Birthday

Today is the birthday of my wife, on old years day. she turned a beautiful 33, and we had a great cake yesterday..hmmm.. icecake ..

I bought here a Nixon D60 digital camara for her birthday, because I know she likes to take pictures, and we now have a very good reason to take a lot of them (my son: paul).

Happy birhtday sweetie, may the sun keep shining on your face!

I also treaded myself to a little treat, I bought another starterpack from the corunea rcg.. can´t wait to get started on the game..but today is party time.

Tonight we´ll have the traditional dinner with my mother in law, and after that we wil celebrate the new year in a friends home.. hopefully we all can stay awake until its 00.00 hours.. I know paul won´t make it, haha..

Some new years resolutions? hmmm.. continue working on Wuxia Pian, keep blogging and keep my family as lovable as it is right now.. o, year, and never again sink money into obvious money making card games (looking at you Sony online enterscamment!)

Gems

You know, every once in a while, you surf the internet and come across a little gem in a sea of garbage and money making schemes..

Yesterday I was searching the internet again for some good articles about game design (esp. card game design), when I stumbled upon some weird but cool looking ccg´s from Singapore (non-manga garbage).. from there I found a small card game from France, called a role card game:

CORUNEA (http://www.corunea.com/)

What an eye opener.. This is what a great card game should look like. I immediately ordered a starter pack. It is a bit pricey, but the quality is superb. If you take a look around the forums, you see all sorts of cries about: this is what WOW tcg should be, and great, no more diving for power rares and mystic rares to get your net deck up to shape.. NO RARITY. let me repeat this again: no rarity! This means fair trades, easier collecting, and best of all, cheaper!

The art look fantastic, and I cannot wait do dive into the game.. Hopefully my wife will understand..

to see all of the cards from the first "set" of Corunea, go here:

http://www.coruneaforum.com/en/viewtopic.php?t=268

I only found one or 2 more gems like this during my entire card flopping life: Starchamber (http://www.starchamber.net/) and maybe Vampire ccg.. card games that do NOT make your wallet glow bright red with friction..

I think the downfall of most modern ccg´s is indeed the money grab they represent. I can understand it from a business point of view, and I am amazed that Magic still manages to keep it up on the same road.. They even introduced a higher level of rarity in their booster packs, and people seem to like it.. just like yu-gi-yo has.. I am amazed that seasoned players still fork over a lot of cash to get those 80$ super rares they "need" for their decks..

Decipher, or should I say, New decipher also jumped off the bandwagon and are proposing a completely new way of distributing their card for their new game: fightklub. I sincerely hope they manage to get on top again with this model. It sure sounds less painful for our wallets.

SO, how long does the French mail takes to reach Barcelona, spain..c´mon!

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

Some help on the net?

I will urge everyone looking for some help on how to create a card game, to look here:

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Trading-Card-Game

Its a bit outdated, and it does not really apply to ccg/tcg´s, but it can provide you with some starting points.

I would also head over (while you are at it) to
lackey ccg, one of the few places where your game can become an online reality.. most ccg creators huddle up here in the forums too, check it out:
http://www.lackeyccg.com/

Next to that, there is also vassel, the game engine, but I am not too familiar with it.

I was an active member of 4GXG, and helped design the rulebook for thier first project, called Conspiracy ccg. the acitivity is a bit low now on their website, but they are friendly folks and welcome anyone who wants to contribute.: http://www.4gxg.com/

also, on the mtgsalvation forums, there is a whole section dedicated to dreamcards (99% is fixed to magic), but I am sure you can get a good idea of balancing issues and such. http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/forumdisplay.php?f=7

And of course Magic set editor, which you can use (AFTER WRITING THE RULES!) for creating your own card templates, and their forums are buzzing with game ideas as well!:
http://magicseteditor.sourceforge.net/welcome

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).

-----------------------

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.

Background

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The list was like this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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