20 Lessons on How to Make a TCG | Reacting to Mark Rosewater | TCG R&D

[@Jorzilla]

Just a quick point of clarification on Tibalt for Lesson 12. Cheaper cards are Magic in good, this is for well-discussed reasons (flexibility, double spell turns, etc.). Planeswalkers are some of the best cards in the game (you can run as many as you get in draft, or up to 4 copies in constructed formats, and commander was pretty new at Tibalt's release which is singleton) as they are mini-card advantage engines and add to your life total (you can attack planeswalkers instead of the player). The issue with Tibalt is that everything said he should be good, but he wasn't. Players spent too long trying to make a bad card work, because they had been trained into thinking it should be good. So the lesson is make sure cards live up to player expectations.

[@JamesJP]

I think this is my longest video (except streams). I really wanted to keep it to around 20 minutes, but it was quite the challenge 😅

[@epicunderworlds5693]

Dude I loved this, inspired me so much! Thanks for putting in the time to make these longer videos

[@ShardTCG]

I'll probably slide back into the 10 to 20 minute videos for my usual uploads, but a nice chunky vid every now and then breaks things up a bit. Thanks!

[@AutisticBoardGamer]

Lesson 1: the "human nature" he's talking about is already learned behaviors in your game and from other games. In a MtG player's head is normally when a creature has been "out" of the hand for awhile it can attack and suspend creature FEEL like they have been out.

[@mageslime]

Phasing was confusing for the opposite reason. It counted as being in play even though it kind of wasn't, and that was first

[@mondoyikes]

Heyy this lecture was the most inspiring thing for me that lead me to the decision of starting my design. Love your commentary on his points 😁 very important indeed

[@ShardTCG]

It's a great lecture, and I am never disappointed when I revisit it, time after time.

[@SenkaZver]

24:40 my favorite MtG deck was a self mill deck. 100 cards thick but enough mill and scry that I burned through it quickly and drew what I needed. The trick is to give enough control to the player so they can minimize milling cards they want to play and tools so they can play from the graveyard or retrieve cards from the graveyard, so milling doesn't exclude them from playing their cards. Very hard to balance and oddly YGO does it well. Digimon too.

[@duyduong9608]

Hey James! Great video as always! I recommend you check out Kohdok’s 7 deadly sins of TCGs. His channel has a plethora of TCG knowledge and it’s be neat to hear your thoughts regarding his lessons

[@ShardTCG]

Kohdok is great! I am a big fan. The challenge is adding anything on top of what he has to say because he always goes very in depth. I will give some videos of his another browse and see if ideas spark, thanks!

[@nathant29]

Wow hes back baby

[@AutisticBoardGamer]

Lesson 5: People normally don't mind trashing cards from the deck, they hate to discard cards from the hand. MtG has the Dredge mechanic which is basically the same as the purple color in Digimon.

[@ShardTCG]

If your deck is designed to retrieve those discarded cards later or to use them as a resource then there is less fear of loss as they are not truly lost. But if it is a secluded effect that requires a sacrifice that your deck may not be built to then retrieve again later? That is normally a risk a player isn't willing to take unless the reward is incredibly favourable.

[@AutisticBoardGamer]

@@ShardTCG Ya true, a deck must be built around it. It must have an effective ecosystem. I think at the time that Threshold came out in MtG it wasn't really an established archetype.

[@MrFishCollects]

Great video

[@ShardTCG]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@JustinTuthill]

they do have other types of zombies, probably 12 of the ones mentioned as a bad example, you also don't need to discard cards to have them in your graveyard, that will fill naturally... not going to tear this whole video apart though

[@AutisticBoardGamer]

Lesson 2: Which is weird because blue fire is hotter than red/orange/yellow fire. Logical isn't always the same as "common sense"

[@Kindlesmith70]

22:55 Again a trivial matter of don't like it don't use it, but at the same time create enough options for players to not miss out. Naturally, if you make overpowered cards for a faction/color, you going to want to do the same for the others for balance purposes. If a bad card is made for one faction/color and this isn't also done with the rest you've create an imbalance that will be felt. In tournaments, everyone serious about winning will gravitate to the most powerful cards, which will mean changing their play style to fit the optimal play. Serious tournament players will dump a lot of money into TCGs to obtain the best cards. This ultimately sucks for players who don't have a loaded bank account. So the underlying point is, keep the game balanced in design decision that are made. There is nothing wrong with having created this card, so long as every other faction/color got the same treatment. As far as what you've stated about going for somethiong stronger, that is my sentiment for rubbish (filler) cards. MtG wouldn't have many cards if it only made the strongest ones, but it would level the playing field in terms of card balance.

