Pheonix Wright had already left PAX by Sunday afternoon, in order to engage in a tedious amount of backtracking. Luckily, Miles Edgeworth was more than ready to prove that he is made of sterner stuff.
And yes, as fun as PAX was, there were some things to find objectionable about it. Most of these were the audience participation part of the show, where people wandering the exhibition hall were suddenly grabbed by burly men, and forced to play demos for card games of varying collectability. Still, such tragic occurrences can teach a person a lot. For example, I walked away with a newfound wealth of knowledge about how not to present a demonstration of a game.
- Promising to teach a game in five minutes is just a bad idea. For example, I was taught that in the Hero Card System, your character has a thing, a thing, and another thing. You can play three things a turn, and three identically named things that modify these things. Then, remove three things, and your turn ends. Logically, this easily lends itself to games based around metaphysical dream combat, stealing treasure from orcs, and hacking the planet.
- Lying about how a card game works just confuses everyone. The Ultimate Fighting System presents a card game with a host of rules, most of which were only revealed to the players halfway through the game. On paper, this makes the game a bit easier to digest on the players. In reality, the people involved may very well feel like the game they're playing has an infinite number of rules... especially when rules that would have altered the game from the beginning are not announced until after it ends.
- If a collectable card game is not going to give away a free demo deck after the game ends, there is no damn reason why both players' decks should be as boring as humanly possible. As far as we could tell, World Of Warcraft: The CCG is a dull game with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Worse, we realized this within the first ten minutes of a game that took half an hour to finish.
The last game especially seemed weak when compared to The Spoils. There, the demonstration of it was well run, with an able description of how to play in the beginning, with no crucial rules left out. The games goals were adjusted downwards, so that the players could get back to the convention. And afterwords, the players had a nice, tournament legal deck of cards to keep... and add to, of course.
And yes, as fun as PAX was, there were some things to find objectionable about it. Most of these were the audience participation part of the show, where people wandering the exhibition hall were suddenly grabbed by burly men, and forced to play demos for card games of varying collectability. Still, such tragic occurrences can teach a person a lot. For example, I walked away with a newfound wealth of knowledge about how not to present a demonstration of a game.
- Promising to teach a game in five minutes is just a bad idea. For example, I was taught that in the Hero Card System, your character has a thing, a thing, and another thing. You can play three things a turn, and three identically named things that modify these things. Then, remove three things, and your turn ends. Logically, this easily lends itself to games based around metaphysical dream combat, stealing treasure from orcs, and hacking the planet.
- Lying about how a card game works just confuses everyone. The Ultimate Fighting System presents a card game with a host of rules, most of which were only revealed to the players halfway through the game. On paper, this makes the game a bit easier to digest on the players. In reality, the people involved may very well feel like the game they're playing has an infinite number of rules... especially when rules that would have altered the game from the beginning are not announced until after it ends.
- If a collectable card game is not going to give away a free demo deck after the game ends, there is no damn reason why both players' decks should be as boring as humanly possible. As far as we could tell, World Of Warcraft: The CCG is a dull game with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Worse, we realized this within the first ten minutes of a game that took half an hour to finish.
The last game especially seemed weak when compared to The Spoils. There, the demonstration of it was well run, with an able description of how to play in the beginning, with no crucial rules left out. The games goals were adjusted downwards, so that the players could get back to the convention. And afterwords, the players had a nice, tournament legal deck of cards to keep... and add to, of course.
1 comment:
Dude. Achievement unlocked.
Well played, my friend.
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