ReVamping VTES?

The vote about "how to continue VTES" has about 1/16 of the voters (1000+) saying they'd like to see a new Vampire card game incompatible with VTES, and about 1/8th of the voters (3000+) asking for an overhaul of rules and cards, preferably compatible with VTES. There has also been some sentiment that an entirely new card game, a spiritual successor to VTES, could be made following FFG's LCG model (as opposed to the CCG model). Given that pursuing that path would likely lead to a game incompatible with VTES, what would you like to see changed, assuming that was what the-powers-that-be opted for? With over 20 years worth of card game design to learn from, what changes would you make or like to see? How would you ReVamp VTES? My initial thoughts are: * Keep predator / prey relationship in some form. It's a really cool setup. * Keep crypt deck & library deck as separate decks. I'm open to the possibility of having one deck though. * Limit vampires to 1 copy per crypt, i.e all vampires are unique one-ofs. I think this would make the vampires all feel really unique, legendary if you will. * Keep library cards to any number of copies or at least 5 copies. Preferably the former, since it acts as a mirror to the 'only one-of vampires' rule. * Cut down on the number of clans. At last count there were 20+ and as flavorful as they may be, it kind of became the equivalent to having 20+ colors in MtG, kinda. * Clean up, simplify disciplines (the vampire powers.) At last count there were 30 or so? Many were also incredibly narrow or useless. * Clean up & simplify card types. There are 10+ card types including: actions, action modifiers, combat, reactions, retainers, equipment, allies, events, master cards, event cards, and political actions, not including the vampire cards in the crypt! * Clean up graphic design (card layout) and improve artwork. IMO, the skin / framing / color of the cards are terrible, nevermind the actual artwork which wildly varies in quality. * Clean up and simplify combat which currently has 6+(?) steps or windows for playing cards: 1) pre-range; 2) determine range; 3) pre-strikes; 4) determine strikes; 5) strike resolution; 6) additional strikes?; 7) repeat steps 4 & 5 for additional strikes if necessary; 8| press; 9) end combat round. It's kind of ridiculous. > Compare VTES combat to MtG's combat: 1) Declare Combat; 2) Declare Attackers; 3) Opp Declares Blockers; 4) Resolve Combat. The important thing to remember here is that during each of these steps, each player has the opportunity to play cards or activate effects, so after each of these steps, you can mentally add two mini-steps: 1) Acting player gets the option to play cards or pass, 2) opponent gets the opportunity to play cards or pass. This applies to Vampire as well! But yeah... enough of my ideas, what about yours? How would you ReVamp VTES? Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> LivesByProxy wrote: > * Limit vampires to 1 copy per crypt, i.e all vampires are unique one-ofs. I think this would make the vampires all feel really unique, legendary if you will. > Legendary? Quite the opposite. This will totally demolish so many deck ideas that it'll ruin the game. The gameplay will be more random as you can't stress the importance, and availability, of your most important stooges. That aside, I don't mind the format how VTES will be sold in the future, but if it ain't compatible with the Old Skool '94 Jyhad, I fear it is time for me to close my door on this chapter in my life, but I'll most likely continue supporting the Ye Venerable Olde Format, though. Finnish Politics!

I agree 100% with Lönnka and as far as I know the very most people in Austria do so. And MtG is another game, if I want to play it, I do(sometimes it happens ). As far as I know, the most players like the many different possibilities and the complexity of VTES. NC, Austria

