So I have been going on about modifying the card text templates to reduce the barrier to entry for a while now (generally falls to death ears on the old google groups) and since Ankha was talking about simplified cards for new players , I thought I would bring the topic up again.
Held a demo game recently for a couple of friends and the main feedback I got was that the cards had too many keywords that were not explained, making it difficult to learn the cards while learning the rules at the same time.
I propose (as I have, time and again) to put simple little explanation of certain keywords on the cards themselves. Specifically on crypt cards (because, while I like the way Ankha puts explanation text for action modifiers, political action cards, etc, I think space may be an issue).
Really, how hard can it be to put "(title, x votes)" next to every bishop, primogen, magaji or cardinal and "(unique title, x votes) next to every prince, archbishop, justicar, inner circle or regent? Of course all these will only appear on new cards or reprints.
This immediately makes a few things easier:
1. Cards that require titled vampires (those that say "Require a titled vampire" or "Only usable by a titled vampire") or require a non-titled vampire no longer require explanation beyond "RTFC"
2. The number of votes each vampire generates becomes immediately obvious
3. Titles that are unique are also immediately identifiable
I think, with all the talk of bringing in new players, this is a good step for the future and now is a good time to start.
Suaku
Inceptor Asian Continental Championship
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Space. Most ICs and Cardinals already have a paragraph of tech. It gets worse on ADV minions (i.e. ADV Karsh, ADV Sacha Vykos, ADV Melinda Galbraith, etc)
I tried to keep the cheat-cards from the PreCons around for newbies. I've also thought of making some 3.5" square cards with things like the Titles listed on them to hand to new players (as well as a Turn Sequence or Combat Sequence**).
** I'd want to have a complete turn sequence that does include all of the possible windows that exist implicitly by cardtexts/rulings and aren't listed in the CRR or Rules. Ironically the Rules & CRR have woefully short and incomplete combat sequences.
Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418
> Juggernaut1981 wrote:
> Space. Most ICs and Cardinals already have a paragraph of tech. It gets worse on ADV minions (i.e. ADV Karsh, ADV Sacha Vykos, ADV Melinda Galbraith, etc)
>
I disagree. Look at vampires like Lambach ADV and Syneosis - the extra "has two votes" on them do not impact significantly on the readability of the card text, if at all.
And the merged text for ADV vampires is a straw man, since most of the merged texts start on a new line that just says "[MERGED] <Sect> <Title>".
> Juggernaut1981 wrote:
> I tried to keep the cheat-cards from the PreCons around for newbies. I've also thought of making some 3.5" square cards with things like the Titles listed on them to hand to new players (as well as a Turn Sequence or Combat Sequence**).
>
I always do that. It doesn't work as well because you have to look at two different sources just to know one thing that can be made intuitive.
I am not pulling this out of thin air. I replace the card text area of titled minions to add explanation text when preparing for demos and the new players always pick up the game faster than when I do impromptu demos (using the cards as they are)
Suaku
Inceptor Asian Continental Championship
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Don't expect this to happen. In V:tES players expect their opponents to recognize every card they play just by announcing the name of the card as it is played.
When we say "Muaziz bleeds with govern" it's expected that you know govern = "Govern the Unaligned," which is a bleed action at +2 bleed, and Muaziz has +1 stealth.
In reality, you are supposed to announce "Muaziz bleeds with Govern the Unaligned for 3 at +1 stealth."
Players are expected to know how many votes each title grants. And VEKN is so afraid of making changes to cards already printed, they will never change the format of a card to include more information.
Common sense changes like you propose won't happen. Vampires don't change and change is bad.
Independent Futurist. Contrarian (titled, X votes where X is the number of votes as the acting minion.) Target Vitals is always the better combat card.
Of all the things that perhaps should be changed or clarified, I wouldn't rank titles or ammount of votes each title provides very highly in need of a change. In my experience, even begginer playes don't have that much of a problem remembering which title is worth how many votes or calculating how many votes are on the table...
