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[Valakanaraga]

Games are often made out of other games. Dungeons&Dragons originated from Chainmail, a wargame played in individual matches. Each side would set up their troops until both agreed the scenario was more or less balanced and then they'd wage battle. The very first version of D&D used Chainmail's rules for most-anything concerning combat. Consequently you could certainly play it in a similar fashion, treating each battle as a self-contained match. D&D, however, featured Framing Mechanics. A metagame overlaid on top of the combat encounters which linked them together. The framing mechanics dictated the initial conditions of battles and the battles fed back into the framing mechanics. In this way what was previously its own game has become the Core Activity in a larger, holistic whole. A game slotted into another game. Most video games are structured in a similar way.

Any given game/core activity can be combined with many different kinds of sets of framing mechanics. D&D's battle system could have easily been used in the context of a 4X title instead of a roleplaying game. Hell, you can even frame framing mechanics! Invisible Inc features corporate heists as the core activity, the campaign as the framing mechanics, and the meta-progression unlock system as the framing mechanics of the framing mechanics. Likewise a given framing game can have different core activities slotted into it and still function. Wheels within wheels.

Why, gentle reader, am I bothering you with game grammar bullshit? Because I have a core activity and need to decide how to frame it properly. Namely, I have a (mostly) functional single player collectible card game on my hands - programmed, AI and all, but artless - which I need to wrap in a metagame. There are a few paths open to me. I hope that you can help me choose one or even suggest another.

In a way the original CCG framing mechanic is the draft format, invented for Magic: The Gathering. Somewhere around eight to sixteen players each buy three booster packs then sit in a circle. Each player opens a pack, takes a card, then passes the rest of the pack to their right. Repeat until all cards have been distributed. The players are then tasked with forming a deck out of around two thirds of the cards they've drafted and play the other players for prizes over several rounds. The format emphasizes the inherent ability of the genre to randomly generate new situations. It does so by randomizing the card pool so that players constantly have to come up with new decks and so ensures the players constantly run into new puzzles to solve. If you look closely enough you see that this format has a lot of similarities to the roguelike genre.

On the opposite side of the spectrum single player CCGs have historically focused on the joy of collecting and slowly growing in power, a la D&D. Games like Shandalar or the Pokemon CCG for the gameboy thrust you into an RPG-esque world where you fought AI-controlled opponents to get better cards to fight better AI opponents to get even better cards to.. you get the idea. The basic appeal is clear. Getting to actually play with all of the different cards without grappling with the exploitative business model of actual multiplayer CCGs is a plus.

Finally, here are the framing mechanics I'm currently considering:


Drafting Roguelite
The game is played in campaigns, a la XCOM or Invisible Inc. You begin the game by picking a character with a special ability and drafting a deck of 30 cards. Your goal is to take down a certain super powerful opponent. You can assault that opponent from the beginning of the game but that is not advisable as their deck is ridiculously powerful and yours is not. Instead you are given the option of playing against one of several other opponents. The opponent selection screen gives you some information about each opponent: their special ability and half of their deck list. Beating an opponent allows you to steal up to 5 cards from their deck to use in future matches. Losing gives you a Strike. Three strikes and you're out.

You have only so and so rounds to get to beating the final boss. Non-boss opponents get more powerful each round. Opponents are procedurally generated. The game autosaves after every action. I'm not sure how long each campaign should be but currently I'm leaning toward 2 hours.

Advantages:

• Innovative. You need to stand out in today's market and this approach is unusual.
• Consumer-friendly drafting. Non-digital drafting costs cold cash each time. Digital CCGs typically require you to pay for drafting as well. With a buy-to-play model you can draft as many times as you want for a one time fee.
• Leverages the novelty generation innate to the genre. Plays on the natural CCG-Roguelike connection.
• Requires the least artwork.

Disadvantages:

• Consumer expectations regarding the length of games. Being innovate means also being the one who has to convince the masses that paying for a 2 hour experience is fine. Now in practice no one is going to beat the game on their first try, and in all probability not on the tenth either, but the very idea is enough to drive off certain kinds of players.

Ye Olde Single Player CCG
I don't need to write much here because this is just me copying the approach of titles like Shandalar without innovating. You start with a deck. You go about the world fighting opponents. You get cards for beating opponents. You use those cards to improve your deck. You use your improved deck to beat opponents you couldn't beat before to further improve your deck. At some point you beat the final boss and that's that. Also there's probably a story and characters and stuff. Wow.

