Making of a card game : the skeleton

First I must say that the first article about my card game was about a new version of it; a kind of second iteration. So don't be confuse when I'll start presenting you a quite different version of the pitch.

Yes it's awkward, anyway I think a lot about how to share with you my journey trough the making of these games and I'd start with a piece of my work which is not in an advanced enough state to be used as a material for my writing.

Enough explanation, let's talk about my first card game. Not a very good one but a finished one. It will be better as a source of examples. It contents many flaws I think, but that's not devaluating the lessons learned.

First the pitch : "Create a RPG pen and paper experience without a game master"

After brainstorming on this pitch I ended up with ideas and objectives.
- Give each player the possibility to build his character.
- Give each player a personal objective.
- Build a system which automatically narrates the players's journey.
- Force the players to play together in order to win solo.

Let's see the rules I found around these objectives.

• Give each player the possibility to build his character
  Each character will be build around three elements : Origin, Class and Destiny.
  Origin : give the player a special power and three characteristics : Charisma, Fight, Cunning.
  Class : give the player an other special power and three characteristics : Charisma, Fight, Cunning. Moreover class could influence some parts of the player journey.
  Destiny : give the player his personal objective; this card is hidden from the other players.
• Give each player a personal objective
  See Destiny above.
• Build a system which automatically narrates the player's journey
  Events will be drawn in order to build a new story each turn.
• Force the players to play together in order to win solo
  Each Event is a challenge requiring to match its three characteristics to be achieved :  Charisma, Fight, Cunning. Most Events can't be achieved solo, forcing players to cooperate.
  Events have consequences which could help or prevent each player to reach their objective. This way each player must carefully choose when to participate or not to an event.

You can already see one flaw in my rules; the strong likeness between Origin and Class. I'll discuss this later, as I said, I already have started a second version of this card game.

The game seems also very static and deterministic with not much place for treachery, strategy and tactics. That's why I choose to introduce Action cards. They give randomness, tactic and strategy to the game.

• Action cards give the player a special action and/or characteristics modifier. Action cards can be played at any moment and can be put on an other card in order to modify it. Action cards are removed when the card they modify are or at the end of turn.

Now we have the core rules of the game. Most of the other rules will come by testing it with friends or just by emulating a game in our mind.

But in order to be playable this game need content, in our case cards with characteristics, power, action, consequences... This will be our next subject, a tough one.

What did I learn writing the first set of rules of this game :

• See your ideas as objectives, then build rules that could match them.
• Don't blame yourself if your ideas are not 100% new, forced novelty could ruin the entire thing.
• Seek coherence, each rule must help the others to make sense.
• Run games in your mind, then search your rules for flaws and correct them.