Gardener of Thoughts Customizable Card Game

A game inspired by the novel Gardener of Thoughts

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Gardener of Thoughts Customizable Card Game (GOT CCG) is a customizable card game which uses the Gardener of Thoughts Card Game System (GOT CGS).

GOT CGS is a customizable card game system which borrows features from classic card games (namely Bridge) and from modern customizable card games. Loosely speaking, the purpose of a session (= game) is to win as many adventures (= tricks) and eras (= deals) as possible.

Unlike in Bridge, each won adventure and each era have further effect in the game. Each adventure may bring new skills to the player who wins it or to all the players, skills which may be used later in the game to win new adventures. Each new era may preserve some of the adventures won in the previous eras.

A single deck (for each era) is used for all the players in order to make the game playable by people who are new to the game (because they don't need their own deck), playable in unexpected situations (when only a single session pack is available), allow playing different cards every time (because the cards are shuffled), and allow cards to easily move from player to player (because the cards don't have to be separated in different decks after the game).

The main mechanics are: turns, adventures (which may bring new skills to their winners), eras, adventures persistent through eras, card trading, card reuse (= to replay cards), card seizing (= using the cards dealt to other players), disabling cards (= forcing players to get back their played cards), wrecking cards (= taking cards out of play), recovering cards (= getting back played cards), various adventure roleplays (battle, cataclysm, challenge, competition, cooperation, epic, obstruction, solo), epic eras, costs and resources of multiple types, randomness (= the cards are shuffled), deferred costs (until the end of an adventure or era).

Some of the mechanics are important enough to alter a player's era strategy: card trading, card reuse, card seizing, cost deference.

The rules may seem very large to you, but this is because they explains things in excruciating details. In order to be able to play the game, you mostly need to read the summary rules and look at the examples (from the end of this book).

You also have to understand what attributes are. Attributes are very short descriptors which are used to create logical links among various actions, for the purpose of making the game complex enough to keep you playing for a long time.

GOT CGS is so general that game designers can use its rules exactly as they are, in any other game with similar mechanics. Only one era deck has to be created and the game is on. But the hard work is just beginning for you. GOT CGS is only a frame for your game, and it's worthless without the cards. Your cards will either make or break your game.

GOT CGS is particularly suitable for story-based games, that is, games where the players are immersed in the flow of the game's universe.

License

The Gardener of Thoughts Card Game System (GOT CGS) is released under a Common Sense License.

The name "Gardener of Thoughts" and the Gardener of Thoughts Customizable Card Game (GOT CCG), namely the artwork and the text of the cards, are free only for personal use; they may not be freely used for commercial purposes.

You may freely use the expressions "Gardener of Thoughts Card Game System" and "GOT CGS" to show that your (commercial) game is based on GOT CGS.

Rules

Here are the rules in PDF format.

Here are the rules in HTML format.

Here are the rules in OpenOffice format.

Cards

The cards will be freely available for download, but they have not yet been created, and this will take some time to complete. I am creating them using Mosaic.

Much of the lore is derived from these quotes.

Artwork

The artwork must be digitally rendered with a resolution of 2'000 * 2'800 and 48 bits color depth, and submitted as PNG or (lossless) TIFF files.

The aspect ratio (longer side / shorter side) must be 1.4.

The artwork for the cards is meant to be printed on cardboard. The silver cards have a size of 63 * 88 millimeters (B8 ISO 216), and the gold cards have a size of 125 * 176 millimeters (B6 ISO 216).

The artwork for the silver cards must be in portrait mode, the one for the gold cards may be either in landscape (which is preferred) or portrait mode.

Photographs must not be used either as backgrounds or textures.

The artwork must be colorful and sharp (without blurred areas), unless the presented scene specifically requires fuzziness or monochromatism.

The colors must be vivid and they have to create a high local contrast, with neighboring light and dark areas. The colors must not be shinny, so as to no create a sensation of leather or plastic clothes.

Body curves must be round, not pointy, especially for heads (chin, ears).

The artwork must be simple enough so that the players can understand what they represent. All represented elements must be intelligible and logically consistent, although not necessarily possible in reality (magic elements are clearly not real).

The artwork may depict humans and plants. Animals must be used only if specifically necessary, that is, to either symbolize something or to represent the gist of the artwork.

All intelligent extraterrestrials must be humanoids, with little or no physiological difference from humans.

The artwork must not depict monsters or animals dangerous to humans. If danger, vileness, extreme anger or fear have to be depicted, you have to use landscapes, human faces and ghosts, colors and shadows capable of inspiring the required emotions.

All depicted subjects must be put in a context. For example, a hand weapon should be in a person's hand and the person could be engaged in a fight.

The artwork must have no frame.

