Orginially posted by Chippy on 6/25/09
With the quick removal of Chaz Elliott, there were a lot of changes that are in
store for the games division. But to understand the beginning dynamics of these
changes and how things came together, you have to look at things from Bill Dully’s
(our new CEO) perspective. Bill and Chaz hated each other, mainly because they were
from different worlds. Bill thought Chaz was an idiot, a smelly leech suculing on
the teat of the success of the games division. So if Chaz was an idiot, then who
were responsible for the games division being such a success?
It turns out that Bill Dully thought that IQ and I were a pair of geniuses. Dully
came from Upper Deck where they had already tried to establish a games division
which had failed miserably. Upper Deck’s games division at the time came out with
tons of games, but none of them were a success (They would eventually find a group
that would succeed in the form of Mike Hummel and Your Moves Games). So the fact
that Score’s games division had 2 critically acclaimed successes (Dragon Ball Z
was banking and Yu Yu Hakusho just won the Best New TCG fan award from InQuest Gamer)
made him think about what the differences were between the two divisions, and the
only thing he could think of was IQ and myself. We were the gaming gods, made of
solid TCG gold. Dully would practically promise us the world and would give us anything
we wanted, like a new “War Room” just for ourselves and our design work. If we continued
our “excellence” there may even be a promotion, with which came <i>more power</i>.
But we were still really young, and Dully quickly figured out that we needed someone
to reign us in, keep an eye on us if you will. So the games division went out to
hire a Game Design Manager, someone to keep us in check and make sure we were staying
on task. And as usual Score tradition, we pretty much hired the first guy that applied
– Dan Tibbles.
IQ and I already knew of Dan Tibbles from the Magi-Nation game designed by Interactive
Imagination. The game actually wasn’t that bad, and if they had actually moved the
Draw Step from the end of the turn to the beginning of the turn, the game would
have been balanced and hassle-free (With the draw step at the end, you could design
a deck that would discard your opponent’s hand before his turn came around, keeping
him from ever playing another card again. This was the basis of the Or-lock deck
that won Magi-Nation’s first World Championships). Dan was also a very charismatic
person, which helped with his individual interviews that IQ and I got to have with
him. We knew the guy and he didn’t seem that bad, so he was quickly hired onto the
team.
Little did we know that hiring Dan Tibbles would have a huge impact on the entire
division and our success. For it was Dan Tibbles that brought in many new things
to our division, both good and bad, which would have a very profound impact on us
all. Yes, Score would never be the same again…
Playtesters! Hooray!
Before I get into what happened with the transition from Dragon Ball Z to Dragon
Ball GT, I should talk about one of the best impacts that Dan Tibbles had on the
division – playtesters. Dan was pretty good with working on financial figures and
quickly found a way to cheaply open up the budget to hire on about 8+ contract playtesters
to bring in house. Before this point, the only playtesting we had were from IQ and
myself, the yahoo playtest list for the Buffy TCG, and our Kid Buu Playtest. So
hiring on people that would be playing our games FULL-TIME and be able to give us
good feedback…My brain squealed in delight about how much improvement and polish
our games would have because of this staff increase.
Many of these playtesters were hired from the Dragon Ball Z crew, but there were
some people that Dan brought onto the team from his Legend of the Five Rings world.
Honestly, it was because of this Crew that made me the happiest I had ever been
since being promoted to Game Designer. In the past, the only other person that was
even near my age was IQ, with everyone else in the division (and company) being
much older. But all of these playtesters we hired were slightly younger or around
my age! People I could better relate to, who’ve experienced the same culture and
played the same games. I loved bring each and every one onto the team (although
purely in a heterosexual way).
I won’t forget these people either, because for once it really felt like I had a
little family in the company. Sean Poestoke (The Asian counter to Aik), Jimmy Watson
(”It’s Time For Some Spinach!”), Rob Halucha (Online Hold’em Addict), Ryan Carter
(Atkins Man), Cole Hutto (Beefcake), David Fashbinder (Fastest talking Jew on Earth),
Jesse Zeller (”All you need is the ground”), Rich Bondi (The Mad Bomber), Geoffrey
Brewster (Any man that doesn’t like music is scary), yeah… I’ll never forget you
guys. There are other names that appear in the playtesting list for Baby Saga, but
their impact will be talked about in a little bit. There were 3 people that were
hired onto the playtesting team (or stuck around) that would totally change my life
as I knew it, from a personal perspective. I personally would not be the person
I am today without meeting these men, and I have absolutely no idea what I could
have become without them.
Sam “Garrett” Wilkinson – Garrett and Michael Gibson had somehow stayed onto the
crew after the Kid Buu playtesting (honestly don’t remember how). I think maybe
it was because they were still in town long enough that when we needed people they
were already there to be taken in. Garrett would definitely be someone who would
change my life. My intelligence is more logical focused like a computer. But Garrett’s
intelligence was social, being able to network and bring people together, and I
learned many things from him. He taught me how to network, taught me how to get
yourself known, and how to “fight the man!” with style. I personally felt that Garrett
was a marketing genius, always knowing how to spread the word in our new technological
age and knowing what would work and what wouldn’t. Indeed, I felt that he was my
mental yin to my yang, and I learned quickly to see what his perspective was when
it came to social matters, work-wise and in our outside life.
Garrett also opened up my musical ears, taught me how to match bands with the songs
they played (or suffer ridicule), and just introduced me to a wide variety of culture
I never thought existed. If you’ve never heard of the psycho billy genre like Necromatix’s
“Struck by A Wrecking Ball”, you are definitly in for a treat. And Troma movies!
I’ve you’ve never seen a Troma movie like Terror Firmer… well, maybe you shouldn’t
see it so you can keep your innocence. But most of all, Garrett was a good friend.
Even though I don’t hang out with him anywhere near as much as I like (I mean, we’ve
got over 50,000 zombies left to kill in Left 4 Dead for some wholesome genocide),
I will always remember what he has done for me and hopefully will be able to return
the favor.
Eric “Kunk” Kunkle – So all gamers have an ego, not excluding myself. We think we
are the smartest and the best, that nobody could even come close to matching us,
that we are the cream of the crop. For myself, that all changed when we hired Kunk.
I knew of Kunk from the TopTierGamging/Fanatics message boards, a writer of eloquently
harsh worlds poised from a venomous tongue yet filled with intelligence instead
of just flame bait. But Kunk has a whole different side that I got to experience
when we hung out in person. I admit that there are many people that are smarter
than me in other areas, like Garrett is when it comes to marketing and social stuff,
but when it came to generally logical intelligence I often felt unequaled (even
to IQ). <i>Kunk shattered that reality.</i> He was just as smart, if not smarter,
than me (although once your genius reaches our levels, it really is hard to compare).
He could solve some puzzles faster and better.
The best part was I could bounce ideas off of him and actually get logical feedback,
even if it was a little sarcastic. At first it made me feel a little crappy, but
that quickly subsided into joy. ‘I’m not the only smart one!” my brain screamed.
A mental equal… and for someone who is as mentally driven as myself… fantastic!
Kunk was able to make me feel good about being smart and that there actually were
other people out there smarter than myself. And most of all, Kunk was able to make
me feel comfortable with myself. From being white (”You can be proud of being white
without being a racist, you racist!”) to knowing that you see things differently
than everyone else, Kunk helped me grow. And all this is not counting the thick
skin grown from resisting the scathing way he can phrase some things. I had to try
to be better than him, to be one step ahead of him if I could. He made me push myself
like noone ever had before, plainly because now I had someone as smart as myself
looking at my game but without the prejudice of actually having made it. Thank you,
Kunk.
Keith Hwong – Last, but not least, was a small Asian man by the name of Keith. Keith
was brought in as part of the “Tibbles Crew” and had actually went to the same High
School as Dan, so he was very unfamiliar to people from the Dragon Ball Z world.
But he was a fantastic addition having a very very different perspective while also
still being smart. When it comes to life in general, I try to be the optimistic
person: The glass isn’t half empty, it’s half full! For Keith the glass isn’t half
empty, it’s actually completely empty: You just don’t understand that yet. Things
didn’t exactly start off the best between us as well. In fact, I’ll always remember
one day that I dropped him off at his apartment. I was picking him up and giving
him rides to the office because he didn’t have a vehicle yet, having left his car
up in Seattle. Keith had assured me that he was going to quickly get a car. But
one afternoon when I dropped him off, he asked if he could get a ride again. My
jaw dropped, because I thought that Keith had his stuff together and, unlike the
rest of us “kids” he would have had a car by now. I didn’t have a problem picking
him up and taking him to the office and back, but Keith took my jaw dropping a different
way and thought that I didn’t like picking him up. “Ok, I get it. Don’t worry, I’ll
find another way to get to the office,” he said. It took me at least 3 minutes to
convince him that wasn’t the case, and I still felt like crap for the rest of the
day. Luckily we got over this and started to become good friends. He was fun to
hang out with, and an avid fighting game addict.
What Keith really gave me, what changed my life, occurred outside of the office.
He gave me a sense of culture, or at least the awareness of my lack of such. Keith
came from Seattle where “everybody speaks at least 2 languages and there were tons
of culture everywhere. But down here in Texas, you’re a bunch of rednecks.” We had
no culture that he spoke of, so he slowly started to inject some of this said culture
into me. From the wildly abstract movies (like this weird anime movie where the
egg is somehow symbolic to Jesus), to the different drinks and foods he would eat(his
fridge was ALWAYS full of stuff I’ve never tried before), to even teaching me how
to play Marvel vs Capcom 2 (I really, really such at combo execution), he had the
patience to show me there was a lot more to this world than what I saw in Texas
and what I had seen at conventions. Heck, I personally blame Keith for giving me
the “travel bug” and the yearning to actually get out of Texas. Before Keith, I
didn’t know where I would go. But now I know – anywhere but here. The entire world
has stuff to offer. Unfortunately, I’ve lost contact with Keith over the years and
I wish that I could get in touch with him again. I’d love to see if he’s found his
“true meaning in life” which was part of the reason he came down to Texas and playtest.
While he didn’t know what he was going to do in life at that time, I hope, no I
believe, that he has finally found found that goal.
But all in all, every member of the playtesting team impacted me and changed me
into who I am today, including the ones that would arrive later like David Bauer
and Josh Morris. To finally have “brothers” in the office was amazing, and I will
never forget all the fun and the experiences we had. Thanks for everything, guys.
You guys will never know how grateful I am for having to meet all of you and work
with you all.
Yes Men
Also before the most pivotal meetings for the Dragon Ball GT TCG, it is probably
best to have an understanding of how politics were in the office in this very short
period after Chaz had left. Without a head of the games division, a power vacuum
formed within the team. There were going to be 4 people vying for that position
of power that was created. The two leading men in this quest were Jonathan Quesenberry
and Dan Tibbles, wanting either more power, or to even take over that position.
Tibbles was quickly able to rise through the ranks and secure new positions and
responsibilities, like being in charge of the TCG inventory. Jonathan had a newborn
on its way and wanted to establish a good career to support his child. Both men
were very ambitious. IQ and I would eventually label them as “Yes Men”, because
that’s all they ever said to Bill Dully. “Yes sir! We can do that sir! May I wipe
your buttocks sir?” But when Dully wasn’t around, they quickly asserted their influence
down the chain, much to IQ and my dislike.
