game again, where both players just went for a full scale assault, and only played defensively when they had no choice.
Second, it also needed again the use of Initiative. To figure out whose turn it was to begin playing combat cards. I really hated that: now you attack, next turn I attack.
Third, it created a bad feeling when not drawing combat style cards. They felt they had too much an edge over not playing with them. Meaning that hand screw could come right back into play here, with not drawing any combat styles for a few turns.

So I decided, even though that I like the concept, and maybe a future expansion could see them introduced, to delete and not use combat style cards for now.

The changes that were implementes were:

A. Create more cards that lets (or makes) you discard cards from a combat zone, or place them face down. This has to be a lot more so that combat is a bit more dynamic and changes pretty much each turn. This is a change that needs to go through in card design.

B. Also a card design change, to create more cards with the Convert game text and cards that let you gain Chi, take face-down cards back into hand etc.

C. Removing the Repose rule and changing the Ready and convert step into the draw and Convert step: “”Starting with the player who has Liú, each player may convert (1) , meaning that they may take one of their combat cards from their Chi pool into their hand OR gain (1) Chi””.

This way, I will let the player decide what is the best way to play the game. Increasing their hand, or increasing their Chi each turn. This also simplifies the Action step a lot (deleting repose)

D. Increased damage dealt by cards. With shield cards going to a maximum of +1, and damage cards going to a maximum of +2, more damage will be dealt, hopefully decreasing playing time.

After these rule changes, I will make up two sample decks to print out and play, so I can get some opinions from players all over the world.

Expect them at the end of the week, or at the latest Monday morning.. Depending on how well I continue to feel.. ugh…

Filling in the cards

This is actually not quite as difficult as it seems (at least, that’s my opinion on it). It is just a lot of work puzzling and thinking of ways to do it. Its not really rocket science, just your basic numbers and abilities :P
You can quite easily make some simple calculations in Excel for each value (life, Chi, Sustain and speed) and let the computer spit out the zillion possibilities possible.

Finding a way to differentiate between two types of warriors (from a game type of view, not numbers), it is a whole different ballgame. For example, Noble warriors might be slow and Shaolin masters might be fast. How to let that reflect in the game?
What about the other three types? How to make sure they all have their own “feel” to the game?

Here’s how I like to do it for the warrior cards:

Wuxia Pian will have (initial) 5 different types of warriors:

Monks
Shaolin masters
Sword masters
Nobles
Assassins

Now I could just assign some random numbers (life, Chi, Sustain and speed) to each type, but that won’t bring out there playing style. So it needs something more.

How do I see each type having their effect on the game? For that, I will fill in some keywords for each one, like this:

1. Monks. They are not so fast, but have great defense and can take a lot of wounds. Uses basic weapons

2. Shaolin masters. Fast fists of fury. Uses no to very little weapons. Go fast through their cards and decks, but damage output lacks.

3. Sword masters. Hard hitters, but need a lot of Chi. Each card says: ouch. But difficult to sustain.

4. Nobles. Slow but sneaky. Can play those over the top cards. High on life, but slow speed.

5. Assassins. Normal speed, a lot of surprises. No defense and piercing attacks. Lots of flipping.

If you didn’t get any of that, don’t worry. It is just a simple placeholder for each warrior type. I just want to write down the “feel” I want each type to have in the game. A small brainstorm about what each type is about. I bet you can doe the same form the colors of Magic for example. Or the affiliations from Startrek, etc..

The actual filling in of the abilities comes next:

I typed up a list of possible (simple) game effects a warrior could have in the game, both negative and positive. (The real juicy game effects come later.)

For example; one warrior type might be able to sustain more combat cards, while another type is able to take that away from a warrior. One warrior type might be able to keep Liú for a long time, while another type easily makes you lose it.

This way, I automatically create a form of rock/paper/scissor balance in the game, AND I am able to give each type their own “feel” in the game.

This does not mean that a certain type of warrior cannot be a fast playing one for example, or take a lot of wounds. It is just that other types of warriors are more “suited” to play that way. Each type will be able to increase their sustain number for example, but only one type is able to do it more easy and bigger than others.

So, a list of 20 (dividable by 5 to make it a lot easier) will do for now. (+) will mean able to increase/create, while (-) means able to take away/decrease.

