Going forward!

The Rules are done. Finished. Ready to be melted into gold. Bring out the chisels. Etc, etc..

Last weekend, we had 2 birthdays we needed to go to, but due to bad weather, we opted to held the “party” at our home (not very wise to take a 2.5 month old infant into the cold + rain just to get to a party), and since one of the persons getting a year older was Vicente, it was a very convenient way for us to be able to play test more on the Wuxia Pian card game.

I had already designed three different Demo decks, but due to low ink in my printer, we could only test 2 of them. Due to the increased graphical nature of the Demo decks, we actually felt like we were playing an almost finished product already. In the end of the play test, we even forgot about “testing” and were really trying to win the game, great!

The good:

The rules held up.. again. The only thing we changed was to change the way to decide who received Liú first. No rule questions came up, and no dead ends were noted, except this.
We actually had great fun playing just the Demo decks. Play was fast, we both went through a lot of cards and even found some nice combos.. with vanilla cards! Not to mention we really got the feeling we could win, even though it sometimes looked grim. The best out of 5 rule of Wuxia Pian is the best thing I came up with, I think, hahaha..
It was balanced. We both won 2 times with our decks, even after swapping. Great! Some cards were obviously good, but no card was over the top, and only a few cards felt far below the curve..
Due to the layout of the Demo decks, it was very easy to calculate each player’s Attack and Defense, and we never had to calculate beyond 15. I think this will be doable for each level of player who dives into the Wuxia Pian game.

The not so good:
Going first in the game was sometimes not so nice, and felt like a penalty most of the times. This made the player with the higher speed feel strange, because even though his or her warrior has a higher speed, it did not felt like an advantage. Luckily, this is easily solved by changing the rule for who begins first into:””The warrior with the highest speed decides which player receives Liú first this combat round.”” Problem solved. This way, a player can decide for himself if he or she wants to go first.
Reversing cards and Discarding cards were a bit overpowered, especially in the beginning of the game: I play 2 cards, you make me discard those and pound in my head. We will need to split these cards into special targets for Reverse and Discard. Example: “”Discard target 3 cost card””, “”Your opponent must choose and reverse one of his cards”” etc.. Making it more specific prevents the cards from getting too powerful (which we found out during the game)
Sustain. The sustain rule is golden, but because of the huge amount and easiness of Discarding and reversing combat cards, Vicente and I never really needed to follow the sustain rule. Only in one game it came up.. Solution: Reduce the sustain value on Warriors, but be careful NOT to increase the power of the Reverse and Discard cards through this reduction.. Needs more play test.
Since there were no combat cards in the Demo decks that handled speed, it was sometimes a very one way street game. More cards and abilities that target Speed are needed.

The Bad:
NONE! I just need to implement some minor changes in the Rules, change some cards in the Demo decks (split up Discard and Reverse effects, decrease sustain), and it’s good to go.

This really gets me exited. Now I know the rules hold up, it’s on to the best part of card game design: the real cards itself. Hopefully the Demo decks will be up this week, so we will get some feedback from players around the world.

Maybe I can begin to set up the website, with a message board, so players and designers can discuss the rules and provide insights and ideas for cards..

I have uploaded the new rulebook, version 1.8 you can download it on the right.

I want to Welcome and express my thanks for Cyrus from the
http://www.anarchycap.com/kingdom/
Card game for jumping in and helping me design the card templates. The first wip (work in progress) already looks great!

During the last few months, work on Wuxia Pian really went to an all time high, and I must say, I am very happy how it is becoming.
During play testing, there were moments when I was not too happy about some cards I had in my hand, because they could not help me at that time, or I faced a grim outlook with the cards my opponent had in play. In most card games, this means game over or a very tedious game, where you are forced to play, but unable to get back in. Not in Wuxia Pian. I just shrugged it off and prepared for combat # 2… I do not want to boast, but not often you find a game where you get 5 opportunities to get into the game and win.. In Wuxia Pian, you can! The rule where your opponent is forced to play his Warrior first if he won a victory point, works like a charm, because I get to choose a warrior who can defeat that warrior (e.g. has an advantage over) more easily, bringing me back into the game, but not automatically, since I still need to win that combat…

What to do next? A checklist:
• Finish making revisions on the rules and let someone (native English) proof read it.
• Finalise the Demo decks and put them online
• Start working on the Website
• Finalise the Demo rules sheet
• Begin work on the final cards for the first set
• Determine the size of the first set
• Supervise the creation of the card templates.
• Start working on pictures from the movies to include
• create a big list of names from the movies, plus possible card names
• Combine the Final templates with the rulebook and finalise it
• Investigate into a stand alone application for online play…
• Play, play and play the game.

So first on my list: Finish the Demo decks and put it online.

Expect to see a big post coming up this week about the Demo decks!

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…

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!)

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?

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!

The Rules

The writing of the rulebook was actually a lot easier than I thought. I just took a .doc copy of the WOW rulebook (since the structure more or less applied to my rules) and slowly started to overwrite all the WOW rules with my rules.

Daily updates and fixing took me about a year to get to this. Since I am not a native english speaker, I am sure some weird sentences will be there, and a few typos.. I will let a professional typewriter look it over for the final form, but feel free to point me to my omgfailNUB english skills.. :P


http://www.freewebs.com/sccards/Wuxia%20Pian%20game%20_v1.0_.pdf

You can download the PDF here, but a heed of warning:

1. The rules are still NOT finished. as always, minor corrections and additions are constantly being done.
2. Its very basic text, no graphical goodies and card examples yet, that is because I am still in the creating cards phase.. finishing the graphical rulebook will be about the last thing I will do..
3. (c) 2008 copyright by me, marcel matijssen, please dont use anything from the rulebook without my permission.

