Thrainn

Thrainn (name not finalized) began conceptually in 2018 as “Mythria” a card game about monsters and cryptids from around the world and throughout time. This was abandoned when the mechanics became too cumbersome and lacked any kind of focus. Borrowing too many ideas from Pokemon, but trying to warp them far enough as to justify being called something new. This left it feeling hollow with no central basis for “why” it exists. The foundation was shaky with numerous re-toolings of how many cards should be played, where, what their function was, how much randomness there was, and more issues that were altered repeatedly until the game had pretty much lost all sense of self.

The world of Thrainn is an ongoing world building project that started for fun and incorporated characters and ideas that I had come up with over multiple years for different purposes. Game characters, short story characters, and general world building concepts borrowed from work on any other personal project I had made previously. As some projects have been put on hold, I wanted to revisit the idea of “Mythria”, but now with a strong base to build off.

The basic combat isn’t strictly based on existing card games in the same way “Mythria” was essentially Pokemon with a new coat of paint, but rather, taking loose inspiration from video game JRPG styles of combat. A team of predetermined characters are crafted to make a synergistic team that will perform similarly every time. Rather than making a deck that has one end goal, but is sometimes ruined by chance, the goal of Thrainn is to make a player have at least two foundational strategies that will still be forced to adapt to new situations every game.

The challenge facing the game now is how to physically play it. Video games can get away with having huge health pools, lots of randomness, status effects, hundreds of different interactions, and a power creep of increasingly complicated character attributes. The computer handles all of the tracking for you, there are no calculations necessary (except the the highest levels of competition) to play the game when most things are hidden from the player. The game generates a random int/float to see if an attack hits or not. No need to keep track. However, in a card or board game, everything needs to be tracked by the players. This can be done with paper and pencil, tokens and dice, or a companion app on a phone. All have their pros and cons, but striking a balance of depth, complexity, and fluidity is important. If the game is too simple and straightforward, there isn’t enough meaningful choice and the game gets stale or repetitive. Too much complexity can become too annoying to keep track of and can muddy the focus; as well as a poor system of tracking game states can cause play to grind to a halt or create disagreements in how a mechanic works when the players are spending half the game doing math.

Cards must also be the main focus. Having a playmat with predefined areas for everything, dice, tokens, and a thick rulebook that needs to be referenced every other turn is not a TCG, that's just a complex German Board Game of the Year contender.

The cards themselves must be easy to understand. Standardization is paramount. Consistent formatting, language, and style will make players do less work mid game to keep track of everything happening.