TV Tropes Trading Card Game

Guys, this is amazing. You rock!

:D Thanks.

I made the idea.

Ironeye came along and made the game unique.

I made sure <insert third person pronoun here> didn't go overboard with complexity.

Now we're really getting something done here.

All good. :D

some ideas:

• Inverted Trope: You give a trope card to the other player.
• Subverted Trope: You remove the trope from play.
• Deconstruction: Next Trope Card takes more Mana than usual to invoke (Oh, and running out of mana is getting a Writer's Block).
• Reconstruction: Next Trope Card takes less mana to invoke.

• The End of the World as We Know It: Remove character and setting cards from both sides.
• The Worf Effect: The next character that attacks a character with this trope does no damage and is automaticcally sent to the... uh, Dead Horse Trope Bin. However, the next attack will deal more damage than usual.

Also, our Mana should be called Phlebotinum and come in three kinds: The Power of Friendship for Sugar/ Idealistic tropes, Dark side points for Darth/ Cynic tropes and Green Rocks for Nuetral Tropes. Idealistic and Cynic card can use Green Rocks too and can use the opposing kinds of mana if they equip Light Is Not Good or Dark Is Not Evil.

edited Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:45:21 by TheAdversary

We are doing this as a web-based game, right?

RIGHT?

We already have a fleshed out mana system, sorry.

@Raekuul: Damnit, ninja'd again! Yeah, I would think so.

edited Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:59:16 by Matrix

Also, I think we should figure out the remaining kinds of Trope Cards before we try to figure out what Subverting/Inverting/Lampshading/Averting/etc. do.

hmm, I currently had it that the SP on tropes was lost for good when it decayed over time. You would get the SP back by having the trope activate its ability (which could almost always only be done once). If a trope is removed (whether it runs out of SP or otherwise) without its ability being activated, the player who controlled it takes a certain amount of card damage for introducing an irrelevant element into the story. Whenever a Plot resolves (ie the conditions are met), all tropes still in play that were used to resolve that plot are refreshed (either by returning SP to max or adding a flat amount on—we need to decide). Of course, resolve particular Plots, and you complete an Arc...so on and so forth.

Anyway, here are what tropes do, as far as I have been able to figure out.

Cards:

