History SoYouWantTo / MakeACollectibleCardGame

''Hecatomb'' was a card game with few, but devoted adherents, designed by WizardsOfTheCoast. It had a number of similarities to Magic, but primarily diverged in two ways: first, players played maniacal villains who sought to destroy worlds to enhance their own power; second, up to five monsters could be combined into a larger "abomination," which augmented one monster with the powers and strength of the others. Because of this mechanic, the cards were five-sided and plastic so that clear edges could show the abilities of the monsters below. While innovative and fairly novel, this made cards a good deal more expensive to produce, and it was a somewhat common occurrence to open a pack and find one or more cards which were cracked and unplayable.

* BribingYourWayToVictory, ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: These are built in default into the existing Collectible Card Game / Trading Card Game model. Because packs usually contain a random assortment of cards, players who spend more money on the game are more likely to have more powerful cards. Having said that, Fantasy Flight Games (''[[ASongOfIceAndFire A Cardgame Of Ice and Fire]]'') have pioneered a new distribution method they call a "Living Card Game," where cards are sold in pre-sorted packs with contents listed on the back of the box. There are ''no'' randomly-assorted packs for sale. According to FFG, this helps you avoid wasting money, and emphasizes skill in playing and deck-building over luck.

Another nice advantage about starting your own Intellectual Property is the ability to avoid CCGImportanceDissonance, something that both the ''[=LotR=]'' CCG and the ''Middle-Earth'' CCG before it fell serious prey to. Not only do you not have to create filler cards out of Extra Of The Week #13, you aren't ''bound'' to that model by the franchise's existing story. Most stories have these things called MainCharacters who appear in almost every instalment of the series; these cards will be--are required by the FanDumb to be--the most powerful cards in the game. If "Third Orc From The Left" is able to take on Frodo and win, fans will scream that the game is ruined... even though the same thing results if you let Frodo hand out {{Curb Stomp Battle}}s (which would not only make him a GameBreaker but is CanonDefilement!). This is where that whole VariablePlayerGoals thing can come in handy. Frodo does not and has never had the combat chops to win a MultiMookMelee[[note]]Fun fact: according to TheOtherWiki, Frodo was a MartialPacifist and never actually killed a sentient creature in his life[[/note]], but he is also the Ring-bearer and is gifted with some level of IncorruptiblePurePureness. Give him extra resistance to the Ring's temptation mechanic and suddenly he doesn't look so useless.

* CharacterDevelopment: ''SW:CCG'', ''ST:CCG (2E)'', ''[=L5R=]'' and even ''Magic'' have all done this: release multiple versions of a character (a Planeswalker in ''Magic'''s case) which have different skills and are suited for different purposes. Typically the way this is done is to have a rule that you may only have one card of that character's ''name'' in play at a time, but then give each version sort of subtitle ([[http://www.trekcc.org/2e/index.php?cardID=2359 James T. Kirk, Highly-Decorated Captain]] vs [[http://www.trekcc.org/2e/index.php?cardID=27 James T. Kirk, Living Legend]], at complete random). In most games you may replace an in-play version with a different one, possibly at reduced deployment costs, but what happens to the first version (LostForever? Back to hand?) depends from game to game. (Note also in this case that the "one in play at a time" rule is indicated by the dot before the name--''ST:CCG'' allows multiples of RedShirt-level cards.) ''Pokemon'' also built this into play by allowing you to evolve your mons, but that's a different mechanic.

Make sure your rules are neither too stifling nor too open. If you can't do anything creative with the ''cards'', your only option is PowerCreep: the business of increasing those cards' PowerLevels until they're OverNineThousand. ''SW:CCG'' was particularly notorious for this; eventually it even overwhelmed the Destiny mechanic because so many important characters became ImmuneToFate in varying degrees. That may be cool if you're the one with Luke, Han and Leia on your side, but Power Creep can be very dangerous to the health of your game overall. It led ''Magic'' players to coin the term "strictly better," for when two cards are identical in all aspects except one, and in that one aspect, one of them is, well, better. [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=370654 Shock]] vs [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=191089 Lightning Bolt]] is perhaps the iconic example: they're both Instants that cost one red mana, but while the first spell deals 2 damage, the second deals 3, giving you 50% more bzzt for your buck. This kind of power ramping is dangerous because, the moment you publish "Lightning Bolt", every "Shock" card on the planet is suddenly worthless... and the last thing you want to tell your consumers is that some of the product they shelled out money for is now without value. The potential for {{ragequit}}s is alarmingly high. [[labelnote:Ironically...]]Shock was actually published ''second''; the consensus was that Lightning Bolt needed to be {{nerf}}ed.[[/labelnote]]

The "magic word" in designing CCG is ''Play''. Don't just play your favorite CCG--in fact, put it aside for at least a month. Instead, go to the bookstore or local gaming shop or comic book store and ''try new TabletopGames''. Play ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', or watch people doing ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''. Watch Creator/WilWheaton's show WebVideo/{{Tabletop}} on Geek & Sundry. Compare TabletopGame/{{Chess}} to TabletopGame/{{Risk}}, TabletopGame/{{Monopoly}} with SettlersOfCatan, TabletopGame/{{Munchkin}} with ApplesToApples. If you're going to create a new game, you need to know what pre-existing games are already doing, so that you can avoid the things you don't like and steal the things you do. Plus, you'll have ''fun''--and isn't that the point of gaming?

!'''Necessary Tropes'''

So you want to make a CollectibleCardGame, eh? Well, good luck. [=CCGs=] has always got the reputation as being a "nerdy" or "kiddy" games in public mind. Breaking past this stereotype is going to be difficult, and designing a game that ''deserves'' to will be harder still.

