55 KiB
Trying to write a rational yugioh or yugioh gx fic, for the zillionth effing time
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Author: u/Sailor_Vulcan Champion of Justice and Reason*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3yaegc/trying_to_write_a_rational_yugioh_or_yugioh_gx/
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Score: 19
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Created: 2015-12-26T14:34:50
Post:
So I've been attempting to start a rational yugioh or yugioh-like fic, over and over again for the past year or so, and have been utterly failing at it and I am out of my mind with frustration.
Let's go over some of the issues, shall we?
The anime metagame is both completely different from the real life metagame and it seems like metagames are too complex to make up an entirely new one from scratch. That's assuming any metagame remotely like the one in the show is even POSSIBLE. Not just whether it's balanced, but whether a metagame that fits the plot is even possible. In the anime, Duel Monsters does involve at least some skill, but in the real life metagame there's barely any skill involved at all. After a certain minimum amount of skill level is reached, it becomes all about who has the most money and better luck. If your opponent is a decent player and gets the right opening hand, you're pretty much certain to lose. Because of this, newer and inexperienced players can sometimes have an overwhelming advantage against long time veterans of the game.
I know that if a card game falls out of the laws of the universe it doesn't have to be a particularly good game because reality doesn't optimize for balance and fun and game design. But really, the way the game is now is SO unbalanced, and gaming skill is SO overshadowed by money and luck, that even if the game was "cosmically significant" (whatever that even means), no one in their right minds would want to play it for fun if there were other options, and no one in their right minds would play it competitively unless they had enough money, and that's true even if you take the "heart of the cards" into account. The "King of Games" doesn't even need to be a really good gamer! He just has to be halfway decent enough and have a lot of money. And as far as I can tell that's almost always been the case with yugioh tcg at least to some extent.
And the whole idea of the "heart of the cards" just screams at me that it's a blatant excuse by those who win in the game to justify their victories. Virtuous people believe in the heart of the cards, and so win more of their duels, and wicked people don't believe, and therefore don't win as much. It's blatantly propaganda, and the fact that so much of the series' worldbuilding depends on it just makes me shudder.
But at the same time, everything needs to come down to a card-game based showdown.
Unfortunately, there are ONLY TWO tabletop customizable strategy card games that exist which aren't ridiculously expensive to play competitively and where player skill actually matters: Mage Wars Arena and Mage Wars Academy, both created by Arcane Wonders.
But Mage Wars Arena's game length is way too long for a yugioh story. The game takes 1 or 2 hours to play, and it takes even longer to narrate it.
And Mage Wars Academy only has two mages released so far, the wizard and the beastmaster, and the card pool is too small for a yugioh story. In yugioh, characters are introduced with and identified by their strategic playstyle. For instance, in the original show, mako tsunami always uses fish and water cards. Yugi prefers to use mostly spellcasters and warriors. Katsuya Jounochi uses luck-based strategies (!!!!!!!), Kaiba uses dragons, Kujaku Mai uses harpies, etc.
That kind of diversity seems to be rather necessary for a duelist kingdom sort of scenario to even be possible. If everyone's using a wizard or a beastmaster every single chapter, things will get stale fast.
Of course, in Arena the game is a bit more complex and their are a lot more cards and strategies to choose from. There are practically infinite strategies you can use for a wizard in Arena, and practically infinite strategies you can use for a beastmaster in Arena. And in Arena, you can actually be creative and design your strategies. However, because of the tiny card pool and simpler gameplay in Academy, coming up with new decks is a lot more like a word search with a bit of fill-in-the-blank than actual deck design.
I keep getting ideas for rational yugioh or yugioh-like stories, and they keep failing. This has been going on for about a year or so. Please help!
Comments:
u/storybookknight [+16] (24 minutes later)
Think of The Origin of Species (the Pokemon fic, I mean.) It makes the setting more rational. If Yugioh is actually a bad game, invent the world where the game is actually fun to play and makes sense.
u/Vebeltast [+13] You should have expected the bayesian inquisition! (53 minutes later)
Go the opposite direction. From what I understand, the heart of the cards is supposed to be similar to Spiral Energy in that it rewards duelists that "believe". So make your story actually rational, rather than mostly rational in a way that confirms expectations, and examine the Heart of the Cards as claimed. Is there really such a thing? If so, why has nobody seriously examined it or questioned it? How does it work? For the love of Bayes, why? And, finally, how do I use it to win, maybe not just in the game? The existence of such a thing implies some very odd things about the cosmology, especially if you're using shuffled decks instead of some kind of randomizer. Why would someone that can pull that kind of crap be sitting around doing it to card games?
As for the game, I think I agree with /u/storybookknight. Change things to make the game fun. Same way the anime did it, same way MoR declared that things like the fidelias charm didn't exist, that kind of thing.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+2] Champion of Justice and Reason (an hour later)
But that then leaves the issue of making up a completely new metagame from scratch. Metagames can be very complicated, and making up an entirely new one might not be feasible if I'm trying to make it in any way realistic whatsoever.
Then again, Mage Wars Academy, while lacking in diversity, might not be too difficult to conceptualize a fictional metagame around. But that doesn't have heart of the cards. In fact it doesn't even have shuffling. All cards in your deck are accessible at any time in Mage Wars Academy.
