Trading Card Games are a new phenomenon in the roleplaying industry. They combine card games with the collectible trading card craze more normally associated with football or baseball cards. A CCG (Collectible Card Game) uses a large number of (usually lavishly illustrated) cards with different properties, some of which are much rarer than others. Each deck of cards contains only a selection of these cards, to obtain more you must buy more decks or trade cards with others. Naturally the rare cards are more powerful in the game than the more common ones.

The first and most popular CCG is Magic The Gathering, invented by Richard Garfield of Wizard's of the Coast. Since it appeared on the shelves of shops a few years ago over a billion Magic cards have been sold, some now trading amongst collectors for as much as $300 per card to people with thousands of cards! In the light of this incredible success it seems as every company in existence has been scrambling to produce its own CCG, producing games such as Illuminati, Star Trek the Card Game and Jhyadd.

Some roleplayers have claimed that CCGs are killing the roleplaying industry, pulling people away from real games and lowering the tone of the hobby, but most people now see them as just another part of the gaming world.

See Collectible Dice Games.