hello, LivingByProxy! Welcome to the forums. Do stay a while and chat, and don't get discouraged by opposition to your ideas (seriously, it can get a little hostile here some times). I'm left wondering how many V:tes games you've played and how long have you been playing in general? Theme and atmosphere are important considerations to the more seasoned members of this community, and while we pretty much all agree that there is some fat that could be trimmed from the game (though we also disagree which bits to trim) it feels like your ideas boil down to "make it more like Magic: The Gathering." In further detail: all vampires are already unique (except the handful that say they aren't) and only one can be in play at a time. The Contest mechanic works to reinforce the theme of ancient vampires expending resources to fight for control of a unique thing. Additionally limiting vampires to one copy of each per crypt makes it impossible to have a star vampire deck. Though there's at least an argument (I'm not sure it's a viable one, though) for a per-card limit, but it involves some other significant rules changes and also assumes that all players have equal access to all cards like an LCG. This doesn't really change the fact that some interesting deck strategies evaporate if you impose a limit, and newer viable strategies don't appear to fill the gap. While I agree that Vampire clans could be streamlined a little bit, I suspect that our reasoning is wildly different*. Be that as it may, the number of clans, disciplines, and card types are moot because of the way the game is played. Let's not forget that the game was successful enough in its heyday, and didn't get canned because it was no longer viable. I'm a big fan of the LCG model for V:tes because it fits very nicely with how people play the game, but there are issues with distribution of such a large set of cards that would need to be resolved.

@ Lönkka: The premise of the OP was that the-powers-that-be would opt for a spiritual successor incompatible with VTES. It would mean some rules changes aimed at producing a refined VTES 2.0 of sorts. A spiritual successor. So there would be no ruining the game, since it would be a different game (albeit with many similarities to original VTES.) Also, I am surprised there aren't more VTES cards that let players manipulate the crypt - the master actions and minion actions that would emphasize the importance and availability of your most important minions. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

@ Ur-Vampire: There is nothing wrong with that, but reviving interest in VTES should still be a topic of discussion. The topic of this discussion is what should change assuming a spiritual successor to VTES was what nuWW opted for. I take it that you think nothing should change? There's nothing you would tweak or alter at all? Interesting... Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

@ Self Biased: Thank you for the welcome. Admittedly, I have never played VTES, I want to but availability of cards, combined with their presentation (graphics), and the learning curve, and the decline(?) of WW and relative obscurity of VTM or VTR makes it a challenge to get players together. This is compounded by the fact that *no one* in my local area has even heard of VTM, VTR, or VTES outside of the old grey-beards who own the local gaming store. I've been fascinated by VTES (and Masquerade and Requiem) for a long time now, since 2010, but only recently have I found resources like Amaranth (and the VTES Checklist site that went down a few months ago.) Never-the-less, my lack of having played VTES doesn't mean I lack for appreciating the game. I do find it sad that it is nearly impossible to find gameplay footage or examples - most of the sites are outdated and links are broken. The videos on YouTube are low-quality visually and aurally. Regardless, I want VTES, or rather a spiritual successor to VTES, (and I want Vampire to succeed and become a force in popular culture once more) but I don't want it to be like MTG. As I get older, I grow to dislike MTG more and more (for reasons I won't get into), and I despise the clones of MTG more. In reference to the combat, I was only pointing out how simplifying it and the timing windows would make the game more approachable, possibly even stealing some of the MTG players away. I actually really like the unique status of vampires once they're in play, and the contesting their loyalty feature. I understand that star vampire decks are a thing, but I have to ask, "is it a bug or a feature?" Did Richard Garfield and the other creators intend or foresee player's putting 12 copies of Nergal into their crypt? IDK but maybe the advantages of the "one-of rule" would be greater than the loss of star vampire crypts. I also really like the "no copy limit on library cards". I would be curious to know what you think should be streamlined or changed or tweaked, as that was the goal of the post, to drive discussion in that direction. For the record, I would also change the win condition in hopes of speeding up the game. I would have players try to get to X Victory Points, maybe 4 or 5? Then I would have the Edge grant 1 VP if you managed to keep it a full round. Such a rules to the WinCon would allow designers to print cards that also grant VP, like a vampire who granted 1 VP as long as he was controlled (likely a high cap titled vamp) or a master card that had some condition to fulfill and then permanently counted as +1 VP. Maybe players automatically had +1 VP for having 20+ pool? IDK, I think it opens up a unique design space. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> LivesByProxy wrote: > I would be curious to know what you think should be streamlined or changed or tweaked, as that was the goal of the post, to drive discussion in that direction. > Shifting the focus to two-player play would solve a lot of issues you bring up (getting only 1 other player to play, speed up the game, streamline timing windows/learning curve). The only problem I see with two-player VTES is the inherent CCG approach to deck building; two players showing up with randomly constructed decks mostly leads to lopsided (and therefore not fun) games. But, if one were to take the existing card pool, build two decks that will interact well, and play the game with those two decks, two-player VTES is viable. And there are certainly plenty of cards around to build many pairs of decks for optimal interaction. People don't give two-player games enough credit. It's not the same as multiplayer, but it's still very fun to play.