+ Sustain (Increasing sustain)
– Sustain (Decreasing sustain)
+ Life (Adding life)
– Life (Removing life)
+ Liú (Keeping Liú)
– Liú (Losing Liú)
+ Speed (Add speed)
– Speed (Remove speed)
+ Chi (Add Chi)
– Chi (Remove Chi)
+ Shield (add Prevent wounds)
– Shield (remove preventions)
+ Damage (Add increased damage)
– Damage (Remove increase damage )
+ Convert (adding convert to cards)
– Convert (removing convert from cards)
+ Flip (Flip face down)
– Flip (flip face up)
+ Repose (Increasing repose bonus)
– Repose (removing repose bonus)

Now I have a list of 20 types of abilities I can divide under the 5 different warrior types, while keeping in mind the playing styles I had in mind for each one. Each style will get 2 “+” and 2”-“, making the perfect rock/paper/scissor match up.

I do have to be careful not to give a certain style too much of a bonus against another style. 1 or 2 for each is more than enough (to prevent auto losses and such..bleh).

So, not like this:

Monk+ Shield (add Prevent wounds)
– Shield (remove preventions)
Two of the same in one style. Not very balanced. Also not like this:

Monk+ Shield (add Prevent wounds)– Damage (Remove increase damage )

Noble
– Shield (remove preventions)
+ Damage (Add increased damage)

Not only pitting 2 abilities against each other in two styles, but as well Damage and Shield in one type of warrior.

Check the Noble for example, he is able to prevent any prevention you might have, and on top of that add some increased damage.. not very balanced.

More ok would be:

Monk+ Shield (add Prevent wounds)– Life (Removing life)

Noble
- Shield (remove wound preventions)
+ Repose (Increasing repose bonus)

Sword Master+ Life (Adding life)– Repose (removing repose bonus)

This way, all three have something against each other, but only one ability, not two.
The Sword master for example is able to take away the Repose bonus from the Noble, but is defenseless against the Noble’s ability to remove wound preventions. There is where the Monk comes into play! Get it?

To prevent any of this happening, I divided the list into this first:



Four different blocks of abilities. Then, for each warrior type, I try to choose 4 abilities, one from each block, and not opposite of each other.

For example: the Monk can have:

Block 1: + Sustain (Increasing sustain)
Block 2: - Chi (Remove Chi)
Block 3: + Life (Adding life bonus)
Block 4: – Speed (Remove speed)

For the Shaolin Master, I must make sure NOT to pick more than 2 abilities in opposite of the Monk, and make sure to pick at least ONE opposite of the Monk. So the Shaolin Master would have:

Block 1: + Convert (adding convert to cards)
Block 2: – Sustain (Decreasing sustain) (ability in opposite of the Monk)
Block 3: + Liú (Keeping Liú)
Block 4: – Repose (removing repose bonus)

Let’s have a deeper look at the Shaolin master. I want him to be able to play a lot of cards, but without added damage.

Due to increased convert, he is able to take more cards into hand -> more cards to play.
He is able to take away sustain from an opponent, meaning he will have more cards in play.
He is able to keep Liú more easy than others, thus playing more cards.And last but not least, he can take away Repose bonuses from opponents. No more resting for you!

A pretty good way to portrait him in the game I would say. Hopefully it will hold up with the other types as well:

Sword Master:

Block 1: + Damage (Add increased damage)
Block 2: – Convert (removing convert from cards)
Block 3: + Speed (Add speed)
Block 4: – Flip (flip face up)

Assassin:

Block 1: + Chi (Add Chi)
Block 2: – Shield (remove preventions)
Block 3: + Flip (Flip face down)
Block 4: – Liú (Losing Liú)

Noble:

Block 1: + Shield (add Prevent wounds)
Block 2: - Damage (Remove increase damage )
Block 3: + Repose (Increasing repose bonus)
Block 4: – Life (Removing life bonus)

Cookies for the one that can spot the problem in one of these.
…
…
…

Indeed, the noble has 2 abilities that should probably not be there. Removing increased damage AND preventing wounds makes a very dangerous combination, but not too broken to change it at this moment. I think it adds a nice flavor to the Noble.

When this is pretty much decided, it is time to get to the heart of each warrior type, the specials..

Specials in card games come in all shape and forms, and in Wuxia Pian it is no different, take a look at these examples:

Dealing Poison
Looking at cards
Healing
Direct wounds
Switch Cards
Lots of Responses
Taking cards back into hands
Prevent healing
Etc. etc.

I bet you can point them to a certain warrior type already. I’ll let you know when I am finished puzzling with this. Fun fun fun!

After I have given each warrior type a certain ability and one or 2 specials (depending on the strength of their abilities), it on to filling in the numbers and make 100+ cards to test.

