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[Haddock]

My other point is that Grand Market's copper restriction makes it about as expensive as an $8 card, quite often more difficult to hit than just $8, which is why King should really cost more or be weakened in some way.  In other words, King is both cheaper and near-strictly better, which surely you cannot find acceptable.  So $8 is too low for King, and I suspect that $8 with VP token to others is not an adequate fix (it's still easier to get than GM, and after a single play the penalty is neutralized, putting it right back in "cheaper and better than GM" territory).  $9 might be too high a threshold, sure, and if that is the case then maybe the right solution is to impose a cost restriction like Grand Market.

"Great Grand Market" - $7 Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
+1 Buy
+$1
+1 VP
Take a Coin token.
***
You may not buy this if you have any Copper or Silver in play.

I have no idea if that would work.

[XerxesPraelor]

That probably costs more than nine.

[Haddock]

That probably costs more than nine.

You're probably right.  I'm not particularly serious about it.  Even at $6 the no Copper or Silver restriction seems tough.  And you can't price it at 5, that looks way too janky in comparison to original Grand Market.

[iguanaiguana]

Found this. It seemed relevant.

Have you ever seriously considered pricing a kingdom card at more than 8$? I mean, aside from Possession.

I had an $8 action very early on (a relative of Grand Market). I don't really remember playing with it but I am guessing it was quickly obvious that that's a bad cost.

It's fine to have an expensive trick cost, e.g. Peddler (and that could go over $8). It's bad to have super-expensive cards otherwise, because for many players Province is too compelling, and at the same time I don't want many narrow cards (which a super-expensive card is likely to be). Colony/Platinum provide a way around this, and yet still I just went up to $7 in Prosperity (not counting). Prince didn't set out to cost $8 and well I guess that worked out.

[horatio83]

Played one 2P game with heavy trashing (Transmogrify, Governor, Doctor and we did not even use Remodel and Trading Post)  game with King so far. One player bought 5 kings and gained 15 VP tokens whereas the other bought 3 kings and gained 5 VP tokens (the last King this player bought was a mistake).

The card was strong due to moderately thing decks, quick deck cycling (Governor) and little money (Training "Peddler-ified" action cards, Governor for one player and Familiar, gained via Recruiter for the other player). As I expected the VP tokens were the smallest asset of the card. 3 VP tokens on average per card for the guy who bought Kings early and 1.7 for the guy who bought them later is less than an average Bishop, Monument or Goon nets. As other folks here have already said, the coin tokens make a delaying of the game to gain VP tokens unlikely. It also makes it tricky to evaluate when to switch from Kings to Provinces.
So yeah, the clear strength of the card over Grand Market or other DoublePeddlers like Conspirator are the coin tokens so I guess the card would be OK for 8 even without the +1VP token.

During the next games I will play it with "When you gain this card each other player +1 VP token", making the VP token thingy even weaker (in this game it would have reduced the extra VP tokens from 15 to 10 and from 5 to 2). I think the card would also work decently at 9 but only in Province games and in Colony games with trashing (then an early King can be useful) KC/TR (obviously making the card superstrong). Otherwise Platinum is superior to King as it is the quicker way towards Colonies.

At 8$, a card has to be gamechanging like Prince or Possession, otherwise, it's too boring.

Nope. A card does not have to be anything except well balanced. Whether one likes a card or not is purely subjective.

People who do not want to play with vanilla-ish card do not have to and as I have already said in my initial post, this is simply what King is, a vanilla-ish card and nothing game changing like Price or Possession. For me the Province/King trade-off, making the "when to switch from building your engine to going to explot it" decision (which is at the core of Dominion and nothing one can truly master) even more tricky, is sufficient to make the card moderately interesting.

Kudos to folks who can come up with a great idea for an 8$ card that is as exciting as Prince or Possession and the stamina to actually playtest it until it works (far more difficult and time-consuming than with a vanilla-ish card), it is beyond my abilities.

I don't want many narrow cards (which a super-expensive card is likely to be).

I am aware that an 8$ card is narrow in two senses. First, it can break the game if one player gains it early (Prince relaxes this via its high randomness, sometimes you cannot play Prince ocne you first draw it as it matches no cheap/decent action card). Second, it is bought less frequently over different decks / less often during one game than other cards.