To be honest, I'm not sure I actually can answer all those questions about the heart of the cards. If such a thing exists, the only possible explanation I have been able to think of so far is that the matrix lord likes to play card games, and when they discovered the existence of sapient beings in their simulation, the matrix lord created some special algorithms for one of the card games that humans created which the matrix lord liked, in order to spice things up. But that seems really narratively unsatisfying. Especially since if the matrix lord is smart enough to even make and mess with a simulated universe like that in the first place, they should be smart enough to put in a better game. If they don't like how much of an impact luck would otherwise have on the one true children's card game, why wouldn't they just create a better one true children's card game where luck doesn't have as much impact, and insert that into the simulation, rather than creating a patch to fix the luck factor (the heart of the cards)?
u/Frommerman [+14] (an hour later)
The illusion of a metagame shouldn't be too hard to create. In the original show, the main character always won unless the plot demanded, anyway.
u/xThoth19x [+3] (11 hours later)
Exactly, the meta in the anime was based on fake rules that weren't codified bc the game came out after the show. So the rules were made up on the fly.
u/Vebeltast [+6] You should have expected the bayesian inquisition! (an hour later)
That's fair. I think the anime skates by by simply not having enough space with which to actually show enough cards for it to have a metagame that can be analyzed and outdone by the fans.
Another option is to take a meta from a few years or decades ago rather than using the current meta. Might require some archaeology. For example, if I were running a similar thing with MtG, I'd probably restrict myself to a meta from back before Urza's because it seems like the meta hasn't dipped back below turn-4 kills since then.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
I think you have the impression that any rational writer that includes a game in their stories needs to actually design a full game from scratch. You really don't have to do it, just make sure that you don't end up contradicting yourself.
u/IWantUsToMerge [+2] (15 hours later)
fidelias charm
http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Fidelius_Charm D= Wow, yeah, that's extremely problematic
tl:dr; it could be used to make any given fact unknowable. Yes it could be undone by bribing the designated secret keeper, but it's not that hard to find a secret keeper either wont take the bribe or can't be identified.
u/nerdguy1138 [+2] GNU Terry Pratchett (a day later)
If the secret keeper is killed, does that break the charm, or make it permanent?
u/IWantUsToMerge [+2] (a day later)
If they shared the secret with anyone those people become the new secret keepers, but I'm not sure what happens if they never told anyone.
u/darkflagrance [+10] (an hour later)
In the show, the rich people carry away all the victories as well (why else is Kaiba the champion?). The only way the protagonists can beat them is by the power of magic, or through rare cards they acquired via special circumstances. The original show's protagonist admits at the end that he is straight up cheating every game via magic. Add to that the fact that people regularly create cards to personally benefit themselves...
It's also clear that you have a strong personal dislike of the actual yugioh community and don't perceive any skill in the actual game you're trying to write a fic about. As such, what kind of skill are you hoping to see in your protagonists? The original "king of games" regularly exploited the rules rather than used skill to win challenges; you might want a game where out of the box exploits are more possible, perhaps a game where some degree of real action is important like the "entertainment duels" of Arc-V.
u/MadScientist95387 [+9] (7 hours later)
My interpretation of "The Heart of the Cards" is that it's magic.
Magic is repeatedly shown to exist. The millenium items. The shadow riders. That time Yami Bakura used a card with ropes in its art to tie up a security guard. Whatever the seal of orichalcos is.
So what does Atem mean by "The Heart of the Cards"? Probability manipulation magic. It's his ability to nudge reality into letting him draw the cards he wants. Maybe people who form emotional attachments to their cards are better at controlling them with luck magic. It's flimsy, but would fit with the strange name.
u/TimTravel [+6] (19 hours later)
It's his ability to nudge reality into letting him draw the cards he wants. Maybe people who form emotional attachments to their cards are better at controlling them with luck magic. It's flimsy, but would fit with the strange name.
This is canon. Drawing the card you need is a practicable skill in-universe. I seem to remember they even have a class on it in Yugioh GX.
u/Anakiri [+7] (18 hours later)
This seems to be a common pitfall for aspiring rational fiction writers. Your metagame emerges from the mechanics and the card set and card availability, so clearly you need to figure all that out before you can even begin writing the story, and...
Mention enough of the theory to get me to trust you. Make sure that everything I see is consistent enough that I can make predictions based on it. Then declare everything else by author fiat. HPMOR never presented the Grand Unified Theory of Magic, because Eliezer didn't have one. Those details wouldn't deserve screentime anyway. You want to be an author, not a game designer. Cheat.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+2] Champion of Justice and Reason (a day later)
Thanks. I think this was really helpful advice. In that case, I'll probably stick with Mage Wars, since that's what I like most and am most familiar with. The next question is whether to use Mage Wars Arena, Mage Wars Academy, or my own version? If I use Arena, I would have to cheat past the long game length somehow. Games of Arena normally last 1-2 hours. Maybe if I don't show the whole duel every time? Maybe I could show the opening moves, move the perspective to things taking place outside the game for a while, and then say things like "They had been at it for over an hour, and things were finally coming to a head" or "So-and-so was losing badly," and then describe the current state of the game, or something.
