Meditating on CCG abilities to strengthen Theme

Note: This post is pretty long, some people already know some of the information in this message, it's just I want to put everybody on the same level. If you have comments regarding this message, let me know.

Summary (if you can understand): For one of my CCG like game, make active abilities not available to creature but only spells in order to reinforce the thematic explanation behind the use of the ability, prevent cards from not being added to a deck due to bad special ability and force players to use spells instead of creatures with similar spell effects.

As some of you know, I am working on a CCG style game that will probably be published as an LCG ( Living card game: Expandable non-collectible card game) that would work similar to Duel Masters.

But like all CCG, the rules is a thin part of the game design. The card design is the biggest part. Now to put everybody on the same knowledge level before explaining the situation, I have been analysing Magic The Gathering and Duel Master and came with the following ability structure:

Passive Abilities: Abilities that are activated only in a specific situation which is normally combat. For example "First Strike", "Unblockable", are passive abilities.

Active Abilities: Abilities that changes the status of the game by changing it's orientation, applying damage, or moving a card into another zone. Destroying a creature moves a card to the battle zone to the graveyard. So the card simply change zone while tapping change it's orientation.

Triggers: Active abilities are generally activated with a trigger that looks like "When Summoned ... do X", "When attacking ...", "When destroyed ...", "Tap this creature ... do X", "Spend mana ... do X", etc.

Conditions: These are additional conditions that must be fulfilled for a passive or active ability to work. It is generally introduced with the keyword "IF" like: "If your opponent has more creature, this creature is unblockable"

OK, now back to the subject. One thing I realized is that when I was playing MTG, I did not took really attention to make strategic deck but I was rather placing card in my deck that either looked cool, tat has not been used for a long time, or that had a thematic relation. For example, I want to make a deck of fairies and dragons ... because I like fairies and dragons.

Most of the time, I was making a deck on the fly just before playing by picking cards semi randomly and only balancing the mana cost. But for duel masters, that is completely a different thing, only special powers matter and if a card has a special power that sucks, well it will never be used.

Now I was trying to see the reason behind this behavior because I like being able to create a deck not only according to the most powerful combo I can make, but also according to the theme. So here is what I found so far:

1- Duel Master had a weird theme making it harder to get attached to it. (It Could be possible).

2- I was not playing competitive. (Another good point, when I played the first MTG video game, I seem to have started to build up a strategy in my decks, but many creature were included because I liked them).

3- MTG has more stats permutation since there is Strength + Health instead of only strength. So much more creature could be created even if they had not any special abilities.

4- In MTG most creatures seem to have passive abilities, while in duel masters a large portion of creatures has Active trigger abilities.

Now point 3 and 4 are actually more important. Let's think in reverse: "What could convince me not to use a creature even if the theme of the creature looked cool". Well in MTG, a creature could have low stats or a bad combination of stats but will not make me reject it from my deck. (ex: "This creature is 5/1, there is no way I can use this!"). As for passive abilities, I see little situation where I would actually reject a card because a passive ability annoys me. (ex: "This creature has first strike, sorry but it completely breaks the deck"). The only thing I can think of is: "Forestwalk is not that useful, since my opponent does not play green". But if you have 1 or 2 forestwalk creature in your deck, it won't be a waste that could have been replaced by a better card.

But in Duel Masters, it's another situation. Since most abilities are active effect, this means that those effects are going to be triggered and change the status of the game. And yes, some effects could convince me not to use a certain card. For example, I would prefer "When summon draw a card" ability, then a "when destroyed, place the creature back in your hand".

But there is worst, Duel Masters also use a lot of conditions for abilities to trigger. And when you look at certain conditions, sometimes you could ask yourself if they are actually going to be fulfilled and you might be tempted to replace it with a card with a more constant ability that you are sure that it is always going to work.

Since strategy is much more important, you are more tempted to place 4 copies of each card to maximize your combo possibilities.

Finally, trigger abilities seems to thin the theme of the game. Why does an ability activates it self "When summoned" or "When Attacking". The creature is suposely busy at the moment, why does it get a chance to use an ability. Taping to use an ability is more logical because instead of "using" a creature to attack, you use it for it's ability. There is also no name to that ability, if you cast "spiral gate" and that "Unsummon" a creature, you can imagine your self casting a portal and see the creature get swallowed. But with a creature ability like "When attacking, unsummon an enemy creature", what the hell did just happen?

So now, this is where the dilema starts, in MTG there seems to be more place to the theme and you are less looking at the card's abilities, but the game seems more driven by the luck of the draw and strategy in deck building is much more limited. While in Duel Masters, the deck building is awesome because you are planning strategy, but the only think you look for is the abilities and it lose all it's theme. Now my goal would be to get something in between and I have thought of something that could be the solution.

Inn my game, each card is a creature and a spell at the same time. Players can either use a card for mana(land), as a creature or as a spell. Up to now, any kind of abilities could be used for creatures, but now I am thinking to proceed otherwise:

1- Creature: would only have passive abilities. For reasons explained above, this will prevent creature rejections, only the spell could suck and the player is not forced to use it. Passive abilities also have a keyword which reinforce the theme and explains why the creature has such abilities. There will also be no need to place a thematic title description of the ability.

It might also solve some issue with an ability like "When attacking, unsummon a creature", does the creature is unsumoned before the battle is resolved or after the battle is resolved. So now during battles, nothing will change the status of the board besides the battle themselves.

2- Spells: would mostly have active abilities that would change the status of the board. Again it make sense that all changes to the board are done before the battle phase. Second, it will force the players to use spells if they need to change the board instead of sumonning a creature that would do the same effect. For example: to "tap a enemy creature", there will be no creature with that ability, only a spell could be used. Some spells could add passive abilities to creature, but it will generally be done with enchantments attacked to target or in play. The spell name also gives the thematical explanation behind the effect.

This process is called restricting the type of abilities to certain area of the game and allow a better control over the game with less chaos. Which is important in my game since I will allow people to design their own card. So that would make the game much less out of control.

The problem is that it reduces the possibilities cards that could be designed. I could run out of permutation sooner if there are too many restrictions on card design. Still, since each card has a spell an a creature, the same creature stats could be permutated with various spell effects, so I doubt that there could be a lack permutation.

Also, I will "cheat" a bit and allow creatures to have certain trigger abilities, for example I could say "You can tap this creature to use the spell ability of this card". So instead of giving a trigger ability to the creature, I'll make the creature use it's own spell ability, and I could force it to use it before the battle phase. Since the spell already have a name, there is no need to explain the theme of the effect.

Some trigger like "When destroyed" could hardly be replaced with a spell. I'll see if I can keep them. Some trigger like "When attacking" could be converted as a passive ability. For example "Power attacker +2000", is in fact a "when attacking" trigger ability but converted as a passive ability.

As for conditions, I am thinking to use them for other purpose, maybe for game wide enchantments. Since they affect most of the time a variable number of creature making the "What you Pay is What you get" philosophy impossible, setting a restriction for a global effect to be active could be the key.

So this is it, if you have comments or suggestions, let me know.