Bishoujo Card Game

Visual Novel Community Anime/Otaku Discussions
#1

Let’s see if we can invent a Bishoujo Card Game… you know, like in the style of Magic the Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh. :o

So I guess the first step, would be figuring out a rules system. Does having a core deck of 112 cards sound good? That’s twice the number of a traditional deck of Poker cards.

Ideas I’m just throwing out there for fun:

Character Card ¬ñ The basic game card. Has the picture of a girl that represents a specific - though physical - clich√© type of bgame heroine. For example: meganekko, DFC, twins, etc. The card would also show whatever “base stats” the game system would use.

Persona Cards ¬ñ The adjustment card. These cards have a representative picture of a personality or character trait. These personality traits then provide a quantified number (+1 or +2 or -1 or -2) that alter the “base stats” on a Character Card, or some sort of “special rule” that influences how things effect that character. For example: yandere, tsundere, childhood friend, bokuko, etc.

A certain number of Character Cards are then randomly drawn, and then each Character Card is randomly drawn two or three Persona Cards that are assigned to them. Using this system, things like: Twin (character) Yandere (persona) Bokuko (persona) and Meganekko (character) Kuudere (persona) Tsundere (persona) could be created. These would be the girls to be won. Each time a new game is played, new types of girls are created.

Are these girls put into a Winnable Pot for the players to fight over? Or does each player draw his own set of girls to create his personal Harem? Is there a better way to do this? Would change the game mechanics I think…

Event Cards ¬ñ The spell cards. Player draws several of these from a shuffled deck, and uses them during play to “remove” or “gain” or “boost” the heroines. Stuff like “spreading rumors” or “promise tree confession” or “she’s a trap!” ¬ñ then Persona Cards could increase or decrease the effects? Some cards are positive. Others are negative.

Problem: how are these attacks exactly handled? Makes no sense for the girls to attack each other like monsters from Yu-Gi-Oh or something (unless it’s a yandere). Maybe have it so that there’s a Love Stat that represents how much a girl loves someone? Then an apposing player attacks that stat, and when it’s depleted to 0, she is “freed” from the owning player (i.e. broken up/dumped). Just as a wild example, let’s say we have a girl that starts with 4 Love Points, thanks to her combination of Character and Persona cards. Using a single or combination of Event Cards to attack that value? Need counter cards I suppose… or at least a way to increase that Love Stat or whatever.

Also what should be the end goal? Guy with the most girls (or Love points) at the end of three turns (Japanese School of three years) wins? Triggering a “true love confession” from a girl, after reaching a certain amount of Love Points (something like x3 the starting value)?

lol… probably going about this all wrong, since I’m not a tourney card player. Or maybe making it too complex. :stuck_out_tongue:

#2

I’m thinking you’d have X number of girls, each defined as you mention in your description. These are played between the players and are fought over throughout the game - once the last girl is won the game is over and the person with the most girls wins. (you’d lay out one more girl than number of players) Each girl has a love number which players must achieve in order to win that girl. (players gain love through use of cards and cost one another love through the same)

Then each player has a protagonist card representing the protagonists (to be fair there should be male and females, maybe among the characters you’re fighting over too) trying to win the girls’ affections. During battle the protagonist can play three types of cards; a love card increases one of the “girl’s’” opinions of him, though it can be countered by another card played by an opponent. (perhaps a secondary effect on the love cards which allow you to play them as a love-block card instead; I like this idea because it forces the player to decide whether to horde their love cards to use for themselves or use them to slow down enemies) The second card is a backstab card and is used against one of the other protagonists directly in order to lower the amount of love he has achieved against a certain girl, remove cards from his hand/character, or impose some other kind of negative; while the third card is the gird card, which can be used to make the protagonist more effective in varied ways - be that in defending himself from damage, allowing him to reuse certain love cards, use them on multiple girls, etc. These are played directly on the protagonist and he is limited to a certain number he can wear at a time.

Finally, once a girl’s love number has been met and won, there should still be a way to get her back on the field, so that once a person wins the majority of girls the game isn’t automatically over, but can continue to be played until all girls are gone. This method should be somewhat difficult - perhaps certain card combinations or rare cards in the deck. Not sure about that part.

#3

How about each player begins with a girl, who represents his “childhood friend” or the “default girl” of the harem (Belldandy, Naru Narusegawa, Akane Tendo, etc)… then she’s the player’s proxy for defending and attacks or whatnot? That way the player is the “harem guy”. Can’t get into the harem without her being in the way (or grudgingly approve)… kinda how the bgames, anime, and manga have the lead girl interfere or help expand the love interests. :stuck_out_tongue:

Make so she’s always with the player, even if he doesn’t get a single other girl (true love till the end)… or perhaps if she’s lost, it’s game over?

