Paul Dennen
Joe Alread
SOE Denver
Trading Card Games

Customization: create unique strategies before the game even begins while still having some constraints. Chess = no customization, WoW TCG has some, something like YuGiOh is full customization of any cards in combination.

Delineation: Separation of powers and skills so that during a game, no player can do everything. Basketball, all players can pass. Soccer = goalie can use his hands, Starcraft the sides are highly separated in their access to units and abilities.

Rigid delineation says what you can do. Flexible delineation says how you can do it. Only Warlocks summon Voidwalkers = Rigid. Football different running plays = flexible delineation.

So how do this relate to TCGs? Games with flexibility and constraints lead to better designs.

Why use gameplay delineation? Linear design time leads to geometric depth. Cards A and B interact uniquely. Card C interacts with A and B, geometric increase in interactions. New cards make old cards interesting again. You can overdo it but rarely do products live long enough for this to be a problem (MTGO solves this with banned lists and formats).

Increased depth without increased complexity. New cards come in without a requirement to go through all other existing cards as a prerequisite. Componentized gameplay provides frequent purchase opportunities. Award cards to generate incentives. Creates new options == players can make decks which are unique to themselves. Expands story and game world in addition to mechanics. Don’t want players to feel like old cards are becoming obsolete, or they will stop buying cards – need to validate older purchases.

Chess = No customization, same pieces on each player. Some delineation that evolves as players lose pieces, pawns promote, etc. Some expansions like Nightmare Chess but these are rarely successful, original format dominates.

Basketball = Some customization (different players on the team with specializations). Different configurations of these specialists to pursue different strategies. No delineation, different skills but the rules allow them to all do the same things like passing, shooting, etc. Broken strategies require errata (rules changes).

Starcraft = Customization by choosing race. Heavy delineation with very different tech trees and unit capabilities, change dynamically on player decisions.

Magic the Gathering = Lots of customization and delineation. Unique deck of 60 cards. Cards come in different colors and require mana / land support. The most popular strategy card game. Land requires some inherent strategy, can’t play just random cards, need to be built with land strategy in mind.

“Shuffle and Play” concept – can you give a friend 60 random cards and have them play?

Free Realms – Total customization like Magic, and has colors to separate. Resource cards, but don’t need a land equivalent. Gems enforce gameplay delineation without preventing experimentation.

Gameplay delineation: Ideally give the player the most amount of flexibility while still having some constraints. Unique, but a lot of natural design space – Magic went many many years before adding a card type.

Starcraft had one expansion, kind of a sweet spot. Has delineation but not oriented around the longevity of a TCG. Turn based nature doesn’t penalize for advanced delineation. Collectible RTS overwhelming? Battleforge. Going to be a challenge for them moving into the future to avoid feeling overwhelmed. Limited # of cards as their strategy.

How to build a companion TCG? System design, card design, expansion design.

System design is critical. Common goals = IP expectations, capture imagination, accessibility and longevity. How easy to learn vs how easy to be able to compete in PvP. Good at the latter since players have expectations and a high randomness element, newbie feels like they have a chance to offset skill mismatch.

Expectations = restrained by IP but also compel you to make systems: Star Wars wants Vader, starships. EQ and WoW want heroic combat with sorcery, questing.

Imagination – give people something fun and fresh. Fun to learn a new system, figuring out the patterns of a new game. Longevity by changing the underlying patterns.

Accessiblity – construct simple, meaningful cards.

Longevity – lots of differentiated cards, bonus points for simple differentiated cards. Players come in late and need to be able to learn the new cards only, but still have to learn those new cards without them all being super-complex. Need to introduce twists and new mechanics. Difference between filler cards and marquee cards, don’t want to exhaust possible filler cards early.

System complexity – the more complex the system, the more simple differentiated cards you can produce in the long run. Sweet spot here is job #1, how far can you push that complexity? Target demographics influence how far you can push it.