But what they didn’t know was that Dully didn’t want them to run the games division
– he wanted either IQ or myself to take that lead. As I prefaced at the beginning,
we were his golden eggs from the goose. We knew what needed to be done to be successful,
so who else to better run the division than one of the masterminds? Now I cannot
speak for IQ here (but I’m 95% confident that it happened to IQ as well), but Dully
was prodding me to be the head of the games division. He brought both of us into
the company meetings for the higher ups, letting us see all of the pivotal numbers
and fact sheets (and they were very surprised when they found out we already KNEW
that stuff since Chaz taught it all to us). He even promised me ludicrous stuff,
like my own gaming room and pay raises and a multitude of other stuff. But I didn’t
want that seat. Beyond Chaz, nobody could last longer than 6 months in that position.
Plus, I was already where I wanted to be. I was designing games for a living! The
frickin’ dream job! Since I’m not a money-focused man, why would I e-v-e-r give
up designing games to be in a position where I was basically everybody’s babysitter?
I believe the proposal for IQ was slightly different as IQ started to go through
some changes. But I’ll get to these changes later because we have something a bit
more important to talk about now – How Dragon Ball GT became the way it was.
Decisions, Decisions
Shortly after Dan Tibbles was hired onto the team, Dully brought the entire division
into one of the conference rooms for a little “pep” talk. Dully had more of a corporate
mindset compared to the small business perspective that Chaz had been running the
games division with. So it was in this meeting that he decided to establish a few
changes and to let us know a few things about how everything will be handled in
the future. One of these decisions – each game designer would have only 1 game and
would be the only designer for it. This way we could be focused and not have our
attention spread out, which would cause us to make “worse games”. Since I had seniority
over IQ, Dully put a fork in my road: “You are the Lead Game Designer so you need
to make a decision: Design Dragon Ball or design Yu Yu Hakusho.”
This was an extremely hard decision that I would have to make. On one hand, I had
always been working on the Dragon Ball Z TCG. I was there in the beginning, I helped
develop it through Trunks Saga and Android Saga, and I handled all of the design
from World Games and on. My work took that game off the ground into the small beast
that it had become. On the other hand, Yu Yu Hakusho would provide me with something
unique: I would get to design and develop my own game. This was something I had
yet to do and I yearned for. All of the other games made by Score before then were
designed by someone else and I either developed it or overhauled it. Dragon Ball
Z was originally designed by Jim Ward and we (myself, Josh, Josh, Chaz, and IQ),
fixed it up in Trunks Saga. Buffy was originally designed by Christian and Owen
from Last Unicorn Games, even though I overhauled the game into something that was
very little resembling what they had given us (you definitely don’t want to see
what their original design that we payed buckoo bucks bucks for).
But Yu Yu Hakusho was designed by me – and people liked it! Hardly anybody knew
what the show was about (It was quickly canceled off the air after the 2nd story
arc because of low ratings), but people like it so much that it won an award! People
were buying the game not because of the show, but because it was a good game! I
had to think long and hard into the night on this decision. Do I keep working on
the same game that I’ve designed for so long, or do I work on my new baby and actually
have the chance to design a game and continue to work on it for its entire life
cycle. I already had everything set in place, with all 6 sets having a preliminary
design and a plan in place that, if the game was still successful after the 6th
set, how to convert it to handle ANY IP we wanted to get our hands on so that the
game would continue to stay alive. Work on something old, or something new? Work
on something you are known for, or a completely new avenue? Cinnamon or Sugar? Tough,
tough choices.
The next morning I walked into the office and I had a small conversation with IQ
before our meeting. “So which one are you going to take?” IQ asked. “I’m going to
stick with Yu Yu…”
The Meeting That Changed It All
So we all walk into another group meeting lead by Bill to wrap up everything about
the organization and flow of things and to set us forward with our tasks for the
future that was discussed the previous day. The very first thing he said was, “David,
you’ve worked on Dragon Ball the longest time. Dragon Ball is your baby, and so
you are going to be the designer for it. IQ, you get that Yu Yu game.” Both of our
jaws dropped. IQ was pissed because he didn’t get the game he wanted, the one I
told him he was going to get before the meeting. I was pissed because of what I
had to go through. Choosing between both games was really difficult. If I was not
going to get to make the decision, why make me think of one? My mind was screaming!
I was given the opportunity that I wanted and it was stripped from me, as if the
option never existed! What a bastard! But that anger quickly became quelled by fear
from what Dully had to say next.
Dully started to rant how brand extensions never work. Not a single brand extension
has “ever been successful”, even though expansion sets to TCG’s ARE brand extensions.
He just didn’t understand TCGs. So I was given an ultimatum – I had to create a
brand new game, different than the Dragon Ball Z card game. But it still had to
be completely compatible with all of the old Dragon Ball Z cards. And he would have
Dan Tibbles be my point man to make sure that this would happen – Dan was given
the ability to approve *MY* games, and it was Dan’s job to make sure I succeed in
this task. Immediately both Dan and Jonathan jumped up, going “Yes sir! We can do
that sir! May I chew your food for you, sir?” Without any say from myself, that
decision had become locked into place.
The room began to stink with an awful smell radiating from my pants from all the
bricks I just dropped. I had been in this position once before, and I knew how impossible
it was. Back before Buffy was canceled, Chaz wanted me to do the same thing for
an Angel TCG. The idea was to make a totally different game but to be able to still
use all of the Buffy cards in it. This way all the people that had been buying Buffy
cards could play this game nearly for free, and we would have cards that could criss-cross
both games (just like in the show! Hurr hurr!). My first and only attempt at this
was really pitiful. The engine didn’t have holes, but the game really sucked because
I was strapped to having Buffy cards be compatible I tried some tricks like flipping
around Locations and Challenges, where your Challenges were the places you “moved
to” and the locations were like Enchantments from Magic that you could put onto
Challenges. But it was a really terrible game, one that I’m nowhere near fond of.
It took me a week just to come up with a preliminary design that everybody liked,
and it tanked heavily. But now, I had to do the same with the Dragon Ball franchise.
I was in for a painful ride. We already had plans for what we were going to do with
Dragon Ball GT, but now Dan would make sure that we went down a different path.
I couldn’t even fight back because of the Yes Men and how Chaz left – I was already
walking on thin ice because I was “Chaz Jr.”, and I was in no political position
to start a fight. So there was nothing I could do except make a new game.
Dragon Ball GT – Making the Game Engine
There was much work involved in creating the Dragon Ball GT game, so I am going
to have to section it off in parts. The first and major part was remaking the game
engine. Now, this new ultimatum really screwed up my plans, but I still tried them
none-the-less. I cleaned up the Dragon Ball Z rules, cutting out the multi-colored
drill reshuffle rule, axing the “When entering Combat” phase (it’s an effect timing
window like “at the start of your turn” and not an actual step in the game), and
just polished it all up. Trying to be sneaky and knowing that Dan hadn’t played
our games much, I tried to pass this game engine by him. “Chippy,” he said, “this
is basically the same game. There’s nothing different about it. Go and make a new
game.” Damn…
My first two rehashed game engines didn’t turn out too well. Frantically trying
to throw the first one together, Dragon Ball GT 1.0 had tons of holes in the game
engine. We couldn’t get through a single game without having to add 2-3 rules to
the game. It was just a poor, poor game design, and so it was immediately shucked.
The second game engine faired better, but it was too drastically different. I changed
the game where both players participated in every turn, and there was no “declaring
combat” – it always happened (take that stasis! Haha!). Furthermore, I was on a
little kick from Yu-Gi-Oh, being fascinated by the “face-down” mechanic. I thought
it was pretty amazing to have the ability to play cards without your opponent knowing
what those cards were. The whole mind game of “I know its there, but what could
it be” really got my mind buzzing. So I applied that mechanic to all Non-Combat
cards – They were initially played face-down and flipped whenever they were used.
Drills would have “instant speed” while Non-Combat cards would take an action during
Combat. Oh, did I mention there was no Non-Combat step either? Instead, playing
a Non-Combat card took an action during the Combat phase. So if you wanted the effect
of a Non-Combat card, it would take 2 actions vs. the 1 action of regular Combat
cards. The active player was handled differently as well – The player who passed
last during Combat was the new active player. So if you kept flushing your hand
and finished before your opponent, you would never get to “go first”. But since
it was a simultaneous turn game, you would never be purely shafted. You just never
would get to go first. But in the end, this engine didn’t work out too well either.
It was too different, and a lot of our playtesters despised the game engine. So
it was back to the drawing board for Dragon Ball GT 3.0.
I knew what I had to do – I had to emulate the same change that Magic: The Gathering
went through. For those unfamiliar with Magic’s history, the game’s engine went
through a change as they shifted from the 4th Edition rules to 5th Edition. The
introduction of the stack as a way to handle the effects in the game was a very
good one, but it introduced a subtle change to how effects resolved, which is best
highlighted in an example. Your opponent has a Prodigal Sorcerer (aka Tim), and
taps him for his effect to deal 1 point of damage to you. In response, you Unsummon/Terror/Lightening
Bolt/(Insert your choice of removal here) Tim to remove him from play. With the
rules of 5th Edition, Tim’s effect would go onto the stack and your removal would
go on top of it. Your removal would resolve first and get rid of Tim. But since
Tim’s effect is on the stack, it goes next and still resolves. But in 4th Edition
your removal would still get rid of Tim, but Tim is no longer in play to use his
effect causing his 1 point of damage to fizzle and never reach you.
Not much has changed from a normal standpoint (especially in the eyes of a beginner),
but this had a very big impact on high-level play. Certain loops and chains could
be created that did not exist before, and it was MUCH harder for a variety of decks
to stop effects. This changed basically reduced countering “in play effects” from
any form of removal in the game to just the Counterspell variants themselves. But
you couldn’t see this at the surface level. All you saw was a very rigid and logical
way to handle the whole “in response” stuff in Magic. This would be the type of
change that I sought for – something that was basic yet definitely changed the game
at a high-level of play.
The first change came to mind pretty quickly, hang already been tossed around the
office for awhile. Letting Carl Braun go free with designs on Dragon Ball GT cards
let him play around with a few things like how many power stages could fit on a
personality card. From this spawned the idea of the increasing numbers in the game.
As the power escalation goes in the Dragon Ball storyline, the fighters should be
stronger than ever before, slinging attacks that made Frieza and Cell look like
they were flicking peanuts. But if we allowed this to happen just by raising numbers,
then a player with a 75 card Life Deck could easily die in just a few attacks. <i>But
this would be mitigated with Endurance if it were added to every card.</i> If
every card had an average endurance of 2, then each card would be worth 3 cards
in your Life Deck. You could take an energy attack to the face for 15 life cards
of damage, but it would only result in you losing an average of 5 cards, the same
as the standard energy attack damage in Dragon Ball Z (since Endurance was rarely
played in most top level decks beyond the super amazing ones like Champion’s Aura
and Are You Tuff Enuff???). I already knew we were going to have somewhat of a Type
II and Type I tournament format, which this change would play greatly into. Now
players in “Type I” would have to choose between using the amazing effects in Dragon
Ball Z coupled with a now tiny attack, or play with a GT card with an effect that
may not be as amazing but it would deal a higher amount of damage and come with
Endurance. This change would also make capturing Dragon Balls more dramatic, as
you won’t know if an attack is 5 Life Cards of damage until that 5th card is flipped
over from the Life Deck.