The idea that love cards can be offensive or defensive is cool. Makes good use of the card count. :o

What do you think of the idea, that unused event cards are returned to the deck and reshuffled at the end of each turn, then new cards are delt to each player at the start of a new turn? That way players aren’t always stuck with a bad hand (or could get a bad hand). Maybe allow them to keep one card per turn? Then each additional turn they could keep another card (i.e. at the end of turn one, keep one card… at the end of turn two, can keep two cards… at the end of turn three, can keep three cards)? If they keep a card, they draw that fewer cards at the start of a new turn. If you can draw five cards at the start of each turn, and keep two from the previous, you can only draw three this time around.

Still just throwing idea out there. :slight_smile:

EDIT
As for the boys/girls thing: could have two versions. Something like Boy’s Side and Girl’s Side (as how Konami does with TokiMemo). One has winnable girls… the other has winnable boys. Since both use the same system, they can be combined for a Boy’s and Girl’s Love. 8)

#4

Okay, say each person starts with one girl who acts as your proxy defending and fighting and trying to get you the other girls. The point of the game is to get the girl from all the other players and so build your harem; if you have no girls you are out of the game. However, if you successfully steal another girl you can then add her to your combat group, so you have more attacks and defense options each turn. To balance this, each girl has an Affection cost which you must be able to maintain by playing cards on yourself each round - these cards are things like “watches romantic movies” or “buys flowers” etc and add to your Affection Pool. If you do not have enough Affection to maintain all the girls currently in your harem you start having to sacrifice them until you can afford the rest. If a girl is sacrificed because you cannot afford her she becomes fair game for anyone who can match some criteria listed on her card. (such as "must have the ‘hates small animals’ card in play)

To add to the difficulty each Affection card has two qualities, a general quality that adds to your Pool and a secondary quality which only effects certain girls. For example: The “Hates small animals” card had the face of a kitten in the classic ‘circle/line’ configuration. Some of the girls’ cards (or modifiers you were dealt for those cards as you outline in the first post) dictate that they react either positively to this symbol - thus they hate small animals as well - or negatively -they love small animals - and this grants either a bonus or loss on attacks and defense with that girl. (or even limits the number of cards she can play, have played on her, etc) These Affection cards also have the secondary effect of Displeasure which can be played against another player to reduce his Affection Pool, but only if you get past their girl/harem’s defense. (thus the more girls you have the harder it is to play a Displeasure card on you, but you’ll only have so many cards you can use to improve the combat and defense of your harem so you’ll have to balance your defense against your attack value - which you’d use to play these cards on your foe)

If you wanted to be really awesome you could have the cards partially transparent like in the game “Gloom” where you stack cards atop one another and certain symbols block out others. In this way cards which added effects could cover negatives or bonuses and perhaps also add something to the girl’s costume. (alternately the cards have holes in them for the head and the benefit slots they intend to show through - almost like building on a paper doll - same basic premise but not outright stealing another game’s gimmick)

#5

I’m in the middle of writing a detailed overview of my ideas for the game. Hopefully I can finish it up this weekend between deconstructing and packing up certain parts of my new computer that I need to RMA, and doing some simple music theory homework that my bass instructor assigned (in addition to the other things I usually do on the weekend).

#6

Uh, great idea. Just a few thoughts.

First of all, I think it would be better, instead of having generic “female character card”, to have cards representing actual bishoujo from bgames, each with appropriate characteristics. For example, Haru from G-Senjou no Maou would have great skills in terms of supporting the player, while Kenshin from Sengoku Rance would beat like crazy.

We could set up a group of heroines of “childhood friend” type (Hoshizora no Memoria’s Asuho, Fate/stay Night 's Sakura, maybe even Princess Waltz’s Shizuna, and so on), among which the player can choose which heroine to start with. Then you put five other bishoujo in the middle ground, and the players start battling to get them. Each heroine would have a different way of conquest. The more “martial” of them (like Saber, Kenshin, and so on) would need a clash of physical stats, other would need to be taken on a date, and so on. Obviously, you would need special cards to trigger an event to get a bishoujo, and those cards would need to be rare (let’s say, a fixed number in each deck), so that the game doesn’t end too early. While non trying to get any bishoujo, you could still try to lower enemy’s Affection pool, or play power-up on your bishoujo, and so on.

I like the idea of Affection as a way of balancing. For example, suppose you draw X cards each turn. Each card can be used in two different ways - to raise your Affection pool or to damage the opponent/try to get a new bishoujo/etc. . The more bishoujo you already have, the more you would need to use those cards to raise your Affection pool, instead of using them to get some other effect.

#7

The only issue I have with “static character” cards, is they allow meta gaming exploitation. :expressionless:

Randomizing the characters, makes it harder (of course not impossible) to power play a game, since they’re random.

