what is neoTCG?

neoTCG is a HTML and JS setup designed to play Colors TCG, a trading card game played on Dreamwidth. It was specifically made to be compatible with Neocities, which does not allow .php file types (and most other tcg setups use php. Both new and current players of Colors TCG game will be able to start using or transfer over their card data.
Neotcg automates card management, simplifying the entire setup down to a a few variables the player changes in order to manage the entire website.
An example setup of neotcg can be seen here.
The neoTCG github, and its instructions, can be found here.

what is Colors TCG?

Colors TCG is a trading card game played on Dreamwidth. Dreamwidth is a platform similar to LiveJournal, which was at its peak popularity in early web. Dreamwidth houses communities through community journals, which contain various posts with comment features. Colors TCG has two community journals: colors-tcg and colors-trade. colors-trade contains game posts, where users can play to earn cards, examples being completing puzzles, playing cards they have that fit prompts, and working together with other players to complete goals.

how do you play? how is it a tcg?

Actually playing the game means to comment on game posts, and if played right, you will be responded to with prizes - cards, coupons, or crayons. Colors TCG has made a how to play guide here! Don't wanna read that? I'll explain it anyway.

Cards within the game are 55x75 pixel images that are within decks of 20 cards. There are 2 types of decks - single character called a chaarcter deck, or a collection of chacters called a special deck. When you master a deck, as in get all 20 unique cards, you achieve the deck's master image, which is twice the size as a normal card!
Card characters are only from japanese media, including animation, video games, and mascots. All the current decks in Colors TCG can be seen on their decks page. Don't see a character listed you like? You can donate the deck to put it in the game! All you have to do is collect around 30 images, send it into the deckmakers, and they'll make and release the deck! You can also choose what the deck name is called, for as you notice the deck names are are not specifically the name of the character on the card - deck names have to be some word between 1-11 characters thats related to the charcter. For example, I named the chaarcter Domo's deck "fur monster" since its a monster with brown fur, and Kingdom Heart's Peter Pan's "neverland" as peter pan is from neverland! Here's some decks in the game:

Crayons are a form of currency earned from participating in games, which you can spend to recieve choice cards! Decks will only ever be red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, or gray. To recieve a card with a red border, you'd have to spend a red crayon. Special decks are two colors, so for a special card, you'll have to spend the matching two crayons! You can sometimes also use crayons in games for prizes.

Coupons are a type of prize from participating in games or events that usually take longer to complete - sometimes games that you play over the course of a month with multiple challenges. Coupons can do a variety of things, but each coupon has an explanation. Most of the type, you use coupons to get extra cards from completing games, or extra cards from using services, which I'll explain later.

Earning cards, crayons, and coupons comes from commenting on game posts in Colors TCG. For example, for the game Pick A Color, all you have to do is pick a color from red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, or gray and comment that color. When the game closes, usually after a week or two, you will recieve a reply to your message with a prize based on what was randomly selected for that color!
Pick a color is one of the more simpiler games, only taking a few seconds to play. Other games including completing crosswords, puzzles, finding cards that match a specific description, or completing a monthly challenge. Based on the difficulty and time it takes to play the game changes the prizes you earn.

Trading cards between other players is possible. Most players have a post on their dreamwidth profile where you can comment cards you want to trade them, and what you want to recieve. Once you make a trade, you simply add those cards to your card pile, and remove the ones you've trades. You can also just gift people cards and crayons, without accepting anything in return!
You get rewarded for trading and gifting to other players in many different ways, with the most proactive way being sketchpads.

Sketchpads are a form of rewarding players for trading and gifting cards to other players. Everytime you trade or gift a card, you mark a square on your sketchpad. Once you fill up a sketchpad with 20 marks, you can turn them in to recieve random cards and crayons. If you trade and gift alot, you get filled sketchpads pretty fast, so they're fun!
Heres some of the custom sketchpad images I've made:

Portfolios are a form of rewarding players for completing decks, as in collecting all 20 images and earning the mastery image for a specific deck. You can have two portfolios at a time - a palette porfolio and a monochrome portfolio. A palette portfolio consists of 8 decks you choose, one of each color of the game (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, gray). A monochrome portfolio is 8 decks of a single color. You complete a portfolio by completing and mastering all the decks on it. The portfolio system is somewhat forgiving, as you can change what decks are on it with limits.
Heres some example portfolios:

Logs are something you are required to complete in order to keep track of incoming and outgoing cards and currency. The most basic logs need to include trades, gifts, game rewards, and when you spend cards, crayons, and sketchpads.
Heres some example logs:

what do you do with all the images?

Thats what neotcg is for! How you store your cards, crayons, and coupons varies between players. Neotcg is something I made for the neocities community to have their tcg collection with the rest of their website. There are also other options, including making a post on your own dreamwidth journal where you insert the images, creating your own website and manually tracking everything, or using a php website setup like etcg. etc is what inspired neotcg, as etcg heavily uses php and is incompatible with necities allowed file formats. Since I didn't want to use etcg and find another website host, I made my own automated website here. However, theres alot of customization going on my own website, so I made neotcg as a simpler version that you can download and customize to your hearts content, as long as you follow the instructions!

Sorting cards is done by players to define what decks they want to collect based on priority, to make it easier for other players to trade them cards they want. The most common terms are High - Low priority, trading, keeping, collecting, and future - far future. High - low priority would be listing decks/ cards you have by the priority you want to finish collecting and completing that deck. Trading and keeping would be just splitting your cards in half, cards you're trading and cards you want to keep. Collecting usually defines a bunch of decks you're currently looking for, similar to high priorty. future - far future is another way to say high - low priority, but for decks you're not actively looking for, usually used with the collecting term. You can view how I have all my cards sorted here Usually for your high priority decks, you put them in a grid using the decks 00 card, or a custom placeholder card. This makes it easy to see at a glance what cards you need, as shown:

gloomlee 2022