u/philgooch

For those of you in the industry, or published designers, I was wondering your thoughts on the idea of pitching to a publisher a game system, with example thematic and play-tested implementations, rather than just a single game?

I've got 3 implementations of the system prototyped, they play in a similar way, but feel like different games because of the thematic differences, different missions and goals for players etc.

I'm wondering whether to pitch each game separately or the entire system for creating the games.

Hi all, I've refining my game design to be simple enough that it can be taught via one double-sided poker-sized card, while having enough strategic and tactical depth (via outward and return journeys with different goals, mission cards and chronicle story beats) to keep players engaged.

Maybe an impossible task! I'm prototyping the game using standard playing cards - the table layout looks like this:

Journey Engine: table layout

And am playtesting with a mixture of at-the-table IRL and online using an HTML version.

HTML version of Journey Engine

The main question I have on the quick reference card below is: combined with the table layout, does it meet the goals of brevity with enough information on the game loop and player actions?

Journey Engine: Quick Reference Page 1

Journey Engine: Quick Reference Page 2

I've been looking into Sidon sets as a way to identify unique card combos or paths. So, rather than hardcode 'turn to card 774' as in 7th Continent (and have to hand-author 1000+ cards and paths), you simply have a rule: 'sum the card values in your hand and select the event card with that number'. Then you have some default cards for non-existent paths (or ones you haven't written yet) that might just say something like 'Nothing interesting happened'.

So you might have a rusty key card with value 4, a crowbar card with value 8, and a location card with value 1000. That location card might be 'The Boatyard'. Sum them and you get 1012. Pick up the event card that has that number in the top-left corner, and you have a unique result: if you set up your numbering correctly there is no way to reach event 1012 except via this path.

So the text on that Event card could read 'You unlock the door and enter. A shaft of light illuminates an area on the floor. A protruding nail on a loose floorboard. You lift the floorboard and find a tin with 32 written on it'

Deliberately not too specific in case later you wanted another path to lead there or even reuse it for another location-item combo.

Items 4, 8, and 32 are all numbered according to your Sidon set so their pair-sums are guaranteed unique.

Basically it's a way for your cards to know their own provenance and to carry path information in them. It's a bit like hash keys in programming but you get to decide if and when those hashes collide.

It seems like a useful mechanic as you can have hundreds of scenarios arise from a relatively small deck of say 60 cards.

I maybe need to write this up as a longer blog post somewhere, although maybe this is a well-trodden thing and I'm just discovering it for the first time.

When designing a card game, I find that if I keep all the thematic stuff and mechanics off the cards, and add them as a separate layer - say in the game scenarios, rule book, etc - then it makes it easier to add narrative beats and can turn that card game almost into an RPG. The way I'm currently doing that is adding 'chronicle' milestones and missions.

To mark the milestone as met, rotate the card in place, and check off the milestone. Easy to do in a computer game/sim, but requires some book-keeping at the table IRL.

However, I find it adds a nice layer of narrative and makes the card game more interactive and closer to 'choose your own adventure'

Here's a screenshot of where I'm at in the online prototyping phase. So you see a list of missions and chronicle events on the left. The green ones are the achieved ones and the yellow glow is the one that I can currently achieve. Chronicle events map to events in the narrative (so if you are adapting a novel into a game, you can put key narrative events here and turn them into in-game actions for point scoring at the end.

Narrative card RPG design via journaling and chronicle events

Hi all, hope you don't mind me posting an update as several of you were interested in the game!

So I've been adding missions and narrative beats which adds more atmosphere to the experience. So as well as fighting Martians you can rescue Miss Elphinstone with the Pony-Chaise, spend time listening to the Artilleryman's plans, hang out with Ogilvy at the observatory etc.