Alternatively, I could go with Mage Wars Academy. The thing with that of course is that the card pool for that is rather small at the moment, and there are very few options for viable decks, so introducing characters with their preferred playstyle might not work that well with Academy. However, Academy is simpler and easier to explain than Arena. Hmmm...
u/Anakiri [+1] (a day later)
The only thing I know about either of those games is what you've said, and I don't know much more about Yu-Gi-Oh. But from only that information, in your place, I'd might go with Academy. Simplicity is important in a written story. Blackjack is way simpler than any collectible card game, but try to sit down and describe the exact state of play at any moment. You're already going to need like half a page to describe all the relevant information, especially if the character has been counting cards. If you describe every play instead of describing the whole thing at once, then how much do you expect me to remember? I'm going to be constantly looking up to confirm the state of the character's hand and the field, and I'll probably have to draw a picture to follow it already... This is a much bigger problem for you than the specific minutia of the game you choose.
So, go with the simple one, and invent your own cards to fill out the roster. You can then just say "Oh, yeah, the metagame developed in such a way that this deck was viable. It's a pity Yugi couldn't use that really clever, broken strategy you just thought of using a card his opponent just used, but it turns out there's totally a hard counter just offscreen. He was stuck with what I'm telling you that he has, and his rational creativity would have to be within those bounds."
That gets you a diverse set of decks, and whenever someone says "metagame", you just wave your hands. You could never explain the full metagame anyway, so you only need to discuss it enough to convince me that it exists - which is way easier than making it actually exist. That same trick also makes it possible to use Dual Monsters, which already has the necessary diversity. As long as you're following the rules whenever I'm watching and you have a plausible-sounding excuse for the general shape of things I don't see, it doesn't matter that the real world Yugioh metagame is completely different.
I don't think that's even cheating at rational fiction. The author is allowed to define the problem however they want, as long as it is defined sensibly.
u/Vebeltast [+5] You should have expected the bayesian inquisition! (4 hours later)
...I wonder if you could simply replace the card game entirely with Magic. Just substitute it entirely mechanics wise. Keep the flavor, keep the bit where for some cards there are only four in existence, etcetera. A well-commentated game of MtG is potentially ten major events worth commentary, which feels right.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+3] Champion of Justice and Reason (5 hours later)
Maybe. But then the whole idea of it originating in ancient egypt doesn't work, because there aren't hidden trap cards in MtG. Though I suppose in some ways it might be more thematic. After all, a LOT of the earlier yugioh cards seemed more medieval-fantasy themed, so the whole ancient egyptian connection would have seemed to be pulled out of the author's a** if it weren't for the millenium puzzle.
MtG still has the problem of money overshadowing skill by a lot, but it's definitely not as bad as it is with yugioh.
In MtG, how well-built a deck is has a bigger impact on game outcomes than card access, card access has a bigger impact on game outcomes than in-game skill, and in-game skill tends to have a bigger impact on game outcomes than luck, though I remember reading somewhere that games are lost to mana drought and mana flood a third of the time, and I've experienced quite a few games of magic like that and it is very frustrating.
Unfortunately, even the best deckbuilder in the world probably wouldn't be able to make a competitive deck without at least $300 to burn, but someone with at least $300 can just netdeck.
And while I kinda like mtg, it's not really very exciting to me anymore. I was burnt out on MtG quite a while ago, and I've tried to go back a few times because it seems to have such a stranglehold on tabletop gaming culture and it's apparently a really useful way to meet other tabletop gamers because EVERYONE plays it. Maybe I would like it if I picked it up again. Maybe I should have stuck to limited formats like booster draft and sealed deck, although then you can't really customize your deck as much.
u/Vebeltast [+3] You should have expected the bayesian inquisition! (7 hours later)
AFAICT, Magic gets a lot better if you play one of the random draft formats. I just got back into it after going to college, but the people I know that play a lot without burning out (or burning money) tend to play a ton of limited and sealed.
Maybe make up some kind of in-between format, where you bring ten cards and draft the other twenty, or bring fifteen and can use up to eight? Potentially a nice middle ground, and allows some comboing, but you have a tradeoff between running your nicely tuned combo and building something that actually works with what you drafted, and another between bringing cards that'll work generally and cards that need you to draft particular other cards, and so on and so forth. "Did you hear? X brought a Stasis!" "What?! You think he's actually going to use it?" "Yeah, he's nuts."
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+1] Champion of Justice and Reason (7 hours later)
But why would anyone have any incentive to play an in-between format like that? And it doesn't make sense for a yugioh story. In yugioh the characters have their own decks which they use on more than one occasion. Their deck preferences are a part of their character.
And furthermore, if I go that route, duelist kingdom and battle city completely fall apart. Everyone would have to get into small groups to draft cards before every tournament, and some of the tournaments are too big to do that. Where are you going to get a table that can sit 30+ people at a time?
u/Salivanth [+5] (9 hours later)
I would suggest doing what HPMOR has done, and limiting the scope of the fic. In this case, a single tournament, which can be beefed up in complexity from canon. In Magic The Gathering, it is canonical that thousands of people can show up to a single open tournament. Even if people had to fly themselves out to a remote location, for a big prize pool like Pegasus offered in canon, you'd probably get thousands of players. Alternatively, Pegasus could send out an open invite to anyone who's ever qualified for a major tournament, past or present, and subsidise airfares. This allows you to have 3-4 stages, each whittling down about 7/8th's of the players. Stage 1 goes from however many you start with (a few thousand) to a few hundred, Stage 2 goes to Top 64, Stage 3 to Top 8, Stage 4 determines a winner. All of a sudden, you've got as many different stages of the tournament as Duelist Kingdom and Battle City combined.