Also the attraction that you never know what kinds of girls you get next. :wink:

#8

I tend to agree with Narg on this one - the way he suggested doing the girls makes for a slightly different game every time which is important if you intend to play the game for a while.

#9

Well, keep in mind that we draw from an incredibly huge pool of possible heroines, so I don’t think that repetitivity will never be a problem. Besides, you would choose randomly which heroines to put on the board - except maybe for the two starting “childhood friends”.

#10

Keep in mind that if this were to ever be a real game, there would be licensing issues. So I agree with Narg and Jack about this. In any case, here is what I have written up so far. There is some difference, given that I think the games goal shouldn’t be building a harem alone.

[list]
[]Deck: Three types of cards are in every deck. A small number of character cards, a slightly larger number of persona cards, and 156 event cards. Decks can be customized to fit the personality of the character the player wants to portray.
[/]
[]Setup: I agree with Narg for how the game should start. Each player chooses a number (to be determined) of character cards that are randomly chosen from a deck, and each has a number (to be determined) of randomly drawn persona cards applied. Each player creates a pool of girls, and can only go for girls from the pool the other player created. Persona cards are hidden (known only to the player who created the pool of girls), and must be figured out over the course of the game as a part of winning over the girl.
[/]
[]Gameplay: Each game consists of 36 turns (each turn equal to a month in time). These turns are broken up in to three years, and each year is broken up in to four seasons. These seasons determine the exact event that occurs when an event card is used, and the effectiveness of an event can vary depending on which year it occurs. For example, an event card could be used to trigger a flower viewing party in spring, but a festival in summer. Each season, the players draw 13 cards from the event deck. Four of these event cards are used per turn, with the option of using one extra card per season. Events can be used either to strengthen relationships with a character a player is pursuing, or weaken an opposing player’s relationships.
[/]
[]Win conditions: The game ends after the last turn of the third year. A win can be achieved two ways. The first way is to completely win over a single girl (exceptions for twins and such). The other is to build a harem.[/][/list]

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions. It is nowhere near as complete as I would like, but in my opinion it is a good start.

#11

http://www.lycee-tcg.com/ (in case anyone hasn’t come across it before. Here’s an English translation of the rules.)

#12

Interesting. :o

Although reading over the rules for that game: it’s just a generic “summon monster” card game with anime girls on it. Just switch out the characters with… oh… say Disney characters, and it fits just the same.

I think that’s a good example of what we shouldn’t do. :wink:

IDK… I just don’t like the idea of having a game that has Sakura Shingukji VS Shiori Fujisaki. Then it becomes a game about Sakura VS Shiori… there’s a lot of anime battle card games (or their ilk) that have been done like that before.

#13

Some ideas

Like Overlord87, I think it would be better to use actual characters; it would be more interesting (though the licensing issues would exist. Not like we are actually planning to make this game, right?). There could be even be actual characters and generic ones (twins osananajimi, yandere loli, etc); the generic would be weaker but easier to play.

Some sketch of game I thought could be:
-You start with a hero card in play; that would be you (Emiya Shirou, Kunisaki Yukito, Itou Makoto, whatever). Every one has some effect (bonus to some cards, draw more cards, that type of things), and the victory conditions.
-Then you have your deck; as usual, you start with a hand of random X cards (7 for a 60 cards deck seems a good standard). You then draw one card each turn.
-You have the heroin cards, which are the girls you are trying to win, and play them (one per turn maybe). Maybe some of them need a special condition to be played (being some particular character, being in some particular location, having some particular effect). You start making your harem this way, though not necessarily in the sense that you have all of them at the same time, but more like these are the routes you are playing. So, Kanon’s Yuiichi could have as victory condition “have 5 girls”, representing the 5 routes from the game. Maybe actual girls could only be played if your character card is the game hero, though that would limit the deck possibilities; maybe is better if they only have some additional effect.
Of course, there can also be girls as your character, and boys as characters to play, for the otome games. I guess you could add to every character if he/she is homosexual or not, and you have to make the deck having that in mind; you can’t play Sono Hanabira’s Nanami if you are a boy.
-Each girl starts with some love counters; you use the event cards (eating lunch together, etc) to raise them, or to lower the opponent’s ones. If the girl’s counters reach zero, she is discarded; you reached a Bad end.
-There also different cards of each girl, like different stages. Once a girl has enough counters, you can play over her a second stage (like Pokemon evolution system). What is needed for each card to be played is specified in the card itself; having enough counters, some card being played, etc. The usual win condition (like above’s Yuuichi) would be “have 5 stage 3 girls”.
-That kind of victory condition would work with characters from the usual multiroute game; other games’ ones should have different ones.
-There are also support characters; the characters that don’t have a route (teachers, friends). There can be also support characters who “evolve” into main ones, representing characters who get a route in an expansion (Mayumi Thyme for example)
-There are event cards, with various effects; there can be also some that are attached to some character and modify them somehow (get more love counters, becomes yandere)
-There are also location cards (park, beach, rooftop, the usual place you go in a game); they give some global bonus, and can also be the condition for some cards to be played.
-The girls are discarded if they reach zero counters; they can also be killed in various ways (depending the character; you would expect Saber to be killed; Nerine not so much). Say, yandere characters get more love counters, but if they are not the one with the most, they kill the girl who has more than herself.
-Characters have individual effects (generic or not) and a list of attributes: osananajimi, yandere, tsundere, meganekko, bokukko, twintails, twins (maybe when you play a twin, you can automatically search for the other; close ones could be both a single card). A card can have more than one attribute. Some attributes would have some effect; others would be just keywords that allow some event to be played, or some event to affect them, or some event to affect them differently. Attachments can add or take away attributes.

