Card Design

This article goes into the nuts and bolts of design (which for most games, will be on cards.)

Wacky stuff

Thinking outside the box is easy. Thinking inside the box is hard.

Are you designing for your own entertainment, or for the players' entertainment?

Going outside the normal rules, components, or feel of the game, or referring to things that other cards don't care about, doesn't make the game any better.

In Radlands, each player adds up the numbers on the camp cards they've chosen, and draws an opening hand of that many cards. Many people suggested or asked about a camp that draws -1 cards. That's interesting, but would it actually be fun? No. And what if they take it with two camps with 0 cards on them? Do they draw -1 cards?

Modalism

Let the card do one of two (or more) things. If you have effects that are cool, but often useless, combine them into one card.

The old Magic card "Shatter" would destroy an artifact card. It was necessary for that effect to exist. However, if the opponent didn't have any artifacts, Shatter was useless. These days, they make cards like Abrade instead. It lets you destroy an artifact, OR deal some damage to a creature. This means it's always useful.

Conditional effects

These are effects that only work if a condition is met.

There's a huge amount of design space and depth in conditional effects. Just pair any condition with any effect. They're relatively elegant, and tie to other actions in a little chain, as the player tries to create the condition.

The Radlands expansion camp "Battering Ram" only works if you have six people.

When using conditional effects, the condition must actually be something that the player can control. If it's something the game controls, then it's essentially a complex way of doing randomness.

There's little difference between "gain 6 dollars when your roll for the turn is 6" and "gain a dollar each turn". Another example is a magic amulet that gives you a bonus whenever you defeat a goblin, but you have no control over whether you'll be fighting goblins or not.

The Radlands expansion card Death Ray used to require that you pay six water to fire it. This was a huge cost, for a huge effect. You could get six water at once, by discarding several cards with the water icon in their corner. However, you didn't actually have any control over what cards you drew. Only a few had the water icon. That was an uncontrollable condition. Later, I changed the cost to just discarding any five cards.

Even weirder are uncontrollable conditions, that the opponent controls. The opponent will not just blithely meet the condition for you. This often just stops the opponent from doing the thing.

Several playtesters and I all invented the same camp for the Radlands expansion. It was a "super-hospital" that would restore (heal) exactly two of your injured people. In practice, however, the opponent just never left two of your people injured. They'd injure one, and only attack the other one if they could kill it completely. That outcome was very different from the intended effect of the super-hospital.

Self-synergies

If a player doesn't have enough control over a condition, you can give the card a second effect that helps create the condition.

The Radlands card Zeto Khan lets your event cards happen instantaneously, rather than being delayed. This is fun, but what if you don't draw any event cards? I gave him a second ability, that lets you draw three cards then discard three. This gives you a very high chance of drawing event cards.

Rule changers

I consider the best category of designs to be the rule-changers. These cards simply make something, or the game, work differently. These can't be easily found, like the other types do. They tend to be simpler, more unique, and more thematic. Try to make more.

The new Obelisk camp from Radlands simply says "When the last card is drawn from the deck, you win."

Go through all the rules of the game, and make cards that break them.

Downsides

A good way to add a lot of strategy to cards is to create a downside, or undesirable consequence. Make cards that also affect (negatively) your own stuff. Negative effects can also be an opportunity for cleaning up the game state. The player can discard useless cards or resources.

Avoid permanent downsides. They're almost always un-fun, no matter how interesting or fair they are.

During the Radlands expansion, I experimented with all kinds of camp cards that gave the player some amazing benefit, but also prevented the player from drawing a card, or getting their income, or playing most cards. They just weren't fun.

Give points

Many cards have an ongoing effect, and are thus useful at the start of the game, but become useless later on, as you'll get less time to use them. If your game has a "points" system, give cards with an ongoing effect a high point value. This means players will want to play those cards at the start of the game, for their effect, but also at the end of the game, for their points.

Unwanted cards

Give the player a way to use unwanted cards. This also lets you give out more cards than the player needs, which increases choice.

In Radlands, cards can be "junked". There's an icon in the corner. You discard the card, and do whatever that icon says, rather than actually using the card.

In my gangster game, to play a card, you had to also discard some number of other cards from your hand.

In another of my prototypes, a few actions simply require that you discard one card. It's not much, but it makes every card useful.