How to make a CCG, TCG or LCG playable out of the box.

I think you are approaching this from the wrong perspective. You are saying, how can I make an LCG/CCG have the approachability of a board game, but you should be asking yourself is, how can I make a board game that has X and Y specific features of an LCG that I love. I think you'll have an easier time of it if you flip the problem upside down like this. For example, what I love about CCG's is obsessing about the meta-game outside of play. Building decks, talking strategy, and prepping for a game. Building something. There are a lot of board games where you build things within the game, or even as a part of the game, like Agricola for example. What if you had X points to build your farm in Agricola before play even started, and then you basically started from the middle of the game? Maybe thats not a great example, but you get my idea.

I am intrigued by this idea as well. What if we look at Magic: The Gathering not as the giant behemoth that it is, but as it was at its release. What if it were released today, and was a 2 player competitive game in a box. What if it didn't have expansions yet? Looking at it from this perspective, it's easy to see a humble competitive 2 player game that has some simple core rules as a framework for the cards themselves to build upon those simple rules. It's then sort of easy to imagine other such games. You create a rules framework that have some components that expand on the framework.

Magic could just as easily have had tiles to build a modular board, or a central deck like you are saying, or a farm that produces resources. It could have been anything as long as the rules were simple enough, and the components could interestingly break those rules. As long as you can come to the table with something you built yourself, I argue you are still capturing the important part of a CCG/LCG... well that and the obsessive desire to spend money on more components.

I think all of my designs lately have been quaint little games that are very self contained. I think this might be a terrible idea if I ever want to make any money doing this. You either come up with a thousand little hit games, or come up with one that you can build on forever. Making a new game that is good every couple of months is nearly impossible. Making a good game once, and then expanding it for years doesn't sound nearly as difficult. I want to build a big game next.

Take my game as an example (Tradewars - Homeworld)... It's deck-builder card game. It has all the cards and components that are required for solitaire game play. So there is a scenario, with its own objective, that is designed for a player to play the game ALONE. BUT if another, or three other players show up with their OWN copies of the game, the players can play a dual (1 vs. 1) or a versus game (up to 4 players).

So basically the game has everything needed to play OUT OF THE BOX, PLUS if players get together they can play one of three (3) other scenarios (which are designed for 2 or more players).

I hope to create expansions of other races with some variance in the cards - I am not sure how I will proceed with that. For now my focus is getting the First Edition of the game to gamers...

I don't think you read my message correctly: I have BOTH a single player scenario which is playable OUT OF THE BOX AND three (3) other scenarios which players can play together...

I get the confusion now... You have to factor in the number of players. So my game would be a sort of *hybrid*. It allows one (1) player to play the game in a 1 Player mode (solitaire game). So out-of-the-box you can play the game - but just you, not you and your family or friends...

For more players, each additional player (up to 4) needs their own copy of the game... Each deck is sold separately... as a one player kit. So that aspect is the opposite of out-of-the-box. Correct!

So larienna is sort of correct, in that the game cannot be played with MULTIPLE players out-of-the-box. But a player can enjoy his own copy by playing the 1 player scenario... So I guess it is a hybrid. You can't play Magic: the Gathering alone. Most games you can't play alone... Mine you can!

Note: The 1 player (solitary) game is much simpler since there is no reason to Bank money - since there is no money objective. It is a race between you and The Derelict, an alien starship that is a threat. The Derelict's goal is to destroy your Homeworld. Obviously your role is to defend your Homeworld first and then build up enough offensive firepower to destroy the alien starship... But there are a lot of concepts not used in this scenario: missions, diplomacy, banking/trading, several roles, etc.

Note 2: This is the 2nd game that I try to develop using modular game units. In this case, each player has their own deck of cards and dice. I just can't picture a box with 300 cards in it (for 4 player games) and 44 dice! Would be crazy to package/sell the game out-of-the-box... The *one player kits* method is logical in that each player brings their box and plays with other players (2, 3 or 4)...

Note 3: The modular design also allows for the possibility of *expansions*. So one player could own four (4) copies of the game, each one with a different race! So with each edition of the game, players can have multiple copies of the game to play in a dual or versus scenario...

I remember visiting a friend and one of his other friends came to visit. He wanted us to play Yu-Gi-Oh! He said he made two (2) different decks with different game strategies. Obviously neither my friend or I knew what those strategies were... And so I can understand the confusion that happens when you say: "...in the CCG world, people are not willing to play a game they do not have cards even if you supply the cards."

It's because players don't know how the decks were built... And what kind of strategy they can use. But it think it is part *stigma* that people don't want to play.

Getting back to my friend and I, obviously the other friend won the game once he summoned his strongest monster which we could not defeat! Something like every time we summoned a NEW monster, his monster allowed him to decide which monster we needed to discard. So we could not summon enough monsters to overpower his one super-monster.

Explaining the subtleties of each *card* is IMPOSSIBLE. You can't say: "This is a cheap card - but if you combine it with this card, it is actually a very powerful card..." And therefore a player can't sit there and explain ALL the cards that could go into your deck. So I think that is part of the game - learning which cards are more powerful, how to perform combos, etc. This is all part of building a deck. And it is something that is more complex than what the average casual gamer is looking for.

Learning about all the cards is something you do ON YOUR OWN TIME. If you like the game, you will immerse yourself in the game and spend time reading and learning all about the cards. Casual gamers that come to a game don't do this... It's like watching a movie or reading a book. A movie takes a couple of hours - enough to satisfy a casual gamer. But reading a book can take a week or more - too much time invested for the average casual gamer...

