Card game proposal--playable IRL?

Project Ideas & Discussion
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So, this is an idea that germinated in my head a while back, but only recently did I realize that this might be a game you can actually play in real life as long as you have a deck of cards, a partner to play with, and an unreasonable amount of food. Before I actually put out any kind of ruleset, though, I want to experiment with a prototype in Dulst and see what happens.

In the meantime, I want to get some feedback and ideas as to what kinds of rules and mechanics would be best for a game like this. So, without further ado, I want to explain what the base concept for this game is and how it might be played IRL. I don’t really have much experience with card games, so all I have atm is a premise and a few ideas for mechanics. If anyone has experience with Dulst, speak now or forever hold your peas. (The peas are hot and they will burn your hands.)

Premise

This is a character/creature-collecting-and-summoning game in the vein of Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or Hearthstone. The player character is a godlike entity who summons various characters (all of whom are hot babes, come on what do you take me for) to fight each other for some reason, idk. If I make this in Dulst, it’ll probably be something rather like Hearthstone, where you spend mana to summon characters and cast spells.

Here’s the twist: the goal isn’t to drop the other player’s HP to 0 by directly attacking them with spells or characters. Instead, every character has a stat called their “value,” representing their mass relative to the player characters. When characters are defeated, their “value” is subtracted from their owner’s “capacity”-in the game’s ludonarrative, this represents the players eating their characters. When your capacity drops to 0, this represents being full, and you lose.

This is more than a gimmick, and it would shape strategy with the use of food. These are a type of card separate from spells which can be given to both allied and enemy characters (or even players, in certain cases). When you give a character food, this will influence their stats and/or cost you mana, but it will also raise the target’s value. This means that every time you give a character food, you’re making a strategic choice: do you give it to your own characters, making them stronger but incurring a greater penalty on yourself if they are defeated? Or do you give it to an enemy, strengthening them but fattening them up to fill up your opponent?

Characters and art direction

I have no talent. Ergo, in order to actually depict the characters, I’d need to maverick together some pixel art based on a template. This requires me to actually find a good one, though. The ideal template would be something in 3/4 view to give a sense of space, though I’m fine with a head-on perspective.

As for what the art actually depicts, I don’t know how to do this in Dulst, but I’d like for the characters to change their appearance based on their current value (or capacity, for the player). You know what forum this is, I think you can guess what that entails.

The characters would consist of various iterations of monster girls and humans. I’m not 100% sure if Dulst allows NSFW content, but ideally I could get away with a bursting top and an exposed nip here or there as clothes rip and tear UNTIL IT IS DONE. There would, of course, be a variety of body types and outfits for characters.

Playing this IRL?

Bringing this game into the real world is feasible so long as the game itself is simple enough to keep track of without a computer. Even if it’s not, you can just set up an online match with a partner and work with the honor system.

Essentially, you can roleplay the “eating characters” system by assigning uniform pieces of food to the cards. When one is defeated, you eat a certain amount of food based on their value. Whenever you’ve had enough, you tap out and forfeit the game. If you run out of food, I guess it’s a draw?

Anyway, that’s all I can think to type for now, but I’m interested in what ideas you have for mechanics that would feel thematically appropriate and how I can go about implementing the features I want. I haven’t touched Dulst in years and I have no idea how it works anymore, but this should be fairly simple if I don’t try anything too deviated from the tutorial game Dulst automatically gives you.

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this is a pretty good idea

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when I was reading this I “predicted” that the value system would work in the opposite way. where the value would be how much “damage” that creature would do to the other hero/player if it attacked the hero (sacrificing the creature). that way you could have creatures specialized on attacking the hero or other creatures. it might just be needless complication but it might be interesting. it also makes more sense to me since the creature would force themselves to be eaten rather than the summoner going “well it’s dead, guess I have to eat it now”.

one mechanic that might be interesting would be to have a health system similar to the one in the red dragon inn (a game about a drinking competition). basically you can take damage by drinking or getting attacked. when your “drink” damage is higher then your hp you lose. but there should be a difference between the two damage types though, other than x attack does damage type A instead of B, so there is some strategy in doing one over another. like one of the damages get healed x amount every round, every attack of one type gets x damage resisted from every attack or something. having the creatures die do one type and the creatures attacking the hero do the other probably works well.
one good reason not to feature this (other than it might make things needlessly complicated again) would be that the game can end before someone gets to max fat (though then again there could be a mechanic to boost max hp)

another thing could be having specific heroes that you choose between like in the wow tcg. in that game the heroes dictate what cards you can have/play, how much hp you have and they also have a special ability on them (one gives you a bigger hand size even). most abilities are just pay x to flip the hero over and do a once a game spell , but some get buffed (or there creatures) when you flip them, summons a creature each turn or gain an ability (some can also flip back).

this might make milling (forcing opponent to draw/discard cards to empty their opponents deck) to strong, but if you draw more cards than you can hold then you are forced to eat them. I feel like if you would add this then you would have to make the game so when your deck is empty you shuffle the cards in the discard pile and start over, basically structured around milling or something.

if Dulst doesn’t allow nsfw content you could probably just do it in table top simulator instead (I don’t think they can stop you even if they wanted to).

