Wikipedia talk:Trading card game/Action plan/Phase 1:Rules

Rules

In an effort to keep this page manageable and readable, I've moved each of the long rules proposals off to the subpages linked below. Feedback and discussions can (and probably should) continue here. Equazcion •✗/C • 23:01, 1 Mar 2009 (UTC)

Proposal #1

• See /Rules proposal 1 for a description of this proposal. -- Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Dittobori)} 08:06, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Pretty good start, though it will obviously have to be expanded once the game has taken more shape. It seems to play a lot like Magic: The Gathering right now. You might want to deviate somewhat from that track. I'm assuming that we want this game to be unique and novel. -Kanogul ^(talk) 17:59, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I was actually aiming for something closer to a blend of the Neopets TCG and M:tG. -Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Cardmaker)} 05:24, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't get it. Why are the "bad" cards always black? Why does "good"="white" and "bad"="black"? What're you trying to say? Alright, I don't think it's intentional, but it's a color scheme with its historical origins in a lot of white guys in europe in the middle ages deciding that white meant good and black meant bad (viz. Whitewash, denigrate, etc) in other words, as culturally pervasive as this color association is in America, its racially charged nature is no coincidence: it really does have a very racist past, and it can't be denied that it's strange to, in general, describe white things as good and black things as bad even today.

So why perpetuate this bizarre dichotomy? Maybe we can just have good cards and bad cards, or maybe use some colors, any colors, which don't come as loaded with a centuries-old orientalizing European paradigm of pale being "good" and dark being "evil". Anyway, you're free to go on with it, it's not that big a deal. It can be frustrating though because it's this nasty patronizing racial belief system built right into our language. --68.32.26.209 (talk) 09:21, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

it seemed far to confusing. chidren won't want to play something so confusing.--RIVER^{Babble at my brooks} 21:28, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

What in the heck do you mean by clicked? I mean, this is a card game and not a computer game right? And I really don't think that you should use colors that might promote racisim, instead of using black and white to distinguish between good and bad, perhaps you could use a check mark versus an x I don't think that people will purchase this if it is exactly like editing wikipedia, something which is not always amusing or fun. Remember who your audiance is. Bubbling anonymously (talk) 21:50, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Wow, people....how can you relate black and white representations of evil and good to skin tones? Honestly, I don't know anyone who has ever equated this with skin tones, and I think someone's just trying to stir trouble here. We could just as easily use red and the Chinese and Native Americans would be after us. I don't think any connection is intended, and I don't think very many people would actually take offense as you have described.

Also, in response to Bubble, our audience is fans of Wikipedia...this game isn't expected to be a hit wonder like Magic or Pokemon, just something fun that would serve as a fundraiser to get editors to actually contribute funds in addition to the edits they already contribute. I'm thinking it will have a much more limited audience, sort of like Redemption, which is targeted at Christians. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:57, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Proposal #2

• See /Rules proposal 2 for a description of this proposal. -- ♠TomasBat 22:35, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

lol i love it ⊕Assasin Joe ^talk 02:26, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

It's very well-thought out, and I like it, though it lacks some expandability and does "encourage vandalism", which is one of the concerns that has been expressed. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:02, 28 February 2010 (UTC) (edited by Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:01, 10 March 2010 (UTC))

Proposal #3

• See /Rules proposal 3 for a description of this proposal. -- Jon513 (talk) 19:30, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Problem is that one of the goals should be to promote a collaborative spirit of gameplay, so that it doesn't send the wrong message (i.e. that Wikipedia's full of Snidely Whiplashes who'd slit their grandma's throat for a penny). Where does this fit in? -Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Cardmaker)} 20:57, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Well Bang! had several expansion, and I don't see any reason why this game couldn't likewise be expanded.

One of the great things in Bang! was that every place got (besides their role card) a special power card. Such as taking three cards at the start choosing two and then putting one back. Or getting the leftover cards of a killed player. Or being about to discard two cards for a health point. Or being able to hold up to 10 cards in your hand. Those with more powerful power got only three health point to start with. That could easily be added, and new powers can be at any time so long as they are not too powerful or too weak.

There was also an expansion that added different rules for every round. One round everyone got 3 cards to start, one round went around counter-clockwise, one round no one can play a "block", one round no one can play a "rfa" (increase health). One round the dead came back to life with three cards. There were many others and any amount could be added. In Bang! you could use any the amount of these card and the last one was always "players loose one life at the begining of their turn" this puts a time limit on the game.

There was also an expansion that added new types of cards. Some cards were very powerful but required the player to discard another card along with them to use them (give a health point to another player, block someone that require two unblocks to nullify, go up two health points ). There were also cards that stay in front of the players but took a round to activate. And there were also cards that did the same things as other cards but just had new names.

Also the game needn't be set in stone. If someone come up with a great card it can be added. If it is too powerful or upsets the "balance" of the game more filler cards can be added with it. Jon513 (talk) 21:58, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I think I misunderstood you. I thought you meant that you want to creation of the game to be more cooperative.

