Design Malarky 5: The SCP CCG Design Diary Part 1

For a little over 2 years now I've been a member of The SCP Foundation, a collaborative writing wiki where people write up SCPs. Strange and unnatural objects that The Foundation Secure, Contain and Protect the world from.

Now while I've not really contributed hugely to the site, some of the SCPs are amazing reads and eventually the topic of a CCG came up. I like making CCGs, I like The Foundation and I like having projects to keep my busy. So this was a match made in heaven.

Now rather than creating some M:tG knock-off I thought I'd stretch the old design muscles a little and try and make something different. While the game is no-where near finished I think I've hit upon a nice system and as I explain my design decisions and then in future articles detail cards and rules I hope you'll agree with me.

Design Decisions:
The primary decision which guided all other decisions was that the game needed to be reasonably complex but have a good enough flow to the game to allow each section of the turn maximum opportunities for interaction without dissolving into effectively masturbation. So with that in mind I decided the game should include the following:

#1: A layer of complexity within deck building to encourage the use of variable deck stratergies and deck compositions.

#2: A bluffing aspect. I just like playing mindgames with my opponent and having some aspect of bluffing always enhanced a game greatly to me.

#3: An attrition mechanic. Think Star Wars but far less complex. Attacks without risk rapidly become degerative so negating threats at the lowest personal cost should be a must.

#4: A rigid turn structure to prevent as many rules abuses and misinterpretation before they can start as possible.

#5: Multiple win/loss conditions to allow for more than a single objective and for decks to switch objective if needs be or designed as such.

Rules Framework:
So with those 5 stipulations in mind I've set to work creating the framework in which the rules can fit. Right now I'm only concerned with getting the game structure down; I'll worry about templating and flow later.

Deck Building:
So to satisfy the deck building requirements I will set a minimum and maximum deck building limit. This'll prevent the 2000 card decks that someone always thinks is a genius idea to bring to a tournament. 40 cards is a good start for a minimum deck size considering a standard 5-7 card starting hand and +10 max for each other player in the game means that playing a larger deck is more viable in multiplayer where having more answers to cards is required.

Considering the nature of SCPs having a player play them from their own deck seems a little strange as deciding what SCP and when it turns up has never been a part of the Foundation so a shared deck would seem the better option. 10 SCPs per player allows a player to tailor their deck towards specific SCPs but also have to contend with a giant pissed off lizard if it comes to it.

Now one part of deck construction I enjoyed from another game is that Unique cards are exactly that, unique, so you can only have 1 of them in your deck. Taking this a little further personalities are unique so named characters should also be unique. So max 3 of any non-unique card, 1 of any unique card and personalities are unique by subtitle, allowing you to choose different aspects of the same personalities.

And finally for the SCP deck, with little under 1000 to choose from I think 10 is a good number, no more or less, and to prevent decks of stupid powerlevels only 1 of over a threshold of power to allow for a less rediculous game.

Bluffing:
Mechwarrior the CCG had a build system where you built your units face down by placing resources on them which I loved. The rest of the game was ok but this mechanic blew my mind so a limited version of that would be perfect for this game. That huge thing you're building might be a game winning card or some chod you put down to direct their attention elsewhere. Also the thought of bidding on how good your opening hand, or deck, is such as the burden mechanic from Lord of the Rings would allow a player to make their opponent to start far more defensively than they would normally thinking that the opposing hand is better than they think.

Attrition:
SCPs are inherantly dangerous for the most part. In simply containing some of them people die. So an attrition mechanic would serve the purpose of preventing a player from making attacks without risk but support building a deck to dodge attrition or increase it. While not as complex as Star Wars I hope to create a system that doesn't punish attacking but makes a player consider when they should or shouldn't act.

Turn Structure:
One idea that has floated around my head for a while is the idea that a player should be able to alter how their turn will run for a benifit so an optional phase to alter the normal rules of the game for a turn would create interesting situations. One other change to the turn structure is forcing players to take optional effects before manditory effects so that players need to consider what they play and when more than if they can choose the order things resolve.

Win/Loss Conditions:
L5R has always been a favorite of mine due to the 4 main methods of winning, honour, dishonour, elightenment and military respectively, and so I'd like to introduce an element of that to the game but also set an overall loss condition to force players to interact with each other and the SCPs rather than masturbating their way to victory.

So something like:
Win: After all SCPs are gone the player with the most VPs wins.
Win: If you hit an alternate condition you win.
Win: You are the only player with cards in your deck.
Loss: There are 30 or more SCP counters in play.

With this basic framework I'll be expanding the rules, section by section, until I have a complete game for you to play along with some demo decks. Keep checking back to see more info on the CCG as it evolves.