Probably shouldn’t have abbreviated that quite so much, but GMG stands for Game Makers Guild! If you haven’t heard of the Game Makers Guild, they’re a group down in Boston that provides a bunch of services for indie designers, including design help, curation, and also runs playtesting events.
I’ve written a fair amount about various playtesting events I go to, but this one was different because for once, I brought a game! (Okay, it’s not just me, it’s a game I’ve done at most 30% of the work for.)
Before I talk about my own game though, I want to talk about another game I saw there, called Rule the School.
Rule the School
Rule the School is an area control game by Alfred Septembre. Players are competing candidates in a school council election, and are trying to win by having their supporters most effectively placed to influence the outcome.
In this sense, it looks pretty straightforward, but the real fun bit is the action selection system. On each turn, one player draws 3 supporter cards, chooses 1 to keep, 1 to give to their opponent, and 1 to throw away. Then, they slot that supporter card into one of their actions, and the supporter they chose adds its effect to the selected action. Alfred described it to me as “slotting the key into an ignition switch,” and I really enjoyed it.
I don’t really have anything to say on Rule the School, other then to note that by the time I was playing it, I’d had 4 hours of sleep, been awake playtesting games for 8 hours straight, and Rule the School knocked me back awake. It’s just a very fun game, and I hope I get to play more of it in the future, whether that’s at PAX East Unpub, another GMG event, or somewhere else.
If you want to learn more about it, Alfred talks about the game a bit on his blog here, or on his instagram! Its really fun, and I hope I get to see more of it.
Anyway, now let’s talk about my game!
Welcome to Card City
I’ve been working on a game called Card City Critters for a few months now, co-designing it with Max Seidman. It’s something we’re calling a “live action collectible card game.” Let me explain how we got here.
I love collectible card games, of all sorts and sizes. Whether I’m talking about what I’m seeing at PAX Unplugged, playing One Piece for the first time, or throwing myself into tournaments for games I’ve only played twice, I love CCG’s.
But CCG’s also have a lot of a problems. From a player standpoint, they’re incredibly expensive in terms of both time and money. If you don’t have a local community for a specific game, it can be hard to find folks to actually play with.
From a design standpoint, there are a lot of problems, but they’re almost all outweighed by the billion pound elephant in the room: if you choose to make a collectible card game or trading card game, your product is competing with Magic: The Gathering. This is something that I view as a pretty bad idea, even if I respect those who choose to do it.
Still, I love trading card games. I love learning a system, seeing strategies I would never have thought of myself, opening booster packs for the first time, and just generally getting to experience all the weirdness and excitement of a new CCG.
So my question for myself was “How can I create an experience that lets players have all of those fun moments, but is also far cheaper, doesn’t require a long term commitment, and also doesn’t compete with big players already existing in the space?”
And while it’s a work in progress, Card City Critters is my and Max’s attempt to design that system.