The "magic word" in designing CCG is ''Play''. Don't just play your favorite CCG--in fact, put it aside for at least a month. Instead, go to the bookstore or local gaming shop or comic book store and ''try new TabletopGames''. Play ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', or watch people doing ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''. Watch Creator/WilWheaton's show WebVideo/{{Tabletop}} on Geek & Sundry. Compare TabletopGame/{{Chess}} to TabletopGame/{{Risk}}, TabletopGame/{{Monopoly}} with SettlersOfCatan, TabletopGame/{{Munchkin}} with ApplesToApples. If you're going to create a new game, you need to know what pre-existing games are already doing, so that you can avoid the things you don't like and steal the things you do. And you'll have ''fun''--and isn't that the point of gaming?

* CrackIsCheaper. TropesAreTools, including this one. First off, the more cards the consumers buy, the more you can afford to create follow-up product, thus resulting in more income; exploit this node, and you're all set. Second, the day players start shelling out ridiculous amounts of cash for individual power cards--the day players ''like'' your game so much that they are willing to blow extra money on it--is the day your game has actually succeeded. [=CCG=]s have RevenueEnhancingDevices built into them. This may sound dirty, but actually works.

* ExpansionPack: This is the main trope that keeps your consumers playing. For one, it provides novelty and variation. They prevent the game from being monotony, keeping your fanbase intact. Second, human beings like new stuffs--this is a scientifically-proven part of human nature. A game that constantly release new things usually has a powerful and addicting quality.

** Card maximums. Originally ''Magic'' didn't have a limit on how many of Card [X] you could have in a deck. So people would go in with decks consisting solely of like 20 Swamps and then a ZergRush of [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=77 Plague Rats]], which could get out of hand really quickly. Nowadays, ''Magic'' decks can only have 4 or less copies of a single card (sorting by name) unless that card is a basic land, and almost every other CCG out there has ''some'' limitation on multiples in this way. (Some games do it by marking the individual cards themselves if they can't be multiplied; under such circumstances you ''can'' have infinite [This] or infinite [That], but those cards tend to be really, really weak anyhow, and you wouldn't play such a deck except for the lulz.) This means you can't load your deck down with whatever card it revolves around. It also slows the game down: if you can only have four copies of your central card, you have only a 1-in-15 chance of ''drawing'' it.

** Choices Vs. Options. First, we acknowledge that we are [[http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/49 ripping off MaRo]], so read the article in his words if you'd prefer. But there is a difference between "Options"--"You can have both A and B"--and Choices--"You can only have A ''or'' B, pick one." ''You want Choices instead of Options.'' Not only should this shape the design of individual cards, but the entire deck-building aspect ''of'' card games is about Choices: there are so many cards available that you simply ''cannot'' create a deck that makes all of them available. FactionCalculus adds to this by further striating the availble strategies, which is another reason why it's good. But the point is this: you want Choices because those provide limitations. And the entire ''heart'' of gaming is about finding ways to overcome limitations. That's why we have {{MinMaxer}}s; that's why we have {{Munchkin}}s; that's why we have StopHavingFunGuys. Say what you want about their attitudes, but ''they want to overcome the game'', because that's what gaming ''is''. So don't give them Options. Give them Choices. Make it that much harder--and that much more fun.

* Most [=CCGs=] are adaptations of existing franchises, for reasons that will be discussed in the next section. The only exceptions are ''Magic'', ''TabletopGame/LegendOfTheFiveRings'', ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'' (which itself is, by WordOfGod, a ''Magic'' ripoff) and... Well, that's about it, at least where ''popular'' franchises are concerned. (I mean, have you ''heard'' of MagiNation?) Decipher Inc came up with three ''very'' good adaptations--''[=LotR=]'', ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' (eventually expanding to all the rest of the franchise save the [[Film/StarTrek 2009 pre-boot]]) and the ''StarWarsCustomizableCardGame''--but not a single one of them is in print today. And nobody needs to talk about ''Pokemon'' cards. The point is that [=CCGs=] are not exempt from TheProblemWithLicensedGames. The rebuttal is that creating your own Intellectual Property is just as challenging or more so... but again, we'll talk about that further down.

* Number of Players. ''Star Wars'', ''Star Trek'' and ''Pokemon'' can only be played with two players. Period. The rules simply don't accomodate for anything else. While this is the sound of the devs taking the easy way out, the truth is that designing a CCG to support multiplayer (by which we mean, "Three or more players") can get crazy--the cards that say "Target opponent does [X]" become weaker, while the "''All'' opponents do [X]" become insanely powerful; politics and the KingmakerScenario get involved, where you start deciding whether to use the beneficial cards on yourself or on your maybe-allies; and so on and so fifth. See all this chaos? One of the things you should decide on, as early as possible, is what the maximum number of players per match is, because this will inform your design decisions. Choosing to go 2P only will make the game more boring, but also easier to design.

** The cost ''itself'' can be variable. ''Magic'' and ''{{Pokemon}}'' only let you play one new {{Mana}} a turn, which delays powerful attacks for a few turns. However, this built an additional WeaksauceWeakness into the game: if you simply didn't ''have'' Mana to deploy, or your opponent was able to destroy it, you were screwed. ''TabletopGame/LegendOfTheFiveRings'' let you play as many "Holding" cards, which provide "Gold" for purchasing other cards, as you wanted, but each Holding ''itself'' costs gold, and furthermore your hand[[note]]Yeah, yeah, Provinces; we're trying not to be too technical here[[/note]] is only four cards large. Decipher's ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' card game used an innovative "twilight pool" mechanic: playing good-guy cards added points to the pool, and playing bad-guy cards removed them.[[note]]This worked in a multiplayer setting because each player had a personal Fellowship they were trying to win with; the people who weren't taking their turn collectively represented Sauron.[[/note]] In other words, you could only do good stuff for yourself at the cost of ''enabling'' the opponent to do good stuff for themselves. And ''[=ST:2E=]'' gave you a permanent limit of seven points each turn, which you could spend on playing cards from hand (each card had its point cost clearly marked) and/or drawing cards ''into'' hand (1 point per card).

