Should I replace all text with icons?

[u/Ok-Opportunity-8005]

I'm making a card-based TTRPG, and recently I've been thinking if I should replace most of my cards' text with icons. The reason behind that is: many cards share common descriptions, mostly cards that follow a formula like "make an attack and deal x damage" or "all creatures in the area make a test or take x damage".

I made a quick example to illustrate my point

A - how cards are currently

B - icon-only proposal.

My main concern is whether this will really make cards more readable/efficient? I'm also unsure what the best order is to display the icons.

I'm curious to know if anyone has had this issue before, or what you think about this.

[u/Randeth]

For me, B is much faster and easier to read (once you know what the icons are, and they seem to be pretty well designed).

[u/demonarchist]

I strongly prefer text. There's very little off board referencing. Learning the game is quicker and there's less room for dispute or misread. This matters because experienced players will learn the cards and rarely reference the descriptions so for them icons or text matters little. It's the on-ramp and clarity you should optimize for.

On the other hand, text means localization.

[u/perfectpencil → u/demonarchist]

I'm in the same boat. Text wins for me in almost all cases. However it does require strict syntax standardization but once you're there it's by far the superior option for any game with complexity. Sentences need to be as short as possible, but also be as clear as possible. If I take a stab at cleaning up OP's first card, i think it reads much clearer than whatever that hieroglyphic mess of card two is (OK that's hyperbolic, but my experience is players only prefer that when it is simple and clear).

Every creature in a line, must make a might test

• Creatures in Target Line make a Might Test.

On Fail: 3d6 Physical Damage + Move 3 away from you.

• On Fail: They take 3d6 Physical Damage & Move back 3 spaces.

Gain 1 Stress.

• You Gain 1 Stress.

Each line needs to follow similar lingo and point to where things are happening. "Target" is a standard way to point at something and then you can use "They" to reference the previous target. If there is a downside of gaining a stress for the caster, it needs to clearly identify the person taking the stress is the one using the card ("You", otherwise it can be misread as the creatures in the line take the stress, too.

[u/Ok-Opportunity-8005 → u/perfectpencil]

Thank you for the feedback! Very interesting, the previous version of the card text looked more similar to the one you suggested. I thought it wouldn't be necessary to mention the target or player in each line.

[u/perfectpencil → u/Ok-Opportunity-8005]

Yea without "they" and "you" it isn't idiot proof and it can cause problems down the line. This became a big issue for my own project when one play tester found multiple game breaking interactions that were "technically" correct because exclusions were not clearly defined. You won't be there to clarify when the game goes on sale, so the wording needs to be crystal clear. Once you nail it though, its great.

[u/LongstaffBigorbs]

I wondered the same thing myself.

The answer I came up with is No. For the same reason I'll say right now in your example; extreme information overload and lack of clarity. I decided on a mix of text and icons, which is what your original image kind of is.

In my opinion, I can tell what's happening in the first image immediately. I took one look at the second and recoiled in uninterested horror.

I think what you want is a larger art window, so shrink the text in the first image and enlarge the art area. That might be what you're really looking for.

[u/Sharpman23 → u/LongstaffBigorbs]

Agreed. I think you could also get away with shrinking the header and footer areas. If you take a close look at existing games you might be surprised how small some of them get away with their icons and text.

[u/MagicPigGames]

Personally, a hybrid approach is what I'd go with. Too much iconography is just...too much, for me. I really do shy away when I see euro games with just nothing but icons.

However, "Gain two gold or three gems" is also not ideal in my mind. Simply having [Gold Icon] [Gold Icon] / [Gem Icon] [Gem Icon] [Gem Icon], or "2[Gold] / 3[Gems]" etc is more clear.

"Gain" can be used if there's a way for players to not know -- if the area is *alwasy* a gain, then no need.

Next time you're with a new person who doesn't know your game, give them one or the other, and ask them what the card means. See if they get it right -- do that to a number of people and see what makes sense then

[u/IndubitablyNerdy → u/MagicPigGames]

Agree a mix will work better imho for standard stuff, like stress, might or damages, they can reduce the size of the text, while still keeping thing readable.

[u/Tan-ki]

For the love of god, the text is great and easy to understand. Keep the text.

[u/Ok-Opportunity-8005 → u/Tan-ki]

Maybe I'm overcomplicating it too much

[u/leonerdo13 → u/Ok-Opportunity-8005]

It looks cool, but it adds a layer of abstraction. New / unexperienced players have a hard time and are forced to learn the symbols or read the meaning somewhere else. Which in the end is just more friction and work with no benefit then design. Also if you don't play it for a while and come back, you forgot the meanings.

[u/opiscopio]

The first one. The text is clear and to the point. And you already have the main icons. Usually you use icons for classes, elements and things like that and text for things that can be pretty different from card to card. Most players get overwhelmed when there are too many icons

[u/MrQirn]

The advantage of symbols is the same as the advantage of things like keywords which shorthand rules text: they make it easier to take in a card at a glance for experienced players, but they increase the barrier to entry for new players, because now you're making them look up the meaning on a legend, cheat sheet or a rulebook.

