Carcassonne Central

So, after much thought, I finally decided to act and make my own customizable card game. Not that I actually have time to develop it, but since each card takes about 10 minutes to make (after I spent two hours on the template), I figure it is a good filler for when I really don't want to work on my masters thesis (yes, I slack off from my history homework to make a history game...I'm a nerd. Aren't we all?). My first card can be found here: Elizabeth I (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/cards/elizabethicard.jpg).

The concept I am working with right now (which really isn't that far along) is that monarchs are played against other monarchs, one-at-a-time, rather like Topps Trumps cards in the UK. It is a bit more advanced, though. Each monarch gains a bonus when fighting their arch enemy (Elizabeth I doesn't get along with Spain) and can do team attacks if partnered with their primary ally (the Dutch for Elizabeth). I still need to work on the point system and general mechanics. I also plan to do something with the royal houses, proto-nationalities, and certain traits (Elizabeth is charismatic, ambitious, and diplomatic). As you can tell, it is in its early stage. Despite the fact that I wanted to work on the British monarchs first, I think I will have to do a broad range right from the onset to make things balanced. Decks will be customized by establishing a specific date and all the monarchs have to have reigns that overlap that date.

The best part is that all the images are from the public domain so no royalties are due if it ever takes off. I plan to expand from the fifteenth century outward to encompass all period, if it ever becomes successful. I also want to keep the monarch traits as accurate as possible, as well as their brief biographies. Images may be hard for some monarchs, but I will have to work with them how I can. Elizabeth was easy, many others will not be.

Please tell me what you think. I don't want the game to be too complicated and it want it to have a historical edge to it, even if it isn't historically accurate in its battling system. Any advice, opinions, or help is appreciated, but don't expect fast progress on this project. Thanks!

As usual for me, I wasn't content with the first draft of Elizabeth, so I created a slightly modified one. Most of it is the same, but some features have changed. Generally, I think it looks better, but it could still use some work. I also now have three cards, showing the range that will be covered. Here are my examples. Tell me what you think:

Elizabeth I (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/cards/queenelizabethi.jpg)
James VI (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/cards/kingjamesvi.jpg)
Rudolf II (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/cards/emperorrudolfii.jpg)

Nice start there but how do you actually intend to use them ? Where are attack points etc ? what would the rules be ?

Heh, WhaleyInk!  The cards look nice, but the descriptions remind me too much of Civilisation 4 (or was it 5?).  That's not a bad thing though.  However, I think you should confine yourself to developing a single country first, and then later you can add on other countries.

Thanks for the replies. I am constructing rules as I go, and a few things on the card are not finalized, rather placeholders for later decisions. After considerable though, I want the game to run similarly to *gasp* Pokémon Card Game. Not identical mechanics, but similar in that a single monarch "fights" another monarch. The reason that I am not focusing on one monarchy (such as England) is because I need opponents and, except in Civil War, those shouldn't come from the inside.

That being said, I plan to make my "Premiere" deck based on monarchs from the Year 1585. Basically, I will have around 25 monarchs from around Europe (yes, I am starting with Europe, but hope to expand someday). Each card will have a passive and an active "attack" which are only enabled by placing "power-up"-type cards on them (such as Diplomacy or Combat, or something like that). I haven't worked out the Hit points system yet, but it is coming along. Each monarch also has an enemy and an ally, based roughly on their primary national foe and friend during their reign. When fighting against your enemy (attack or defense), you get a bonus. If you have an ally in your hand (Maurice of the Netherlands for Elizabeth I), you can play them to double-team the opponent. Of course, the opponent can do the same thing in response (in fact, I may make it a defensive move, that can be reacted to).

Customizing the deck requires players to use the dates in the top-right corner of the card. To make a deck, a date must be agreed upon and only monarchs who ruled during that time period can be used. The only exception is that an heir of a monarch from that period can be included in a deck, but it can only enter play if replacing a monarch from that time period (Philip III could replace Philip II, but Philip II must be placed in play first). Obviously, I need to make about as many Action cards as monarchs, as well as the power-up cards, but I am working on the monarchs first.

The game will expand as more monarchs, before and after 1585, are created and released. Other historic figures will appear as Action cards with brief historic descriptions, but will otherwise be rather generic (I can't make everything a character). Shakespeare will probably be "Aspiring Playwright" which gives a cultural bump in some attack I haven't yet made up.

