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Cards for Trivia Game

11 replies [Last post]
Tue, 02/17/2004 - 08:34
zaiga
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Joined: 12/31/1969

Hello people,

I'm currently in the brainstorming phase for a new trivia game. I came up with some cool and original concepts. The gist is this: one player takes a random card and reads a question and the three possible answers (A, B and C). The other players use cards to "vote" on what they think the right answer is. Yeah, that's not terribly original, but I have some twists that make the game interesting, but that's not the point now.

Now, ideally, there would be one question plus three possible answers on a single card. I tinkered around a bit with the design of a card and I could comfortably fit one question + 3 answers on a half-sized playing card (like the cards in "Amun-Re" or "Attika"). However, the problem with this is that I would need quite an enormous number of cards to make it a decent trivia game. For comparison, the basic edition of "Trivial Pursuit" has over 2000 questions. 2000 cards in a game is too much, even when they are half-sized, right?

"Trivial Pursuit" doesn't have this problem because there are six questions on each card and the (single) answer to each question is on the other side of the card. I cannot use that soultion because the back of my cards need to be blank (because of the voting) and, because of the multiple choice nature of the questions, space on a card is much more limited.

I tried multiple questions + answers on a single, normal sized playing card. I could fit 3 questions + answers on a single playing card. This means I would only need 700 or so cards in total. However, this also means that I need to add some kind of mechanism to determine which of the 3 questions the player should ask. I don't want the player to choose which question he asks. This is only a minor problem and not too hard to fix if I must, although it is less elegant than a single question per card and I want to avoid it if I can.

However, a bigger problem is that the player who asks the question can read the other two questions on the card, probably memorizing them in the process (intentionally or not). I always find this takes out some enjoyment out of trivia games - players that remember the answer to a question from a previous session, and being able to read the answer to other questions only makes this worse.

So, basically my question is: is 2000 half-sized cards too much, production wise, for a trivia game (btw, the game doesn't have any other components besides the cards)? If this is not feasible, what are elegant solutions to be able to get multiple questions + answers on a card while avoiding the "memorizing" problem as much as possible? Or perhaps there is a simple solution that I'm overlooking?

Thanks for your help!

- René Wiersma

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Tue, 02/17/2004 - 11:28
#1
IngredientX
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Joined: 07/26/2008
Re: Cards for Trivia Game

Two thoughts...

First off, if your game has no other components, 2000 cards might work. I'd think it would probably still list pretty high though... $30 to $40, at a wild guess.

You may want to look at Apples to Apples, especially the new "Apple Crate" edition, to see another game with gobs of cards and nothing else (no boards, dice, pawns, etc.).

Second, perhaps the voting mechanism can be modified for players to come up with their own questions at the beginning of the game? As long as you put in some cheat-proof mechanic (say, the person who created the question loses points if no one can answer it, or if the same person answers it x times in a row), this might save you from coming up with all those cards.

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Wed, 02/18/2004 - 09:50
#2
Anonymous
Cards for Trivia Game

How about something like a bridge shoe, whith three windows in it? you only have the window with question 1 in it open the first time , number 2 the second.

More production, but less cards.

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Wed, 02/18/2004 - 10:10
#3
zaiga
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Cards for Trivia Game

Thanks for the replies, guys.

I took a look at the "Apple Crate" which IngredientX mentioned. It comes with 1000 fullsized cards plus a nice "crate" to store the cards in and sells for $29.99. This probably means that 2000 halfsized cards won't be much of a problem either.

This is good news because I prefer the simplicity of 1 question per card!

-René Wiersma

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Wed, 02/18/2004 - 11:38
#4
IngredientX
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Cards for Trivia Game

zaiga wrote:
Thanks for the replies, guys.

I took a look at the "Apple Crate" which IngredientX mentioned. It comes with 1000 fullsized cards plus a nice "crate" to store the cards in and sells for $29.99. This probably means that 2000 halfsized cards won't be much of a problem either.

This is good news because I prefer the simplicity of 1 question per card!

-René Wiersma

Hmmm... I'm wondering if the Apple Crate actually saved them money as well. They had no need for a thick outer box, or for a molded plastic inlay. All the Apple Crate is, is a wooden crate, a thin cardboard title overlay, rulebook, catalog, and scads of cards.

Something tells me that as cute as the Crate idea is, there's a practical bent to it also; if they'd released this in a traditional box, it probably would have added at least a few dollars to the list price.

I wonder if Gamemaker is reading this. While I don't want to know exact financial details, I'm curious if the Crate actually saved them money... and if you were to package such a card-heavy game, would you have to be as creative about it?

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Wed, 02/18/2004 - 12:50
#5
jwarrend
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Joined: 08/03/2008
Cards for Trivia Game

One other (probably obvious) point -- how many questions are actually seen in a given game? Could you release the game with, say, X cards and have the other Y cards as "expansions"? I definitely understand your concern about replayability with trivia games, but if only, say, 50 or 60 questions are looked at in a game, a deck of 750 cards would last a pretty long time.

