Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Weekly Design Contest => Variants and Fan Cards => Mini-Set Design Contest => Topic started by: Davio on September 21, 2012, 07:53:13 am
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Here's an interesting idea for the Design Contest: Design a card with a mechanic that's not yet used in the game.
You could use dexterity (a bad idea, but go for it if you will), passing the card you played to your neighbors, a card that's an action on one turn and a treasure on the next, etc....
The card still has to fit within the rules of the game and be playable with any of the other cards currently available.
Some cards with unique abilities currently in the game: Masquerade, Possession, Black Market, Young Witch, Native Village, Island, Pirate Ship, Haven, Tactician, Tournament, Band of Misfits. If we loosen the definition, the list could be bigger, it doesn't matter really.
What I mean is that we've seen cards that reveal, have an on-something event, give cards, actions, buys and coins in some way, discard, trash, gain, etc... You could call Pearl Diver a unique card, because it's the only one that lets you look at the bottom, but it's just another form of revealing.
I'm just curious as to what unexplored space there still is and challenge all designers to boldly go you-know-where.
Thoughts?
An example:
Tax Collector
Action-Duration $2
Discard a Treasure card from your hand.
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During the buy phase of your next turn this is played as a Treasure giving as much $ as the Treasure discarded.
Don't pay any attention to the wording or any rule weirdness or whether it would be actually useful, it's just an example.
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I think this would be a great contest idea, and I nearly submitted something that would have fit this for one of the earlier contests before deciding that it had no chance in hell of winning anything -- not because I thought it was a terrible card, but precisely because of the mechanic.
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I think the line for "unique" is too fuzzy, and if something is truly unique then it will be too difficult to evaluate. If we've never seen it before, how can we decide if it is strong or weak?
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I think the line for "unique" is too fuzzy, and if something is truly unique then it will be too difficult to evaluate. If we've never seen it before, how can we decide if it is strong or weak?
Don't judge based on its power-level then. Judge it on how fun the concept is. Let playtesting worry about balance.
As for the criteria being "fuzzy", I agree, but I don't think that's necessarily a problem. The idea is to get people outside of the box, but that doesn't mean the parameters have to be so concrete, especially when public voting is the deciding factor.
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I think the line for "unique" is too fuzzy, and if something is truly unique then it will be too difficult to evaluate. If we've never seen it before, how can we decide if it is strong or weak?
It will be a challenge for both the designers and the voters, but I don't think it's impossible.
Heck, I'm pretty sure some of the contest winners may be overpowered and some may be underpowered, that's always going to happen. Did you instantly know Jack would be such a good card? If so, then I applaud your insight.
I just think there are only so many things you can do within the current mechanism space and a lot of the cards make me think "yeah I've seen this before in so many different ways."
Currently the cards that have unique mechanisms get snowed under in the regular contest because they're hard to judge, so a special contest for them would be brilliant.
I think it would make a great addition to the set and if it won't be good or bad, it will at least be fun!
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I think the line for "unique" is too fuzzy, and if something is truly unique then it will be too difficult to evaluate. If we've never seen it before, how can we decide if it is strong or weak?
Don't judge based on its power-level then. Judge it on how fun the concept is. Let playtesting worry about balance.
As for the criteria being "fuzzy", I agree, but I don't think that's necessarily a problem. The idea is to get people outside of the box, but that doesn't mean the parameters have to be so concrete, especially when public voting is the deciding factor.
Maybe I shouldn't say strong or weak, but rather broken or not broken. Some concepts may be so weak or so strong that they can't be fixed without reworking the entire idea. Unfortunately, groundbreaking and unique mechanics will often go overlooked because of that. Given that we can't put a solid line on what cards meet the contest theme of being "unique", the less unique but more obviously workable ideas will tend to do better than really unique ideas that are hard to evaluate without actual play.
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I think the line for "unique" is too fuzzy, and if something is truly unique then it will be too difficult to evaluate. If we've never seen it before, how can we decide if it is strong or weak?
