Nuggets of Wisdom: Design what interests you. Let exciting ideas guide your path.
Discussion Question: What game mechanics have you seen that truly inspire you?
I had been designing a very different sort of game when I discovered 18-card games. My original idea was fine, and getting into game design was exciting, but the concept itself wasn’t overly inspired. But I heard about this sub-genre of 18-card games, I was truly intruiged. Just 18 cards, no components, and a rule book? What an amazing design constraint to force creativity. I very much am the type of person who will just bang his head for hours against a blank canvas, but when operating within constraints, I thrive. So, the idea of designing a rich game with just 18 cards game was right up my alley. I decided to pause my less inspired idea and see where this path would take me.
The design of Quickdraw came to me in pieces over the next few weeks as the thought of an 18-card game lingered in the back of my mind. The first aspect of the game I knew I wanted was for it to be a 2-player head to head game with a small footprint – since some good advice is to design what you like. The next aspect I knew the game needed was to utilize multi-use cards to add complexity while remaining inside the limited card constraint.
One mechanic that has always stayed with me is the success/failure card drawing mechanic from Lord of the Rings Journeys In Middle Earth. If you’re not familiar (and forgive me for getting some things wrong as it’s been a few years since I’ve played), in the game you have a deck of cards that serve both as the actions available to you, and act as your random number generator (RNG) instead of dice. You have a hand of cards, but when you go to perform an action you discard a number of cards from your deck and look for the symbol in the top left to determine if you succeed.
This is such a unique mechanism because not only does it cut out needing dice (and since it’s an FFG game you know it would be like $50 custom dice), but now it creates this really interesting decision – is this card better in my hand than in my deck? With the hand size and deck size in that game, it’s not too relevant of a decision in my brief experience, but it still stuck with me. I’m sure other games utilize this mechanic but it’s the first time I saw it and really thought about it.
So, when thinking of how I could make my 18-card game have deep decisions, this was one of the first mechanics that bubbled up. With only 9 or fewer cards per player, all of a sudden the decision of better on the field vs. better in the deck would be front and center to the game. This basic framework bounced around in my head for a little while as I tried to pair it with other mechanics or themes as I thought of them. I was listening to a podcast on game design (Gabe Barrett’s amazing Board Game Design Lab podcast) and either Gabe or one of the guests offhandedly said something about a wild west shootout game. It was a totally different game than I had in mind, but the theme just clicked. I had been playing around with the idea of making it an asymmetric game, since those always appeal to me, and so a classic western shootout of the Law vs. the Bandits seemed like the perfect blend of theme and mechanics. And even if it’s not my go to genre, classic westerns have always had a soft spot for me due to their strong use of consistent theme, so it got me excited about the possibilities.
For those keeping score, we now have an 18-card, asymmetric, 2-player, Wild West, dueling game, where the success/failure mechanic would be determined by revealing cards from your deck. It’s 18 cards, so 9 per player. That doesn’t make for a very big deck. Well what if it’s not really a deck? What if you have 8 units to pick from for each side where 4 are deployed, and 4 become ammo to determine the success of your deployed cards?
Boom, now that’s something. Stronger cards have a higher ammo value, so before the game even begins players are making tough decisions around balancing their field alongside their RNG. Do you want to play cheaper cards with a high chance to hit, or risk it stronger cards that will require a little more luck to payoff. For a little while I was playing around with labeling this mechanic “rigging your RNG” but I was afraid that would only make sense to me. I still really like calling it that, but maybe I’ll find a way to make the idea a little clearer (suggestions welcome!).
Once I had the basic mechanics and theme down, the rest came together quickly. Like I said, westerns have really strong themes and archetypes, so it doesn’t take long to come up with 8 unique characters per side that fit with the theme. Likewise, mechanics were easy to add on too. Pretty instantly I came up with the Mysterious Stranger that shoots the gun out of the bad guy’s hand, and the Sheriff that can keep getting shot without going down – both of which made it to the final iteration.
Now balancing the cards so that each character had a place within a strategy – that was a bit harder.
