Make Your Own TCGs?

[deathmasterb]

Has anyone here ever tried making their own TCGs? I try to be creative, but they always tend to be based on my past favourites, or variations of them. I had a few spoof games of Yu-Gi-Oh! that turned out all right, with relaxed rules and cards based on occupations (like bus driver or accountant), but right now I'm working on a game where you can level up your cards and play as a card yourself.

Does anyone else have hobbies like this? Let's hear about it. Ideally, I'd like to find a site where people can get together online and develop their own joint TCG, post ideas, artwork, etc. Where the players can also be the development team.

[Phades]

I haven't tried to make a card game myself, but you might want to read up on the following in order to get some ideas on what and how you could get some stuff to work for you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheapass_Games

[deathmasterb]

Thanks. I love the name of that company. At first I thought it was a joke. I'll definitely do some reading up on it.

[Phades]

Researching Atlas games (for card games not video games) would be useful too. Simply stated lunch money owns and is a very simple setup for a card game, but usually a good time too.

[Escaflowne]

Hmm... making your own TCG's could be fun. Even an online TCG could actually work - maybe I'll make one as a hobby. I'm not that good at art though.

[DanTheTimid]

I used to make TCGs as a kid all the time, I'd make like a 50 card set then photo copy them and give them to all my friends, we'd build decks, and we'd play each other. In late highschool I made a pretty unique card game that I never printed, only made in notepad form, that was based off a story I had written. In early college I programmed a computer game, it was basically an adventure game (think phoenix wright, monkey island, sam and max, etc) but I had other mini games in it, one of them introduced in the second chapter, was a tcg card game, to advance to the next chapter you had to buy an item and you could win money via playing the card game. You got a weak starter but could buy packs of cards to help you build a stronger deck and fight stronger opponents who gave bigger money payouts thus getting the money faster, that was the only part where you ever HAD to play the card game at all, after that it only showed up as something extra you could do to get extra non-essential items or features unlocked since I know not everyone cares for card games and I didn't want to make it the focus of the game.

[Phades]

Yeah, going from a pure design perspective, the options are rather limitless really. Essentially it comes down to what makes the most sense and which options are the most efficient at achieving the original "vision" the designed had for the game. Tuning a game (aka balance) is different, since you are taking existing properties and adjusting them to mesh together better. I think many games going through design focus more on implementation rather than effect and impact overal. Both really need to be considered, in order for it to be a "serious" offering.

Of course in dan's example, moving into the coding format opens up options radically as well, allowing the designer to splice themes together in order to give variety within play experience and allows the user to choose which options they like the best.

[Harion]

Here's a make your own tcg forum i stumbled upon

TCGplayer

[Rebaillion]

Do you think it would ever be possible for online card games to not just play cards in a 2d playing field, but also on the walls and ceilings?

[Sumiko]

In many ways.

As if the field is shown as a 3d model, changing some textures should work - advanced programming stuff durrrrrr.

Other ways require 2d image trickery.