WebVideo/ExtraCredits has only done a few videos on collectable games, but as usual they are astute and efficient. The [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIlrJLIyiWk first]] was a basic overview of the premise of collectability; the second catalogued [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBIX_A1l1bM the pitfalls]] inherent in the genre, and the third [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGkpoYxSep8 its strengths]]. They also have videos on topics that are not CCG specific, like [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxszx60ZwGw Power Creep]], [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9sHIQaFVC8 fanbase management]] and more.

** The cost ''itself'' can be variable. ''Magic'' and ''{{Pokemon}}'' only let you play one new {{Mana}} a turn, which delays powerful attacks for a few turns. However, this built an additional WeaksauceWeakness into the game: if you simply didn't ''have'' Mana to deploy, or your opponent was able to destroy it, you were screwed. ''LegendOfTheFiveRings'' let you play as many "Holding" cards, which provide "Gold" for purchasing other cards, as you wanted, but each Holding ''itself'' costs gold, and furthermore your hand[[note]]Yeah, yeah, Provinces; we're trying not to be too technical here[[/note]] is only four cards large. Decipher's ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' card game used an innovative "twilight pool" mechanic: playing good-guy cards added points to the pool, and playing bad-guy cards removed them.[[note]]This worked in a multiplayer setting because each player had a personal Fellowship they were trying to win with; the people who weren't taking their turn collectively represented Sauron.[[/note]] In other words, you could only do good stuff for yourself at the cost of ''enabling'' the opponent to do good stuff for themselves. And ''[=ST:2E=]'' gave you a permanent limit of seven points each turn, which you could spend on playing cards from hand (each card had its point cost clearly marked) and/or drawing cards ''into'' hand (1 point per card).

* Most [=CCGs=] are adaptations of existing franchises, for reasons that will be discussed in the next section. The only exceptions are ''Magic'', ''LegendOfTheFiveRings'', ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'' (which itself is, by WordOfGod, a ''Magic'' ripoff) and... Well, that's about it, at least where ''popular'' franchises are concerned. (I mean, have you ''heard'' of MagiNation?) Decipher Inc came up with three ''very'' good adaptations--''[=LotR=]'', ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' (eventually expanding to all the rest of the franchise save the [[Film/StarTrek 2009 pre-boot]]) and the ''StarWarsCustomizableCardGame''--but not a single one of them is in print today. And nobody needs to talk about ''Pokemon'' cards. The point is that [=CCGs=] are not exempt from TheProblemWithLicensedGames. The rebuttal is that creating your own Intellectual Property is just as challenging or more so... but again, we'll talk about that further down.

The opposite, rules that are not specific enough, encourages you to just keep developing "Complexity Creep"--NewRulesAsThePlotDemands, which is just as bad. ''ST:CCG'' is the banner example here. At the beginning of First Edition, it had eight card types[[note:eight card types]]Mission, Dilemma, Artifact; Personnel, Ship, Equipment; Event, Interrupt[[/note]], but each new expansion introduced some new gameplay mechanic, and by the end, it had ''seventeen''. This created a ''huge'' barrier to entry; new players would go up against decks that were doing things which were, as far as they were concerned, BeyondTheImpossible, and which they (the new players) had no hope of replicating. Not to mention that learning tons of rules is time-consuming. In fairness, Decipher learned their lesson: Second Edition launched with only seven card types and remained that way forever. Its rulebook is also quite a bit shorter. Complexity Creep is just as dangerous as PowerCreep, and while both are inevitable, you want to keep them to a minimum.

If you are going to have VariablePlayerGoals, you absolutely ''must'' have that ever-elusive quality "depth" in the sense that each goal needs to give you the capacity to interfere with a player who is trying to win the game some other way. And that made life difficult for the designer. But no matter which goal the player is pursuing, they ''must'' have some ways of competing towards the other ones, if only to defend themselves against others who are pursuing it.

(The real reason slvstrChung abandoned this idea was that he couldn't figure out how to prevent it from turning from a Trading Card Game into a ''Stealing'' Card Game--packing up your deck, shaking your opponent's hand, and only ten minutes later realizing you've walked away with five cards that used to belong to him, and that he has three of yours. Even worse, ''he'' managed to convert that ultra-rare of yours during gameplay, and good luck getting it back from him. Yeah, this sounds like a ''great'' model for a card game.)

We've talked about the "Living Card Game" idea, which takes the "random" out of RandomlyDrops; although your game can be a "CardBattleGame," a digital (non-cardboard) product that doesn't have to be played in person. The Internet is a magical thing. A game that's programmed as a smartphone app, using Internet or even Bluetooth for interface, might be really wonderful. Alternately, if you equip every card with a QR code, your players can maintain a cardboard- and digital card library simultaneously, though obviously this verges on CopyProtection and will irritate some players in that way. This could also build into the aforementioned "storytelling via sequence of card plays" by having global results affect, for example, what cards you can even play. "Players of [X] faction have won #### duels in the last two weeks, and as such cards with [Y] symbol on them are now legal for play." The Internet and smartphones are at your beck and call; consider how you might integrate them into your experience.

Most card games are not very funny. Why the heck not? ''SW:CCG'' in particular was written and designed with a clear eye towards humor, which players loved; though the real kicker is the card "Barber Pole" from ''ST:CCG'', which said, literally, nothing but "Plays on table." As in, This is a permanent, put it on the table and leave it there. What did it do? ''Nothing''. It was literally useless. And, as such, nobody used it. It was a JunkRare of the most blatant nature. But the mere fact that Decipher were willing to waste cardboard on it was a lot of fun.

''Hecatomb'' was a card game with few, but devoted adherents designed by WizardsOfTheCoast. It had a number of similarities to Magic, but primarily diverged in two ways: first, players played maniacal villains who sought to destroy worlds to enhance their own power; second, up to five monsters--called minions--could be combined into a larger creature--called an abomination, which augmented one monster with the powers and strength of the others. Because of this mechanic, the cards were five sided and plastic so that clear edges could show the abilities of the monsters below. While innovative and fairly novel, this made cards a good deal more expensive to produce, and it was a somewhat common occurrence to open a pack and find one or more cards which were cracked and unplayable.