• Major Characters (eg Hero (Action Adventure) and Evil Overlord (Fantasy))
  • Major Characters count as Characters
  • Major Characters don't innately have any abilities.
  • Major Characters don't get removed from the story if they run out of SP, but deal 1 card damage for every turn they remain in the story without SP
  • All tropes that can be played on Characters can be played on Major Characters (unless the trope says otherwise, of course)
  • Character Tropes may be played on Main Characters. The Main Character gains all abilities of the Character and is considered to have all aspects of that Character (eg The Rival could be targeted as The Blood Knight for the purposes of other tropes, particularly Plots). All other rules applying to that Character still apply (including SP loss), but the card penalty for not activating the ability of the Character Trope before it leaves play, is reduced by 1.
• Character
  • Character tropes represent characters in the story. All Character Tropes have an ability, an SP total, and a Card Penalty.
  • Activating Character Trope abilities returns SP to the Troper. This SP may or may not be more than the cost (in SP) of the Trope.
    • Perhaps tropes come into play facing the opponent (allowing them to read the ability easier), then is turned to face the owner after the trope ability is used (and thus no longer relevant). The assumption here is that you know the abilities of the tropes in your deck, and thus don't need to read them all the time. Also, this is an easy way to tell whether or not you take card damage when the trope leaves play.
  • The primary functions of Character Tropes are to use their abilities and satisfy the conditions of Plots
  • Promoted To Main Titles is a Characterization trope that "promotes" an unattached Character Trope to Major Character status.
• Setting Tropes
  • Setting Tropes typically provide passive bonuses instead of active abilities.
    • These bonuses typically apply to tropes of the appropriate genre
  • Settings can frequently matter for Plots and the Justified costs of Tropes
• Plot Tropes
  • Plot Tropes confer benefits to other tropes while in play.
  • When the conditions of a plot trope are satisfied, rotate the plot trope 180 degrees (just like character tropes after abilities are used).
    • When rotated in this fashion, the plot trope counts towards completing the requirements on Arc Cards.
    • When the conditions are satisfied, refresh all tropes that satisfied those conditions
    • Plot cards may have additional one-time effects when rotated
  • Once rotated, Plot Cards no longer loose SP
  • A rotated plot card is removed from the game once it is used to complete a Story Arc
• Story Arc
  • Story Arc cards typically let you search your deck for essential trope cards when they come into play if those trope cards are not in play.
  • Story Arc cards have a list of conditions (typically satisfied by rotating particular plot cards). Once those conditions are met, remove the relevant plot cards and reward the story card to the player who satisfied those conditions (Easy) or who played the story arc (Medium, Hard). See the previously discussed rules regarding when and how story arcs enter play.
  • Completed Arcs reward SP and may have other one-time effects.
• Twists
  • You may play a twist even when you are normally unable to invoke a trope. (When this is, exactly, will be decided later)
  • Twists cost SP but do not reward any (unlike other trope cards)
• Troper Cards
  • See the rules mentioned about tropers by Matrix.
  • Whenever a twist card is played that is Nightmare Fuel to a troper, it steals SP equal to its invocation cost
  • Whenever a trope is in play that is Nightmare Fuel to a troper, it deals 1 SP damage to the troper each turn and leeches the appropriate SP when using active abilities
• Applied Phlebotinum (AP because I really don't feel like writing it out)
  • AP either stands alone or is attached to Character Tropes (especially Major Characters).
  • AP has abilities just like Characters
  • AP may be needed to satisfy a Plot
• Characterization Tropes
  • Characterization tropes attach to characters (usually, but not always, major characters).
  • Characterization tropes may have active abilities. When activated, the ability counts as the character using the ability for the purposes of satisfying Plot cards or when considering trope abilities that don't specifically mention Characterization.
  • Otherwise, Characterization Tropes behave as normal tropes (SP, rotating, card damage)

If I think of any more, I'll add them.

Whenever a Plot resolves (ie the conditions are met), all tropes still in play that were used to resolve that plot are refreshed

Could you explain this?

edited Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:04:46 by Matrix

Oh, right. "Refreshed" means SP of major characters/major phlebotinum is restored to full. In other words, the tropes have shown their usefulness to the plot and get a reprieve.

So let me get this straight.

Each Troper card gets a certain number of Story Points, which presumably can be refreshed in various ways. When a card is Invoked, it is placed on the table and Stroy Points transferred from the Troper to the Trope.

Each turn that it is on the table, a Trope loses one Story Point. A player activates a Trope by rotating it 90 degrees, which causes it to have an effect. When this is done, it stops losing Story Points. When its effect wears off, it is removed from the field of play and any Story Points left on it are returned to the Troper.

Is that right? I may be wrong, but this seems like a rather clumsy mechanic - after all, what's to stop a player from simply invoking a Trope, activating it that turn, and getting the effect without losing any Story Points?

Many card games have a rule that you can't use a card's effect or attack with it on the turn you play it.

We probably just overlooked it, taking it for granted since it's one of those ubiquitous things about card games.

So yeah. You will always lose at least one SP per trope played since it loses one SP on the turn it is played, during which you cannot activate its power.

This also means that it could be possible for your opponent to make the card lose all its SP on said turn.

Well, see, that's actually something me and Matrix seem to disagree on. We should probably figure this out before things go further.