> Kiddo wrote:
> Of all the things that perhaps should be changed or clarified, I wouldn't rank titles or ammount of votes each title provides very highly in need of a change. In my experience, even begginer playes don't have that much of a problem remembering which title is worth how many votes or calculating how many votes are on the table...
>
Whereas I get asked how many votes an Archbishop or Cardinal is worth shockingly often by people who have played for years.
While that shouldn't be the case, the game should be vastly clearer than it has been historically.
Traveller Card Game
> Kiddo wrote:
> Of all the things that perhaps should be changed or clarified, I wouldn't rank titles or ammount of votes each title provides very highly in need of a change. In my experience, even begginer playes don't have that much of a problem remembering which title is worth how many votes or calculating how many votes are on the table...
>
Of course there are other things to change.
However, this is one of the things that should be changed for the better and is not hard to implement the change. If we can't even start on one thing, what's the point of talking about everything else?
Suaku
Inceptor Asian Continental Championship
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www.youtube.com/SuakuOz
> wesile wrote:
> Well... do you remember that card that came inside every deck with the disciplines, clans, etc?
>
> Create a mew one and just add the titles...
>
At the risk of sounding rude and abrasive, at least be bothered to read one page of posts before posting something that has already been covered.
It's not like there are more than ten posts in total
Suaku
Inceptor Asian Continental Championship
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Anyone from the card design or marketing team care to weigh in on this?
I personally think there are a lot more changes we can do, but something this simple and effective should at least be considered. No?
If we can make card comprehension more intuitive, we will increase the chances of groups that start up themselves before joining the greater community. Ultimately, is not our plan to grow the player base? I propose that making it easier for people to pick up the game works very well towards that goal and making card comprehension more intuitive most certainly makes picking up the game easier.
Suaku
Inceptor Asian Continental Championship
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www.youtube.com/SuakuOz
> the1andonlime wrote:
> Anyone from the card design or marketing team care to weigh in on this?
>
> I personally think there are a lot more changes we can do, but something this simple and effective should at least be considered. No?
>
> If we can make card comprehension more intuitive, we will increase the chances of groups that start up themselves before joining the greater community. Ultimately, is not our plan to grow the player base? I propose that making it easier for people to pick up the game works very well towards that goal and making card comprehension more intuitive most certainly makes picking up the game easier.
>
I suppose you have the "title (x votes)" in mind.
Adding the number of votes after the title has nothing to do with intuitiveness because either the player have read the section about referendum and knows what title and votes are about, or he hasn't and the concept of # votes won't help him.
Adding the number of votes is more a help for beginners which is welcome on initiation sets (that's why I added them on my demo cards -- and you can see that there's a lot of text as soon as you begin to add rules reminders) but becomes quickly redundant and space-wasting when you've played a few games.
I don't think you can make standard VTES cards "intuitive". If you haven't read the rules, you won't get far.
If you have a look on Magic cards, only core sets have reminders about keywords such as Flying and so on. The volume of cards printed and expansions, as well as the quantity of vanilla cards (1/1 flying creature with no text) make it easy to add reminder text. Classical sets don't have reminder (except for new keywords, which doesn't happen frequently in VTES).
To cut a long story short, I think that "Prince of Miami" is perfectly clear and doesn't need any additional reminder text. It's more useful either to design a beginner's set with special cards, and/or a set of reminders cards (the existing ones have to many informations on them): one with the titles and what they're worth and how a political action works, one for combat, one with the turn layout, etc.
In fact, playing on the playmat should be enough. The number of votes a Prince has is written on it.
If people have ideas to make the game more "intuitive", please share!
Prince of Paris, France
Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director
See, I believe that, ideally, potential players can pick up vtes without going "WTF?! TL;DR, not going to play something so complicated". I am specifically talking about those who have no access to an existing playgroup to show them the ropes.
I agree that too much reminder text for keywords do make the text overly long, but there are too many players (potential and existing) who keep asking how many votes certain titles have.
