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[Naturegirl1999]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=174192.msg7989859#msg7989859
Here is a link to the original thread.

I don’t know how to balance, so I’m hoping things stay balanced or that others will help me keep things balanced
Game Rules
1) You start off each game with 20 hearts, and 5 cards in your hand. For any given game, you and your opponent may decide to start with a different amount of any of those three things.
2) If you have 0 or less hearts, you lose.
3) At the start of each turn, you draw one card.
4) Unless stated otherwise, you can only play one card per turn.
5) Cards also have hearts. If they have 0 hearts, they go away, unless stated otherwise. If a card says it has attack power, it can only damage the player directly if they have no cards defending them.
6) If a card has zero hearts when you play it, it will be destroyed after it does its effect.
7) There is a kind of resource called Stars, and you start the game with 0 of them. Strong Cards cost Stars to play, and they can be gained with the effects of weak cards. This prevents your best cards from being played immediately. Cards may also have effects that cost stars to use. (Stars carry over between turns)
The player who goes second starts the game with one star.
9) You can also make up your own resources for your cards if you really want.
10) Cards cannot attack on the turn they are played unless otherwise stated, and can only attack once per turn unless otherwise stated. When a card attacks another card, both cards lose hearts equal to the other card's attack
11) By default, if a card is face down it cannot be attacked. Cards may be attackable when face down, in which case this must be declared when playing the card.
12) Face Down cards cannot protect you from being attacked until it is flipped up. If a facedown card does something it will be flipped.
13) The game will typically use the honor system, so players can randomize their own deck and draw cards without GM intervention. If you suspect someone is cheating, inform the GM. Its just sad if you feel the need to cheat in this game. For grudge matches, you can request the GM do all the random stuff.
14) Strive to avoid situations which will require a retcon. Those are a big pain to clean up.
15) In the event of a disagreement, the GM will decide what happens.
16) Don't be afraid to get creative with your deckbuilding!
17) If a card says it does something "At the end of each turn", this only means your own turns unless it specifically states otherwise.

Relative card strength
A card that costs no stars to play would typically have a combined stat total of 5. (Example, 2 attack and 3 hearts). Useful effects will generally lower this, and detrimental effects can raise it. You can also make cards with no hearts which act like "Spells". Each star a card costs will typically raise its base stat total by 3 or 4. Very high star costs can have ridiculous effects.

Tips
Cards can do all kinds of things if you want them to! Want to attack on the turn a card is played? You can give it an effect to let it do that. Don't like only playing one card per turn? Make some cards that don't count towards the limit, and some other cards that let you draw more cards!

You'll want to consider your "Star economy". You can have just a few cards with a very high star cost, or maybe an equal amount of star generators and star consumers. Or maybe just skip the stars altogether and have a lot of basic cards.

You can give cards effects that trigger when they are destroyed, when they attack, when they are attacked, when played alongside another card, cards with an effect depending on how long the game has been going on for, or any number of things really. Surprise me!

Deck Creation
Decks will start out with 40 cards. This may be negotiable in the future. You can have multiple copies of the same card in your deck and I recommend having at least a few multiples to make this a bit easier on the GM. For each card you want to make, provide the following information. PM your card information to the GM, do not post it in the thread!

1) Card Name
2) Star Cost if applicable
3) Card effects and/or flavor text
4) Hearts and Attack.
5) Card background color (All cards will have a very light background)
6) A picture for the card. All pictures should be 100 x 180 pixels in size. (100 vertical and 180 horizontal)

It is recommended to use exact numbers when discussing what you want a card's stats to be. Submit all cards to the GM for approval. The GM reserves the right to refuse any card for any reason.

Facedown Cards
In the event that a card says it can be placed face down, use this image to represent the face down card. Somewhere along the lines it was decided that this is to be the back of all CYOGTCG cards forever. Its a tradition I don't intend to break.



Player Mechanics
These game mechanics are used by some cards and cannot easily be explained with card text alone. You only need to pay attention to these if a card actually uses them.