For example, the finished Shaolin master might look like this:

+ Convert (adding convert to cards)
– Sustain (Decreasing sustain) (ability in opposite of the Monk)
+ Liú (Keeping Liú)
– Repose (removing repose bonus)
Lots Of responses
Looking at cards.
This will provide me with a great playing field in which I can create cards for the Shaolin master.



I all goes well this weekend with play testing, and nothing serious comes up. I might have 2 or 3 demo decks available end of next week (just text + numbers, no art) so all of you who wants can test the game as it is. (And provide some feedback of course!)

Nice weekend all…

Other Card designs “out there”.

You might to check out some of other Designer’s their websites for their card game design. Unfortunately, There are not a lot of that I am aware of. Hopefully this list will continue to grow over the course of time.

First one up is Monarch, the Sovereign Struggle ccg:

http://www.monarchccg.com/forums

Rule design is mostly done (rulebook available here: http://www.monarchccg.com/MonarchTSSRulebook_v1.0.pdf )
And on the forums you can already see about 50 cards that are ready. Including the 2008 Christmas promo set!

The game is a mix between Magic and Wow tcg, where you control 3 different resources to play allies next to your hero to conquer the opponent!

I like the art and card design a lot; I am just not a big fan of the magic/wow rules mix. Not a lot of new rules were implemented into the game. Nonetheless, a beauty to look at, and I will sure play it a few times.

Second up is Knight ccg:

http://blog.knightsccg.com/

A father (just like me!) who is creating a card game so he could play it with his sons. Rules and cards are updated and it sure looks like a fun game! Awesome dad!

Last one (for now, until I find more) is Star ship SBG by Briggs:

http://www.lackeyccg.com/starship

Card design is mostly done; rule design is currently up for play test. Sign up to get in.
Who does not like to fly around big star ships and blow up stuff? Beat that Scotty!

If you know of more card game designers out there, mail me @ wuxiapiangame@gmail.com

EDIT: got another one!

http://www.godsandminions.com/

this is a new concept that I haven´t thought of before: bringing a miniatura game to the card games. It started out from Archon, but (of course) due to possible copyright infringment issues and such, the maker changed the name into Gods And minions.

I haven´t looked over the rules yet, but the cards look great! check it out, and leave some comments at their forums:

http://www.godsandminions.com/forum/


About Wuxia Pian. The rules are now in stage 1.3, and getting ready to receive artwork and better layout. Not a lot of changes since version 1.2, just some grammar and clearing up. The Liú keyword had a lot more impact than I thought. You can download the latest rulebook (v 1.3) here:

http://www.freewebs.com/sccards/Wuxia%20Pian%20game%20_v1.3.pdf

Rules are almost done and I have some great ideas for card texts. I think the best way to design cards it so split them up into groups of card effects. Let’s say I want to design cards for the Monk group.
First I would assign some basic abilities, like:
No base damage
Able to play a lot of cards: e.g. keeping Liú all the time
Able to increase sustain
Overall greater card throughput
Lower overall damage

Then, I would assign some basic numbers to the abilities and create cards for it (after I have puzzled out all the other group’s effects).

Hmm.. Maybe first start with the groups itself:

1. Monk class (your defensive, passive, friendly neighbour)
2. Shaolin class (your wild flurry fists of fury)
3. Sword Master class (aggressive hard hitter)
4. Assassin class (sneaky and deadly)
5. Elite Class (kings and rulers and such)

5 different classes with 5 different play styles.. next blog I will go deeper into this for each class.


wrapping up, time for some father/son time (+wife of course!)

Business models of T/CCG´s

Some T/CCG stuff to think about

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/363660/page/1

A discussion about the “lower” rating of CCG´s vs the game dominion on Boardgame geeks.

Some might argue it is due to CCG´s not really being boardgames at all (so can be said of dominion), and others say it’s the business model that earns it such a low(er) rating. A very good read.
It surely got me thinking about the business model I would implement in Wuxia Pian. I haven’t really thought about it, since I expect Wuxia Pian not leaving the indie game stages, but you’ll never know :P

If Wuxia Pian were to be sold for real, I would create a business model similar to that of the Corunea RCG, just fixed cards, with fixed expansions (in fact, just like Dominion, but more customizable). In fact, if the game ever gets THAT far, I prefer to hire some programming studio to bring the game online with a subscription based fee (low one, like 3-5 $ a month for a fixed # of cards, own choice).

Like, you pay a fixed fee of 4 $/Month. For that, you get to pick (insert random number here) 34 cards from a possible 1000 to add to your collection. You decide which cards to add, so if a certain Meta is being played, you can make sure you are harnessed against it next month.. or something like this. No rarities at all, I guess I am also one of the old bittered CCG players fed up with the business models of most CCG´s, which ultimately brought it down..