Would you agree that, after quickly reading through the rules, a player should be able to jump into the game without having to constantly reference rules or reminder cards?
That said, I concur that if we do get a chance to do beginner sets (which can be used with existing cards) on a more or less regular basis, that would be the best place to have cards with reminder text.
However, without such a set anytime in the horizon, I still think my proposal will help the game.
Suaku
Inceptor Asian Continental Championship
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> the1andonlime wrote:
> Really, how hard can it be to put "(title, x votes)" next to every bishop, primogen, magaji or cardinal and "(unique title, x votes) next to every prince, archbishop, justicar, inner circle or regent? Of course all these will only appear on new cards or reprints.
>
I second this. Considering the absurd amount of text that already on certain vampires, for reasons that is mainly just bad design, this should be possible. Helping newbie is never wrong.
"My strategy? Luck is my strategy, of course."
> the1andonlime wrote:
> See, I believe that, ideally, potential players can pick up vtes without going "WTF?! TL;DR, not going to play something so complicated". I am specifically talking about those who have no access to an existing playgroup to show them the ropes.
>
I don't think than adding "(x votes)" after each title will contribute to change a "WTF!" in "oh this game seems so easy now!"
> the1andonlime wrote:
> Would you agree that, after quickly reading through the rules, a player should be able to jump into the game without having to constantly reference rules or reminder cards?
>
Of course not
But why put the rule reminders on each card rather than on a reminder card?
Addind reminder text on cards can lead to long text where the important information is diluted in lots of useless text.[/quote]
Prince of Paris, France
Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director
> Ankha wrote:
>
> > the1andonlime wrote:
> > See, I believe that, ideally, potential players can pick up vtes without going "WTF?! TL;DR, not going to play something so complicated". I am specifically talking about those who have no access to an existing playgroup to show them the ropes.
> >
> I don't think than adding "(x votes)" after each title will contribute to change a "WTF!" in "oh this game seems so easy now!"
>
Many a little makes a mickle, or? But of course you have to pick the right things to clearify.
"My strategy? Luck is my strategy, of course."
This game is around 17 years old?
Card layouts have changed somewhat in that time. A crypt card in vampire takes up about 60.5%* of the usable surface of a card (compared to a Magic: the Gathering card which the image takes up 42.6%)
The reason is that the portraits are in an elliptical frame, and the outer corners are not utilized for card function. The AREA of the ellipse is about the same as the area of a magic card image.
You want to put more information on a vampire without crowding the text? Find a way to use that space.
Independent Futurist. Contrarian (titled, X votes where X is the number of votes as the acting minion.) Target Vitals is always the better combat card.
> Ankha wrote:
> I don't think than adding "(x votes)" after each title will contribute to change a "WTF!" in "oh this game seems so easy now!"
>
I think you are missing my point here. I am not saying that adding "(x votes)" after each title will do that. What I am saying is, ideally, players should be able to look at the cards and go "oh, that's not too hard to understand", and that adding "(x votes)" is a good step towards that goal.
> Ankha wrote:
> Of course not
>
I don't quite understand: are you saying that you don't agree to the entire statement, or that you agree that players should not need to keep making external references?
> Ankha wrote:
> But why put the rule reminders on each card rather than on a reminder card?
> Addind reminder text on cards can lead to long text where the important information is diluted in lots of useless text.
>
Yes. I agree fully with you on the evils of huge walls of text.
I am proposing only exactly what I have stated and not for reminder text for all keywords. That is another discussion for another thread, with the very good chance of requiring major layout changes to achieve.
Like Ashur said, we have to
>
> pick the right things to clearify
>
, and I think this is one of the things that is useful, easily implemented and will not take up too much extra space by itself.
Is there any card you have in mind that adding "(x votes)" will cause the card text to explode?
Suaku
Inceptor Asian Continental Championship
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www.youtube.com/SuakuOz
> the1andonlime wrote:
>
> > Ankha wrote:
> > I don't think than adding "(x votes)" after each title will contribute to change a "WTF!" in "oh this game seems so easy now!"
