Pokémon Card Design: Complexity

One thing the Pokémon TCG does very well, that other card games struggle with, is a tight balance of simplicity and complexity. They've actually been putting a lot of thought into it since the very beginning. Let's examine how the first generation handled complexity.

Common = Simple

One of the simplest tricks they used was to just keep common cards simple. These were the cards most prone to having a single attack with a focused effect.

"Focused" effects are effects that do just one thing. This Doduo's Fury Attack flips coins to determine how much damage it does, but it ONLY does that one thing. This was the norm at the time.

These were also the cards most likely to have attacks with no effects other than damage. The beginning of a game was fundamentally easier to parse out at a glance than the midgame or late-game.

Redundancy is Key

One big tool that the designers used was redundancy. All three of these cards feature Confuse Ray, and it does the same thing on every card. Flip a coin for a chance of confusion. This allowed players to shorthand the effect of Confuse Ray in their mind, since it always did the same thing.

They even went a step further and kept power levels of moves roughly consistent, with outliers depending on the needs of the game. Flamethrower usually did 50 damage. Slash did 30. Water Gun's damage depended on how much energy it required, but always had a cap of +20 when adding more damage based on additional Water Energy cards.

There are some examples of them failing to practice redundancy, or making exceptions if we want to be charitable. The most egregious example is probably Poisonpowder.

On each of these three cards, Poisonpowder has a slightly different effect, a different energy cost, and a different damage value. On Kakuna, it does damage and flips a coin for poison. On Ivysaur, it does damage and inflicts poison without a coin flip. And on Gloom, it just inflicts poison.

To me, this violates the redundancy principle. Every time Poisonpowder is on a card, the player has to read it carefully to see which version of Poisonpowder is on that specific card. This can lead to misplays, memory issues, and a small amount of frustration as players feel the need to read and reread their cards to make sure they're not mixing them up.

The general principle that they all inflict poison is retained, but it would have been a good idea to give these three attacks three different names. I understand that they wanted most of the attack names to be from the main series, but if that was the case then they should have chosen one implementation for Poisonpowder and stood by it.

Complexity is Isolated

If a card has an especially complex effect printed on it, then it usually does so at the cost of all other effects it could have potentially had.

Take a look at Fossil Ditto as one of the finest examples. Its Power, Transform, requires so much explanation that they opted not to give it any attacks at all, not even a simple Pound.

You could argue that this was partially done to conserve space, but keep in mind that these cards were originally written in Japanese, a language that can fit entire essays on playing cards when compared to English.

This was an intentional design choice, so that players only had to use up so much of their mental space at any given time. You don't have to think about how Ditto's other attacks interact with Transform, because it doesn't have any.

Another beautiful example of this is Fossil Zapdos. While Thunderstorm isn't as wildly out of pocket as Transform, it does have multiple effects all condensed into a single attack.

It flips coins, it counts the number of 'mons on the opponent's bench, it damages the defending 'mon, it damages the bench, and it damages itself.

But it does all of this in one elegant motion. While you may have to read it a few times, you only have to understand the one attack. It's noteworthy, also, that both of these cards were rare cards.

A rare card is a good place to explore complexity, because players aren't coming across them in large numbers. This further isolates the complexity, dividing it up into easily readable chunks.

Types Have Specialties

Going hand-in-hand with the concept of redundancy, types tend to have effects they gravitate toward. This gives the type a sense of unity, isolates core mechanics from each other, and allows players to form associations with the type more quickly.

Fire is the type that discards energy cards to do big damage. This isn't just a property of one redundant move. It's tied to the effects of Ember, Flamethrower, Fire Spin, and Fire Blast, along with dozens of moves added to the fire-type since then.

This sense that a type "does a thing" gives it a personality, but it also forms expectations. We expect lightning-type cards to have high-risk, high-reward attacks, so we're mentally prepared to look for phrases like "does X damage to itself" or "discard all energy cards attached." Knowing what to expect helps us find the keywords that make up the card's fundamentals faster.

Exceptions Serve a Purpose

If your rules are too rigid, they become predictable. Players will start to recognize the patterns and will know what to expect from a given type or rarity or evolutionary stage.

Which is why it's wise to occasionally design cards that go against the pre-established rules of design.

Hitmonchan is a rare card, but both of its attacks are textless; they have no effect outside of damage.

Additionally, Jab and Special Punch are unique attack names reserved for just this one card.

It's because he breaks the rules, that he feels like a rare card, despite missing most of the hallmarks of a typical rare.

Closing Thoughts

Complexity is extremely fun to explore from a design standpoint and the temptation to make increasingly complicated card designs is very real. Who doesn't want to be the first person to come up with an exciting new idea or mechanic that's never been done before?

But a good game designer trusts the fundamental skeleton of their game to do the heavy lifting for them. Lead designers on Magic the Gathering have famously claimed that the game would still be fun if you were only slugging it out with vanilla creatures.

A good card design is not defined by its simplicity or its complexity. It's defined by how well it fits within the larger ecosystem of the set and the metagame as a whole. Sometimes the most important card you can add is the generic basic that just happens to counter a metagame staple by being the right type and hitting the right numbers.