Discard Zones

[Typherion]

I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts about discard/removed zones in card games. I believe that today's card games have design issues arising from excessive interactivity with discard zones, but that there may be a solution.

Perhaps the first discard zone in a ccg was Magic's graveyard. It's function was to store the cards that were destroyed on the field, discarded from the hand or milled from the deck. It's purpose was to physically separate the cards that were no longer active so players could focus on the active cards in play. The flavour of the graveyard as a discard zone is fairly weak, but effective enough to be interesting. Many games have since copied the concept of the graveyard as a discard zone.

Next came cards that interact with those in the discard zone. Suddenly the cards that were supposed to be dead had a chance to come back to life. Players could no longer forget about the cards in the graveyard. Nowadays, many powerful but difficult to play cards can be brought out much more easily if they are in the graveyard instead of a player's hand. Some decks even focus on milling their own cards as quickly as possible as a winning strategy.

The removed from the game zone was supposed to be the final solution. Once a card was removed from the game it was finally gone and you could forget about it. But again there came new cards that could interact with those removed cards.

Now I see cards that present a further solution: sending cards to the bottom of a player's deck. This is an excellent concept because the deck is not public information. Players can finally forget about cards that are returned to the deck. Sure they might draw the card again eventually, or use another card to search it out, but until that happens the card is out of sight and out of mind.

For my own game, I plan to have only one discard zone for destroyed cards, while cards that are banished will be sent to the bottom of the deck.

So I guess the question is, do you think there is a problem with how much interaction card games allow with discard zones?

[Turonik]

I think there's a much simpler "fix" if you think there's too much recursion with discard piles for your game. Just don't make any cards that do it.

And with your set up. what about card search? It feels like it'd be even worse to banish a creature than to just have it die.

As for my thoughts on discard and removed from game piles, it depends on the game. Some games like magic have it just as another battle mechanic for some decks to use which I'm ok with. Others games on the other hand need them for other reasons for either flavor and to balance out game play. Games that use your deck as your health use recursion as a form to heal yourself. They typically just shuffle it back into your deck or put it on the bottom of your deck. Then others like Doom town and 7th seas have a "removed from game pile (known as boot hill and a sunken pile respectively) since you cycle through your deck pretty fast, the removed from game pile keeps the cards that died separate so you don't keep getting them back.

[Typherion]

I think you're right that the purpose of the discard zone depends on the game. If the game is designed with the intention that players will recycle cards then lots of interaction will be natural. It's not a problem common to all card games, but I know the head designer of Magic has expressed concern over the exile zone becoming "graveyard #2".

Simply not making cards that interact with the "final" discard zone is a valid solution. But as long as the zone exists as a public area I think there is always a strong urge to make cards that interact with it.

Using the bottom of the deck removes this temptation and avoids the need to shuffle unless card counting is a concern. The elegant thing is that using search cards to find a banished card offers little advantage over just searching another copy of that card. Search cards don't turn the banished card into another abusable resource that players must track any more than the other cards a player might draw.

Flavour will vary between games but I also think it's only fitting that players should have to search for a banished/exiled card if they want to bring it back

The point that I'm hoping to make is that a lot of complex card games are designed with the intention that players are allowed to forget the old cards to focus on the new, and that sending dead cards to the bottom of the deck might help with this.

[Shockpulse]

It all depends on the game, really.

For example, "Cardfight!! Vanguard" keeps the discard pile (or "Drop Zone" in this case) off-limits to everything, except for the "Granblue" cards, which are based on ghosts and zombies, and thus have the ability to manipulate the discarded cards. A related mechanic is Bind, which forces a card (usually from the hand) out-of-play for a set period of time. During that time, no one can do anything with the card.

In "Yu-Gi-Oh!" there are plenty of cards that interact with the Graveyard in dozens of ways, but Banished cards are usually gone for good. Which is why "Return from the Different Dimension", a card that lets you summon as many banished monsters as possible, has potential to be incredibly powerful.

As for myself, I don't mind which way it's used, as long as the game balances it. As long as there's balance, pretty much any mechanic can work well.

[r0cknes]

In my opinion it depends on the theme of the game. If you treat your discard pile as a "graveyard" or "destroyed" and the theme doesn't allow for resurrection of cards then it shouldn't be there. If however your discard much like Starwars LCG is treated not like a graveyard, but like a "taken out of battle" zone, then those cards under different circumstances should be allowed to enter the game again.

It's all about the theme. Is it a large scale game, or a game that is a short burst of battles. A large scale game IMO should allow for more discard manipulation.

Also, abstract cards should be treated like abstract cards. A Jutsu in Naruto, or an Attachment, or a objective/Mission. Should not be treated the same as a character. What I mean is if you don't want characters coming back, that shouldn't stop you from having cards that grab these types from the discard pile, because they can't die. Unless your theme allows that.

I am not a Magic guy, so I can't judge the game itself, but I do remember watching this show when I was younger, and whenever a good guy died, they would find a way to bring him back. This happened so much in the show that they said in the show, OH NO we can't bring him back a third time! So they found a way around that rule and brought him back again. Things coming back to life are annoying to me in a game too.

In conclusion the theme should determine the level of manipulation of the discard pile. I am not a fan of Character resurrection, but more abstract cards that don't die I am all for, unless the theme says otherwise. Small scale battle games should never let resurrection of unit types. It just doesn't make any sense.