ANSWERED! Your TCG Design Questions | Talk TCG Q&A

[@tapntcg]

Your advice is up there with kodok big help for getting my game rules and mechanics balanced

[@knoxvillecl]

But his advice is better. Kohdok used to advice buying metazoo cuz "it's a great game" and that aged poorly.

[@tapntcg]

i never liked nor bought meta zoo because it feels something is missing from it, Unfinished and poorly managed but that dosent mean it didnt have people who thought the opposite it had potental, but even so i still hold kodok around the same base with shards insite because kodok gives an honest review on product and explains important tips on marketing presentation and a genuine gameplay review and shards videos are in a different niche of tcg breakdown where he explains how to make the game dos and donts ,they are two sides of one coin watching both of those channels gave my tcg game balance and i appreciate em both equally.

[@ShardTCG]

Thank you. That is a nice comparison. Just to be mentioned in the same sentence as Kohdok is a big wow for me. Thanks again.

[@ShardTCG]

Thanks. I hope none of my advice ages poorly.

[@tapntcg]

@@ShardTCGNo problem! N Lmao me neither

[@danielpayne1597]

I'm designing my own TCG, and I'm also a competitive PoGo player. I thought it was cool that you derived a game system idea from its combat. For me, the whole appeal of PoGo over an actual Pokemon game is battling in real-time, it's helpful for my creative immersion. If Pokemon were real and you ran into a Beedrill, you don't have minutes to decide on what to do, you hurl out your Pokemon to defend yourself with and you issue a command within seconds. I'd love to see a TCG that emphasized this kind of "speed Chess" gameplay.

[@Monquesttcg]

Always providing awesome knowledge and content. Card games definitely don't have to be influenced by other card games like you said you can take something from a board game. For instance, my skills actually come from going to school to learn about game design and programming. So my influence for the card game I have now is actually influenced by different video games. And when I say different video games? I mean in terms of mechanics that I'm using. I played the big three growing Up, And I have some Inspiration from those but I really think that you don't necessarily have to follow it take ideas from them and implement them how you can to fit your game and learn from them. This is for anyone that feels like you have to fall into that mold of doing that. And even if people don't believe in what you're doing or say, it's a terrible idea. Just keep doing it because if it makes you happy to do it. That's what really counts. Also, like you said, you know you're in a battle against the player. And that's awesome because it helps you grow and figure out what makes the card game work and what your audience loves about it.

[@ShardTCG]

Good insight, thanks. It's awesome that you went to school to learn game design. I'm a little jealous.

[@DreadgateTCG]

Building a community. Don't worry about doing it fast. Find just 1 person interested in your game. Get them hooked. Now you have two evangelists. Find a third. So on. Focus on keeping those fans interested and more will come. It is better to have a few people love your game than a lot who think it's meh.

[@ShadowEclipex]

From what I heard the Lorcana situation was actually the other way around. Upper Deck was making the TCG Rush of Ikorr, and then one of the team, Ryan Miller, took some of the mechanics and went to Ravensburger and Disney to get a license to make a Lorcana. It might look the other way around since Ravensburger was able to get Lorcana out first.

[@DragonsTCG]

Awesome video as always! I really appreciate the talk tcg series and it really helps me with creating my game. You always have some usefull insight in every video that I end up using for myself. Thanks alot!

[@ShardTCG]

Thanks so much. I'll keep trying to bring fresh insight. Though it is getting harder not to repeat myself. But sometimes a refresher helps, too.

[@Abagail_ari]

hey great video! The idea of homemade indie TCG reviews sounds like a great video series!

[@neuroscape]

I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE! :)

[@CrytterCountryTCG]

Woohoo! thanks for the tips! always useful!

[@obiwon1237]

26:05 Well done for staying humble and not getting defensive.

[@monopoliz___2856]

I got about 30 cards and made good progress for a months work. I like the idea people had started with making board games. I have a dozen board games I made and could incorporate parts of them into my card game.

[@p3rditious638]

I also started with board and card games (I have around 18-20) and it definitely helped me. Especially around game pacing and, in testing my board and card games, working out how others might think about or interpret my rulesets and language used

[@setlight]

Beautiful video man!! Thank you so much for that!

[@ShardTCG]

Thank you!

