Should we nail down certain gameplay aspects?

Question

After quite a bit of discusson on this in the chat, I believe this question needs to be here.  We have decided on a TCG, so what is going through our minds is MTG, Hearthstone, and the like.  So what things should we set in stone now, and start building the game around?

These would be things such as:

• Does the player have hitpoints? If so, how are they represented?
• Is the default to draw one card per turn?
• Does the discard pile reshuffle into the draw pile when it runs out? Or are you dead?
• What is the deck size? 30? 60? Unlimited?
• How does the player gain mana? What is the maximum amount of mana?
• Is there a tactical battlefield with multiple rows of units? Or just one row? And how many units would be the maximum?
• Is two players the maximum?

There is already a question for attacking and blocking, so I will not include that here.  If any other of these need to have their own questions, feel free to ask it or ask me to ask it.  The answers to these questions will, in my opinion, dramatically affect the basic gameplay of the game.  I'm sure there are other very basic things I am forgetting to include so please sugget those too.

Answer 1

These are the rules for the playtest that Phrancis and Jay did:

 

Each player starts with a deck of 52 cards.  The cards range in strength from 1 to 13, and there are four of each strength in the deck.

 

Before the game begins, each player draws a hand of 5 cards.  The rest of their cards are placed to the side and comprise their Draw deck.  Once destroyed, scrapped, or used, cards are placed in a pile next to the draw deck called the Discard pile.

 

Starting with a randomly chosen player, play alternates back and forth between the players.  The player may play as many cards as they can afford to play during their turn.

 

Each card has a cost in either Mana or Scrap.  Each turn, the players Mana Total increases by 1, starting with 1 on the first turn.  Mana is returned to the current Mana Total at the start of each turn.  Unused mana is lost at the end of a turn.

To gain scrap, a player takes a card that is currently in their field and places it in their discard pile.  Scrap only depletes when it is used, and is only accumulated when cards are scrapped.

 

The goal of the game is reduce the other players health to zero.  Each player starts with 10 health.  Damage is caused to the other player by attacking them directly with units or by spillover damage.  (spells are not currently in the game yet)

 

Each player has a Field in front of them which contains all of the units that they have played.  When a unit is played, it has the Sickness on that turn and may not attack until the next turn.  A player may choose to attack with any unit that does not have the sickness.  There is no limit to the number of units that a player may have on the field.

When a player attacks, if the opposing player has any units in their field, the attacking player must direct their attack against one of those units.  If they have no units in their field, the opposing player may be attacked directly.  If attacking a unit, the Strength of the attacking unit is compared against the Health of the defending unit.  If it is greater, the defending unit is destroyed, and any extra damage carries over against that player as Spillover Damage.  The Strength of the defending unit is also compared against the Health of the attacking unit, and if it is greater, the attacking unit is destroyed.

 

(the rules for spells/buffs are not in here yet but they are in the game)

Answer 2

This answer pretty much consists of stuff that was in my head "by default." I don't know if this is the best way to handle things, this is just what my preconceived notions were.

• Does the player have hitpoints? If so, how are they represented?

Yes. They can be visually represented by current hitpoints over initial hitpoints: 6/10

• Is the default to draw one card per turn?

Yes, but this can be altered by playing "effect cards" or with "unit cards" having appropriate "effect attributes."

• Does the discard pile reshuffle into the draw pile when it runs out? Or are you dead?

Probably reshuffle. Maybe there's more to this, like both players get to reshuffle, or some other significant thing happens... but only if needed for balance.

• What is the deck size? 30? 60? Unlimited?

It seems like it should be a fixed size of around 30 cards. Unlimited could cause premium features to affect game balance (which I think we want to stay away from, we should discuss this separately).

• How does the player gain mana? What is the maximum amount of mana?

I think we're leaning towards Hearthstone-style automatically increasing mana pools. The maximum amount will depend on the overall "mana economy." The mana economy is probably something that will not be determined by the "core components," it will be determined by the "mod" being played. This is something we will have to figure out for the "vanilla" mod while balancing it.

• Is there a tactical battlefield with multiple rows of units? Or just one row? And how many units would be the maximum?

Multiple rows sounds good. Two rows seems like enough. More than three sounds like too many. Could play into attack/defense mechanics. Cards being adjacent to one another within a row could also have special meaning for things like AOE effects.

• Is two players the maximum?

I think we should build a two-player game, but leave things open to allowing more players in the future if it doesn't make things too complicated.

Comments

I actually agree with all of this except for this section

Does the player have hitpoints? If so, how are they represented?
Yes. They can be visually represented by current hitpoints over initial hitpoints: 6/10

I don't think a representation of the initial hitpoints is necessary. It's just a little nitpicky on my end, but every player will know the starting point of their health after playing a game or two, and we don't know yet if we'll have a life gain mechanic. So that would make that a little confusing 15/10 instead of just 15 life

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From the minor three-player experience of MTG that I have, things get a lot more complicated then. I definitely think we should go with two-player only. Yet keeping the code base extensible for three players in the future.