* the player. In most [=CCGs=], the player is a non-entity who only kind of interacts with in-game entities. The Planeswalkers of ''Magic: the Gathering'', for example, can be attacked but cannot defend themselves; in ''Pokemon'' you don't even fight your opponent directly, but instead his mons. Likewise, the ''Star Wars'', ''Star Trek'', ''Lord of the Rings'', ''Game of Thrones'', ''Babylon 5'', ''Wheel of Time'' and ''Wing Commander'' card games don't feature any entity corresponding to the player at all; victory is determined by other means, often ScoringPoints. Just about the only exception is ''HearthstoneHeroesOfWarcraft'', where you choose a character class and that class is then represented as an in-game entity. He or she can not only be attacked, but--if equipped with Weapon cards--can attack as well. The logistics of incorporating the player into the game ''as'' an in-game entity are confusing, but it's a design space that hasn't much been explored.

** Deck design. Look, it's the truth: this is ''your'' deck. There are many like it, but this one is ''yours''. If you're reading this article, you've probably designed a few decks in your time, regardless of which CCG you play. You ''have'' a favorite; I am certain of it. I also would also bet you can remember the salient details of most, maybe all, of the decks you've designed (not just collected out of spare bits and pieces, ''designed'') over the years. And why? Because ''players bond with their deck designs''. They get emotionally invested in ''their'' work--and rightly so. So giving them the tools to put their own mark on the metagame can only result in further investment on their part. Of both time ''and'' money.

* The Player. In most [=CCGs=], the player is a non-entity who only kind of interacts with in-game entities. The Planeswalkers of ''Magic: the Gathering'', for example, can be attacked but cannot defend themselves; in ''Pokemon'' you don't even fight your opponent directly, but instead his mons. Likewise, the ''Star Wars'', ''Star Trek'', ''Lord of the Rings'', ''Game of Thrones'', ''Babylon 5'', ''Wheel of Time'' and ''Wing Commander'' card games don't feature any entity corresponding to the player at all; victory is determined by other means, often ScoringPoints. Just about the only exception is ''HearthstoneHeroesOfWarcraft'', where you choose a character class and that class is then represented as an in-game entity. He or she can not only be attacked, but--if equipped with Weapon cards--can attack as well. The logistics of incorporating The Player into the game ''as'' an in-game entity are confusing, but it's a design space that hasn't much been explored.

* Card Frames: The "card frame" is, if you will, the game's ViewerFriendlyInterface: it organizes the data on the card so that players can easily scan that card and figure out what it does. For example, ''Magic'' always has mana icons in the top right, the card type right under the picture, and a panel describing the card's use occupying the whole bottom half of the card. The point we are trying to make here is not, "You should have a card frame design," though obviously you should; the point we are trying to make is, Consider having ''different'' card frames under different circumstances. In ''Magic'', the differences are usually in color and texture (green cards look like they're made of lizard skin, while red cards are made of sandstone), but you could potentially have completely different card ''layouts'' for different circumstances; ''SW:CCG'' had Location cards that operated in both Portrait orientation (planets) and Landscape orientation (spots ''on'' that planet; Tatooine would be a portrait, Mos Eisley a landscape), and neither of them looked anything like their Character cards. This raises the difficulty barrier at entry--The Player has to learn to recognize multiple frames--but speeds gameplay for experts, who can tell even ''more'' quickly what a card does.

So the reason to adapt an existing franchise is also simple: it already ''has'' a story, known characters, emotional connections to and from The Player. If I give you a card for Eric del Scheir ([[OriginalCharacter OC]], don't steal), you see a kid who looks like Music/JustinBieber in the card art, and you know a little bit about his personality (the squealing peasant girls in the background are another indication), but you don't necessarily know anything about his relationship to Lenoia del Scheir, or Corlan, or Grevon, or the peasant girls, or why a TeenIdol is in a game with mages and soldiers and priests, or why he has a claim for the throne. (And the fact that he looks like Bieber may turn you off.) If I give you a card that says "[[StarWars Luke Skywalker]]," though, you have knowledge about him that predates the arrival of the card, and you know what it means if you manage to get Obi-Wan in play alongside him, or what might happen if he has to fight against your opponent's Boba Fett card. Even better, you might be ''excited'' for the chance to pit him against the card of someone he never faced in-person, like [[ThePhantomMenace Darth Maul]] or [[VideoGame/TheForceUnleashed Galen Marek]]. Oh, and as an added bonus, you can [[TeasingCreator withhold popular cards]] for later expansions. Players will whine and gripe and complain... but if you tell them that the long-awaited [[TheThrawnTrilogy Mara Jade]] card is finally seeing release in the next expansion, they ''will'' line up and they ''will'' shell out their money.

Another helpful weapon in this arena is "flavor," which has to do with how memorable the card's design is and whether it taps into some form of shorthand. In other words? '''''Tropes'''''. TropesAreTools and you should use them ''unabashedly'' in designing individual cards. If I tell you that a card called "[[ShockAndAwe Lightning Bolt]]" does three damage to whatever it hits, that makes perfect sense. Likewise, if I tell you that a monster with "Flying" can't be intercepted by creatures without it, you nod and go with it because of ''course'' a lion can't stop an eagle. Look for this kind of resonance. Use it to communicate concepts. Design cards around it. Be shamelessly {{troperiffic}}, because it will make individual cards easier to understand.

