Episode: 3406
Title: HPR3406: A study of cards in games
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3406/hpr3406.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 22:48:43

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3406 for Mundi, the 23rd of August 2021.
Tid's show is entitled, A Study of Cards in Games and Is Part of the series table top gaming
it is hosted by Clot 2 and is about 27 minutes long and carries a clean flag.
The summary is currency, deterrent coercion, clutter rules.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by Ananasthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
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Hey, great you listening to Hacker Public Radio. My name is Clot 2 and in this episode I want to talk
about game design, which is a hobby of mine and by no means qualified to speak about this,
but I'm doing it anyway for for want of anyone else doing it on this network.
So until someone qualified starts posting episodes about game design, I'm just going to keep on going
myself. Anyway, I was thinking lately because I like to design card games and I was thinking
lately about card like what cards are in games and even beyond that what cards and I guess
general assets in games are like when you're when you're pulling things together to have components
to make up a game, what what components do you have sort of to choose from.
That's not to say that you shouldn't just make up your own stuff, but I think that there are,
you know, if you look at different games broadly, you can kind of start to categorize things.
And so I've been doing that. I've been like I say thinking mostly about this in terms of cards
because that's kind of a fun medium for me, but I'm sure that if one thought about it hard enough
when you could find categories, these categories cropping up in other in other media,
but here's the sort of the types of cards that I've been able to identify so far.
In gaming and I've got six of them and you know, like I say, there might be official terms
for these because I know that game design and game theory and all that other stuff those are
official like there are actually fields of study around those. So I don't have like the official
terminology assuming there is official terminology. So I'm observing and making up terms
sort of outside of that. So yeah, these are just observations, I guess, and not again,
not authoritative on this topic whatsoever and haven't done any research on it. It's just
things I've noticed as I play games and try to design new ones. Okay, so to start with, I think I'll
start with strangely the one that is sort of the anti-asset in a way. It is what I call
Clutter. And this is the stuff. These are cards that are designed or maybe not designed
sometimes, but end up as Clutter in your, they clutter up the hand of your player.
So for instance, easy example here is Uno. If you've ever played Uno, it's like a Milton
Bradley game or a Parker Brothers game. It's like a really sort of classic at least where I'm from.
It was a classic sort of kids game. And the idea of Uno was that I haven't played it in years.
So I'm probably getting some details wrong, but I don't think it matters. Object of Uno is to get
rid of the cards out of your hand until you reach one card. And I think after you reach
one card, I think you're meant to then get rid of that one card. I don't know the significance of
sort of reaching one card. It seems to me like that's inevitable. So I'm not sure why there's
why that's singled out, but whatever. You reach one card and then you get rid of that card.
And the way that you get rid of cards in Uno is you look at the cards in your hand.
You look at the top card of the sort of play deck on the table. And if your card, if you have a
card that matches that card, the play card, the last played card, in either color or number,
then you can sort of discard your card. You can add your card to the top of that play pile.
And then the next player has to have a card that matches that card in either color or number,
and so on. If you do not have a card that matches in some way, color or number,
of the top play card, then you have to draw a card. So in other words,
in Uno, a card game drawing a new card is punishment. And having cards in your hand is undesirable.
It's if you think about it, it's really like really strange. Why would that be the goal of the
game? It's a card game. Just don't draw. Then you win automatically, right? But I mean,
these are how games are made. You know, you get in this game, you get yourself into an undesirable
state and work very hard to get rid of the things that you got. So that's clutter. Nobody wants
the cards. You can't give them away. There's another game called Dominion, which I don't think
I've done a hacker public radio episode on. I should. It's quite a good game. It's a deck building
game. You're building, you're assembling your play deck as you play the game. So the game sort of
changes as you go. And one of the ways that the game changes is that you have sort of shifting
goals throughout. When you first start, you're trying to amass enough money in game money,
currency, to purchase land, which are called victory points. So you're purchasing cards
within game currency that will at the end of the game. And I do mean the end. Like after the game
is over, these cards that you have purchased will count toward your victory. But during the game,
those cards are useless. They don't have any special powers. They don't do anything for you. They're
not currency of any sort. They're just, well, clutter. So those are cards specifically designed
to frustrate the user or the player. When you draw a hand and you've drawn a land or a victory point
card that you have purchased with your hard earned in game currency, you're really frustrated
because you only have five cards in your hand. And one of them or two of them or three of them
is one of these useless victory point cards that you can't do anything with.
So that's an interesting way to treat some cards that they're clutter. Now there are ways around
clutter in Dominion. And indeed, there are some ways sort of around certain mechanics of clutter
in Uno. Both games have sort of power up cards as it were or rule breaking cards that change a rule
for a moment that allow you, for instance, to discard a card anyway or whatever. So that's clutter.
