Just finished up a 4 Player Game.
So a brief synopsis. 113 Cards (24 Attack Cards, 21 Event Cards, 11 Common Mates, 3 Unique Mates, 12 Fetish Cards, 17 Bit Cards, 11 Commission Cards, 9 Classes, 2 Class Modifiers)

Completely new test group. It still didn’t take much to teach people how to play, and after the first round or two it was very easy to pick up.

We used a 6 card hand, which seemed to still not make a difference on the time to end the game. The ending scores were very close. 39, 38, 34 and 27 ( the 27 was due to an attack that crippled him ).

It seems that it was still very entertaining to play and an hour and a half still did not feel like I was an hour and a half. So I think perhaps a “house rules” option can be thrown into mix. Less conventions for less time required. I’m certainly going to try that out.

As far as the hand (paw) goes, I’m thinking 6 might be the perfect number. There were some pretty epic Drama and Flame Wars.

So this lead to some really amazing data collection. I can’t wait to get some more games going. I’d also like to thank the good people who joined in for a game and their contributions and feedback.

The Turn.

So at the beginning of your turn, you draw until you have the maximum amount of cards in your hand (also called your ‘paw’). I’ve tried the game with a five card max and a seven card max. I’ve yet to try a six card paw.

The Writer Class gets an addition card that they can hold in their paw.

You can play two cards during your turn. This includes Resource Cards, or other cards ( Bits / Fetishes / Mate / Commissions / Events ).

The Suiter Class gets to play an additional action.

At which point, that ends your turn.

If I go with a six card paw, then you can end anywhere from three to five cards remaining in your paw. This lets you hold onto things that you can’t pay for yet, or attack cards.

Attack cards can be played at any point in the game, and has more of a focus on being played during someone else’s turn. They’re meant to be reactionary and played against cards coming into play or against cards that would benefit someone.

That’s pretty much that. It’s simple, and it should keep things moving fairly quickly. One major problem I’ve noticed in some other games (Dominion) for instance is the everlasting turn. Where a player takes a dozen actions each turn. It slows everything down for everyone and people lose interest. I want to keep people engaged in what’s going on. Limiting someone down to two or three actions keeps things at a reasonable pace.

At this point, I’m back to the point where play testing is going to refine everything, but I’m pretty happy with where this ended up. I think this is where I’ve been pretty successful as far as gameplay.

As an added bonus for this post I was donated a nice graphic to show a typical layout for this game. Much love for the support from Matt.

End Game Conditions currently are pretty simple. If there are Convention cards equal to the number of players, the game is complete. Tally your popularity, whomever has the most, is popufur and wins the game (and life—obviously).

It’s very transparent.

But it seems to take up quite a bit of time to get those all out.

Convention Card
+8 Popularity / 5 Resource Cost

You need at least 3 turns to get to the point where you have the resources to pay for a Convention card, and you can still be the subject of Drama (which makes the card cost an additional resource—or however many Dramas are played).

All the while you’re limiting yourself to playing any other cards along the way. Of course, if you can rush the convention card, other players will be less likely to have enough popularity playing other cards.

I’m toying with the idea of having event modifiers or different types of Convention cards. Generally to reflect the various conventions that actually go on. Originally I had intended to have ‘attendee’ counters. However, I’ve felt that the game really needs less bells and whistles (dice/counters/other items to play a game, it should just be the cards and the people).

The ratio is fair enough, and through some of my play tests, the game has come very close even when one player was trying to rush resources to get to where he could play as many convention cards as possible.

Perhaps I’m barking up the wrong tree and this isn’t what needs to be altered in order to reduce the amount of time to play. It’s just the case of more play testing to work this one out.

Resounding success!

I tested my game among a small group of peers and it works well. The game is very entertaining and not too terribly difficult to learn. Everyone seemed to get the hang of it within the first couple of rounds. Which is more than I could’ve asked for. Simplistic gameplay makes it a better party game and game you can play drunk.

A few minor issues. That I will be trying to fix.

Top among those, is gameplay time. It took a maximum of 2 hours and a minimum of an hour and a half. Of course, getting drinks, discussing various ideas for the game, taking notes, bathroom breaks, getting more drinks did add to the time. However, I really wanted to shoot for a time between 30min to 1hr as a reasonable time for a game. The only real counterpoint to this was in the fact that everyone remained entertained during the duration. Being actively involved does help pass the time, but I want people to be able to sit down play a game OR two instead of being locked into one game is what I’m aiming toward.