Advantages:

• Leverages the impulse of humans to collect and grind.
• Familiar. Players know what to expect. No resistance to buying an 8 hour game.

Disadvantages:

• Forsakes gameplay novelty in order to be a better one-time experience.
• Derivative. Being similar to other titles might result in it going unnoticed.
• Requires more artwork.
• Requires a writer.

Why not both?
A hybrid approach. Break the game into 30 or so chapters. Each chapter begins and ends with a VN-esque sequence of talking heads. In the middle of each chapter is the core activity. You take up to 15 cards from your collection and then head into a draft where you form the other half of your deck. You then face 2-3 opponents selected similarly to how you select opponents in the first method, improving your drafted deck each match until you face and beat the chapter's boss, ending the sequence. You add all drafted cards to your collection and repeat the process until you beat the game. Losing sends you to the beginning of the chapter. Each chapter takes 30~ minutes to beat in total.

Advantages:

• Has most of the upsides of the other approaches. While it is not infinitely replayable like the first one it does not suffer from length issues. In fact making the game fairly lengthy is trivial because the gameplay content largely generates itself.
• Novelty. Of the three this approach is probably the most unique.

Disadvantages:

• Requires the most artwork.
• Requires a good writer to do a lot of work.
• Limited replayability. Still better than approach 2 though.

Aaaaaand that's that. Wow, this came out longer than I intended it to be. If you're still with me, dear reader, I applaud your endurance. I've been writing this post for three hours - a fact which is probably reflected in my ability to write properly slowly and visibly deteriorating the further you read. Thank you for making the journey all the way down here. As always, I'm open to any and all feedback.

[Jordgubben]

Drafting Roguelite
The game is played in campaigns, a la XCOM or Invisible Inc. You begin the game by picking a character with a special ability and drafting a deck of 30 cards. Your goal is to take down a certain super powerful opponent. You can assault that opponent from the beginning of the game but that is not advisable as their deck is ridiculously powerful and yours is not. Instead you are given the option of playing against one of several other opponents. The opponent selection screen gives you some information about each opponent: their special ability and half of their deck list. Beating an opponent allows you to steal up to 5 cards from their deck to use in future matches. Losing gives you a Strike. Three strikes and you're out.

You have only so and so rounds to get to beating the final boss. Non-boss opponents get more powerful each round. Opponents are procedurally generated. The game autosaves after every action. I'm not sure how long each campaign should be but currently I'm leaning toward 2 hours.

What if the opponents fight each other while you fight one of them, applying the same rules (win = take 5 cards, lose 3 times = out)? Some opponents start of with cards that are weak on their own, but become ridiculously OP if combined with other opponents decks. This adds an additional layer of strategy to how you pick your next opponent.

[Valakanaraga]

That's a really neat idea. Making difficulty scale at the proper rate would be a challenge though. The current plan is to generate opponents by giving each of them a fixed list of 15 cards centered on a certain theme then randomly generate the other half. Difficulty is scaled both by slowly improving the fixed 15 cards on a round to round basis as well as scaling the AI's special ability. As only, say, a fourth of all possible opponents would appear in a given campaign that would create an acceptable level of variety. If the AIs are to improve their decks in the same fashion as the player then I'll have to figure out a way to make them understand how to build a good deck. A step beyond having them just play well when given a preconstructed deck.

I'm not rejecting the idea outright, mind. It has a lot of potential and is very novel. Just difficult to implement, at least for me. Thank you for commenting.

[Jordgubben]

That's a really neat idea. ... If the AIs are to improve their decks in the same fashion as the player then I'll have to figure out a way to make them understand how to build a good deck. A step beyond having them just play well when given a preconstructed deck.

I think you work around this by givnging the AI predefined wish list. I.e. a list of predefined cards that works well with the AI:s predefined starting cards. The AI would then challenge opponents based  this list and opponents known cards.

[s0]

Maybe instead of using a framing mechanic, you could integrate deck building into the core gameplay. example: mage knight the board game is a fantasy adventure game (and somewhat comparable to a roguelike) where you have a deck of cards that represents your character's possible actions (move, attack, etc). you "level up"/get stronger by adding cards to your deck your deck from common card offers. You represent damage by adding useless "wound" cards to your deck. The pathfinder adventure card game is a simpler implementation of a similar idea. Pathfinder has a f2p digital version for tablets now, so you could check that out for inspiration.