So..... I would strongly encourage you to play some vtes before asking some of the questions/making suggestion. To answer one question: crypt manipulation matters very little once you're set up, so most minion actions aren't focused on it. However, some strong abilities use the uncontrolled region as a resource. Anyway, a spiritual successor should be separate and based on CoD(nWoD) where a cross splat 10 dot supernatural trait is already in place for source and all factions can be played. Also, super important, it wouldn't be vtes on any level, as it would be completely separate. Vtes is multiplayer and plays kind of like a board game. Card availability is fixable by return to print, which is being worked on, but cards aren't unobtainable. Think entry cost to MTG. To be viable in standard (as far as I know this is still the range) you have to drop at least $100-$250. Eternal formats, let's ignore buying the power 9 and look at legacy: fish, counter top goyf stuff, goblin variants you need sac lands($25?x4), real dual lands($40ishx4?) And some Staples (goyf is around$100 now? ) No idea on vindicate, pernicious deed, meddling mage, confidant, etc. Compare to Magi nation and it's $50 for booster boxes enough to make all core set decks, even though the games long out of print, and it's staggering. So, considering vtes has vamps and staple cards for 2,4, sometimes 10 for $1, and only freak drive doesn't have cheaper alternatives and it's $5, I don't see this barrier compared to other games. Where are you located? I can't argue against it sucking if your area has no WoD fans and wanting to play a 4-5 player card game. I do recommend connecting with players and playing some. Once you get over the learning curve, it's phenomenal, and nothing compares in terms of strategy and fun.

> ”ReverendRevolver” wrote: > I would strongly encourage you to play some vtes before asking some of the questions/making suggestions. > I was going to mention this. Things that may seem like a huge deal academically might only come up rarely. Having practical, first-hand knowledge of how the game works and flows is super important. As a prime example: your mention of Crypt manipulation not appearing to be a thing. Games tend to last 14-16 turns [citation needed] and most of your vampires that you’ll use in the game get influenced out in the first 3-5 turns. Because you might not have minions out you’ll probably have a hard time playing cards from your hand, which in turn affects how many cards you draw. Crypt manipulation using cards in the deck would really only be useful for a few turns, and have rapidly diminishing returns once you had minions out. But, come to think of it there is crypt manipulation in a sense: when you build your deck, you select your vampires and how many of each are going in your crypt. I usually do 2-3 copies of 5-6 different vampires I want to use. So I’m hoping to draw at least 3 different ones in my initial uncontrolled region. I’ve made several posts about what I’d like to see changed, you can go read them for more in-depth thoughts. The TL;DR of it is that Vampire: The Eternal Struggle has some legacy holdovers from its source material from Vampire: The Masquerade. Anti-truibu clans for the Sabbat could probably be folded into their Camarilla counterparts in V:tes without it being game-breaking. Not every clan has its own unique discipline (as an aside, this is one of the things that Requiem got right, along with the way it has 4-5 sects that have a different relationship to each other than the usual Sabbat/Cam boogeyman syndrome. And honestly, in a lot of ways Requiem fits V:tes much better as a setting than Masquerade does, but I digress), which makes it hard to tell a Toreador with Potence apart from a Brujah with Auspex by mechanics alone. V:tes also had several expansions that added mechanics like Red List & Trophies, Black Hand, the research area, and Imbued, but most of these outside of Black Hand weren’t supported in later expansions. The biggest hurdle to some of these issues is that in order to fix them it’d require a massive errata and reprinting, and would surely alienate older players as much as it would confuse players who are new to the game. I’m the person responsible for creating the proxy demo decks. Eventually I hope to add another set to them covering the other major Independent clans and the two Sabbat-only clans. From there, the long-term plan is to generate the same high quality proxies for most, if not all of the game. The caveat is that Amaranth already does this but doesn’t use the official layout. It’s probably easier to just use those proxies rather than wait for me to give the treatment to the full set of 5,000 cards. I should be done with my planned revamp of the Demo Decks in a few days, though. If you were inclined to print them out and use them, I’d wait until the update gets posted. There’s several V:tes facebook groups that can help you connect with players. If you’re anywhere in the northeast US, I know of several groups that you could potentially join. Also, If you haven’t downloaded it yet, Lackey CCG offers a V:tes plugin for online play. I haven’t tried it with Discord, but allegedly it interfaces with Skype so you can talk to your oponnents.

