Some card game help needed.

[shortymonster]

Hello there everyone. Although I'm still working on my first written adventure, it's ruddy huge and being more of a time sink than i would like, so I'm taking a break from it for a while. Instead I have an idea for a card game. At the moment it's a very loose idea indeed, I just wondered if there was anything out there in the way of advice for how to structure and balance a card game?

[Onix]

Hmm. . . Shiekjabooty and Vulpinoid have done card mechanics. I don't know of any tutorials that I could point you at, and there are a lot of different ways to use cards. Can you give an idea of what you're trying to accomplish?

[shortymonster]

A character based card game where the aim is to go on improbable adventures with the help of items, gadgets and followers, being hindered by the other players, with victory dependent on the newspaper coverage of successful adventures.

[Onix]

So would the items gadgets and followers be embodied by the cards themselves? Are you looking to create your own deck or use playing cards?

[shortymonster]

I will be creating my own deck. At the moment just thinking of printing off the stuff and cutting the sheets to fit card sleeves for now.

[shortymonster]

Thanks to some reading, I'm chugging along nicely on this project, and might have something ready for private play testing within a week. Quick question though; for a deck of cards that's going to make up most of the game play - including items and player interactions - how many cards should be included? Not just different cards, but how big should the deck be?

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

The complicated thing is, there are dozens or even hundreds of ways to combine the various cards and abilities - so really, it more about play testing ideas and seeing what works than any real guidelines.

With Magic, decks are somewhere between forty and sixty cards, and a third or so are the mana cards needed to power everything. In the Call of Cthlulu living cad game, a factions deck is only thirty to forty, but there are no mana type cards. (Each card may be set aside as fuel, or used according to its text).

Now is this deck per player, or one deck both people draw from? How long do you want the game to last? Is a power or character very strong and hard to replace, or quite expendable?

If you haven't already been there already, check out - its a great repository of free print and play card and board games. I really want to try the game , but printing would be a bit of a chore.

[shortymonster]

Thanks for the suggestions so far, and after one play test, I have cut back on the Adventure deck, but it may still yet grow. We're still play testing it out, but if people want to know how it's going, the first update can be found , and I invite you all to throw your suggestions for Adventure cards into the ring.