Spoiler: Player Mechanics (click to show/hide)

Adjacency: Your cards may be treated as being physically to the left or right of other cards when played, which may make a difference based on certain card effects.
Token: This is a card that is "Created" by another card which is not an actual card you can draw from your deck directly. Tokens should have their own card made for them

Card Creation
Images must be 180 pixels wide and 100 pixels tall

[Unraveller]

(( Are you hosting your own version of the CYOGTCG, Naturegirl, or continuing the previous iteration? Or am I misinterpreting this thread? ))

[Naturegirl1999]

You interpreted it right. I will try hosting the thread, however, I’ve never balanced decks before, Supernerd has, have you?. The idea is to figure out who’s playing who, then have one or two other people who aren’t playing with either of the decks we inspect make sure that the decks in play are balanced. E.g. Player A challenges Player B. Boost A and B submit decks for balance inspection. Players C and D will be PMed about the decks in play and we will discuss whether they are balanced and if not what can be done to balance them. If you see any problems with this thought process lay them out so they can be remedied before the implementation of a flawed balance check system. Also, images should be 180 pixels wide and 100 pixels tall. I was kinda hoping for all the rules to be in one post, will add this to the main post as well

[Supernerd]

Back when I ran the variant of the game you are quoting, I didn't really balance a deck as a whole, and instead balance individual cards based on their own merits. If people want to combine their cards in unexpected ways then that is probably a good thing.

Just to confirm, for this game do we send an entire deck worth of information to the GM straight away?

[Naturegirl1999]

Oh, I thought you did the entire deck. Balancing individual cards will be much easier

[Unraveller]

I'll admit, I'm generally not good at balance, I tend to air on the side of 'fun' and more interesting effects to just deal with the fallour afterward. That's partly why I like Supernerd's current iteration, as it puts a little less burden on me for the card specifics, at least at the moment, and I can focus on flavour.

However, if there's anything worth pointing out, at worst, other players who get to see A & B's deck will have the chance to build around them ahead of time. However, that's a case you can chalk up to the honor system. It does do the job of engaging the other players in everyone's deck though, I would think.

[Naturegirl1999]

Hmmm… if some people want to know what the cards do exactly and others want the effects to be chosen by someone else to focus on flsvor,  maybe people can submit either partial or full cards as they see fit, like, in your case you seem to not want to worry as much about effects, so you could send a card with the other information that you do want to lock in, and I can fill in any blanks left. This does app.y to all players, you were used in this example since you mentioned the possibility. Does quoting keep things at scale? I’m assuming it does, I’m assuming the face down card is to scale. Is this a correct assumption?

[Unraveller]

Oh, I'm by no means complaining about that fact, I'll do my best to build a sensible forty card deck along with everyone else, I'll still enjoy doing this as it's a little different for me. c:

Quoting shouldn't change the image scale if you go to the ing link, they're still from the same source URL.

[Naturegirl1999]

Ok. I found a face up card and changed the text and image, mainly for size purposes, the text is supposed to be the same size, but I don’t know what the original text size was so I guessed

Spoiler: Card Template for Size Comparisons (click to show/hide)

[Supernerd]

Here's a blank template. I use font size 14 when I am able to, but its okay to use a much smaller text if it is required to fit an effect.

[Naturegirl1999]

Thanks. Now templates are here for people to use

Spoiler: Sample Card (please tell if it’s balanced) (click to show/hide)

[Supernerd]

I've submitted my deck information. (Don't let me get away with something I shouldn't just because of my history with CYOGTCG)
As for the Sample card, it looks like you are on the right track. I might be inclined to let it have one more heart or something personally.

[Unraveller]

(( It'll take me some time to get a whole deck out, a lot of thinking has to go into it. More likely I''ll just choose a fun theme I like and put together some hastily unplanned nonsense. Haha. ))

[Unraveller]

(( Double post, but I'm making good progress! I've got a fun theme going on I believe, though I have no idea if this is overtuned or totally weak yet. Haha. We'll see. ))

[Naturegirl1999]

I've submitted my deck information. (Don't let me get away with something I shouldn't just because of my history with CYOGTCG)
As for the Sample card, it looks like you are on the right track. I might be inclined to let it have one more heart or something personally.

really? I thought positive effects warranted a lower stat total as a balance mechanism…is it one good effect=one stat total reduction?