And I guess because I mentioned it, I'll jump up to currency next. So currency is a mechanic
or a type of card or asset that people use in-game to acquire, as currency, to acquire other benefits
of the game. Magic the Gathering, as I've mentioned in a very recent episode, 33, 96 or 34,
a one I think Magic Gathering has land cards that when you tap them, they produce mana. And mana
is the in-game currency that you spend in order to cast spells or summon creatures or do other
other things that make the game go with mana you're able to do the things that you want to do in the game.
Now as I've demonstrated in a recent episode, there are hacks around the limitation of only having
so much mana by decoupling the relationship of land to mana in some ways. But you have to acquire
those. Those are things that you have to draw from your deck. You have that own. You have to sort of
work that into your deck initially. Similarly in Dominion, you have currency. They are appropriately
just their gold coins and copper coins and silver coins in Dominion. And you get to draw those,
you get to purchase those rather. You start with some number of copper and you get to purchase silver
and then once you have enough silver, you can purchase gold. So you're working your way up
as part of the game. You're getting more and more valuable currency. But that's all those cards do
is they you trade those cards in for for other benefits of the game. And similarly in Dominion,
you have hacks around sort of the currency limitations. So for instance, you have things like
cards that not only grant you another turn, they also grant you sort of a temporary until your turn
ends. You have two extra gold coins. And so now even though you might only have three copper coins
in your hand, you happen to also have two more coins granted to you by this special card that you
purchased with with in-game currency. So that's currency. It's a fairly common
convention in games because you it's a way of limiting limiting players from sort of ramping up
too quickly to the really powerful stuff. And it causes well just like in real life, it causes
sort of a feeding frenzy and a mad rush on the bank to get currency because you know you need currency
in order to do something special thing. And that special thing of course will put you above
your your opponent in some way. That's currency, that's clutter. I've mentioned it a couple of times
so I'm going to skip over, well I'm not going to skip. I'm going to I'm going to jump over to rules.
So rules or rule breakers are cards that are designed to modify the the game engine as it runs.
So easy example here is flux. I've done a podcast on flux for hacker public radio.
Don't know the number off the top of my head. Thumbout for a walk right now so I can't look it up.
But go listen to that. Flux is a really cool game. The long and short of it is that there are two
rules in flux. Draw up card and play a card. But every card you draw almost
modifies the game rules. So one card you draw might say from now on draw two. And so now you're
drawing two and playing one. Something else might say play all the cards in your hands every turn.
And so you're playing insane amounts of a ridiculous amount of cards every turn and you're
drawing two and then you get something else and it tells you a new way to win.
Rather than doing this to win you do that to win. So the rules are changing based on the cards
themselves and that is that's the design of flux. But you see it elsewhere too. You see it in
magic the gathering. Certainly you'll have a card that says that it's an enchantment or an artifact
and from now on every character every every creature that you know loses that that gets
sent to the graveyard grants you additional life or it lets you draw an extra card or something
like that. So it's it's there are cards that you can draw to change the the normal rules of the
game and that's fun. Like those are those are exceptions those are rule breaking moments and I
think any kind of like power up card I think from from myself I I put that into the rules category
because essentially that's what like power up cards you're doing and by power up I mean you know
something that grants a card. I don't know if you could hear that through the microphone but there
is a there are huge like I don't know what they're called Yorkshire cows or Oxfordshire cows
or something like that they're big cows with like really long pointy horns it's really amazing
they're really shaggy. Anyway yeah rules and power ups like any power up card like it gives you
you know like a plus one to this card or take an extra action this turn or an extra turn or
something like or skip the next player or in Uno you have the wild card card that that that you
can play and now the next player can put down any card that they want because the wild card counts
as any number and any color or I think also in Uno I think there's a reverse reverse the
the direction that the gameplay is is happening I don't know if that's actually a benefit or
just something wacky that that makes people sort of excited because things are different now but
either way rule changing stuff dominion has a bunch of these as well you're you're acquiring your
currency thinking that you're you're going to be able to buy more more land because you have more
currency and on your on your way to that you're you're buying other cards that break the rules
because natively the rules of dominion are to play to yeah to take one action and to buy one thing
and that's all you can do and then I think yeah that's it that's that's all but there are other
cards that you can purchase for in-game currency that give you benefits like take two actions
discard a card and replace it with a new one from your deck buy two things instead of just one
or or you know if you can so so yeah rule breaking cards are are another category of cards
so next I'm gonna do persuasion cards persuasion cards are things that I classify as assets
that encourage or discourage player your a fellow players from taking actions of some sort
their persuasion cards they're not they're not currency they're not winning conditions they're
not breaking any rules they're just or maybe they are I mean none of these are mutually exclusive
but the persuasion ones are things that your that players know you or maybe assume that you have
and will modify their behavior in some way and along with this I classify what I would
call deterrent cards so deterrent or persuasion maybe they're the same maybe they're slightly
different in mood but they they help modify other players behavior either by by explicit threat
or by you know suggestion of a threat so for instance in poker I would say that the card the