From there I got a link to a list about how CCG´s are made to create addiction, also a very good read:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/16427

Which made me even think more about Wuxia Pian. I designed Wuxia Pian with the normal (old) business model of CCg´s. Packs, starters, rarity, you name it. I am now slowly, but steadily changing that into a fixed out of the box play. You buy Wuxia Pian and get 2 ready to play decks. There will be like 3 or 4 different 2-player decks. Or one big box with 5 decks to use.. Don’t know, haven’t´ really though about it yet.

Maybe a bit like Dominion, but with “some” customization in it. I am still in the “get the game to work” phase, and haven’t really thought about stuff like: how many cards in the game, expansions, boosters and such. I only know I do not want to see any rarity (save for maybe a few promo cards (alternate art)).

I guess I’ll have to cross this big bridge when the game is operational and the meat (cards) is ready to go on the BBQ…

What comes first? cards or rules?

I think most people who are designing their own card game can amend to the problems I face now:

A. Where to stop with tweaking the rulebook .
B. What way to design a card game is the best? Cards first? Rules first?

A:

I think I have reached a point with Wuxia Pian where the tweaking rules wise must stop. I think it is time to set some stuff in stone. We all are trying to design the best and most fun game out there, but I am sure we will never reach that point. Rewriting portions of the rules will sometimes bring us closer to the perfect game, but I think more often than not, it will only take us further away from the game we want, until we reach a point where we simply give up we lose interest. Point of saturation I like to call it. I can make my rulebook for Wuxia Pian a million pages long, with a complete MMO, FPS and what not in it to please all gamers out there. But I think my rules have reached a saturation point, where I am “forced” to say: ok, let’s work with this and not change anything, unless a serious problem comes up. I think this is the best way to go. You just have to force yourself at some point to stop designing new ways of playing your game (read: rules) and simply work with what your have (e.g. go to Card design and play testing). To find that “point” is difficult, and I wish I could say to you, at THIS point you go to play testing and card design, but unfortunately, it does not work that way. Maybe it is just a designers-feeling, where you know at a certain point you just got to stop designing rules, and just get on with it!



B:
I have hit my head a lot of times with this: I usually designed cards first, with some obscure game play (read: rules) in my head. This usually resulted in designing a wicked fun to play card game, but when it came to writing the rules, it ended up in the garbage bin, because I failed to keep in mind things like Timing issues, turn sequence and combat phase steps for example, resulting in a very messy rulebook, since I had to implement all the cool stuff I had designed on my cards. The rulebook became a bore and impossible to do, so I was forces with the option to redesign the cards (but they were so cool!) or rewrite and rewrite and rewrite the rulebook, until all cards were implemented and just print the thing already! (Resulting in no-one ever playing the game due to an impossible to read rulebook).

The other option is to design the rules first, and later on design the cards for it. This sounds a lot more solid, but it also has some pitfalls. When I decided to make Wuxia Pian, I was set on writing the rulebook first, without a single card being designed. I was thrilled when I thought the rules were finished, so I could go on to card design and play testing. Boy was I wrong. The rules turned out create a very boring game, and no matter how crazy I designed some cards, it still seemed like a stiff and linear game. The cards I designed later on forced me to rethink the rules I came up with.This really got me. I really was convinced I wrote some of the best rules out there, and that it was just a matter of designing the cards and voila, a finished game. I learned the hard way it is not like this. Cards design and rule design go hand-in-hand. One cannot exist without the other.
I personally prefer now do design rules first (rough outlines), while designing some rough numbers and names for cards (also rough outlines). Then play test both rules and cards at the same time, while taking notes and slowly start to add and remove rules, cards, stats, numbers, icons, phases, keywords etc, etc, until you reach the saturation point where you take the things you have and stick with it.

I personally went a little too far with the rule design, and I wish I had designed more cards (rough outlines) first. The balance was waaay in favour of the rules here, but I hope this does not have too much impact on the game, where the rules I made are too strict to leave any room for card design.I find it very hard to find a balance between the two (rule and card design), and I have not been able to find any good articles on the web to help me with either one. I guess I have to find out for myself!


Unfortunately, Vicente did not have any time to come over this weekend to play test further. Hopefully next week we’ll have some time. It’s not easy to look after a family, work and my other hobbies to find time for working further on Wuxia Pian. But this Blog surely makes me more and more determined to continue work until it is finished.

Fingers crossed and brains in overdrive!

