Moe Girls Color Wheel: Card Types

[Username17]

So rather than get bogged down in the weeds of a single thread of ever increasing length, let's talk about card types a bit more. For a bit of background, this assumes six colors:

• Red - Blood characterized by Nobles and Vampires.
• Orange - Hope characterized by Priestesses and Angels.
• Yellow - Law characterized by Scientists and Soldiers.
• Green - Nature characterized by Barbarians and Spirits.
• Blue - Sorrow characterized by Goths and Ghosts.
• Purple - Chaos characterized by Rogues and Chimeras.

So let's talk specifically about cards that stay in play that aren't resource cards ("lands") or vassals ("creatures"). Magic has Artifacts, Enchantments, and Planeswalkers. Yugioh has Traps. Star Realms has Stations. This is a kind of card that needs to exist. And yet, the nomenclature for this sort of thing is incredibly bad in established games. For fuck's sake, Yugioh distinguishes "Type" and "type" and the lower-case "type" is the higher-level organizational concept! The OG of the genre MtG has "Card Types" and "Creature Types" and that is also fucking terrible because both of those things are "Types" in various circumstances and that's horrible.

So here's the deal: "Card Type" determines what happens when you play a card. A card is "Type: Spell" if playing it causes it to have an effect and then go to the discard pile. A "Class" is a tag that a card has which determine whether other cards affect it or not. A card is "Class: Soldier" if it benefits from effects like "All Soldiers in play get +1/+0." So "Asset" is a Type, "Goblin" is a Class. These use different words so that you can speak about them without your tongue turning into cottage cheese.

Now let's talk about what a card that's in play might do. In Yugioh, a Monster goes into a battle position and a Trap goes face down. But once a Trap has been activated, it either stays where it is or moves to a different position (or goes to the discard pile) depending on what kind of trap card it is. Magic has Enchantments and Artifacts but those should just be Classes, because those card types aren't different in practical effect.


So here's a fairly exhaustive list of where cards can go:

• Cards can go to the Discard Pile.
• Cards can go to your Vassals who could then be declared as attackers and defenders.
• Cards can to to your Resource pile.
• Cards can go on the table in an attackable location.
• Cards can go on the table in a non-attackable location.
• Cards can attach to other cards.
• Cards can go face down in a manner where they are on the table but haven't been contextualized yet.

That is the complete list of places a card could meaningfully go. And thus, that is a list of equal length with the number of card types a game could plausibly have need of. Separately, there is a question of "card speed" and there are only three that matter:

• An effect that can only be played when the stack is empty.
• An effect that can go on the stack.
• An effect that takes place immediately and does not use the stack or allow it itself to be responded to.

Again, those are the only meaningfully different speeds that a card or effect can have, and you don't need to tie these speeds to card types or have any additional speeds. Very especially, counterspells and such can simply be medium speed, because that's already fast enough to respond to something and have the counter effect take place before the original effect. You need to have effects that take place immediately because otherwise paying costs becomes fucking irritating as fuck.

Now let's talk about restrictions on playing cards. A card inherently:

• Can only be played during your turn.
• Can only be played during the "main phase."

Now MtG links skipping the former restriction to skipping the latter restriction (and also to play speed). That's a terrible idea. The ability to be played on an opponent's main phase but not during draw steps or combat is the kind of ability you'd want on a card - most specifically on Discard spells, which might want to be useable during an opponent's turn but certainly not before they've been given the opportunity to play something while they are in topdeck mode.

And yes, by dividing these concepts you can in fact have cards and abilities that can be used in response to things but can still only be used on your turn or still only used during a main phase or both. This creates a design space for action modifiers - abilities that modify your own major effects but aren't things you can interrupt combat with.

So next up, we can talk about what relevant abilities cards of different types can have.

-Username17

[Username17]

Let's talk about the card that sits in play and can be attacked. In MtG this is the Planeswalker, and in Star Realms this is the Base. The MtG Planeswalker is hot garbage from a design perspective because they have a "once per turn" use that doesn't use the game's own built-in system of using things once per turn (tapping), which makes them super awkward and fit into the rest of the game really poorly. Star Realms Bases function more coherently, being a card that works just like other cards in the game except that instead of going to your discard pile they sit in play until destroyed and your opponent can attack them instead of you. This is much better from a design standpoint.

Anyway, Star Realms teaches us that the primary difference between whether an attackable resource's attackability is an advantage or a disadvantage is whether your opponent may attack it or must attack it. If it's a choice your opponent is making it's bad for you, if it's a choice your opponent is not making it's bad for them. Importantly, the way that works in Star Realms where everything has to attack the defending bas only works with sequential attacks. If all attacks are declared simultaneously like in MtG that would be too easy of a lock.

Assuming then that we go with a setup where attacks are declared all at once, an attackable card can only have the ability to require an enemy vassal to be assigned to attack it before any can be assigned to attack your face. Once that requirement is made, other enemy vassals can be assigned to attack you or your other similar cards. So what kind of design space is there for this?