If you are going to have VariablePlayerGoals, you absolutely ''must'' have that ever-elusive quality "depth" in the sense that each goal needs to give you the capacity to interfere with a player who is trying to win the game some other way. As an example, the four characters described above (Eric, Grevon, Lenoia, Corlan) are the main characters in a CCG this editor (Tropers/SlvstrChung) was trying to create in which they are the heirs in a SuccessionCrisis, competing to see which of them will succeed their father on the throne. Each character had their own power base--Grevon from the military, Corlan from wizards, Lenoia from the priesthood, and Eric from pre-teen fangirls--and could leverage their influence to ''steal'' characters another sibling (IE player) had already deployed. In addition to trying to win a Popularity Victory (have supporters with Influence totaling X) or a Last-Man-Standing Victory (shame the opponents into withdrawing), there was also LoopholeAbuse: getting popular doesn't make you king, plunking your arse on the throne does, and politics is simply a means to that end. If you can simply [[CuttingTheKnot sneak your heir into the throne room]]... This would be the "passive," defensive win condition, but it obviously leaves such a player vulnerable: they're busy assembling their StealthBasedMission and can have important supporters poached by the opposition. As such, the business of ''plotting'' an infiltration needs to give that player certain bonuses, which either help protect their most-important followers or weaken the enemy's support, making it easier for you or someone else to knock them out of the race. And that made life difficult for me, the designer. But no matter which goal The Player is pursuing, I knew s/he ''must'' have some ways of competing towards the other ones, if only to defend themselves against others who are pursuing it.

We've talked about the "Living Card Game" idea, which takes the "random" out of RandomlyDrops; the only other major subversion I can think of at this point is that your game can be a "CardBattleGame," a digital (non-cardboard) product that doesn't have to be played in person. The Internet is a magical thing. A game that's programmed as a smartphone app, using Internet or even Bluetooth for interface, might be really wonderful. Alternately, if you equip every card with a QR code, your players can maintain a cardboard- and digital card library simultaneously, though obviously this verges on CopyProtection and will irritate some players in that way. This could also build into the aforementioned "storytelling via sequence of card plays" by having global results affect, for example, what cards you can even play. "Players of [X] faction have won #### duels in the last two weeks, and as such cards with [Y] symbol on them are now legal for play." I dunno. But the Internet and smartphones are at your beck and call; consider how you might integrate them into your experience.

So the reason to adapt an existing franchise is also simple: it already ''has'' a story, known characters, emotional connections to and from The Player. If I give you a card for Eric del Scheir ([[OriginalCharacter OC]], don't steal), you see a kid who looks like Music/JustinBieber in the card art, and you know a little bit about his personality (the squealing peasant girls in the background are another indication), but you don't necessarily know anything about his relationship to Lenoia del Scheir, or Corlan, or Grevon, or the peasant girls, or why a TeenIdol is in a game with mages and soldiers and priests, or why he has a claim for the throne. (And the fact that he looks like Bieber may turn you off.) If I give you a card that says "[[StarWars Luke Skywalker]]," though, you have knowledge about him that predates the arrival of the card, and you know what it means if you manage to get Obi-Wan in play alongside him, or what might happen if he has to fight against your opponent's Boba Fett card. Even better, you might be ''excited'' for the chance to pit him against the card of someone he never faced in-person, like [[ThePhantomMenace Darth Maul]] or [[TheForceUnleashed Galen Marek]]. Oh, and as an added bonus, you can [[TeasingCreator withhold popular cards]] for later expansions. Players will whine and gripe and complain... but if you tell them that the long-awaited [[TheThrawnTrilogy Mara Jade]] card is finally seeing release in the next expansion, they ''will'' line up and they ''will'' shell out their money.

So you want to make a CollectibleCardGame, eh? Well, good luck. [=CCGs=] has always got the reputation as being a "nerdy" or "kiddy" games in publicIn the public mind. Breaking past this stereotype is going to be difficult, and designing a game that ''deserves'' to will be harder still.

The "magic word" in designing CCG is ''Play''. Don't just play your favorite CCG--in fact, put it aside for at least a month. Instead, go to the bookstore or local gaming shop or comic book store and ''try new TabletopGames''. Play ''DungeonsAndDragons'', or watch people doing ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''. Watch Creator/WilWheaton's show WebVideo/{{Tabletop}} on Geek & Sundry. Compare TabletopGame/{{Chess}} to {{Risk}}, TabletopGame/{{Monopoly}} with SettlersOfCatan, TabletopGame/{{Munchkin}} with ApplesToApples. If you're going to create a new game, you need to know what pre-existing games are already doing, so that you can avoid the things you don't like and steal the things you do. And you'll have ''fun''--and isn't that the point of gaming?

So you want to make a CollectibleCardGame, eh? Well, good luck--you're an idiot. In the public mind, there's only two kinds of [=CCGs=]: super-nerdy kinds that people only play if they've [[NerdsAreVirgins given up on ever having sex]] (''MagicTheGathering''), and the stupid ones for kids (everything else). Breaking past this stereotype is going to be difficult, and designing a game that ''deserves'' to will be harder still.

Second, even more important: ''play''. Don't just play your favorite CCG--in fact, put it aside for at least a month. Instead, go to the bookstore or local gaming shop or comic book store and ''try new TabletopGames''. Play ''DungeonsAndDragons'', or watch people doing ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''. Watch Creator/WilWheaton's show WebVideo/{{Tabletop}} on Geek & Sundry. Compare TabletopGame/{{Chess}} to {{Risk}}, TabletopGame/{{Monopoly}} with SettlersOfCatan, TabletopGame/{{Munchkin}} with ApplesToApples. If you're going to create a new game, you need to know what pre-existing games are already doing, so that you can avoid the things you don't like and steal the things you do. And you'll have ''fun''--and isn't that the point of gaming?