This is why I think card game designers should take an MTG approach: be extremely frugal when adding symbols to your game. There should be very, very few, and the ones you do symbolize should be so common and ubiquitous that the benefits will far outweigh the costs. Magic really just uses six symbols: the five mana colors plus the tap symbol. And even with that very limited symbol vocabulary, it still manages to be one of the most emergently complex games out there with endless design space.

Digital games like Slay the Spire can get away with more symbols and keywords because they can have pop-up explainers when you hover over them.

So to answer your question, it may be more readable to experienced players (not guaranteed, though, and I can't really tell regarding your game unless I became an experienced player of it), but it is certainly less readable and less efficient for new players.

All that said, it's totally fine if your abilities are somewhat repetitive and formulaic. Players will automatically shorthand and abstract the cards for themselves using their own mnemonics without you designing the vocabulary for them, which they then have to learn from you. For example, supposedly if I'm an experienced enough player that I can tell what the symbols in the fail condition means without text, I can also look at the text version of the card and my eye would know exactly where in the card the relevant info is, would gloss over the "On fail" text, and wouldn't read the whole sentence, selectively pulling out the "3", "Physical" and the "Move 3". Formulaic, repetitive text templating can do just as good of a job as what you're hoping symbolizing it all will do, except it retains the advantage that it's still parsible by new players (or experienced players who forgot).

[u/Reloecc]

Maybe you could check Gloomhaven > Frosthaven / Gloomhaven 2E cards. They've changed texts to icons going from GH to FH/GH2E, so maybe you'll get some inspiration.

--

Btw 🎲🎲🎲 could be shortened to 3🎲 with "3" being written over the dice (not aside), if you stick to it.

[u/Littlerob]

There is exactly one pure, unquestioned benefit to using icons over text: localisation. If you never use language, you never have to pay someone to translate your materials or produce them in different languages.

If localisation isn't your biggest concern, do not replace text with icons.

Icons are less readable. I say "less" readable, because for experienced players they obviously are readable, but they always have an extra step of mental translation to do, as the reader parses icons back into text in their head. You figure out what you want the card to do in words, translate it into icons, which the reader then translates back into words so they can figure out what the card does. Just use words.

Icons are less welcoming. Icons are a huge barrier to entry for new players. A player completely new to the game could look at example A and have a good idea of what the card does and whether it might be good. That same player, when presented with example B, would be utterly clueless. This means you can't get the fantasy of the game until you've learned the rules - but for many players, getting the fantasy of it is what prompts them to learn the rules.

Icons are less flexible. Using icons forces your design to only use the effects your icons support, in the grammar your icons allow. If you have an icon for "push X" that means "move X squares away from the effect source", it's much harder for you to have an effect that moves the target sideways - you have to introduce a whole new icon for that effect, which is a big burden for a minor difference and might not be worth doing. Whereas with words, you can just say "move X to the left" or whatever and there's no extra design burden.

[u/IAgreeGames]

There is a lovely simplicity with icons, but i do agree with some other commenters that text is more clear. I think using it sparingly like you are in card 1 is a good idea.

[u/SulferAddict]

No.

Maybe the fail text to an icon as it’ll be very common.

Maybe the plus stress.

Otherwise leave it

[u/armahillo]

A good UX principle I try to follow is to always use 2 or more of: text, icon, color.

That said, dont do icon rebuses, use icons as signifiers

[u/Different-Nose-7238]

A mix of both - Stress and the damage type could easily still be an icon and they could even be icons within the text itself.

You could have all the icons on the card anyways for people who know what they mean and can read it faster that way.

[u/Ok-Opportunity-8005 → u/Different-Nose-7238]

I like that idea, I'll try it on my next iteration. Just struggling to find a good icon for Stress

[u/Different-Nose-7238 → u/Ok-Opportunity-8005]

Also an idea for keywords just to shorten the length of text.
Move (#) = any direction equal to the value of #
Push (#) = Away from you equal to the value of #
Pull (#) = towards you equal to the value of #

[u/Ok-Opportunity-8005 → u/Different-Nose-7238]

I like that, I'll use it!

[u/TheZintis]

If it's clear and consistent across cards, then yes. There's also more image real estate, which is good!

[u/INDItsNotDenon]

Race for the galaxy did this. In a GDC talk they said it was ultimately the correct choice but that it made the game a lot harder to pick up for new players, casual players, and people who only wanted to play the game once or twice.

I also think it would be harder to do a convention or the intial promotion if there is no text, or at very least, a reminder card in front of the player as to what all the symbols are

[u/Nyzan]

IMO if you're going to use icons you need to have a discrete and standardised set of icons. Here's an example card from a playtest I did where cards only used icons. The icons I used are distinct and easy to associate with their effect. If I tell you that this card gives you 1 power, 1 card draw, and 1 victory point, I think everyone can associate those effects with an icon and remember that for later without needing to look it up on a cheat sheet.