While this change seemed full of win, it wouldn’t be enough to constitute as a “change”
for Dan. He liked the direction, but he wanted more. So it became time to look at
what issues were plaguing the game and how they could be resolved. This lead into
cleaning of the rules (as was originally planned for the beginning), but it also
took a hard look at one of the mechanics really interfering with the game – Anger
and Leveling. The Level 1 Theorem (due to the amount of anger hate, you will never
leave your level 1 MP without Aura Clash or being an Anger Deck yourself) really
hurt the refresh rates and values of many cards we produced in the game. We could
make all these awesome level 2-5 personalities that would never see the light of
day except for being a placeholder towards your MP’s overall levels. Only once in
a blue moon would they come into play for your deck. After much thought, there was
just no easy way to handle Anger and keep it in the game.
The issue comes for the core mechanic behind Anger itself. In order to raise your
Anger level, you must play cards that specifically raise your anger level. If no
anti-anger is added into the game, then to win by the Most Powerful Personality
Victory you just needed to use X cards, where X is the amount of anger it takes
to reach your top level (at this time in the game x = 20, and cards that raised
your anger 2 levels count as 2 cards for this). So once you used 20 cards that raised
your anger, you won. You could always put in effects to lower anger, but players
would have to specifically pack these cards into their decks. This makes the MPPV
victory different than the other 2 natural victory conditions in the game, as you
can interact with Survival and Dragon Ball victories with Combat (you don’t have
to play with Dragon Balls to deal 5 Life Cards and steal one). Even with anti-anger
cards, it basically turns the 2 players into fighting over a bean pile – 1 player
is filling it with beans trying to get to X while the other is taking out beans
trying to win before that happens. Indeed, MPPV vs. MPPV is the most boring matchup
in all of Dragon Ball Z, purely because its whoever reaches X anger, completely
ignoring the rest of the game. At least a Stasis vs. Stasis match could have players
trying to steal Dragon Balls with Blue Betrayals (like the North Carolina Regionals).
So I made the decision that it needed to be removed, but a leveling system would
still be needed. That’s when my brain clicked onto removing cards from your Discard
Pile. In the show, the characters NEVER started off at their highest levels or transformations.
Only after fighting each other for a bit would they then dramatically make their
change and release their inner strength. The choice of removing 10 cards was decided
on the idea that it should take a little bit more than an average combat, or 3-5
non-active turns (depending on what you decide during the Rejuvenation Step). The
strategy would be perfect for the game’s combat. Do you remove the card and take
less damage from the attack and protect yourself from Dragon Ball theft, or do you
keep it in your discard pile and use it to level to a stronger personality level?
Furthermore, this would be a drastic change from a high-level play perspective,
as top decks could climb levels and even the level 5 personalities could see play.
This also gave me much more freedom to create new effects and ways to gain and lower
player’s levels. Content with my change, I went back to Dan with my results and
reasonings.</p>
<p>
Not enough? What do you mean not enough? We don’t need to change anymore. I like
this rule set, and we know the engine works as a whole. Not ambitious enough? Tiny
changes? The idea is that they are supposed to be small, but have a rippling effect
towards high-level play. Huh? Fine, I’ll go back to the drawing board. I’m telling
you that this works… no, you are the boss. I’ll get back to work.
Well pansy sticks, what am I going to do? Well if there needs to be another change,
what still needs to be fixed? The brain juices flowed into the ether thinking long
and hard about what to do. After a few hours, I was getting nowhere. So I turned
to the players. What did they not like mechanically in the game? Many issues could
be resolved purely with a good card set, but there had to be something in the way
the game played that they didn’t like… Nope, not getting anything. So what do
they complain about? Well, the most common complain with any card game is bad hands.
“Oh, you won because I drew a bad hand at the wrong time.” or “Oh, you were just
lucky that I didn’t draw X card” or “I just don’t have any luck today” could be
overheard at many conventions between players arguing with each other…
Right at this moment, one of those huge epiphanies slams into my head like a freight
train, the exact same feeling way back in Android Saga when we “solved” the issue
of ending combat as a defense. The PROBLEM with the game engine was that there was
no hand stability in the game, both in drawing cards and keeping them. But players
flocked to Android 18 like she didn’t wear clothes, and it was because she gave
them some of the stability lacking within the game. Being able to choose your hand
from the next 6 cards better ensured that you never drew a bad hand, or at least
the odds were really minimal. Instead of having a 1 card hand after discard, you
actually had 7 that you just got to use 4 from. It also added strategy because the
better players would pick better hands. Indeed, the sign of a good player from Cell
Saga onward until Buu was how he selected his cards from Android 18. Sometimes it
as a no-brainer, but many times there were subtle tricks and better choices that
could be made, allowing the consistently better and smarter players to always get
an advantage.
And so the most drastic change was made to the game by giving everybody Android
18’s power (without the card draw). This would change the game to be unlike any
other TCG. Nobody else lets you pick your hand. Nobody else could offer a game without
Mulligans and truly be safe (Pokemon and YuGiOh come close, but you can still get
hand screwed). The best players would then be able to forge their own destiny with
consistency becoming the key word. In order to help with this hand stability (and
to make card advantage matter more), I increased the number of cards kept in your
hand from 1 to 2. Now not only would the size of your hand matter (if you timed
things right you could go into combat with 5 cards without drawing from effects
against your opponent’s 3, definitely giving you an overall advantage during that
Combat), but it could also help us get around “heavy” cards that often clogged up
hands. Through all of Dragon Ball Z, the card kept in people’s hands the most after
discarding was Trunks Energy Sphere. Easily 70% of the time you naturally picked
Sphere, with only the strongest of the strong making you decide otherwise. If that
would become the case again, they could still keep their Sphere but also 1 other
additional card. More strategy, card advantage mattering more, stability… And
most importantly such a big change that Dan couldn’t say it was different.
I couldn’t have been more right. Dan literally crapped himself when I introduced
the “simple but elegant” change to the mechanics, and he thought it was perfect.
I had failed to keep the change small like Magic, but the goal was achieved none-the-less.
The game would naturally play the same, just with a few modifications. But these
few modifications would completely change how the game would be played on a strategic
and deck building level. Looking back in hindsight, I think I still hit the goal
really well. There would be only 1 thing that I would change (and if I could, I
would release it as an official errata for the game) – You do not get to look at
the top 6 cards when entering combat as the defender. While the “foresight” ability
was great, it really clogged the pace of the game. Once the game would be released,
there would be matches where players looked and determined their top 6 cards more
than playing the entire rest of the game! Removing the lookup on defense puts a
greater emphasis of decision making on your turn – which 3 do you want to draw for
the turn and <i>which 3 would you like to draw for your defense?</i> The pace of
the game would dramatically speed up and a player’s turn would completely feel like
his turn – he gets all of the advantages while his opponent gets none. While many
players that loved how the old Dragon Ball Z mechanics worked would loath these
changes and scream to the heavens, the rule changes are not the real reason why
everything would crumble. Nay, the transition itself would be our downfall.
Where We Failed: Type I and Type II
While it should be said that all of Score (including myself) failed with the transition
into GT, it was this decision and meeting that destroyed it all. If drastically
changing the direction of the game for GT is the wrecking ball, the change to our
tournament environment would be the arch stone knocked out causing the entire bridge
to crumble. If we handled this any differently, I believe that the transition would
have been a lot more successful and the game would have lived a much longer life.
Especially for those that are wanting to design TCG’s or are currently in the industry,
I cannot stress this point enough. Please learn from this lesson, because repeating
it will assure your doom.
First, let’s go back to that pivotal meeting with Bill Dully where it would be decided
that Dragon Ball would be “rebranded”. Immediately afterwards there were some discussions,
especially about the tournament scene. It was then that we knew that we were going
to shift into a Type I/Type II environment (for those that are still scratching
your head, this is 2 different tournament formats. Type I lets you use any cards
in the game while Type II only allowed to most recent sets to be playable). But
if we handled this correctly, this would be a boon instead of a fault. What I didn’t
understand was what everybody’s perspectives of this split would be, or more importantly
how we would handle it.
So lets speed back up to the present part of the Score storyline. In the corporate
umbrella, the organized play department fell under Marketing which was Jonathan
Quesenberry’s domain. So one day he sets up a meeting with Dan and I to go over
the changes to the game and to talk about how we were going to handle this transition
from a general format to Type I/Type II. As soon as the meeting started, Jonathan
was already laying out his plans and little did I know that he was already enacting
those plans as we spoke. Jonathan wanted to place the Type II format on a prominent
tier, leaving Type I in the shadows. And we’re talking really really in the shadows.
EVERYTHING would be Type II and would would have 1 tournament a year for Type I,
possibly having it take over the Grand Kai Invitational. He was effectively trying
to ignore the previous 3 years and start everything fresh, which was in line with
the “new game” philosophy that Dully was speaking of.
Now this is a very, very bad idea. Once a TCG has matured to this level, the players
have invested a great deal of money into the game. We’re talking hundreds of dollars,
more than just a single booster pack or even a box of them. To effectively say “All
that money you spent is only worth being played once a year” greatly devalues the
investment. It also brings a second specter of “reinvestment”, as a player would
have to buy a whole ton of new cards. While this would happen regardless, this brings
the notion to the forefront because you are forcing them to buy the new cards, not
releasing them and players wanting to buy them because the cards are better.
Instead, it should be a gradual shift into Type II where they both share equal time.
When Type II is first introduced, <i>it</i> should be the light one. The game isn’t
even fully fleshed out yet and you have tons of players still wanting to play with
all the old cards. Once you have reached your first or second expansion should Type
II tournaments become a bit more common, giving players at least 6 months to slowly
embrace the new format (and in our case, the new rules). This also gives the Type
II format to mature by the card set size doubling with an expansion or two. But
your old cards MUST always have some value to them, and therefore Type I can never
go away. Sure, you’ll always lose a few players making this type of change, but
slowly changing the format would let you retain a much larger percentage than just
practically throwing them out. Plus, why would anybody want to buy your cards again
if you were just going to make them worthless a year or two down the road?
The Company Line
I tried to explain this concept to Jonathan, unknown to having lost before I begun.
Dan entered Yes Man Mode and completely went along with the idea, turning the meeting
into them shooting down why the above mentioned strategy would be the WORST thing
we could do and that their idea of practically shunting Type I from existence was
the best (and in Dan’s eyes, the most profitable) decision the company could make.
Anything said and any tactics employed in the meeting did not budget either of them
from their position. I would have made sure IQ was at my side for this meeting had
I known what I was walking into, if anything to even the numbers instead of it being
a 2-on-1.
Since Organized Play was under Jonathan, the only way to set things straight was
to make him change his mind. If Jonathan thought otherwise, he would do otherwise.
I was not his boss and had no authority in his realm. Dan backing him up further
solidified that his mind would never be changed. Remembering again the political
position I was in (”Chaz Jr.”), this would be a battle I would have to drop for
my own job’s sake. Jonathan was becoming the power player in the division, and he
could easily get me ejected since there was still IQ and Dan Tibbles himself. I
was expendable, he was not.
Jonathan’s decision would have a great impact on how nearly all the decisions would
be made from that point on for Dragon Ball GT. The idea wasn’t ejecting the old,
but that they would stick around regardless. “If they love the game, they’ll stick
around no matter what we do.” As far as design decisions were concerned, this meant
leaving Type I as the open wacky world, the high-powered playing field where decks
were monsterously powerful, wicked fast, and just downright crazy (like Magic’s
Type I format).