The name of the artists must not be present in the artwork. They will be shown in the "Identifier" area of the cards.

The artwork may be included in the artist's public portfolio either as prints or as digital pictures (at a maximum resolution of 600 * 840 pixels).

The card text (the "Directive" text first, then the "Lore" text) from the sample artwork is the most important factor to consider when deciding what the artwork should convey to the players.

Use the sample artwork only to understand what I want to convey to the players; they must not be copied. The general idea may be used.

The importance of the categories of the sample artwork is as follows: style, texture (= local color contrast), colors (= sets, transitions, vividness).

The style must convey feelings of a story, of roleplaying in a story, and not be too realistic (neither like paintings).

The game is mainly a story about the physical and metaphysical conflict between two parties, one (named USSA - Unionized Socialist States Alliance) which is driven by the flock instinct and which wants to control everything, and one (named Spacelings) which is driven by individualism.

The most important metaphysical aspect of the USSA is to stay alive at all costs, usually as simple followers of their leaders, whereas the one of the Spacelings is the way an individual lives and the unique marks he lives in the Universe.

Ships belonging to the USSA must be named USS [ship name] (meaning "Unionized States Ship").

Here are the illustrators whose work I liked while I was researching for artwork for GOT CCG.

What is a game?

I evolved with GOT CGS, that is, my understanding of games did, even though I've been trying to create a game since I was about 12 years old.

"What is the most important thing in a game?" is a question that every game designer must ask himself, the question that I didn't know for many years.

How many of you would say "the fun"? Most. But that's like putting the effect before the cause, because the next question is "what makes a game fun?"

Each game design has advantages and disadvantages, but the game designer must find the optimum balance of all the important features of a game.

Player interaction

The absolutely most important feature of a game is the interaction among the players. Simply put, there is no game without human interaction (you need at least one person to interact with the game). People are social beings and they like to communicate and participate to common actions. That's what people perceive as being fun.

There are many delicate details which can make or break a game, but the rules of a game must result as a consequence of this crucial feature.

A game designer must first decide how the players will interact and how much fun that will be. The more dynamic this interaction is, the more fun the players will have.

For instance, I want all the players to participate in an adventure in GOT CGS. There would be basically no interaction and therefore no fun if a single player were to play and win an adventure. That would be boring because virtually nothing would make things new and surprising.

Simplicity of rules

Another important feature is the simplicity of rules. Read this carefully, it's not the simplicity of the interaction, but that of the rules which determine the interaction.

In fact, simple rules should determine a complex interaction, that is, prepare the stage for potential complex interaction. The rules should be as generic as possible and allow players to interact naturally (outside the boundaries of the game).

Team play

Another important feature is team play. Not only do people like to interact, but they also like to cooperate to achieve a stated goal, in this case, winning the game.

It was very important to me to design GOT CGS so as to allow any number of players in any formation to play a game, and the game can be played with 2 to 9 players, either individually or grouped in teams.

Mechanics

Another important feature, which determines the quality of the interaction among the players, is the number of mechanisms which allow the players to interact either with the game or among themselves.

These mechanisms have to be varied in order to avoid the repetition of actions, which in turn would lead to boredom. For example, GOT CGS has several distinct adventure play modes.

Player evolution and costs

While playing a game, a player needs to feel that he is evolving, that he isn't stuck on the same level of experience as he was when the game started.

The problem with board and card games is that integrating evolution leads to a complex design. On the other hand, a game can't be too complex because the players would have to do too many calculations which would turn the fun into exhaustion.

But eliminating complexity leads to games which are too simple, and therefore many games try to compensate the simplicity with a layer of rules which are more a patch than a fluid integration.

In general, games try to substitute evolution with a system of costs management, where usually various types of costs have to be paid for various actions. This works but it limits a game to accounting.

GOT CGS keeps the cost management to a minimum (while still allowing it to reduce the importance of luck and determine complex strategies – greedy players are at a loss), and prefers a skill management system.

In general, a skill management system suffers from the above mentioned problem of too many calculations and this was a critical issue for me.

When a player's skills evolve during a game, it means that they are interdependent, which in turn means that if the player can't achieve a certain basic skill, he may become unable to evolve and loses the game.

But this can lead to linearity, which means that the players may either end up playing the same flow again and again, or if they fail to get over a certain step then the entire game ends. So, a good game must balance the interdependence of skills.

GOT CGS succeeds in keeping the calculations to the minimum, but still relies on a good era deck composition for fun.

Conclusion

Even if sometimes the game rules may seem a bit artificial, if the important features are part of the game, the players will have a lot of fun.

History

11.03.2009

Fundamental update of the GOT CGS from a player-deck design to a game-deck design.

First public release of the GOT CGS on 26.04.2008.