Designing a Card Game

My older son and I have been working on ideas for card games recently. Our first foray is now available for sale. We've played the game quite a bit here at home, and I've also tried it a few times with some local board gamer friends, who really enjoyed it. 

Castles: A Game of Medieval Rivalries 

That's a link to DriveThruCards. 

The game is designed to be quick to learn, easy to play, and fun. Each player is trying to build castles. Castle cards are played in front of you, and each has points, from 1 to 5. Action cards can help you or hinder your opponents. On your turn, draw a card and play a card. Simple. 

 

 

Once one player has five Castle cards in front of them, each other player takes one more turn. The player with the most points (not necessarily the most Castle cards) is the winner. 

A game takes around 15 minutes to play, and with 60 cards in the deck, it should suit games with 2 to 6 players. The most we've had is four players, so far, but that went well. Played/discarded cards get shuffled and made into a new deck when the draw deck is empty, so 6-person games (or more?) don't need to worry about running through all the cards. 

The proceeds will go to Flynn, to help him save up for university expenses. 

I'll post updates with other ideas when we get them worked out.

Disney, hmm?

Just cogitating on some things in the news besides Obama's victory (qualified yea!) [That's about as political as I'm gonna get here, don't worry.]

Disney bought up Marvel a while back, but pretty much have left Marvel to do their own thing. 

Disney repurchased Pixar, but pretty much leave them to do their own thing.

Disney has just purchased ILM, including Star Wars.  After thinking about this, I say good!  At worst, anything they turn out won't be any worse than something Lucas might have done were he inclined to do so.  And thinking about the general quality of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (first and fourth were good, middle two were decent enough) and the John Carter movie (movie was fine, Disney just stuffed it up on marketing and accounting), they'll likely do a good job with any future Star Wars movies.

And getting things away from the Skywalker story would be a good thing, IMO.  We don't need movies about Leia and Han's kids or old Jedi Master Luke, there are novels that already cover those if you care to read them.  Give us some awesome new stories in awesome new parts of the Star Wars Galaxy, please!

Arnold Schwarzenegger is returning as Conan!  King Conan of Aquilonia!  Awesome!  Looking forward to this, even if they don't use one of Howard's original tales (although the Scarlet Citadel or Hour of the Dragon would both make good movies, IMO).  I'm cool with letting original Conan be Original Conan, the comics Conan and the movie Conan being alternate universe things, like how the comic book, old Fox cartoon, and movie X-Men are similar but not the same.

And now Disney is thinking of picking up Hasbro, and WotC.  Well, at least I guess we know who will be making any future Star Wars CCGs and RPGs if this goes through.  Again, if Disney takes a fairly lax hand with WotC the way they have with Marvel and Pixar, this could be good.  If the Mouse House tries to micromanage the gaming business, well, at least we've got the OSR.

Plus, a Bargle movie, or something in the Star Frontiers or Gamma World universes would be cool.  You know Disney will be in charge of future D&D movies, maybe we'll get one that doesn't suck!

Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em

then he bummed a cigarette, asked me for a light

So some people have their panties in a bind about WotC finally trying to do what they do best with the D&D line--sell kids collectible cards.

Why not?  It worked with their minis line.  Sell people on random blind packs of minis for their games, or to play the table-top minis game they came out with.  According to some anecdotal evidence, they made more money off minis than they did off of splatbooks in the mid- to late oughts.

They've made piles of cash with Magic and Pokemon card games.  Why not tie it into their premier RPG?

I'm not playing 4E, and don't plan to ever pick up the books, so why should I be upset that they're 'making the game into something else?'  They've already done that.  That's kind of the point of making a new edition to them.  Remake the game the way they want it, rather than just retread the past.  It's a valid way to view things, even if it's one I don't think is necessary (along with most of the rest of the OSR types).

I'm sitting here wondering, though, if maybe something like a card mechanic might be fun.  I've got several thousand Magic cards sitting in my closet.  They could easily be used for something of the sort.  Maybe not all of them, but enough of them could be used to provide some temporary bonuses and the like in an RPG. 

And I've already shucked out plenty of money for them, so no need to invest in further cards.

Or I could just use the GIMP and make my own...