Good, you noticed. There is only so much you can write in five short lines of text about an important person's entire life, so they often do appear the same across many genres. I did get a lot of influence from Civ4 for this, but the game won't follow that game very closely, except maybe in personal traits and card colours (Spain is Yellow in both and I rather prefer it that way).

I like what I see so far.  We homeschool our children, and my one son is a history nut.  I could see us playing a game like this. 

Marie

As I continue to push off my foreboding thesis, I have re-worked much of the design for the Monarch Cards, designed the Trait Card (which still need some work), finalized the Card Back (which will be constant for all cards), and begun formulating more of the rules. The only card design I have left (for now) is the Action Card. I won't post my draft rules yet as, basically, they aren't even near cohesion and I still have some contradictions and am trying to determine what mechanics are copyrighted by Wizards, Decipher, and whoever makes Pokémon. Basically, I am trying to create a game that could be commercially sold and I don't want to get into any legal entanglements in the future (I know, I am very optimistic since I finally found a way to have a monarchy card game). Also, the subtitle for this expansion won't be Elizabeth's Wrath anymore, but rather something like The Unsaid War.

Most importantly, though, I have determined how Hit Points will work, or rather "Life" value. Basically, for every 5 years a person reigned (not lived), they get 10 Life points, rounded up. Thus, someone who ruled for 7 years gets 20 Life (10 for the first 5 years, 10 for the remaining 2). This creates the problem that some monarchs have very little "Life" while others, such as Elizabeth, have up to 90 Life. But I plan to balance that somewhat (although not entirely, since longer-life makes them more valuable) by making their abilities more expensive. Also, all active Monarchs lose 1 Life per turn, regardless of anything, to represent aging. I don't think this mechanic has ever really been used before in a CCG.

Finally, I have some new samples for you all. I removed the old links, since they were outdated, but have made a new version of Elizabeth I (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/cards/queenelizabethi.jpg), as well as a sample Diplomacy Trait Card (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/cards/diplomacy.jpg) and my Card Back and logo (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/cards/cardback.jpg). Please tell me what you think. I need to work on some homework now...sigh...

I just keep chugging out improvements. I guess it is because these cards require good-looking templates to work from and I really don't have tons of time to tweak each future card individually, so I am trying to make a perfect template from the very beginning. Please tell me if anything seems amiss.

I have two new drafts to present for critical review:
1 – Elizabeth I, Queen of England & Ireland (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/cards/elizabethiengland.jpg) (Monarch Card version 4)
26 – Provincial Rebellion (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/cards/provincialrebellion.jpg) (Action Card version 1)

Wasn't QE1, Queen of England, France & Ireland (or at least that's what she claimed to be?).  The claim to the Queen of France only got dropped after the Act of Union with Scotland IIRC.

Indeed, she was and it wasn't actually dropped until the Act of Union with Ireland, during the Napoleonic Wars. However, for practical purposes, since some of these monarchs can claim many countries that they don't actually have any authority in, I've decided to drop pretentious titles, unless they are especially relevant. It wasn't an easy decision, but I think it is the right one. For many of these monarchs, I will be forced, out of space considerations, to only choose certain titles for them. If they pick up additional titles during their life, I may make multiple versions of them, but all titles earned at the same time will lead to only one Monarch Card.

Thus:
Elizabeth I, Queen of England & Ireland
James VI, King of Scots –> James I, King of England & Scots
Charles III?, Duke of Burgundy –> Charles V, King of the Romans –>Charles I, King of Spain & the Romans (the latter two being Electors)

How about subsidiary titles, e.g. Elizabeth I, Duke of Normandy or Lord of Mann, etc.?

Oh, how many of those there would be for people like Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. I could definitely make cards that are just a specific subsidiary title. As it is, I am not making any Holy Roman Emperor cards, just King of Bohemia & Hungary (at least for the post-Charles V Habsburgs). Imperial Elections are an Action Card an any active monarch can be elected emperor, assuming they have enough electors to support them.

The real problem with subsidiary titles is that, unless they were held by the monarch before they became monarch, they usually remain just subsidiary. I mean, when was the last time a Prince of Wales used the title Hereditary Steward of Scotland? Sure some titles have more power than others. The Habsburg kings of Spain were also Dukes, Counts, and Lords of the Low Countries (or at least Belgium-region after 1580), which definitely provided them with power. In the end, I think I am going to have to stick with major titles, and introduce earlier titles if I feel they are necessary. The game is suppose to be roughly historically accurate but that doesn't mean that it has to give an intellectual overload. Most people in English countries don't know most of the kings of Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Russia, etc, so it is optimistic enough that they learn those names. I hope that maybe I can introduce some subsidiary titles not used on the Monarch Cards as Actions or mention them in the biographies, but I am not going to go out of my way to teach people that the Archduke of Austria was also the Count of Styria.