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This is something I like as a mechanic or special ability, but I’m not sure it would work as the default manner of play. This would require a lot of big-brain design decisions and player strategy to work, and I want the gameplay to work out. I also wanted to preserve the usual card game mentality of not wanting your own units to die except in certain cases, so this was the most straightforward way to do it. Of course, rn it’s in the ideation phase and if I actually make it, I might end up having to turn this system around to your way, but we’ll see.

Yeah, I think that’s reason enough to not go through with that system. I kinda wanted a game about seeing who fattens up the other the fastest.

This is something I’ve considered, but currently don’t know how to approach, in part because I don’t know what mechanics this game should include beyond just what Hearthstone has.

A potentially interesting idea, but it ultimately sounds like an indirect way to just make your opponent eat, which you could just have spell/character effects for.

That costs moneeeeeyyyyy…

In any case, Dulst seems to permit “adult” games. The challenge is, well…figuring out how to make Dulst work. At all. Because the tutorials for Dulst are pretty bad, and it’s not exactly intuitive. The main things I need to figure out atm are how to change the art for a card in the middle of a game and how to trigger events based on/influencing stats besides HP, attack, or cost.

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This is an interesting conception, even including a sort of mind games behind how the players themselves behave. Do they go ahead and force their opponent to eat too much, or for themselves do they eat what isn’t their favorite first to allow for an easier time in the late game. If this were to be made I could even see this being used as a collab for some of the fat models when they do something together, just a fun way to see gameplay while pushing their opponents to the brim.

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Alright so, to everyone interested in this project: I think it’s doable! Some kind souls in the Dulst Discord helped me get this bullshit up and running, but essentially, the technical framework needed for this game is now operational:

  • Cards can now change their image based on their current stats. This will allow the player character (currently called the “Patron”) to have a sprite that gets bigger based on its current HP, and the “Disciple” cards can do the same based on their weight, which is the current name for their “value.”
  • Disciples can drop their Patron’s HP when they are defeated based on their weight.
  • Patrons pretty much don’t interact with other cards. They cannot be targeted by any Disciples with the “Combatant” keyword, and if I want to make a card that can attack Patrons for some reason (maybe to act as a suicide bomber of sorts), then I need only remove that keyword and add special rules for that card. Patrons can target other cards, but they have no attack stat and negate the damage they deal when they attack (they can only deal 1 damage without weapons, which I don’t intend to use in the game).
  • Dulst games are automatically created with a shitton of cards to act as templates, and I can just use these as references for any cards I want to add.

Figuring out how to do all this has taught me some very important lessons, the most important one being that Dulst fucking sucks. With the base framework available, however, I only need to make some temp art before I can actually start developing the game. This will take some time, and I don’t expect to be able to start soon, since I’m about to lose my job and I need to get job-hunting. Once I’m in a more stable situation, however, I may actually have news on this!

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one thought I have: is there anything stopping a player from not playing any disciples as a turtleing strategy? as I understand the rules you would be invincible if you don’t play disciples

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Good luck job hunting

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There’s 3 straightforward ways to get around this:

  • Dulst requires a minimum of 7 cards to a deck by default, and I can make it so that you can’t have any spells or food if you have no Disciples. This means you need a minimum of 1 Disciple card in your deck.
  • Only using spells can simply be a terrible way to deal damage, as the enemy will be able to utilize their own spells plus any unique capabilities offered by some Disciples, and most spells will target Disciples rather than Patrons.
  • There can also be mechanics that punish not having any Disciples and reward you for having some–for instance, a spell that can stuff the opponent if they have none to defend them, or another that heals based on the number of allied Disciples on the board.

Actually making these methods a reality may not be possible until playtesting can begin so I can balance the numbers, but the thinking rn is that not having a good selection of Disciples is just a bad strategy and only drags out the fight.

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or could make it where you need certain types of Disciples to use spells and having more of certain types or combos could boost the spell

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Card synergies are the heart and soul of the deck-building genre, and I would be a terrible dev if I didn’t try to create specific playstyles. Tying many spell and food functionalities to the Disciples is a necessary part of my to-do list, and I intend to write a “style guide” for the gameplay at some point.

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You could make Body Types like classes and Diets like Elements (like ETD) and have spells only be usable when the Right Type of Disciples exist forcing players to actively use Disciples and you could make it where powerful spells are high risk. However it is possible for this to end up like Pokémon where Comebacks are near impossible, which would have to be fixed by balancing.