Donald is totally right that there should be no 8$ card in a normal Dominion set, they are just too wacky. But then again nobody here is so arrogant as to assume that some stupid fan cards can as good as official cards.

[Asper]

But then again nobody here is so arrogant as to assume that some stupid fan cards can as good as official cards.

There's nothing that makes it inherently impossible for a fan to come up with a card as good as or better than one Donald will come up with. Fans have on various occasions had idea practically identical to existing cards, and Donald has at some (rare) occasions let really bad cards slip through. It's really quite possible, i think.

This has nothing to do with arrogance, though. Donald has created an insane amount of cards, with a very low deviation in quality, and it's amazing that he manages to do that. There's some ability and experience there, and it would in fact be arrogant to claim we could keep up with that. The difference is just the position from which we create cards. We can create one card at a time. We can put any amount of time into improving it. We can focus on it as much as we want. Donald can't. He has to rely on his ability and experience from some point onward, and even he sometimes misses out something when time is short, as happened with Rebuild. Sure he feels bad about the card, but well, sooner or later it had to happen. You can't endlessly do cards without doing one that sucks sooner or later.

A fan has no excuse for doing a Rebuild. He has the time, he has the focus, and he can improve any card to death. If he wishes. Of course you don't have to, i guess you have a live beyond Dominion fan cards, but there's nothing that makes it inherently impossible for you to improve your card until it is equally good to an existing Dominion card.

[pacovf]

One Card to rule them all, One Card to find them,
One Card to bring them all and in the network bind them
In the land of F.DS where the fan cards lie.

[LastFootnote]

But then again nobody here is so arrogant as to assume that some stupid fan cards can as good as official cards.

There's nothing that makes it inherently impossible for a fan to come up with a card as good as or better than one Donald will come up with. Fans have on various occasions had idea practically identical to existing cards, and Donald has at some (rare) occasions let really bad cards slip through. It's really quite possible, i think.

This has nothing to do with arrogance, though. Donald has created an insane amount of cards, with a very low deviation in quality, and it's amazing that he manages to do that. There's some ability and experience there, and it would in fact be arrogant to claim we could keep up with that. The difference is just the position from which we create cards. We can create one card at a time. We can put any amount of time into improving it. We can focus on it as much as we want. Donald can't. He has to rely on his ability and experience from some point onward, and even he sometimes misses out something when time is short, as happened with Rebuild. Sure he feels bad about the card, but well, sooner or later it had to happen. You can't endlessly do cards without doing one that sucks sooner or later.

A fan has no excuse for doing a Rebuild. He has the time, he has the focus, and he can improve any card to death. If he wishes. Of course you don't have to, i guess you have a live beyond Dominion fan cards, but there's nothing that makes it inherently impossible for you to improve your card until it is equally good to an existing Dominion card.

This. Also, if you're not even trying to make your cards as good as official cards (i.e. fun to play), why are you making them at all? What's the point?

[horatio83]

But then again nobody here is so arrogant as to assume that some stupid fan cards can as good as official cards.

There's nothing that makes it inherently impossible for a fan to come up with a card as good as or better than one Donald will come up with. Fans have on various occasions had idea practically identical to existing cards, and Donald has at some (rare) occasions let really bad cards slip through. It's really quite possible, i think.

This has nothing to do with arrogance, though. Donald has created an insane amount of cards, with a very low deviation in quality, and it's amazing that he manages to do that. There's some ability and experience there, and it would in fact be arrogant to claim we could keep up with that. The difference is just the position from which we create cards. We can create one card at a time. We can put any amount of time into improving it. We can focus on it as much as we want. Donald can't. He has to rely on his ability and experience from some point onward, and even he sometimes misses out something when time is short, as happened with Rebuild. Sure he feels bad about the card, but well, sooner or later it had to happen. You can't endlessly do cards without doing one that sucks sooner or later.

A fan has no excuse for doing a Rebuild. He has the time, he has the focus, and he can improve any card to death. If he wishes. Of course you don't have to, i guess you have a live beyond Dominion fan cards, but there's nothing that makes it inherently impossible for you to improve your card until it is equally good to an existing Dominion card.

Looks like I was wrong about my arrogance assumption.