> self wrote: > Crypt manipulation using cards in the deck would really only be useful for a few turns, and have rapidly diminishing returns once you had minions out. > Excellent post, except for this utterly insane piece of a fairy tale. Have you played against a Proper Shalmath multiact or Al Mun ally deck? I will play anything from 5-7 copies in a deck built entirely around the idea of recursion. Almost every other card is at a 1 or 2 card limit. Most of them are actually unplayable by anyone in the deck, and quite a few are the buts of eternal vtes jokes. "So, you need Clan Impersona...." "Oh shut up, those never work." But it works, and it works well, by manipulating the crypt. Shalmath silliness needs over 100 vampires in the crypt, but could get away with 45. There are some seriously silly tricks to be played, and I packed them all into one deck. Best turn ever with the Shalmath deck? Full initial setup complete. Shalmath and The Unnamed, both have perfectionist, Heart of the City and Homunculus. I went from about 4 pool and just 2 minions, to shalmath, unnnamed, harza, high top, a 2 cap malk, Remnant and Carlton. While gaining 10 pool. All from the start of my 6th turn till the end of my 7th turn. Then ousted in the end of my preys turn, and did it in my new preys turn again The power of 5 Summon Histories in a row, with a mad wall with a 2 cept barrier dropping in front of you is painful. But to then see your prey gain pool like a glass truck colliding with a bus of haemophiliacs is unsettling, to say the least. And if you are the pred, it just pings you for 6, on every single players turn.

> Blooded wrote: > Have you played against a Proper Shalmath multiact or Al Mun ally deck? > I haven't, no. it sounds wondrous and horrifying to behold, though.

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > I would strongly encourage you to play some vtes before asking some of the questions/making suggestion. > I'm actually very interested in comments and feedback about the game by someone who has never played it. Consider that V:TES was one of the earliest CCGs and there was a lot to be learned and developed in that genre. Also consider that the gaming market and expectations of games by players had not yet matured to the point they're at now. When V:TES was first released, it was very much a do-it-yourself environment. You had to come up with counters on your own. You had to come up with your own edge marker. There weren't playable decks available until White Wolf took over with Sabbat War - just random booster and starter packs. Quite simply, there was no "everything you need to play in one box" product. Today when you publish a game, there is very much the expectation that everything needed to play will be provided. For example, as part of the attempt by DriveThruCards to get V:TES back in print, I helped design a playable boxed set, with everything you need to play. 5 pre-built decks, counters, edge marker, packaging. Something I realized when I was working on this was that you'd need at least 150 counters. It got me wondering if the product I was designing was really just a terrarium's worth of glass beads. I could just imagine someone new to the game opening the box and wondering what on earth was up with all the counters. Not to mention the cost of the counters plus the weight, and the resulting addtional costs for shipping due to the weight. I personally have no interest in doing a complete redesign of V:TES (or a CCG about the World of Darkness as a whole), but if I did, I'd definitely get rid of the counters. As for work on V:TES, I'd love to get feedback on initial impressions of the game from someone who's coming into it from today's game market and expectations. - Ben Peal (VEKN Design Team Leader)

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > I would strongly encourage you to play some vtes before asking some of the questions/making suggestion. > SO MUCH this! ^^ Thorugh this site you should be able to locate a helpful playgroup or two withing at least fairly easy reach. Also card availability ainät a problem, with teh exception of few high profile torunaments VTES currently allows proxies, so all cards are available to all players in any quantities. And Ben, counters do not need to be glass beads. Obviously they can be made of some lighter material. Heck, add a sheet of cardboard that players can to cut to make some counters... not much weight (or classfor that matter) there Finnish Politics!

