Print on Demand CCG Rules review-

[daMoose_Neo]

Since coming here little more than a year ago, its become a little bit of a quest of mine to develop some kind of print-on-demand card game, and by combining it with one of my possibilities for Final Twilight, I just might succeed!

What I have here are the rules for making your own cards under Final Twilight's rules and play system. What I *need*, and I do emphasize need, is some folks to look it over and just run with the card design section. The document here contains the rules to Final Twilight as well as all of the current options for designing the basic cards for the game.
My personal concern is balance, but you don't even need to be an FT player to evaluate that- if anyone could read over the rules and cook up some cards based on the options presented, I'll be able to look over them and know whats busted and what works.

Should this work, this could be a real innovation in CCG development and I would dearly love to get this off the ground! Just looking for balance feedback now, but if rules clarity is an issue I'll gladly address that as well. They're certain to see an overhaul before being included in the final product of this.

File: http://www.neoproductions.net/files/divtest.pdf

[jjsheets]

First, limit the number of rare and uncommon cards in a deck, to say 1 rare per 4 common cards, and 1 uncommon per 2 common cards.  Without a limit like this the only thing stopping a player from making an army of rare cards is the associated Moren/$ cost, but with such a huge number of rare cards, I'd think that would be easy to overcome.  Nip it in the bud, and players will HAVE to play on an even field.  Force rare cards to be actually rare, and uncommon cards to actually be uncommon, and not just by limiting the number of identical cards in a deck.  Perhaps I read that section of your rules wrong, if so, oops.  :)


Next I would limit the number of positive points allowed when creating a card.  Say to one or two times the end point cost of the card.  This will curb any outrageously powerful cards that have numerous "easy" drawbacks.


Some notes on your drawbacks:
Unique should be only 1 drawback point (if any), not two... since it would be extremely easy to create an identical, or nearly identical, copy with a differing faction and name.  Unique cards seem to me to be pointless in a game where cards can be readily designed by the players themselves.


What's to stop a player from making a card with the following limitations:  When (a player) draws a card(-1), once per turn(+1) ...

The +1 gained from once per turn is legal according to your document, and I'd be a fool not to add it to any Timing feature that can happen only once per turn.  If this is intended, fine, but it seems odd, I've never before seen a rule like that in other CCG's... and it seems like a nifty rule loophole to eliminate the cost associated with the timing limitations.

My solution?  Only allow the once per turn when the rules in general or on the card itself make it possible for the timing condition to occur more than once per turn, and spell this out for card designers.  Thus if the card has some rule that allows a player to draw another card, then the card may take the once per turn bonus.

Other Timings that can be loopholed with the once per turn trait:
When (a player) discards a card...
At the beginning/end of each turn...
If a character is killed in a turn this card damaged it... (unless the card is capable of damaging multiple enemies in a single turn)
When this card enters/leaves play...

All of the Timings above that have a negative cost do not cost anything with the added once per turn bonus, which, I'm sure, was not what you intended.  Some of the loopholes possible with once per turn are curbed by the fact that once per turn is worth no points on character cards, but there are still the above loopholes.  I'd allow points for once per turn regardless of card type, but require that whatever is limited this way is reasonable to assume to occur more than once in a given turn at least SOME of the time.


These loopholes, I'm sure, could create a very unbalanced game, if only one player wished to be a rules munchkin.  :)


Nifty card game, and I am very impressed with the idea of a design your own card CCG.


Jeff Sheets