At least I feel good about the rules so far, and now work can commence on the best part: card design. (although I still have a blast designing ways to play the game, but it must stop here..)

More changes and less sleep

Since my little son (1.5 month old) kept me pretty much the whole night awake, I had a lot of time to do some thinking about the rules so far.

I came up with a few points that needed to be changed.

First and most obvious: Discipline.

I designed the discipline keyword to let players draw extra cards for their initial hand of 5. This was because in the v1.0 rules, combat cards were still divided between Attack, Defense and switch (both attack and defense in one). This could cause some unwanted hand draws (screws), so I designed the Discipline keyword to somewhat fix that and to improve a players hand, albeit at a cost (extra cards gets discarded).

With the v1.1 rules, the combat rules got a big overhaul to make it more dynamic, which means most combat cards will have both an attack and defense value on them, and you are not limited to only play an Attack card for example (there is no longer an attacker and defender state for players). Both players will attack and defend as they see fit, namely, though the cards they play. (Combat got a lot more dynamic, and will be even more, read on!)

So Discipline is no longer needed. I will change it into another meaning, see below.

Second point is that if a player decides to ONLY play combat cards with high defense bonuses, the game would fall quickly into a stalemate, since there is (currently) no way to win while defending, and a balanced player would have a hard time to overcome the massive defense number(s). This needs to change.

There are a few ways to do this, the one most obvious would be to make defense cards a little bit weaker than attacking cards.
The problem with this is that if the “gap” between the two strengths is too big, players just would not bother with defending at all!
Another way to do this is to restrict the amount of combat cards a player may have active at a time, or at the end of a round. I think this is a more elegant way to restrict a player going nuts with defense (or attacking while I am at it).

Next to that, I will make sure that both strategies (playing defensive and playing aggressive) will be able to win, albeit more risky than not playing a more balanced deck.

This is where Discipline comes back. Certain warriors are more proficient with certain martial arts, weapons etc, and thus they will be able to maintain those longer in play. Discipline will be changed into:
At the end of the resolution phase, both players (starting with the lowest speed) must discard combat cards from their combat zone until they have reached their maximum #, as indicated by the Discipline value on the warrior card.

Thus a warrior with Discipline: 5 will be able to sustain 5 combat cards in his combat zone. Another warrior with Discipline 6, will be able to sustain 6 combat cards.

This does not mean that players cannot play more combat card in a turn. For example, the first warrior with Discipline 5, may play more cards than 5 during a single turn, but he won’t be able to sustain them all. He might play 7, but at the end of resolution, he is forced to discard 2 of them from his combat zone.

So, if you are facing a very defensive warrior, and you have already (in my example) 5 combat cards in your combat zone, you just play some new (attacking) ones, to overcome that big wall of defense, and at the end of the resolution phase, you just discard some defense ones, to slowly change your combat zone into a very aggressive one.

Pro´s:
- not restricting a player to a certain number of cards they can play
- But still punishing them a bit for playing more than their discipline (excess cards gets discarded)
- Its an elegant way to keep calculation of total attack/defense values low during the resolution phase
- A great way to make a clear difference between types of warriors.
- Playing very aggressive or very defensive is possible, but a player can slowly adapt to that strategy, by discarding the cards that are ineffective against it.

Con´s:
- It is a restriction, which a lot of players do not like.
- Dunno if this will solve the problem. Hopefully play testing will get it clear.


Last point for today: Actions.

I started out Wuxia Pian with the boring one card/player combat. In v1.1 I changed it into Actions (each player has one, which can be increased to be able to play more cards during your turn)

V1.2 will see the introduction of (with lack of proper, own name) the flow.
It’s too bad I am not able to find back the card game which had it (still looking on the net for it), but I will implement this into my game, to even further increase dynamics, and to eliminate the need of Initiative (I hope).

Here´s how the flow works. Each combat card will have either a:
O -> Meaning you keep the flow.
X -> Meaning you lose the flow.
? -> Meaning you keep or lose the flow, depending on the condition on the card.

Rule wise it will work like this:
The player with the highest speed will get the flow each turn. As long as a player has the flow, he can play all the cards he can (he still needs to pay for them). As soon as he plays a card that makes him lose the flow, the flow goes to the next player. As soon as that player loses the flow, the combat round ends and we go to the resolution phase, to see who wounds who.

Pros:
- No more need to keep track of how many action(s) you have left to take.
- Another way to implement cool game text on cards: keep or lose the flow.
- Not sure about this (depends on the card design), but this could easily fix timing issues.
- Total elimination of the Initiative rule.