> BenPeal wrote: > ...I'd get rid of the counters > Yes. A thousand times yes. The amount of counters needed makes the game look ridiculous to newcomers. It's a problem I've run into. The amount of counters and the amount of players needed are the biggest issues with this game. It needs a two-player format, which would cut down both.

About the counters: A friend of mine uses nuts from a property market and for a boxed set, why not use cardboard printed counters, they take less place and are light so the box is not that heavy

> ur_vampire wrote: > About the counters: A friend of mine uses nuts from a property market and for a boxed set, why not use cardboard printed counters, they take less place and are light so the box is not that heavy > It's not really the weight and size of the counters that's the issue. It's how cumbersome having ~180 of any individual thing to drag around for a game is. That's just too much crap to keep track of. Also, this game, like most TCGs has great artwork. That's one of the major selling points to getting into TCGs. The artwork conveys flavor and theme to the game being played. And this game blocks it out by putting many ugly counters on the cards. Not to mention it blocks out important information, and makes cards harder to move around when control changes. And the counters are just not that easy to keep track of (9 counters on a card sure looks a lot like 10...).

Would it help to have some other counting devices? Something like a wheel that goes up to 30 for pool, and flat rulers between 0 and 11 for vampires. Card design could even take the size of the ruler into account. Counters might remain the best way to track swarm decks.

> Non-existant user wrote: > Would it help to have some other counting devices? Something like a wheel that goes up to 30 for pool, and flat rulers between 0 and 11 for vampires. Card design could even take the size of the ruler into account. > > Counters might remain the best way to track swarm decks. > Counters that are numbered 1 to 11 to indicate blood on cards may work, plus 20 or so generic counters to indicate something non-numerical, like an anarch counter. That would allow only one counter on a card at any given time, plus occasionally 1 or 2 generic counters. You'd still need a lot of counters to have on hand, but most are left in the blood bank during the game. Pool can be tracked with pen and paper.

Aren't all these suggestions doable in your own playgroup? If you want to use pencil/paper to track your own pool, what is stopping you? Prince of Dallas Toreador Grand Ball: Dallas August 13, 2022

context is important. The discussion is about the process of making elements for a product released with modern commercial expectations.

> BenPeal wrote: > ...I'd definitely get rid of the counters. > Seeing a table with cards plus shiny beeds are what got me into VTES. But yeah, it's overkill in VTES. -1 Strength

I'd still sign up for a new full WoD based minion card game, mummies vs wraiths vs vamps vs mages vs hunters vs werewolves etc. Does not have to be a 'revamp' of VTES at all. (with beeds) -1 Strength

> ruiza97 wrote: > Aren't all these suggestions doable in your own playgroup? If you want to use pencil/paper to track your own pool, what is stopping you? > Again, it potentially has an impact on card design. If designers know in advance how much space is needed to track blood, they can leave that space blank on vampire cards. Currently, it does not work for big caps because tokens take up the whole card. In other games I know of: -old school L5R had wheels to track honor (1 number per player, similar to pool.) Some editions had a cardboard wheel integrated to a card (not convenient for sleeving, plus the required rivet might damage other cards in a tight box.) They also sold nicer-looking big wheels embossed with clan logos. -Warmachine has damage boxes printed on unit cards (similar to blood.) Players can sleeve the card and track damage with a dry-erase marker. I would not recommend it for vampires because blood tend to fluctuate a lot more and both ways, so I am not sure the card would remain readable for a whole game.

> ruiza97 wrote: > Aren't all these suggestions doable in your own playgroup? If you want to use pencil/paper to track your own pool, what is stopping you? > The answers to those questions are so obvious that I'm guessing your questions must have been rhetorical in nature to express your annoyance at my suggestions. All I'm doing here is pointing out the flaws I've noted in my experience with this game, which can and probably will differ than others' experiences. One of my experiences is that the amount of counters is a problem. If you've had a different experience with counters, that's great, but your response here does not really convey that. Instead, it comes across as an uncalled for and snobby rebuke for my suggesting anything is wrong with your beloved stupid game about vampires.

