Star Trek CCG Design-a-card Seminar: Part 1
Not to be outdone by yesterday's Lord of the Rings
Design-a-card Seminar, later in the day Star Trek CCG's intrepid
designers Evan Lorentz and Brad De Fruiter commandeered the seminar room
for a similar presentation for Star Trek CCG's Second Edition. Along
the way Evan and Brad offered up a good deal of insight into the design
considerations for Second Edition.
Evan started off by stating that Second Edition will show
more of a "cultural" emphasis (similar to that in LOTR) on the
different affiliations than was evident in First Edition, with each affiliation
having something they are particularly good at. For example, Bajorans will
be good at manipulating and retrieving personnel from the discard pile.
With a caution that we would be looking at the design of just
one card – more akin to a typical "dream card" design than
to real card design which more often tends to involve themes or "suites"
of cards that work together – Evan showed off the database of available
Star Trek images and demonstrated how he can search for images by
keywords (painstakingly entered by Evan – "This represents about
a month of my life"). Participants dcided they wanted to do a Bajoran-related
card, so he called up all the cards with a Bajoran keyword and we browsed
through them. A number of images that caught someone's eye turned out to
have already been used for a Second Edition card, but the book of the Kosst
Amojan was available and looked intriguing. So Kosst Amojan it was.
For more than an hour discussion went back and forth about
all the aspects of the card. First a card type needed to be chosen –
it seemed like a "verb" card (event or interrupt) and Chuck suggested
an event, which typically would stay in play for an ongoing effect, would
be most appropriate. The storyline of the book suggested it should be something
aggressive against non-Bajorans, with a benefit to Bajorans but at a definite
cost. A Pah-wraith theme was rejected as probably requiring it to mesh with
more cards.
Evan dropped the image into a Second Edition event card template
and began to give it the text that evolved from the discussion. First a
title – The Text of the Kosst Amojan. Jason wanted a quote for the
lore, so Evan looked up the script of the episode The Changing Face of Evil
and located this: "There's an old saying... 'He who studies evil, is
studied by evil.'" Then came game text. We got a lot of terminology
insights here; the designers have learned a lot from eight years of First
Edition wording inconsistencies and ambiguities, and are now nailing down
wording conventions right from the start.
Verbs that are going to stay in play (most events) will now
say "Plays in your core." That identifies the area on the table
where such cards go. Requirements for playing the card might say that you
must command a personnel with specific affiliation, keywords, or skills.
Timing issues are eliminated by stating that text is an "Order"
(meaning you can play it only during your own turn and only during your
execute orders phase) or by specifying that you may play it when some specific
action occurs or while a condition is in effect. For an action to be restricted
to once a turn it must say that. Some text is seen to be redundant or superfluous
and the wording is streamlined. And instead of saying "your opponent"
a card will say "an opponent" to allow for multiplayer gameplay.
The first draft ended up something like this: "To play
this event, you must command a Kai or a [Baj] Treachery personnel. Plays
in your core. Select three cards from your discard pile. An opponent chooses
one to place in your hand, one to shuffle into your deck, and one to be
removed from the game. You may do this only once each turn." And because
of its high inherent costs (you're going to lose a card completely), the
cost to play was set at 1.
Sounds good, right? But now the critiques begin, and the final
product looked quite a bit different. We'll tell you how that went in the
next installment.
Kathy McCracken
(Major Rakal)
Webmaster and Intelligence Officer
November 2, 2002
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