MANUAL OF STYLE: Errata Text

the Chicago Manual of style was first created by the University of Chicago press in 1906 but rather than being a document about the current fashion trends of the time it was conceived as a standardized method of writing books and Publications it's not the only Manual of style the Associated Press has their own for instance and there tend to be subtle differences between them if you see disagreements online over certain formatting such as the use of commas or whether cited work titles should be italicized or quotated it's often a conflict between different manuals of style but for the most part a manual of style has one purpose to unify the works created by a diverse group of people and in an ongoing project like a card game a unified Manual of style has just as valuable a role it's also practically invisible most players are able to easily pick up on the flow of the language of the cards and might not even be aware of the work that went into that unless it's some of the more audacious changes such as magic The Gatherings 4th edition or Yu-Gi-Oh's Master role 3 introducing things such as the tap symbol and problem solving card text done right and it will be pretty easy to introduce complex ideas thanks to the assistance of the game's internal consistency take probably one of the most simply written cards of all time counterspell counter spells effect simply reads counter Target spell now this sentence is complete gibberish to people who aren't familiar with card games the way something like draw two cards might be but I'll try setting the word counter aside for a bit Target simply means choosing the one thing that this card is affecting that thing becomes the Target that this card is targeting and spell is any non-land card that is in the process of entering play whose costs have been paid for but whose effects have yet to go off this includes creatures and artifacts as the spell is Conjuring them into to play from this counter is pretty easy to figure out it stops that spell from working written in full text it would read something like choose a non-land card that is entering play that card is discarded without effect but by consolidating it into counter Target spell and by having these terms be consistent across all of the other cards in the game players get what's happening Yu-Gi-Oh on the other hand didn't get off so easily even after Master rule 3 which introduced problem solving card text Yu-Gi-Oh still has a lot of it to the point that the term graveyard got shortened to gy purely to save space there's also this little tangle can be special summoned by must be special summoned by and must first be special summoned by all mean wildly different things despite the similar text and it's easy to see how people might get confused but even as confusing as its text might be Yu-Gi-Oh still has a consistent Manual of style which begs the terrifying question what happens when you don't have one probably the most common problem we get is the implied effect where the card describes some sort of fictional action that doesn't really fit the bill of concrete card text saying that a character does a backflip or something doesn't really tell me what the card's action is actually saying if the goal of such text was to inform how the card is supposed to work the slack there can be taken up by the card name art and flavor text while sticking to something more Concrete in the game text dry game text is fine offset it with the aesthetic but the bigger Danger on a lack of Manual of style is inconsistent card text like I detailed with my magic the Gathering example it can get away with short sentences for a lot of its effects because the terminology is consistent across all of the cards but what does a game without this consistency look like well for a pretty perfect example we need look no further than the Yokai Watch Trading Card Game this shot only made Hasbro cash grab was another spoke on the wheel that was the disastrous American launch of Yokai Watch rather than taking the perfectly good Yokai Watch trading card game that was just sitting there complete with an English version Hasbro decided to quickly churn out their own I am to this day astonished that the company in charge of Magic the Gathering botched this so badly although considering magic the gathering's newest product maybe I shouldn't be the Yokai Watch card game is one that runs on the action economy where you tap your Yokai to perform actions so forcing your opponent to tap their Yokai without letting them take an action seems like a powerful effect if it was properly written here we have two cards frostina and quit now on the surface these two cards seem to have the same sort of effect when they battle at Yokai they cause the Yokai of the same type as that Yokai to become tapped without action but do they Frosty Dina has an obvious problem the effect says tap all other Yokai of the same type but fails to clarify what this is relative to same type as what same type as frostina same type as the Yokai she fought same type as all other cards in play it doesn't say but on the other hand we have quit who seems to have the second part of this effect figured out stating how the effect is clearly based on the Yokai he blocked in battle but then the top half is confusing nowhere in the rule book does it clarify what a successful block means is it the fact that he blocked it all or does quit have to win the battle in order for it to count in which case why doesn't it use the clear terminology from the top half of frostina's card you see what happened here the text across these cards is inconsistent and so we can't really understand their Effects by using the other to get it there was a clear breakdown on the part of the development team when it came to card text or rules clarification though this was as much a symptom of the game's Rush development as it was poor organization like I said obvious cash grab the deception here is that I can feel really easy to keep this terminology straight in your head but that doesn't necessarily apply to anybody who joins you on the project and certainly not for players so making sure that you have a solid glossary of terms that describes the vocabulary is an important first step and another document determining how those terms might interact with each other is an important follow-up there are certain collisions that are also important to keep in mind for example figuring out if a card Effect might be abused a famous example is how the cartoon table of contents can be used to search for additional copies of itself which you can play in sequence allowing players to boost Spell Counters or activate other effects basically for free while simultaneously thinning the deck some card text like tune contents's spiritual success or spell power grasp state that you can only use a card of a certain name once per turn While others specifically exclude themselves as a viable Target meaning they cannot grab themselves with their own effect it all depends on how it gets used and sometimes things slip between the cracks another is on Omni negating effects such as cards that lock down an entire type a basic example is the Magi Soraya from the game Magi Nation his effect nullifies the powers and effects of all other Magi in play but what happens when more than one Soraya is in play do they lock down each other well as it turns out it doesn't really matter you see there can only be two Magi in play at a time and the ability nullification is sorea's only ability so whether the two cancel each other out is besides the point but then we have an effect like garbodor's Garbo toxin whose ability nullifies all other abilities in play and yes there can be more than two Garba doors in play at a time but what if the opponent also plays garvador well you could say the effect doesn't affect garbadours but what if a garbador comes out with a different ability well in this case the ability was written with the proper care where it specifically locks down abilities except those named Garbo toxin keeping things clear garbadors do not cancel each other out and if you have one or multiples in play it doesn't matter the effect is working regardless sometimes this kind of text is necessary when it comes to dealing with these sorts of situations it's often a good idea to work on a series of Master rules these are a version of the rules that are a lot longer and deal with a lot of the minutia of your game which works alongside the regular rules and the cards and a manual of style can easily be spun off from this It's always important to take at least a day going over a set of cards to make sure everything lines up with this manual before trying to go to print consider it part of the editorial and typo Discovery process having a solid Manual of style is an important thing to make sure that your game's terms remain clear and consistent keep those things in mind and you too can build a better card game join us next time on erratatext hey thanks for watching just thought I'd let you guys know that I have revamped my patreon now one dollar per month is enough to get you access to the Kodak Discord Channel we're talking about metabots right now also five dollars will get you a mention on the credits as seen by these guys right here and special thanks to spudmay and timayorga who have gone for the 100 level where I am currently helping them give feedback and consultation on their games I hope to see you there soon my 300 goal if I can get up to 300 a month I will do a review of the Mattel hyperscan at a level that no other developer has done yet so if we can get just a few more people to join in get your names on these credits and uh we'll see if we can do some amazing stuff here until next time this is Kodak signing off [Music]

Channel: Kohdok

Views: 21,467

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Id: zjLdU9ZBQ8o

Length: 10min 8sec (608 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 14 2022