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How to calculate the number of points a card should have?

5 replies [Last post]
JamieDoe
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Joined: 09/14/2013

First of all, I would like to say: Hello!

It looks like I am going through the process of designing my first game and I would like to ask you a few things.

So, here it goes:

I have a number of, let's say, 60 cards. Each of them has 3 types of points in different numbers.
10 of them should add up to a certain number of points of type X, that will allow the player to buy something, Magic X.
Of course, type Y will buy Magic Y and so on.

The question I have is: How do I calculate and distribute the number of points correctly so that 10 cards will add up to the number needed for Magic X but not Magic Y or Magic Z?
I am interested if there is a mathematics formula as I would not like to play test this- a lot of things might be missed.

Thank you in advance for your help and I look forward to a great read on these forums!

Veldriss
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Joined: 07/26/2008
I'm not sure I understand

I'm not sure I understand correctly, you're saying that 10 cards should have the points to buy Magic X and only half points for Magic Y and half for Magic Z?

StagCutlery
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Joined: 06/02/2013
??

Do you mean to say that Income X should never be able to play for Component Y, but Income Y can pay for Component X?

If so, do you really need a formula? Can't you just have a conversion rule?

Example:
I have a lighting rod that is powered by Sapphires and a fireball wand powered by Rubies. For whatever story-based reason, no amount of sapphires will power my fireball wand, but one ruby provides my lightning rod with double the amount of charges that one sapphire would provide.

Yamahako
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Joined: 12/01/2010
Do you mean that if you have

Do you mean that if you have a card that says

X: 3 points
Y: 5 points
Z: 2 points

one that says

X: 3 points
Y: 2 points
Z: 5 points

and one that says

X: 5 points
Y: 3 points
Z: 2 points

That those 3 combined could buy (with exact value) 1 11-cost X magic, but it be impossible to buy a 10-cost Y magic, or a 9-cost Z magic?

If this is the case, then you'd have to design the game such that the sum of the resource on 3 cards can only pay for the value of a particular resource.

I can think of only 2 ways to do this: The first is, make sure that each of your resources on a card are the same value (all 2, or all 3, for example) but the magic types you want to pay for not have overlapping costs. (ie 1 cost is X, 2 cost is y, 3 cost is z...). But that kind of removes the need to have 3 different resources in general (unless there are other game mechanics that modify these cards).

The other is to do it by hand. While a formula may give you the total number of permutations of cards that could exist (its 1000), and you could use statistical analysis to determine average values over particular quantities of random cards - no formula will be able to output the specific thing you're asking for.

As for this line: "I would not like to play test this" If you want to make a game, that phrase needs to not be in your vocabulary. You will need to play test everything, UNTIL nothing is missed. Then you will need to have it blind playtested by people, until they find the stuff that you did miss. Game design is something like 70% playtesting in my experience.

JamieDoe
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Joined: 09/14/2013
Thank you for this

Thank you for this Yamahako!

This is exactly what I meant and I apologize for not expressing it more clear from the beginning.

I was just thinking this morning something like this:

If 10 cards with the lowest number of resource X on them can buy Magic X but not Magic Xx (which can be bought with more X), then I have covered the case when even though a player has only 10 cards, it would still offer the possibility of buying at least Magic X.

From there, I will write down the numbers and calculate how much Magic Xx will have to cost based on the values I will give to other cards and possible permutations.

When I said that I would not want to play test this, I meant I would not want to play test the distribution of the resources on cards from the beginning but settle on a starting point and take it from there. I have started play testing the game already and I am introducing new rules or modify existing ones with every play :)

I fully agree that there is nothing more important then play testing!

Yamahako
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Joined: 12/01/2010
Ahh ok, well a good place to

Ahh ok, well a good place to start when you're trying to decide on point values of cards where they are among a range of powerful (and less powerful numbers) is a normal curve (or a bell curve). If you have a total of 10 values that you wish to express - over 60 cards - you can see the results of 1d6 + 1d5-1. This will give you 30 values evenly distributed such that the middle ranges happen more frequently. You can double each card, and get a fairly nice distribution of values.
So (2) 1, (4) 2, (6) 3, (8) 4, (8) 5, (8) 6, (8) 7, (6) 8, (4) 9, (2) 10 - would give you 60 cards with a pretty nice distribution.

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