Hey everyone,

I feel a bit like I'm hijacking the forum, especially since I'm new here, but I don't know where else I can turn to. I'm looking for� A LOT� of advice on starting a Triple Triad Club at my high school. It's been my dream for a while now to see the monitor in the atrium display the weekly TT rules as students run around challenging each other between classes. :D Unfortunately, there's a lot that needs to go into planning it, especially since I'm transferring a virtual game to a physical format. I�ve already tried working out most of the logistics; however I�ve probably still forgotten to consider a lot of factors. Questions and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. And if you don�t want to read through everything below, that�s ok. Just keep posing questions and advice.

CLUBS AND POSITIONS

To start off, there will be one club, the Triple Triad Card Club. I likely won�t have any problems actually starting the club. This club will meet once a week to play. At each meeting, I, as the president will run the meetings and gradually introduce the rules and different methods of play, along with the vice president. The secretary will handle supplies, etc. and attendance if applicable. He or she will also answer deal with inquiries and sign-ups for tournaments. The treasurer will create and organize fundraisers, getting members to help. He/she will also run the card store. This will not start until the club is well established, and fundraisers will likely just be card auctions.

A Triple Triad Cardmakers Club (please suggest a better name for it!) will consist of artists (digital and �conventional�) and photographers who commission cards and boards. It will only be necessary once the club is doing very well (assuming it gets there). The incentive to commission cards is based on the love of art and the spread of their artwork (artists will be allowed to sign their work), as well as points to the school reward system. The reason for card/board creation is that the students will likely be much more receptive to cards they can actually relate to (I�m definitely including a Double Rainbow in there somewhere) than those from a video game they�ve never heard of. The president will oversee the card creation and update a database of cards, along with the vice. They will also assign values to the cards, possibly based on artistic criteria (the better they think the card is, the higher its values). Depending on the construction materials, the treasurer will collect the money made from the main club and use it to fund for ink and special paper.

Lastly, a Triple Triad Webteam may be created to update a full list of cards online, connected to the school�s main website. Tournaments and other events will also be posted there. This probably won�t happen until next school year, or later.

MATERIALS

I have absolutely no idea. The easiest way to make cards would be to print, in colour, double sided sheets of paper and cut them up, but they wouldn�t be durable at all. Anything more complex would be expensive. I�m considering sticking a front and back onto cards from a standard poker deck, but that would look kinda shabby.

I�m also not sure of what to do about player one and two. Should I make a blue and red card for each design, and have everything sold, won, and lost in 2s (which increases production costs)? Or should I just use, for example, counting chips which players put on and take off the cards when they play? There�s also the problem of remembering who started with which cards at the end of a game. Having a red and blue copy would mean that they could pair up the cards if they forgot which ones they started with, but the chips offer no reminder.

Boards are much easier to handle. They will be printed on paper at first, and hopefully something nicer later on.

Firstly, welcome to the Shrine! :D

I just want to say that this is probably the coolest idea I've heard in a long time. :D Squaresoft did license an actual official collectible card game of Triple Triad not long after FFVIII's original release (made by Japanese toy company Bandai), but they were only commercially available in Japan and as such are now very hard to find.

As long as you're not making any money out of this (as you stated any profits you make will be spent on materials for making new cards), I can't see Square Enix having any issue making your own TT cards (as they keep a very tight reign on their intellectual properties).

Finally, for how to set the game up, a good first step would be to study the FF Wiki page on the subject: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Triple_Triad

Anyway, good luck with it. :)

I would just make one card for each. A blue side and a red side to each one.

Aren't the official triple triad trading cards made that way? I'd imagine they'd HAVE to be. If that's the case, you could always buy a set of those. However, knowing the money-mill Japan is with such things you'd have to buy boxes upon boxes to get all of them.

Yes, I'm aware of the actual set, but I'm not going to dish out hundreds of dollars just to see if the club will work. And I'd rather have custom cards.