Eventually, it will be a printed game with a deck of cards and rule/storybook but for now it is online. Here's a couple new screenshots:

https://preview.redd.it/5uivhemnp7fh1.png?width=2690&format=png&auto=webp&s=27bf906726216aac02bbdac2502bc32abe6e994b

https://preview.redd.it/p6xmfkgop7fh1.png?width=2685&format=png&auto=webp&s=9a0f43159660d6abb93dd9444d450fa9bdc2eb3e

Hi all, I'm debating a Flee rule with my co-designer and we've reached a bit of an impasse. Previously, we had a guaranteed Flee from an enemy encounter (discard 1 card), and a separate, luck-based Hide (nominate a card from your hand, then pick the top card from the Supply deck - if lower, then you succeed and enemy passes you by, if you fail, enemy attacks you first then combat proceeds as normal).

We both want to simplify this to a unified Evade mechanism. My preference is to make it more like the Hide mechanic. But then, we lose the guaranteed escape route via a possibly painful discard.

Would be good to hear your thoughts. I prefer maximising player agency but also combining an element of chance!

Hi all, great to find this sub. As well as Holmes, Im also a huge War of the Worlds fan, and I was thinking recently what Holmes and Watson would have made of the Martian invasion.

It could make a great story!

In the meantime, I’ve been working on a card game engine with a standard pack of cards, and the first two implementations of it have been fit WotW and the Holmes canon. But now I’m thinking of combining the two: Holmes vs the Martians. Maybe Holmes and Moriarty join forces to beat them.

Hi all, thanks for admitting me to this sub.

I've been tinkering with card game designs for about a year now, and after many false starts I'm starting to learn what works and what doesn't - at least for me and my group of play testers.

For me, rule simplicity and minimal components are paramount. I used to love big box games with beautiful components, but I hardly ever actually played them. My goal is to create something anyone can pick up and play.

My background is in software, where you typically have a three-tier architecture: the presentation layer (user interface), the application layer (business logic - the rules), and the data layer (storage - the substrate).

This also applies to videogames (being software), but how does it apply to physical games (card, board, RPG)? Does it even apply?

Certainly a mistake I was making over and over during the past year was mixing the presentation layer with the rules, and having both be determined by the substrate (physical construction). Ideally, you would have a completely modular design so that you could change one layer without affecting the others.

If we are thinking of games as narratives (so I'm explicitly excluding abstract games here, where these rules may not apply: for example, you can't really have Connect4 without the physicality, without the vertical grid where tokens fall under gravity), then you will have, at a minimum, nouns and verbs.

What I found is that your rules are the verbs, and the presentation layer ideally contains only the nouns. So you could have a completely different set of nouns, but keep the same verbs, and you have the same core game but reskinned with different characters, situations, theme etc.

And for a game that is quick/easy to learn, you should have relatively few verbs, and the types of verbs can determine whether the game is competitive, co-operative, solo, or a combination of these.

And ideally it should be possible to change the substrate (physical format) without dramatically changing the verbs or the nouns. So ideally it should be possible to recast a card game into a pen-and-paper game, or a board game, or an interactive book, with minimal changes.

So far I've come up with an engine that I've been able to apply to several narratives/themes, and it seems to work well. I'm still play-testing, but feedback has been positive so far.

Hi all. It seems to me there is no shortage of card games that are fun to play as a group. And new games are being published every day. But, we don't always have a group, and sometimes we want a bit of quiet, introspection time.

So my question is: is there a need for more solo card games? Are existing solo card games fun, or is there a gap? Is it harder to design a solo game? And is there a need for more abstract, solo games, or more thematic ones?

My personal lean is that I want to see more thematic card games that are more like reading a short story or piece of interactive fiction, but played out as a card game.

I'd welcome your thoughts!

As Calligrapher-Bureaucrat of the Academy of Letters, your loyalty and your calligraphy skills will be tested in order to survive in the Eternal City of the Ang-Shyu-hal Dynasty, in its final days.

Based on the award-winning story by Dom Wright.

Hi all, I was wondering if anyone else uses simulation to playtest their games to ensure they are 'solvable' or use decision-making policies to sweep parameter to see which settings produce a game that’s completable but still challenging?

I'm finding this really useful to try out ideas and test out rule changes.