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 Malarky 3: MachineHammer converting Skubhammer to Skubmachine

At one point in my little Moley life I was a die-hard adherant to the GW philosphy. After getting fucked over by codex changes, price hikes and crappy staff in their stores my interest waned and I looked further afield for games.

One of my favorites was Warmachine and after a very dissappointing game of 40k and a very fun game of Warmachine I wondered if there could be a way to convert 40k to Warmachine's rules and create some sort of unholy hybrid for people to have a bash with.

There's needed to be a number of changes but I think I managed to create something playable, all that's needed now is some balancing and all that malarky.

The Golden Rule: They're Your Damn Rules

Due to various medical issues of mine flaring up I was unable to complete my blog post on Wendsday so in return this Sunday will have some extra posts to make up for it.

There's a proud tradition in many games I play of doing things your own way. From tweeking the rules to make combat smoother to creating whole new games out other games it's always been something I've particularly enjoyed.

So this article is for me to share my love of houserules, game modifications and emergent gameplay with you so you too can enjoy playing things how they weren't ment to be played.

I Weild a Power Greater than The Heart of the Cards!

It's called reading the cards.

That is a common quote from me when it comes to teaching people games and showing them tricks and effects that are a little more obscure than the norm.

So why is this phrase so important? Well the more you know about a game and its mechanics the better you can manipulate them in your favor. Heck even in my own blog I've a perfect example of that. Just take a look at the comments from Circles of Annoyance and you'll see what I mean. In that same tournament I could have won a turn earlier but the rules were not followed exactly so the odd thing crept through there.

Now while this might seem to you like a pointless exersize I have a few examples which I hope will show you the importance of this along with a few tips on how to make things easier on yourself.