* CrackIsCheaper. TropesAreNotBad, this one especially. First off, the more cards the consumers buy, the more you can afford to create follow-up product, thus resulting in more money; it's an infinite cycle you want to exploit. Second, the day players start shelling out ridiculous amounts of cash for individual power cards--the day players ''like'' your game so much that they are willing to blow extra money on it--is the day your game has actually succeeded. [=CCG=]s have RevenueEnhancingDevices built into them. If that makes you feel dirty, don't make a CCG.
** BribingYourWayToVictory, ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: these are built into the existing Collectible Card Game / Trading Card Game model: because packs contain a completely random assortment of cards, players who spend more money on the game are more likely to have more powerful cards and more-powerful cards. Having said that, Fantasy Flight Games (''[[ASongOfIceAndFire A Cardgame Of Ice and Fire]]'') have pioneered a new distribution method they call a "Living Card Game," where cards are sold in pre-sorted packs with contents listed on the back of the box. There are ''no'' randomly-assorted packs for sale. According to FFG, this helps you avoid wasting money, and emphasizes skill (both in playing and deckbuilding) over luck.
* ExpansionPack: again, this creates more money for you. But it also keeps your consumers playing. For one, it provides novelty. Human beings like new shit--this is a scientifically-proven part of human nature. A game in which new shit is constantly being released is a powerful and addicting quality.
** ComplacentGamingSyndrome: Expansion packs, and to a lesser extent banlists and rotating formats (if you choose to have them), will also help prevent your game from becoming static. Witness the phenomenon of the "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solved_game solved game]]" - games in which the correct choices, the ones that ''always'' result in a win or at least a forced draw, have already been identified. While [=CCGs=] are typically a bit too complex to truly "solve," there will always be {{Game Breaker}}s that essentially serve the same purpose: choosing not to play them is suicidal because make it that much easier to win. The first answer is the ObviousRulePatch, where you simply ban that card from (supervised) play... but once one is gone, another takes its place as strategies shift and decks are redesigned, and if you keep banning ''those'' then eventually the game simply isn't as ''fun'' anymore because there are only three cards still legal for play. So the better answer is, Don't just remove the old ones. ''Add new ones.'' And then do the cycle all over again, yeah, but frankly that's your lot in life, now that you've decided to build a CCG: monitoring as many matches as you can and taking statistics on which cards have a higher-than-normal win rate. Have fun.

Another thing that ''Warhammer 40K'' and ''[=L5R=]'' both did was allow the results of tournaments or normal gameplay to determine the ''metaplot''. ''[=WH40K=]'' used to run "global campaigns," providing BackStory and then allowing players to submit the results of matches in support of that back story. GamesWorkshop then tallied all the results they received and eventually declared who had won the Thirteenth Black Crusade ([[spoiler:Abaddon has Cadia, but he's cut off from the Eye of Terror and any reinforcements by the Imperial Navy]]). And at one point a [[BigBad Shadowlands]] player came within a hair of [[TheBadGuyWins taking the world L5R championship]], which would have had very interesting implications for the game's future. (An expansion taking place AfterTheEnd was released, though with an "{{Elseworlds}}" flavor to indicate it was non-canon.) This is not the same as building a story out of ''each'' individual match, but it's something to think on.

* AwesomeButImpractical. It is important to have deployment limitations, slowing the game down and preventing players from putting really powerful things in play right at the start. Only one card game didn't do so: the original version of the ''Star Trek'' card game. It was a disaster. Under normal circumstances you could only play one Ship or Character per turn, meaning that some RedShirt was worth the same as the ''[[CoolStarship Enterprise]]'' herself; and the Event card "RedAlert," which let you play any number of cards per turn, became a GameBreaker of ludicrous proportion. The second edition of the game put a resource system into play, which was a lot more sensible.

* The Player. In most [=CCGs=], the player is a non-entity who only kind of interacts with in-game entities. The Planeswalkers of ''Magic: the Gathering'', for example, can be attacked but cannot defend themselves; in ''Pokemon'' you don't even fight your opponent directly, but instead his mons. Likewise, the ''Star Wars'', ''Star Trek'', ''Lord of the Rings'', ''Game of Thrones'', ''Babylon 5'' and ''Wing Commander'' card games don't feature any entity corresponding to the player at all; victory is determined by other means, often ScoringPoints. Just about the only exception is ''HearthstoneHeroesOfWarcraft'', where you choose a character class and that class is then represented as an in-game entity. He or she can not only be attacked, but--if equipped with Weapon cards--can attack as well. The logistics of incorporating The Player into the game ''as'' an in-game entity are confusing, but it's a design space that hasn't much been explored.

** Something cool ''SW:CCG'' and ''[=L5R=]'' have done is build the dice into their cards. Almost every card has a "Destiny" value (''Star Wars'') or "Focus" value (''[=L5R=]''), and during any circumstances where skill, chance and circumstance should help decide the outcome of an event ({{Sword Fight}}s, aiming torpedoes at the Death Star, contests of wills), each player drew the top card of their deck and added the value to whatever totals they were already counting. ''Star Wars'' took this an extra step and made a card's Destiny value roughly ''inverse'' to its PowerLevels. UnderdogsNeverLose in that galaxy far, far away, because TheForce is with them; by enforcing this trope, Decipher not only added flavor but helped newer players (with weaker cards) compete against people who had sunk more money into their decks. ''And'' this adds a LuckManipulationMechanic where, with the right cards, you can "stack your deck" to give yourself favorable Destiny / Focus values.

* Card Draws: ''Magic'' only lets you draw one card per turn. This can make it a very slow game, and increases the importance of deck-building and deck optimization. Games where you can draw more cards are faster, and potentially more fun, because everyone has more options, but also means that a skilled player can run away with the game more swiftly since s/he is more rapidly handed the tools they need to do so.

Make sure your rules are neither too stifling nor too open. If you can't do anything creative with the ''cards'', your only option is PowerCreep: the business of increasing those cards' PowerLevels until they're OverNineThousand. ''SW:CCG'' was particularly notorious for this; eventually it even overwhelmed the Destiny mechanic because so many important characters became ImmuneToFate in varying degrees. The opposite, rules that are not specific enough, encourages you to just keep developing "Complexity Creep"--NewRulesAsThePlotDemands, which is just as bad. ''ST:CCG'' is the banner example here. At the beginning of First Edition, it had [[labelnote:eight card types]]Mission, Dilemma, Artifact; Personnel, Ship, Equipment; Event, Interrupt[[/labelnote]], but each new expansion introduced some new gameplay mechanic, and by the end, it had ''seventeen''. Second Edition launched with only seven card types and remained that way forever; its rulebook is also quite a bit shorter. Complexity Creep is just as dangerous as PowerCreep, and while both are inevitable, you want to keep them to a minimum.