Any game that has a winner is going to be competitive is some way. Though these rules are less competitive because there are teams (the founder and admins, the vandals; the rogue admin is always by himself) so you are more likely to win. In fact even if you are killed ("blocked") you can still win if your teammates win.

Having a more "cooperative" game might be a nice idea but I think the main goal should be which is more fun. Jon513 (talk) 22:17, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposal #4

• See /Rules proposal 4 for a description of this. I do not intend to finish this ruleset, so consider it just a resource for ideas, and not a complete proposal. Lithoderm 23:45, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

This is my favorite proposal so far. It will need to be developed more (like all the rest) before finaization. To me, they all still seem kind of stock- not too original. I haven't thought of anything spectacular to fix this yet, but any novelty will be an improvement as far as I'm concerned. -Kanogul ^(talk) 18:58, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Question: Would there be counters to easily keep track of the EPs, WPs, GFPs, and APs? ♠TomasBat 22:46, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

The editor cards would be designed with three columns; a die of some sort (presumably 20-sided; they make them) goes on each column, and is rotated (easier to keep track of than counters). As for article points, you'd have tokens that match the color each article type, and replace the tokens when the article is promoted... Petropoxy (Lithoderm Proxy) (talk) 17:30, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

The problem with that, Petropoxy, is that d20s are associated with RPGs in general (and Dungeons & Dragons specifically) and are unusual to use in a card game. That said, I like this proposal. -Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Cardmaker)} 05:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Trading card games shouldn't involve any dice or coins if it can be avoided. At most, different colored counters (stones or chips) to indicate hits or bonuses. But I love these rules, and I'd like to see them merged with the highly expandable proposal #5. A side note, three "battle" type stats on a card is a bit much. I'd use 2. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:19, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposal #5

• See /Rules proposal 5 for a description. Certes (talk) 00:39, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I think that this is a really cool idea. Since this is a 52 card deck, we could also to the corner of the cards a suit and a number so the deck could be used regularly also. I have seen this done on professional games and it does not look weird and out of place. Jon513 (talk) 10:29, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Jon, and that is a good improvement. Custom cards are often printed in sheets of about 54, so I picked 52 to be flexible. My limited testing suggests that this size gives a reasonable duration and chance of winning. We can add extra link cards (Joker in corner) if the supplier's sheet is bigger than 52. Certes (talk) 12:57, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Nice idea. ♠TomasBat 10:59, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree, that would be a great idea... which gives this an advantage over other proposals. Unless of course, the others are planning to use a similar amount of cards. I've seen the thought of separate decks of 40-50 cards being used. ♠ 00:29, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I like the expandability, something I don't see in the other proposals. I'd like to see if we could combine this proposal with proposal #4 somehow, as it has great rules as well. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:15, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

And I'd recommend using the 12 categories below, found at the list of topics:

• General reference
• Culture and the arts
• Geography and places
• Health and fitness
• History and events
• Mathematics and logic
• Natural and physical sciences
• People and self
• Philosophy and thinking
• Religion and belief systems
• Society and social sciences
• Technology and applied sciences

12 colors of articles shouldn't be too hard to manage, I've seen a trading card game that uses as many as 12 colors of characters and they're very easily distinguishable. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:29, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I modified the above list to demonstrate 12 colors. Since Magic uses colored borders to distinguish the card's color, we probably ought to only use border color for aesthetics. Rather, all the cards requiring an article category (be they article cards or enhancements to be played on article cards) should display some icon or symbol which can be color-coded. This also solves the problem of having run out of colors-- since the other cards will not bear this icon, it won't matter what color they are. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 07:21, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Proposal #6

• See /Rules proposal 6 for a description of this proposal. -- Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 23:46, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I like it. It is very flexible and a lot can be built from it. I think it would be a great starting point. I liked specially how the player does not command the "bad" cards, but builds a "bad" cards deck that is passed to another player and acts by the drawing of random cards; I guess this would fix the problem of my proposal regarding the fact that it encourages vandalism/you take the role of the "bad guys". Here it's just more of a game mechanism - which you can customize. ♠TomasBat 00:48, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Updates on alterations

I'll keep y'all posted as I alter the rules, because every so often I may go back and fix something. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:27, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

• The following change has been made:

Turn over a one bad card from the bad card pile per bad entity in your playing space (i.e. if you have two Trolls and one Drama Monger, draw three bad cards) so all players can see it. The instructions on this card these cards must be followed immediately. If it any bad card drawn is an entity or article, it must be added immediately to the playing space. Enhancements and abilities, if possible, must be played immediately or discarded if it is not possible to play them. Before a player can continue with his turn, any special instructions on bad entity cards must be followed, and all any bad entities who have not already acted as a result of the played card cards must make one edit or vandalize once (certain abilities added to vandals, such as one called "sockpuppet", may increase this minimum to two). Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:27, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Proposal #7

• See /Rules proposal 7 for a description of this proposal. —Antony-22 (talk) 03:40, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