OK, how about when you get to (was it?) Victoria.  Would she be Queen of the United Kingdom and Ireland, Empress of India or would there be 2 separate cards for that?

I'm still contemplating how recent I will bring the game. Perhaps to the nineteenth century. For Victoria, I would probably just include Empress of India with her other titles, although I would definitely mention it. While she picked that title up in 1876, Victoria had very little personal authority in India and it is arguable if the title was anything more than a titular one based on the overthrown Mughal Empire. Her card, if ever made, would probably be: Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom & Ireland, Empress of India (and the dates of her reign would coincide with the first title). I must admit, though, that is a really long title so I'd have to see how it would work in the space provided.

So, I have been working on the cards. I already have 18/25 Monarch Cards completed as well as the text for pretty much all the Action Cards (I don't have the art or captions for most of them, though). I also have completed the 6 Trait Cards. That brings me to 60 cards, which is what the initial deck is suppose to have. However, I have run into a problem which I would like some help with. Most of the monarchs only have one or two titles, so fitting them all on a line is not very difficult. The Habsburg emperors, however, are not so easy. Perhaps strangely, I am not using the title Holy Roman Emperor since Imperial elections are a mechanic I am using with some of my action cards. Sure crowning Queen Elizabeth I as Emperor is not historically accurate, but technically it could be done if the Imperial Electorate chose to do so, hence the reasoning.

This, however, has stranded me in a corner with the Habsburg emperors. What title are they most famous for? I have established that their most important titles (other than emperor) are Archduke of Austria, King of Bohemia, and King of Hungary. But that fills the text line to the brim and looks messy. Right now I have:

Rudolf II – Archduke of Austria, King of Bohemia & Hungary

But it is too long and has too much. I tried changing it to:

Rudolf II – Archduke of Austria

But that seemed to be missing something. Technically the most important title the dukes held as King of Bohemia, since that is what gave them their vote in the Electoral College. However, the title is not even considered a part of the Empire, it just gave them votes in the election, nothing else, making it seem pretty worthless of a title outside of Bohemia. King of Hungary was a powerful position, but again it places the Habsburgs in the Eastern circle, when during this time they were teetering in both the Central and Eastern circles. What do you people recommend? Or should I change a mechanic and have them be emperors after all, foregoing my current mechanic for Imperial Elections?

According to wikipedia:

Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia, Margave of Moravia, King of Bohemia, Prince of Piombino, King of Hungary, King of Croatia, King of Slavonia, Archduke of Austria, Emperor of Austria, King of the Romans

How about just Rudolf II - Emperor of Austria ?  If he wasn't HRE, he would probably be known by his greatest title, which I presume would be Emperor of Austria.

Actually, he wasn't Emperor of Austria until 1804, when Napoleon had all but annexed the majority of the Holy Roman Empire. So that title doesn't work unfortunately. Otherwise, I would agree entirely, but sadly, it doesn't apply for another 219 years.

Ouch, sorry, my bad.  I know nothing about European history.  Go with King of Bohemia and Hungary then.  Use Archduke of Austria as his game text which gives him a leg up on becoming the HRE :)

I nearly forgot to keep everyone here updated on my new card game: Monarch Wars! I've been fairly busy with numerous things lately but in some of my spare time last week, I updated, improved, expanded, and largely finalized the look of my Monarch Cards for my card game. The other cards also need to be updated, but I am working on a Print-and-Play version for my family to playtest at the moment and so haven't gotten around to updating pretty much any card except Elizabeth I • Queen of England & Ireland. Her card is pretty much done. Thus I present to you all a preview of my card. I would appreciate any feedback on its design since that is my main focus with the cards themselves right now. Don't worry too much about rules and specific functions on the card, those are still in the works (or at least getting worked out). Thank you in advance for any comments you leave, positive, critical, or informative!

(http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/cards/elizabethi.jpg)

my one suggestion would be that if you have these at typical card sizes, the fonts may be extremely difficult to read. If this is the case, perhaps shrink the photo and increase the font size.

