#TCGs

[prokopetz]

Did you see that Magic: the Gathering now has a game state in which you need to prove that there are an infinite number of twin primes to win? I can explain it more if you are interested.

(With reference to this post here.)

By all means, please tell us about the Magic: the Gathering combo which requires proving the twin prime conjecture in order to win.

[forgottenbones]

[lilithsterrarium]

if you know of (or are making) a tcg, kink involved or not, i'd love to see them!! making a trading card game has long been a aspirition of mine and i would love to see lesser known projects <3

[varivahl]

They really made one of the most straightforward easy to play engaging tcgs with wild and amazing art and let it just die... twice... fuck wizards of the coast normal style but also fuck them extra style give me the duel masters license ill make it work you cowards

Look at some of this radical art

[readingrobin]

In breaking news, I shall continue to play into the Corporate Mouse's game by indulging in Disney's new Trading Card Game coming out later this year.

They're just so pretty.

[hadrians-wall95]

I'm bringing Jank to Locals tonight. It deserves an appropriate deckbox, don't you think?

[astorastuff]

I've been thinking of making my own tcg, probably just a video game rouglike but I'd want it to be playable over the table too. If anyone has any designs from tcgs they like lmk, I want to learn much more than I currently know about tcgs before properly starting.

[directivexero]

God it sucks living in the middle of nowhere. I tried to go play One Piece today and there wasn’t anyone there, and hasn’t been since that pre-release according to the guy behind the counter. I just wanna play cards. I don’t wanna drive 90 minutes to do so 😔

[imoverthinkingitagain]

For one glorious night, The Chris Gethard Show was back on the air. We got old friends, old Keepers of the Battledome, new familial relations, a Beef off, and a chat room that felt like going home again.

Dunno if we'll ever see more, or if it's going on an infinite googy vacation, but I was so damn glad to have it back one more time.

To the TCGS crew, and to the Chat Ratz, Lose Well, and keing being the fuckin awesome people you are!

[mystybelle]

Totally not running my sleep schedule by staying up on this section longer than I need to instead of letting the void claim me BUT-

MTG fans, do they keywords make things more or less annoying to understand when you play?

(I have my own opinion, but I'm at a bit of a crossroads in design atm, so if anybody has some opinions to share I'd love to hear so I can decide what to do

[willfrominternet]

New Yorkers of Tumblr: You must not sleep on this one-night-only event. The Chris Gethard Show was basically my lifeblood for several years and I didn't ever shut up about it on The Old Tumblr. While I only attended TCGS tapings back when it was on public access TV and then cable TV, I have heard stories of the UCB-era shows. Sheer chaos. Immaculate vibes. There is no better way for the UCB to return to New York than with Gethard and friends doing their weird, wonderful thing.

I do not live in New York anymore, and I have no means of getting to the Big Apple on Friday, September 13th. But you, you stalwart New Yorkers of Tumblr, you have access! Attend this event and spend what might just be the best hour of your life! Do it for me! Do it for Geoff!

(An explanation: The Chris Gethard Show is a one-hour-long comedy show hosted by Chris Gethard and his friends. Every show is different and usually involves hijinks, strangers, and at times physical and mental gymnastics. It was a live comedy show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York City, then a public access TV show on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, and finally a cable TV show on Fusion and then TruTV. It included a character named the Human Fish. Please do your own research to learn more. Thank you.)

[prokopetz]

I love the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG because it sounds something that a person who doesn't know much about TCGs would make up in order to parody the medium. Like, what if there was a TCG that hated keywording and just stuck a full paragraph of rules on the card whenever a slightly complicated effect comes up, except it has no editorial consistency, so seemingly standardised effects may in fact have multiple variants with subtly different wording which causes each variant to resolve completely differently in specific edge cases? And also, judges' rulings at major tournaments are considered to be precedent-setting for future tournaments even if their conclusions are not subsequently incorporated into the rules, like some sort of TCG Supreme Court, but the lack of keywording and inconsistent phrasing mean that whether a given ruling on card A applies to card B is based on a subjective assessment of "substantial similarity" which is, itself, subject to precedent-setting rulings, such that knowing with certainty what a card actually does may require a complete knowledge of its history of use in tournament play? That'd be fucked up, right? Just kidding, it's not hypothetical at all – it's fucking Yu-Gi-Oh.

[forgottenbones]

Hold up. Let her cook.