One of my favourites. I liked the idea of different secret win conditions for each player; "although everyone is acting collaboratively to improve Wikipedia, the face that the specific goals are different will cause some tension in the game" is a very clever idea. I also found the dynamics of the game very neat (article improvement, article issues that halt article improvement, skills, area of expertise) and the "IP edits deck" a good implementation of the random factor. The "hoax" articles is an interesting idea too. Well done! ♠TomasBat 00:20, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Any card game will necessarily need a lot of play testing to balance due to the sheer variety of cards. Having a variety of player objectives is relatively novel and interesting, but exacerbates this challenge. I suggest that the number of types of player objectives be reduced (perhaps to 3 or 4) and simplified by reducing the number of variables that enter into the determination of which player has won the game. Perhaps additional user types that are difficult to "score" should be relegated to the ranks of the "new users" or "IP edits." The win condition (N pages created) sounds good. Very promising start. —NewtyW (talk) 16:09, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I love this, but for some reason this game sounds rather "boxed"-- I don't see any incentive for players to purchase expansion cards or decks or trade cards. I'm also a bit biased against using dice with a TCG...if there's any way to eliminate it in favor of a deck of cards without requiring a massive amount of cards...

It's too bad I can't think of a way to incorporate cooperative playing which encourages good editing with tradable "bad" cards. After all, the bad cards make up half of the exciting Wikipedia terminology, and there are probably hundreds of possibilities for them. If anyone has ideas for how to do this, shout em out. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:50, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments! I actually was thinking along the lines of Race for the Galaxy, which does have expansions but which is not expandable in the same way that Magic is. The decks in my proposal could certainly be expanded with new Skill, Article, IP Edit, and Identity cards, but possibly with the exception of the first, the users aren't bringing their own separate decks to the game. That being said, it's a community decision whether we want to make it Magic-type or Race-type expandable. I'd be curious to hear suggestions as to how it could be modified to be more of the former, and see whether that changes the gameplay in a good way.

I agree that having a die for a card game is nontraditional, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Right now there are situations where a random article card needs to be chosen and I haven't quite thought of a good way to do that; another possiblity is to make instead the selections all deterministic (e.g., target the article with the most other issues, and break ties by picking the newest article). Antony-22 (talk) 04:18, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Ideas

Idea #1

• See /Idea proposal 1 for a full description of this proposal. Rock drum (talk·contribs·guestbook) 16:11, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Idea #2

• See /Idea proposal 2 for a full description of this proposal.

I like this idea, since multicolor cards force players to collaborate if they want more points (with single-color and grey/black colored cards both adding more spice to the game). Perhaps directly a whole new set of rules could be devised, being based mainly on this idea. ♠TomasBat 21:54, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Idea #3

• See /Idea proposal 3 for a full description of this proposal.

I think your idea is great, but please express your card suggestions a but more...--RatónBat ^{Talk 2 me!!} 23:11, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Idea #4

• See /Idea proposal 4 for a full description of this proposal.

I like the idea of using real articles rather than generic "Article" cards, that way the game is extensible in future. Pretzels^Talk! 18:32, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. -Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Cardmaker)} 21:52, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

• I agree. I say we do it.[user:Kingofsouls]-6:03 PM, march 2nd
• Very interesting idea indeed... ♠TomasBat 22:48, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
• I quite like it but how do we choose which WikiProjects to use? Rock drum (talk·contribs·guestbook) 12:16, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

End?

When will the poll end?--RatónBat ^{Talk 2 me!!} 19:50, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

A closing date hasn't been set yet, but I would think not very soon - more participation is needed. ♠TomasBat 21:09, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

We should probably set a deadline for submitting new proposals, and then have a fresh poll lasting for one week or so. Newer proposals have a disadvantage in the current poll, since a lot of people voted before they were posted. Antony-22 (talk) 21:06, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with setting a deadline for submitting new proposals and acknowledge that the newer proposals have a disadvantage in the current poll (though users can change their vote if they wish), but I believe one week is way too small a period of time to garner a considerable amount of votes: it's just a matter of taking a look at the dates of the votes to see how spaced out they were - and they total to merely 9. Plus, having a fresh poll would throw away all the participation we've accomplished up to now. ♠TomasBat 21:27, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps we could notify those who voted before that new proposals have been submitted and that they are encouraged to review them and vote again (even if that means they still vote for the same one). Whatever we do, I think the polling needs to wait until we work out all the bugs. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:28, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

By "all the bugs" do you mean the gameplay of each particular ruleset or the issues we're having with the poll? ♠TomasBat 20:30, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

End of this poll

After months of !voting, I think the results are clear:

1st place: proposal 2 with 10 votes

2nd place: tie between proposals 1 and 5, with 1 vote each

3rd place: all other proposals have achieved 0 votes.

I believe "newer proposals have a disadvantage in the current poll, since a lot of people voted before they were posted" is a valid argument; so, if anybody wants, I have no problem with repeating the poll before getting on with the project. That said, if the poll is repeated, we would have to move on with the most-voted ruleset as a base: otherwise we'll never get this going. Please comment, ♠TomasBat 00:11, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I think moving on would be a better idea. If this starts to drag it is going to go the way of other ideas for wikipedia that failed.  rdunnalbatross  07:49, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Yeah I think we should going on.--RatonBat ^{Talk 2 me!!} 21:09, 8 May 2010 (UTC)