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..)