Cons:
- I will need to come up with ways to increase, decrease your/opponent’s speed. To be able to play first, or last. Not too difficult to do I think.
- I cannot come up with a cool way to name it, and I lost the card game that had it.. I want to read more about it..

In the end, some rules rewriting, to get to version 1.2, and hopefully a very successful play test this weekend. And some sleep while I am at it!

Quick Edit: found the name of the ccg: Ophidian 2350

About Playtesting

I am just beginning the large process of play testing the rules, with some mock-up cards. I think it was a good idea not to think too much of the text and number(s) on the cards itself, because I am sure they will change over 4 or 5 revisions. I want to test the rules mainly.

I want to see if the rules hold up, if there are some loopholes I need to fix, and if the game is actually fun to play. I also want to get an idea about the time per game involved. Since it is a best out of five games, five games could mean it is taking too much time. I am hoping for 10-15 minutes per combat max, thus a maximum of 60 minutes per game.

Last Sunday, when Vicente was over at my house to test, we just cut up some note block paper into tiny pieces, and used those to put some random numbers on and slip them inside a sleeved card (for those that wonder, its LOTR cards we work with here). It worked out ok, but it was a bit cumbersome to calculate players attack and defense totals each round, due to our handwriting being less readable than Egyptian hieroglyphs.

So I made a small table in Word, copied it a few times, and filled it in with numbers I made in an excel sheet (see picture). The number just started from scratch, and play test will probably reveal that they suck; they will be too costly, or too easy to play. Hopefully I will be able to take a lot of notes from the next time we play test (this Saturday or Sunday).

I was reading about a card game (forgot name + link) where players did not use turns to play cards, but used something called the flow. Each card you played determined if you kept the flow (e.g. continued playing cards) or lost it (flow goes to next player who gets to play cards). I think this is a great way of playing the game, and I am thinking about implementing it in Wuxia Pian.

Next to that, I am also thinking of implementing a way to players NOT needing to have dice or beads with them to play the game. Cards only.

This works ok for Chi (endurance), because this mechanism is like Starwars ccg (Decipher, for those who remember), but I am a bit struggling to find a way with cards to represent wounds on warriors. Any ideas?

Help on the net v2

In my never ending search for articles and help for designing a card game, I found some more links to articles that provide some good insights and help for designing your own card game.

First up is Mark rosewater. He has like a zillion articles about Magic the gathering, and most of his articles are indeed about creating Magic, but if you can read between the lines, you can get a good overview of why certain cards were chosen, and the underlying concept behind it, check it out, it’s a good read:

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr80

There is also a very good article about the need of some restrictions in choices a player has when building a deck. In magic´s case; the color pie, but this applies as well to Factions, Clans, Alliances, etc..

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr85


Next up is an article about the creation and ideas of the online CCG: Kongai. It’s an interesting read and may provide you with some helpful hints. It sure did it for me! It talks about they changed a very popular Pokemon game into Kongai, retaining the elements, but adding more layers of strategy. I sure hope I am able to do that with Wuxia Pian

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3673/an_achievementcentered_online_.php

while you are at it, you might as well check out their other articles about game design as well, even though it is more oriented towards computer games:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/article_display.php?category=4

The last link is not so much an article, but a Diagram of The Process of Game Design and Development. This sure sounds like a big balloon of difficult terms and charts with numbers.. nope. It is actually a very simple graph which you can use to check where you are at, what you have missed, and where you are heading.
I say this is a must have for all game designers out there..

http://www.pulsipher.net/gamedesign/GameCreationProcess.htm


For me? I have to say I am dancing around points 4-5-6.. where are you?

BTW, if anyone like to point me to other game designers out there, designing there own game and keeping a blog, please DO

Writing rules and revising them

I never was very good at remembering rules in my head, and the small notes I once tried to write for Wuxia Pian turned out to be a major pain to read later on.
I taught myself to write proper rules for a game, without going too much into detail on the cards itself. I made that mistake too many times. On more than one occasion, I came up with a card game, and went straight to card design, figuring the rules would be written in the end.
This resulted each time in a too big of a hurdle to cross in the end. The amount of cards already designed, the impact they had on the rules (without a single rule being written), made the rulebook a very difficult undertaking. Since my last fiasco with this, I promised myself NOT to design a single card until the cores of the rules were set in stone.
With Wuxia Pian, I finally managed to get a game going, where one of the hardest parts (writing the rules) were already largely set. This makes card design a lot easier, since the framework in which they should operate is already laid out, and I know exactly where their borders are.
During play testing, a lot of (see my last entry) possible problems may come up, and I find it easier to re-write the rules, than to re-design tens of cards.

