Card game design principles
From Wiki @ Karl Jones dot com
In card games, design principles inform both game syntax and game semantics.
Basic principles
- Start with a standard deck of playing cards, and then customize to make new Cards! games.
- Develop Cards! protocols -- game rules as well-formed formulae.
- Develop Cards! skins to customize the design and content of Cards! protocols.
First pass
First pass, be as simple as possible.
- Codify these Cards! games as logical structures, algorithms, frameworks, protocols.
- Call each such game a Cards! protocol.
- Assign each Cards! protocol a unique identifier (name, UID, etc.).
Goals include protocols which can be skinned with infinite varieties of content.
Second pass
Second pass, for a given Cards! protocol, design one or more skins.
- A skin is a set of design principles, used to customize the appearance and content of a Cards! game, without affecting the Cards! protocol.