So my advice to you is this:

• Find a *way* so that you use a *MASTER Deck* (Having all the cards) and allow players to CHOOSE their cards. Yes - the setup time of your game will take MORE time...
• Find a *way* so that player can UNDERSTAND the value of each card they pick. This is the tough one. You need to have something that can GUIDE players in choosing their cards. Perhaps you could have values in the top right-hand corner going from 1 to 5. This may be a too simple solution...
• Explain to players that the BEST deck is a BALANCED one... You would need to enforce this with your game rules... So if a player takes always level 5 cards, he will not be the most powerful, he will have a HARD time playing the game.
• Find a *way* to make *combos* with maybe the use of colours. Sort like in Magic: the Gathering, you can have a Blue deck or a Red deck, etc. I think this is a good way to have *combos* that work together...

These are some ideas of how to make a CCG playable "Out-of-the-box". But it requires a LOT of thinking by the DESIGNER. You have to make sure *combos* can play out, you need to make sure that a balanced deck is stronger than unbalanced ones... So your goal is to have an AVERAGE deck (the best way I can explain what I am thinking...)

You could use SYMBOLS that work together... Again very difficult for the designer to be able to get the cards follow these rules... You can have colours and symbols and use a RPS-5 (Rock-Paper-Scissor-Lizard-Spock) for your combos. Using 5 colours with an RPS-5 is more DIFFICULT for the casual gamer to understand. So maybe you could use a RPS-3 with three colours... This is probably as simple as it can get.

But why customize IF you don't know the rules yet...

This REMINDS me of Quest Adventure Cards(tm). Each booster pack is a SET of 10 cards (the same 10 cards). Players CHOOSE which sets they want to play (3 sets per player) and then play the game TOGETHER. So if three (3) players are playing, there are nine (9) sets in the game. Also it does NOT matter if there are DOUBLES or TRIPLES, the game will still work.

The sets are THEMATIC-oriented since they are all DIFFERENT QUESTS. So if a player likes the undead, he may choose "Vampiric Crusade" or if he prefers magic then he would choose the "Magic Brewery"... Players customize their decks by including the sets they like...

My ORIGINAL plan for the game was to have a LARGE number of sets. Like 100 sets (Of 10 cards = 1,000 cards). Kids could choose in the morning before school which sets they would bring to school... On lunch hour they could then play with friends after having had lunch! That was the plan... :P If Quest AC had a lot of traction in the market, my goal would have been to have MANY, MANY Quests for children to choose from.

It is a *hybrid* CCG, since you can TRADE whole SETS (of 10 cards). So basically you could trade one Quest for another. And it is easy to know by the cards themselves which cards are part of a set and that there are ALWAYS 10 cards to a set.

A Second Edition is in a prototype phase - But I would want to rework the game into something else... I would want the game to be LESS RIGID... Something like being able to TRADE CARDS (individually) and not affect the Quests. In the Second Edition, I have REMOVED the Quest Cards (the ones with the Quests themselves) and I am using a way to bind the cards together. This is a step forwards (in terms of looser mechanics) but it still needs some work to be even more FLEXIBLE.

I would want the game to be like Magic, where you can trade ANY card for another and still be able to play the game...

Making me think about Quest AC reminds me that although the game is SIMPLE, there are still good points to the game. Knowing what I have learned about the difficulty of CCGs and the approach I used, I would do things very differently. Even the Second Edition prototype is not where I would take the game.

But your idea of using 5 x 10 card sets is EXACTLY what Quest AC does - except we only use 3 x 10 cards!

Note: I'm not even sure if collating sets to 10 cards is a smart idea any more... I colour coded each set, so for example Magicians were Green, Fighters were Red, Thieves were Yellow, etc. If you want to allow TRADING, I think you need to give up the SET concept. But in doing so, you complicate the game - So instead of ONE deck, each player should have his OWN deck (like Magic).

Sharing cards is a *difficult* concept. Why? Some players will take better care of their cards, when playing with double, cards get all mixed up... The concept HAS MERIT, teaching kids to SHARE... But in practice separate decks is much, MUCH more PRACTICAL.

The idea posted by larienna about mixing decks is the whole premise of smash up. Fantastic game and adds a ton of replay value and strategy. Take a look at how that game is structured and go from there.

My guess is that it's similar to Kaijudo, where creatures can act like creatures or mana, you choose?

Isn't that a little bit *confusing*? Like how do you know which are real creatures and which are being used for mana? Is it something like tapping the mana cards to demonstrate they are mana not the creature? Can you decide at some point that mana becomes a creature???

I find it odd - because I had designed a game like that. It was called "Rain of Fire". And it had the exact mechanic as suggested: a card could be a unit or mana. Personally I felt it was too confusing and decided that the prototype just didn't make it. I also had a sh!tty battle mechanic which did not help also...

Rain of Fire had three (3) types of units: Gods from the Heavens, Humans for Earth and then Monsters for Hell. There were 3 types of mana: heavenly, earthly and hellish. The game had religious undertones like from the Old Testament... Things like "Burnt Offering" to produce more "heavenly mana", "Sacrificial lamb", etc.

Note: How I was using the cards was to have UNITS and the MODIFIERS. Each card could produce mana. Units were like creatures and could be used for battle/defence. And modifiers were cards you could use like *Trap* cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! They gave bonuses to a player or caused penalties to the opponent.

My understanding is that, let's assume you want to play Grizzly bears (Going back to Magic for a bit). You need to have two cards in your "Vault", and one of them needs to be green. Want to play Vulshock Sorceror? You could have, as an example, 1 Air Elemental (Blue), 1 Grizzly Bears (Green), and 1 Goblin Catapult (Red). There are no cards that require multiple of any given color. So the mana curve is more even because, although the Vulshock Sorceror in Magic requires two red mana and 1 of any color, in Larienna's game, as long as you have 1 red card in your vault, you're good to go!