[Sample article you can have in your wiki] sdfg Game Design Principles

This document is to inform all card contributors on the principle guiding ideas behind the design of this game. Please consider to these principles when designing your cards.

Dulst is about collaborative game design and we welcome all suggestions and card ideas. Please submit any card ideas you have and the admins will help you adapt your idea to the principles of the game.

What are some of these Principles?

Promote interactivity

Our goal is to design games and cards which have a high degree of participation from each player. We favor combos that allow the opponent to react strategically. This can be achieved by creating combos that can be reacted to with the sophisticated core mechanics available to all players. Along the same lines, we disfavor strategies that do not involve the opponent. We call such strategies "non-interactive" or "solitairing", which are contrary to this principles of our game. Our general approach to such strategies is to discourage them by making them weaker than interactive strategies.

Promote variety and novelty

As a card game we want a great variety of cards and abilities to give the most room for creative experimentation. We even like cards which initially seem weak. There's usually a lot of room for future exploitation.

Promote self expression through deck building

A huge part of the fun of card games is the creative deck building process. We really like card designs that are unexpectedly interesting when used in unexpected ways. Generally speaking, cards that are intended to be used with cards of the same tags are not as fun to discover and use.

However those cards are okay too! We want both easy to use cards and ones which take more strategic analysis.

Have great balance

We believe the only way to have a large and fun variety of playable cards is to have great card balance at the higher levels. Decks and strategies should never dominate the scene to the exclusion of diversity.

These are some of the non-exhaustive principles that this game is designed around. Some players have a different idea of fun than what is described here. We encourage everyone to share their ideas. There are a lot of alternative ideas and principles out there that we really love but cannot implement into this game because they cannot fit into this game in a stable way. If you have such ideas, you are welcomed to take this game and make modifications to it. You're also free to use our forums to promote your alternative version!

Cascading Protection Priority Rule *Important

This is one of the main game design rules that allows us to enforce and ensure game balance, variety, and interactivity. So please read and understand this rule.

As more and more cards are added to the game the nature of the game will change. Cards that were previously powerful can become less powerful and cards that were previously weak can become stronger without being directly changed. Creating new cards will create new card interactions, and that's good and intended, except in cases where the new interactions violate some of our principles, most typically, the principles of interactivity, variety and balance.

Cascading protection priority is a rule that says for concepts or cards that come lower on the priority, if said card comes into conflict with another card that is higher on the priority in matters of interactivity, variety and balance, that the card higher on the priority wins and the lower card is removed. In other words, higher priority cards are protected against lower priority cards.

The priority list:

1. Core Game Systems
2. Game Keywords
3. Card Archetypes
4. Specific Cards

Core game systems can be summarized as units being played, units hitting each other, and units or events doing damage to the hero. Being the highest on the priority list means that cards that circumvent core game systems would violate CPP and are not allowed. For example, a card that reads:

If you get 15 Mana you win.

would violate the CPP. In general, alternative win conditions are considered violations of CPP. They belong in custom games or other games.

It is also possible to sidestep core game systems and hence violate CPP more subtly. For example, if so many powerful event cards are created that they alone can carry a deck without units, those event cards would violate CPP and would be subject to removal, even if none of those cards are individually imbalanced. As another example, cards that enable a milling strategy is also considered in violation.

Next on the priority list are Game Keywords. These are keywords that have been determined to be fun and inviolable. Effects that bypasses keywords violate CPP. For example an effect that reads:

Ignore Vanguards

would violate CPP. Cards are not considered in CPP violation if they use your own cards. For instance

Remove Vanguard from all units you have. +x/+x for each Vanguard that is removed.

Would not violate CPP.

Cards that invalidate or bypass certain archetypes are also considered in violation. These archetypes may be explicitly named or indirect. For example cards with these effects would all violate CPP:

Destroy a Demon.

Destroy a hero with more than 7 ATK.

Prevent Ice Damage to your hero.

Violating CPP does not mean that a card is immediately removed. It means that a card is on probation for possible removal if negative impacts to the overall game are detected.