Hi everyone,
I posted here quite a while back about creating a co-operative boardgame. I got some good advice, and I have proceeded with an idea that I got while playing Terra, the game where you have to co-operate in order to keep the world from being destroyed by different disasters. Basically, there are disaster cards with a higher number that you have to counter (together with others) with resolution cards that have a smaller number.
Now, my game is a game concentrating on human rights and gender issues. The idea I have now is that the game would consist of a board and four decks of cards. These decks would all be different type of 'task cards', in some you would have to answer quiz type questions, in others you'd have to do drama, or think of ways of solving problems or discuss attitudes. The type of card you would pick would be determined by the square you are on at the board.
Mixed with these different task cards we would have a system of 'disaster cards' and 'resolution cards'. So, sometimes when you think you are getting a drama card, you would have a card saying '10 minus points'. You can either go back ten squares on the board or counter it with 'plus point cards', i.e. resolution cards. If you don't want to do either, you can leave the card on the table, but when you have 4 disaster cards on the table, everyone has to go back on the board, to the same square. So just playing to win does not pay off.
So, after my long explanation, the actual question: How many cards will I need to make the game work? There need to be quite a few task cards, so that it is not boring to play the game if you have already played it before. However, to make the other system work there need to be many disaster and resolution cards, too.
The disaster cards would be minus 10 points and resolution cards plus 5, so maybe there ought to be twice as many resolutions as disasters.
Let's say I'd have 50 task cards per deck. If we start from this hypothesis, how many disasters and resolutions should there be hidden among the task cards?
I wonder if anyone could follow my incoherent ramblings... I am anxious to see what happens when I try to write down the rules of the game so that someone will actually understand them. :)
Many thanks,
Petra
Hi Petra,
So you've got 4 decks with 50 cards each, right? This means that if you have 25 disaster cards and 50 Resolution cards you'll have 125 other cards available.
I've designed a board game that utilizes cards as well and my first problem was that I had more cards than I really needed. This meant that while there was diversity, it was extremely rare that players ever got more than 10% through the deck before the game was over. So all those neat cards I put in there never got played.
One suggestion is to make a playtest deck (or decks) and try it out. Maybe try it with 75/125 and see if that works. Do you go through the decks 3 times before the game is over? Or do you only make it a tenth of the way through? Or perhaps you'll hit it right the first time.
Cheers,
Ben