Also, ''play games''. As many of them as possible. The more overview you have, the better, and the easier it is to steal from ''everybody'' instead of plagiarize from just one game. And stealing from everybody is called "research."

[[http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Archive.aspx?author=Mark%20Rosewater Mark Rosewater]]. He writes one of the most comprehensive design columns on the Internet; game designers and would-be game designers from every genre and medium tune in every Monday to see his brilliance. And, since he's one of the lead designers of ''Magic'', much of his advice is tailored to this genre. In particular, his articles "[[http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/174 Ten Things Every Game Needs]]," [[http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/28 Magic Design Seminar: Looking Within]] and [[http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/218 When Cards Go Bad (Revisited)]] are so on-point that we could have just copy-pasted them here instead of all the original research we've done. But that would be plagiarism. AndThatsTerrible.

* The Player. In most [=CCGs=], the player is a non-entity who only kind of interacts with in-game entities. The Planeswalkers of ''Magic: the Gathering'', for example, can be attacked but cannot defend themselves; in ''Pokemon'' you don't even fight your opponent directly, but instead his mons. Likewise, the ''Star Wars'', ''Star Trek'', ''Lord of the Rings'', ''Game of Thrones'', ''Babylon 5'' and ''Wing Commander'' card games don't feature any entity corresponding to the player at all; victory is determined by other means, often ScoringPoints. Just about the only exception is ''HearthstoneHeroesOfWarcraft'', where you choose a character class and that class is then represented as an in-game entity. He or she can not only be attacked, but--if equipped with Weapon cards--can attack as well.

* VariablePlayerGoals. As mentioned, you need them. But that means you need to decide what they are. And, unfortunately, the sky's the limit, since [=CCGs=] can take place in any milieu and focus on any scope, from one-on-one fistfights to games of thrones to saving the galaxy from evil.

As previously mentioned, you'll want to balance the game's difficulty very carefully. You want it to be easy enough to be accessible, but with enough depth to really suck people in. One of the simplest ways to do this is to make some of the rules only matter in certain situations. For instance, one of the rules of ''Magic'' is that if you ever have to draw a card from your deck, but can't (IE you're out of deck), you lose. Because it takes more than 50 turns to get to this point in the normal course of things, most beginning players can safely ignore this rule. Eventually, however, it'll crop up... and probably in such a surprising fashion ("Wait, I can lose to ''that''? Let me get the instruction manual.") that they'll never forget it, and then later try to design a strategy that allows them to "deck" their opponent as they themselves were decked. Have as many rules as you want... but make as many of them ''optional'' as possible, so that the game can be played very easily using a bare minimum of them.

So what do we do? Keep the new rules ''on individual cards''. Many ''Magic'' cards actually break the game's rules ("[[IntangibleMan 'Shadow']]? This creature can't be blocked in certain cases?"). And Rule Zero of ''Magic'' is, "If a card ever says it can break the rules, the card is right." But the end result is that the cards ''carry new rules with them''. To aid this, cards meant for beginners will often have reminder text on them, explaining how they break the rules and what that means. This is still NewRulesAsThePlotDemands, but at least many of those rules can be ignored. ''Magic'' also tends to keep real rule-breakers to rare or at least uncommon, limiting new players' exposure to them. But the point we're trying to make is to leave yourself space for new rules on ''cards'', not in the rulebook. Ideally the rulebook should never have to change from the day of first printing to the day your game is finally canceled. (That's obviously impossible, but less impossible than you think.)

If you are going to have VariablePlayerGoals, you absolutely ''must'' have that ever-elusive quality "depth" in the sense that each goal needs to give you the capacity to interfere with a player who is trying to win the game some other way. As an example, the four characters described above (Eric, Grevon, Lenoia, Corlan) are the main characters in a CCG this editor (Tropers/SlvstrChung) was trying to create in which they compete to see which of them will succeed their father on the throne. Each character had their own power base--Grevon from the military, Corlan from wizards, Lenoia from the priesthood, and Eric from the smallfolk--and could leverage their influence to ''steal'' characters another sibling (IE player) had already deployed. In addition to trying to win a Popularity Victory (have supporters with Influence totaling X) or a Last-Man-Standing Victory (shame the opponents into withdrawing), there was also LoopholeAbuse: getting popular doesn't make you king, plunking your arse on the throne does, and politics is simply a means to that end. If you can simply [[CuttingTheKnot sneak your heir into the throne room]]... This would be the "passive," defensive win condition, but it obviously leaves such a player vulnerable: they're busy assembling their StealthBasedMission and can have important supporters poached by the opposition. As such, the business of ''plotting'' an infiltration needs to give that player certain bonuses, which either help protect their most-important followers or weaken the enemy's support, making it easier for you or someone else to knock them out of the race. And that made life difficult for me, the designer. But no matter which goal The Player is pursuing, I knew s/he ''must'' have some ways of competing towards the other ones, if only to defend themselves.

(The real reason slvstrChung abandoned this idea was that he couldn't figure out how to prevent it from turning into a ''stealing'' card game--packing up your deck, shaking your opponent's hand, and only ten minutes later realizing you've walked away with five cards that used to belong to him, and that he has three of yours. Even worse, ''he'' managed to convert that ultra-rare of yours during gameplay, and good luck getting it back from him. Yeah, this sounds like a ''great'' model for a card game.)

[[http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Archive.aspx?author=Mark%20Rosewater Mark Rosewater]]. He writes one of the most comprehensive design columns on the Internet; and, since he's one of the lead designers of ''Magic'', much of his advice is tailored to this genre. In particular, his articles "[[http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/174 Ten Things Every Game Needs]]," [[http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/28 Magic Design Seminar: Looking Within]] and [[http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/218 When Cards Go Bad (Revisited)]] are so on-point that we could have just copy-pasted them here instead of all the original research we've done. But that would be plagiarism. AndThatsTerrible.