But just accepting this fate was not enough for either gentleman. What they really
wanted was to make sure that I would say the company line, that I would be complete
“in” with the plan. Not only would I have to say the company line to the outside,
but I must also resiliently defend it inside the company as well – it would not
succeed unless everybody at the top were saying the same thing. If Dan and Jonathan
were sending one message and I was sending out a different signal, it wouldn’t hold
up in the office and therefore “would fail on the outside”. I was heavily resistant,
because I still felt it was a plan for failure. But none of us would get up from
our seats until it was beaten into me that I *will* say and do this. After a long
period of time trapped in the corner with nothing on offense left, I finally crumbled
in.
To this day this feels like my greatest failure. Politically I made the right decision,
as I would stay with Score long after both of them would leave the company and have
the upper hand. But I still feel like I could have tried to fight more. Maybe hop
the corporate ladder, or rally the troops. Something, anything… One of the worst
feelings in the world is doing all you can do but still feel like there was still
more that could have done, somewhere or somehow. Or worse yet needing to defend
and fight for a cause you didn’t fully believe in. I had many heated discussions
with playtesters and other designers with some of the decisions I had to make because
of this meeting, and how I had to keep saying “the company line”. Felt a little
dirty, actually. That feeling will probably never go away. I’m sorry, guys.
Dragon Ball GT: Making the Card Skeleton
With the rules in place and a fair idea of the direction of the game, it was time
to get down and make the cards for the game. Dan wanted to be a part of this process
and we went over to his apartment to map a few things out. This meeting fleshed
out how big the card set was going to be overall, how many cards of each rarity
would exist, how many promo cards, and other basic logistics The personality list
was filled out, starter deck personalities were picked, and we knew exactly what
levels each character in the game would get. How many Freestyle cards do we make?
Do we do just one set of Dragon Balls or two (since we could do the Dark Balls and
use the Style Guides for regular Dragon Balls). We even got into the nitty gritty
for the fighting styles: How many cards do each fighting style get? How many of
those cards are Physical Combat, Energy Combat, Event, Drill, etc? Of the combat
cards, how many are attacks, and how many are blocks? Will they be physical focused,
energy focused, or mixed? Layout this initial structure gave many fighting styles
different feels straight out of the box, and helped give each style a different
feel. Blue had very little attacks but tons of Non-Combats. Saiyan had barely any
Non-Combat cards at all making it totally focused on beating someone up.
Another one of Dan’s good ideas came out in this meeting as well – 2 Masteries per
style. He initially culled it from the Legend of the Five Rings TCG he was so fond
of, but the idea had wealths of advantages. This would allow us to give each fighting
style two different avenues and ideas to work with, ideas that would be similar
and cohesive but also go in drastically different directions. This also had an added
bonus of stability: No designer is perfect and there have been some pretty terrible
Mastery cards. If I accidentally created a pure stinker, the fighting style would
still have at least 1 “good” mastery to rely on keeping the entire grouping of cards
from being non-competitive. And if they both were good, then that’s just 2 different
deck types for that style from the very start! I believe this is the very definition
of “Win/Win”.
The change to the high-techs was spawned from this meeting as well. We were on a
discussion on personalities and what their effects in general would be and the idea
just popped up. At first it was just having a “variable” card effect for the personality
chosen by the effect of your choice, but it seemed a little bland. Once I added
the ability to change the PUR and some power stages (basically any part of the personality
besides who it is and its level), the idea gained more traction.
There was one surprise up Dan’s sleeve, which arouse when I mapped out the slots
for STAR (Stance, Time, Aura, Resistance). I brought up I wasn’t sure how I was
going to MRP the Nappa cards, since Nappa never shows up in GT. There just wasn’t
going to be an elegant way to handle it. “Actually, no MRP’s.” My brain was boggled.
“But we need to reprint these because Type I could get a little disastrous,” I responded.
“This is a part of what we talked about with Jonathan. All of these cards have to
be new. If we just reprint a bunch of cards, the players won’t have to buy as much.
Besides, its Type I. It’s supposed to be crazy.” Once again this was a point that
Dan would not budge on and I had to live with. But unlike the previous meeting,
this was something I could rebel on. For while Dan knew of what the most popular
cards were in DBZ, he was not a player of the game and did not know of the entire
card pool. So quietly I snuck in a few MRP’s like Vegeta’s Quickness Drill and Saiyan
Planet Explosion, just in spite. Let me tell you, it was quite difficult explaining
to the playtesters why STAR wasn’t getting MRP’d but a few others would be while
making sure that Dan never got wind of it (because if he did, they would have to
be taken out). At this point preparations for the design were made to help combat
this in Type I – With new recursion decks and a “Blitz” deck that could help get
around the “Block for the turn” cards should hopefully allow survival decks to have
a chance.
At the very end, all the information was gathered and put into a big access database.
Every single card slot was mapped with what card type, fighting style, and card
number it would be. Images were also matched up since I knew what each card was
going to be. All information was filled out for the card except for the title, the
effect, the rarity (assigned at the very end) and how much damage the attack on
the card would do (if any). All that was left was to fill in the blanks.
Lunacy begins at Hour 32
So the weekend rolls around and the deadline to turn the cards over to the playtesting
group is Monday. So Dan and I decide Friday night that we would meet up on Saturday
and spend the weekend knocking out the card effects. Saturday rolls around and Dan
is nowhere to be found, even with me blowing his phone up all day. He finally answers
that night and says that we’ll just meet on Sunday morning and split the list in
half so we both could get it finished. Sunday morning rises and Dan once again uses
his power of invisibility leaving me stranded. So I get into the office at 11am
and start working on the entire card set.
Things started off pretty smoothly as I had already assembled an “effect pool” over
the past few weeks. Whenever I just had some random ideas I threw it into a Word
Doc to cull from later. Starting with the fighting styles, each card was given a
title that matched with the image and an effect. Slowly but surely the entire list
was slowly being put together. The Mastery Card was first cards finished for each
style, and the personality cards were worked on once every colored card was complete.
Having the fighting styles finished before working on personalities helped since
I knew which styles I wanted the characters to be compatible to. But having to assemble
all of the information (Title, Power Stages Math, PUR, Effect, Which are windows
if it is a high-tech) took a much longer time than the other cards. It was well
after midnight and I was still working on them. But the list MUST be finished by
tomorrow, so I needed to continue on. I focused on the list creating cards for 55
minutes, then taking a quick 5 minute break for some nicotine and taurine to stay
awake. As the surfers in my generation would say, I was “buzzing it hardcore”…
But I would think that would happen to anybody after their 4th Red Bull.
If there was an award for endurance game design, that night would have gotten me
the gold. I nearly tapped out the entire effect pool and then some. The sun arose
and I was in the midst of the huge collection of freestyle cards and promos. Everybody
came in to see my zombie-looking eyes as I diligently continued to work on the list,
focused on keeping my eye on the prize. The afternoon strolls in and I’m about to
almost lose it at some points. Things started to look a little funny and the Red
Bulls tasted like water. I didn’t need to smoke any cigarettes anymore, needing
only to blow upwards towards my nose to get some smoke. Am I awake or is this a
dream? AHA! What a perfect card effect!
while slightly exaggerated, the feeling was very much the same as I finally reached
the end of the list – Dragon Balls. Saving up the last of the “hit ideas”, I knew
that the Dark Dragon Balls were going to be the lynch pin for the set. These cards
needed to rival the Earth Dragon Balls and may even be preferable over them, without
making them totally game breaking (time to dance the line). I still wanted to keep
the general themes for each of the Dragon Ball numbers, but they needed to be awesome
effects that everybody would want to throw into their decks so everybody would always
be fighting over Dragon Balls. Delirious, sketched out the base ideas for each of
them on a white board, erasing a few if I didn’t feel they were strong enough or
fit in well. Surprisingly, the hardest Dragon Ball to make an effect for was Number
2. Can’t remember why, but that was the last one to get made. Happy with the results,
I typed the effects into the card list and hit save. At 6pm I handed over the card
list to the playtesters, stumbled out of the office and into my car, crawled into
my apartment and slept on the floor until the next day. Carpet Face never felt so
good.
Over the Edge
You can say that I’m a bit of a liberal designer, wanting a more open game than
a restrictive one. Sometimes this is about effects, and sometimes its about the
flavor of the card. But one of these cards never saw the light of day, thanks to
Will Harper. What’s even more amazing is that he would let cards like Red Mouth
Shot through or sayings like “Lord Slug Gets Huge!” (that was actually his idea).
So here’s the story of my favorite card that never made it: Black Parental Guidance.
Now if you’ve actually watched the GT series in Baby Saga, you would understand
the premise of the storyline – Baby has the ability to plant his seed in orders,
forcing them to become his mindless slaves. Towards the end of the Baby Saga, Goku,
Pan, and Uub/Buub/Uubuu/(Pick Your Combination), were on Baby’s planet. There’s
a specific scene where Pan confronts her parents Gohan and Videl. But Gohan and
Videl had Baby’s seed, and therefore were under his control. Pan tried to snap them
out of it to no avail, with Videl slapping Pan and saying “We have become accustomed
to this, and so will you” or something along those lines.
Now the image of the slap was a great image overall, and so it was thrown into the
first set, with the above quote for its flavor text. But my mind is a bit more devious.
The card setup the pun way to well, and so I named it Black Parental Guidance. I
thought if I were going to get any backlash, it would be people calling me a racist,
not the fight I was about to get in…
So I am suddenly called into the conference room where Will Harper, Juddy, and Dave
Nichols. “What’s going on guys?” I said. “What were you thinking when you made this
card?” they responded. Will was no fan of child abuse, and was completely appalled
that I would ever even lean in such a direction. Everything on the card was offensive
to him: A child was getting beaten by her mother, the quote was “awful”, and the
title just sealed the deal.
So I concede, as I guess it was a bit overboard. I told them that I would change
the title of the card, but that wasn’t enough for Will. No, Will wanted the entire
card scrapped. Everything. The image, the card effect, the quote, the title, everything.
While I understand the changing of the title, there was no reason to change anything
else, so I fought back.
We started to get into an argument about the image, which I was clearly winning.
If I wasn’t allowed to use this image, then we need to recall EVERY previous set
we’ve ever produced. Goku kicks the crap out of Gohan ALL THE TIME, are we never
allowed to use another image of Goku and Gohan fighting? According to Will, yes.
Score should not promote child abuse. “Have you even watched the show, Will? It
is not child abuse. You are taking the entire scene out of context.” Then Juddy
raised his voice, the first time of the entire 2 times he yelled at me while working
on the game’s division. This card was clearly abuse and would get scrapped. Period.
Will would leave with the biggest smug face I’ve ever seen, as this battle let him
become the “Creative Editor” forever giving him to ax one of my cards just because
he felt like it (and it would happen in the future).
After the meeting, Juddy pulled me aside and talked to me about the meeting. I thought
it was utter BS and that I was being restricted, that Will went overboard. Juddy
responded that it was my fault – Had I put any other card title, nothing would have
happened. But the title kicked everything into gear and Will had the moral upper
ground. That’s why the card got axed. “Choose your battles better next time.” And
thus Black Parental Guidance… Sorry, I had to get a tissue, my eyes teared up.
Playtesting – The Good, The Bad, and the Stupid
Coming off of my experiences from the Kid Buu playtest, I had a fairly good idea
how I was going to utilize everybody on the team. R.J. had come back briefly to
help out with the playtesting of GT (and being the awesome center of morale that
he is), and with other key testers I had a good feeling that we would get a lot
of work done. We had a good mix of old and new players, but some people worked out
well and some people did not.