Actually, all the fonts are 12 pt and I made sure to keep them that way. Most card games are 11 pt or smaller, I believe, so I think I'm good in these regards. Shrinking the photo...that's actually the one thing I cannot fix yet. I have no optional border design for photos that don't fit inside their frames. Elizabeth fits fine, but I have two that are just pretty much heads with no bodies, and the heads are a bit (big bit) on the large size. I was able to Photoshop an extended frame for one, but the other you can practically see pimples on.

What size are the cards, physically? When I make it playing-card sized, the fonts in the red area are barely readable at about 6pt, and the copyright section font looks like it's about 3pt, completely unreadable.

Wow, I just printed out a draft and you are indeed correct, although I think some of the blurriness I can correct. The image was only 72 px/in resolution which could explain why it degrades when printed. We shall see. Either way, I agree now that the text is too small. This just reinforces my initial problem, though, that I still have no frame mechanic for the image itself. I will have to shrink them all now to allow for more text space, but that means shrinking the images which causes problems when the images' widths are not longer than their heights (which none of them are). Any suggestions for a frame?

You could crop instead of shrinking the images

No amount of cropping will make these suckers readable! I've been working for the past month or so to get the mechanics worked out...dropping some ideas and adding others. The Risk (formerly Action) and Experience (formerly Trait) Cards are quite adaptable to new font sizes. Only some resizing is necessary, not too much work, really. The Monarch cards, though, are suffering so I need to find some other ways to get the same message across in less space. I've decided that the Monarch Card bios will be shorter and only reflect a specific aspect of the monarch, specifically the function of their Level 2 Ability (now known as Political Ability). I've removed nationalities and decided to standardize the Monarch Card colors relative to geographic location (Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Central Europe, Middle East). This makes choosing colors and color-matching much less of a burden. I currently have 22 colors for 24 monarch cards and some cards don't look very good because of it. Finally, I successfully balanced all the cards. All Level 1 Abilities (now known as Warfare Ability) require only 1 Experience Card to use, and there are 4 monarchs for each of the 6 experiences. All Warfare Abilities also do the same thing now...no more changeability based on life-span, as I had before. All Political Abilities have been created based on the 6 experience types as well, but all monarchs require 4 experiences of various arrangements to use the ability, meaning that 24 monarchs X 4 experience slots each = 96 experiences slots that must be divided evenly between 6 experience types = 16 uses of each specific experience type throughout the expansion. In other words, between the 24 Monarch Cards, every experience type is used 4 times in the Level 1 abilities and 16 times in the Level 2 abilities. This makes the game very even in regard to the most important component.

That probably was all jibberish to everyone including me. I'll get some beta rules posted soon and after I run through a few playtests to balance certain elements, I'll even provide some printable samples of the game if anyone is interested. I've currently got the game on a .doc file with no images, which provides an easy printing and editing sample.

Well, after three playtests with three evolutions of the rules, I determined last week that Monarch Wars needs an entire conceptual overhaul to properly work. Coincidentally, and unfortunately, all of my cards were deleted when I reformatted my hard drive about two months ago. All of the card samples (in a Word document) survived, so I have that information, but all of my old cards are gone. Very oddly, I backed up my hard drive's documents folder onto two separate hard drives when I backed up, and somehow the Monarch Wars card images in that specific folder did not transfer. Since I have been reworking the rules with my Word print-outs, I hadn't looked into the actual card samples folder until today. It's not all a loss. I have version 3 samples of three cards that were rejected, and I have a full chronology of Elizabeth I of Egland to version 8 on Facebook. All the other information on the cards survived, but the original image files are nonetheless gone. I spent hours on those things and now they are no more. Sad times...

The good news is that my rework is progressing smoothly and properly. The cards will be a lot less complicated and I am taking a clue from Ticket to Ride by giving players three options each turn, of which they must only do one. My game has also moved from a one-on-one trading card game (stylistically) to an alliance game, where each player (up to 4) try to win over all the monarchs to their alliance (or get them to remain/become neutral). Once I run some test games, I'll post the results. I think it will be a much better strategic and entertaining game now. It should also move faster than the earlier version. I'm not investing time into graphic designs for this game until it has been thoroughly playtested, but I still have to spend many hours balancing the cards. All the monarchs will have one bonus that can be used with one of the three options, but I'm not going to work on those bonuses until after the game works mechanically first. More to come...

What ever happened to this?

It's sitting on my computer awaiting an epiphany. Hopefully one will come before too long but I'm not holding out luck. I love the concept of the game and still want develop it but I just am not sure what the best route to go is at this point in time. Whenever I return to it, I will be sure to disuse it here. I'm glad there is still interest.