@BenPeal My initial impression of VTES was curiosity. After dropping MTG I was hunting for another card-game, and interested in making my own, so I was looking for inspiration and most of what I saw amounted to 'like Magic but different'. VTES was one of the few games I found that stood out as significantly different, with the multiplayer focus, the political aspect, and the emphasis on vampires as characters with personality in their own right (and not just 'monsters / creatures / units' like so many card games) and the setting as being our world and not a generic fantasy universe. The amount of symbols (the disciplines) was unlike anything else I had seen too. It was definitely a learning curve, but it was VTES that caused me to learn more about the WoD and CoD. I understand the 'too many counters' issue, and my immediate thought is to do what FFG does and just print counters or tokens that people can punch out of a perforated card-board that comes with the product, and have some counters represent 1, 3, or 5 pool. Not an original idea to be sure, but honestly I was as fascinated by the counters as by the vampires themselves. I think Mark Rosewater (Lead Designer on MTG) said something about how even people who are not familiar with board and card games are attracted to the tactile aspect. The feel of cards in hand, rolling dice, or having a pool of glass beads is important for getting players hooked into the game, just as important as the artwork / graphic design and even setting / story flavor. That said, the idea of making a spiritual successor to VTES that relied less on having tons of counters has me problem solving now... Personally I think the biggest issues facing a revival / renewed interest in VTES or a spiritual successor to VTES (and WW, more generally) is just one of marketing / advertising / presentation. Vampire has always had a particular style and flavor, and at one point in time (as I understand it) even enticed non-RPG players to try it out (apparently a number of females 1st RPG was Vampire?) I think new blood can be drawn to the game if it's graphics / art were improved and it presented itself right, and maybe simplified some things. I don't want Vampire to become True Blood / Vampire Diaries / Twilight by any means, but there is an audience there who could / should be converted to the WoD / CoD. And most of my suggestions / critique of VTES, as outlined in the OP, were based on reading about the gameplay, reading comments and critiques, and watching people play. P.S. Do you have a link to the 5 player starter product you created? I'd be interested in seeing that, as I can't find it on DriveThruCards. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

@ GreyB: See, I'm the opposite. I want a game strictly about Vampires. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

Counters never bothered me. I remember being told to buy a box of counters when I bought my first VTES starter, and I was pretty excited with my green beads tokens for my Followers of Set deck. And yes, the tactile aspect of the game is somehow important. The setup is extremely easy, I've seen far worse with some board game with a lot of counters, of different nature, to be put into specific places (Arkham Horror, Through the ages etc.) Tokens are constantly being moved around (Blood Doll, 1 damage, bleed for 1, hunt, add a counter on the Dreams) so not using unitary tokens is not a great idea. Maybe 5 pool counters could somehow reduce the number of counters without too much nuisance, but definitively no 2-pool counters or 3-pool counters. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