• A card could demand one (or more than one) enemy vassal be assigned to it before any can be assigned to attack lower priority targets.
• A card could stop being attackable under certain circumstances - such as being untapped.
• A card could become a high priority target under certain circumstances - such as being untapped.
• Such cards need a toughness score, but some of them could do damage to vassals that attack them.

So let's call this type of card the "Holding." It's inherently different from an Asset in that it can be destroyed with damage or attacked during combat. The ability where it's a must-attack target if anything is attacked can be called "Fortress."

And yes, there's a lot of overlap between Vassals that have the "Garrison" ability where they can't attack (but can still be declared as defenders) and Fortress Holdings. The big difference is that the defending player chooses whether and what to intercept with a Garrison, but the attacking player chooses what gets intercepted with a Fortress.

-Username17

[zeruslord]

There are a lot of words available for distinguishing different type-like things. Popular choices in programming language theory include type, kind, sort, and class. Personally I'd lean towards creature types and card kinds, just because "class" has different connotations in RPG land.

[Username17]

There are a lot of words available for distinguishing different type-like things. Popular choices in programming language theory include type, kind, sort, and class. Personally I'd lean towards creature types and card kinds, just because "class" has different connotations in RPG land.

I leaned towards "Class" precisely because it has strong RPG connotations. The keywords on a lady knight are going to include "Knight" and the keywords on a sorceress are going to include "Wizard." And if Knight and Wizard are "Classes" that makes intuitive sense to people who are coming at this from an RPG standpoint. I mean, I admit it's kind of weird for "Bird" to be a "Class" but it's not very weird for "Vampire" or "Elf" to be a "Class."

And compared to Yugioh where everything is a "Type" or perhaps a "type" and there's no difference at all between how they are said outloud because capital letters aren't pronounced differently...

In any case, one of the key insights is that keywords don't have to be different on your monsters than on your spells. MtG has Creature Types that only appear on Creature Cards, which leads to the true rules statement "Creature Types Only Appear on cards with the Creature Card Type." which is so fucked that I can't even. But beyond that, the game is simply objectively worse that "Goblin Gathering" doesn't benefit from Goblin Warchief making your Goblin Cards cost less. That's confusing and terrible.

So Spells and Holdings and Assets and stuff can just have Classes. A Den of Thieves can be a "Holding - Rogue," a Call to Arms can be an "Asset - Soldier" and a Tide of Swine can be a "Spell - Pig" and so on and so on.

-Username17

[Username17]

Let's talk for a moment about the Asset: the Card that sits in play and does not inherently have any interaction points with the rest of the game. This is the Continuous Trap from Yugioh, the Edge from Shadowfist, the Enchantment and the Artifact from MtG. And so on and so on. It's an important card type, because it's the card type where you can write any rules you want. The design space is limitless.

An Asset interacts with the rest of the game solely through its text box. It does what it says it does, no more and no less. But an Asset is interacted with by other cards almost solely through its Classes. If you ever want to be able to make a "dispel magic" style effect, then every Asset that is supposed to be an ongoing dispellable magic effect needs to be labeled as such. If you ever want to be able to make an effect that smashes gadgets, then every Asset that is basically a smashable gizmo needs to be labeled as such.

This means that while the text of an Asset is completely unrestrained and can be anything at all, the Classes on an Asset are heavily constrained. The Classes you slap on Assets today limit what kinds of cards you can make tomorrow. You can only ever make a "Silence" effect if the Assets that are songs and battle cries are distinguished by one or more Classes that make them a distinguishable group of cards.

But this also means that there isn't any need for there to be different "card types" of cards that sit in play like in MtG or V:tES. The Classes on the cards are the only meaningful routes of interaction for other cards, and you just have to remember to give all of them enough relevant Classes for there to be a design space for cards to interact with them.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

'Sort' is good. People will say 'he's a knightly sort' and it doesn't sound as bad as 'bird class' to say 'bird sort'.

[DrPraetor]

To me, a "class" is a broader category and a "type" is a smaller category, and using "sort" as a noun is painful.

That said:

Class: Aves
Linnaeus, 1758

bird can definitely be a class. So I'll accept Franks position: Types are the big category and classes are the subcategory.

If you are basically playing MtG, that's enough card types, but:
[*] You might want victory cards to be distinct from Assets and Vassals (not just in what cards hit them, but in how they're played / where they go).
[*] You might want Fortress cards which can be attacked (and therefore are distinct from Assets) but can't participate in battle otherwise (and therefore are distinct from Vassals.)
and you could have Location cards, and Mission cards, and so forth, which would be different from Assets in that, like Vassals, they have somewhere else specific to go or some subgame with which they interact.

But, let's do classes for Assets:
[*] Rite. A rite can be disenchanted.

This class also appears on many spells, I suppose? Do you want fire-and-forget effects like "Battle Bellow" which are of mundane nature? If so, "spell" is a bad type for such effects.

