What Came First? The Name or the Ability?

Welcome back students! In this post we will be discussing one of the processes in creating cards. If the title of the blog didn’t give it away we will be discussing what came first? The name of the card or the ability it was given.

I bring this up because during a design meeting, one of our content designers asked a very similar question about our card Moth Flame. He asked, did the name of the card come first or the ability? For those who don’t know, Moth Flame grants the player Strike 2 and reduces their defense dice by 2. The question was brought up because he was going to write lore for this card and the ability did not make a whole lot of sense to him at the time with the ability in place.

The answer to his question was that the name indeed came first, but the ability was not always Strike 2 reduce defensive dice by 2. I don’t rightly recall what the card did before (sorry) but I have reason to believe it fit the title and quite possibly the card art! Moth Flame is an old card with old art but the ability is new because our cards went through a revamp. This means that we changed the abilities of already made cards to better suit the game.

For Magical and Astral Cards, most of the cards are made with the ability first and then the names come second. This is because when we look at a Realm and an Element we lay out what that set is supposed to “feel” like. For example, Dark Fire is offensive and destructive where Light Earth is defensive and regenerative. Knowing this we create abilities and cards around these various ideas to create a set. Then we can put names into them as well as Flavor Text.

For Physical and Materia Cards, it tends to be the opposite. It can be difficult to find the right Memories and Essences to fit each Realm as well as the right minions that will fit the Realm and Element. When we do, we can look at the name and see what made these real/mythical people or creatures unique and base their abilities, strengths and weaknesses off of that. I great example is Vlad the Impaler. The ability we have designed for him is that he can sacrifice a minion and turn it into a glyph that states "Any Enemy Minion within radius 1 reduces their damage by 2." Vlad was known for intimidating his enemies by impaling his own people and so his ability does just that.

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you this year at GenCon 2016 August 4th through the 7th! If you are new and would like to play the game yourself, click the link below and we will send you an Alpha Key! We are also currently running our IndieGoGo campaign and we are on Steam Greenlight! So if you like what you are seeing and want VoZ on Steam, vote yes in the link below!

http://visionsofzosimos.net/download.php

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/visions-of-zosimos/x/11444741#/

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=509966714