It will be a challenge for both the designers and the voters, but I don't think it's impossible.
Heck, I'm pretty sure some of the contest winners may be overpowered and some may be underpowered, that's always going to happen. Did you instantly know Jack would be such a good card? If so, then I applaud your insight.
I just think there are only so many things you can do within the current mechanism space and a lot of the cards make me think, yeah I've seen this before in so many different ways.
Currently the cards that have unique mechanisms get snowed under in the regular contest because they're hard to judge, so a special contest for them would be brilliant.
I think it would make a great addition to the set and if it won't be good or bad, it will at least be fun!
That's fair. My main concern would be that even with a "unique mechanic" theme, a unique mechanic won't actually win out. :P
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Okay, I understand your concern, but we can just let the public decide.
I for one would be more inclined to vote for a card that I think is both fun and playable and I don't think it's one way or the other.
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I might suggest that cards be posted without recommended prices. The winner would be the card that feels coolest to the voters, without regard to cost initially.
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I might suggest that cards be posted without recommended prices. The winner would be the card that feels coolest to the voters, without regard to cost initially.
Ooh, that is a good idea! There is so often in these contests a good card, at the wrong price :P
Like others have said, it would be hard to judge the cards, unless everyone agreed that they would only vote on those that are truly different.
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Contests that would almost entirely consist of unique ideas would be "Design a $0 card" or "Design a Base Card" (that would be employed similarly to Colony/Platinum or Shelters for cards in this set)
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I might suggest that cards be posted without recommended prices. The winner would be the card that feels coolest to the voters, without regard to cost initially.
It would be an interesting exercise. It's difficult to get past balance issues and get to the heart of a design at times.
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Balance is part of the heart of design.
I don't like voting on uncosted cards. Cost is only one part of what makes a card balanced. The effect is very important. Some effects don't work at any cost. Some effects work well at multiple costs.
Costing the cards is part of the execution, and it's good to put up cantidates with a cost to prove that there IS an execution.
If Jack were submitted with no attached cost, I have to think about how the card would work at 2$, 3$, 4$, 5$, 6$, and 7$. I wouldn't know which was intended. From a standpoint of "oh, cool effects and stuff", I would vote for it.
If it had a cost of 4$, though, I wouldn't vote for it. I'd punch it into a simulator or compare it to Ironworks and say "This is too strong at 4$".
It might be unfun at 5$ too, I have little idea. But without a cost given to me, I have to spend 3 times as long analyzing the card to account for the different prices it could have.
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Well, costs may be part of the design, but without actual playtesting, all they can ever be is a rough indication of a card's power level.
I'm sure there are some cards in the actual Dominion space that are either too cheap or too expensive.
Adventurer is an example often brought up in these kinds of discussions.
To me, cost represent availability.
A card that costs up to 3 will always be available for both players on the first turn.
A 4 coster will also always be available, but it can never be double opened.
A card that costs 5 needs an opening (terminal) Silver or a lucky 5/2 split.
A 6 card needs some actual building up to and requires more work and will have Gold to contend with.
Finally, the 7 cards are exclusive and have to make up for the fact that they may come too late to do a lot of damage.
I mean, imagine you could open Double Jack, that might be even more dominant than it already is. That's why Jack might be a 4.
You also have to look at possible competitors at that price level. Any 5 card knows it may appear alongside Wharf, Mountebank, Witch and the likes. You certainly don't want to design a 5 that's only going to be chosen if Counting House is the other 5.
Then there is such a thing as relative power level. Sometimes, a 2 card is worth 0 to you and sometimes it's worth 11 because it's the only card with a +Buy. Making it 2 just ensures that you don't deny anyone the option of taking it.