The set has a both blue and red cards, I think. The images I saw were all of the blue side, but the captions implied that there were red and blue cards. Each card definitely has a back, though, so they couldn't be double sided. And that would destroy the Open.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's how the official cards were made (double sided with one side red, the other blue). And, as far as I'm aware, they've been out of production for over a decade now so it will be very difficult to find even a few cards on the second-hand market (aka, eBay), let alone in large quantities.

He'd just be better off making his own, as he was planning on doing (I think you can get A4 size card sheets in bulk from any stationary shop which are divided into smaller cards and scored for easy removal - the kind often used for large business cards and flyers. They can work in any standard ink-jet printer too).

EDIT. I'm pretty sure the cards are double-sided though - I have a friend who owns a set of them and I do not recall them being single sided. I'll have to ask him though to clarify this. ;)

Jesus, they really milked it if they made red and blue cards.

Just did some more research. The system uses red and blue counters to keep track, so I guess if I used those, that would be fine as well. Unfortunately, I'd still need a way to help remind players which cards they started with.

I think once you get the custom cards made, you should have everyone start of with some kind of "starter" deck with low-level monsters. Then at tournaments or whatever you plan on doing when it comes to activities, higher level cards can be won or something. I must say you have my interest because I really enjoyed playing Triple Triad during the game and I think this is a pretty good idea.

Yes, for sure. I'm planning on distributing only level one cards at first, and I'll gradually introduce higher level cards. And your comment reminded me: I have to find a way to fairly give out those higher level cards. Maybe as rewards, or something? (E.g. The first person who activates a same combo after I teach that rule? But that seems too easy. I'll think of something.) I don't plan on a tournament until maybe 3 months after the beginning (because I have to gradually insert the rules), so tournament distribution isn't such a good idea. But I'm planning on having unique cards for the winners, as well as titles, like Card King/Queen, and down through the ranks.

I remember my high school banned card-playing because of concerns about gambling, which is inevitably associated with card-playing in general. It would definitely be difficult to justify to the faculty that the students aren't gambling. Also, I'm wondering about trading rules. If you win, do you get anything from it? What happens if you lose all your cards?

Have you thought about creating a program that can do Triple Triad, or modding FFVIII's own Triple Triad system to make it multiplayer? Don't know if it's possible or not...

If anything for multiplayer, there can just be another playing area either on top or bottom, or on either side of just one. Maybe if they lose all of their cards, they can buy another starter set or something? The school might not like the fact of a club making its own money though unless the money goes to benefiting the school in some way.

Really? We play cards all the time in the halls. The only concern the teachers have is that we block the hallways. And we have a Mah Jong club already, and Mah Jong is "traditionally" a gambling game. I've never heard any complaints from anyone about gambling in the school, either.

Yes, the standard trade rules, as well as some that I made up will still apply, though at the beginning, the trade rule will be "None". I might skip "All", and halve the number of cards won from "Diff", since everyone will have a much smaller number of cards.

If you lose all of your cards, you simply have to wait; every meeting, as an incentive to come, I'll hand out a card at the end to everyone who is still there. Or you can mooch off of your friends, assuming they'll let you. And yeah, I might sell booster packs.

I considered the program, but then I might as well tell everyone to join Triple Triad Extreme, or one of the other large TT sites. And I have no programming experience, either.

As a matter of fact, each club is expected to make its own money. The fund raiser just needs to be cleared by the student council. Most clubs are charity based anyways, e.g. Kids Help Phone so they donate all of their money.

I see. Then in that case I don't really see a problem as to your club being turned down. But I'm going with the policies my old high school had (assuming they haven't changed when it came to the sanctioning of clubs) and it doesn't seem like this club would be turned down. Good luck and I hope you get what you want.

to the OP, how did your idea turn out? i would have loved for something like this to have been in my school. but like one said, gambling was big in my school(mostly shootin dice, ) so it would have been hard to pass where i live.

anyways, i would love for screenshots of your made cards to be posted when they are done. and gl.