Attributes – primary tool for differentiation. Numeric, Color, Symbolic, Type. Core systems encapsulate data and prevent you from having to explain that explicitly. Green is embedded in the template of a card itself! In Legends of Norrath the color used light and dark as a faction meter, something easier to do on a computer because the display can be dynamic. Even new players can learn to stick with one or the other, but it is a subtle delineation because they can feel free to play with both as long as they don’t go too far. Introduced elementals that go to a faction but then are powerful if you swing all the way to the other.

Stargate TCG = had to work paper and online. Complex rules embedded in chevrons.

Conflict mechanisms = simple to learn / difficult to master (accessible and deep). Flavors match mechanics. Swinginess is important = rock-paper-scissors. TCGs are more abstract that other forms of videogames so have to be able to convey the flavor of a mechanic, not just something arbitrary. If you can make a player laugh by reading the rules text by what it evokes, you’re doing this the right way. Flying in Magic.

Swinginess is important because it makes players choices have more meaning and impact. Some cards are good at defeating other cards, RPS circles all over the place. Whatever the best cards prove to be in practice, those are going to be valuable, which drives sales. Magic has a lot of these (protection). Fiery Avenger vs Sunder in LoN. The Pokemon RPS is explicit on the card, weakness / resistance to energy types. Some of this swinginess needs to be subtle, buried and deep enough that players will discover it later. Sometimes old mechanics are RPS to new mechanics, which is good for validating old purchases (set 2 mechanic good against set 4 mechanic).

Resource systems = stick to simple systems. Capture imagination elsewhere. Different for digital only where you don’t have to strongly tie to cards. Can be simple for computer to track and simple to understand, what may be annoying on tabletop can work well on computer. Tabletop forced to use cards as their inherent resource mechanic. Modern resource games allow you to play any card face down, but some cards are specialized in this regard.

Victory system = can be good differentiator. How many methods? MTG and Free Realms primarily use one method. LoN and SWG use two, Star Chamber uses three to evoke more of the ‘4X’ space experience.

Timing and computerized play. Sorcery vs Interrupt, lost on new players. Adds depth but has an issue with complexity. In computerized play creates difficulties in implementation. MTGO online has the “do you want to do something” problem because it has to ask you to avoid metagame signals, so maybe that is a better for tabletop system. Better to limit handshakes for digital games, like only in combat. Duels of the Planeswalkers on XBLA has a specific limited time window to change the onus of who has to say “ok”.

Card set design: Rarity and complexity, rarity and specialization, roles, appeal by player profile (minigames in FR match to demographic psychological profiles). Different cards for different kinds of players.

System design > faction mechanics > card set design > playtesting > ship! But with lots of embedded loops. Demo decks and design exploration prototype in the system phase. Commons = lower complexity, but rares can be specialized, ramp up. Don’t want vanilla rares because expectations are higher. Rares that are powerful, but you have to specialize to access that power. Good to limit that to rare to avoid frustration, but can also generate excitement and put ideas in player’s minds.

Expansion design is a similar process but system design is constrained to the cards themselves. Listen to the metagame, watch the high level players and see what they are breaking in the game (or close to doing so). Use your keywords wisely – kind of marketing tool for the expansion, unwritten contract to see more of those keywords and riff on them.

The playground – provide places to play! Newbies / learning area, this is the hardest part! Competitive PvP, solo and co-op PvE. Hard to make tutorials, have to teach a lot. PvE is important because many computer games have this expectation and are not looking for head to head competition. MMO players view the companion TCG as a relaxing playground even if they are competitive in the MMO. Single player campaigns + co-op raids. 80% of companion TCGs are played PvE.

Use of AIs to achieve balance by playing starter decks against each other. Make sure systems are simple if you want more generalized AI play capability you can trust.

Timeline to create / team size? 3 / 4 month cycle of expansions. Gather data from metagame, want to shake things up. Get initial design quickly to leave time for playtest and balance. 2-3 designers designing cards, 10-12 actual people including intense testing. New game: 3 people, 3 months from inception to first playing, but can only do that because of a well developed infrastructure.