First, Donald is the auteur, it is his baby, so he has more insight into his game than anybody else. Second, like any game designer he has done serious playtesting. I seriously doubt that anybody here has playtested his cards as much as Donald. Big difference between a hobby (which for most of us consists of far more games than just Dominion) and a job.
Third, people who do design games that are mechanically sound have a particular talent. One obvious example is Stefan Feld. I am not a big fan of anything but his early games but it is undeniable that he is incredibly good at making well-balanced games.

If anybody of us here had even half the skills of an outstanding game designer he or she would design his or her own game instead of fan cards for an existing game.

Gee, I have recently printed about 40 cards from this site and play Dominion with them so if I am biased in any way it is towards and not against fan cards. But I can transcend my love for the game and all these nice fan cards, use my mind and be honest about the natural limitations of all of us who design Dominion fan cards.

Of course this doesn't imply that a particular fan card cannot be as good as official card. But it is more of a needle in a haystack effect than the result of serious playtesting.

[horatio83]

This. Also, if you're not even trying to make your cards as good as official cards (i.e. fun to play), why are you making them at all? What's the point?

Reading skills are essential. I never claimed that one should not strive to improve one's cards but that is arrogant to assume that one's creation could match that of a guy who has actually published games. It is as if somebody wrote fan fiction and thought that he is the next Fitzgerald or whatever.

[Seprix]

King of all trades
Action - $

Gain a Gold.
Look at the top 3 cards in your deck. Discard one, put the rest back in any order.
Draw until you have 7 cards in hand.
You may trash a card from your hand that is not a treasure. If you do, +1 Buy.

[LastFootnote]

Gee, I have recently printed about 40 cards from this site and play Dominion with them so if I am biased in any way it is towards and not against fan cards. But I can transcend my love for the game and all these nice fan cards, use my mind and be honest about the natural limitations of all of us who design Dominion fan cards.

Of course this doesn't imply that a particular fan card cannot be as good as official card. But it is more of a needle in a haystack effect than the result of serious playtesting.

Dude, I can tell you right now—from experience—that the official Dominion cards don't get as much testing as you seem to believe. Some of the later cards in Dominion: Adventures had maybe one to two dozen plays before being finalized, not hundreds. I mean they could have been changed if a problem had been discovered after finalization and before printing, but there really wasn't much testing during that period. I can tell you right now that many Enterprise cards have had more playtesting than several of the Adventures cards.

You're really mythicizing Donald and the official cards. There's nothing magical about them other than that they've been tested and found to be fun and balanced. Making good cards is a process of coming up with new ideas, testing them, tweaking them, and being willing to let them go if they don't work out. Obviously not everybody has the time or skills to do it, but more than one person does.

P.S. I find Feld's games to be tedious, point-salad snoozefests. I guess Castles of Burgundy was OK.

[eHalcyon]

This. Also, if you're not even trying to make your cards as good as official cards (i.e. fun to play), why are you making them at all? What's the point?

It is as if somebody wrote fan fiction and thought that he is the next Fitzgerald or whatever.

Dude, there is some really great fan fiction out there and some really terrible published stuff as well.  Having talent for something doesn't mean you'll end up doing it for a living, and doing something for a living does not mean you are any good at it.  And you are underestimating how much testing is done by some of the fan card makers here.

[horatio83]

Dude, there is some really great fan fiction out there and some really terrible published stuff as well.  Having talent for something doesn't mean you'll end up doing it for a living, and doing something for a living does not mean you are any good at it.  And you are underestimating how much testing is done by some of the fan card makers here.

Nope. First, to get actually good at writing, as with anything in else in life, you have to do it constantly over years. This is why people who only do it for a few hours a week in their spare time cannot become good at it.
Second, if you compare fan fiction, something which is derivative and unimaginative, to proper literature you are direly begging to not be taken seriously.
Same with Dominion fan cards. If any of us were good at designing games they would, big surprise, actual design their own game and not do derivative work. Then again I am not really surprised that fan(atic)s overestimate their skills.

Dude, I can tell you right now—from experience—that the official Dominion cards don't get as much testing as you seem to believe. Some of the later cards in Dominion: Adventures had maybe one to two dozen plays before being finalized, not hundreds. I mean they could have been changed if a problem had been discovered after finalization and before printing, but there really wasn't much testing during that period. I can tell you right now that many Enterprise cards have had more playtesting than several of the Adventures cards.