#14

Having played with multiple sized decks: 40, 60, 75, 90, 200 in multiple games (pokemon, .hack, yu yu hakusho, Star Trek, MtG, Harry Potter, AniMayhem, Duel Masters, etc.) I can say the best is 60 for non-life decks and 90 for life decks. For those that don’t know, life decks are those that when damage is delt to the player they discard 1 card per life taken (unless otherwise specified). Personally, I like life decks better. It makes keeping track of life totals easier and makes you design decks to withstand losing your power cards more (because you likely will). The downside is it removes the milling deck as a viable alternative as that is what everyone is trying to do.

The next is to figure out whether you want to use a mana/energy based system or an action based system. Duel Master’s is generally considered to be the best example for the former (even Richard Garfield has admitted this) while Harry Potter are good examples the other. Pokemon is a kind of mix between the two. I will say I prefer something close to the DM style gameplay.

Next using the 3 card types listed, I’d say that you need at least two more. Often games like this have Location cards which act as global permanents affecting all character (on your side or the entire field) and item/equipment cards which can be equipped (and sometimes remain in play, sometimes are discarded when the character dies). Persona cards represent enchantment type cards.

For characters, you will want to make it so that, on average your overall attack is 1.5x-2x the defense (however you want to calculate it). Less than that and you’ll likely end up with stall battles too often and more than that and defense becomes pointless.

For event cards you want to have at least 2 types, instants and your-turn only cards. Games without instants tend to not do so well because you can’t react and it basically makes the gameplay more dull. There are a few exceptions, if you have a lot of characters with special abilities that can be activated at any time, but that is generally not the best way to go.

If you look around there are only few CCGs that have managed to survive: MtG, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokemon and to a much lesser extent Bakugan and Duel Masters. Look at these games and, with the exception of MtG because it was the first you’ll notice they have 3-5 card types and in some way at least one card out there can perform all those functions (even Pokemon I’ve seen a few cards that can be used on your oponent’s turn).

EDIT: Also we need to figure out how many types of cards (in mtg they are colors, in pokemon, energy, in DBZ (original) cardgame they were fighting styles/colors, in HP they were spell types, in Bleach it was character type, etc.). In general 5 is the magic number. Pokemon has more because it is based on a game that has a ton more and it did a lot to simplify it to what it is. Bleach has 3 (until the Bount arc) because it was based on character types in the series: Human, Shinigami, Hollow with a few exceptions like Kon. Since this game is not based on a particular series, it is best to stay with the magic number of 5. 3 tends to make it too easy to make compliation decks and doesn’t offer much variety. 7 tends to dilute the card types or require too many cards to be viable. Even numbers of 4 and 6 generally don’t work out very will for some reason.

That said, we need to decide how we would classify the cards (and i would base it around characters as that seems to be the core theme of the CCG). Do we go by their personality quirks, physical attributes, general colors (ie would this character be a black or red), or more overall themes? There can, and should, be type-less cards, but most cards should fall into one of those 5 types.

#15

This sounds like a pretty complicated game. You’d have to come up with a beginner’s version for people like me. Something simple, perhaps with only one girl as the goal. Also, how the heck would you play a yandere character? Wouldn’t it make sense for all the players to avoid that character like the plague?

#16

That’s why, when you develop some of the basic fundimental structures of a game you have an idea what the goal is. Generally good v. evil type games fail. The original DBZ CCG was the only one semi-successful and they quickly discarded most of the mechanics behind hero/villian. A bishoujo card game wouldn’t have that, but you could have multiple ideas some of which are:
[list=1][]Typical battle last-one-standing scenerio[/]
[]Resource aquisition, such as the main character being the guy/girl protagonist trying to collect X girls first[/]
[]Leveling your character (RPG style); can replace level with other phrase, example: libido.[/][/list]
Probably some others, but those are the basics. Generally #1 is favored as it is the easiest to understand. The others are generally alternate methods. Every successful CCG uses the first as the primary one.