Game Design and Mechanics
The UX of Multidecks
I ran across this article on a new “good looking” multideck, and as a UX designer, it gave me pause. The idea behind a multideck is to visually make a standard poker deck of 52 cards (or 54 with jokers) accommodate more games than poker decks typically lend themselves too. This includes games that need more than four card suits, or games that need values higher than 10 (or 13 depending on how you count face cards). In theory, I’m all for optimizing a limited amount of components to allow for more ways and games to play. But multidecks overload the components with too much competing information. So much that it hurts the experience of playing any game with them.
One of the most interesting thing about tabletop game components is the significance players give them. In many poker games, we often say the Ace has a higher value than the King even though there is no real-world role of “ace” royalty. Multidecks allow us to do that sort of thing with a number of different visual elements (suit, colors, words, cats, etc). That could lead to a number of cool games that use most or all these elements that are simple to play but deep in strategy. The problem with multidecks is that they try to smash a bunch of simpler games into 54 shared components. Those games are fighting each other for the player’s attention.
Even in the multideck called out in the article (which is very clean compared to the others, though I do prefer the cats more), each element has nearly equal presence on the card. This means I can’t easily look past the 8s on my “Captain” card when I’m trying to play a less stylish version of Coup, a game that doesn’t use numbers. As a new player learning to play this Coup-like game, I may regularly think my card with a 9 on it may beat out the other player’s “Captain”/8 even though I was told the game doesn’t use numbers.
Another challenge is the numbers compete in a way that requires the player to focus extra hard. My card is an Ace in one corner, a 1 in the other, and a 27 in the middle. Depending on the game I may be able to fan my hand in such a way that I can always see the one corner that applies to my game. More often than not I will likely need to double check the same card a few times just to make sure I am reading the right value for the current game I’m playing. Depending on the game, playing the wrong card because I mistook its value could completely expose me.
Lastly, multidecks rob the dedicated game of some of its charm and communication. In the Coup example above both cards say the most important information about the card for the game; this card is the “Captain”. But where the multideck card falls short is that it doesn’t tell the player what the card actually does in the game currently being played. That is something the player has to know or reference elsewhere. Further, the multideck captain card doesn’t have this badass graphic giving you a sense of the world and lore this game is in. One captain is in some regal, sci-fi revolution probably out there issuing BAMF level orders. The other is just a captain. A multideck card can’t illustrate that setting because it has to accommodate for other games that don’t have anything similar.
I think the best thing about poker decks is that they support so many more games than just poker. I can see that’s what these multidecks are aiming for. To support even more games using the same exact components. Where multidecks can win in this facet is creating new games that better leverage all the information the card elements are trying to convey. Playing a game where a yellow, diamond, traitor cat has some unique advantage over a red, heart, traitor cat can be something interesting, fun, and deep. And most of the elements on the card have value to me, the player, because they mean something in the game.
The other thing multidecks might excel at is helping designers come up with new games, even if they don’t use most of the elements on the card. As a game designer (*cough cough* check out Movie Cues *cough*), one of my biggest pains was modifying existing playing cards or printing out new ones to test ideas. I often found myself hung up on the cards’ visual design when I should have been focusing on what these cards mean in relation to each other and how that makes for an engaging game. Designers could use multidecks to quickly try changing the number of classes, or change the hit points, or change any number without having to erase & rewrite or print new cards.
In theory, multidecks are really cool. It’s a bunch of games in one 54 card package. But the cards often end up with too much information competing for attention when it’s often not relevant to the game at hand. And while players can adjust and learn where to look for the game they are playing, the greater charm and communication of the game is lost because the cards have to be as minimal as possible to allow it the freedom to be any other game. In short, multidecks are doing too much at once, and so they don’t really do one thing well.
