Super Mario Card ideas

[Koopaul]

A long time ago, an 10-year-old Koopaul had an idea to make a trading card game based on the Mario Universe. I called them "Super Mario Cards". Yeah, what else would you call them? It was similar to Pokemon but the rules were really simple. Reduce your opponent's cards' HP to 0. I made about 100 cards on some blank flashcards I bought. The kids in the neighborhood would come over and play it all the time. It was fun as a 10-year-old but I soon realized what a mess it was.

When I was fifteen I tried making the game again but using Paper Mario rules. You'd have a captain card (like Mario or Bowser) and a sidekick card (like a Toad or Goomba) It was far more sophisticated now that certain characters were given certain attributes. Cards like Paratroopa couldn't be hit with a shell attack and Spiny couldn't be jumped on. But it was kind of a pain to play. We had to constantly write down how much HP each card still had among other things.

At one point, even Pixeltendo had a Mario card game that was played on the forum for coins and stuff. But I (like always) criticized the hell out of it. Things were super unbalanced, characters had moves that were completely useless.

Now years later the idea itches in my brain again. Ideas to fix the problems the game had in the past. But it's not enough for one mind to do. I'd like some advice and ideas. Let me know what you would do. What your rules would be. Anything.

Right now I'm thinking about redoing the rules. I was thinking about having something similar to Mario Party 3's Dual Mode where sidekicks have a salary and protect the captain card. I also wanted to figure out a way to simplify the math and having it so you don't have to write down so much. Perhaps I could integrate a standard deck of cards somehow to represent HP? Or poker chips?

Either way, please share your ideas.

[DragonDePlatino]

That sounds like an interesting idea! And you're certainly not alone with the whole childhood card-making thing. When I was a kid I made up a series of "Kirby cards" which failed similarly.

From a gameplay perspective, I've never played a CCG in my life so I can't offer much advice. I know Extra Credits has had some really interesting episodes on balancing card games, though. They've covered subjects like handling power creep, balancing randomness and even a big 3-part series on making good CCGs. The bottom line is, the heart and soul of every card game is emergent gameplay. Individual cards should be very simple but interact in complex ways. This introduces the possibility of really memorable combos but also some really cheap exploits...Only hours of testing, testing, testing can fix the latter.

From an art perspective, this could be pretty fun. You could have multiple artists contribute art and have tons of crazy clashing styles like in the original Pokemon TCG. If you set up some restrictions for the card art (i.e. 8 colors max) you could arrive at something like the GBC Pokemon TCG. Off the top of my head, two pixel artists that have made pixel art cards are neoriceisgood and justingamedesign. Whether you incorporate some of their ideas into your project is up to you.

[Koopaul]

Hey thanks! I'll definitely look into all that.

One thing I definitely want to do with this card series is to include Mario platform rules. That means you have characters that are in the air that can't be hit by kicking a shell across the ground, and characters like Spiny can't be jumped on due to its spikes. If you played Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi you know what I mean. Those elements are a must.

Perhaps you can arrange cards in a certain way to represent the placement of characters on the battlefield. For example If you place Goomba card next to Mario and Boswer spits a fireball, it will hit the Goomba instead of Mario. However, if Bowser uses a jump attack, he can leap over the Goomba and directly onto Mario.

[Kriven]

I've had a few ideas for Mario card games in the past...

...the one idea between all of them which had been consistent was the "Power-Up" gimmick. It essentially worked like in the games, where a character retained their power-up until they were damaged. Power-Ups are activated by placing a power-up card ontop of a player character card (like Mario). For the sake of neatness, I had Fire Mario, Star Mario, etc. cards. Of course, the health counter remained the same between a power-down and powered-up state... unless the power-up changed stats (for instance, the Blue Shell increased the character's Defense stat).

For "Little Mario", I didn't have him revert to that form after damage, but considered it a "Curse" which could be cast by certain characters or items. Little Mario has much worse stats than his other forms.

There were two types of item cards: Power-Up cards, which could be used as I described above, and traditional item cards... a Life Shroom to revive a fallen ally (or protect a living one). Sleepy Sheep to knock out an enemy for a set number of turns. Sometimes I would mix in dice or coin flips, to keep players on their toes.

