TV Tropes Trading Card Game

So, what are the writer cards going to be? Authors? Tropers? Original characters? TV Tropes characters (e.g. Trope Tan)?

The writers are, well, anything that can write a story. Authors, Tropers, TV Tropes original characters, whatever. The Writer is not cannon to the story that they are writing (unless we decide to make an Author Avatar Characterization card, which I doubt will happen in the first set as depending on the implementation that might require some special rules) and they represent the player during the game. So the card Trope-tan, would represent the player playing as Trope-tan. The card Apocalypsering would represent the player playing as me. The card Mark Twain would be the character playing as Mark Twain. The card Bob the Hippo would represent . . . well, you get the idea. It's best if they are all something that the player wants to associate themselves with being, and if we give them subtype based on certain genres then they will have abilities that seem to make sense for that kind of story. As the writers don't have to follow any particular theme, being outside of the game's canon, they can be a little silly and impractical in terms of flavor.

Possible Writer cards:

• Trope-tan
• The Wiki Witch Of The Web
• Black Magician Girl-tan
• Mysterious Waif-tan
• This Troper
• That Troper
• Betty of the Mary Sues
• Unknown Troper
• Human Writer
• Bob Timlison
• Apocalypsering
• The Blundering Writer
• They Might Be Giants
• Little Kuriboh
• King Henry VIII

edited 26th Jun '09 9:33:25 AM by Apocalypsering

but if we really want to banish a card, putting it on the bottom of its owner's library is generally a death sentence. By the time they draw it, it won't help them because they'll deckout on their next turn.

So I'm assuming card search is either nonexistent or ridiculously expensive. But if you keep banishing cards that way, how is the player in question supposed to run out of cards to draw? Or is this not supposed to be much of an issue for some other reason I'm not seeing?

...what if "Put on a Bus" were a status effect, represented by turning the card sideways or upside down or face-down (or something)? They're meant to come back eventually, but for the moment they're just inactive in terms of moving the story along. So instead of removing them from the board completely... you get the idea.

Players running out of cards to draw should not be an issue, as that is not the point of the game. While a mill deck (for those unfamiliar with the term, in other TC Gs a mill deck is a deck built around the idea of forcing your opponent to run out of cards in their deck) might be a viable archetype, it is not supposed to be the primary win condition. Not too many cards will have that kind of effect anyways, and if someone attempts a mill deck, then they just wouldn't play cards that do that.

Your Put on a Bus as a status effect is effectively just Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp". It is the same thing represented differently, and I think setting them aside in a specific zone will alleviate more confusion.

Given your "flavor" description of the Story Arc cards, perhaps we should call them something else.

Edit: I also think that a separate zone would be a good idea so that players don't have to remember that sideways cards aren't counted for various effects, and things like that. Since a character being Put on the Bus means that they aren't actually in the story any more (but can come back easily, of course), then we shouldn't keep them in the "story" zone.

edited 26th Jun '09 6:48:13 PM by Ironeye

EDIT: Due to ninjafication, this post is addressed to Apoc.

Since the Put on a Bus zone represents characters that have been, well, Put on a Bus, it's for characters who in story terms are out of the story but can be brought back at more or less any time. The Killed Off for Real pile is for characters that are completely dead.

So here's what I propose (I'm going to use Bus to refer to the Put on a Bus zone, and Graveyward for the Killed Off for Real zone):

When a player is to draw a card, they may instead draw a Character from the Bus, at a cost of 5 Insp; they must show this card to their opponent. They can then bring that character back into the game with any Characterisation cards attached to them, provided they pay for all those cards they bring back. Any Characterisation cards not paid for go to the trash can.

Players cannot ordinarily bring Characters back from the Graveyard. There are a few in the SF and Horror genres, but these have severe costs. However, the card Never Found the Body could potentially move a Character from the Graveyward to the Bus; conversely, Bus Crash would move a Character from the Bus to the Graveyward.