People would have an incentive to play any format you came up with because of the prize pool. Canonically, Duelist Kingdom offered several million to one of the winners. This could be changed to a several million dollar prize pool that's weighted towards the winners, but pays out to Top X, but winner-takes-all tournaments have occasionally existed. StarCraft II had one for a $100,000 prize.
Magic: The Gathering Pro Tours that incorporate draft usually incorporate drafts after many of the players have already been eliminated via a sealed deck round, but even then, that's not necessary. The reason that tournaments do this is because of a lack of staff (you'd need one judge for every table of eight players drafting), and the expense of hiring them, not because they don't have the space. Drafts are 8 people only, so all you need is a lot of 8-person tables, which can be regular tables put together. This is trivial for a man who is paying millions of dollars to run this tournament in the first place. But again, you could start with Sealed Deck, where everyone's just given 6 packs and registers a pool on their own.(or to prevent cheating, Pegasus could hire some people to register the pools beforehand, and engage in some sleight of hand of his own where he ensures his favourites, like the protagonist, get good card pools) Draft can come later if you think it strains credulity for Pegasus to fly in hundreds of judges.
You should do some research into competitive MtG if you want to write this. A couple of the questions you've asked indicate to me that you could use more familiarity with the formats available and the tournament system. Look up info about MtG Grand Prix tournaments; they have often had 2,000 or more players in recent years. If your major gripe with Yugioh is that they have no idea how competitive CCG's work (which is true) you'll need to do some work to learn enough to fix this problem in a rational MtG fic.
u/Vebeltast [+1] You should have expected the bayesian inquisition! (9 hours later)
Build the format more like sealed than limited, then, and the semi-constructed portion was brought in to compensate for the more limited selection and maybe to maintain audience interest. Deck preference will still be a thing. Everybody is going to have their own sets of cards, possibly a much smaller set but that's OK because it increases the relative value of (and attention given to) the cards they bring and their effect on the game. Having a couple copies of Stasis means you can run a Stasis deck and if you do it a few times you'll end up with a reputation, so you clearly have enough power. Also, people do all draft differently. Finally, vary the ratio of random to constructed to suit your needs. If you really want to go nuts, change when the draft happens. For example, have a central huge pile of cards (which you hype up as much as possible; One Deck for the Card Emperor on his Card Throne), then every game starts with a two person draft out of a pack of cards from the tournament pool. Judging drafts is still am issue. Solve it with the same kind of automation that YGO already uses?
Why the dominant format is a random one is a more interesting question. Maybe it's because people believe enough in the heart of the cards that they preferred the more random formats? Maybe it was done during something like the Combo Winter and the constructed format just never recovered?
Honestly, I want to see if I can run this with MtG IRL. It feels like it's just crazy enough to work. And sorry for brainstorming at you. I have a bad habit of running with things even when it departs hugely from the original topic.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+1] Champion of Justice and Reason (11 hours later)
It's ok. The idea could possibly work. Maybe the constructed part of their decks could be kinda like deckmasters or commanders. But the issue i'm worried about now is that if you make it partially constructed, doesn't that run the risk that the constructed part of your deck won't be compatible with the drafted cards?
u/Vebeltast [+1] You should have expected the bayesian inquisition! (12 hours later)
doesn't that run the risk that the constructed part of your deck won't be compatible with the drafted cards?
Yes, and how people deal with that is part of their "personality".
- Some people bring solid-but-generic cards that fit into every deck reasonably well. Counterspell, mana elves, lightning bolt, swords to plowshares, assorted dual-lands, that kind of thing. Enhanced kitchen-table Magic, but given that a well-placed bolt or counter can win a game, potentially very effective.
- Some people bring a mostly-self-contained strat and ignore the randomness as much as they can. Like, they'll bring the core spells for a blue control deck or a pile of synergistic elves or the core of an entire combo, then fill in the cracks with miscellaneous stuff from the draft.
- Some people bring rare key cards and hope that the draft gives them what they need to finish one of their awesome combos. Like, they'll show up with a Polar Orb, a Necropotence, a Black Vise, a Tolarian Academy, and a Yawgmoth's Will, and hope that they get enough of the right cards to build something that wrecks face.
And then you have everything in between, and then inside that what kinds of cards people prefer when they bring sets. Getting the tuning right would be a huge pain, but I feel like it could result in solid gameplay. That said, I haven't done more than brainstorm here. Veeeeery theoretical.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+1] Champion of Justice and Reason (13 hours later)
Yeah, it sounds like it has a chance of working and being fun, but I honestly don't know if it would actually work or not. And I really don't know what the gameplay for that format would be like. It would be cool to try in real life though.
I really wish that a competitive deck in the regular game didn't always cost $300+. Figuring out how to write this story would be so much easier if there were cheaper competitive decks.
Also, if I do go for MtG as the replacement for duel monsters, that leaves the question of how it would relate to the plot. Maybe I could have it as just a plot device, I suppose.