card functions in poker all of the cards are essentially deterrent cards they they or persuasion
cards they they encourage your fellow players to to to not to bet more or to bet more money or I
don't know how poker works I've only played text Texas hold them but yeah in poker you know you've
got your cards you got your card hands you're making assumptions about what other people have
and so you're you're either increasing your bid or you're folding based on what you think the other
players have the cards themselves essentially from other players viewpoints they're all essentially
the same they all look the same from the back of the cards right like they don't know that you have
an ace or a full house or whatever all they know is that you have some number of cards
and a smoke look on your face and so they make assumptions based on that another one like that
is the game koo c o u p like a koo on a government or whatever koo you only have two cards in your hand
or is it three two or three cards in your hand it's it's brilliant I've done a hacker public
radio episode on koo I'm pretty sure and once again two other players those the cards are essentially
completely equal because they don't know what those cards are but they know that certain
cards have certain abilities and based on their their either fear or or their their belief in that
card they are persuaded to to modify their behavior in some way
and then finally I have coercion or curse cards coercion cards yeah coercion is to go with coercion
that sounds better coercion cards are what I what I think of as you know all out attack cards
they're the the sort of the battle ready cards that's in some way
modify the state of either the game board as it were or you know the table or the the hands of other
players magically gathering is the maybe the obvious the obvious example here you're you're
literally we're not literally well literally you're in game literally attacking other players
you're you're you're summoning creatures that ideally deduct points off of the player's life
total that's a coercive card in dominion there are a couple of cards like this I mean there are a
lot of expansion packs for dominion but at least in the base set there are a couple like this
there's a militia card that forces your opponent to discard two or down to three cards
there's a a witch card that inserts a negative one victory point into your player's hand
there's a like a robber card or something like that that steals I think gold or some you know
currency from your from an opponent and so on in coup there's one or two cards that outwardly
outwardly attack the the opponent like the assassin card you don't like play you know I think
you do actually play the assassin yeah so it isn't very obvious attack in the the game gloom
uh which is a sort of a spin in a way off of dark cults which have also done um an episode about
you you are placing um potentially points on your opponent's family members to try to
well it's kind of it's kind of everything's reversed so actually you're trying to uh you're
trying to heal their or you benefit their their family but actually that's bad bad for them
but anyway the point is that you are you are modifying the state of your opponent's
wind condition or proximity to the wind condition and those are coercion cards
and like I said none of these are necessarily mutually exclusive and I think that in a way um
persuasion for instance well persuasion is a little bit funky maybe that's not one um
maybe it is I don't know persuasion and deterrent are kind of essentially the same arguably
but in my mind I think persuasion is I think of persuasion more when there's a bit of a
looser table rule where I mean depending on the game um it might be written into the game rules
where people are sort of bargaining for things like hey I'll I'll give you this if you give me that
that sort of thing the bargaining almost of persuasion but that could also be your currency you
know you could just outwardly bribe people with your in-game currency uh if that's allowed
or if it's not allowed who knows I don't know how you play uh so that's it anyway so I got currency
persuasion persuasion slash deterrent um clutter coercion and rules those are the the things
that I've identified in card games and in games in general um and I will say that uh one of the
reasons that I sort of started down this thought process this thought exercise was because I
realized um when I was designing a game once that I had come up with some uh bonus cards some
power up cards of sorts that I didn't realize it at the time and it wasn't until I play tested
it with some people who who were quite used to um to card games like a lot of different card games
that I wasn't familiar with um I designed power up cards that at the time I thought were really
beneficial and I thought boy people will really love these these cards because they're just um
they really power things up and it didn't realize it until until it was pointed out to me
that um actually they just clutter up your hand because uh they kind of they they put your hand
count at the maximum when all you really want to do is discard your stupid little measly power up
card um and gain a really powerful card instead so you know you got a power up that gives you a
plus one well that's great but why not just discard it and kind of you know fish as it were
for a um for a something that's worth five in the first place so um I feel like
identifying the the um identifying the kinds of cards that exist can kind of help you avoid
potentially or at least I should say it's just not necessarily about avoidance it's it's also just kind
of it'll help you when you're designing things to identify the function of what you've just designed
and really look at it and think and be able to identify whether it's it's actually what you
intended or whether it's playing some other role that maybe you didn't intend or that it is
playing a couple of the different roles maybe it is a bonus in some circumstances and yet also
a clutter card in other circumstances and maybe that's okay like I say in dominion that's
surely by design the fact that that if you buy things too early in the game you're cluttering up
your hand and you need to come up with some other strategy that will break a rule for you so that
you can then get rid of the clutter and get a better hand during your turn or just don't don't buy
victory points until the very end of the game there's flexibility there but you you have to deal
with it and that's by design so I hope this has been I don't know sort of informative or at least
interesting thanks for listening I'll talk to you next time
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