User:Spineflu
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=== Introduction === | === Introduction === | ||
| − | + | The first rule about creating custom fan cards for Dominion is that you can ignore every single rule about it if you want to. Dominion is a game. Its purpose is fun. If you've got a card idea that sounds fun, do it. Playtest it. If it remains fun after scrutiny, keep playing with it. | |
| − | + | Donald X. Vaccarino, the creator of Dominion, on house rules and variants: "I encourage people to play whatever game variants they want, provided they comply with local laws and are agreed upon by all players." | |
| − | + | However, this guide might help you create balanced cards without falling into as many pitfalls along the way. If you get past all those, you might still have trouble figuring out how to cost your cards. This guide might help you there, too. Additionally, the later sections of the guide discuss issues related to creating artwork for your cards, printing them, and using them. | |
| − | + | Dominion is a very simple, highly flexible game model, and it's very easy to add to. With that flexibility, though, is the potential to make uninteresting ideas. Whilst they may not be flawed, your ideas could get to be disappointing in some way after playing with them for a while. Particularly disappointing if you went through the trouble of getting them printed out. | |
This guide aims to help make your good ideas into great ones before the final send-off to print, big reveal to your friends, etc.; it goes through the design process, identifying where people can take a bad turn, aiming to help refine your card ideas to be just what you want them to be. Whether a single card or a whole bunch of them, or your own expansion, this is going to help. | This guide aims to help make your good ideas into great ones before the final send-off to print, big reveal to your friends, etc.; it goes through the design process, identifying where people can take a bad turn, aiming to help refine your card ideas to be just what you want them to be. Whether a single card or a whole bunch of them, or your own expansion, this is going to help. | ||
| + | |||
| + | One last note: If you're going into fan card creation with the goal of showing Donald X your cards so he can tell you how good they are and that they'll be in the next dominion expansion, don't. With the exception of [[Courtyard]], DXV dislikes card submissions, avoids the Variants & Fan Cards subforum, and gets upset when they're posted in the endless interview thread. | ||
=== General Tips === | === General Tips === | ||
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Simplicity is a good thing. You don't want your cards to be any more complicated than they have to be. If you have an idea for a card, try to boil it down as simply as possible without losing the essence of the idea. Note, by the way, that by "simplicity," I'm talking about the concepts you use, not necessarily how complex and careful the the card text has to be to convey those concepts. [[Native Village]], for example, has a wall of text on it, but that's okay since the concept itself is a simple one. Once players learn what it does, they don't have to reread the card text every time just to make sure each use conforms to every nuance. | Simplicity is a good thing. You don't want your cards to be any more complicated than they have to be. If you have an idea for a card, try to boil it down as simply as possible without losing the essence of the idea. Note, by the way, that by "simplicity," I'm talking about the concepts you use, not necessarily how complex and careful the the card text has to be to convey those concepts. [[Native Village]], for example, has a wall of text on it, but that's okay since the concept itself is a simple one. Once players learn what it does, they don't have to reread the card text every time just to make sure each use conforms to every nuance. | ||
| − | ==== Swing | + | ==== Swing is a Miss ==== |
Try to recognize cards that will be "swingy" and avoid them, unless adding swinginess to the game is your intention. By "swingy," I mean a card that will tip the balance of the game too much, especially in a random way. In general, you want to reward good strategy, not random luck. | Try to recognize cards that will be "swingy" and avoid them, unless adding swinginess to the game is your intention. By "swingy," I mean a card that will tip the balance of the game too much, especially in a random way. In general, you want to reward good strategy, not random luck. | ||
| − | As an example, suppose you had an attack card that allowed you to take the top card of the deck of the player to your left. You might get lucky and turn up a [[Colony]], resulting in a 20-point swing in your favor | + | As an example, suppose you had an attack card that allowed you to take the top card of the deck of the player to your left. You might get lucky and turn up a [[Colony]], resulting in a 20-point swing in your favor — more than the margin of victory for many if not most Dominion games. Or you might get very unlucky and turn up a Curse, resulting in a 2-point swing against you. With such a card, strategic play scarcely matters. The winner is whoever gets luckier with that attack. |
| − | Swinginess does exist in the official Dominion cards but on a dramatically smaller scale. [[Saboteur]] turning a Colony into a [[Province]] is only a 4-point swing. [[Swindler]] turning a Province into a [[Peddler]] is a defensible edge case. [[Thief]] and [[Bandit]] only work on treasure: a plentiful, non-scoring resource. | + | Swinginess does exist in the official Dominion cards but on a dramatically smaller scale. [[Saboteur]] turning a Colony into a [[Province]] is only a 4-point swing. [[Swindler]] turning a Province into a [[Peddler]] is a defensible edge case. [[Thief]] and [[Bandit]] only work on treasure: a plentiful, non-scoring resource. Also note that many of those swingy cards have been removed as of the [[Second Edition]]. |