@ livesbyproxy: I recall coming into vtes from a Vtm background and scratching my head over the bloodlines clans and disciplines from buying my first starter deck. I knew of most of them, but what we're harbingers and samedi, I thought those were just capadoccians(which I knew of mostly from the vtm redemption pc game, having no experience with DA vampire). I j we gargoyles, but WtH was a pander, a kiasyd, a true brujah? This was way before I started actually playing vtes, and then my problems and confusion many years later included laibon oddness. And of course which old cards were group 1 or 2, with no numbering, but I eventually figured out the ones with an expansion symbol were group 2. Now, my question is, would it feel less daunting with more mystery at the end of the road so to speak if when you started investigating vtes there was a simpler side presented, removing bloodlines, laibon, and thier disciplines, and focusing on 13 clans, the antitribbu and more importantly, just the regular disciplines limiting the tzimitsce, assamites, ravnos, Gangrel, giovanni,tremere, malk,lasombra, and setites to the only clans with "oddball" disciplines? If I'm losing you, auspex, Celerity, animalism, fortitude,dominate, potence, presence, obfuscate, are the normal staple skills that cross all clans and bloodlines. From those you have in clan skills of ventrue, Nosferatu, toreador, brujah, and all thier antitribbu counterparts. Now, the other 9 of 13 clans have 1 discipline that's stuck to that clan, and 2 disciplines that are one of the more universal ones. If you came into the game knowing there were 3 levels to learning, and it was like MtG back in the late 90s, with "beginner, advanced, experienced" labels, would it feel as daunting? I believe we can make the whole learning curve easier by limiting the amount if nonsense you need to go to get started. 8 clans, easily squishable into a 5 clan starter by both Nos one, or even removing!nos. Then merge brujah and torries, then merge !torries with ! ventrue and it all gets less crazy and more trackable. Advanced add rest of thirteen clans, final level bloodline and laibon. Would that have been easier?

Counters do not need to cover cards at all. I stack pool in 4 stack lots, in a rectangle, to the top left of my play area. Each vamp/minion has vertical stacks of beads and cards next to it. Those are the cards and counters on that minion. Easy to see, simple to manage, works well. No need to change. Maybe I am being somewhat conservative here, but I honestly never saw the "problems" these guys describe as problems at all. I like having different shiny ccounters for different decks (good old pog caps for brujah or ranged decks, cos you can stack them and flick them off at the target. especiall nice for assamite!) or tiny skulls for Gio, or little dragons for Tzimmy, etc. The fact that it takes a while to play? Well, yes, how else do you develop a strategy. That, imho, is the missing part of all PvP 2 player games. very little strategy space. So from someone who has been playing since the start, I don't think there is much need to change anything. It is the complex, intricate, WELL DESIGNED space this games cards and rules exist in that make it such an interesting and fun thing. If you wanna revamp something, get rid of imb-ew-d

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > @ livesbyproxy: > Now, my question is, would it feel less daunting with more mystery at the end of the road so to speak if when you started investigating vtes there was a simpler side presented, removing bloodlines, laibon, and thier disciplines, and focusing on 13 clans, the antitribbu and more importantly, just the regular disciplines limiting the tzimitsce, assamites, ravnos, Gangrel, giovanni,tremere, malk,lasombra, and setites to the only clans with "oddball" disciplines? > If I'm losing you, auspex, Celerity, animalism, fortitude,dominate, potence, presence, obfuscate, are the normal staple skills that cross all clans and bloodlines. > From those you have in clan skills of ventrue, Nosferatu, toreador, brujah, and all thier antitribbu counterparts. Now, the other 9 of 13 clans have 1 discipline that's stuck to that clan, and 2 disciplines that are one of the more universal ones. > > If you came into the game knowing there were 3 levels to learning, and it was like MtG back in the late 90s, with "beginner, advanced, experienced" labels, would it feel as daunting? > > I believe we can make the whole learning curve easier by limiting the amount if nonsense you need to go to get started. > 8 clans, easily squishable into a 5 clan starter by both Nos one, or even removing!nos. Then merge brujah and torries, then merge !torries with ! ventrue and it all gets less crazy and more trackable. > > Advanced add rest of thirteen clans, final level bloodline and laibon. > > Would that have been easier? > Some interesting things here... I would not say VTES was / is truly daunting, but I come from a card / board gaming background and I wanted to learn more about the game (specifically, what was the deal with the square and diamond icons?) There is a saying in Magic that you can't teach the game to someone who doesn't care / want to learn it. The art of teaching (and "selling" a game to your friends as being a fun and worthwhile experience) is worthy of it's own post, but "selling" the world of Vampire, and the concepts associated with it, seems to really be the challenging part and where the 'difficulty' comes from (I guess, I haven't taught anyone VTES yet.) With most board-games and card-games the premise alone tells new players everything they need to know about the setting (which is often intentionally left vague, or generic, or the setting is tiny, like in Clue) but VTES comes with all the setting baggage of VTM. The premise of VTES is "ancient vampires manipulating younger vampires into political struggles and physical confrontations in an effort to undermine their opponents," but players then have to learn about "Methuselahs, the Camarilla, Princes, Justicars, Primogens, the Sabbat, the Anarchs" etc plus all the weird disciplines AND all the clans. And, to be honest, I don't think VTES really world-builds very well. It would be interesting to find someone who had never played / heard of VTM and get them to play VTES and then ask them about the world they imagine the game takes place in. How similar would it be to VTM? How different? All the same "material" is there, but the way it is presented paints a very different picture, I think, of the WoD. Also worth noting, MTG had the beginner, advanced, expert level products back in the late 90s, early 2000s, but they've since dropped that model, as Mark Rosewater said (paraphrasing) that it ended up not being that meaningful of a distinction and taught bad gameplay habits / did not introduce or communicate the higher level concepts of the game, despite the complexity / power-level of cards increasing with the "difficulty". (/paraphrasing.) Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> Blooded wrote: > The fact that it takes a while to play? Well, yes, how else do you develop a strategy. That, imho, is the missing part of all PvP 2 player games. very little strategy space. > > So from someone who has been playing since the start, I don't think there is much need to change anything. It is the complex, intricate, WELL DESIGNED space this games cards and rules exist in that make it such an interesting and fun thing. > > If you wanna revamp something, get rid of imb-ew-d > Well, not to get into semantics, but strategy (as I understand it) is the broadest scope of how you're aiming to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish. Strategy would be deck-building around a few particular disciplines and library cards (like playing Malk stealth-bleed) or choosing who you sit next at the table. Tactics would be your moment-to-moment decisions. As one antediluvian on this site quotes: "Strategy? Luck is my strategy, of course." I do think the game is well designed on a macro-level but I still think it could be improved along the points I mentioned, especially graphically. I'm still curious, what would you consider to be the core elements of VTES? Obviously not the Imbued. (Which I would remove if I had my way.) Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