[paintingsandrecords]

a horse and a bee; ink and watercolor

last fourteen day’s listening:

beastie boys - sound of science record 1

chuck berry - new jukebox hits

the mountain goats - the coroner’s gambit

love letter - everyone wants something beautiful

the cardigans - first band on the moon

the mountain goats and john vanderslice - moon colony bloodbath

bed maker - bed maker

b. dolan - the wound is not the body

korea girl - korea girl

minor threat - first demo tape

cheap city - blue dancers

[alexissara]

Card Games Fail Women

I've played card games since I was a little girl. As a trans woman at first I blended in, I didn't really get as much direct aggression for my femineity. However, I've always had problems with the TCG community from how they talked about women to how they threated them to many other issues that make these kind of games less welcoming to the marginalized. Many card game players ask why women aren't playing their games and today I want to explore the reasons why less women play TCGs, a little bit of what is changing and the barriers that exist.

Card Art

Before anything else, before you step into a shop when your buying a game, the card art is the very first thing you'll see before you even learn rules for a card game. When you see a card like the one I posted above, which is a core card to a fairly good deck in Cardfight! Vanguard, do you really think that this card was design to make a woman feel like they could be the hero of the story? I love a big tiddy woman but they are so massive and in focus that they become the focal point of the card. The design is consumed by them. When the game itself is sexualizing women it is also socializing the audience to see women as something to sexualize. It's also giving the cosplay scene less options on the kind of cool women they can dress as if they don't want to display a lot of their bodies [I don't personally mind but a lot of people are uncomfortable with showing too much skin].

It goes beyond tiddy art though and goes into general art design, the kinds of cards made, the styles of art put down. We're all massively diverse with diverse taste but it is also true that we are socialized to enjoy different kinds of aesthetics and to appreciate different kinds of power depending on our gender. If all the best cards in your game are very cool masculine dragons even if the women who are depicted are depicted respectively it may be that this game simply glides past women or the adults who buy products for their kids in the case of the early entry ages for many TCGs. Allowing cute designs or cool women or very pretty designs be top level cards can work towards bringing in those audiences. It is actually easy to make characters people are horny for without having to make them over the top.

Even when it's feminine coding on a card sometimes it can be clear that it is not for women though the thematic positioning. Like if you make a bunch of decks about women all the decks about men are warriors with swords or guns or big monster dudes and all the women are pop idols going to a school with no drama or stakes, just cute girls doing cute things. Some of that diversity is good but doing too much is going to speak to the kind of thing they either think women only like or say "these are here to pander to a particular kind of man". The art should be diversely spread around, a character with big giant boobs in a smutty little outfit isn't a big deal if the game has women in armor and shit leading decks as well.

Marketing

What you might see before you even see your first card is marketing for a card game. Marketing is a massive concept to dig into so we're keeping it basic here. The art on a pack, the commercials that are run, the other media made about the IP, all of these add to an impression of what a game is. When all the pack art features a man looking angry while playing cards it says "This is a dude game for dudes." When the ads center the male characters of the story or focus on boys playing the game then we're running into a problem.

The reality is that the majority of card game animes are targeting boys and this is reflected in that the main protagonist of almost every card game anime is a man and most the active players of the games in those animes are men. These are a primary means of marketing, very few Japanese TCGs that aren't tied to a license refuse to take a swing at making an anime. We have a more recent card game anime with groups of women as the protagonists but that's 1 anime and many would argue that despite all the card game players being women they are also sexualized in ways that clearly are intending to bring in adult men to play the game.

This marketing trickles down into the online space where the content creators these people chose to work with very often don't include very many or any women. The companies don't want to build up anyone and since the communities are already sexist they further the issue by instead of highlighting women just focusing on popular men. This varies with game to game but on average even the best companies are choosing more men then women to be the people making sponsored opening content or exclusive card reveals and shit.

Narrative Positioning

Most card games have some kind of story or lore they are covering. Sometimes the story is just in some anime, sometimes there is several story lines being told through multiple series of cards, sometimes there is a bigger narrative being told in every set, sometimes it's fairly simple but builds over time. Whatever the case may be it is true that in any non licensed TCG people do get invested in the stories of the card games they love. These stories are wonderful places to make a card exciting even if it's effect sucks because the moment depicted on the card is so special or the character on the card is so special.

So, when we are telling these stories how important are the women in these stories and where are they at in terms of screen time and do they do anything other then talk about men or support men or motivate men? Women in these stories should matter, they should be able to be top level players in the animes and not just defeated to prove some boy is very strong but be able to be the hero of these stories. In world lore characters should be able to be saviors of their realm, unitors of the multiverse, queer, radical, evil, heroic, every flavor whatever it is they leave a mark on their worlds and the events that happen with those characters aren't things that you can just brush over.