I spend most of yesterday-afternoon rewriting the rules to implement the changes Vicente and I came up with, and here they are:

http://www.freewebs.com/sccards/Wuxia%20Pian%20game%20_v1-1.pdf

To give you an idea about how to write a good rulebook, just take a look at the dozens of available rulebooks for ccg/tcg´s out there. What I did was to take a rulebook that "kinda" represented my game, in my case: wow tcg, and just deleted all the entries and replacing them with mine. It becomes like a big exam you have to fill in, but luckily, you know the answers to the questions. Next to some deleting and minor editing of the bullet points, its quite easy to do..

I am still on the fence about letting the winning warrior stay in play. I found it pretty lame to force a player with his almost dead warrior to fight a freshly new one. The battle then is no longer about who defeats who, it was all about one player trying to defeat the other warrior as fast as possible, while the other player was just concerned with dealing some wounds and get ready for his new (fresh) warrior. I did not like it. I prefer a fresh start for both players, but with a small handicap for the player winning the last combat (e.g. forced to show and play their warrior + element card first).

The next time we’ll play test, I will make sure to pinpoint the pros and cons of this system and make revisions if necessary.

I feel great that the rules are coming along so fast and with each revision I make, the game feels more “mature” and more diverse.

Next up: creating a basic cost matrix for combat, elopement and warrior cards, and another play test, with a possible 2 or 3 revisions. Hopefully the revisions to the rules will be minor….

And after that.. card design.. hurray!

I think for most game designers, card design is where they get their kicks and thrills.. rule design is pretty dry and can take a lot of time. Card design is where the real creativity is to be found. Card design is also a very big part of making the game fun to play.

I can make a bunch of boring numbers fit together, any monkey can do that, but to make cards texts work together in a smooth way, without being too obvious or creating a “broken” combo, there is where they real challenge is.
Of course I already have like a zillion ideas in my head, but I prefer to not put too much cards on paper, because if the rules turn out to be in need of another change, I do not want to be forced to change tens of cards as well.

I think card design should start with some basic cost matrix, later on filled in with costs for card effects.
Maybe a list of possible card effects is a good idea, to see the possible framework I can work with.
Maybe just basic cards with just numbers will do for now.. I’ll design broken combo’s later on!

Playtesting the rules.

First of all, let me wish you all a happy new year and a great gaming 2009. I know this year will be a great gaming year for me!

The New Year could not have started better. The brother of my wife, who is also a great card game fan, came over to my house and we play tested Wuxia Pian almost all day long.
The good news: The rules I wrote for the game were solid.
The bad news, the game is boring to death..

Let me explain: In the rules I had, both players were only able to play one combat card when attacking/defending. This led to a very simplistic and boring game play, even though it looked good on paper. I hoped the Combo-zone I invented would bring some “spice” to the game, but it still did not feel like 2 warriors in an intense combat, it was more like a slapstick movie, where 2 dumb heads are slapping each other in the face, taking turns doing so. There was no feeling, no real strategy in the short run..

So, Vicente (thanks man!) came up with an idea. There is a great board/card game online (and real life) called Dominion, where you have cards you play that gives you the option to draw extra cards, but they also provide extra actions to take, so you might be able, for example to draw a card, play a card, play a card, draw a card, all in the same turn.

This mechanism sounded perfect for Wuxia pian. Vicente and I quickly drew some rough numbers on cards, shuffled up and tested. It worked like a charm. The battle is no longer boring and even quite dynamic now. I even think the time it takes to play the game got drastically cut, and best of all, its more fun!

One other thing we did was to change the following:

1. Winning warrior stays in play
2. Combat cards have both an attack and defense value on them
3. Create Action(s) for warriors to use, and an easy way to increase that.
4. Create different “types” of warriors, to differentiate between fighting styles (reflected back in combat cards)
5. Start of each combat, both players may convert a card - Rule.

1.
In the original rules, each time a warrior won a combat, he got a victory point, and all cards still in play must be discarded to make room for new ones, including the winning warrior. We changed this to : winning warrior stays in play.
This way, the winning warrior gets to fight on, but with much less life (he hopefully took some beating during the first combat) and with less chi (more on this later) to use. This way, the losing warrior will have an easier fight to get back into the game.

I am still unsure about this change, since even thought the losing player might get back to (1 victory point all) evening things up, their warrior will receive some wounds, and thus the first “kill” still is very important. We need to do some more play testing on this when the rules for the new enhanced combat are done. Including the numbers for the combat cards.

