GAH, idea-generating ahoy!

[telophase]

OF COURSE my brain is busy generating ideas that I can't really put into play in time for A-Kon. the_z posted a suggestion for a simple card game thing on my previous idea-generating post, and my brain wants to see if we can make it go viral.



the_z writes:

Also, I felt the need to note, bishounen ANGELS AND DEVILS SELL LIKE STUPID! You could just sell them as a collector's series each year or each con (make them limited edition with numbers on the bottom like a card battle-type game). Additionally, you could have them as blind draws by putting them in an envelope or such. Have the art of them out on the table and either let them pick at random or have them choose from angel or devil. You could just do them in series of 4 or 6. Maybe arrange a tournament later in the day for a prize (custom art?)

Sounds like alot of work, but I think it would fly.

You could just do them rock, paper, scissors game style too. Maybe Blue beats Red, Brown beats Blue, Red beats Brown...

What would be fun is get several artists in separate tables to come up with original designs with the same system.

Okay, I think this has gone beyond simple keychains. I'd love to toss in art to something like this.

I answered:

My brain kind of wants to elaborate this, actually, in a way that wouldn't break the bank, and could also spread virally without having to worry about controlling it. Call it Battle Bishies or something.

1) Come up with simple gameplay system, maybe just Rock Paper Scissors or something similar would work.

2) Establish specific parameters for the cards - size, colors, weight of paper - so that they could easily be made into a deck that holds well in the hand. But something that anyone could produce from their printer using stuff you can buy at an office-supply store if necessary. (Maybe quarter-page cardstock? Or would that be too big?) Is trading-card size available or easy to get hold of?

3) Get (metaphorical) buy-in from several artists we know, to produce some cards of original characters for this. They'd either give them away or sell them themselves; this isn't a fancy distribution thing.

4) Get a website. Make the rules available on the website, as well as a simple starter deck's worth of images for people to print out and try on their own. Watermarked or otherwise marked, of course, to encourage them to drop by other artists' websites or con tables and buy nicer versions.

5) Sit back and see what happens. :) Have the game rules and setup available under a Creative Commons license, so that anyone can use them and make art for them, with the individual cards copyrighted to whatever artist does them under whatever license they want. It's up to the artists to do one set of cards and no more, or to keep adding to their own line, or to put out limited editions, or whatever.

Does that make sense? More ideas? Different ideas? Better ideas?

So. Ideas, anyone? Make sense? Simple needs to be the keyword here, I think.

Comments

[nekonexus.livejournal.com]

I have no constructive feedback beyond - sounds like fun! PokéBishies - gotta catch 'em all! *g*

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

Print-your-own buisiness cards are widely available, but they are a little smaller than Pokemon or playing cards.

[animarelic.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'd be in to design a few of these. ^_^ I think it would be a BLAST.

[animarelic.livejournal.com]

ALSO perhaps you could use the standard ACEO or whatever those things are called as the size? (Artist's collector cards editions and originals I think or soemthing, I think they are about standard small index card sized, and you can get cardstock precut to the size from some websites.)

[nockergeek.livejournal.com]

I doubt you could get a hold of paper in the right dimensions for individual CCG cards. However, depending on how large a sheet you can print, you can print several cards to a sheet and cut them (even if it was just two cards on a 3x5 or something). Shame you can't get a hold of one of the cutting dies that actual CCG companies use; that would give you the rounded corners.

However, Yaquinto Printing, which does do card games (such as NeoPets and Pokemon), is right in your area (http://www.yaquinto.com/conta.php).

[sutlers.livejournal.com]

The only problem I see with the gameplay aspect of it is that if people can make their own cards, it would be very tempting to godmode and maximize stats.

[animarelic.livejournal.com]

I think this could probably be negated in a rock-paper-scissors type style of gameplay.

Since making a rockpaperscissors card would just be silly.

You could even do it in a sort of pokemon-elemental style. lightning beats water, but is beaten by earth, etc, etc.

[animarelic.livejournal.com]

Uh, sorry about the angry icon there. ;_; I'm not sure why it didn't use my default. o_o

[croaky.livejournal.com]

Sounds like AWESOMEcakes to me I'd LOVE it

Simple rules + number of cool cards. RockPaperScissors system works great. Each player has X amount of cards, choose one card and turn up at same time; play best of one or best of a numebr of 'lives'. Used cards are discarded. There are too few simple card games anyway. ♥

A marked 'free' and downloadable deck sounds super. Additionally a system of size for decks could be usable, such a minimum of 6 cards etc. You can later start doing collectable themed decks beyond demons, angels, bishounen, fan art decks, artist's original designs, art styles or genre decks, etc -meanwhile all cards still only retain the usual functions and can play any other deck (I challenge your Angels with my Steampunk-themed fantasy deck!)

[sutlers.livejournal.com]

Haha, oops, sorry, I guess I totally missed that part of the post. NEVERMIND, I'M A DUMBASS.

[animarelic.livejournal.com]

Well, naw, you're not. I agree that if it was a statted card game like magic or pokemon, it would be too exploitable. And to be fair when most people say 'CCG' that's what comes to mind first! ^_^;;

[chomiji]

I always think of War as the quintessential simple card game. You have however many cards you (game creator) want for each suit (13 like regular cards, 14 like Tarot, 10 like some other games) - people could make up a suits from manga, anime, or whatever It wouldn't matter how many suits you had, an 8 from any suit always beats a 5 from any suit. The backs of the cards would be different from suit to suit, but that wouldn't matter - it wouldn't reveal the value of the card itself, which is what matters in play.

