
Show HN: My 10-year-old son has made a card game, which he is giving away - gregpilling
My 10 year old son Troy has made a card game. It has 27 characters, each with different powers. You can download it here https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;jrgphx4vn95va4z&#x2F;LegimonChristmasSet2013.pdf<p>His goal is to have 100 kids play it, and he wants to give it away free as a Christmas present so that more kids can play it. I have created a Facebook page https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;legimon . He would be ecstatic if anyone has feedback for him.
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pessimizer
It may get more love at [http://boardgamegeek.com](http://boardgamegeek.com).
Lots of people there distribute games to assemble and play, and are always
looking for kid-friendly stuff.

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clavalle
[http://www.drivethrucards.com/index.php](http://www.drivethrucards.com/index.php)
as well.

The unofficial home of print and play card games on the net.

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l0gicpath
Clickable links:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/jrgphx4vn95va4z/LegimonChristmasSe...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/jrgphx4vn95va4z/LegimonChristmasSet2013.pdf)

[https://www.facebook.com/legimon](https://www.facebook.com/legimon)

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hawkharris
Your son is very talented! The illustrations, writing and game mechanics are
fun and engaging.

I hope he learns how to write code (if he doesn't already) because it would be
great to see this type of thing implemented as a web-based game.

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gregpilling
Thank you. He has done some playing around with Kodu Game Lab, and we have
played with some very basic Arduino stuff.

Troy has already done a bunch of sketches for what his tablet game will look
like, to make an electronic version of the card game. I hope that is an
incentive to learn more for him.

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swamp40
Looks very cool! Good job Troy!

I'm not quite sure how the battles go down.

You pick an attack method, and the # is subtracted from your opponents HP
score (possibly x2), and then they do the same?

What happens if they are still both "alive" afterwards? You just move to the
next player?

And how do you win? Just be the last player with a live character?

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lotharbot
Additionally: how does one "keep score" in this game? Do you gain points for
each enemy monster you kill (in which case, it might make sense to have a
"trophy pile")? Do you gain points for whichever cards you have remaining when
other players are eliminated? What do the levels mean on the monster cards?

\---

Great job, Troy! I teach math to kids about your age, and I think this could
be a slightly sneaky way to get my students to practice some of their basic
skills like subtraction and multiplying by 2.

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gregpilling
The game involves a lot of subtraction. Also keeping track of who is weak
guides your strategy.

Start with the HP number, and each attack subtracts the attack value from the
HP number. Get to zero and the character is out, and placed in the discard
pile.

Troy has not told me what the levels do; they seem to be a way to indicate the
more senior characters, but do not affect game play with the LVL number.

That would be great if you would play the game in class. We have played four
people at a time, three people and two people. The cards don't all have to be
played, or you can use multiple decks. More cards==longer playing time.

How many kids in your class?

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lotharbot
I tutor small groups of 4 at a time, all third and fourth graders. I don't
actually have a lot of leeway with what I teach, at least not until after
standardized tests are done in the spring.

So it sounds like there aren't any "points" or "score" during the game, it's
just a matter of being the last player standing -- having a card left when
nobody else does. The only scorekeeping you have to do during the game is
tracking hitpoints and attacks remaining, correct?

If two monsters fight, do they each just get one attack (and both could
potentially survive) or do they keep fighting until one dies?

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gregpilling
In a two player game, the monsters keep fighting until one dies. In a more
than two player game, the monster can attack any of his opponents, so he might
alternate between opponents or team up with another to take out a monster.

We played last night, and a couple alliances were formed. There were two
adults playing (me, Wai-ka) and two kids (Axel and Troy). So Troy would attack
me, then Wai-Kai, killing my card. I would attack Troy, then Axel would attack
Troy, killing Troy's card. The alliances made during the game are not stable
though, and there is a tendency to shift sides if one player is too strong.

It reminds me of the reality show Survivor, where people are teams until the
end; then it becomes every man for himself.

We initially played with a piece of paper to track scores, but found that
since it was subtraction only that we could keep the scores in our head and
play faster. If you forget your score, your opponent will happily remind you.

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lotharbot
If you laminate the cards, you can write scores directly on them with dry-
erase marker.