When you receive advice from a playtester, you must always keep how they are seeing
things in perspective. You don’t necessarily do everything they say, but you try
to see how they look at it so you know what to do. This can vary for every playtester
on the team. Playtesters can come in a variety of flavors, each requiring different
action. Some playtesters were high-level general players, like Kunk. These players
were great for overall feedback for the game, if things really were working at a
high level, and if there were any gross imbalances in the game. These playtesters
have great feedback and should be listened to well.
Then you have your combo artists. These playtesters are actually average or a bit
above average in general skill, but what makes them amazing is the combos they can
find. Rob Halucha, heck the entire Michigan crew, fits this bill perfectly. Rob’s
overall decks are a bit average, but he could find tons of infinite loops in the
game. They were the ones that originally found the loops with Trunks Sword Position
4 in Dragon Ball Z, and they kept many loops from ever being released. When you
are trying to create deck archetypes based around recursion or engines, these playtesters
are the best to make sure that they cannot get totally out of hand.
Another group are the specialists. Like combo artists, their general playing skill
is average but they are really amazing with specific deck archetypes Cole Hutto
being the man with the plan for Ally decks and later on Dan Posey are good examples.
It is these players that you have to treat their advice with caution. It’s not that
they are bad, but that their perspective is limited. If something is “broken”, it
may just be an effect that wrecks their deck but is actually perfectly balanced.
The tricky part lies in knowing when it’s just a card that is really good against
them and when its something so pivotal that the deck is unplayable. A good indicator
is how biased they are towards their archetype and what type of effect they are
complaining about. If Cole came to me and said “There’s too much Ally Hate”, then
that’s fine – He’s just been playing against decks filled with a good amount of
Ally Hate (which often is opted against in a live format), and an Ally deck can
be kept in check if a player prepares for it enough. On the other hand, if Cole
told me “Well, the format is too aggressive and I just never get enough time to
get my allies setup and get an advantage” or “Well, I have tons of guys in play
but they all suck, so I don’t effectively do enough damage” then the issue gets
looked into to see if I can make Allies better or tone other things down. Unfortunately,
bias can often severely cloud this type of playtester’s eyes. Dan Mosey would cry
“Wolf” nearly every single time he lost a game because some card or some deck somehow
beat is deck flavor of the month and therefore the deck was “overpowered and broken”.
At first it was ok, but after while you really can’t rely on their input too much
because it becomes hard to decipher if it really is an issue or not, and that time
could be better spent getting advice from a playtester who was not as biased/tainted.
The final group of playtesters are what I would call “Other Realm” playtesters.
These are players that are new to your game, but not to TCGs. What marks a great
distinction, though, are the drastic difference in game engine design. If a player’s
experience is only from Magic: The Gathering, he’s only going to see things in M:TG
terms. If he’s from the world of Legend of the Five Rings, he’s used to the pace
and mechanics L5R takes on. This could be a testament to how unique the DBZ/GT TCG
is, because these playtesters had a really hard time getting to a high-level. It
wasn’t that the mechanics were confusing but that they were so drastically different
than what they were used to. This happened very frequently with Scott Hadsal (Leader
of the Samurai), Jake “The Lumberjack” and Ryan “Atkins” Carter, as well as their
other L5R buddies. While Ryan and Jake sped up in front of the pack, the rest of
them were severely lagging behind.
A great example was how they actually made themselves a laughing stock of every
playtester that had ever touched DBZ before entering the building. During one of
our earlier playtest meetings, they announced they had found something “extremely
broken” with the game, all excited like they found the next Stroke Deck (If you
get that M:TG reference, two points for you!). What they revealed were that cards
like Power Up The Most were too broken in the game. Why? Because you could never
deck out. You could just keep recycling cards like Power Up The Most and always
be able to put cards back into your deck. Every single DBZ player in the room bursted
out into laughter. I myself even needed to hold back my smirk.
Every Dragon Ball Z player knows this is a terrible idea. Sure, you can constantly
keep yourself afloat from naturally drawing yourself out, but all it takes is a
single attack and your screwed, or you will in no way be able to stop your opponent
from completing his Dragon Ball set or winning combo. But in games like Legend of
the Five Rings, this is extremely powerful. Having the chance to recycle cards back
into your otherwise empty fate deck or play deck drastically changes your position
in the game. Doing the same in DBZ does not.
It’s not to say that their comments did not have worth… well, not these specific
comments, but other things that were brought up did have value. A good game designer
just has to recognize the perspective his playtesting advice is coming from. Some
things may not be so bad, but their previous experiences may paint the situation
differently in their head. Take with a grain of salt anything that seems to come
more from a previous game than your game. For example, if they start talking about
The Stack (and your game doesn’t have one), you know that’s a Magic taint. If your
game works without a stack and you don’t have a pseudo-stack predominantly through
the game, don’t add one. (And for the record, I do not count Trunks Energy Sphere
as adding a Pseudo-stack to the game).
In the end, it’s all about recognizing what type of person each playtester is, so
you can evaluate their advice and apply it best to your game. Beware of ownership
of decks, as a playtester could be unnaturally biased towards what defeats those
decks. Always listen to everyone’s advice before reacting, as the general consensus
may be drastically different than one single person crying wolf. And most of all,
learn when to listen and when to stand your ground. If everybody in the room is
complaining about something, it probably needs to be changed, regardless what you
think of it. But if only a portion want to set your game in a certain direction
because that’s what they feel it should be, resist them if it is not your vision.
Not every game needs a stack, or resources, or card advantage, or many other standards.
It’s up to YOU if you want those to matter or even see the light of day in your
game.
Dragon Ball GT: Graphical Revamp
So Carl Braun was practically giddy with the thought about experimenting with the
card designs. Without any gameplay input, he tried all sorts of interesting ideas.
While most didn’t see the light of day, some of them were a bit remarkable. It was
because of Carl’s experimentations that gave me the idea for 16 power stages and
endurance on every card. He even found a wicked cool way to combine the Z-Scouter
and Anger Sword into 1 piece, having a little window tucked in the Z to show your
anger level.
But once the experimentation was over and it was time to solidifying the card designs,
the story changes its pace. Jonathan, being the “man in charge” wanted to help out
one of his friends: Todd Cowden. Now Todd was a pretty cool dude and made tons of
neat websites for us (all of the original DBZ and Buffy sites after Trunks Saga
were his). So Jonathan allowed Todd to also experiment and come up with a few card
designs. Then we would pool Carl’s designs and Todd’s designs together and pick
which we thought were best. This did not go over so well, as it was obvious to everyone
that Carl felt his territory was being impeded upon. He was the Lead Graphics Artist,
Todd just did websites. Who was this guy to step up and challenge his designs?
At the fated meeting, there were 8 designs total that we got to choose from. Todd
Cowden presented 3 different styles and Carl had 5 different card sets with the
help of Garyt (the most he’s ever made for a TCG, then and now). The look on Carl’s
face as priceless, a golden Kodak moment. While we eventually went with one of Carl’s
designs, he was clearly flustered from what Todd had produced. Worse yet, the room
was initially warming up to Todd’s artwork, with Jonathan leading the way (surprise).
In fact, it probably was Jonathan trying to lead the charge to pick one of Todd’s
pieces that made me not only side with Carl but made sure his design got picked.
This was clearly a power play by Jonathan and I was going to make a stand somewhere.
I also started to feel a bit bad for Carl. While a small part of me was smug because
Carl was being shown up at his own game (should have taken Chaz’s advice as lessons,
shouldn’t ya?!?), this just wasn’t right. Carl was our Lead Designer, and he alone
should be the one making those artistic calls. A game designer should have some
input, but he’s the one lifting the weights and doing the work. Carl shouldn’t be
going through this – Todd should be giving Carl the designs and Carl makes the call
what to show us. I really felt for him. I mean, how would I feel if someone was
trying to show me up and take my job?
Oh wait…
Yu Yu Haku and the IQ Coup
While it did not exactly happen at this time, this is probably the best place to
talk about the departure of my dear friend, IQ. While I placed a disclaimer before
I started writing, I just want to repeat again that this is all from my perspective.
Anything I say about what IQ was thinking comes from my view, and I will try to
do so as little as possible. If he feels I took him the wrong way, IQ is free to
post in the message board (or even this site) his perspective of the events, and
I will modify the following to fit such. But this was a big stepping point in the
company, and I feel my writing would be incomplete without mentioning these events.
It would also be helpful to have a little bit of perspective into IQ’s ideas of
Game Design. While I eventually moved on to different philosophies, IQ primarily
held our “Androids Saga” methodology intact, not only through the end of the Dragon
Ball Z TCG playtesting but in the Yu Yu Hakusho TCG as well. This idea is based
on the “Triangle” theory, involving 3 top tier decks. Probably the easy philosophy
to fit into your game, the premise is all about the “Best Deck” and what beats it.
So let’s say there’s a super powerful best deck in the game (Deck A). Well, if you
design your set right and tweak the cards correctly, you should have some deck that
could beat the super powerful deck (Deck B). But Deck B isn’t that super powerful
deck and therefore has to lose to something (Deck C), otherwise it would be Deck
A. So Deck B beats Deck A, Deck C (and others) beat Deck B, and Deck A beats down
Deck C and everything else in the environment.<
The reason this is such a big issue is not because of overall game design (because
there are much better philosophies), but in how you had to prove things to IQ himself.
IQ’s greatest strength is deck building, and because of these deck building skills
he could easily take another deck list and find its weaknesses. So whenever you
had some “broken” deck, IQ would create another deck and play your deck against
his. If IQ beat you, then you were obviously wrong…
So let’s rewind back to the meeting where my decision was taken away and was put
onto the DBGT TCG. Because Bill Dully put me onto the Dragon Ball GT revamp, IQ
was given Yu Yu Hakusho. It was no secret that he did not like the decision at all
– he wanted to be the designer of Dragon Ball. Chalk it up to the disagreements
we had when designing Yu Yu Hakusho, and mix it with the expectations that he was
going to get the Dragon Ball GT game, and its easy to see why he was pissed. The
way IQ reacted though, seemed that he felt that he hadn’t proved himself enough
to Dully, which is why he was given the “weaker game”. So IQ was set to go prove
his worth.
At first I thought it would just be him coming into the office in business clothes
and a tie every day, but how little did I know what was going to happen. IQ took
the entire box set of Yu Yu home to watch and brainstorm ideas over the weekend,
and he was supposed to come back Monday with most of Set 2 completed. When Monday
came around, though, he went way overboard. Not only was Set 2 finished, but he
had finished Sets 3 through 6 as well! He left 10-15 card slots open for each set
so he could add new cards as the game develops (and possibly make silver bullets
for decks being a problem), but other than that it was done. He just needed to do
the image capturing, and all of his work was practically complete.
I brought up to him that it wasn’t that good of an idea. You should see how your
game grows and design to that, and what you see now is not what your TCG will be
like a year from now. So how are you really going to know what’s going to be good
or not in a set released 1 to 2 years from now? But IQ didn’t care, he didn’t want
Yu Yu. If he could finish all of his work with Yu Yu Hakusho, then he would be in
line for whatever new game would be coming down the pipes, one he could call his
own.
While it was a major accomplishment to complete that many card designs in such a
little amount of time, it was apparent that the quality of his work would suffer.
It wouldn’t help that he didn’t want to use anything I had already made for the
game, like the 6 set plan listing out the new mechanics and card types for each
of the sets until the end of the show’s time line. He kept the limit of 6 sets and
what general periods that would cover, and threw everything else out the window.