** The cost ''itself'' can be variable. ''Magic'' and ''{{Pokemon}}'' only let you play one new {{Mana}} a turn, which delays powerful attacks for a few turns. However, this built an additional WeaksauceWeakness into the game: if you simply didn't ''have'' Mana to deploy, or your opponent was able to destroy it, you were screwed. ''LegendOfTheFiveRings'' let you play as many "Holding" cards, which provide "Gold" for purchasing other cards, as you wanted, but each Holding ''itself'' costs gold, and furthermore your hand[[hottip:*:Yeah, yeah, Provinces; we're trying not to be too technical here]] is only four cards large. Decipher's ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' card game used an innovative "twilight pool" mechanic: playing good-guy cards added points to the pool, and playing bad-guy cards removed them.[[hottip:*:This worked in a multiplayer setting because each player had a personal Fellowship they were trying to win with; the people who weren't taking their turn collectively represented Sauron.]] In other words, you could only do good stuff for yourself at the cost of ''enabling'' the opponent to do good stuff for themselves. And ''[=ST:2E=]'' gave you a permanent limit of seven points each turn, which you could spend on playing cards from hand (each card had its point cost clearly marked) and/or drawing cards ''into'' hand (1 point per card).

Another nice advantage about starting your own Intellectual Property is the ability to avoid CCGImportanceDissonance, something that both the ''[=LotR=]'' CCG and the ''Middle-Earth'' CCG before it fell serious prey to. Not only do you not have to create filler cards out of Extra Of The Week #13, you aren't ''bound'' to that model by the franchise's existing story. Most stories have these things called MainCharacters who appear in almost every instalment of the series; these cards will be--are required by the FanDumb to be--the most powerful cards in the game. If "Third Orc From The Left" is able to take on Frodo and win, fans will scream that the game is ruined... even though the same thing results if you let Frodo hand out {{Curb Stomp Battle}}s (which would not only make him a GameBreaker but is CanonDefilement!). This is where that whole VariablePlayerGoals thing can come in handy. Frodo does not and has never had the combat chops to win a MultiMookMelee[[hottip:*:Fun fact: according to TheOtherWiki, Frodo was a MartialPacifist and never actually killed a sentient creature in his life]], but he is also the Ring-bearer and is gifted with some level of IncorruptiblePurePureness. Give him extra resistance to the Ring's temptation mechanic and suddenly he doesn't look so useless.

Make sure your rules are neither too stifling nor too open. If you can't do anything creative with the ''cards'', your only option is PowerCreep: the business of increasing those cards' PowerLevels until they're OverNineThousand. ''SW:CCG'' was particularly notorious for this; eventually it even overwhelmed the Destiny mechanic because so many important characters became ImmuneToFate in varying degrees. The opposite, rules that are not specific enough, encourages you to just keep developing "Complexity Creep"--NewRulesAsThePlotDemands, which is just as bad. ''ST:CCG'' is the banner example here. At the beginning of First Edition, it had [[hottip:eight card types:Mission, Dilemma, Artifact; Personnel, Ship, Equipment; Event, Interrupt]], but each new expansion introduced some new gameplay mechanic, and by the end, it had ''seventeen''. Second Edition launched with only seven card types and remained that way forever; its rulebook is also quite a bit shorter. Complexity Creep is just as dangerous as PowerCreep, and while both are inevitable, you want to keep them to a minimum.

[[Hecatomb]] was a card game with few, but devoted adherents designed by WizardsOfTheCoast. It had a number of similarities to Magic, but primarily diverged in two ways: first, players played maniacal villains who sought to destroy worlds to enhance their own power; second, up to five monsters--called minions--could be combined into a larger creature--called an abomination, which augmented one monster with the powers and strength of the others. Because of this mechanic, the cards were five sided and plastic so that clear edges could show the abilities of the monsters below. While innovative and fairly novel, this made cards a good deal more expensive to produce, and it was a somewhat common occurrence to open a pack and find one or more cards which were cracked and unplayable.

* TradingCardLame. Most [=CCGs=] are adaptations of existing franchises, for reasons that will be discussed in the next section. The only exceptions are ''Magic'', ''LegendOfTheFiveRings'', ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'' (which itself is, by WordOfGod, a ''Magic'' ripoff) and... Well, that's about it, at least where ''popular'' franchises are concerned. (I mean, have you ''heard'' of MagiNation?) Decipher Inc came up with three ''very'' good adaptations--''[=LotR=]'', ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' (eventually expanding to all the rest of the franchise save the [[Film/StarTrek 2009 pre-boot]]) and the ''StarWarsCustomizableCardGame''--but not a single one of them is in print today. And nobody needs to talk about ''Pokemon'' cards. The point is that [=CCGs=] are not exempt from TheProblemWithLicensedGames. The rebuttal is that creating your own Intellectual Property is just as challenging or more so... but again, we'll talk about that further down.

See anything at TradingCardLame. If you can find them. There was a period in TheNineties where game studios were throwing cards at any franchise and seeing what stuck. Most of them didn't.

Second, even more important: ''play''. Don't just play your favorite CCG--in fact, put it aside for at least a month. Instead, go to the bookstore or local gaming shop or comic book store and ''try new TabletopGames''. Play ''DungeonsAndDragons'', or watch people doing ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''. Watch WilWheaton's show WebVideo/{{Tabletop}} on Geek & Sundry. Compare TabletopGame/{{Chess}} to {{Risk}}, TabletopGame/{{Monopoly}} with SettlersOfCatan, TabletopGame/{{Munchkin}} with ApplesToApples. If you're going to create a new game, you need to know what pre-existing games are already doing, so that you can avoid the things you don't like and steal the things you do. And you'll have ''fun''--and isn't that the point of gaming?