TV Tropes Card Game?

This seems as good a place as any, since there isn't an existing "Tabletop Games Only You Think Are A Good Idea" thread (as far as I can tell).

This is just an idea I had the other day... I think the rules are something of a mash-up of Magic and Fluxx.

• Each card is a trope of some type ("character", "theme", "equipment", "genre", etc), and all cards have an effect of some kind on gameplay.
• Each player has four basic areas for cards - the Index (draw pile), Hand, Storyboard, and Library (discard pile). The goal is to be the first person to empty your entire Index into your Library.
• Turns, predictably, involve drawing from the Index, playing your hand to the Storyboard, and publishing to the Library. Cards go to the library in sets that form a complete story - i.e. each set must contain at least one Setting, Character, Conflict, and Medium. You can be working on multiple stories at once, of course, and there are no default restrictions against using Left-Justified Fantasy Map, Humanoid Abomination, Robot War, and Music and Sound Effects as the four...
  • Things like Genius Loci or MacGuffin Girl can function as multiple types (Setting/Character and Character/Conflict, respectively), but only one at a time. If you use Genius Loci as your story setting, it doesn't count as the character, too.
  • Players are allowed to play a card from their Library anytime they would be allowed to play a card from their hand. (This prevents one player from having to forfeit when they discover that the last four cards in their index are all conflicts.)
• The rate at which you can play cards is a function of the number of cards already on the Storyboard (in Magic terms, mana doesn't come from one particular type of card). This encourages making stories as Troperiffic as possible.
  • On the other hand, the size of your hand is a function of the number of stories you've published. Being able to play fifteen cards each turn isn't much use when your hand only has five cards in it.

...Thoughts? Suggestions? Snide remarks?

edited 15th Nov '10 10:43:22 PM by Noaqiyeum

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Sounds fun- the interaction between size of storyboard and size of library and your options looks like it'd make all tactics and stuff.

Would there be other cards with more esoteric effects- Hype Backlash, that sort of thing- or would you stick to the main types?

You may want to take a look at this.

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

I'm not surprised that someone has thought of this before me.

I can't exactly archive-trawl that entire thread at the moment, so please point out if I'm mistaken, but the version that's grown from Matrix's idea seems... ambiguous, I guess. Not sure quite how to put it. There seem to be features of both "story elements interacting with each other" (one player's characters directly confronting other player's characters, defeat via story points) and "meta-trope elements interacting with each other" (victory by completing story objectives, "plot twists", etc) that make things needlessly complicated...

Arrrgh, I don't have time to try to clear up my thoughts right now. I'll be back.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Well, yes, the idea was to have something analogous to Magic The Gathering (ie very complex) instead of to Fluxx (simple).

Incidentally, your rules seem broken—being able to play from your Library at any time you could play from your hand is very powerful.

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

No, that's not what I meant by "overly complicated"... :P I would fully anticipate this getting as complex as MtG, just without being directly analogous in gameplay terms. Specifically, my idea doesn't utilize anything involving combat between characters or players, and thus no life or SP to keep track of  ^*

.

I agree, it is very powerful. I think that it's somewhat mitigated by the fact that using this ability is directly antithetical to the goal of the game in the short-term - it's much easier to remove cards from the Library than it is to get them back in, and getting all the cards into it is the entire point of the game, so you'd better have a strategy to return it with interest in the long run.

If that's still too powerful  ^*

, it's also possible to weaken it further. Perhaps you are allowed to draw from your Library anytime you might play from your hand, or you are required to draw from your Library iff you are unable to draw from the Index...

Hype Backlash would be an instant effect of some kind that prevents your opponent from increasing the size of their hand when they publish a story. :)

edited 16th Nov '10 11:43:10 AM by Noaqiyeum

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Depending on which version you look at (and there have been many), the players are either in or out of continuity and either actively trying to kill or indirectly utilizing the opponent's characters (including at least one case where it was essentially MtG with the cards all having trope names). In the current version, the players are authors working on the same story (ie out of continuity), and it's counterproductive to view your opponent's cards as the opposition (though your opponent still is).

The issue I'm seeing with playing cards directly from the Library is that after you get a few stories in, the killer strategy is to fill up your Storyboard with as many incomplete (3-card) stories as possible, then complete them with the cards in the Library when you empty your hand. So long as you only use the Library for the 4th card, you'll never lose anything from the Library by playing from it, and if you keep out stories that you know you can complete with the Library, it will allow you play a large amount of cards on one turn, making it easy to empty the Index (since you already "published" a few times) and your hand.

Switching to being able to draw from the Library does to little to solve the problem you're trying to solve, since then you're at the mercy of the RNG (well, the shuffling) to get the four types in perfectly balanced amounts—unless decks are built with exact ratios in the first place, in which case you're solving a non-existent problem.

Edit: Also, this has turned into a Troper Covens thread, so I'm moving it there.

edited 16th Nov '10 12:36:24 PM by Ironeye

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

Oh hey, are we reviving this? Awesome!

Should we just go ahead and make cards or do we want to try to revise the rules some more?

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1

This isn't a revival—it's a proposal for a completely different game.

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

...ok then.

Still want to revive the old game though.

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1