Feel free to comment on it, and leave me a message through:
wuxiapiangame@gmail.dom
marmatone@hotmail.com

Quick rules

Just to get the experienced player have a go at it, here are the quick rules, with the explinations below it.

Quick Reference Rules (For Experienced TCG Players).

• Start game by choosing your starting warrior and element. Reveal both warriors simultaneously. Warrior with highest speed chooses who attacks first.

• Object of the game is to win three victory points. Kill an opponent’s warrior to gain one victory point.• Opening hand is 5 cards. Use discipline to draw extra combat cards. Place cards underneath your combat deck until you have your starting hand of 5 cards.

• Place cards equal to your warrior’s endurance value aside to form your endurance pool. Place cards from here back underneath your combat deck to pay for endurance costs on cards.• Play combat cards face-down next to your warrior. Both players reveal their played combat card at the same time. Pay for Endurance cost with your warrior’s endurance.

• Use actions and abilities on cards in play to enhance your Attack/Defense totals.

• Determine the winner of the combat round. Loser receives wounds.

• Move combat cards played to the combo zone. Check for Fatal wounds on warriors.

• If both warriors are still alive, the attacker becomes defender, and vice versa. Start a new round of combat.

• If a warrior is killed, winner wins 1 victory point. First player to get 3 victory points wins.

• If a player wins a victory point, place all cards in the endurance pool back underneath the combat deck and discard all other cards in play and in hand. Player who won a victory point this combat phase must choose a new warrior and element card first for the next combat phase and show it to opponent (e.g. place face-up in play).

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Each player brings to the game:
5 different warrior cards
5 different element cards (element cards are some form of equipment/artifact cards, but based on COOOL elements from the movies, like: blood, Dragon, Bamboo, Flowers, Gold etc…
50 combat cards. Combat cards come in 3 flavors: Attack, defense and switch. Attack and defense speak for themselves. Switch combat cards can be use for BOTH attack and defense, but will of course have some weakened stats.

Each player chooses for each fight 1 warrior and 1 element card to use.
Warriors have stats like: endurance (is a resource to pay combat cards with), life, speed, weapons and discipline.
Element cards have enhancements, like; +life, +speed, extra abilities etc..

First player to kill 3 warriors of their opponent wins. So a maximum of 5 fights can happen.
The nice thing is that if you just won a fight, you MUST choose your new warrior and element card first, meaning your opponent has the opportunity to choose a warrior that has a good possibility to defeat that one, sort off like Anachronism did.. I really liked that.
Players then use the top cards from their draw deck to form their “mana” (to keep it in layman terms) pool, which they use to pay their combat cards with. Special “convert” game text lets you draw some of those cards back into hand (somewhat like starwars ccg). Used “mana” goes back underneath your combat deck.

Players switch turns being attacker and defender, although some combat cards will change that of course…Combat cards have an attack and defense value, as well as damage values for each one. If you win, for example an attack, you use the attack damage value to damage your opponent. If you successfully blocked an attack, you use the defense damage value.. The combat goes on until one of the warriors receives fatal wounds. Rage ccg players will recognize this mechanic.

Will post the complete rules in a next post (if it fits) or host it somewhere.

Remember folks, all Wuxia pian rules written here are (c) 2008 by me: Marcel Matijssen.. dont get you hopes up :P

On to the cards?

Not. The rules need to come first.

I know, it’s very hard not to immediately start drawing up card templates, card text and great stuff to make card combos and interesting strategies. I too wanted to begin brainstorming right away.. and I did. Rules-wise.

What kind of rules do I want, what options in the game are there? How does a turn structure look like, what are the win conditions, etc, etc..

Unfortunately, I think it is safe to say that whatever cool rules you come up with, some of it (or all if unlucky) are already implemented in some way in a ccg or sorts. Tapping, destiny drawing, knocked out, agendas, locations, lands and missions are all done and accounted for.. So what I did was try to come up with a new mechanic, while taking some cool stuff from existing game that I and other players liked.

For example: Anachronism card game. People loved the idea of having a set of fixed warriors. That way, players would know what would come, without a so called “auto-loss”.

I wanted to implement this as well, by creating 5 fixed warriors in a stack for each player, who would battle for victory points (a bit what magi-nation had). First player to get 3 victory points wins. This way, you would be sure to get at least 3 fights, and a possible intense 5!
Not like most ccg´s where you are stuck with a single, long drawn out fight for your life total (magic, VS, WOW etc..), but a fight over 5 victory points, 5 games in one! Why do you think most CCG tournaments implemented best-out-of-3 games? To fix this problem of a single, right from the start race.

To create a possible way for a “losing” player (e.g. the player behind in victory points) to get back into the game, without the need of a killer hand, I created the following rule:

The player, who won a victory point last turn, MUST choose their new warrior first and show it to their opponent.

This way, the losing player can choose a warrior that have a good (or better) chance of defeating the opponent’s warrior, thus I am giving the losing player a step-up to get back into the game, without knowing the outcome 100% of course, since the combat still has to follow.

I think Wuxia Pian takes some card mechanics from the following card games:

Rage
Magi-Nation
Starwars (decipher)
Anachronism
And some more, no doubt….

I do hope, my combat zone is a new concept and will introduce some nice element to the game.
Next up: the rules itself.