I was hoping that tropes would continually loose SP (and I do mean loose—it doesn't return to the Troper). If the trope has an ability (which is activated by rotating a full 180 degrees from "facing opponent" to "facing me"), that ability will generate some amount of SP for the Troper (probably less than the invocation cost). In other words, the trope is an investment of SP that may pay off if it becomes relevant to the story by its ability being used. (I forget who, but someone suggested that tropes generally only be able to be activated once because reuse of a trope gets boring and doesn't help a story.) When the trope runs out of SP (which will inevitably happen, barring special effects that restore SP; see: Plot Cards), the trope is removed from play (and sent to the "shallowest" discard pile if we have levels of discard—that is, the one from which it is easiest to recover tropes) and you if the trope was unactivated (that is, still facing your opponent), you take card damage for introducing a trope irrelevant to the story.

What's stopping players from activating tropes ASAP would be:

• Generally can't active tropes the first turn they are in play
• Active abilities would have some targeting requirements
• Active abilities are critical to helping you satisfy Plot elements. Activating the trope early will prevent you from taking the card damage and restore some of the SP spent, it won't help you satisfy Plot requirements.

First off: It's lose. Loose is a different word. Yeah, I'm a Grammar Nazi. But it's just been bugging me. Especially since its one of those mistakes that spellcheckers overlook for the reason of it being a word. Anyways, since that's off my chest now, I don't see where we disagree.

Also: "Active abilities are critical to helping you satisfy Plot elements. Activating the trope early will prevent you from taking the card damage and restore some of the SP spent, it won't help you satisfy Plot requirements." Can you explain this?

Oh dear! From one Grammar Nazi to another, I'm rather embarrassed I didn't notice that when I posted.

We both seem to have different ideas with what happens to the SP on a trope as it decays. I think of it as a meter of how many more turns the trope is in play. The benefit from activating abilities is fixed.

As far as I understand your view, activating a trope restores all remaining SP to the Troper.

As for my comment, well, I made another mistake—this time of omission. I forgot the "might". That is, activating it too early might not help satisfy plot requirements. The idea is that if a character is introduced with the goal of satisfying a particular plot point, then does the necessary stuff too early...

Ah, now that makes sense.

Also, I had remembered that Tropes restored SP on use. I figured it just gave back its remaining SP, not a fixed number. But now you reminded me. Mmkay.

EDIT: Okay, so we've got our rules on Cards, SP, what next?

edited Sat, 14 Feb 2009 16:52:40 by Matrix

Active abilities are critical to helping you satisfy Plot elements. Activating the trope early will prevent you from taking the card damage and restore some of the SP spent, it won't help you satisfy Plot requirements.

Now see, that doesn't work for me. In any CCG I've ever seen, people bring out cards when they need them. In this case, you're assuming people will play cards which can only be on the field for a limited number of turns in the event that they might need them in the future. In this case, the card would just be sitting on the table doing nothing, costing SP, and if the need for its effect doesn't arise before it runs out, it's discarded and the player takes damage.

That isn't going to work. Perhaps it should be a case that a trope immediately starts performing a passive effect upon being played, and activating it causes some bonus, one-time effect. For example, playing the card MacGuffin Delivery Service allows the player to search their deck for Plot Coupons once per turn as long as the card is on the field, and activating it (by turning it sideways) allows them to steal a Plot Coupon or MacGuffin from the other player.

I think it could certain work that they restore whatever is left, but we'd have to find a way to thematically justify it. On the surface it would seem to endorse that tropes should be used as soon as they first appear in a story.

I've been thinking a bit about Meta-type tropes. Things like Put on a Bus and Creator Breakdown. I figure that those tropes may have to be a new class of cards. Some, like Put on a Bus, would make sense to have cost some large amount of SP for a single use, but return none (sort of like twists), but others don't really fit the model of costing SP.

Second random thought: we currently have Twists as Tropes that can be Invoked at (almost) any time, but as a downside are unable to directly refund SP. Another model that someone suggested was that they work more like Trap cards from Yu Gi Oh—they are put into play face-down and can be turned face-up to activate. (Someone more familiar with Yu Gi Oh feel free to expand on this—I don't know that game very well.)