[nockergeek.livejournal.com]

Downloadable decks are a great idea. A number of companies have used PDFs to distribute demo decks (with the idea being that you print out the PDFs, cut them up, and then sleeve them with normal CCG cards), and it's worked out well for them, as far as I know.

As long as the "free" download is watermarked and/or features low-res versions of the art, there's still the incentive to get the physical cards at cons.

[nockergeek.livejournal.com]

Something else to keep in mind would be making a template for Magic Set Editor (http://magicseteditor.sourceforge.net/), a freeware program for making custom CCG cards (not limited to Magic). That would make it very easy for people to make new fan-generated cards.

[animarelic.livejournal.com]

The 'free' deck would be a cool way to advertise, too, if you could get everyone who wanted to get in on the project to submit a card or two for it, that way people could have samples from each artist to see. (Then they could check out that artist's website or the like.)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Thanks to scrapbooking, if I desperately needed to round the corners of homemade cards, there are a variety of punches available that will do the job. :D I was astounded this weekend at the stuff available - all sorts of fancy cutting equipment. I need to buy stuff while it's available, before the Next Big Craft Trend comes through and all the punches and cutters go away.

Since you mentioned the thing below about sleeving paper cards with regular CCG cards, making sure that any artist can get their hands on the right paper weight isn't quite such a priority (you can tell exactly how familiar I am with the field XD), which helps.

[the-z.livejournal.com]

I'm really excited to see all the interest in an idea I just tossed out there. I'd love to see something come of this one. I don't have any input right now. nockergeek and animarelic both have far more CCG experience than I have, but I could always brainstorm at home with NG. This is so inspirational, I really want to jump on this project.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

It's a fantastic idea! I think that what needs to be done is:

1) fix the rules, which means - come up with the categories equivalent to Rock, Paper, and Scissors (more than 3 might make it too complicated to teach in 10 seconds), and what needs to be on each card associated with it: a symbol? a color?

2) fix the size, which, if we want people to be able to just download a starter deck, cut it out, and sleeve it with another CCG card to play, would be just a standard CCG size. Which I have no idea what that is. XD *googles* Standard trading cards are 2.5 x 3.5", and the WoW online card generator produces one that's 2.6 x 3.6". So 2.5 x 3.5" looks good to me - and, hey, that's 5x7" cut in quarters. Step 2 done!

3) start makin' art. We could leave it up to the artist as to what they're printed on, whether the corners are rounded, etc.

4) work up a nifty-looking website and set it up.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

And here's a page (http://www.cedarseed.com/air/atc.html) on ATC's, or Artist Trading Cards, which has a lot of nifty ideas.

And redriver.com sells paper, including a double-sided 60lb semi-gloss in a 5x7" size that might work if I, or anyone else who wants to do this, can't find someplace that would print and cut them for me. XD

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

come up with the categories equivalent to Rock, Paper, and Scissors

Seme, uke, and switch? *ducks*

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The not-so-serious answer is that the switch get both seme and uke. :)

The serious answer is that you haven't heard me railing on about how much I hate the whole seme/uke thing and as such am not likely to make anything based on it, except as a joke. XD

[the-z.livejournal.com]

I think you have a solution there by the cutting of 5x7". As for the symbols, I think elements would work well in general (especially if, as a second edition, we wanted to move on to bishoujo as well-- something that isn't bishounen specific). Fire, Water, Earth are always a good combination. We could also do Mind, Body, Spirit attacks. There we could have intellectual characters or ESP characters, tough/brawler characters, or magic/religious characters for their elements.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Got it: Triangle, Circle, Square. Neutral symbols. Triangle beats Circle, Circle beats Square, Square beats Triangle.

Any artist can work that into the design of the card - like a suit on a pack of playing cards, as a background element, a pattern or design, whatever. And they can theme them any way they want - Fire/Water/Earth, Mind/Body/Spirit, Seme/Uke/Switch, Red/Yellow/Green, etc. That way, cross-pack play is easy: a Square Fire will always beat a Triangle Uke.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Excellent!

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I find the inflexible seme/uke roles tiresome myself, so that "suggestion" was purely for snark value. ;)

[animarelic.livejournal.com]

Sounds great! Nice easy shapes.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Next step! Starter pack and website!

After that: world domination!

[the-z.livejournal.com]

So, will card templates be made available online with the symbols already on them?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Heck, sure, why not? I can see working the symbol into the design itself - if you've got magic-users battling each other, Mystic Summons could be drawn in the various shapes, and I've already had three characters hit my mind's eye holding their hands out in the shapes - but I don't see why we wouldn't want to also have cards with, say, one symbol at top or bottom center, or two copies of the symbol at two corners, much like a playing card. Those templates could be placed over any picture to make it into a card.

[the-z.livejournal.com]

I think having the symbol plainly on the card would make it more readily apparent what suit it is. Some artists could get a little too "subtle" and make ambiguous symbols. I have a feeling this will be a rapid-fire game, being as simple as it is, so quickly-identifiable symbols in plain sight would be best.

We'd probably want some border, too, so people could include flavor text of some sort and a card name.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Makes sense.

[eldanis.livejournal.com]

I would just like to say, I thoroughly approve of this idea. I would also dearly love to contribute art for it. (*points with no subtlety at all at DA gallery (http://eldanis.deviantart.com/gallery/) for examples*) Please keep posting about it as it develops!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

:D I will! So far, it seems like a nifty way for a lot of artists to get stuff out there. XD