==== Scale Model ==== | ==== Scale Model ==== | ||
| + | Make sure your card scales well to multiple players. It's okay if a card plays differently with different numbers of players — many of the official cards do, like [[Jester]] and [[Pirate Ship]] —but you don't want a card that only works with a certain number and is brokenly weak or brokenly strong otherwise. Note that it is no accident that Witch affects all opponents, while Tribute only affects one. The other way around, and neither Witch nor Tribute would scale properly with different numbers of players. | ||
==== Avoid Scripted Play ==== | ==== Avoid Scripted Play ==== | ||
==== Fair isn't Balanced ==== | ==== Fair isn't Balanced ==== | ||
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* [http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=699.msg9671#msg9671 Formatting Your Cards] | * [http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=699.msg9671#msg9671 Formatting Your Cards] | ||
* [http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=699.msg9671#msg9671 Printing Your Card] | * [http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=699.msg9671#msg9671 Printing Your Card] | ||
| + | == Fan Card Creation Tools == | ||
| + | *[https://shardofhonor.github.io/dominion-card-generator/index.html Shard Of Honor's card template] - a fork of VioletCLM's card creator with additional functionality added. | ||
| + | *[https://shemitz.net/static/dominion3/ VioletCLM's card creator] | ||
| + | *[http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=16622.0 thread discussing both card creators] | ||
== Design Contests == | == Design Contests == | ||
Revision as of 13:13, 6 January 2020
Fan cards are unofficial Dominion kingdom cards created by fans of the game for personal use.
Contents |
Fan Card Creation Guide
The Fan Card Creation Guide is an extensive collection of tips and guidelines for fan created cards written by users rinkworks and Aquila. The guide is well respected and often referenced in the design and critique of fan made cards.
The rinkworks guide is reproduced here in its entirety, with edits for clarity & formatting, and additional content from Aquila and spineflu
Way, Way TLDR: Playtest your fan cards.
Introduction
The first rule about creating custom fan cards for Dominion is that you can ignore every single rule about it if you want to. Dominion is a game. Its purpose is fun. If you've got a card idea that sounds fun, do it. Playtest it. If it remains fun after scrutiny, keep playing with it.
Donald X. Vaccarino, the creator of Dominion, on house rules and variants: "I encourage people to play whatever game variants they want, provided they comply with local laws and are agreed upon by all players."
However, this guide might help you create balanced cards without falling into as many pitfalls along the way. If you get past all those, you might still have trouble figuring out how to cost your cards. This guide might help you there, too. Additionally, the later sections of the guide discuss issues related to creating artwork for your cards, printing them, and using them.
Dominion is a very simple, highly flexible game model, and it's very easy to add to. With that flexibility, though, is the potential to make uninteresting ideas. Whilst they may not be flawed, your ideas could get to be disappointing in some way after playing with them for a while. Particularly disappointing if you went through the trouble of getting them printed out. This guide aims to help make your good ideas into great ones before the final send-off to print, big reveal to your friends, etc.; it goes through the design process, identifying where people can take a bad turn, aiming to help refine your card ideas to be just what you want them to be. Whether a single card or a whole bunch of them, or your own expansion, this is going to help.
One last note: If you're going into fan card creation with the goal of showing Donald X your cards so he can tell you how good they are and that they'll be in the next dominion expansion, don't. With the exception of Courtyard, DXV dislikes card submissions, avoids the Variants & Fan Cards subforum, and gets upset when they're posted in the endless interview thread.
General Tips
Know Your Canon
Be intimately familiar with all of the official Dominion cards and how to make the best use of them. You don't have to be an expert Dominion player, but you should be an expert at knowing what each card does and when and why you'd want to use it. Okay, so you don't technically have to know ALL the cards, but my point is that there are more design principles behind the published cards than you might think at first glance.
For example, do you know why Sea Hag discards the top card of your deck instead of just having you plunk the Curse on top? (Answer: So multiple Sea Hags don't completely destroy your next turn.) Do you know why Tournament gives +1 Action? (Answer: So a player with a Tournament in hand but no Province doesn't have to agonize over the uninteresting decision to risk playing Tournament at the expense of another terminal Action in his hand.) Do you know why Outpost won't let you take more than two turns in a row? (Answer: Otherwise you could build a deck that plays an Outpost every turn, shutting out all other players.)
Knowing why the official cards are the way they are will keep you out of the same traps they avoid.
