Friday, March 25, 2022

Introducing a project: Some art, some thoughts

Parallel to all my rpg heartbreakers, I am finishing a cherished project of mine; this time a small card game with no name yet (just some ideas). It's not mean to be a CCG or a TCG, just a set of cards which compose a "boardgame" all together.
You are suposed to play against a friend both with the same deck; each of you representing some sort of shogun trying to recover their respective heirloom relics from the hands of the other, who has stolen them. Yeah, I know its weird, but it made sense to me eventually.


These are some hand-drawn cards from the beta deck (in spanish). One of my design goals for them is to have the card text as short as possible. I realized shortly that I was writing too much text on them, trying to cover every possible legal trapping: due to my long relationship with MTG, I was using the same prose and mentality.
Though it as hard as it is hard for a man not to carry his homeland's accent, I am trying to get rid of the corporate game-designer vices. There is a reason for MTG to be extremelly careful on their wordings: they got the DCI, grand prixes, etc. They cannot afford a card to have an ambiguous meaning. If, for example, a card is a merfolk, you cannot just name it Merfolk Assassin and have a merfolk on the picture: You must specify Creature - Merfolk on the type line, or cards that affect merfolks won't have effect on him.

But I want to revel in the advantage I have over that kind of game. 
This is a small game meant to be played by persons. Probably persons who are friends or family with each other. I want to believe that if an hypotetical card affects "all creatures who carry a sword" they can civilly discern it by watching the pictures. 
I have this card called "Marsh Frogs", which originally were to have a bonus against spiders. Then I thought on writing "If the marsh frogs combat against the spider, they will automatically win the combat". But then I went: What the fuck, this is not a game for bots. People will understand this. Maybe it will change over time, but the current text is: "They will eat spiders directy". I think that people will surely interpret it the right way, and even if it is not the case, I think that the pleasure of working with human language instead of lawyer language still is worth the risk.


2 comments:

  1. I love this! Thanks for sharing, I'm excited to see where this goes. I have a similar design mentality of precision, but I think there's something so cool about leaning into the ambiguity and trusting the players. Bravo!

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    1. Nice to hear, Cam. I am the first one excited to see where does it take me hahahh. Thanks!!!

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