Using mtg might be the best idea overall, but I'm worried that I won't be able to be enthusiastic about it enough to write a good story. I"ve barely played mtg the past couple years, and I haven't enjoyed it the last few times I played because of too much luck and money involved and not enough player skill, and not enough freedom to customize and still be viable. Part of it is that I invested a lot of time money and effort into Magic before I realized that the regular 1v1 version of the game wasn't that exciting to me and for the most part it was pretty much the only format anyone plays besides commander, the game had significant imbalances built into it (although they were no where near as bad as yugioh) and buying enough staple cards to play competitively cost a small fortune at least. It got even worse when they got rid of legacy format, then started to destroy modern format. From what I hear, Standard format has more viable decks than modern, which is absolutely ridiculous. And standard is a huge money sink that only really wealthy people can afford to play sustainably.
Writing this fanfiction probably necessitates getting back into MtG. And I just can't get back into MtG. The majority of people I remember having ever met who played magic agreed that people who played control decks were poor sports, and I was relentlessly ridiculed and verbally attacked for my strategic preferences by a LOT of the people I played against online, and even my real life friends got really mad at me for playing control.
And I'm not sure I have the energy to invest anything more in MtG than I already have. Maybe if I had written this fanfiction years earlier while I was still into MtG...
u/Vebeltast [+1] You should have expected the bayesian inquisition! (13 hours later)
That sucks. I've been through burnout before. :/
And, yeah, from what I can tell, major-format bring-a-deck modern Magic is nowhere near as good as it was way back when. I hear that the oddball variants, things like Commander and 2v2 and Limited and Sealed, are still good, and that's probably what I'm going to end up playing. Not much chance I'll get beyond playing with my friends as far as real constructed decks go.
If you can't write the fic replacing YGO with MtG, then try to write it with YGO or something YGO-like of your own devising. Might take some advice from this conversation anyway; unless the game is really fundamentally different I can't see why the same format wouldn't work there too. And building your own YGO-in-name-only is certainly a worthwhile proposition. You can't do worse than the original author, especially if you've played TCGs before.
Anyway, I need to go to bed. Maybe come back with more ideas tomorrow.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (15 hours later)
I really wish that a competitive deck in the regular game didn't always cost $300+. Figuring out how to write this story would be so much easier if there were cheaper competitive decks.
I went to a tournament at one point where the winner of the degenerate game used a deck made entirely of common cards: plains, Healing Salve, and Feldon's Cane. He just decked his opponents the hard way.
On a different topic, I will comment that I tried to write a story like this some time ago and abandoned it a short ways in. You've got two choices: write it as a Yugi-oh game (or, in my case, MtG), where you name the cards and actions and etc, in which case you have massive exposition and it's utterly opaque for non-players. Alternatively, you can just describe the fact that a Pegasus leaped out at the enemy, but don't mention that it's a 1/1 Mesa Pegasus with Flying and Banding. If you do, though, you're not writing MtG, you're writing generic fantasy with card-based flavor to the magic.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+1] Champion of Justice and Reason (a day later)
But the original yugioh introduced the rules of the game as part of the exposition. And a LOT of people play magic the gathering. I'm not sure that it would be that difficult to explain if I were using MtG. The rules of MtG are not really that complicated, it's just that it has a TON of cards that are exceptions to the rules, and there are a lot of interactions that have to be memorized to play competitively. Or am I missing something?
Also, maybe the other players who had $300+ competitive decks just didn't know how to use them right?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
You're welcome to give it a shot, and I'll be happy to read at least the first chapter.
I would disagree about the rules of MtG being simple, even before bringing the cards in.
Also, maybe the other players who had $300+ competitive decks just didn't know how to use them right?
I obviously can't speak to that one. Still, my prior is pretty low on the proposition "people spent >$300 to have a competitive deck, went to a major tournament to play it, but didn't know how to play it right."
u/Akiryx [+1] (a month later)
The idea of having the 'Deckmasters' thing incorporated as a permanent part of the game seems very intriguing, and something I'd definitely be interested in.
I have to say though, I would MUCH rather prefer Yugioh to MtG.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (15 hours later)
because there aren't hidden trap cards in MtG.
Will these do for what you need?
Unfortunately, even the best deckbuilder in the world probably wouldn't be able to make a competitive deck without at least $300 to burn, but someone with at least $300 can just netdeck.
Can't you fix that by setting your format and Restricted/Banned lists appropriately?
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+1] Champion of Justice and Reason (a day later)
Unfortunately, that would end up with the same problem I discussed earlier of "I can't try this format, therefore it will be hard to enjoy writing about it and hard to conceptualize the metagame."
u/Roxolan [+1] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (19 hours later)
Though I suppose in some ways it might be more thematic.
Theme is entirely under your control. If you decide to use a real-world card game for your fic, there's nothing stopping you from renaming Wrath of God into Orbital Bombardment, or Insurrection into Hades' Plunder, or instants into traps. Readers who know the game will see right through it anyway.
u/Drazelic [+4] Dai-Gurren Brigade (2 hours later)
I'm sorry, but the way you wrote this post makes me feel like you don't like Yugioh at all, and you're writing this more to prove a point than you are to make a legitimate piece of work???
I'd love to be wrong about this guess of mine. Tell me why you want to write this so badly that you've obsessed for a year about it?
