Summary

A revamp of the PPA TCG, cleaning up the characteristics list and evening out the power between cards; still based around achieving a 4.0 GPA and killing your competition.

Status

Following the disasterous second expansion of the PPA TCG, I felt the game required a fresh start. Learning from many of the mistakes, I revamped the game by fixing the characteristic pool to a more reasonable number, standardizing item usage (and eliminated a couple), and giving dual Character cards back their basic traits (which I had foolishly left out thinking they were unnecessary).

As with the first PPA TCG, the revamp was intended to be sold as a fundraiser for Yearbook. The game released with the 237-card base set just before the end of the year (and my high school graduation) to a lukewarm response, despite the new cards being fully-compatible with the old ones. Not too many decks or boosters were sold. I completed the first expansion that summer with the intent that it would be sold by the Yearbook club (along with the base set) in my absence. It is unknown whether that actually happened.

I continued creating cards in college, starting with a mini-expansion, following with a redo of the base set with new art, and concluding with several new expansions. All of the sets after the second were never sold in physical form, but rather distributed by CD. I eventually rebranded the game as Student Wars to better fit with the college-centric cards, and retired the PPA TCG.

Gameplay

Like the first PPA TCG, the game had a goal of obtaining a 4.0 GPA by playing GPA cards. Characters were used for their skills to play GPA, as well as to play other cards such as rules and events. Characters were also able to attack each other, fueled by items such as Book and Drinks.

The Personas expansions added three new characteristics to the game, matching the set's theme. This is the only time in the PPA TCG Version 2 when new characteristics were introduced.

The rules are exactly the same as the original PPA TCG, and all cards from the two are able to be mixed and used together. As such, this game can be considered an extension of the original game, whereas subsequent games in the series (Student Wars and Student Wars Version 2) represent significant revisions to the game.

Cards

There were six types of cards: Character, GPA, Event, Rule, Item, and Group Node. Group Nodes were introduced in the final expansion, Groupings, as a way to enhance dual Characters further.

The game ended up having six card sets: Flashback (the revamped base set; 237 cards), Personas (100 cards), Flash-forward (135 cards), CMU (72 cards), Movin' On (99 cards), and Groupings (99 cards). There were also 24 promo cards. The first two sets were primarily distributed in physical form, sold in decks and boosters back at PPA. The subsequent sets were distributed via CD at college. Flash-forward was just all of the non-character cards from the base set with new art for CMU.

The card templates retained the same colors (per type) from the PPA TCG; for example, Items were red because the boxes on the original Item cards were red. The templates did not change throughout all six card sets.

A sample Character card, "David Stoll", from the Flashback base set A sample GPA card, "Photographic Memory?", from the Personas expansion A sample Event card, "Carry The Burden", from the Flash-forward expansion A sample Rule card, "Obscuring Fog", from the CMU mini-expansion A sample Item card, "Debit Card", from the Movin' On expansion A sample Group Node card, "CompSci Group", from the Groupings expansion

Site

The PPA TCG had a website with information on the game, such as rules downloads and card listings. Cards were not downloadable, as this game was sold. This is probably the most comprehensive website I've created for a card game.