Originally published at Brain Dump. You can comment here or there.
Way back when I started this blog, I made the claim that it wasn’t just about roleplaying, but about gaming of all sorts. I have talked about other gaming topics in the past, but I find roleplaying extremely provacative, so I talk about it quite a bit. Anyway, I’m going to spend the next couple of posts talking about something different: CCGs. I bet you’re excited.
One of the most compelling things about Customizable Card Games (CCGs), at least to me, though I assume it’s generally appreciated, is the deck design phase. There’s a significant portion of play which centers around selecting which parts of the rules you’re going to employ. (Note that this understanding of deck design is based upon the fact that each card contains certain rules. If a given card is not in play, then its rules do not impact the game.)
One of the reasons that this is so interesting is that it makes a game out of game design. In selecting the rules you are doing something similar to what a game designer does when designing a game. You are constructing the specific interface that you will play under. While your choices are constrained to the cards available in the game, they are much wider than most other forms of gaming.
This design-level game is an important and compelling part of CCG play, and it has a lot of implications for design in other arenas too. Which is what I’m hoping to talk about over the next couple of days. For now, I just want to point out that, in some senses, this part of CCG play is a sort of poor man’s design. It’s also a form of competative design. Similar to a game like Mao or Nomic in which part of the game is selecting the rules best suited to gaining you victory in future play. This game-within-a-game effect generates some very interesting social effects.