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+4] Champion of Justice and Reason (3 hours later)
I like the yugioh anime and the manga, and I really like the premise of high stakes card-battles, and my memories of watching the yugioh anime are very nostalgic to me. It's just that when I tried to play the real life version of the game it was so unbalanced and there was so little freedom to be creative and there was so much less skill involved and money and luck were too big of a factor by comparison...Aside from the whole heart of the cards thing I really like the premise, I just kinda became disillusioned with the real life game because its flaws make it not very fun and there's very little freedom to customize your strategy and still have it be viable or even playable.
And when I try to imagine an anime version of the metagame or something analogous that could actually be realistic and be balanced enough to have a sufficient amount of skill, strategic and playstyle diversity that a decent rational yugioh retelling deserves, I come up short. I don't think Kazuki Takahashi knew anything about what metagames are or how they work, and it shows.
For instance, in the show there are only 4 copies of Blue Eyes White Dragon in existence, it has no special effects, and it's 3000 attack points are supposed to be a really big deal. This should mean that effect monsters tend to have lower attack/defense than normal monsters, but that was never really true--not in real life and not in the anime. And the show never involves any siddecking. The shadow duels are never shadow matches. This means that a villain who is at all familiar with yugi's deck could just make a hate-deck and defeat yugi with it easily, since he can't sidedeck anything. Except that would only be true if Yugi (or any of the other characters) actually had a coherent strategy instead of "I play this random card because the plot demands it, and not because I actually had a good reason to put it in my deck."
Long story short, I think the yugioh tcg is a game that could have been really good but isn't because the people who make it screwed it over. And trying to create a fictional metagame that's actually fun is like fantasizing over a game that doesn't and will never exist. Since I don't enjoy the real life game in the ridiculously broken form it has been constantly forced into since the very beginning, it's hard to be enthusiastic about a version of the game that I would really like if I could actually try it in real life, but can't try in real life.
u/Drazelic [+6] Dai-Gurren Brigade (4 hours later)
I'm just gonna say that your problem doesn't feel like a problem that can be solved with a fanfic, of all things to try to solve it with.
And trying to create a fictional metagame that's actually fun is like fantasizing over a game that doesn't and will never exist.
Have you tried it? Game design can be fun! Of course if you don't try to create it, it'll never exist. Same goes for fics, though; it's not like any fic you write is going to overthrow the dominant paradigm of YGO meta or anything, so...?
Since I don't enjoy the real life game in the ridiculously broken form it has been constantly forced into since the very beginning, it's hard to be enthusiastic about a version of the game that I would really like if I could actually try it in real life, but can't try in real life.
Again: it REALLY sounds like what you want to do isn't write a story, what you want to do is design a game.
So... design a game, then? It's honestly NOT that hard to come up with a game more balanced than YGO, because you, unlike Konami, are not constrained by market forces demanding that you make molochian tradeoffs of fun for profitability. Seriously, give it a shot!
That said, there's definitely something interesting to be said for the fact that literally every single person you EVER meet in the yugioh anime has their own archetype. No realistic card game could possibly be so diverse; there's definitely something going on with that. Maybe it's worth exploring? Maybe in your version of the setting, people create their own cards and just get the cards verified and encoded into the game by some sort of superintelligence-equivalent-entity that lives in the duel monsters dimension, who's responsible for maintaining competitive balance?
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+1] Champion of Justice and Reason (5 hours later)
You have it backwards. The only reason I would want to design a new format or an entirely new game altogether is because I want to write a yugioh or yugioh-ish story. But I have trouble being inspired or enthusiastic about a game I can't play, and likewise for a game that I can play that isn't fun at all for me.
I think you're getting confused about what aspects of yugioh I like and what I don't like. I like the basic rules of the yugioh game. I like the anime. I like the story. I like the idea of high-stakes card-battles. I like a lot of the cards. I think the game had a lot of potential. I don't like synchro monsters. I don't like xyz monsters. I don't like pendulum monsters. I don't like the direction and form the game has taken because of all of the intentionally broken cards. I don't like how little skill is involved in it, and how much more of an impact luck and money makes. The Yugioh TCG didn't HAVE to be that way. It could have been a lot better. Konami could have made it balanced and made skill matter more, but they didn't.
And if I will never have the chance to play a format, then I can't get sufficiently enthusiastic about it to write a story about it like I want to, which means there's not much point in designing that format.
u/Akiryx [+1] (a month later)
Synchro and XYZ are fine in most cases, they're pretty powerful, but I don't think the early-to-mid era stuff is too bad. It's the most recent stuff that's really getting too OP, to be honest.
u/sir_pirriplin [+1] (2 days later)
I think monsters with high attack were a big deal in the anime because most duels were played with only 2000 life points (25% as much as usual) but all monsters still had their normal attack power.
All the characters had a favourite monster that had enough attack points to end a duel outright in a single (direct) attack.
u/GaBeRockKing [+2] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (an hour later)
Just revert to one of the more skill based formats. Goat control is a good one.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+2] Champion of Justice and Reason (2 hours later)
Would goat control format have enough playstyle diversity to fill the entire yugioh duel monsters series?
Also, where can I play goat control? I googled it and I still haven't found out where people play it online.
Also, where can I look up a list of successful decks in goat format? According to the banlist on duelistgroundz level limit area b is forbidden, but it is listed in one of the decks here:
http://formatlibrary.weebly.com/goats/goat-control-deck-gallery
u/RolandsVaria [+2] (a day later)
You can play Goat Format on Dueling Network, all you need to do is go to Unlimited and advertise for Goat Format, and people will show up in a couple minutes. But there is definitely not much variety in that format, there are like 3 competitive decks and 70% of those decks are the same.