> >
> I think you are missing my point here. I am not saying that adding "(x votes)" after each title will do that. What I am saying is, ideally, players should be able to look at the cards and go "oh, that's not too hard to understand", and that adding "(x votes)" is a good step towards that goal.
>
I think quite the opposite. I prefer a single keyword, rather that a keyword followed by extra text. It's quicker to read, straight to the point with no superfluous information.
> the1andonlime wrote:
>
> > Ankha wrote:
> > Of course not
> >
> I don't quite understand: are you saying that you don't agree to the entire statement, or that you agree that players should not need to keep making external references?
>
I misread what you wrote. But I don't think a player can jump directly into the game without refering to the rules or some help during the game; the game isn't simple to a point that reading once the rules is enough. And it's not the only game. Last game I tried (Netrunner) requires a few games before I could grasp all the basics.
> the1andonlime wrote:
>
> > Ankha wrote:
> > But why put the rule reminders on each card rather than on a reminder card?
> > Addind reminder text on cards can lead to long text where the important information is diluted in lots of useless text.
> >
> Yes. I agree fully with you on the evils of huge walls of text.
> I am proposing only exactly what I have stated and not for reminder text for all keywords. That is another discussion for another thread, with the very good chance of requiring major layout changes to achieve.
>
> Like Ashur said, we have to
> >
> > pick the right things to clearify
> >
> , and I think this is one of the things that is useful, easily implemented and will not take up too much extra space by itself.
>
There's no clarification involved there, because the "prince" keyword is perfectly defined in the textbook. It's more "help for the beginner" or "reminder" text.
Question is: where do we start adding explanation text to cards, and where do we stop? I don't think that titles should be explained.
And you could go further in the details: why not add "(title worth 2 votes)" so that players know that Prince is a title? Or "(city title worth 2 votes)" so players know it has a special interaction with titles from the same city? We could even add "(unique city title worth 2 votes)" to make clear there can be only 1 Prince of a city... Where do we stop? I'm a bit exagerating there, but once again, I prefer a clear simple text whose full definition is in the rules.
> the1andonlime wrote:
> Is there any card you have in mind that adding "(x votes)" will cause the card text to explode?
>
Without making text explode, any add of "(x votes)" will lengthen the text and reduce the text font size (even sometimes for vanilla prince such as Tara).
Prince of Paris, France
Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director
> Ankha wrote:
> I think quite the opposite. I prefer a single keyword, rather that a keyword followed by extra text. It's quicker to read, straight to the point with no superfluous information.
>
I don't think it is superfluous. It serves a purpose, and a good purpose at that.
> Ankha wrote:
> I misread what you wrote. But I don't think a player can jump directly into the game without refering to the rules or some help during the game; the game isn't simple to a point that reading once the rules is enough. And it's not the only game. Last game I tried (Netrunner) requires a few games before I could grasp all the basics.
>
I think FFG's games are a terrible frame of reference to take. They have the same problems we have: complicated rules with convoluted rulings.
> Ankha wrote:
> There's no clarification involved there, because the "prince" keyword is perfectly defined in the textbook. It's more "help for the beginner" or "reminder" text.
>
To a player:
"Malkavian Justicar" = not clear what this means, wait, let me check/think back on the rules again.
"Malkavian Justicar (unique title, 3 votes)" = instantly clear that this is an unique title that is worth 3 votes
I think that makes things clearer, which is not necessarily the same as having clarification.
> Ankha wrote:
> Question is: where do we start adding explanation text to cards, and where do we stop? I don't think that titles should be explained.
>
I propose we start from this. Where would you propose we start?
We stop with this for now, until someone can show that a new change will neither improve on the game or make the game worse, at which point we start again.
> Ankha wrote:
> And you could go further in the details: why not add "(title worth 2 votes)" so that players know that Prince is a title?
