stories involving card games

[mitchermitcher]

...that aren't yugioh fanfics since by default the target audience is one who's already familiar with the game to some extent

 

This place is a YGO site and all, and we do get a small number of YGO-related stories every once in a while, so I feel this topic isn't something out of the blue(most of you've experienced YGO as a story before getting into the game, I'm sure).

 

How to write stories with card games as part of the gimmick? To what extent should the rules of an introduced card game be solidified and how should it be introduced to the audience? Does it even matter to have solidly defined rules?(selector infected WIXOSS, for example, was the sort of anime you'd watch through completely and have no idea how to play the game by the time you're done, and still enjoy it). How relevant should card games be to the story?

 

Another thing of note is that the few card games-related shows I've watched all had some sort of supernatural, larger than life element to it(YGO, all four or five seasons of it, needs no real explanation and should be a decent enough example). To what extent is something fantastic like that required for an interesting story about competitive card games? Can I have a story purely about little girls(or grown men) playing card games just to win and still be fun?

 

I feel a little inspired to work on a visual novel and decided it probably should be about card games but I have no idea how to go about it, or if I should go with that as an idea at all so, seeing some discussion on this would be nice, helpful even.

[Draconus297]

Well, in regards to how important the game is to the story, that's for you to decide. Anywhere on the slider works, provided you can build your plot to function at that level.

 

The more relevant the game is to the plot, the more you should put stock in the rules of the game: if this world revolves around this card game, you should establish the basic rules in the first few chapters/episodes, perhaps even before the plot kicks off. If the game is only tangentially relevant to the plot, the rules can be made up as you go along, and points in that regard do not matter.

 

In the end, you don't fit the game to the plot. You don't fit the plot to the game. You build both around one another, and see what you get from there.

[VCR_CAT]

Cahd Game Shows can be interesting, and there's a lot you can do with it. What it depends on is what you want the universe to be, and what kind of story you want to tell. But it is possible to make it believable.

 

The primary part that the entire universe rests on and, admittedly, requires some suspension of disbelief, is the popularity of the card game. Sometimes you can just make it something niche and small within a normal world that has bigger implications, or you can make it super wide-spread and popular. For the former, there's a lot of interesting stuff you can in terms of the story and quite a few interesting universes. For the latter, it's a little harder to explain believably, but you do need to give people a reason to want to go to a stadium to watch these live. In the case of Arc V, Action Duels actually look like events that a lot of people would pay great money to watch live in a big stadium.

 

Once you have the setting/universe crafted and how the card game is involved, you need your characters to have a very good reason for this card game to be the solution to their conflicts. Yugioh often falls flat on this, but has decent explanations in Duel Monsters and Arc V. In Duel Monsters, the reason dueling is used is because The Millennium Items cannot just be stolen and used. The owner of said item must be defeated in a proper duel for the opponent to properly inherent the item's power. This is why Pegasus worked so hard towards his duel with Yugi but never imprisoned him: He needed Yugi to duel him willingly, and he needed to win, so he spent a lot of time testing Yugi to see how he dueled and how he could beat him so that he could take the Puzzle. This is why the primary conflicts in DM are solved through dueling, although the Virtual World arc has no excuse (which is fine because it's bad anyways) In the case of Arc V, solid-light technology got so good that summoning a giant robot with big cannons was super possible with a disk; so being able to completely pwn a city without using any real guns was a thing. I can understand why, in Arc V, they weaponized Dueling; because Ancient Gear monsters trump normal guns.

 

Finally, the inclusion of the super natural. This part is completely optional. The first two points I brought up are more important; what the card game means in that world and how it's involved and why it's the primary method of problem of solving, but the supernatural aspects are totally optional. It's just a plot piece to give "depth" to the cards and explain how the duelists gain "bonds" with their decks and sack  destiny-draw with them.

 

 

Card Game Stories can be done in so many different ways. You could do one like a Sports Anime, you could do one like a Mystery, you could do action, comedy, etc. It's a genre with deep potential untapped due to companies more concerned with selling product and younger children as their target audiences. So if you wanna make a Card Game Story, remember these two very important facets:

- What is this card game, why is it so popular/important, is it so popular/important, how did it develop, if it's popular/important, why do people good money to see it, etc. (have a good, well thought-out setting. This could really tie it all together nicely!)

- Why is this card game the primary method of conflict resolution? (Is it because magical item rules, is it because Hard Light Monsters are really stronk, or is it a competitive Sports Anime? Having a good answer to this question can make the universe VERY believable and do a lot of good for the plot. Having a bad answer can allow it to fall apart quickly.)

[Hunduel]

If you're aiming for a mature audience/theme, you have to deal with one important thing that is missing from most card game shows. You either have to go full sci-fi in order to make it as "unreal" as possible (something that Yu-Gi-Oh! tries to do), but we all can see that what people really want to see is some kind of relation with our reality. However, because of all the gimmicks these card game shows share, you have to realize that the overall "save the world" plot just isn't working anymore, and you have to solve one major problem: making it as believeable as possible. As soon as the watcher, the viewer can accept these rules, your story is plausible and believeable for the audience. It doesn't have to be completely real, but it shouldn't contradict the rules of that universe you create. For example, if you watch a movie with Superheroes that is based on our own reality, you know that something like this wouldn't happen here, but you know that all this could happen in THAT specific universe, because it has its own rules, and the rules are followed by the "residents" of that world and don't break it. As soon as they are broken, you lost your authenticity, and thus the plot is "ruined".

 

To give you an example, all the card game stuff should have been based on our reality in a way that it could actually happen. No gods, no magic, no other stuff that is completely out of place, all you need is your characters and a plot that is based around them and the card game itself. You can easily make it into a sport that is the most popular of that universe, and with the same technology we have, it could have dedication like e-Sports today. All the "duelists" are modern gladiators who are fighting for something in their "arena": either for the living (money), becoming more popular (fame), or the chance to manipulate the world as their wish (power). The "heroes" could be ordinary guys and girls at the beginning who are trying to be as good as possible, and as they process, they are just entering to national, regional, and world championships in order to prove that they are the best of the bests for several reason that is easily explainable AND still making it relevant to the development of that specific character. (Like how Jonouchi needed the money for her sister at the original series.)

 

All the antagonists can be """evil""" players who uses their already earned power for wrong, or they don't have any respect neither for other players, nor for the game anymore. The main antagonists can even be enterpreneurs, or even the leader of the company running (and ruining) the game for their very own reason: commercializing and elitism is actually a big problem in a world where (like in ours) some people can't even find a job, or have a "mediocre" life at all.

 

This interpretation of a card game not only makes the plot more interesting and unusual, but also questions several other topics that are also related to our life in general. How something that we love and have fun can actually decide over lifes and be a source of power and money by some others? How did someone and something become popular at all? Like, the issue of someone getting "managed" and some other people who are coming literally from the bottom (in a similar vein to Jack Atlas and Yusei Fudo at the very beginning of 5Ds).

 

This way, it is not only a slice of life writing at the beginning, but also can be a (personal) drama as the story progresses with some sport anime elements, and even crime can be involved in such cases, especially if corporations has a huge impact in the storyline (for example, several small companies are united in order to make the game into their own monopoly; or one company does a takeover the original one, etc.). 

 

I think this way, you can also include your own idea (grown man and woman are having fun while playing the game), yet still has an interesting plot that even if barely mentioned at the beginning, is still interesting for the audience enough to keep reading your work.