As for your problem, I don't think it's much of a problem. Why? Because, in the anime it's plainly apparent that people can manipulate the probability of their draws. Therefore, decks that would normally be unviable, become viable. Why would a character not simply use the most well constructed deck at any given time? Simple, if you want the Heart of the Cards to work for you, you need to be using a deck that you genuinely love, not just the most competitive one. Something like that.
u/LordSwedish [+2] Q Continuum (14 hours later)
Honestly, yu-gi-oh abridged is as rational as I think the show can get. Just have the characters acknowledge that everyone is either cheating or lucky when they want to win.
u/Roxolan [+2] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (19 hours later)
Unfortunately, there are ONLY TWO tabletop customizable strategy card games that exist which aren't ridiculously expensive to play competitively and where player skill actually matters
...Woah there. Arcane Wonders is by no means alone in that domain.
Not that I would suggest using a real card game; that was just my gut reaction. It is very hard to make a comic about strictly-defined boardgames, because of the pace and barrier to entry, and considerably harder to write a novel about it, because of the lack of visual aids to track game state.
YuGiOh the early anime & manga effectively played like a squad tactics game, with victory defined not by clear-cut rules but by whether your mecha-gorrilla's armour can protect him from my acid rain long enough for it to topple my demonic monolith. Pokemon with card game trappings. That seems much easier to write and much more entertaining to read.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+1] Champion of Justice and Reason (a day later)
Wow. I totally forgot about summoner wars and battlecon! And even if you take into account that some of those are expansions and not core sets, that sale also cuts the prices of all the more expensive games nearly in half. I'm really glad to know there are other options now, and I'm not sure why or how I forgot about summoner wars and battlecon. As far as I know, when mage wars first came out in 2012 it was the only game that fit that criteria, but it's been 3 years since then and I failed to update after seeing Summoner Wars, because I wasn't paying enough attention, I guess? I stand corrected. Thank you!
u/Roxolan [+1] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (a day later)
There's also the entire Fantasy Flight Games' "Living Card Game" lineup, much of which is actually quite good. It's not "buy one core set and you're good forever" cheap, but it's not Magic either. I would gladly read an Android:Netrunner manga, with all the bluffing, out-thinking, and difficult decisions. (Though not an A:N novel, for the aforementioned reasons.)
u/xamueljones [+1] My arch-enemy is entropy (3 hours later)
Just warning you, I know nothing about the card game other than reading the manga series, but can you tell us some of the ideas you've been coming up with?
Maybe we can better help you if we edit the story ideas you thought of.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+2] Champion of Justice and Reason (3 hours later)
retelling of yugioh gx with a rational Jaden Yuki as the protagonist.
retelling of the original duel monsters series with a rational yugi as the protagonist
A Mage Wars story similar to Cardfight Vanguard with a coherent version of the ability "psyqualia", covering three or four "seasons":
I: a Duelist Kingdom-ish arc
II: a "Battle City"-ish arc
III: the part where the main characters go to Etheria (that's the world Mage Wars takes place in)
IV: I was thinking this would be the concluding season in which the events of the first three seasons are resolved. In my head I was originally imagining this as Etheria and Earth are on the verge of war, but war is averted at the last moment by a representative of our world playing the card game version of Mage Wars against a representative from Etheria (since Earthlings don't have magic of their own, and therefore can't participate in the original Mage Wars proper. This would of course be much to the distaste of a lot of people in the governments of Etheria and Earth, as well as a lot of other people. It would be really awesome and funny to see how the militaries of the world would react to being told that the fate of the world depended on a card game).
A real-life modern day setting with no magic, just a group of friends who travel around playing their favorite game, going to tournaments and trying to be the best they can be, plus a bunch of plots, adventures and drama they get tangled up in. Kinda like the original beyblade anime was, except with a rational protagonist and without an equivalent of the bit beasts.
u/TimTravel [+1] (19 hours later)
In mine the card game is going to have limited impact on the plot. In the original manga it was more about evil egyptian spirits anyway.
I've only written two chapters. I do plan on finishing but I care too much about the quality so I think I'll write a few "practice fics" first. I have done rather a lot of planning but the beginning is sort of open so it's hard to get stuff out there.
u/WriterBen01 [+1] (6 days later)
Firstly, you do not need to have the card game be fully rational. There is something enticing about a protagonist who is the only person to figure out that the card game sucks and shouldn't have this big a place in society. I mean, a game like monopoly is really lacking in fun, but everyone plays it because it's a cultural phenomenon. Someone who loves Dual Monsters would want to fix the problems, but would keep running into walls as other people shun the very idea of changing the rules.
One of the big differences between the Yugioh TCG and the game in the show, is just how rare cards are. Kaiba is willling to search the whole world for a Blue-eyes white dragon. We got one in every starter deck. The anime makes a lot more sense when you realise that people spend most of their adult lives finding cards to complete their decks. Professionals keep track of all new cards and are sure to travel to distant tournements if they offer up specific cards. Ordinary folk just visit their local game shops. Kind of like rebuilding a vintage car.
