[brainstorm] cardgame for ages 3-99

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tsr
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[brainstorm] cardgame for ages 3-99

Post by tsr »

Hi,


I've been on vacation for a couple weeks and my daughter (age 4) was very frustrated by our friends (age 6) pokemon game.

Not only because he cheated all the time and refused to lose (this is understandable as he was used to play against his father who of course let him win easily all the time) but also because she couldn't understand the game at all (of course the cheating and the somewhat homebrew gamestats obfuscated a lot to her).


All in all this got me thinking: what about making a cardgame of our own.


The basic requirements would be:
- fun and interesting pictures.
- not take up so much table space (for travel purposes)
- multiple battle systems (so that beginning/not so advanced players can play with one set of rules aginst more experienced players and still have a good chance).

Bonus requirements:
- multiple gamestyles: competetive and cooperative play.

Ok, I can't really come up with any ideas right now, so keep the brainstorm coming.

/tsr
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turin
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Post by turin »

Do you mean like a trading card game, or a traditional playing card game like Go Fish, etc?
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tsr
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Post by tsr »

Well I was really thinking about a trading card game (as I think that the trading adds a lot of value to the game, specially when you consider it as an Open Source project where you can easily replace mis-traded cards[1]).

But a traditional game could work too, as long as the deck is more interesting than a normal playing card deck. Since I think that a game with normal playing cards is hard to balance on multiple levels and the cards are just boring.

/tsr

[1] Considering that everyone can have every card in an open source game there must be some nice rules about how to form a deck (also the lack of ¨uber-cards would help).
sparr
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Post by sparr »

There are plenty of card games with CCG-like decks, but no collectable/tradable aspects to avoid most-money-wins problems. Fight City is one example. For wesnoth, I would expect to see a deck for each faction. Or maybe decks for each race, with rules or mechanics to handle mixing races.
tsr
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Post by tsr »

Ok, here are some more thoughts:

- game for 2-X persons but best played for 2-4 persons.
- 2 dimensional classes (think earth/wind/fire/water and attack/defend/enhance, but don't marry them)
- each card has a recruitment value and each deck must consist of exactly 12 cards and not more than 120 points (arbitrary value)

The 12 card deck combined with the 4 basic elements and 3 functions creates a situation where you have to chose between spreading or specialising it also makes it so that you can start out with fewer elements or even play with half-decks to make the game easier.

2-4 locations/player to place their cards on when they are in action (I think 2 makes it more portable but 4 might make it more interesting).

There shouldn't be a need to keep track of values, so all the information must be visible at all times (this excludes HP that go down without the unit dying, assuming that health, unit and die will be relevant :))

Basic story ideas:
- units fighting
- building/wrecking houses/machines/etc
- racing (cars/animals/bikes)
- cooking
- ...

Ok, people, I know you have these great ideas, keep em coming!

/tsr
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Jetrel
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Post by Jetrel »

You might be tilting at windmills here. It might just be that your 4 year old is just too young to understand any cardgame. I was the same at that age.


A good introductory one would be "war".

War is a very simple game - each player gets half a deck of cards. Each turn, players flip over the top card in their deck, whomever has the higher valued card takes both cards and adds them to the bottom of their deck. Repeat until someone runs out of cards. (Note - if both cards are equal, you do a tiebreaker by drawing two additional cards, and the winner there takes all four).

If she can't figure that one out, you just need to wait.
tsr
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Post by tsr »

Well, yes I'm pretty sure that my 4-year old is too unexperienced/unwise to really play any card game, but sooner than later she will be 5 and then she will be able to play a "real" game. In the mean time she can have fun making up her own rules and look at the cool/pretty pictures and making up stories.

Otoh, I think it could be fun to try to develop a game regardless of my daughter, that story was just my reason to start thinking about this, others will have other reasons.