So I wouldn't worry too much about cost because you'll never be able to balance a card with the 200 other cards that are available. What matters most to me is the amount of fun it potentially provides. And the fun comes from the fact that a card may sometimes be good and sometimes not so good. I don't think Mountebank is a fun card because it's so dominant. On the other hand, I do think Menagerie is a fun card because hitting it feels like a mini jackpot especially when you go out of your way to add unique cards to your deck. Cost is only a small factor really and as long as it can convey the designer's intention of availability, I won't be too harsh on it.
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Witch, Mountebank, and Wharf make every other 5 feel like a Counting House.. Most of the cursers are deliberately imbalanced cards. They are deliberately overpowered because if they didn't have positive effects they would slow down the game more being on both sides, like Sea Hag, and so a relatively small number of Witch variants allow lots of games in which to explore the "making a good deck full of junk" concept.
I'm not sure that is actually more interesting than balancing cursers so that they are about as powerful as other cards at their cost. But I can see the thinking behind Donald doing it the way he did.
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If it had a cost of 4$, though, I wouldn't vote for it. I'd punch it into a simulator
Really? I haven't heard much talk about punching contest entries into simulators during the discussion phase, yet.
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I saw someone do it. It's the sort of effort I'd only put in to try to get depopularize a card I really hate already though.
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In this case, since we're talking about "unique" mechanics (which is problematic to define in and of itself), we shouldn't worry about simple balance. The only balance questions should be: (1) Is this mechanic overpowered at any cost? and (2) Is this mechanic useless at any cost?
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Which is harder to evaluate than "Is this mechanic underpowered at this cost X, or overpowered at this cost X". I think more onus should go to the designer.
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I think that unique mechanic discussion is the domain of the Variants and Fan Cards board and that people should be encouraged to post their unique mechanics there as they have been doing and get the balance feedback for them. If there is a contest, it should include some of the unique ideas posted in earlier threads (if their submitters want to see what people think).
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No idea if something like this would work as a mechanic, but I had a crazy thought about a card that I don't remember seeing a version of before, and I figured maybe the conversation would be helped by having something out there to discuss in addition to Davio's suggestion in the OP:
Slot Machine
$3
Each player selects a card from his hand. All players reveal their choice at one time.
If two or more of the cards have the same name, +$2
If none of the cards have the same name, select one of the revealed cards and gain a copy of it from the Supply.
- Maybe needs +1 Action to avoid being inferior to Silver most of the time?
- Seems to me like a card that potentially gains in value when opponents have trimmed decks.
- Not sure if the "bonus" for having two or more of the cards matching is the right one. Certainly, the +$2 on an Action has been used before (perhaps overused?). Perhaps it's more interesting with some other mechanic (perhaps a Cantrip or some other effect?).
- I pondered the idea of "Each player [probably with at least five cards in hand originally, to avoid stacking issues] discards the revealed card." as a mechanism, both instead of and/or in addition to one of the two "bonuses" above. I do think the Attack could potentially add to the strategy space, but though it would add complexity to the card [i.e. does/should Moat block the reveal of the card, or just the discard?] and decided that the added confusion didn't help the card enough.
- $3 felt like the right price when I looked at it at a glance.
Certainly open to ideas to modify it, and certainly open to the idea that this is just a crappy card as well. 8)
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The idea of a dexterity themed card interests me (then again, I liked carcassonne catapult)
Dealer
$4 - Action/Action
Pick up one of every card in the kingdom from their supply pile in alphabetical order in 10 seconds or less.
If you successfully complete this, return them to their supply piles, gain a kingdom card, and
+1 action
+$2
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The idea of a dexterity themed card interests me (then again, I liked carcassonne catapult)
Dealer
$4 - Action/Action
Pick up one of every card in the kingdom from their supply pile in alphabetical order in 10 seconds or less.
If you successfully complete this, return them to their supply piles, gain a kingdom card, and
+1 action
+$2
Then pick up the scattered piles of cards while the next players take their turns. If you play more than one Dealer on the same turn, you lose the game and go get everyone brownies.