The real life trading card game has also really changed over the years as more cards have been added to combine. The original starter decks consisted mostly of normal monsters. The dragon deck was strong because, if you had a Lord of D. on the field (ATK 1200, DEF 1100) and activated the magic card flute of sumoning dragons, you can special summon two dragons from your hand. In other words, you'd need four cards to pull of this strategy, two of which are pretty useless outside of it. Summoning Exodia is a matter of being patient and very lucky.
When I started playing Yugioh on the DS (nightmare troubadour), a lot more interesting strategies became available and you see a lot more interesting decks. Using cards like Level Limit Area B or Gravity Bind to keep anyone from attacking, in combination with using Needle Worms to empty another's deck, Flame Princess to deal lifepoint damage while healing, or use toons to attack through your enemy's monsters. You should only have a few cards that you NEED for your strategy, trying to build in redundancies. Excodia is summoned by keeping your deck limited to 40 cards, stalling well, and having a few back up cards in case some Excodia parts are destroyed.
When I picked up Yugioh 5ds, the whole game had changed again. Three times as many cards as before. Very strong decks include lightsworn monsters (easy to summon creatures that hit hard and fast) or batteries where you can get three 3000 ATK monsters on the field with a few easy moves. Insane redundancies have become the norm, with synchro monsters being a clear example. Basically, you have monsters with a 'synchro' subtype. If they're on the field, you can combine monsters and look only at their levels. Synchro a lvl 4 and lvl 3 monster to get a lvl 7 monster. It's basically a more general form of fusion. Summoning Excodia involves deck suicide, only putting cards in your deck if they can lower the amount of non-Exodia cards in your deck. Like three copies of Toon Table of Content, which you can all retrieve in a single turn as long as you have one.
The biggest change I'd make to the game, for fanfiction, is to remove all explanation text from the cards. Duelists simply have to know/memorise what each card does or figure it out by experimentation. That makes it a lot more difficult to play with somebody else's deck and explains why people tend to stick to the cards they know.
Also, a side deck is pretty essential.
Soooo.... I really like Yugioh. Both the anime and the real life game. If you want to discuss anything game related, you're always free to DM me.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+1] Champion of Justice and Reason (2 months later)
After extensive brainstorming and countless scrapped ideas, I've come to the conclusion that Mage Wars probably just doesn't work for a rational yugioh fic. I've thought about what you said. I think the idea of the rational protagonist who realized that the game isn't that great might work for a rational Yugioh 5d's fic, but that isn't the story that I was hoping to write. In other words, I'm still stuck at the drawing board.
I recently found out about a custom yugioh format called "Newgioh" which looks really awesome, and much more balanced and fun. I don't know how long it's been out or how easy or difficult it would be to find opponents for it though.
Newgioh.com
I'm also starting to wonder if part of the issue I was having trying to use Mage Wars is that LCG's just don't fit with the story of Yugioh, because asymmetric access to cards is perhaps a fundamental part of the series world-building and characterizations. After all, each character has at least one or more key cards that represents their personalities and their playstyles. If everyone had access to Dark Magician or Blue Eyes White Dragon, then the roles of Yugi and Kaiba in the story might be kinda different. I don't know.
Ideally I would prefer character express their personalities through their strategies and playstyles, and not just the thematic flavor of their cards. But then it becomes a problem trying to explain why characters don't try out other kinds of strategies more often. Why is the only character in the series who uses 7 different decks Sebastian from Yugioh Gx? Why does Kaiba only use strategies that heavily feature dragons, especially the blue eyes white dragon? It would be one thing if dragons were his favorite kind of strategy, but for it to be the only kind of strategy he likes at all just seems like really really unrealistic characterization. Unfortunately, it seems pretty hard to disentangle yugioh characters from their decks. If Kaiba made and played a no-dragon deck even once, and he enjoyed it even a little bit, it would not be Kaiba.
So I'm still stuck. The general idea of the kind of story I want to write is in my head, it's just that whenever I try to fill in the details it turns into something else or falls apart. I'm hoping to write a rational adventure story in the style of card game animes like yugioh or cardfight vanguard, either as a retelling of yugioh or as something else, but without magical luck-manipulation like the Heart of the Cards or Psyqualia, and with realistic characters who have the freedom to experiment with different decks and are allowed to like more than just their favorite strategies. And whatever game ends up being used for the story, I want it to be one that is more skill based than luck based, and more skill based than money-based. And I don't want the game to be just a plot device, because if it's only a plot device than it's hard to justify having things boil down to a game-based showdown.
One of the other problems with realistic characterizations for this sort of story is that real people who play games like magic and yugioh and Mage Wars at a competitive level barely talk while they play. They're so engrossed in the game that there's no room for actually talking to your opponent during the game, because that would be distracting. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to make a no-talking game be exciting or dramatic enough. Imagine what the duel between Yugi and Pegasus in season 1 of yugioh would be like if the duelists didn't speak at all during the duel. Or the duel between Yugi and Yami Yugi at the end of season 5. I'm not sure it would be boring per se, but it would be a lot less dramatic and probably less interesting.
I'm really not sure what to do at this point. I really want to write this story, but I've been getting stuck on this countless times in the past year or two, and it's gotten really REALLY frustrating.
u/Akiryx [+1] (a month later)
I would /definitely/ enjoy reading a Rationalist Yugioh, like 100%. Seems to me like it would make sense for the protagonist to question the Heart of the Cards, for sure.