I changed the name Endurance to Chi. Sounds much more oriental and cool.

2. + 3.
To sum it up, the rules for combat have changed into this:

Player with the highest speed on their warrior starts with the initiative. He or she gets to play their cards first.
Each player gets 1 action to do per turn, but additional cards and effects can increase this. A normal action usually means to play a combat card.
For example, player A has initiative and plays the following cards:
Card 1: +2 attack, +1 defense, +1 action (giving player A another Action to use)
Card 2: +1 Damage.

Player A has no more actions to use, so the turn goes to player B.

Player B is now looking at an attack from player A, that has an attack of 2, a defense of 1 and does 2 damage (1 standard, plus 1 extra).
Player B plays the following card(s):
Card 3: +1 defense, +1 Action (giving player B another Action to use)
Card 4: +1 Attack.

Player B has no more actions to use, so the turn goes to resolution:

Player A´s warrior has the highest speed (is the fastest), so his attack gets resolved first.
His attack is 2, with a damage of 2.
Player B´s defense is only 1, not enough to block the attack, so player B´s warrior receives 2 wounds. Since player A “used up” his +1 damage card, that card gets placed face down, signifying the effect is used up and can no longer be used (unless a card or effect places the card face-up again).

If player B´s warrior still lives, his attack resolves.
His attack is 1, with a damage of 1 (just the basic 1 damage each warrior has)
Player A´s defense is 1, not enough to block the damage (defense must be higher than the attack) and Player A´s warrior receives 1 wound.

The combat round ends and if both warriors still live, player B gets the initiative to play cards first. The cards already played last round stay in play.

Player A has in play:
Card 1: +2 attack, +1 defense
Card 2: Face down.
Player B:
Card 3: +1 defense.
Card 4: +1 Attack.

Since player B has initiative, he better get his Defense up, or player A will hit him again this turn. Or maybe he will get his attack up, in anticipation of some defense cards from player A.
Remember that the resolution still gets done first with player A, since his warrior has the highest speed. Especially if both warriors are low on life this could mean a won or lost combat. Speed therefore has a much bigger impact in the updated rules.

It will be a challenge to get the balance right, but if I just start with some basic numbers, and work our way around the power curve from there, it will be alright.

Since both Attack and defense values are on the same card now, there is no longer a need to create a strange way to prevent a hand screw of 5 defense cards, for example.

4.
Next thing to do is to categorize and create different fighting styles. Some warriors (like a Monk) might have very fast fighting styles. This could mean, playing a lot of cards very fast for a low cost, but have a lower damage output than other warriors. A Samurai, for example, may be slow, but he hits harder (higher damage output) and so on and so forth.. Hopefully this will create some different deck types.

5.
During play testing, we found out, that even with the Convert game text, both players quickly run out of card in hand to play. We found a few problems we needed to “fix”:
A: Both players without endurance (chi). What happens then? Both warriors just sit there and make a staring contest?
B: Both players without cards in hand to play.

We fixed (hopefully) both things by:
A: Giving the standard action (in the rules, not on cards) for a warrior to use: Rei to rest, meaning : use an action to increase your endurance by 1.
B: Giving the standard rule that a player may convert (1) at the start of each round. Meaning he or she can convert 1 endurance (chi) into a card in hand.

This way, the game gets going no matter what. You ran out of cards to play? No problem, just convert 1 card at the start of each round. Ran out of endurance? No problem, just use your action to rest and to increase your endurance by 1.
Ran out of cards and endurance? no problem. Use Rei to increase your endurance, use convert to draw that card and make a note to re-do your deck, since you are using too hight costed cards :P

As you can see, both methods come with a cost, to prevent abuse.
Converting 1 card sounds like a great idea, but you will use up your warriors endurance pretty quickly this way. You will have to find a balance, without overdoing one (playing too many cards) or the other (using up too much endurance too fast)
Resting to increase your warriors endurance is a great way to pay for those heavy hitter cards, but it does use up your standard action you are allowed each turn, meaning you won’t be able to defend your warrior from attacks (play cards).

I hope players in the end will not need to use these rules a lot, but they need to be there to prevent stalemates from happening.

Next thing to do: come up with a cost-matrix for basic cards, and slowly increasing that to a finished set of cards.

And also re-write a good portion of the rulebook..

Playtesting the rules is very important for a card game. I did not even had a single card designed, thankfully.

Back to the drawing board.. but with a bigger bucket of ideas and a bigger board to draw on. You rock Vicente, thanks superfriki!