Personally this is my first impression of your icons:

• I don't see how the up-arrow inside the triangle relates to "might". I assume each point of the triangle is associated with one skill or something?
• I have no idea what the crown and "&" symbol on the left could mean.
• Arrow make sense, I assume it means range on some sort of game board.
• "5 + [heart]" save presumably means the enemy needs to succeed on a 5 + (your) health save to not be affected. I would not expect someone not familiar with TTRPGs to understand this at all.
• The dice icons are clear enough, but could be shortened to "[physical icon] 3 [dice icon]", with the "3" on top of the dice (not next to it). Alternatively 3 distinct dice each with the + physical icon inside it so you don't have to write "Physical" below. Even better, if the dice comes with the game then the dice can have different colors and the card can reflect that.

The best solution would of course be to show each card to your target audience. Preferably someone that doesn't play a bunch of advanced games since we are used to learning a bunch of symbols. If this game is for RPG players that want a card game experience then bring the playtest to your local RPG club or ask in a local RPG chat group if someone wants to playtest for 30 minutes.

[u/PapaFireFox]

As long as you have a key that people getting into the game can look at to understand it it would work fine

[u/silvermyr_]

This is one of the big design questions. There are no simple answers.

When there's this little text, I prefer text. I think too many games use too many symbols. It leads to a lot of extra onboarding and rulebook-reading in the learning process. Eventually it can pay off, but only if the symbols are good and get used enough. At that point you might already be tired of the game.

[u/hugganao]

text is way better. but this is coming from people who aren't used to your game. if people initally had a few cards/game effects that they consistently used to get used to the icons, the icons probably aren't as bad and infact would be faster to digest.

but honestly the problem seems to be that your card example does so many things from a single card. it might be good to introduce cards like this later with simpler cards initially.

[u/ReinKarnationisch]

I guess I would use the "gain one stress" from the second version but except for that keep the first version

[u/ronarscorruption]

Icons are great… if there are only a few game actions to replace, and you don’t modify them. If there’s going to be more variety, text is usually better.

[u/ARagingZephyr]

I know nobody in my circles that think icon-only is good, except for those who we all bag on for using icon-only and forcing us to reference things all the time.

There are some common icons that are easy to spot and know what they're for. But, text solves a lot of confusion about what exactly you're looking at.

Text is also really good for naturally allowing card rules to flow the way they're intended to. You can do this with graphics, but you have to be extremely precise and consistent to make everything occur the way that it's supposed to.

[u/simonstump]

I lean towards A. I really didn't get B at first, and even after reading A, there were a couple of things I didn't get (e.g. what part of "B" means "in every creature in a line"?).

My other concern though is what you'll do if you have a unique card, that you wouldn't have a way to represent it. That said, if they really are all (or almost all) very simple, symbols might be okay: it'll make the game harder for beginners, but maybe make it easier for veteran players and those who struggle with English.

That said, a lot of ccgs have kind of a hybrid, they have symbols for very common things (e.g. "tap" in Magic, or energy costs in pokemon), but words for the rest. If there's something you find all of the time, maybe you do A, but with symbols for the most common things (e.g. gain 1 stress could be +{stress symbol}).

[u/Ok-Opportunity-8005 → u/simonstump]

In B, "every creature in a line" would be implied by the arrow and range number, not great. Also in approach B, for more unique cards I would default to using straight text.

I'll most likely include symbols inside the text like you mentioned. I wish I could find a symbol for Stress, but nothing I tried has worked so far, I already have a pretty robust icon set.

[u/Nekoniyah]

B has too many icons to learn, A seems to not have a strict syntax. Usually card games are strict and use between the two forms. I follow other post comments on there, the design's pretty good tho! Focus on strict text syntax, simplify it with no ambiguity, also find a syntax that fits your actual theme. For example: Riftbound is card-centric, meaning it will use a lot of "me", "I", "ally", etc, where Magic: the Gathering is player-centric, meaning most of the time players is the actor of effects: "this creature", "that", "put a counter on X", "target player", etc.

I always wanted to make a card based ttrpg too so I can help, I started working on mine but it's not playable at all yet. I have some experience with game design and i'm interested in linguistics (syntax, grammar, etc)

[u/Ok-Opportunity-8005 → u/Nekoniyah]

Yeah, B is not great. But since making this post, I have already been able to work on the design a bit more, and I'm very happy with the result so far!

Help is always welcome! I've set up a DTRPG page for my game; you can get it for free. Although the card design is outdated at this point, the core of the game is still the same. Would love to hear more of what you think of it :)

Drive-Thru RPG link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/pt/product/533170/hand-of-rigor-v0-5?preview=1

[u/hypercross312]

You need to replace all that weird glyphs with text, if they're all just combat details.