That’s not to say that all of his ideas were bad, as the “King Cards” mechanic he
thought of was pretty ingenious for the game. But you could see in the effects after
awhile that his brain was exhausted, and he was just taking effects from previous
sets and just making them slightly stronger. But with all of his effort, IQ would
never be taken off of Yu Yu. Both Dan and Dully asked him to sit down and think
through his sets more, to more develop them. Try as he might, he was stuck to Yu
Yu for good.
Fast forward to the end of Dragon Ball GT playtesting. Except for Ryan Carter and
Keith, all of the L5R playtesters were sent home. But that would not be the last
time we would see them. Going into Yu Yu playtesting, Dan proposed using an outside
group to handle some playtesting for us. with the way he juggled the numbers, it
would be cheaper than having in house playtesters. But little did upper management
realize that this “company” was just Scott Hadsal and other L5R players forming
a playtesting group. IQ and I quickly got in the way of that happening, because
we felt our in house playtesters were much more valuable. But IQ took things a bit
farther.
It only took Dan being in the office 2 weeks before he started butting heads with
IQ. They would disagree about things constantly, but Dan would always end up the
winner playing the “Game Design Manager” card. But with Dan now trying to bring
in his buddies again, IQ felt threatened. Not that he was going to lose playtesters
he liked, but that Dan could just as easily replace HIM with one of his other friends.
Within 2 months, IQ was convinced that was Dan’s plan. Dan was going to come in
and replace him AND me with his friends and be completely running the show. In IQ’s
book, Dan just got promoted from adversary to mortal enemy. IQ was not about to
let some new guy take his game design position from him.
As instructed by Dully and my own conscious, I stood by IQ when the battles were
right. While he was being paranoid, some of his comments were very valid. We both
knew he had a silver tongue and was doing some shifty things, and always took his
L5R friends with more esteem than who we felt were our good players. At one point,
IQ became really fearful for reasons unknown to me. But it didn’t matter, because
Dan was beginning to get on my bad side as well. It wasn’t hard to see during Yu
Yu Hakusho’s Set 2 playtesting that he was trying to rally the troops on his side,
which could be used against both of us. So it was time to take things up to the
next level.
I go with IQ into a meeting with upper management, where IQ lays out his complaints.
While I did not agree with many of them, I never said a word. I was there to have
IQ’s back, just like he had mine. We were in this together, even if IQ didn’t want
it to be that way. The head of upper management below Bill Dully was a man by Dave
Nichols, one of the new men in upper management I had respect for. IQ was half way
through his speech when Dave ripped us 2 new holes in our backsides. Dave not only
couldn’t believe what IQ was saying, but felt we were being childish and let us
know that at the full volume of his voice.
What IQ didn’t know was after the meeting, I went up to Mr. Nichols and apologized.
After the apology, I explained my position and what my perspective was on the situation,
completely and truthfully. “Hey, I know some of the things IQ is saying is BS, but
there’s a political battle happening here. Dan does not have a halo, and has done
things to have IQ’s fear justified.” I explained some of the power plays I saw in
Yu Yu playtesting, where Dan would override IQ whenever his buddies wanted him to.
I come to find out a few months later that my speaking to Dave saved IQ’s job that
day. Why? Because Dan had already beaten us to the punch and had talked with them
about IQ, and it was my stepping out as the “third party” that Dave start to see
what the situation was really like. But things would just constantly heat up between
Dan and IQ, much to IQ’s detriment. It would become his Archilles’ Heel and how
he would fall during Yu Yu Set Three playtesting.
When a game designer’s brain becomes exhausted, often the new ideas that come to
his head deal with archetypes that he often utilizes as a player. This is just natural,
because that is what they are used. For example, my deck preferences have always
been aggro and tricky decks, like hand disruption (explains a few things, doesn’t
it?). IQ, on the other hand, is a control player, and will always be a control player.
That is the deck he can play the best, and few can rival his abilities in that area.
So when playtesting for Yu Yu Set Three happened, it was natural for the set to
have a decent amount of control cards.
What IQ didn’t realize was that he went a little overboard. Sure, control decks
need to exist in a game, but they were too strong. All of the decks in the game
were some control deck or another, and it was really hard to have a plain aggro
deck. But IQ never saw eye to eye with anybody on this. Every time a playtester
would come up to him with some overly powerful control deck, IQ would sit down and
build a new deck that could beat whatever was presented to him. This happened consistently,
giving IQ the impression that his playtesters were inferior. I mean, if they were
really finding broken stuff, then IQ wouldn’t be able to beat it so easily, would
he?
But the game was becoming a very sour point for all of the playtesters. They started
to hate playtesting the game, and were always complaining about the game. Dan took
advantage of this, and rallied the playtesters together. Soon they all had a common
enemy – IQ. I would say that things would have changed if IQ understood this, but
in a weird way I think he did because he definitely thought of them as the common
enemy after some time. He thought the playtesters were inferior to him (see Buffy
playtesting), so how could he be wrong and they be right? This was all that Dan
needed to leverage most of the game’s division against him.
So we come to a fateful meeting with Dan, IQ, and all of the playtesters. The were
going through the entire set, card by card, talking about if it should stay or not.
And as the third party, I could see both sides a bit screwed up. On one hand, this
was IQ’s game. If IQ wanted it to be control focused, then it’s going to be that
way. The playtesters do not get to choose the direction of the game, the game designer
does. On the other hand, IQ should have been the better man and understood that
nobody is perfect, including himself. Just concede a few battles, change a few card
effects that they are all complaining about, and the entire situation would have
been quelled. But it didn’t go that way. The meeting lasted all day, and when they
walked out of the room everybody looked like someone pissed in their Cheerios. I
don’t know everything that happened in the meeting, only the hearsay of both sides.
Now during this entire time, I had been doing my best to be the good friend to IQ.
Even though he had pushed me away before and we have had our conflicts, I tried
to be there for him. But IQ at this point was ignoring me. I would give him my input
and advice, and he would just nod his head and forget it 5 minutes later. So this
one time, I didn’t step in. This was something that needed to happen, I thought.
IQ and the playtesters needed to get this off their chest so the game can be better
and get over this hurdle. Oh how wrong I was…
So when I come in the office the next morning, you could see the shock on my face
and the smell of my recently stained pants to see IQ’s desk completely empty. As
in, everything is all gone, not even a pen cap or card left on the desk. So I immediately
go to Bill Dully to find out what’s going on, because this was normal. Apparently,
IQ had talked with the HR people the previous night about his situation, and he
took his stuff home to think. At that time, he really thought he was going to quit,
thus why his stuff was packed. But by morning, he saw the folly in his thoughts
and came back to the building with his stuff.
But clearing his desk would be all upper management needed, or more importantly
Dan. The company didn’t want to put up with the “drama” anymore, and they were not
about to let IQ pull off some play where he’s “threatening the company that he is
going to quit”. IQ already did most of the work for them, so all they needed to
do was turn off his key. And like that, IQ was no longer employed by Score Entertainment.
One of the oddest feelings in life is to be the saddest person in the room while
everyone else is filled with glee. I felt so bad and sorry because I should have
been there for him. I should have been in that meeting and diffused the situation.
I would be the only one that would miss IQ in the office, even to this day. But
no time for that now, I had a new mission. Dan would slip up, some way, some how.
Nobody hurts one of my friends, and the vengeance would come ten fold. I didn’t
know how I was going to do it then, but I was not going to let IQ go unavenged.
And then I was approached by “Macho Man”…
Super 17 Saga
Because of all the drama with IQ and Dan filling my brain, I actually don’t remember
too much about this set. In fact, it would probably be the least memorable set that
I could think of, as all the other expansions are a bit more vivid in my head. But
here is what I do remember.
Since the first set had been released, the goal was to just generally expand upon
the first set and solidify decks that needed some improvement. But there were 2
decks that I focused on in making sure they were kept in check: Red Rush and Orange
Ally. The Red Rush deck is pretty obvious – it was one of the fastest decks in the
game. Based on our playtesting, it was at just the right level. But if Red Rush
gained anything more powerful than its current arsenal, it could be too overpowered.
But there was a much larger focus on Orange Ally. From Set 1 playtesting and the
cards designed in set 2, I knew that the Orange Ally deck was setting the bar. There
was some ally hate sprinkled throughout the sets in order to fight it, but if Orange
Ally was left unchecked it would be a powerhouse in the late game. I resisted every
urge to put a “The Plan” card in Set 2 to wipe out all allies, mainly because of
how I wanted the environment to play out at the time. While I could prevent Red
Rush from gaining power, I could not do so with Orange Ally because there’s no way
to not make new personality cards. So instead, I made sure there were multiple decks
that could beat it, and playtesting showed that there were ways to do it. It basically
came up to winning before Orange Ally could get too setup, so it had issues with
Red Rush and Saiyan Blitz (although Blitz had a much harder time than Red Rush did).
And funny enough, just about any variant of Blue Dr. Myuu seemed to make Orange
Ally cry. So by the time that playtesting was finished, I felt that the deck was
really strong but had other decks in the environment to keep it in check.
The only other major memorable memory from this set is my view of Kieth. It was
around this time that I began to gain a great amount of respect for Kieth. He was
part of the L5R crew, but didn’t act like it. He actually learned DBZ/DBGT and was
better than the entire rest of the group. What raised my respect was how fast his
gaming ability was growing. He was the only L5R player that could see DBZ at a high
level. Now, he couldn’t play at that high level with someone such as Kunk, but he
could at least see things at that level. Unknown to everybody, he became one of
my key playtesters – I finally had someone that could talk theory yet was new to
the game and therefore not “tainted” completely by DBZ from years before. This different
perspective was invaluable to the game, and I think DBGT would be a much poorer
game without all of his input. He won’t tell you, but he really is a badass.
Last but not least, I was already preparing for the Shadow Dragon Saga. Many really
good ideas were pushed back to the third set in preparation, and no new mechanics
were designed specifically because what was about to happen with the set. If things
went as they should have, Shadow Dragon Saga would change everything people felt
about the Dragon Ball GT game, and Score itself. I was right, but for the wrong
reasons…
In The Shadow Of Darkness
When I first started working on the Dragon Ball GT TCG, I knew exactly how much
content we were going to get out of the set. After watching the entire (horrible)
series, I knew that we had exactly 5 sets to get out of the episodes. Since FUNimation
released the Baby Saga first, we would follow the story arcs with them, thus providing
Baby, Super Android 17, and Shadow Dragon sets. We could then go back to the first
16-some-odd episodes that FUNimation skipped and make another set from that. The
5th set would then be an “Anthologies” set reusing anything from the show he hadn’t
used, upon which we would be back to where we were at the end of Kid Buu.
With this in mind, I knew that the “cycle” needed to end on that 5th set. Furthermore,
I became tired of hearing the player’s complaints about our sets coming out too
fast to collect and get used to. So I was determined to fix this with Shadow Dragon.
Starting with Set 3, game would change its release schedule. We would slow down
to 3 sets a year, with one major big set and 2 much smaller sets very similar to
Magic’s block structure around the Tempest and Urza Saga blocks.
But didn’t Score already do that? In a way, but now it would be much more focused.
To emulate Magic, ALL of the new mechanics for the entire block would be introduced
in the core set, and the next 2 expansions would just expand upon those ideas. If
we kept all of the new mechanics in Set 3, we wouldn’t need to print out new rules
fliers and the rulebook for Shadow Dragon could actually be valid beyond the set
it was printed in! Amazing! This idea evolved into the 5 mechanics you see in the
Shadow Dragon Set today. With 5 new mechanics, one focused with each fighting style
(although they would all get sprinkled around all the styles), there would be plenty
of mechanics to play around with and create new effects off of for the following
two sets.