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danso
For all the purported evils of copyright infringement and intellectual
property theft, I wonder if today's children will grow up with such an
attitude that will make the Homebrew club seem like 90s-era Microsoft. With
today's technology, they can create and share without (from what they can
tell) any cost. By the time they're old enough to realize that while nothing
is free, they'll have been naturally inclined to see that creation and
distribution doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. That seems like an attitude
that would be harder to get from the supply-and-demand lessons you learn from
a lemonade stand.

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gregpilling
I asked him if he would prefer to share it with other kids, or if he wanted me
to pursue licensing with a toy company (I own a manufacturing company). He
very clearly wanted to share, and set his goal of 100 people playing the game.
He has a decent sense of money, and he understood that it was his intellectual
property, and that he was retaining commercial rights.

He has more designs coming, so I am sure he will want to share those also.

The facebook.com/legimon page was at 122 likes when he went to bed, with a
large grin on his face.

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Vaskivo
Great Work! I love games, so I'm really happy to see a kid so young designing
game. Too bad I don't have any kids around to play this with.

Does he have any thought on "fluff"? Ask him about the Legimons he created,
what sounds they make, if they are fierce or mostly friendly. Making a world
and a story is almost as much fun as making a game (and will give more value
to the game).

On a totally unrelated note, your son has "ruined" my weekend. Legimon just
made some game mechanics ideas pop in my head, so I'll probably spend my
weekend scribling stuff and making game components.

All around, thank you for sharing!

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adrianmalacoda
This is exciting, especially the CC licensing, which will encourage kids to
expand the game themselves. As a kid I've made similar projects, and I know
I'm not the only one. Good job! :)

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gregpilling
Troy very clearly wanted to share with other kids, but to charge if someone
wanted commercial use. So he picked the creative commons license.

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err4nt
Wow, very creative! I know it's not the cheapest way to do it, but
MooCards.com makes it really easy to print sets of unique business cards (like
each card in the stack has a different design) - that might be a fun way to
'make it real' with cards he can play with his friends if he manages to get a
league going at his school or something!

Great work Gregpilling Jr, keep it up!

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gregpilling
Thanks for the tip about moocards, we will look into it.

I printed out the files at work for him on paper, and used the paper slicer
there to make the cards. Scissors also work of course. My kids are playing
with 5 decks right now, and that seems to entertain them.

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lsdafjklsd
Wow this looks like fun! Printing out to play my nephews / nieces tomorrow,
they will love it :D

Where can I submit balance issues? :P

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gregpilling
You can post to here, or to the facebook.com/legimon page.

There are some issues caused by the fact that these are the first 27
characters of more than 100 written out so far. Not all of the characters in
this set have "x 2" enemies.

Nevertheless, we have played about 5 games where the action went down to the
last card. I have been surprised by that.

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primitivesuave
You've got a really talented kid, and he's lucky to have a parent who
encourages him to distribute his ideas. One great way to expand on this would
be to get him into programming this game - Scratch (scratch.mit.edu) is pretty
popular amongst kids of his age. Best of luck to him!

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gregpilling
I will show him Scratch and see if it interests him.

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lsiunsuex
No cut marks? No pantone color chart for printing?

(seriously, joking! :)

Will print this and play with my godson tomorrow (13)

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dindresto
Awesome. I usually tend to have an asshole-ish attitude in my comments, which
I highly apologize for, but in this case: I just love them :)

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windsurfer
I remember making tons of board games when I was a kid. What happens when you
want to play an evolved character? How does that work?

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ScottWhigham
Downloading now for my 9yo son and I to play...

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Liongadev
Well done Troy!

Artwork looks really nice how was that done?

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speg
Looks way better than anything I could do. Did Troy do it all himself?

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itsybitsycoder
The PDF says it was made by someone on Fiverr. :))

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gregpilling
The character sketches and features done by Troy, Jannzky@Fiverr.com did the
line drawings, and then I cobbled it together to make cards out of the
finished drawings.

Then give it away! If Troy is happy how it works this time then he will keep
giving it away. There are some pencil sketch plans for an app that I have
seen.

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maerF0x0
if your son worked in tech he'd have been sued by a troll by now. I really
like the drawings :D

