Design Log: Stardate 08.02.2002

Templates Fugit

When I looked through those demo decks the other day, I said the cards looked strangely familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. I wasn't talking just about lack of classifications or cost-icons, or for that matter just personnel. While the card backs are, of course, identical to 1st edition to allow for backwards compatibility of some cards (well, right now technically they're identical because they consist of color printouts sleeved with old cards, but you get the idea), there are some changes to the actual card templates. Same general layout – at a quick glance, you probably wouldn't notice much difference between these cards and the ones in your old standby Romulan or Federation deck. But they'll be easier to design and to play with.

What kind of changes make for easier design? "The tiny amount of space for game text on most Star Trek CCG cards is a severe design constraint," says Evan Lorentz. That's because the lore box takes up the same amount of space whether there's a lot to say about the card or only a little (e.g., "Romulan spies are everywhere"). "That leaves only three lines of game text on a standard verb card – a dilemma, event, or interrupt – and only two lines for skills on a typical personnel card."

You mean three lines isn't enough? Actually, I know darned well it isn't enough; trying to shoehorn enough text into a dilemma game text box for the intent to intelligible without a three paragraph current rulings entry was a Major difficulty – pun very intentional! – when I helped design cards for The Borg expansion. I kept trying to get Evan to let me make dilemmas on the seven-line template used for incidents, but he wouldn't buy that. So the "easier design" solution to this problem? "We merged the lore box and game text box into a single box. Cards can still have lore most of the time, but when we need more game text space the lore can be shorter or even eliminated if necessary." Wow – can I go back and rewrite some of those Borg dilemmas now? I didn't think so...

What about personnel cards? "Same thing, a single box for skills and lore." This will allow "special game text" on many more personnel cards, making personnel much more individualized than just regular skills will allow.

In fact, so-called "noun" cards (personnel and ships) will inhabit templates much closer in appearance to "verb" cards (events and interrupts) all around. Instead of a narrow classification or ship class "bar," nouns will have a bar the full width of the text box, similar to the current verb title bar under the picture. Since there's no longer a personnel classification, that space will be used for species (similar to Lord of the Rings character races) – no more guessing whether a personnel is human or not! – and for icons that (on personnel) used to sit outside the text areas, like staffing icons and Alternate Universe icons. (And yes, I did see at least one AU icon – on Telek R'Mor – in a demo deck.) Ships will continue to list the ship class in that bar.

Conversely, verb cards will have the card title transferred to the top of the card, just like nouns have always had. This allows you to see all the card titles when you fan out your hand (I can hear the message board denizens cheering now), and relegates the card type to the under-the-picture position. After all, if you have a card type icon in the upper left corner to distinguish events from interrupts, why do you need that information printed across the top of the card, too?

In case you're wondering how incidents and objectives will differ from events now that the text boxes are merged, the short answer is that those card types, along with doorways, will disappear. Incidents and objectives were never much more than events that were inherently immune to Kevin Uxbridge and had more space for game text, anyway; so all "permanent" verbs will be events and all "cards that play like interrupts" will in fact be interrupts.

Now won't that make a nice dent in the glossary?

Kathy McCracken
Major Rakal
Star Trek Intelligence Officer

August 2, 2002

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