I've read the discussions about things like "drawing a card" (without
the replacement/dicarding text) and "does five mean five-or-more", and
I was wondering why -from a game designer's point of view- reminder
text is used at all.
In my opinion, before you start playing a game, you should know the
rules. It's not like you can buy a chess game where a King piece has
reminder text on it saying: "(if this piece is taken, you lose the
game. The King may not move if that move puts him in check)".
Of course, in any game as complex as VTES there will be problems and
uncertainties, but that's what the detailed rulebook, clarification
pages and groups like this are for.
I for one agree with LSJ that the rulebook should always be the first
place to look for answers, but I also think reminder text that just
quotes a rule is therefor pointless and only raises more
uncertainties.
So, the question is: why use reminder text at all? Don't tell me it's
to make the game easier for new players, because I think VTES has
quite a complex set of rules and mechanics anyway (compared to other
CCGs, that is), so a new player couldn't just pick up a starter and
begin play to anyway (without thouroughly learning the rules). Also,
most people nowadays have access to the net and can look up any
clarification.
On a personal note, I'd love to see reminder text getting replaced
with flavor text. :)
Not trying to bitch here, just curious.
-Teeka
Teeka wrote:
> I for one agree with LSJ that the rulebook should always be the first
> place to look for answers, but I also think reminder text that just
> quotes a rule is therefor pointless and only raises more
> uncertainties.
>
> So, the question is: why use reminder text at all?
It staves off quite a fair portion of questions. The "uncertainties"
raised are a miniscule price to pay for that.
--
LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc.
Links to V:TES news, rules, cards, utilities, and tournament calendar:
http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/
>I've read the discussions about things like "drawing a card" (without
>the replacement/dicarding text) and "does five mean five-or-more", and
>I was wondering why -from a game designer's point of view- reminder
>text is used at all.
>
>In my opinion, before you start playing a game, you should know the
>rules. It's not like you can buy a chess game where a King piece has
>reminder text on it saying: "(if this piece is taken, you lose the
>game. The King may not move if that move puts him in check)".
Chess has incredibly simple rules and interactions in comparison to pretty much
any CCG.
>Of course, in any game as complex as VTES there will be problems and
>uncertainties, but that's what the detailed rulebook, clarification
>pages and groups like this are for.
Rulebook has a couple problems. First, finding relevant info in rulebooks is
too often an ordeal. Second, the little rulebooks that come with starters
eventually end up being woefully insufficient for understanding how a
particular CCG works. If you ever look at the official online rulebooks for
the few games that have real ones, they are painfully long. Firestorm tried to
put out a real rulebook with its starters and it had something like 67
sections. Kind of cool how they addressed all sorts of things that are
important to high level play and usually ignored by standard paper rulebooks
but not user friendly.
The V:TES rulings/clarifications/et al pages are inadequate. I find it
disturbing that people think it's okay that a lot of rulings have to be looked
up through Google rather than having a (real) database on the WW site. I
almost never find an answer to a card interaction question in looking through
rulings/clarifications/errata/et al. I might be able to find it in the rules
Yahoogroup or Google from a discussion here. Usually, if I want a definitive
answer, it requires asking LSJ. That's just amazingly inefficient when a
searchable database of every ruling or clarification *ever* made could exist.
I realize the data entry aspects of such are an issue for smaller companies,
but it's what should be aspired to.
>I for one agree with LSJ that the rulebook should always be the first
>place to look for answers, but I also think reminder text that just
>quotes a rule is therefor pointless and only raises more
>uncertainties.
Real world counter - Magic has increased reminder text on cards because it was
deemed helpful.
>So, the question is: why use reminder text at all? Don't tell me it's
>to make the game easier for new players, because I think VTES has
>quite a complex set of rules and mechanics anyway (compared to other
>CCGs, that is), so a new player couldn't just pick up a starter and
>begin play to anyway (without thouroughly learning the rules). Also,
>most people nowadays have access to the net and can look up any
>clarification.
For the first argument, I'm not sure how the absence of reminder text solves
the complexity problem of the game.
For the second, people can't always look things up while playing. Remembering
questions after playing is something I've found difficult. Should write down
questions, but it's tedious to do so. Then, with V:TES, finding the answer is
no picnic. Even if you are used to searching Google, you have to make sure the
ruling you find is best data.
The funny thing is that reminder text is used both by companies that word cards
badly and ones that word cards well. V:TES cards happen to be worded badly;
there's an absence of consistency (templating), keywording, and whatnot. For
this game and others like it, the reminder text is in there to prevent people
from making bad assumptions about how things work or to resolve ambiguous
wordings. In the ideal, you come up with rules for writing cards that makes
ambiguity difficult and wouldn't need reminder text to serve this purpose (kind
of what you are getting at).
For a game like Magic that has tight templating and lots of keywords, reminder
text helps teach the rules of the game while cutting down on case-by-case card
interaction issues (due to the keywording). Some keywords, like First Strike,
may be intuitively obvious in how they work (for Magic), but Magic is
constantly creating new keywords and some of their mechanics just aren't
obvious in how they work. Explaining Sunburst (keyword), for instance, on
every card that uses it helps oodles for getting people to play it right over
having a little insert in starters or forcing people to look up how things work
or forcing people to ask someone to explain how it works to them.
But, why use keywords and reminder text over just writing out the mechanic each
time? Keywords are sweet for simplifying CCGs. "Haste" used to be written on
Magic cards as "~ is unaffected by summoning sickness." and before that "~ may
attack and tap for effects [or something like that] the turn it comes into
play." If you put Haste plus its reminder text on cards, you probably end up
with more words than if you just wrote out the mechanic sans the keyword. But,
suppose you want something to reference a card or all cards with Haste.
Suppose you are worried about an interaction between the mechanic and something
else. Rather than go card-by-card to make sure the wording are identical so
that the interactions are identical, all interactions involving the keyword
*must* work exactly the same way because the keyword always means exactly the
same thing.
Rather than something like "When ~, you may draw a card. (Discard down to your
hand size afterwards." or however such things are written, if there were a
keyword DRAW (or Draw in boldface or some other word all together) such that
you could write the mechanic "If ~; DRAW: 1 (Discard down to your hand size
afterwards.)", while possibly limiting the amount of space available to other
text, it would at least be consistent.
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