When a new set is coming around what is happening with the women characters should be on people's mind not just what is happening with main boy and main evil boy. Magic The Gathering has done a relatively good job of late pushing women forward in their plots but it's still got room for improvement too. Still it's tragically probably the top TCG in terms of narrative positioning for women that isn't like Pokemon or some other license.

Community

The gathering of players is one of the most important part of card games for TCG players but it can also be one of the most alienating elements to others. It is common to have men instantly think of women as potential girlfriends as opposed to opponents. This happens in person and online so long as communication. Way back in the day when I would play on Ygopro I would have men hitting on me just for my name online being Sara, asking for my number, to add them online when I was just trying to jam out some games of yugioh and at the comic shop when I was there with my partner multiple was hitting on them even though their understanding of us was that we were monogamous and happy in our relationship because they perceived them as a woman. We were teens and adult ass men were trying to hit them up to get them to fuck them in private texts.

I have no idea if this is still dominant at local scenes but what I can say is I feel pretty unwelcome by a lot of card games at the floor of it whenever I see youtube videos of people talking about new cards that have a woman on them as "new Wafius". It makes me feel like the cards aren't for me but for some horny guy on the internet and it diminishes that feminine cards might be designed actually to get women into the game. It doesn't create an environment that I think I'll be respected when I know many men see a woman and think "new waifu".

In the Japanese side we've seen several companies try to actively build community for women by running women only events which is a model that can build community and solidarity between women playing the game and lead to them feeling more comfortable. However, it's not the only thing that companies can do to help women feel more respected and cherished in the spaces. Improving any of the other sections here should trickle down on the community. Also just reaching out to women who play the game, helping highlight them, helping build up platforms of up incoming women playing games.

LGS Model

Local Comic and Game Shops can be amazing spaces of community, friendship, engaging in hobbies and more but they can also be places full of sexual harassment and toxic gatekeeping. Most money is owned by cis het white men there for most stores are. Comics and games are thought of as male dominated hobbies and have been in the nerd deep end side mostly dominated by them over the years. That means we have a top level issue with these spaces while some very good shops exist even the best operation is going to struggle with cultivating a space if they don't have experience with that community.

On the LGS side obviously we can support diversly run shops and the ones already owned by allies can work to make their spaces more inclusive by hiring diversly. The shop can run events that particularly promote women coming in with solid prize pools or events that are just social that include community building. Outside of special time though something very important is weeding out bad eggs from the spaces, taking seriously people who are being sexist or homophobic or racist and telling them they aren't welcome will make the space more welcoming and improve the LGS's ability to host women.

On the card game side I believe the games can actually expand outwards and look to find new audiences in new spaces. There is no reason an indie book shop couldn't host a game night or a little small run queer coffee shop couldn't sell cards. The main thing is giving them the prices and incentives to get them to give your a game a shot. There can be more direct to consumer attempts and digital card games. A lot of women play yugioh but they mostly play on Master Duel and Dueling book, digital planforms one of which is unoffical so Konami won't even talk about it but it is the one that has a social element and therefore women can actually make friends. Fostering these digital approaches is a great way to get women to be able to feel more comfortable and safe. especially given the present danger to disabled women that is Covid.

Historic Context

Even if we can move past these issues the fact that these things have been happening over all this time. There will still be a public perception of these things being the case and there will be a reactionary move against any improvements made outside of the local level because people hate when things get better for people who aren't them even when it's not affecting them in any real way.

Beyond this though we have the very real thing called Nostalgia that exists. I think at this point we are all aware of the concept. The longer that games go on ignoring women or unminding them or whatever then the less we can bring back elements from parts of a games history without also bringing back harmful elements. Much like comics want to increase diversity while putting marginalized people in new roles we all know that things go back to the status quo to appeal to people who want the version of the hero to be there from when they were a kid.

To get over the history we need to see long term investment, people need time to know their not going to get stabbed in the back. So a lot of it is not giving up on something because it's not working right away and giving it more time then you would normally give other projects. Like you need time for word of mouth and trust that these things are good and consistent.

The Core Of The Games

The final hurdles for card games to get past is core the the way TCGs work. TCGs so long as the random pack format exist will be dangerous for people who have gambling additions to play. LCGS are a model that can be a viable alternative but there is types of play that an LCG can't provide and other models can exist TCGs have only existed for around 30 years this is a very very new concept. Literally as old as I am.

Competitive games while very fun aren't for everyone and that kind of gameplay has a harder time foster collaboration unless they can work on alterative formats that move away from the grind to be number one like Magic's move to have Commander as the star format as opposed to designing focused mostly on the competitive formats.

These two things effect everyone who plays TCGs we are seeing people take approaches to shift them so it will be interesting to see where we see things go.