I don't see why you're so opposed to removing cards from play. Being dead and being Deader than Dead are fundamentally different states, and both should be accommodated. Sending cards to the bottom of the deck is a worse idea - this game represents writing a story, and that mechanic makes it so that a character or thing which has been removed permanently will come back eventually. Sure, it might take a while, but so-called deader than dead Characters will frequently return during the endgame, and cards that allow decks to be searched or shuffled make a mockery of this idea; and before you say I'm wrong, yes, we will have cards that allow the deck to be searched, such as Chekhov's Gun.

For this reason, it should be possible to remove cards from play. This would only be possible with a small number of costly cards, such as Deader than Dead and Dropped a Bridge on Him. Cards which have been removed from play would be impossible to bring back; this would be a specific rule, and there will never be any cards at all capable of circumventing it. Sure, Yu-Gi-Oh has a fairly ridiculous number of cards that can bring cards back from the out-of-play zone, but we can avoid this problem simply by not making any such cards.

It doesn't matter much if there's a dedicated out-of-play zone; I think it would be better if there was, but lacking one wouldn't be a huge detriment. If it is included, I favour calling it the Afterlife.

And if you still want to argue against it, please give an argument other than "That makes it too complicated". After all, it's your idea that they can keep track of what cards were attached to which Character even when those cards are in one of the discard piles, which is a rather more difficult undertaking. It seems like you've just taken a personal dislike to this mechanic and you're trying to justify it with a weak argument that would apply even better to systems you're setting up, but which you never mention in conjunction with.

edited 27th Jun '09 4:06:06 PM by VampireBuddha

I don't envision Put on a Bus and Killed Off for Real as regular discard piles. I would think that you'd put the characters in the areas, not on top of eachother.

Now, I've been saying three graveyards is too complicated since the beginning. It's not a silly argument, especially considering we already have three graveyards and another would make four.

That said, I think we should fold the Trope Graveyard into one of the Character Graveyards (probably the Dead one), and add Deader than Dead as a removed-from-play zone.

No, no, and no.

The character discard areas are special things specifically for them to that you can keep track of what Characterisation Cards are on what Character Cards.

It's not complicated at all. Really, you seem to have a very low standard for "too complex," Black Humour.

I have a very low standard for too complex because I need to have a very low standard for too complex, because nobody else is worrying about it and the easiest way to make a game boring is to make it too complicated.

Four graveyards is just too much, nobody'll be able to keep track of them all. Three graveyards, maybe. There is a reason why pretty much all popular card games have only two graveyards (and mostly only use one anyway), y'know.

I wouldn't consider out of play to be a graveyard. I would say that a graveyard is a discard pile from which a player is capable of getting cards back. Anyways, it's not like that many cards are going to go there.

Well that doesn't change my argument then, because then Magic/Yugioh/Pokemon have only one graveyard, and we want three.

This isn't Magic/Yugioh/Pokemon. In those games you can discard cards all into the same pile and not worry like you would if you had to do that in this game.

edited 27th Jun '09 8:06:46 PM by Matrix

Well, that's the point, isn't it? Not worrying?

I'm trying to think of the number of available cards in the decks. Like how many of each card should be available for any given game. Like there should only be one Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies card.

Oh, and the next person who posts works for the devil.

Ignoring SJ.

Read what I wrote again, Black Humour. You seem to have read it wrong.

Read it wrong intentionally.

(Also, WITCH!)

Seriously? That's a pretty low tactic on your part.

That makes me think, should there be a Burn the Witch! card?

If it's a trope, there will be a card of it at some point.

Now stop being a moron.

Thank you.

Wait, if it's a trope it will eventually be card? That means that we'll end up with over a thousand different cards. That would make for one hell of a collection.

A thousand cards isn't much.

Sure it is. If each card is only a millimeter thick, then the whole stack is a meter high (I think).

I think a card would be less than a millimetre thick.

Magic the Gathering has thousands upon thousands of cards, and the number keeps growing with each set. Never been a problem with them, has it?

Also, cards aren't 1mm thick unless you want it particularly stiff.

Also also, going back on topic a little, I'd also want fewer graveyards in the game design as much as possible. In terms of table space, The draw pile and the graveyard take just about enough of it (especially on a cramped surface). More piles mean less space for actually playing the game proper.