Great that you were in the group with which Donald playtested his Adventure cards. Ridiculous of you to imply that your cards are more balanced and better than official cards.


Back to the card.
I am considering to make the card a bit weaker via "When you gain this, each other play gains a Coin token and +VP token", thus converting King into a Market when it is first played, and wonder what the folks who think that the card is seriously overpowed think about this.

[faust]

Nope. First, to get actually good at writing, as with anything in else in life, you have to do it constantly over years. This is why people who only do it for a few hours a week in their spare time cannot become good at it.
Second, if you compare fan fiction, something which is derivative and unimaginative, to proper literature you are direly begging to not be taken seriously.
Same with Dominion fan cards. If any of us were good at designing games they would, big surprise, actual design their own game and not do derivative work. Then again I am not really surprised that fan(atic)s overestimate their skills.

Okay, let me stop you right there. First, writing a lot does not mean you will become good at it. If you write trash and are successful, people will buy it, you will write more of the same trash and not have improved at all. There are plenty of examples for that out there.
Second, it's not like everyone needs to put in the same amount of work to become good at something. Some people are more talented than others. There are examples of very well-written and successful newcomer authors, which in your world should not be possible.

To our second point: All art is derivative. There's always inspiration taken from somewhere. You can call Tolstoy's War and Peace fan fiction for the Napoleon wars. By dismissing all fan fiction as "unimaginative", you are behaving much more arrogant than anyone else in this thread.

Your last point also does not hold water. I can be good at two things, big surprise.

[Asper]

You see, nobody here is making a claim to the likes of "Yo, i could've invented Dominion". What we are saying is that, given a finished game, it's not hard to expand on it. I happen to make my own game with a friend (surprise), and now that the basic mechanic stands, new ideas fly in every day. It would be easy for anyone who knew our game to come up with cards or abilities for it, and they could easily be as good as ours. The same applies for Dominion. Donald had to invent Dominion, and then Duration cards and Embargo before i could make up that pretty-much-Swamp-Hag i did four years ago.

Creating a working game concept is very hard work. Expanding on it isn't, and everyone who is ra bit talented can do it. Why do you think there are so many Dominion knockoffs? Because, given the mechanic Donald X invented, it's easy to build something that works. What you are claiming is either that we confuse ourselves with people that would have come up with Dominion, or that we are moronic half-monkeys incapable of expanding on a given principle. Both claims are as insulting as untrue.

Edit: Of course that doesn't say creating good fan cards, or any fan material, is trivial. You still need a bit of a hand for it, and the will to test and improve. But it's far from developing a boardgame from scratch.

[XerxesPraelor]

Another thing I think is that the skill required to make a game and the skill required to expand on it are not qualitatively the same. From my personal experience, I've tried to design dozens of games and put hours and hours of work into each one. None worked.
On the other hand, I've made custom cards for Android: Netrunner, custom quests for LOTR:LCG, and those have gone great and my group often even prefers playing my custom quest over the official ones. For Dominion it's more complicated, but I still some of my fan cards (I hope most) are better designed than Scout.

In short, you say "If you can make good Dominion cards, why not go out and make your own game?". I say that the skill needed to make good Dominion cards is not the same as the skill needed to make Dominion (or even something less creative like Trains).

[LastFootnote]

Ridiculous of you to imply that your cards are more balanced and better than official cards.

Of course I never implied this. I just stated that some of my cards have been tested more than some of the Adventures cards before the set was finalized. That's a fact.

[XerxesPraelor]

I'm kind of surprised at how little playtesting you report, LF. I'm working as a playtester right now (can't say for whom) and a lot more is getting done than a few dozen playthroughs. I guess different games do it different ways.

[LastFootnote]

I'm kind of surprised at how little playtesting you report, LF. I'm working as a playtester right now (can't say for whom) and a lot more is getting done than a few dozen playthroughs. I guess different games do it different ways.

Well, don't read too much into it. Most of the cards in Adventures got way more testing—most were in well over 100 games. But if a card shows up late and is super-unlikely to break the game (e.g. Raze), it doesn't need that much testing. Just enough to make sure it's fun and not obviously broken.