The rules for my card games are always pretty simple... Attack Strength - Defense Stat = Damage dealt. A card is removed when it is defeated. Some cards had elemental attributes (for instance, a Podoboo would have a fire attribute) which influenced how they had to be attacked, and of course each attack had its own attribute as well... So even though a Cheep-Cheep might be able to use the water attack Squirt and damage Podoboo, Cheep-Cheep couldn't just Flop onto the fireball and hurt it very much. I don't know if you would want to make elemental attributes different from other physical properties, like being spiked or having wings.

I never had a Captain/Partner mechanic, though I like where you're going with that. I would recommend going one step beyond the single partner idea, though... Hide the Captain behind a wall of three or four partners, or something to that effect. My games always involved a player's personal HP (each player had about 1000 HP per game). When the player had no monsters out, they were open to attack. The Captain cards could be used in place of the Player HP for this model...

Maybe even make the designated Captains non-shuffle-able... rather, a player has to stick with their chosen Captain for the duration of the game. Peach might have lower HP than Bowser, but she can heal her squadron (granted, this would consume FP) without the aid of an item.

I would say Paper Mario is definitely a good model to be looking at... You've gotten me wanting to make my own again :p

[Koopaul]

I like that power up idea. Perhaps instead of a character card having HP it has Boxes filled with power up cards acting as hits.

For example Goomba has 3 boxes which act as it's HP. You can equip 3 Mushrooms to endure three hits, or you could switch things up a bit. 2 Mushrooms and a Star. That means after Goomba has taken 2 damage his Star will be activated next turn making him invincible and doing double damage. Just an idea.

Oh yes I always intended to have the captain card be the one you are stuck with. Just like in Paper Mario, once Mario goes down its Game Over. But he has a bunch of partners that can be KOd but the game keeps going.

As for elementals, I think it's best to stick with Mario platformer attributes as the elementals. For example:

Defensive Attributes
Flying: Can't be hit by ground attacks.
Spike Armor: Counters direct physical attacks.
Dry Armor: Immune to fire damage.
Fire Armor: Counters direct physical attacks and immune to fire damage.

[Kriven]

Oh, also (unrelated to card game ideas kinda), my friends and I used to keep track of HP in Pokemon with coins. Pennies for 1 damage point, dimes for 10, etc. Two dimes and a penny = 21. Kind of like Roman Numerals. Maybe you could do that (or something similar) when playing games with your friends?

[Koopaul]

Yeah that's why I'm mentioned poker chips. But coins would work just as well. Thanks.

[DragonDePlatino]

Instead of abstractly defining the spike/fire/flying as abilities, those could be physically represented by the card's location. In most card games (i.e. Magicka) the cards are set up facing each other in rows. In this card game, they could be set up with a single card in each column:



Cards on the lower column are ground cards and the higher cards are flying. Some cards (i.e. Podoboo or Thwomp) could could move up or down between turns. Going with Kriven's idea, certain powerups (i.e. Wings or Metal Cap) could change the height of cards.

Another thing...Some cards could function as trap cards and flipping them over has an effect. And to represent the spike/fire resistances, there could be dots on the sides of cards. Attacks could hit from the top, front, back, bottom and spike/fire resistances could be had in those four directions.

[Koopaul]

So I took some of your ideas and came up with a rough concept.



This would be your table. You have your 4 character cards arranged correctly. Flying characters in the higher spots. But things can switch around during the game.

-Hearts represent Hit Points and Coins represent Salary/Budget. Mario has to pay what's in his budget to his partners. This limits how many good character cards a Captain can have. Mario can afford to have Goomba, Paratroopa, and Lakitu on his team. Other characters might be able to afford better allies, but have less hearts as a result.



-Next to each character card is their deck of Hit Cards. Each card represents 1 hit point. So Goomba has 10 HP, that means he has 10 cards stacked next to him.



-For each point of damage done to Goomba, a card is flipped and discarded. So if he took 3 damage, 3 cards would be removed.

-Most cards simply represent 1 HP. But what's this? A Mushroom? Yes hidden in Goombas Hit Deck are Item Cards which have different rules.

For example, the Mushroom card has two properties.
(1) If Goomba had taken 4 damage instead of 3, the Mushroom card would prevent further damage from being taken. That means instead of discarding 4 cards, you only discard 3, stopping at the Mushroom which was the third card in that pile.
(2) If Goomba took exactly 3 damage and the Mushroom card was the last card flipped, Goomba will recover all the cards that were just discarded from that one attack! How lucky.