Things didn’t go too well with the playtesting group when this idea was first introduced,
but once many of them understood my “master plan”, they began to more focus on the
mechanics themselves. There were only 2 of the new mechanics the playtesters had
a problem with – Masked and Augment.
Many of the playtesters rejected the masked mechanic as soon as they saw it, mainly
because of cheating. I was still on my “playing cards upside-down kick” so I really
wanted this mechanic to exist in the game. The idea of making your opponent block
BEFORE they knew exactly what the attack was inserted a cool mind game. We eventually
worked out the kinks, although I think that some playtesters such as Kunk still
hated the idea.
The problem with Augmenting wasn’t so much that the mechanic had too many problems
or was over powerful. Nay, the playtesters never fully understood what the mechanic
did, in partial thanks to Will Harper. The Blue Fighting Style was heavily focused
around Non-Combat cards, so I wanted them to have some type of card advantage that
focused on Non-Combat cards. Since Blue was also a bit of a “Late Game Color”, something
that gained more power over time seemed to fit well. But even after I clarified
to the playtesters what the mechanic did, they became confused because of the wording
on the mastery card.
For those that are STILL confused as to what this mechanic does, here’s a great
example. Let’s say you have a card that says “Augment a wish card.” So what you
would do is choose one of your cards in play with “Wish” in the title and then play
any copies of that card directly out of your discard pile. Simple, no? So how does
the Mastery fit in (aka what the hell does that card do)? The Mastery grants 2 effects:
The first effect was that the card you wanted to augment didn’t need to be in play.
So with “Augment a wish card” you could name “Blue Underwear Wish” without it needing
to be in play. The second effect would let you search your deck for the cards instead
of the discard pile… Yes, the Blue Mastery turned Augment into a tutor effect,
allowing you to name some card and play all 3 copies directly from your deck. No
waiting for your discard pile to fill up, just go get those cards! But Will Harper
NEVER liked my wording of the card’s effect, so he kept constantly changing the
text while trying to keep the effect the same. Every time Will changed the text,
nearly all the playtesters asked me what the new effect was, followed by a face
palm when I told them it did the exact same thing as before. So thanks, Will, for
making this the most confusing Mastery ever. If I could show a middle finger in
writing, I would.
The entire goal was to shift the game into this new block structure, and to do so
would require Shadow Dragon to be huge. The Shadow Dragon Saga would need to be
able to “feed” the game for at least a year, if not longer. To compensate for the
size, Sets 4 and 5 would be smaller than they previously had been. It was because
of this decision that some changes were made in the set, the biggest of which was
doubling the number of Ultra-Rare cards from 4 to 8, which would become one of the
most complained about aspects of the set. This was done to compensate how future
expansions would be “drawn down”, with the plan of only having 1 Ultra-Rare in the
future expansions. The first 7 Ultra-Rares were pretty easy and, for the first time,
attacks would be made and designed to be Ultra-Rares instead of picking the best
out of the bunch. The level 6 personalities were thought of because in the story,
Goku and Syn Shenron would be the most powerful fighters in Dragon Ball Cannon,
and therefore deserved a level that only they could reach. The next 5 Ultra-Rares
would be designed for the fighting styles, each one getting something awesome. I
also finally caved and made a “The Plan” card because of everybody’s comments about
Ally decks, both Blue and Orange. I really didn’t want to, but it eventually had
to be done. But I made the effect a Combat card instead of Non-Combat for other
effects in the set, like the new Trunks Energy Sphere cards.
These new Trunks Energy Sphere cards caused the most uproar in playtesting, and
definitely sparked some philosophical debates about the game. The main issue was
not that the new Trunks Energy Spheres were made, as the playtesters had been asking
for them since Baby Saga. Instead, the issue was that not a single one of the cards
had “If you declared a Tokui-Waza”. On one side were people that hated the idea
of Freestyle, with Kunk leading this group. These players did not want Freestyle
to gain this much power, as packing 15 Trunks Energy Spheres to shut down Combat
cards AND gain effects was really really good. “Freestyle’s advantage should not
be that it gets to play whatever it wants”. The other camp was headed by myself,
which completely contradicted the previous statement. One of the things I didn’t
like about Dragon Ball was that you had to have a Mastery card to have a good deck.
There was not a single good deck in the entire game since Mastery cards were introduced
that was top tier and didn’t need a mastery card or a Tokui-Waza. I wanted players
to be able to actually make one of these fabled “Masteryless decks”, and I felt
that Freestyle should have the advantage of playing whatever it wants. In effect,
that was its Mastery Card (”You can ignore fighting styles when building your deck”).
This debate raged for weeks, until I finally compromised. Three of the Trunks Energy
Spheres (the most powerful in the freestyle decks used in playtesting) would gain
“If you declared a Tokui-Waza” while the two others would stay “clean”. This let
Freestyle decks still play with double the number of Spheres, but would appease
those like Kunk. Too bad we would never find out how it would play out.
The last of the major cards were the new Cracked Dragon Balls. Like before, my goal
was to keep in the same power level as the Earth Dragon Balls. This time, I wanted
to have a bit of a twist. With all of the Dragon Ball sets before it, Dragon Balls
were effectively one shot effects. Once you played the Dragon Ball and used it,
the Dragon Ball would simply be a token in play for your opponent to steal from
you. I wanted these Dragon Balls to have more of an impact, to actually have something
going on while you still controlled them. Personally dubbed the “Drill Dragon Balls”,
these cards were given good initial effects but then a “Constant Effect” so you
would continually gain bonuses from them. The idea worked well, but I did too good
of a job with the previous set of Dragon Balls. A few decks used the Cracked Dragon
Balls, but most others deferred to other sets.
The final major goal was to complete the Three Set Theorem Baby Saga was already
out on the market and I could see how players were reacting to the game. Taking
player feedback from Baby Saga, Shadow Dragon was molded to help fix what players
had issues with. Yet another reason for “The Plan” Ultra-Rare. But it was at this
point that I wanted the game to be fully balanced. Unfortunately, some of the Mastery
cards were falling way behind and would need some type of good boost in order to
help them out. This is why there were many personalities specifically designed towards
deck archetypes – I made sure that every Mastery got a new personality that would
specifically benefit. Examples would be Naturon Shenron for Ally decks, or Nappa
being a beast with Saiyan Supreme. In fact, Nappa Supreme ended up being my favorite
deck out of the Shadow Dragon Saga. It jumped around to all of his levels launching
tons of attacks, taking advantage of Nappa “forgetting” to use his power to change
levels, all the while constantly refilling his Life Deck again.
At the end of playtesting, we rounded up all of the playtesters and sat down to
rate all of the decks. “If you were going to play in a tournament today for lots
of cash, what decks would you consider Tier 1?” was the focus of the meeting. While
not everyone agreed, we eventually fleshed out a list. All of the fighting styles
had at least 1 deck considered “Tier 1″ except for the Blue Fighting Style, which
apparently was still getting the gimp end of the stick. But there were only 4 decks
listed as Tier 3 or below, with 2 decks being listed as “Tier 1.5″ (They were beefier
than all the decks listed in Tier 2 and below, but it just had terrible match ups
against the 4 decks considered “Tier 1″). With this response, I felt appeased that
all of my hard work was for naught, that this set would fully realize my vision
for how the Dragon Ball GT should be. Too bad most of the players never got to play
the set.
In fact, I almost was fired by Jonathan personally. Jonathan and upper management
had set the release date of the Shadow Dragon Saga to be 2 weeks after the World
Championships at GenCon. He “didn’t want to screw the players by releasing a set
a month before Worlds” was his excuse. But I wouldn’t have it. We did not spend
so much time working and tweaking the Shadow Dragon Saga to get pushed off. I, like
many, were hearing that many players were going to quit after the World Championships
because of everything Score had done, from the “Type I/Type II” debacle to the way
the sets were playing out. The player base felt the Ally decks were the best and
nothing could stop them, and they were losing patience. So I fought for the Shadow
Dragon Saga to be released 2-3 weeks before Worlds. The environment needed it, and
if the set didn’t come out before the World Championships, nobody would ever see
the true Shadow Dragon environment. By the time any new tournaments would have come
around, new sets would be released and the Shadow Dragon environment would cease
to exist. So I fought, loudly and vocally. The set was finished and could have been
release, but Jonathan held it back. Eventually both Jonathan and Juddy got tired
of it, and in the middle of the office in a wide open area specifically told me
if I ever brought the issue up again, I would be fired. As in kicked out the door,
don’t look back. Jonathan valued my skill as a game designer, but “you kids are
a dime a dozen, and we have an entire group of players that would die to design
the game they loved. You are not, and never will be, needed and are easily replaceable.
So what’s it going to be, David?”. I quietly sat down at my desk, never again to
forget those words that came from Jonathan’s mouth…
Gen Con and the Mezzo Disaster
So GenCon was coming up fast, and everybody in the office was making preparations
for our biggest convention stop of the season. Normally this is the convention that
we have to work the hardest, game designers included. But Juddy came over told us
that we didn’t really have to work at GenCon – The Game Designers (now including
others like Garret since IQ was fired) didn’t have to work. Our only responsibility
was to judge the finals match at the World Championships. Aik would be running the
show, and we were free to do whatever we wanted.
“So does this mean we get to play in tournaments?” Juddy let me know I could do
whatever I wanted, even get a hooker if it wasn’t on the company dime. “So, to restate,
I can play in a TCG tournament, even if it is a competitor’s?” I was given a green
light. Finally, I could get back into the scene and flop some cardboard! Not only
that, but I could prove to some naysayers that I was actually good, if not better,
than them. My ego wouldn’t allow any other conclusion.
At the time, the development group had been cracking into Upper Decks’ VS System
(before all the bad decisions). If you don’t know much about this game, you’re going
to want to skip the next 3 paragraphs. We really tried to break that game, but to
no avail. Instead, we found the best deck in the environment. This super deck came
in the form of what was termed at the time “Big Brotherhood”, but our variant was
different than what was on the Internet, and it was the best. 7-8 copies of every
duped character, and every single Plot Twist upped ATK or DEF except for Salvage
and Overload (We knew about Savage Beatdown/Overload 1-2 months after the game was
released). The most contentious points of the deck beyond maxing out the number
of copies of Mystic, Sabertooth, Quicksilver, and Magneto was the very late inclusion
of Savage Beatdown and 2 other characters: 4-Blob instead of the bird dude due to
the 9 defense and everybody crying when Lost City Pumps him, and 2-Pyro. The deck
consistently beat every Doom variant by turn 6 (Thank you Pyro and Flying Kick),
beat “Small Brotherhood” because of its natural beef, had about a 70/30 win rate
against Fantastic Four, and beat X Men every single time (but I guess any deck could
do that). Here’s a perfect example: I’m playing against Garret’s Fantastic Four
Deck. Garret was at 40 HP to my 3 HP with a 5-Thing, 6-Invisible Woman, 7-Thing
all with Fantasticars staring me down. All I had was 4-Sabertooth, 5-Magneto, and
5-Quicksilver.
This was my planned deck for the VS System Pro Circuit, which I qualified for in
a local tournament with Wild Vomit (Longshot/Sentinel). But with the inclusion of
the DC set, there was one deck even our Big Brother deck couldn’t beat – Teen Titans…
Or more specifically, that damnable Roy Harper. without Roy Harper, it would have
been a non-issue, but I could not get around those guns. I could out pump him during
combat, but he could just gank them once combat was over and Lost City lost its
effect. So I changed to the new “Best Deck” – Batman.
