(Branching from the Asper's Cards thread)
Without having played with it, I'm leery of Minister. I feel like cost reduction and gaining are such a powerful combo that they don't need to be on the same card. On the other hand it hasn't been done before and it's simple rules-wise. The penalty is also a nice simple thing. I was going to talk about how I prefer fan expansions to be self contained—not needing components (like VP chips) from other sets—but I suppose this isn't an expansion so much as a collection of cards, and it already uses Potions, etc. So nevermind that; cool penalty.
Thanks. I don't consider my cards an expansion, as you said. If anything, it's more of a treasure chest. I mean, i catch myself thinking stuff like "i don't have enough cheap cards" or "i don't have a Cornucopia card, yet", but that's light compared to the complexity of making a realistic expansion that has to follow the rules you mentioned, and many more. If i really wanted to do an expansion, i'd not only have to worry about things like components or card count, but also couldn't reasonably have that many different kinds of cards in it. But looking at Seaside, thinking "Can i make a card that would fit in Seaside?", that's fun to me, and as i'm not going to make money with it either way, Donald doesn't care much about fan cards, and most people here either have the components or play online anyhow, i'm fine with just fooling around.
Wanted to quote the whole message, but this is the specifc part I want to reply to:
I was going to talk about how I prefer fan expansions to be self contained—not needing components (like VP chips) from other sets—but I suppose this isn't an expansion so much as a collection of cards, and it already uses Potions, etc.
I want to throw out my view on this: Whether fan card designers consider a set of their cards to be an expansion or not, I don't see any reason for them not to use mechanics or components of any other set. Let's face it: No fan card expansion is going to be made into an official expansion. No fan card expansion is likely to be published in any kind of widespread or even semi-official way. Whatever tokens or mats fan cards refer to are likely to always use whatever around that is handy as a token or mat (most likely using tokens or mats from an official card or set). If anyone wants to print out a fan card to use, they can also print out any card that the fan card refers to (like ruins or spoils) just as easily if they don't happen to have Dark Ages or whatever official set has the appropriate component(s).
Also, when people critique fan cards, it's fine to make comments on stuff like art or formating, but those are not (IMO) what we should critique when we critique fan cards. Helpful critique helps make the card more fun, whatever that entails. Ease of understanding, preventing confusion, and simplicity are generally all included/involved in making the card more fun, and so are good things to critique on. I hate to complain that my cards don't seem to get much critique compared to other fan cards, but I'm concerned that part of the reason for that is because I'm not receptive to formatting or knitpicky critique* or critique that conflicts with my fan expansion philosophy in the previous paragraph. I would like to suggest focussing our critiques on helping to make fan cards more fun to play with.
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*And there has been at least once instance where certain critique seemed knitpicky to me, but it turned out the way my card worked conflicted with official rules, and that causes confusion which isn't fun. The line between knitpicky and helpful is fuzzy sometimes, so I need to consider more carefully the things that initially strike me as knitpicky. So I recognise I haven't been as receptive as I should've been to some helpful critique, and I'm sorry about that.