Know Beyond the Canon
The Secret Histories and Endless Interview both have extremely valuable insights into what has and hasn't worked with official DXV playtesting.
The Variants and Fan Cards subforum - especially the Weekly Design Contest thread - can be a treasure trove of useful jumping off points and ideas that both work and don't work; a thing to note with these is the date they were posted compared to which sets were available as "official" reference at the time - several things that used to be a semiviable card were suddenly made overpowered in games with Capitalism, or an official card did them better.
Keep It Simple
Simplicity is a good thing. You don't want your cards to be any more complicated than they have to be. If you have an idea for a card, try to boil it down as simply as possible without losing the essence of the idea. Note, by the way, that by "simplicity," I'm talking about the concepts you use, not necessarily how complex and careful the the card text has to be to convey those concepts. Native Village, for example, has a wall of text on it, but that's okay since the concept itself is a simple one. Once players learn what it does, they don't have to reread the card text every time just to make sure each use conforms to every nuance.
Swing is a Miss
Try to recognize cards that will be "swingy" and avoid them, unless adding swinginess to the game is your intention. By "swingy," I mean a card that will tip the balance of the game too much, especially in a random way. In general, you want to reward good strategy, not random luck.
As an example, suppose you had an attack card that allowed you to take the top card of the deck of the player to your left. You might get lucky and turn up a Colony, resulting in a 20-point swing in your favor — more than the margin of victory for many if not most Dominion games. Or you might get very unlucky and turn up a Curse, resulting in a 2-point swing against you. With such a card, strategic play scarcely matters. The winner is whoever gets luckier with that attack.
Swinginess does exist in the official Dominion cards but on a dramatically smaller scale. Saboteur turning a Colony into a Province is only a 4-point swing. Swindler turning a Province into a Peddler is a defensible edge case. Thief and Bandit only work on treasure: a plentiful, non-scoring resource. Also note that many of those swingy cards have been removed as of the Second Edition.
Scale Model
Make sure your card scales well to multiple players. It's okay if a card plays differently with different numbers of players — many of the official cards do, like Jester and Pirate Ship —but you don't want a card that only works with a certain number and is brokenly weak or brokenly strong otherwise. Note that it is no accident that Witch affects all opponents, while Tribute only affects one. The other way around, and neither Witch nor Tribute would scale properly with different numbers of players.
Avoid Scripted Play
Fair isn't Balanced
Common Pitfalls
Reactions
Mirror Force
Non-terminal Reactions
Revealing Multiple Times & Ways to Defuse it
Reactions to things Other Than Attacks
Attacks
Trashing Attacks
Stacking Attacks
Targeting & Political Attacks
Attacks that offer no benefit
Gameshaping
Power Cards & Drawbacks
Trash Picking
Indefinite Duration
On Terminality
Golden Deck
Un-Dominion ideas
Specialized Cards
Reference Limited Card Types
Resources Not Available
Accountability
Census Cards
Special Case Rules
the Discard Pile
- General Tips
- Common Pitfalls
- Myths About Card Prices
- Pricing Your Cards
- Formatting Your Cards
- Printing Your Card
Fan Card Creation Tools
- Shard Of Honor's card template - a fork of VioletCLM's card creator with additional functionality added.
- VioletCLM's card creator
- thread discussing both card creators
Design Contests
Design contests for fan cards are run periodically by various users of the message board.
Dominion Fan Card Contest
In October 2011 user Davio organized a fan card creation contest.[1] As motivation to receive quality entries, Davio offered a modest prize of an Amazon gift card. Davio received 20 entries and allowed the community to vote on the winner. The chosen winner was Archivist, a card designed by rinkworks.[2] The card was an example of a single card engine, with the following card text:
- Name: Archivist
- Type: Action
- Cost:
- Card Text: +1 Action. Choose one: Draw until you have 6 cards in hand; or +
and discard 1 or more cards from your hand.
To the surprise of the community, Davio had secretly contacted dougz and the card was playable for a limited time on Isotropic.[3] This is the only instance of an unofficial Dominion card being playable on the public version of Isotropic.
Mini-Set Design Contest
As a followup to Davio's contest, rinkworks later launched a far more ambitious design contest. The second contest attempted to create a complete mini-set of cards, with every card in the set being designed, voted on, and fine tuned by members of the community. There was a full subforum dedicated to the contest on the forums.[4]
Weekly Design Contest
A follow-up contest to rinkwork's Set Design contest, the Weekly Design contest was started by Doom_Shark; it has a rotating judging criteria and its host is whoever won the previous week's contest. It has been running since Sept 2018. Its winners are posted in the Weekly Design Hall of Fame.
References