[@TheGoblinGod]

Great video! I found you today and I watched many of your videos. I must say... It's nice to see that other people wants to make their own card game too. I'm working hard on my tcg since a year now and I'm already hit the 300 different cards. I have some ideas and some sort of "deck themes" I'm trying out. The most important thing is to test it all. I want to make the game as balanced as possible and I don't want to have some cards to dominate the game. Sure... I made some cards that looks like "staples" but I like it when you can use any kind of card in your deck. I also don't like the concept of a Bannlist or set rotation. Every card in the game should be playable. On a certain point it will getting hard to handle this, but I had an idea to getting prepared for this. Erratas! My concept of my "Creatures" are very simple.. They have HP(Health Points) and AP(Attack Points) and some sort of costs like mana in mtg or like stars in Yugioh and at least a text box with their ability's. So if a card should be toooo strong I was thinking about to change one of those 3 types HP/AP/Cost and bring the new version out as some promos or something. But I'm not sure about that. If all creatures that costs 3 maybe have some 2-3AP and low HP then Why should I give another 3 cost creature give maybe 6 or 7 AP and a high amount of HP? So maybe you should change the HP or AP of that card to make it "fair" and not broken. Ye I know a sort of power creep will exist in your game, but thats a point I was thinking about since a few month. What you're guys thinking about that problem?

[@danielpayne1597]

I'd love to try out your game. You can make digital cards using Dextrous and import them into Tabletop Simulator. What I'm doing to avoid power creep -- at least mitigate and put a hard ban on increasing overall Might of cards -- is using math and spreadsheets to keep all cards within certain parameters. The highest total potential damage of a card, resource costs, and ability types will be tracked. The easiest example of this is that no character in my game will have more than 10 HP. With that line in the sand, I can avoid the temptation to just make BEEGer stompies.

[@bettasteve]

Love these videos super helpful!

[@ShardTCG]

Thank you!

[@deadlypandaghost]

TCG is just a distribution model. Can you do an analysis video of other distribution model options for deckbuilding card games?

[@sawderf741]

Deck building card games are a lot more like board games as far as buyers are concerned.

[@Slurmy]

A question I had, is what do you feel about a TCG about real life creatures? For example, bugs and so on. I grew up in a household where MTG and pokemon were banned because of the demonic side of MTG and the evolution side of pokemon. So I had an idea for a card game where people could enjoy it even if they grew up in a household like mine. I know not everyone grew up like I did but I also wanted to include those that did too

[@sawderf741]

Have you heard about the game Redemption? It's the second oldest tcg still in print.

[@danielpayne1597]

You could take the premise of the TierZoo channel and make a TCG out of it. I'd play it. Build me a cat deck and maybe sprinkle a hippo in there as a nasty surprise.

[@setcreature]

ngl, when you said "sometimes you're not in an artistic mood", legit thought you said "sometimes you're not in an autistic mood", and i was just thinking "you can't exactly turn autism off", then i realised. Fantastic advice btw :)

[@ShardTCG]

Careful. You'll attract someone who thinks they can identify as autistic because they "feel" autistic sometimes 😂

[@mannyweinhaus9975]

You have to tell us! How did you make such a beautiful website!? And are there templates out there we can buy/download?!!

[@ShardTCG]

Oooh, the website is Richard's creation. He built it from scratch and even built it with a Shard TCG card maker on the site. He has put 100s of hours into that site, and I couldn't tell you where to start to replicate it. Sorry about that.

[@getrobed648]

What if I'm scared people may not like my TCG but I'm already in the process of slowly putting it together?

[@ShardTCG]

I'm still scared every time I make a change to my TCG or make a new video. You don't want to let people down. It's okay to feel that way. To risk showing your work and who you are is to risk offending someone or disappointing someone. But we do it anyway because the alternative of living in fear and silence is not a real option we can take and still expect to live a happy and fulfilling life.

[@MathewGX]

What's the best way to play test a card game if you don't know anybody to play test your game with? It would be nice to get some feedback from someone else in regards to how my game is going rather than have to start from scratch every time I have doubts about how a certain mechanic works.

[@monopoliz___2856]

Try playing chess as solitaire and play competitive against yourself. I did this with magic the gathering playing one d3ck as solitaire versus itself to. Can see it's strengths and weaknesses. Could upload a solo gameplay to KZbin to rewatch it and analyze it

[@monopoliz___2856]

I playtest3d a few of my my risk type board games solo back.in the day with a patron tequila or cognac

[@MathewGX]

@@monopoliz___2856 That's part of the problem I run into. I'll design a system that seems good, play test a few games by myself, and end up rewriting the entire rulebook some time down the line. It's hard for me to discern on my own which ideas are worth keeping and which ideas are worth scrapping.