/tsr
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Post by elricz »

If you have a good idea, I could help with the design. I was trying myself to make a game out of Wesnoth using cards and pawns, but I couldn't come out with simple enough rules. In the process, I created an Excel spreadsheet that generated the sets of cards, you can take a look at it at http://zapicm.googlepages.com/wesnoth_cards.zip, and if you like it I could do something similar for your game.
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Post by Lorbi »

i suggest taking jetryls descriped "war"-game which to me seems to be the most easy game possible and enhace with some trading-card-factors

something like:
a deck consits of 15 cards
there are 3 "classes" of cards ( A, B, C )
A beats B, B beats C, C beats A
at the beginning each player lays before him 3 random selected cards so that both players can see them.
player1 now starts: he selects one of his cards and "attacks" player2
player2 chooses his card to defend with.
if the cards are of unequal type the one that is "beaten" is taken out of the game and replaced with any card the owner can choose out of his deck
if the cards are of equal type both are taken out
... now its player2s turn

... i know that this somewhat stupid but i think it gives a good expression of a cardgame that is not too much complicated for a 4 or 5 year old
forget everything that plays with numbers bigger then 10 ^^
Blarumyrran
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Post by Blarumyrran »

the mentioned "War" game is 100% deterministic, the player has never a choice, so imo it would fit as an introduction (tho not for a real interesting game). i think the first card game i ever played was also almost the same, only with a trivial extra rule not worth explaining. and yeah i was very young back then, and i think ive played quite a lot of card games after that (with the normal, 4*13 + 2 cards, because i havent wanted to waste money on MTG). so its been proved in practice to be a good start! btw its called "Burning of Cities" over here.

totally missing the topic with this, but i, being recently obsessed with UI, made a TCG frame a while ago and then wondered "oh why did i just make this thing? its not like id possibly ever have any use for it!" have it if you think it fits for something.
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Post by Dragon Master »

Lorbi wrote:i suggest taking jetryls descriped "war"-game which to me seems to be the most easy game possible and enhace with some trading-card-factors

something like:
a deck consits of 15 cards
there are 3 "classes" of cards ( A, B, C )
A beats B, B beats C, C beats A
at the beginning each player lays before him 3 random selected cards so that both players can see them.
player1 now starts: he selects one of his cards and "attacks" player2
player2 chooses his card to defend with.
if the cards are of unequal type the one that is "beaten" is taken out of the game and replaced with any card the owner can choose out of his deck
if the cards are of equal type both are taken out
... now its player2s turn

... i know that this somewhat stupid but i think it gives a good expression of a cardgame that is not too much complicated for a 4 or 5 year old
forget everything that plays with numbers bigger then 10 ^^
Modding you game idea to make it a bit more interesting IMO. Keep the rocks, paper, scissors interaction, but instead of getting three random cards, why not have a hand of cards (say, four) and the attacker chooses one card in his or her hand face down, the defender does likewise. If the cards are the same, whichever has a higher assinged number wins. Heck, you could do this with a regular deck.
Weeksy
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Post by Weeksy »

1000 blank white cards:
http://www.geocities.com/nconner23/bwcards.html

it's fun and games for everyone who wants to spend the time thinking and making it fun, there's no real point, and showing people your cards is pretty awesome as well.
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Lorbi
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Post by Lorbi »

Dragon Master wrote:
Lorbi wrote:i suggest taking jetryls descriped "war"-game which to me seems to be the most easy game possible and enhace with some trading-card-factors

something like:
a deck consits of 15 cards
there are 3 "classes" of cards ( A, B, C )
A beats B, B beats C, C beats A
at the beginning each player lays before him 3 random selected cards so that both players can see them.
player1 now starts: he selects one of his cards and "attacks" player2
player2 chooses his card to defend with.
if the cards are of unequal type the one that is "beaten" is taken out of the game and replaced with any card the owner can choose out of his deck
if the cards are of equal type both are taken out
... now its player2s turn

... i know that this somewhat stupid but i think it gives a good expression of a cardgame that is not too much complicated for a 4 or 5 year old
forget everything that plays with numbers bigger then 10 ^^
Modding you game idea to make it a bit more interesting IMO. Keep the rocks, paper, scissors interaction, but instead of getting three random cards, why not have a hand of cards (say, four) and the attacker chooses one card in his or her hand face down, the defender does likewise. If the cards are the same, whichever has a higher assinged number wins. Heck, you could do this with a regular deck.
mod it as much as you like
i just wanted to give an example of the level of complexity and difficulty that a game for 3 or 4 y.o childs can have
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Post by Maeglin Dubh »

Cuyo Quiz wrote:I really should push for Temuchin's brainstorming with all my might someday, when the skies are cloudy, the winds dance and the light is free to roam over the soil along the fog.
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