>
If you re-read my original post, I did.
> Ankha wrote:
> Or "(city title worth 2 votes)" so players know it has a special interaction with titles from the same city?
>
Interaction should not be so specific. We see it as "Prince" + "of <city>", which is where I can see you are coming from.
To grow the game, we must assume that not all players know what this means in terms of the greater WoD. For all intents and purposes, we should be reading the title as "Prince of <city>". Just to be clear, what I mean is "Prince of Istanbul" should read as a completely different entity from "Prince of Madrid" instead of reading both as "Princes, one from Istanbul and on from Madrid"
> Ankha wrote:
> We could even add "(unique city title worth 2 votes)" to make clear there can be only 1 Prince of a city...
>
That does not make it clear that one city can only have 1 Prince. "unique title, 2 votes" should suffice.
> Ankha wrote:
> Is there any card you have in mind that adding "(x votes)" will cause the card text to explode?
>
Without making text explode, any add of "(x votes)" will lengthen the text and reduce the text font size (even sometimes for vanilla prince such as Tara).[/quote]
I don't see a problem here. It's not like the text on Tara become illegible once it shrinks one font size.
Again, I will ask for specific examples supporting this argument where it becomes not good for the game.
Or if you can get 10 other players to say honestly that reducing Tara's text by a single font size makes it impossible to read her text comfortably.
Suaku
Inceptor Asian Continental Championship
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www.youtube.com/SuakuOz
> the1andonlime wrote:
> "Malkavian Justicar" = not clear what this means, wait, let me check/think back on the rules again.
>
It is not that the term 'Malkavian Justicar' is not clear - it is crystal clear, but in you example the player doesn't know the rules. That's it.
Once you accept that, we can discuss whether it would be useful or redundant to put reminders on the cards, and if so, which ones. I mean, there are even more rules that are quite important but would require a bit more space to explain/remind on the card, like Scarce or Infernal.
> Or if you can get 10 other players to say honestly that reducing Tara's text by a single font size makes it impossible to read her text comfortably.
>
Vamps lie Tara aren't an issue, but vamps like Arika, Anneke. Anastazs or Aeron (to name a few just a few) sure as hell don't need another line of text. Jut imagine what would your proposal do to Alfred Benezri ADV card.
> Kiddo wrote:
> It is not that the term 'Malkavian Justicar' is not clear - it is crystal clear, but in you example the player doesn't know the rules. That's it.
>
> Once you accept that, we can discuss whether it would be useful or redundant to put reminders on the cards, and if so, which ones. I mean, there are even more rules that are quite important but would require a bit more space to explain/remind on the card, like Scarce or Infernal.
>
Yes. I agree that the player doesn't fully know the rules.
And I concede that, for some players, this is just reminder text.
However, I have come across enough feedback from players both new and old that justifies needing such text on the card.
In addition, after looking at all the keywords that would be helped with reminder text, to use your words, it seems to me that titles are the only keywords on a minion that can be easily explained without the extra text causing the existing card text to explode. It is not that I did not consider anything else, it is just that I did, can came to this conclusion.
> Kiddo wrote:
> Vamps lie Tara aren't an issue, but vamps like Arika, Anneke. Anastazs or Aeron (to name a few just a few) sure as hell don't need another line of text. Jut imagine what would your proposal do to Alfred Benezri ADV card.
>
Oh wow. He has a huge wall of text.
Yes, this certainly would be bad on him, but Anneke, Arika et al can still benefit from the extra text, IMO.
Just to share a little off-topic:
If I believe I would get my way with something more radical, I would propose a change to the very layout of the cards. M:tG found space to split generic and repeated keywords from the actual card text and that can be applied to V:tES cards as well (e.g. reformatting the art to fit something like "Unique. Minion. Vampire. Camarilla" between the portrait and the card text) which frees up breathing space in the card text area. But this is another story for another thread.
Suaku
Inceptor Asian Continental Championship
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www.youtube.com/SuakuOz