VB: While I think that the trope is overpowered as written, I like the idea of (weak) passive bonuses. They have already been explicitly mentioned with regards to settings and plots, but there really isn't any reason why they can't apply to everything else. Of course, the bonuses on narrative tropes (as opposed to the meta tropes I mentioned in my last post) would be player-blind. (For that matter, the active abilities would be player-blind as well, but the choice to active the ability, as well as the target (if relevant) would depend on who paid SP for the trope.

Trap Cards get put face down, and you activate them when the card says to. The whole point of having them face down is of course so your opponent doesn't know what it is.

edited Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:09:06 by Matrix

I think we're still hazy on the role of Tropes- are they more like attack modifiers/special abilities, or are they elements that are comboed to satisfy various scoring conditions?

Both - And the only "scoring condition" is the Arc Cards.

Ironeye: Yeah, I was just making up an example to illustrate a mechanic; nobody says that has to be a real card. I do think it's important that each card has some sort of effect while it's on the field, because it doesn't make sense to play them otherwise.

I just had another idea - active and passive cards. Passive cards have a fairly strong effect as soon as they're invoked, but do not have any effect by being turned sideways. Also, they can't be removed by their own effects, so a player generally has no choice but to let them wind down. Active cards get a small effect as soon as they're played, and a very powerful one when they're turned sideways.

Most likely Passive would affect the field as a whole, and active cards would affect specific other cards, or possibly the Tropers or Players directly.

If we're going with multiple discard piles, I think Put on a Bus should be the lowest of them - that is, the one from which it is easiest to regain cards. Cards which have fulfilled their role in the arc would go here. This fits thematically with the idea of writing a story, as the writer is finished with them and shunts them off for a while but might want to bring them back later.

There should be at least two other discard piles, Killed Off for Real and Deader than Dead, from which it is harder and impossible respectively to regain cards. Then there could be a Bus Crash card, whose effect is to move a card from the Put on a Bus pile to the Killed Off for Real pile.

I figure that that wasn't an actual proposal for that card.

Having tropes with no active ability would certainly be interesting from the point of view of the mechanics as we currently have them. For one, they cannot generate SP. Also, since they cannot be "activated", they will automatically deal card damage when their SP runs out. From a purely mechanical point of view, we can significantly reduce the card damage (quite possibly down to 0) so that the player isn't penalized for not including "active" tropes. In this way, passive tropes guarantee that you never gain SP from them, but also that you won't naturally take card damage, either.

The catch is finding a way to deal with them that works with the theme of the game. As it currently stands, SP on a trope card represent the amount of time that trope can be in the story before the audience gets fed up with it not being relevant. This is why satisfying plot cards refills the SP of the tropes used—by participating in that plot point, the tropes are shown to be still relevant. Plot points are typically satisfied by cards with the "major" modifier (we really have to find a better name for that), which are so central to the premise that they don't just leave the story like other tropes (though they still can be destroyed/killed in-story or be written out via a "meta" trope). Instead, they deal constant card damage any time they run out of SP. Note that these cards have no "active" abilities. Back on topic, card damage is the penalty for introducing something that just didn't matter to the story.

So here's the question: how do we determine a "passive" trope contributed? If the bonus is, say, "all furries come into play with two additional SP" (silly? Yes. Potentially over-/underpowered? Yep.), and neither player plays any furries, the trope didn't have an impact. Once way I see out of this is to turn the trope card the first time its bonus applies, but that solution seems rather in elegant. Any ideas?

Edit: we may have to name the discard piles a little differently (given that those names would actually be playable tropes), but I think essentially those three piles would be a good idea. Tropes that run out of SP would be put on the "Put on a Bus" pile, I think.

edited Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:27:44 by Ironeye

How would turning a passive card be inelegant?

ok, I suppose it's not inelegant, just a little...weird.