Batman really broke the flow of how the VS system worked. Packing 4 Fizzles and
4 Utility Belts won you games on their own. All you needed to do was counter whatever
character search effect they used, forcing your opponent to miss playing the biggest
character he can for the turn, therefore losing the game. Easily 1 out of 3 games
were won because the opponent was denied tutoring for a character and meeting his
curve. This wouldn’t be an issue in a game where 2+2=4, but VS is more like 2+2+2+2=4,
a mechanical flaw my deck was trying to take advantage of. Utility Belt was also
the bane of Teen Titans, which would be prevalent at the Pro Circuit Toss in 4 Savage
Beatdown/Overloads, a few Kabooms, and the rest of the standards and I had a mean
aggro/control deck that had a fairly good win percentage and didn’t have a single
bad matchup.
All of us that qualified felt pretty confident for the tournament, primarily because
of our friend IQ. While he was no longer at Score, he wasn’t totally out of our
lives. He picked up the game and built some average control deck with the Fearsome
Five and done so well at a Qualifier to make waves will all of Upper Deck’s press.
Back home we actually playtested against that deck, and repeatedly stomped it into
the ground. If they couldn’t take IQ’s deck, they couldn’t handle us. While I don’t
remember the records of others myself, I went 7-3 losing 1 game to utter stupidity
on my behalf (”Yeah, 4-Doom shuts off your resource row, so I better keep this Savage
Beatdown/Overload in my hand”), 1 game to missing my curve (No 2 or 3 drop, 4-Batgirl
has loyalty, so I lost with my lone 5-Batman), and one really close match to Arkham
of all decks (No character tutor to counter).
My most memorable match was against DBZ’s own Tim Batow, who had jumped out at GT
and as playing VS. Once I was the game designer of his game, now I was his opponent.
Both packing Batman decks, we took the game to the 11th inning. I think it was turn
14, both of us with the ridiculous 8-Superman and 7-Batman in play when I finally
poked through enough damage and sunk Batow below 0. It kinda feels good to prove
to someone you rock when they’ve been thinking/saying you suck for a long time.
I ended up walking away with $750 after going 5-4 in the draft (would have done
better if I had actually done a VS draft before). I even had my “nemesis” matchup
against Scott Gerhardt’s girlfriend/wife which lasted 1 1/2 hours and delayed the
tournament by going into sudden death, only to scoop it from her with Teen Titans
Go. You have no idea how refreshing it was to finally be able to play in a major
tournament after all of those years. I was so focused that a barely kept in mind
our own major tournament…
Barring checking in from now and then, I was pretty much hands off with the World
Championships. When the Top 4 came around, Tim Mezzo (sp?) came up to me. One of
our more vocal and passionate players, he was begging to be a playtester. He asked
that if he won the World Championships if we would hire him as a playtester. I told
him that I couldn’t say yes or no, but we had culled playtesters from our best players
before. I wished him good luck and wandered into the attention of other players.
Because the Shadow Dragon Saga had not been released (and because somehow all the
Red Rush decks lost), Ally decks were conquering the top cut. It came time for the
finals match, and I was summoned to judge.
The finals matchup was against Tim Mezzo and some other guy who’s name escapes me,
so we will call him “Bob”. Both Tim and Bob were packing Ally decks, so it was going
to be a long set. We had three judges for the match – Aik watched over Tim, Garrett
supervised “Bob”, and I was the center judge. Aik and Garrett were both writing
down every card drawn by their players, but I was oblivious to each player’s hands
and instead focused more on the general play on the board. The games were generally
close. Tim won the first match and barely lost the 2nd by not drawing defenses.
Tim eventually scooped out the final game and was the new World Champion, winning
our new Champion Card, money, and other prizes. Hoorays for all.
I come to find out that this ended up being a fixed match, and that Tim Mezzo was
willing to give “Bob” all of the money and prizes if he would throw the match, just
so that he could be the winner and use it to try and be a Score playtester. At first
I was shocked. How could this be? There were 3 of us watching! But then Garrett
mentioned how he did think some plays were a little fishy, but chalked it up more
towards “Bob”’s bad playing than him throwing the match, especially at certain times
where “Bob” had Epic Battles but didn’t use it to stop a barrage of attacks (Garrett
thought he was saving it for another turn). But, there was enough proof in the pudding
to condemn Tim, so his title was revoked and prizes withdrawn, including Super Dragon
Fist. The very last World Championships of Dragon Ball GT would end in utter failure.
What a terrible way to go out.
There’s Villainy Afoot!
We conclude this generation with the departure of our Game Design Manager, the first
and the last. While I could not have done this alone (and indeed, it would not have
been possible without others), I feel good inside for being involved with this.
Some things may be considered “dirty” to some, but I was able to avenge IQ with
tasty blade of sweet, sweet justice. So IQ baby, if you are reading this, this one’s
for you.
So we’re out at The Church, which is the Lizard Lounge in Dallas on Thursdays and
Sunday nights. You know, the local place where Goth’s go drink and the drama queens
can try to be outcasts amongst outcasts. The general crew had gone out drinking
for the evening, with Dan Tibbles bringing his current fling along, busting it out
epic style on the dance floor. I remember Cole, Garrett, and I were sitting in the
balcony people watching when I received a text message from “Macho Man” (name changed
to protect the awesome). Macho Man told me that some devious things were going on
at Score that I should be aware of. I ask why this is over text instead of the phone
or in person, and Macho Man responded with paranoia of Dan finding out. So we agreed
to talk at a later time.
What Macho Man had to tell me was huge. Dan Tibbles had been working to steal Dragon
Ball GT cards and sell them over Ebay. During his tenure at Score Entertainment,
Dan had worked his way around to pick up additional “responsibilities”, one of such
being the Inventory Warehouse Manager. Everyone was so oblivious to what was going
on, especially since so many people had trusted him, that Dan was literally walking
out the front door with boxes of Ultra-Rares. He was even on camera, waltzing out
the front door. He had gotten so busy with his “business” that he had to get additional
help, which is where Macho Man came in. But after a short period of time, Macho
Man started feeling awful about everything and wanted to come clean. He knew what
he was doing was wrong and he wanted to right it.
I was so pissed, thousands of angels were incinerated from being too close to the
heat coming from the depths of my soul. Not only did this little dwarf changed everything
up with the Games Division (including getting IQ fired), but he was stealing off
of us and making a heaping profit too. Dan’s actions flooded the market and kept
the general prices of GT cards, including Ultra-Rares, at very low prices. With
an unlimited supply, Dan could hand out whatever he wanted at his prices. So he
got my friend fired, stole from my company, and was damaging the value of my game?
Oh nonononono. It was time to smite that bugger off the face of this Earth. I was
pissed at Macho Man for 3 seconds, but then realized how much of a man he was coming
up to me and confessing. Tack on that he gave me the iceberg I needed to sink Dan’s
Titanic, and I couldn’t help but want to snap into his Slim Jim (two points if you
get the reference).
But I had learned from the battles in the past, and Dan would not go down easily.
He is quite wily and as soon as he would get window of this, he we surely try to
find a way to stop it. I couldn’t just go up to Dave Nichols and say “Dan’s on camera
stealing cards”, because that’s to easy to dismiss. Dan could play it off that he
needed to take some promos for a convention or some other ridiculous reason, his
silver tongue lashing away at his defense. No, I needed more hard proof to present.
Something that would tie Dan to everything and mark him as the Mastermind. Macho
Man wouldn’t be enough, but with the help of others a plan was formed.
In the end, you can’t imagine how great of a plan this ended up being and how well
it worked. With the help of Garrett and Kieth, we were able to have Dan’s apartment
willingly unlocked while he was away. Under the guise of “getting some D&D books”
so Dan wouldn’t freak if anything moved, a group of 4 of us entered Dan’s apartment.
Inside was a wealth of DBZ, DBGT, and L5R cards and, well, not much else. Dan didn’t
have any furniture except for a bed, table, and 2 chairs I think. We took pictures
of all the cards, making sure that they were not only visible but within picture
shot of things that was clearly under Dan’s ownership, as to not think we fakes
the pictures. In less than 7 minutes we were in and out with all the evidence we
needed. That evening we toasted and drank for victory!
My only regret is what would happen next with Macho Man. One of the assurances with
Macho Man coming forward is that he would be protected from any trouble, no police,
no nothing. Unharmed if you will. Because he had been such a man coming forward,
I gave him my word I would do anything I could to protect him. The next morning,
I take Dave Nichols and Juddy into a conference room and show him our evidence and
spill the beans. I repeatedly focus that we would not have caught this without the
help of Macho Man, and he should not be implicated. In fact, if he would be, he
wouldn’t step forward with his information and a good chunk of proof would be lost.
Dave had a very grave look upon his face, and after 15 minutes asked me to leave
the room as he talked this over with Bill Dully. I asked if he understood about
Macho Man, and Dave told me he would be safe. I walked out of the room all stout
and chivalrous, because I knew I started knocking down the dominoes that would fall
on Dan’s head.
When Dan got into the office, the upper management took him aside to one of the
rarely used conference rooms for a “talk”. Dan would end up confessing, knowing
what was happening as soon as they asked to talk with him. They seized his laptop
and found only a month’s worth of records, clearly in the thousands. Dan would be
fired and forced (so I’m told) to repay the full amount that they found on his laptop.
His laptop was then cleaned of any and all company information, returned to him,
and he was sent packing. Unfortunately, the two other people involved (”Macho Man”
and “The Dude”) would also be fired, and quickly kicked out the door. As soon as
I saw them doing this to Macho Man, I tried to stop it. But it was under direct
orders from Bill Dully himself that anybody involved with the mess be quickly evicted
from the building. The sugary taste of win was filled with the sour taste of a kick
in the balls. I gave him my word. And now, after being so awesome, he was forced
to pay the price. I drank myself to sleep that night and would never be the same.
If you are reading this Macho Man, I owe you one. It’s the least I could do.
Funny enough, there were no charges pressed against any of the three individuals
involved. While I was glad that The Dude and Macho Man were to get some respite,
I was very puzzled as to why Dan didn’t get reamed even further. Why not make an
example of him, to scare away others from doing the same thing? He did the heinous
crime, so he deserves the maximum penalty. But Bill Dully himself had stepped in
and strictly forbade this from reaching the ears of police and investigators. Dully
mentioned that he didn’t want the image of the company to be tarnished, and that
by firing all three of them and having Dan repay the money he made (although it
was only 1 month’s worth of cards and he had been doing it for at least 3) was a
suitable punishment to keep others from doing it again. But as I would soon learn,
people that high in power always have ulterior motives…
Next time on Score Anthologies: Dragon Ball GT: Beginning or Middle of the Semester
Edition!
With the Don given the boot out the door, Score now has to come together and regroup
to pick up the pieces. But with Dan and IQ gone, who would fill in those positions?
Who is this new Titan that has come to be the new leader of the division? And what’s
so special about some guy with pointy ears and really long silver hair? All this
and more on the next Score Anthologies!
Wow! I read all of that and it did not disappoint. This kind of stuff reminds me of my days playing the card game in high school and Walmart bureaucracy(when I worked there)all rolled up into one.
I really enjoyed this read. Is there anywhere I can read the prequel or sequel to this? if it exists of course. I would love to know more.
is it possible for the first articles n this series to be posted? they can’t be found online any more