How to Lead a C3G Design

[tcglkn]

How Lead a C3G Design

Gather points

All designs must either win the Public Design Nomination process, which requires you to be a C3G Ally to submit designs into, or have an Ally spend the points to start the thread. You can become an Ally and earn points by playtesting for the group. You can do that by signing up in the Public Playtesting Sign-Up thread. Playtesting can seem daunting at first, but it really is not that hard and we have a highly active group of members here and on the C3G Discord Server and we want to help you get involved. You can also earn points towards designing by submitting mini photos in our Photo Depository here. Note: you do not earn any points for tests or mini photos provided for your own design threads.

Brainstorm your design and get approval

So you want to get a design ready for the Public Design Nomination process or to spend points on in the future? You will want to workshop your design in the Public Design Workshop. We have several resources for getting your design started. First you should make yourself familiar with our previous designs which can be found in our Books of Index thread. At this point in our history, we have covered most things, so you can almost always find a similar power to the one you are thinking up, the easiest place to compare powers is with our Sortable Index. All of these are just to help you get in the right area, we have plenty of more experienced members who can help you tune your wording and make it more official if you just post your ideas in the Public Design Workshop.

Request to Lead a design

You've gathered your points and workshopped your design and think it is ready to go, now you need to submit a request to lead your design in the Ally and Fan Rewards thread. Here is a good example of such a request. At this point the Heroes will discuss and either approve or deny your request. Once approved you can pay your 15 points and proceed to the next step. A few tips for getting approval: Make sure the character has comic art if you are suggesting a character from outside of Marvel or DC. Make sure you have a figure ready to go before the design is started, either a HeroClix figure selected or an approved mod (you can request approval for the mod with the design). And make sure all of that information is included in your request to lead a design.

Start your thread

Once you have won the Public Design Nomination or gathered your 15 C3G points via playtesting and gotten C3G Hero approval, you can start your design thread in the C3G Public Design subforum using the template found here. The template has information for the first two posts in the thread, the second post holds the design and the third post is for any art you want the artist to use on the card (this is just a suggestion, our Art Department will use what they think is the best). Once you have the thread posted, post a link to the thread in the Welcome to C3G thread and tag all of the C3G Heroes to make sure they are following the thread.

Phases of the design:

• Design Phase
  This is the first part of the design process where you will receive plenty of feedback. Your job as a the Lead Designer of the thread is to take all of this feedback and apply it or address it and put together an updated design. We highly recommend you avoid changing the design with every piece of feedback you receive as not all of it will be aligned. Listen to all the feedback and participate in the discussion and when you feel like it's ready, start taking all that feedback together to make any changed needed. During this period the thread title should be "The Book of <unit name> - Design".
  
  
• Checklists
  Once at least 48 hours have passed and you have a design you and a majority of the group are happy with, you can fill out our Competitive and Consistency Checklists and propose we move to initial playtesting by changing the thread title to "The Book of <unit name> - VOTE for Initial" and post "I propose we move to initial playtesting" in bold. You will need 5 Yea votes from C3G Heroes or Legends and then you can call the vote passed.
  
  
• Initial Playtesting
  Once the vote for initial playtesting has passed, please post in the C3G Playtesting Signup thread so the design doesn't get over looked. Any Hero, Legend or Sidekick can now run the initial playtest which may or may not lead to more adjustments being made to the design. The person who ran the initial playtest will suggest a cost for public playtesting. You can then make a proposal to move to public playtesting, update the thread title to "The Book of <unit name> - VOTE for Playtesting" and wait for 5 Yea votes from Heroes or Legends again. When it passes, update the thread title to "The Book of <unit name> - Playtesting" and post the mini info from your thread into the Playtesting Sign-Up thread.
  
  
• Public Playtesting
  The amount of playtests required to settle on a cost will vary from design to design, but as the Lead Designer you will automatically be signed up for the first playtesting slot so you can have a better understanding of what tweaks you could make to the design to balance it. Once you have received enough testing info to settle on a cost you can propose we move to Final Editing at a certain cost. Simple make a bolded post that says "I propose we move to Final Editing at ### points" and change the thread title to "The Book of <unit name> - VOTE for Final Editing" You once again need 5 Yea votes from Heroes or Legends to pass the vote. When it passes you can update the title to "The Book of <unit name> - Final Editing"
  
  
• Final Editing
  Final editing is usually pretty easy these days as we keep the wording fairly tuned throughout the process but this is where we finalize the wording and then the Art Department will create the cards for the design.
  
  
• Release
  Once you have the cards, all your playtests and other information is linked in the thread, you can propose that we release the design. This vote is different, you need to tag all the Heroes and you need votes from all active Heroes before the design is released so updating the title to "The Book of <unit name> - VOTE for Release" is important. Once you have votes from all current Heroes, you design passes and is released! Take a link and post it in the Books of Index thread and we will probably ask you for a suggested booster name for that specific design so keep that in mind. Congratulations, you're now ready to start the process over again and lead another design! (C3G is not responsible for any addiction)

[IAmBatman]

Worth noting that Allies can receive design points for submitting photos of minis that we end up using on cards (there's a thread where folks will request mini pictures, so that's the place to look for opportunities). It's one point for your photo if it ends up being used.

For Final Editing, this may change over time, but these days it's a decent idea to tag johnny139, Karat, and SirGalahad for wording checks. Sporx might be willing to take a look as well, as he's skilled at noticing things we miss!

It might be worth clarifying what's actually required for the design to be considered released and what happens with it then. Ideally an LD posts the finished link in the Books of thread and hangs around long enough to suggest a title for their release.

[Dr. Jekyll]

This is super nice and easy to follow. Thank you for this!

[tcglkn]

Cool, glad that it reads well from someone with less experience, want this to make it easy for people.

[Dr. Jekyll]

This should be a first stop for new LDs taking their first steps on the path to greatness.

[IAmBatman]

Originally Posted by Dr. Jekyll

This should be a first stop for new LDs taking their first steps on the path to greatness.

Tickle did such a great job with it that I made sure to link it in at least 100,000 places.

[FreshFoods]

Great post! I’m starting to work up points and the design process seemed a little daunting to me, but this cleared it up perfectly!

[tcglkn]

Glad this helped!

[tcglkn]

Made some updates with Bat's feedback. Definitely did not want to mention specific people in the OP for wording, want it to be timeless and not something I need to always update. I figure someone will be around to tag the appropriate people when we hit editing.

[fret_gurglo]

Thanks for all your work to create this invaluable resource

[Zakizzryn]

Pretty handy for us new comers! Thanks Tickle.

[Splash]

Thank you, this is amazing!