You decide what cards are in each characters' Hit Deck and the order they are in. Try to guess how your opponent will attack and arrange the deck accordingly.

[DragonDePlatino]

I like the idea of having stacks of cards as HP! When people pick up these sorts of games they want to see all of the references. Having one of the major mechanics revolve around tons of cards is a great way to play into that.

The budget system is also good and sounds like something an experienced CCG player would come up with. The height system isn't quite what I envisioned but it works very well. I have some questions, though:

- How would attack damage be handled? Is that another stat like Hearts or Cost? (Budget/Salary sounds a bit business-y)
- When a card is defeated, how would you bring another into play? Do you regain the lost budget? Where do the new Heart Cards come from? Does your leader have to donate them?
- How would a flying character move to the ground spot when there is a card below it? (This is why I had a limit of 1 card a column)
- Is there a hard limit of 4 cards per person or do you plan to expand that? I'd love to try a deck with tons of super-cheap Fuzzies and a Golden Fuzzy as the leader.

Also, as this rough concept is developed, I'd suggest bringing the scale of Hearts/Cost back a bit. Come up with the weakest card you can think of (a Mini Goomba?) and set that as the minimum with 1 Heart / 1 Cost / 1 Attack. Then think of the strongest possible card (Shadow Queen?) and scale everything to be between them.

Oh yeah, and based on your current system here are some ideas for abilities:
- A vampiric card which can steal Hearts.
- A tanky card which looses Hearts for another card.
- An undead card which remains on-field but inactive after loosing all Hearts.
- A berserker card which sacrafices Hearts to deal damage.
- A sneaky card that can shuffle a single card's Hearts.
etc etc etc

Basically, there are tons of ideas based on the system you have here. I'd love to see how it looks after you've fleshed it out a bit!

[Koopaul]

Each character card 2-3 attacks written on them detailing how much damage the attack does and which cards it can hit.

For example: Mario has Jump Stomp which does 1 damage and attacks from above down.

He also has Fireball which attacks cards on the ground from left to right.

The numbers right now are just something I quickly wrote down to demonstrate the rules. That won't be Goomba's HP and "Cost" if you prefer.

The salary/cost thing was designed to prevent someone from using all their most powerful cards at once. I don't want Mario surrounded by a Chomp and two Thwomps. He would be overpowered. So I would make Chomps and Thwomps very expensive, so Mario could only afford to use one.

I also want to give the player a reason to use a Goomba. I never liked the idea that there are cards that are just bad and you are better off never using them and only using the strong ones. I want there to be some sort of edge to using a Goomba.

- A sneaky card that can shuffle a single card's Hearts.

A think Kamek would be perfect for that.

[Koopaul]

Hey guys I've been testing scenarios of the whole "HP = Deck of cards" thing and it's not working out so well. So I think I'll scrap it. However, as a result, I'm upping the amount of cards on the field of battle to 6 instead of 4. Also I made a little mock up card.



As you can see, to the right of the attacks listed it shows from which direction you can attack. To the left is what type of attack it is.

[CosmicLoop]

Cool! I've never played much of trading card games aside from simply collecting Pokemon cards; but I have played Mario+Luigi and I have played Pokemon videogames. So I'll just throw the idea out there....like how someone mentioned power-ups (like a sort of "positive status") what about if there was a "negative status"? Like poison, trip, freeze, burn, etc.
I can't really word this right because it's 4AM....

Like say; what if someone's fireball attack - be it Mario's or an enemy's - has a chance of causing burn, and has the HP penalty described? You flip a coin; heads you don't get burned, tails you do get burned. Oh, your coin gives you tails, so you get burned; look back to the card (with the fireball attack) for reference, let's assume it says "if burned lose 1HP for 3 turns" or something like that.

I honestly forget if the Pokemon cards have something like this, but oh well. Apologies as i'm tired lol

[Koopaul]

Ah yes, status effects. We had that in our second version of the series. It was often difficult to remember who had what status and what each status would do. We would have to keep a book handy.
Hopefully I can think of a way to include such a thing in a more easy to remember way.

[OurManFlint5512]

Yeah that's why I'm mentioned poker chips. But coins would work just as well. Thanks.

Maybe after every point lost, the player gets a slap to the face.  Lol Just joking.  Though you could turn it into a great drinking game. hehe


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