TCGS AS A BASIS FOR SKILL CREATION

Another thing that could apply is the “tapping” for resource mechanic.

Say you can level up your characters by upgrading the max amount and types of resources she can use per turn. Instead of using MPs her skills will be limited by her resources.

E.g. She only has two fire tokens, one water, and one colorless/all token. She can only cast spells that add up to those tokens per turn.

The difference between a summoned creature in a TCG and a buff in an RPG is small enough to be manageable. And I think if you converted TCG summons into RPG buffs instead of RPG party members, you'd get a more unique and deeper game. I think it would be interesting to see an RPG where there were lots and lots of buffs, and there were spells that targeted enemy buffs to reduce their remaining duration, or that "healed" your own buffs by improving their duration.

For example, you could have a spell that deals 10 points of fire damage and also reduces the duration of the targets ice-elemental buffs by 2 rounds. This would be the equivalent of a spell that damages the enemy and also one of their minions.

Many buffs would probably just be passive damage effects. A buff you applied to yourself to radiate fire damage to all enemies each round. Maybe buffs could have elements, to make this more interesting. And certain effects could target those elements. So every time this example buff deals fire damage, maybe it could reduce the remaining duration of all ice-elemental buffs on enemies by 1 round, as well.

Certain buffs could be better at defending. Like you could apply a buff to yourself that had a very long duration of 20 rounds, but did nothing but make it so any time your fire- and earth-elemental buffs would have their duration reduced, this buff's duration gets reduced instead. That would be the equivalent of a "taunt" minion in Hearthstone.

Randomly drawing attacks is definitely the least interesting part of TCG combat, and the first thing I'd remove if I were making a single-player game. The random draws are necessary when playing against another human, or else the game is too predictable and there's almost no question of who wins. If you remove the randomness, then at high levels of play, the entire game is based around guessing your opponent's deck and making the right deck to beat them, which is not really what you want. You want the game itself to be exciting, instead of being a foregone conclusion as soon as the players sit down.

But in a single-player video game, you're overcoming a specific set of challenges made by a game designer, which you're supposed to win, instead of an infinite number of challenges against random people, which you're not necessarily supposed to win. So the entire game can be pure strategy without any more randomness than a typical JRPG's battles.

In a PVE game, I am strongly against the idea that a player can do everything perfectly and still lose due to RNG. And if you randomly draw cards to determine what skills you can use each round, then that can always happen.

I am making an TCG inspired game in VX Ace. It might have some ideas you can borrow.
https://imgur.com/a/jgIUH

I didn't have to use MtG cards, but I feel the fanservice adds to the game. I try to keep effects literal where possible (Lighting Bolt deals exactly 3 damage, etc) But in some cases like tapping/untapping lands I have to take some liberties as to how those effects translate to an RPG.

Deckbuilding is a part I decided to cut from the game. It would probably create a lot of balance issues which was going to make playtesting more time consuming. But with a good leveling system, letting players choose their deck contents wouldn't make things too unbalanced, since exp/leveling would serve as an equalizer. So maybe I will add it in someday.

One thing I did was offer a sort of real time deckbuilding by adding a skill that shows two card and you choose one. So you can pick the one you want or whichever benefits you in that situation. It took a while to implement this, but I feel it was well worth it! It's one of the highlights of the game.


The game has no summoning. But I HAD brainstormed at one point making a game where the party is only one person and you simply summon monsters (party members) that go away at the end of the battle. They would have less HP than you making them somewhat fragile. I remember looking at scripts to determine whether such a game was possible to make in VX Ace, and from what I remember it is totally possible, at least in theory.
I had a very nonlinear game in mind, there could be guild bosses and you go around learning/mastering the various colors which you can do in any order.
red = damage spells
green = creatures
white = healing
Obviously green would have a major emphasis in such as game. Nothing says the colors have to be equal.

"Randomly drawing attacks is definitely the least interesting part of TCG combat, and the first thing I'd remove if I were making a single-player game."
I may have to disagree there. The same logic apples to both PVE and PVP, it keeps battles interesting otherwise they'd play out the same every time. It adds 'replay value' to battles.
I really like the card system in in Mega Man Star Force 1-3 for instance. Very fast and simple game with tons of encounters but the cards keeps encounters unique and it makes player feel like a improvisational badass using their dealt cards as effectively as possible.
It's also why Black Rock Shooter is dumb. Just equip the best 4 skills and spam them at the start of every battle. Even worse are those skills that pause the battle and make you watch an animation of BRS doing a cool attack. Meaning that most of the time the battle is over as quickly as you can press X and only in those rare cases the enemies survive your initial onslaught do you actually get to, you know, play a videogame.
And in a regular RPG you just spam attack to conserve MP.
Randomized skills are a godsend imho.

edit: This illustrates how deckbuilding could have worked if I decided to include it:

During battle, each draw is a random number (such as 1-10) which produces whichever card the player chose in advance to go into that slot.

MTG has been a consistent and major influence and inspiration on all aspects of my game design, not just mechanics and gameplay but also (often subconsciously) setting, flavor, and proper nouns. Also some of the base assumptions of how magic and interplanar travel work, look, and feel.

The Owl project I was working on was...I think it'd be accurate to say based on...the card Sage Owl, who was a familiar to Arcanis the Omnipotent, a name from MTG so ridiculously over the top I couldn't not use it.

I mean, my username is also a Magic card so... yeah. I have absolutely no knowledge of or interest whatsoever in any other CCGs, though.

I think using scripts that are commonly available and well understood you could make a pretty sweet "deck" based battle system. I also think lots of the ideas you mentioned don't necessarily come from TCGs or belong to TCGs as such, like there's really nothing unique to TCGs about summoning, summoning has pretty consistently been a thing in CRPGs and JRPGs. The project I'm working on now probably is the least influenced by MTG of anything I've made and I'm still planning on having deployable turrets, for instance.

author=Darken
@LockeZ:You misunderstand how drawing cards work. Not only are you drawing from a player chosen pool (which is fixed actually as far as what's available) but your deck gets smaller as the game goes on. There are tons of card effects that play with how cards are discarded and gained also (which IS interesting actually). If you had a bad hand when you lost you probably made bad choices before. That the strongest strategy isn't going to be the same every time is probably the strongest value unpredictable hands have.

You're assuming the entire match is played in the single first hand or something. You're also assuming the card design itself is so imbalanced that it's possible to draw a card that does nothing. Which I guess, just don't design stuff like that and you're fine?

much troof. strong agree.