Also some games need more testing than others. Any game with individual player powers would probably require WAY more testing to make sure all of them are very closely balanced. In Dominion it's fine if this $4 card is stronger than this other $4 card as long as it's not making the game worse (i.e. the strategy is always to load up on just that card).

EDIT: Also, it's possible that your playtesting project is for some big company like Wizards of the Coast. In that case of course it's easy to do a ton of testing. Dominion is much smaller scale.

[LastFootnote]

Well, don't read too much into it. Most of the cards in Adventures got way more testing—many were in over 100 games. But if a card shows up late and is super-unlikely to break the game (e.g. Raze), it doesn't need that much testing. Just enough to make sure it's fun and not obviously broken.

Memory is flawed and just to do the due diligence I went back and checked to make sure I wasn't full of crap. It looks like the last Kingdom card that changed significantly was Relic. The previous version was much different and the final version was only around for about two weeks before testing effectively ended. Near as I can tell it was played in about 30 games, but in many of them (at least half a dozen) Relic wasn't bought and some of the others may have been isotropic games using the old version (understandably there's a delay until Doug has time to update the cards). So Relic, not tested all that much. But we already had a good handle on how the attack effect played out (it had been on other cards/events) and it just didn't need that much testing.

EDIT: Oh, Raze was tested way more than I thought. Over 50 games for sure. And extrapolating, many early cards (e.g. Port) were easily tested in hundreds of games.

[eHalcyon]

Dude, there is some really great fan fiction out there and some really terrible published stuff as well.  Having talent for something doesn't mean you'll end up doing it for a living, and doing something for a living does not mean you are any good at it.  And you are underestimating how much testing is done by some of the fan card makers here.

Nope. First, to get actually good at writing, as with anything in else in life, you have to do it constantly over years. This is why people who only do it for a few hours a week in their spare time cannot become good at it.
Second, if you compare fan fiction, something which is derivative and unimaginative, to proper literature you are direly begging to not be taken seriously.
Same with Dominion fan cards. If any of us were good at designing games they would, big surprise, actual design their own game and not do derivative work. Then again I am not really surprised that fan(atic)s overestimate their skills.

You assume that fanfic authors don't write constantly.  Some do.  Some are even published authors themselves.

There is great fan fiction.  Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is a fanfic, but it is a huge departure from the books and enormously creative.

There are derivative and unimaginative "original" works.  I actually enjoyed reading through Eragon way back when, but it's some of the most generic fantasy writing I've ever seen.  And it was still successful.

There are some horrendous published works that have had baffling success.  Do you think Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey are paragons of great literature?  50 Shades started off as a (bad) fanfic too, but it was published all the same.

There are unpublished works that are amazing.  Worm is one example there.  Harry Potter could be another example, at least for the first dozen attempts.  Did it magically become better the moment it received validation by a publisher?

Getting published and becoming a commercial success requires more than just skilled writing and creativity.  Luck is a major factor, as is perseverance and knowing the right people.  Marketing savvy can help too.  There are certainly talented writers who aren't published because they lack in other departments.  There are bad writers who yet succeed because of those other things.  Likewise for game designers.  Sometimes these talented people are content not to seek out commercial validation, and that doesn't diminish their ability at all.

And just to bring in another area, do you also think fan art is derivative and unimaginative?  Because many of the great masterpieces in art history are works of fan art.  And not even fan art done by a fan!  Rather, they are commissioned pieces.  Think about it.

I am considering to make the card a bit weaker via "When you gain this, each other play gains a Coin token and +VP token", thus converting King into a Market when it is first played, and wonder what the folks who think that the card is seriously overpowed think about this.

I don't think I've called it overpowered, at least not seriously so.  I've just pointed out that it was more powerful than Grand Market while effectively costing less.  If GM didn't exist, I would have just waited to hear the results from testing.

Does that new text even fit on a card?  I think it's over-complicating what was supposed to br a simple design.  It sounds OK for testing, but it doesn't seem worthwhile.

[Seprix]

There is great fan fiction.

...and there is bad fan fiction...

[eHalcyon]

There is great fan fiction.

...and there is bad fan fiction...

I never said there wasn't.

[Seprix]

There is great fan fiction.

...and there is bad fan fiction...

I never said there wasn't.

And when it's bad... It's really really bad...