[*] Plot. A plot can be exposed or foiled.
[*] Mechanism. A mechanism can be broken.
[*] Courtier. see note

Some assets will want to be policies or institutional structures; think of Shadowfist edges like Paper Trail or Underworld Contract. BUT, I think these Assets want to be the same class as Vassals who fill the same role

[*] Practice. A "thing that you do", like meditate or be really good with swords.
[*] Lore. A "thing that you know" - not sure if this should be different from Practice or not? Lore is probably a better name.

"Being good at stuff" is clearly a class if you are an asset, but is not a class if you are a vassal. Lore Assets and Scholar Vassals might-or-might-not want to be the same class.

Assets that are subject to silence (Rallying Cry, Song of Death) should be Bards. This will be true for many classes, for example Courtier above.

What class would "Entropy is your Friend" be? What about "Fire in the Lake" or "Magnum Justice"?

http://chimpshack.org/db/cgi-bin/card_search.cgi

[Username17]

I prefer "Gadget" over mechanism. However, I think you probably want to differentiate technological things from magical things. So you might have "Relics" that are for things like crystal balls, and "Gadgets" that are for things like laser turrets. And you can then have effects that smash things that can destroy a Gadget or a Relic; and you can have effects that dispel magic that can destroy a Relic or an Enchantment.

The core insight is that we aren't specifically looking for the smallest number of keywords that could plausibly work, we're looking for having enough keywords to allow there to be venn diagrams that allow for future design space. I figure that a typical Asset should probably have two or three Classes, and that typical Asset Removal options should probably have two or three targetable Classes.

-Username17

[DrPraetor]

The subset of Classes that are used to ensure sensible interaction with the playspace wants to be finite.

It's okay if "Mobilization" is a Soldier Asset and "Chivalrous Conduct" is a Knight Asset. But, if "Crescendo" is Bardic and "Song of Sages" is an Aria or something instead, that's unsatisfying for having future cards interact sensibly. "Song of Sages" can certainly be an Aria as well, and you can-and-should sprinkle a long tail of classes like Bird and Crystal (for the crystal ball) and so forth.

That is, you can have as many Classes as you want, but because you don't want to have to put both "Bardic" and "Sonic" on every spellsong, your list of classes that you are keeping for interaction purposes does indeed want to be minimal.

So: Art, Bardic and Warcry would be a good compact set of Classes. "Ennui" hits Art and Bardic, while "Silence" hits Bardic and Warcry. Other classes exist, but they are in the "long tail" and you don't worry about forgetting to put them on cards for which it might make sense - so Aria might be a Class you introduce in the second expansion for four particular cards that are supposed to be a tribe together. If "Song of Sages" in the original set isn't an Aria, you don't lose sleep over it.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I think if you're envisioning most Assets as having multiple classes anyway, there isn't much point to having Gadget be shorthand for 'Tech Object' and Relic be shorthand for 'Enchanted Object.' You can cut out the middle man and just have Tech, Enchanted, and Object be classes.

[Username17]

I think if you're envisioning most Assets as having multiple classes anyway, there isn't much point to having Gadget be shorthand for 'Tech Object' and Relic be shorthand for 'Enchanted Object.' You can cut out the middle man and just have Tech, Enchanted, and Object be classes.

I don't think it's profitable to cut things up quite that much. Mostly because the Classes on Assets are also going to appear on Vassals - where there's a lot less room because those Vassals are also going to be Wizards and Warriors and Cats and shit.

So here's the issue: let's imagine that we have a Dragon Golem. It's a Golem, and also a Dragon, but it's also whatever the fuck the Crown of Leaden Flowers is. Now there's lots of space on the Crown of Leaden Flowers. It's just an Asset and doesn't have Creature Classes, so if you wanted it to be an "Asset - Magic Apparel Object" or something, you could totally do that. But for purposes of the Dragon Golem, it would be much better for that to be a "Vassal - Dragon Golem Relic" than it is for it to be a "Vassal - Dragon Golem Magic Object."

Remember that while you could have the Memory Veil be a "Magic Aura" and have the Crown of Leaden Flowers be a "Magic Object" and then have Dispel Magic be usable on either because it can destroy a Magic target, you could also have the Memory Veil be an Enchantment and the Crown of Leaden Flowers be a Relic and then have Dispel Magic target Relics or Enchantments. And that might be preferable because you have a lot more space in the text box of Dispel Magic than you have in the card signifiers of your Assets.

It's okay if "Mobilization" is a Soldier Asset and "Chivalrous Conduct" is a Knight Asset. But, if "Crescendo" is Bardic and "Song of Sages" is an Aria or something instead, that's unsatisfying for having future cards interact sensibly.

The fact that Bards and Poets are Performers and Splendorous Anthem is not is a problem, I'll grant.

One of the issues of course is that based on the Classes you end up choosing there will design space that is forever cut off. The fact that the Sword Throne doesn't have the "Metal" class on it means that you'll never be able to make a "Rust Mist" that destroys the Sword Throne but wouldn't destroy the Ivory Chair.

-Username17