[@rlwarner777]

Did you check on Meetup for groups that are for board game crafters? Although any group of board gamers would play your game if the rules were fleshed out.

[@OniBoiXD]

you can also play online with table top similar or untap...im pretty sure there are more out there too

[@knoxvillecl]

Am i getting crucified for using ai in my game? Like, getting a baseline for the image and use ai to improve the composition like game devs do when creating skill icons.

[@DragonsTCG]

I'm not sure what the community as a whole thinks about it, but in my game I use ai art for all of my cards. The actual design/template is created by me but again the artworks are ai. I think it is a great option especially if you want hight quality art or if you can't draw (like me). I think it is a medium like any other, but I understand that some people consider it stealing (which i dont) and might get upset. The game tainted legacy tcg does exactly what you describe and you could see if he has any thought on the matter.

[@Abagail_ari]

I'm tryin to remember a quote from this KZbinr who said in his stream. I think it's something like, "I don't care how it was made. If the game is good, I'll play it." Use whatever you need. If you don't have the time, skill, money, or patience to draw, have drawn, or Photoshop'd, then use AI. Focus your talents on the rules, gameplay, expansions, lore, mechanics, etc.. But, since you're not devoting time to the art, everything else better be awesome!

[@ShardTCG]

There is a stigma around using ai art. It removes skill to just generate images. Aesthetics matter, but the game design in how it plays is MORE important. So continue with what you are doing. If it is a good game with fun, engaging mechanics, then your audience will not care where the art comes from.

[@danielpayne1597]

@@ShardTCG You've said this elsewhere, but when using AI-art, be sure to look into where they generate images from. Some of those programs just yoink images without permission, and that's where a lot of the stigma comes from. As for me, I'll either use AI art or steal Pinterest art until I can pay an artist. No, I'm not selling anything with other peoples' art used illegally, but for game-testing purposes, I will use whatever art makes me happy. As you said, game mechanics matter more, though I will say the desire to play a TCG can diminish if it looks awful. Yu-Gi-Oh! just barely passes my aesthetic low bar with its card design. The art in the box looks fine, but the rest of the card (boring/uninspired card back, monocolor card front background) really diminish my desire to look at the game as anything more than an overcomplicated power sprint. Pokemon cards, by contrast, are designed beautifully. All the information is on the card without taking up huge blocks of space, and half of the cards are dedicated to the art. Motivates me much more to play it.

[@IMPOSTERPEELY]

Do you think it’s OK to use AI art ?

[@sawderf741]

For test cards yes. But AI uses other artists assets without permission. The AI can only function by using other artists artwork.

[@sawderf741]

Whether you use AI art is up to you. I don't think using invalidates your game. Your game is still unique.

[@IMPOSTERPEELY]

@@sawderf741 I’m not planning on using AI I was but I felt like it wouldn’t be my game

[@danielpayne1597]

@@IMPOSTERPEELY I recommend using whatever images you want while in the playtesting/designing phase. Then when you're ready to distribute, hire an artist, or at least ensure the AI art generation program you're using has permissions for all the art it's pulling from, as some will just rip from any image on the Internet sans permission like what sawder said. Me, I'm going to rip whatever art I want from Pinterest while in the designing phase. I want something nice to look at while I focus on the design, otherwise the ugly / overly simplistic stand-ins will distract me. I will, of course, not steal the art when I get to distributing, by that time I'll either hire an artist or follow my above advice on the AI art generation.

[@alejandrofernandez4159]

Extremely off topic, but you're incredibly handsome.

[@ThomasCKFuller]

22:33 Dont give them any ideas bRO!

[@obiwon1237]

14:49 my old chick

[@dumi4688]

wow i never knew you can't copyright your mechanics... no wonder so many new games are so similar to mtg and digimon... kinda of a let down as i have created a game with pretty unique mechanics, it feels so much different from the big 3 T.T i was hoping i could've copyrighted the mechanics / gameplay as a whole

[@danielpayne1597]

Attempting to patent gameplay mechanics just strips all opposition of any options and it's terrible for the industry. See also: Nintendo's shitty behavior with the PalWorld lawsuit. Ninty thinks it should have sole ownership of capturing creatures and sphere-like objects.

[@raysandrarexxia941]

Raysandra Rexxia

[@ShardTCG]

Got it. Thanks.

[@raysandrarexxia941]

@ShardTCG hehe I thought it was funny, thank you for answering my question

[@obiwon1237]

26:05 Well done for staying humble and not getting defensive.