Also, there's always the possibility of printing the cards with the whatchamacalit technique that makes the text illegible unless a piece of red cellophane is put over the text. Examples of this are games like Outburst, or Vampire Hunter. I'm afraid I don't know the actual name. Something like this could get you multiple questions for cards.

I must say, coming up with 2000 questions sounds like a fun challenge. Good luck with the project!

-J

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Wed, 02/18/2004 - 17:42
#6
Oracle
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Joined: 06/22/2010
Cards for Trivia Game

jwarrend wrote:
One other (probably obvious) point -- how many questions are actually seen in a given game? Could you release the game with, say, X cards and have the other Y cards as "expansions"? I definitely understand your concern about replayability with trivia games, but if only, say, 50 or 60 questions are looked at in a game, a deck of 750 cards would last a pretty long time.

A standard trivial pursite game has 800 cards (4800 questions), and the special edition ones (like the millenium edition) usually have 600 cards (3600 questions). 750 cards with one question each would be about 15% of the question, so unless the game is a lot cheaper than the $30 trivial pursuit costs, it would not be a good buy.

As a player, I also have no problem with multiple questions per card. I'd be happier with something in book form anyway.

jwarrend wrote:
Also, there's always the possibility of printing the cards with the whatchamacalit technique that makes the text illegible unless a piece of red cellophane is put over the text. Examples of this are games like Outburst, or Vampire Hunter. I'm afraid I don't know the actual name. Something like this could get you multiple questions for cards.

You could use a different colour of cellophane for each question too, but those make my eyes hurt after a while.

jwarrend wrote:
I must say, coming up with 2000 questions sounds like a fun challenge. Good luck with the project!

When I was in university, I was involved with our trivia club. We'd run official NAQT tournaments and an annual in-school open tournament where anyone in the school could play. Since the official question packs for a tournament were a few hundred dollars, we'd usually take over a computer lab one evening and write our own questions for the in-school one. It was a lot of fun.

Jason

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Wed, 02/18/2004 - 18:55
#7
hpox
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Cards for Trivia Game

Oracle wrote:
As a player, I also have no problem with multiple questions per card. I'd be happier with something in book form anyway.

Does it already exist? A category card could be drawn first, then a question card which have a code on it referring to a question of that category in the book.

The questions could even be ordered by difficulty. For example, modifiers could be used before drawing a question card to reduce the difficulty of the question or increase it (on the leader!).

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Thu, 02/19/2004 - 02:16
#8
Anonymous
::Needs requested:: Trivia Game Idea.

I am trying to make a Trivia Game as well (actually its my first board game). I don't know if this has been done before but here it goes.

The board has four Islands which are all connected to each other. Between the Islands there are spaces or boxes which are labeled with different colors (trivia catagory depends on color of box). Each player rolls the dice and has to answer trivia questions (based on the color of the box) to move to that spot. The idea is to get to every Island so they can collect the treasure from each Island. When the player collects all four tresures they win. What the catch? If someone lands on the Island and the treasure has already been taken by you.....they are can challenge you (by doing a trivia showdown) for the treasure. The winner gets the treasure. The idea is to get all the treasures while defending the ones you have. If you lose a treasure, you have to go back to the Island and get it back again (via trivia challenge).

I want to make at least 150 questions per catagory (600 questions total). Having one question per side, I will need at least 300 cards. I plan to sell this game but I doubt I can sell more than 250 games. I have three questions:

1. What do you think of the game idea?

2. How much do this will cost me to make this game? (cosidering that I want to make it look good enough to sell)

3. What do you guys suggest as the best route to make this game? (buy pieces seperate or goto a manufacturer and have him build the whole thing or ??).

Thanks in advance

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Thu, 02/19/2004 - 13:14
#9
Anonymous
Cards for Trivia Game

can anyone help me out with this?

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Fri, 02/20/2004 - 00:05
#10
SVan
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Joined: 10/02/2008
Cards for Trivia Game

I'm on my way to bed, but quickly I do want to point out that to me the idea sounds great. I'm not huge into trivia games, mostly because they all have a board and the board is usually the same.

This game could go on forever though. Maybe 3 out of the 4 treasures would be enough to win the game.

I couldn't tell you what the cards would cost you, but check out this thread http://www.bgdf.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=786 and you can see the price of regular cards are, yours will probably be a little smaller than that. There are probably better threads than this which would be a little more help.

Hope this helps...

-Steve

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Thu, 03/25/2004 - 06:54
#11
Anonymous
Trivia game

I, too, have an idea for a Trivial Pursuit-type game, which would need a board, some generic pawns, and a huge honkin' box of cards (maybe 500 to 1,000 -- with one question on each card).

And, of course, a box to hold all this stuff.

Anyone have any idea how much this would cost to self-produce?

How much would 1,000 cards cost to print and put in a box? And then put that box of cards in a bigger box with the game board and pawns?

In other words, if I wanted to mass-produce a Trivial Pursuit knock-off in my garage, how would I do it, and how much would it cost?

Has anyone done this themselves? Are there any good companies that can produce both hundreds of cards plus a game board, or would I need to have different companies produce each, then assemble the games myself in a custom box?

I am clueless here ... Anyone got a ballpark dollar figure for such an endeavor?

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