We made a change to the mechanics behind the Drama card, and it actually works for the better. Made it a bit more risky to play a card if you don’t have the resources to pay for the card you’re trying to put into play.

Drama Cards cost 0 Resources, and make a card coming into play cost 1 Additional Resource.

I’m on the fence about whether or not you should be forced to Sellback something already in play to pay for it.

So the idea is that you play a card with all the resources you have in your resource pool.  If someone plays drama on top of it, you:

• A) Discard that card.
• B) Are forced to sellback a card already in play to pay for it.

Either way, I’m already in the process of fixing the card to reflect the change to be a 0 Resource card. So, some more play testing will help balance this issue out.

Points at the end of the game were usually very close, and there were several different play styles, and really that means that there’s a non-linear way to win. So that’s a great sign.

But basically this all boils down to more and more play testing. I’m so very glad that the people who’ve played it thus far enjoyed it, and I can’t wait to refine this into a fun little successful game.

Magic the Gathering was probably one of the first card games I was ever exposed to. It was in it’s early early days that I ever saw it, and it made me want to create my own card game… on the backs of my parent’s business cards.

Really, it even spurred on my own art.

I’m diverging.

Resources. I didn’t want to create whole sets of cards dedicated to resources. Magic has Mana/Lands etc. Dominion has Copper/Silver/Gold/Platinum. Even the Pokemon card game has a resource that they use. I wanted something that didn’t pad a deck.

When it comes to deck “building” games, like those mentioned above, it becomes incredibly important that you don’t weigh down your deck with worthless cards, people go through whole formulas in order to devise ratios of how much to how much. Yet, the way I’ve built my game, I wanted it to resemble Munchkin.

I certainly won’t hide the fact that Munchkin has helped in determining the direction that my game has been developed. But certainly it has many influences. Much like this upcoming rule, which has slightly been shaped by the Warcraft TCG.

Rule:

• Resource cards are Normal cards placed face down in your resource pool from your hand.
• The Resource pool is an area set aside in front of you in play.
• You may play 1 Resource per turn, at the beginning of your turn, after you draw.
• When you spend a resource, it is discarded.
• Once a card is played as a Resource card, it cannot be undone.

Pretty simple and straightforward, though I will probably re-word it quite a bit when I actually get around to making a small player’s guide.

So this frees me up from making additional resource cards, when I leave it to the player to decide when they should start pooling their resources to pay for the cards that have a resource cost.

Yet, I’ve taken into account that a lot of things have no costs, bits to add to your fursona, fetishes that you get into, mates… but Commissions? Meets? Conventions? Those have a cost, but are definitely worth more Popularity. A fairly common strategy in Dominion where you just buy resources and focus on gaining victory. So it would be interesting to see if it holds true in this game as well.

Of course, testing will certainly help iron this out—like a lot of other things.

Oh, I entirely loathe coming up with names for various projects, various paintings, and so on and so forth. Why must everything have to have a label?

Regardless, let’s get on with the show.

This is definitely the alpha stage. The cards are in the works as I speak(type), printing, and cutting them up. As I move along I will be putting down ideas, where they came from, how they’ve been adapted. I’ll post rules, things of that nature.

I will start off with the premise though:

Be more popular than everyone else.

Simple as that. In my years in the fandom, I’ve learned that popularity gets you everything you want.  Money, Fame, Hot Blondes in odd positions, Fame. With quick examination of what makes one popular in this fandom: different things on your characters, “taurs”, wings, neon stripes, sparkles, whatever; various fetishes that you’re into also alter your popularity; whom your are mated to. There are other factors yes, but they are less fun to make fun of.

Of course, Popularity comes at a cost. Flames and Drama start to rear their heads in your direction. The two basic attack cards. Flames target things in play, and Drama raises the resource cost of cards coming into play.

I’ll get into resources later.

For now, just know that I made this as something meant to be laughed at, sardonic and a firmly planted tongue in cheek.

Over the course of the development I will post more about what’s going into this whole endeavor and the exciting and frustrating time it takes to develop a Collectible Card Game.