[@rmcdaniel2424]

You showed your cards a few times on your videos. Where do you get them printed? :)

[@ShardTCG]

On TheGameCrafter. Most of the homemade TCG community get theirs printed there.

[@Kindlesmith70]

11:20 Seems like another busted topic to me. It's an option of play more than a forced mechanic. You can not play with cards of such. I don't get the issue. I'm sure Threshold was made well use of. Aside from MtG there's strategies in other games that are built around playing from/with your discard pile. Fun is a subjective term. One can certainly have fun with discard mechanics. Should I point to Arkham Horror the card game that has a main system built around this? How about the Noldor from Lord of the Ring the card game? I can't imagine backlash for an option of play. Perhaps that set contained that theme too strongly and forced players into this mechanic. I'd agree with problems there. edit: Yes with Digimon TCG. This is a very thinky color, and I made one killer deck for tournies that worked off discarding cards, and bringing them back. It did get me second place once, and first place once. This against really strong decks like the Megazoo and Green that were leading at the time in my area. It certainly wasn't an easy deck to play. Big brain requirements under a time limit isn't my strong suit, but I pulled through with it the two times I used it. Point being this play mechanic is an option, as every other color played a different way. You aren't forced into playing this way. If you were worried about trashing cards you should have used cards that bring them back too. I stopped after BT6-7 (I think) because the power creep became too big which invalidated a lot of cards from previous sets. edit 2: The next point is the very reason options are great which is what I was talking about. 24:47 My winning purple deck in Digimon TCG.

[@SparePartsCartoon]

What is the event the guy is speaking at? I’d like to watch the whole thing

[@ShardTCG]

It's the GDC event. I have a link to the video in the video description.

[@SparePartsCartoon]

Awesome thx! I’m creating a game and this was very helpful!!

[@Kindlesmith70]

I'd like to share my experience with a very broken card game called Final Fantasy TCG. I have a love/hate relationship with the mechanics. It's not terrible, but the lack of options, and extreme inbalance does make it less appealing to even touch. I can honestly say booster packs are a worthless investment for playing purposes. Far better to know the deck you want and buy the cards individually. There's a lot of bad (suboptimal) cards in this game. It's been discovered there is one deck type that will win every given game against decks that don't follow the same design. You don't need to use the exact same cards as there is some (little) flexibility to designing it. This deck is just brutally unfun to play against unless you are using the same kind of strategy. All cards in the deck fuel the concept of punishing the opponent. As with MtG the way to win is to attack the player enough times which may involved removing opponent's cards from the board to deny them doing the same in return. This deck strategy punishes both actions, and constantly moves towards winning. They attack, they suffer the consqeunce. They remove cards from the table, they suffer the consequence. If they don't do anything you will build up a stronger board, and continually beat them down which may result in further punishment if this costs you your card. We played one Final Fantasy tournament in our local game store, and it never got another tournament again. The end came down to myself and my friend facing off, and it was all a matter of who got their cards first. Our decks were similar, but not the same, utilizing the same strategy. i ended up winning, him placing second. It was a good laugh playing the mirror match. nobody else utilized such a strategy, but there was one guy who had brought a very dangerous Samurai deck. Thankfully my cards never allowed him to build up a board to become a runaway threat. Everything in his deck synergized super well if he managed to have enough things on the table he'd be undefeatable. His deck genuinely terrified me even though he had little chance XD

[@Kindlesmith70]

39:34 I call that ignorance to world that is being created. Your naming conventions for things for the world create should be evident to the player in manner that doesn't rely on their notions of what is and what isn't. If your zombies are bat creatures, that's fine as long as the term isn't dumped in front of them first to create a misconception. You will find that elves, goblins, and orcs aren't the same across the board. Elves in Tolkein are long lived race as tall as humans, and very pretty. Compare that to European folklore that depict elf as any mischievous supernatural being. Santa's elves certainly don't meet the same image as typical fantasy troupes. Orcs from Warhammer Fantasy/40,000 are different from orcs in Tolkein, which are also different from orcs in the anime Slayers (1995+). Goblins also vary. Goblins in Warhammer Fantasy vs goblins in Pathfinder rpg vs goblins in Faery: Legends of Avalon. Goblin is even used in folklore to signify any kinds of evil/mischievous supernatural being. Even with your term of zombies, there are many different types, and each function while in similar ways have different aspects to them. Consider Last Of Us "zombies" to Return of the Living Dead, to 28 Days/Weeks Later. I feel it is a cop-out to be held back by public knowledge.

[@TastySnackies]

Hey James, good video! Without Mark, most of us designers wouldn’t be here. If you’d like, I wanna show you an in-progress demo of my TCG through Tabletop Simulator, because I’m interested in receiving feedback from you as another game designer. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll send you my email

[@ShardTCG]

Sure, we can make it happen. Thanks for asking.