SJG LCG?

[Densar]

In the last 3 or so years, my main hobby has been modern board games of various ilk. Games such as Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Horrified, Dune Imperium, Mage Knight, Scythe, and many more.

Two of the games that I’ve played a lot are Marvel Champions LCG and Arkham Horror LCG. Living Card Games (LCGs) are different than collectible card games (like Magic the Gathering) in that you don’t get random cards, but buy packs that contain everything you need for a specific scenario or character. For example, in Marvel Champions, you can buy character packs for several super heroes such as Captain America, Thor, Hulk, etc. You can also buy scenario packs that contain villains and some basic stories/challenges. There is a lot of ways to mix and match these, and you can modify the decks of your heroes to adjust them as you see fit, following certain basic rules. They are a lot of fun.

I was wondering if anyone has thought or tried to build a custom LCG using GURPS or INWO as inspiration? Seems to me that a lot of the material to do so could be taken/inspired by what already exists? It would still be a lot of work and require expertise that I don’t have, but it would be great to see a LCG based on universes like Technomancer, for example, having characters like cat people and mages and such duke it out against dragons and elves and super villains, in a world of magic and technology.

Any thoughts?

[HeatDeath]

If you squint hard enough, Car Wars 6e is kind of an LCG.

Everyone has access to the same cards, via purchased expansions whose contents are fixed and known, and you build your car by selecting a subset of these cards and laying them out in a tableau.

It lacks the hand management and probabilistic aspects of deckbuilding LCGs, obviously, but the lineage is there.

[Densar]

I'm not familiar with Car Wars. The only thing that I remember is seeing an unboxing of it at Dice Tower (I think it was a deluxe version -- it had tons of components and such). I'd have to check if there are online videos for playthroughs and such. I do have GURPS Autoduel but I've not used it in any games. I don't know if it bears any resemblance to the actual Car Wars game...

I think In Nomine might make a good LCG. It could have character cards (e.g. Angels, Demons), song cards, artifact cards, each with their own advantages, costs, disadvantages, effects, etc. Could have mini adventures somewhere between what Arkham Horror does and Marvel Champions.

Anyway, I just thought that would be cool (of course, making this happen is probably not practical, but... still cool though ;-)

[Densar]

The Car Wars unboxing can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWndIMRS9tQ

[mabhatter]

I feel like Munchkin "sort of" fits that LCG space because we get regular additions of cards that are swappable between sets. You can collect however many Munchkin sets you want and mix them up. It's LCG-lite. I don't think we'll see any more pure card games like TCG/LCG anytime soon because the Munchkin CCG was kind of a bust for SJG and didn't sell as well as needed to keep making sets.

[Devin Lewis]

We certainly debated whether to make the Munchkin one a CCG or an LCG.

[bonetm]

Originally Posted by Devin Lewis

We certainly debated whether to make the Munchkin one a CCG or an LCG.

That's interesting. Can you share why, ultimately, you decided for the former, not the latter?