TV Tropes Trading Card Game

1. We can't remove Inf. entirely since it's possible to create a situation where nobody can fulfill any Ending Arc in their deck. It's best that players have something to do in that situation rather than just wait for a deck-out.
2. Hmm... maybe. I'd like a little more detail on this.
3. Yeah, sure.
4. Ah, that's a point. Maybe only permanents, then? Flavorwise, physical objects (settings, characters) shouldn't "belong" to either writer, but specific tropes should.

edited 8th Aug '12 11:12:51 AM by BlackHumor

1. You're right, I overlooked this.
2. Basically, I want to remove the numbers from character traits. Characters will have a maximum number of traits. A characterization adds one trait (in rare cases more than one) to a character. They can still require other traits to be in place like explained on the wiki page. Traits are divided into classes like "role" or "gender". Characters may only have one trait of each class at a time, so you can't play a role:hero on a character with role:villain without the help of additional tropes (e.g. Heel–Face Turn). The classes should be as abstract as possible, as few as possible and defined before the card design process, while the number of traits may increase with new "expansion packs". Character cards may also come with traits. An example would be the Big Bad which has already one trait slot occupied by role:villain. Of course, characterizations can have additional effects on the character or the game.

4. Ok. Permanents are settings, characters and phlebotina, right?

edited 9th Aug '12 8:24:02 AM by Seldon

2. I'm a little concerned that'll leave us unable to judge some sorts of situations. A clown is scary, and Cthulu is also scary, but they're not the same AMOUNT of scary.
4. Yes.

Well, we don't have to create situations that make a distinction necessary.

I want to get rid of the numbers because of two things: 1. numbers are harder to keep track of than properties, 2. higher levels of granularity reduce the number of possible card combos. Compare those three effect requirements: "Target a character...", "Target a scary character...", "Target a character with scary > 5...". Which one would be the most useful?

Look at Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh (how it is played today). In my opinion, Magic did many things right in the design process, while the latter jumped the shark already, but YMMV. Magic cards usually have few restrictions: They require Mana out of 5 possible colors and may name a few card types for their targets ("target artifact", "a black creature", etc.). Yu-Gi-Oh, on the other hand, introduced so-called archetypes a few years ago, bascially cards which share some words in their name (and, this has to be said, they already had over 20 types and 7 attributes to work with). This renders many cards only useful in dedicated decks, plus the strategies are more or less predefined.

To a player, obviously the first one, but that's not saying anything about which would be most useful to a game designer. Each of those has its place in the right situation.

Magic does this all the time, though.

edited 11th Aug '12 2:08:30 PM by BlackHumor

That's right, yet you can assume that every creature in Magic has reasonable values for power, toughness and mana cost. Colors aside, every card in the search results could be easily added to your deck. Most Characters or Characterizations in TV Tropes TCG won't provide values > 0 for all stats. Assuming that the number of possible traits (age, gender, combat, love, scariness, funniness, ...) will be huge, decks making use of traits have to be dedicated to them. An action deck, for example, requires many combat characters. Plus, you can't know which traits your opponent focuses on, so "Put target character with funny < 3 on the bus" would be useless in your action deck with and without numbers (that's the reason why I also wanted to introduce trait classes). I don't know how you'd design Arcs, but I assume they are specific in terms of required tropes/traits/etc. to complete them. Drawing the necessary cards is hard enough, but if you need two "combat + 2" cards for an Arc or Trope that requires "combat 4", this could take forever.

Now as I'm thinking about it, there is another solution: Replacing "draw 1 card each turn" with "draw cards until you have a total of X each turn".

THAT'S a point.

But, now I think about it, I think we can do a flavorful solution to it; since the point of the game is to keep influence over the story, ideally most of the cards you should be interacting with each turn should be your own cards, (and thus stat requirements shouldn't be a problem within your own deck). Think of it more like a race than a battle.

Alright. We have to wait for test plays to see how this works out.

Do you have an idea how influence is allocated by now?

Unfortunately not, sorry.

Do you guys need any help?

We need help actually getting anything done, if that counts.

I think that there should be a YKTTW pile and a set of blank cards. This would allow players to try to launch custom tropes for a game, at the end of which the specific card will be wiped clean. These tropes could exist on TV Tropes the website, or not exist at all yet. When a trope is made, it is sent to the YKTTW idea pile, and the turn is finished. Next turn, a coin can be flipped to see the card's fate. Alternatively, you can wait. Flipping this coin ends the turn. If the coin flip comes up heads on a card, it goes to the Trope Launchpad to be launched into the hand next turn. If the flip is tails, the card stays in the YKTTW pile, ready for another attempt next turn or on later turns.