The "You make the card" Column

[Kenny_C.002]

As none of you know, I am actually bigger on designing of cards and the art of creating cards than actually playing the different games. After all the time that I've been spending on pefecting my own art, I try to help rookies who are still just starting off. Obviously, this means that only the devoted will EVER read this column I write, but I guess it's alright...for now. Note that I'm FAR from perfect, but I'm definitely better than most rookies out there.

So where should I begin? Common rookie problems sound good! I'll start writingabout some common rookie mistakes and such. The reference I amusing is Mark Rosewater.

So what is one of the most common rookie mistakes?

1. The card is too complicated.

Strangely enough, I've seen this as much as anybody has. The fact is most rookies just love to cram all of their ideas onto one single card. Mark Rosewater says that this is the most common mistake, and it sure sounds like it. I've seen this more than any of the other common mistakes in my time. Here's the major breakdown (courtesy of Mark Rosewater):

1. The card has too many abilities
2. The card has too many "add-ons"
3. The card is hard to understand
4. The card has too many memory issues

1. This is again on the top of my list also. I've seen this in mostly the extremely rare cards that the rookies tend to make. The more abilities you put into a card, the lower the focus of the card you have. Let's say you have 3 extremely cool ideas and you put them all in one card. Now the focus of the card are the 3 ideas. A single person can only deal with so much within a card, so the more abilities is in the card, the less they focus on the individual abilities themselves. If you split the 3 abilities into 3 different cards, all 3 cards have themselves devoted to that single ability, and the player will have a much higher focus on the coolness of the abilities. Also, most of the people who tend to make a lot of cards like to say that you will also expand your library of cards if you split it into 3 (for this case).

Aside from that, if you have that many abilities, you'd have EXTREMELY small font for your cards. That's not good, you wouldn't want the player to get out the magnifying glass just to see it all...besides,they may see it and give up on it before noticing that "hey this card has cool abilities!". Remember, most of the best cards out there don't have the most text. I can assure you that the most loved cards might even use the fewest amount of text. Tell you the truth, I'm still learning on perfecting this.

2. These are called extra rules you use to govern the card. I've seen some of this in action, too. An example on this would be if you make a YGO monster with an ability such as this:
[card name] goes to the graveyard when pyro is on the field.
This might have some flavour or something, like if it's a plant that's afraid of fire or something. Seriously, if anyone takes this ability, they should get shot for the simple error in this card: pyros don't appear often, and so this ability happens once in a blue moon...PLUS it's just randomly killing it...not good. Add-ons generally are rules that just doesn't get used often enough and should get axed.

3. Lots of text and nobody knows wtf you're talking about? This happens all the time. Remember, if the card can't explain itself, it's not a good card. You want to reach out to your players, not withdraw them from you.

4. Memory issues tend to happen a lot too, just because rookies like all these silly abilitiesthat may be cool. If you require memorization for something, make sure it's memorable. Something like "you lose life for every card you draw" is memorable, but something like "you lose life whenever a 1900ATK monster with level of 5 or higher is played" is not. You'll figure these things out as you play with the cards themselves.

Join me next time...for synergy! If you have any comments, complaints, rants, hate comments, positive comments, flames, etc. please make a separate thread! :P

 

[Kenny_C.002]

What is synergy? It is essentially the essence of combo parts of a card. There are 4 ways to describe synergy within a card:

1. the card is synergitic (if the card has only 1 ability, it is synergetic)
2. the card is not particularly synergistic between its abilities
3. the card has no synergy
4. the card is directly anti-synergistic

So why worry about synergy? It is because a card should be read logically with a logical fashion. If a card has 2 abilities that have nothing to do with each other (or worst yet, conflicting), it makes the card look particularly bad. As with any card, you must look at thecard as a whole before passing it through. Allow me to explain the 4 status's.

1. The card is synergistic.

Generally this is where you want to aim your cards to be at. You want your cards to have pieces that flow together in a logical fashion. 1 ability cards automatically fall here anyway (usually the case with DM and YGO).

2. the card is not particularly synergistic between its abilities

Usually we put them in separate categories of abilities. Examples are things that don't really add up but don't really go against each other. Overall this is still acceptable although it usually shows that one is an amature with these (even experts make them too, but they can catch them more easily). Magic players will know an example would be first strike and trample. YGO usually doesn't touch these as they usually don't have more than 1 ability anyway. Same with DM. (YGO has BLS -Envoy as having this, the sp. summoning requirement and the ability he has have NOTHING to do with each other)

3. the card has no synergy

If it doesn't belong in the first 2 category, chances are it's here. Usually the abilities just don't work together at all. This leads to...

4. the card is directly anti-synergistic

There's a good anti-synergistic and a bad one. The bad one is more common, and involves the activation of one ability to inhibit the other ability. These are less apparent again in DM and YGO as well both are more limited in these senses anyway. A magic example would be first strike with tapping for mana. The good anti is usually a tag-along ability that makes the card worst FROM it's own good ability. For example, a card that pumps itself for every card in your opponent's hand but forces your opponent to discard whenever you hit her is an example of a good anti-synergistic card.

 

[Kenny_C.002]

Since this is my column anyway, I'd like to tell you the main reason why I have beef with YGO with a quotation from magic Celebrity, Mark Rosewater. Hey, I'm one of the only guys in any pokemon forum to prefer magic/Duel Masters over YGO.

This is why the color pie is so important. As a game designer, I want to make the players earn their victories. The game simply wouldn?t be as fun if every color had access to every effect. Each color has built in weaknesses that the opponent can exploit. But that doesn?t mean you can?t find creative solutions. In fact, finding creative solutions is what Magic is all about.

I don't know about you, but if you notice the YGO setting, you actually DO have every card at your disposal to play with. In magic and Duel Masters, you're restricted to 1 or 2 colours (well we're not going into rainbow decks and such). The sole impact of this aspect of the games made DM and magic much more solid than YGO. What fun is it when you know everyone else has raigeki? What if you know the guy can't have it because he's playing a certain group of card so he CANNOT play with a card with the raigeki effect? Doesn't it make the game more intersting?

Alright. As usual, beef against me on a separate post.