Please Help

Hi Mike.

It sounds like you're very exuberant about your game, and that is always step one for me. If I can get myself crazy excited for something that doesn't even exist yet, that's just key. Check that one off your list.

The first comment about giving your creation a clear theme is very important. I find that writing some basic rules helps me: things you can do, things you want to limit, stuff that's right out. For the first step, don't sweat your world-building or backstory: get your map drawn in simple black-and-white and bang out your rules in a simple 2-3 sheet word document.

With your game's essentials taken care of (board for setting and rules as a roadmap), then look at how you want your cards to work. Are they going to be resources themselves (like Monopoly properties), actions (as you'd have in CCGs like Magic or Yu Gi Oh), or both? A great first step for card design is the game Dvorak. Google the Dvorak wiki to get the juices going...and to keep things simple. With the cards' role designated, think about the pieces that make up your game.

For the rest of this reply, I'm going to use a basic game like checkers and add a deck of cards to it to illustrate my point.

OK, the rules for checkers say "put your 12 men on the board in the three rows closest to you on one color squares. Players can move a single checker per turn, always forward, always on the diagonal. A move ends when a player takes his finger off the checker."

In just that simple rules set, here are the things you could possibly do with cards:
-- alter opening layouts
-- allow backwards moving
-- allow double (or more) moving
-- special rules/conditions for taking extra turns
-- add a new rule that all moves have to be approved by an opponent, etc.

And we haven't even gotten to "kinging" or jumps yet!

To start, you can even do themes: a set of "move two" cards, a set of "move backwards" cards, etc. I always find that the rules tell me where the loopholes are and the loopholes dictate cards. Again, keep cards pretty basic for your first run-- break the rules a little bit, but keep it to the basics of your game: draw more cards, move more spaces, break X rules, etc. I also don't sweat art or fancy names at first (unless you have something REALLY cool you don't want to forget). I've gotten more miles out of business cards in Microsoft Office than I could ever even imagine.

As far as prototypes are concerned, again, look at what you've got at home. A re-purposed Trival Pursuit board might be all you need for the basics of moving and taking game actions. Heck, some railroad games are crayons on dry-erase boards. And there is a neat-o graph-paper generator at incompetech.com/graphpaper that will make grids REALLY easy. Flat glass beads are available at most cheap stores like $1 stores or craft stores for a song and come in all sorts of colors. Again, using free Office or home publishing software that probably came with your computer is another great way to do everything from currency to game cards to pawns or markers with a little time and ink and limited overhead.

I will tell you too to log your creation...a lot. I have 20-some-odd pages of "Fixed X. Found typo in rules. New clipart added to __, __, and __." dated to show the evolution of the game for my card game A Twist of Fate. It helps you keep your ideas in one place and god forbid, is a track of your progress should there ever be legal ramifications.

This seems like a ton of work, but it's really amazing how quickly you can bang out a printable copy of something playable to get your beta stuff done.

Have fun!

PS: I will say that if you want feedback here, the more details you can give the better. We're all friends here, so put aside your fear of "somebody'll steal this" and let us know the details. Also, I had a boardmate tell me "Here's what I need from you guys" is an excellent way to start you various posts. You nailed this already-- don't forget to do it each time.

Hi Mikee,

I usually approach the brainstorming phase of development from several angles and simply write down everything that comes to mind regardless of the "quality" of the idea.

The first time around, I tend to write down names for cards that fit the concept. For your game, I might have written down things like Ice Storm, Power Surge, & Demand Increase. The second time around, I tend to write down the result of playing the card. Again, for your game, I might have written down things like Gain 3 Power, Lose 2 Customers & Steal 1 Power and 1 Customer.

With these 2 lists in hand, I start trying to match a function to a concept. Most of the time the I am able to match a majority of both lists, but I always have concepts that don't have a function and functions in need of a concept.

I also use Excel to track the card lists and to calculate the deck composition by %. Cars that are powerful usually make up a smaller % of the deck while weaker cards or fundamental cards are a much higher %.

I tend to create prototypes based on what I THINK will be a good card mix, but there is nothing quite like playtesting to reveal what is balanced or excessive. I suppose the advice I have been given and suggest back to other people is that you get something playable together and test it out. It probably won't be perfect, but the feedback from playtesting will help you take a good idea and make it better.

Good luck with your design!