I think the counters are extremely useful and tend to give out the situation at a glimpse. Am indicator looks the same if it is indicating lowly 1 or the big pile of 11. Besides most of the glass bead variety counters tend to look nice. Years ago some mates were playing VTES while on the ferry to Tallinn and mundies were oohing and aahing their game due to aesthetic value, especially due to the counters.. Since you can use whatever you want for counters, I think 5 point counters are extremely confusing and therefore A Bad Idea TM. I recall a game years ago where someone used such counters and it was less intuitive than playing without them. Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > Since you can use whatever you want for counters, I think 5 point counters are extremely confusing and therefore A Bad Idea TM. I recall a game years ago where someone used such counters and it was less intuitive than playing without them. > The context Ben likely intended about the counters was more "How Do I Design A Complete Product?" thing, with the intention being to give a prospective group of players everything they need to play the game in one package. I have no idea how people picked up the notion that he thought counters were bad.

ranty and rambly message ahead: V:tes was sold to us as a CCG. It’s the second game in the Deckmaster Series by the famed Magic CCG creator Richard Garfield. At the time it was created there were no Living Card Games and the board game culture that exists today was still in its infancy. But is it really a CCG? True, it was traditionally packaged and distributed as such, but I feel that V:tes is actually a board game that thinks it’s a card game. Most CCGs follow set blocks for competitive play. Cards are rotated in and out of the current base set periodically effectively limiting the card pool for what is considered legal for tournaments. This presumably helps drive sales and provides easy entry points for new players when the Block resets. V:tes is different in that it does not follow this pattern. Outside of a handful of cards on the banned list, cards from the first printing are as equally valid for use in tournament play as cards printed in the final set. Furthermore, members of the community have opposed the notion of adding a set rotation mechanism, and some even still oppose the Grouping rule that was introduced back in 2002. The grouping rule puts a limit on what vampires could appear together in crypts, but also does not invalidate or remove cards from the overall pool so it’s possible to see vampires from very early sets and from very late sets at the same table (but not in the same deck, barring a few exceptions). In theory it’s possible to show up to a tournament using your first edition cards play, and in some cases do well, despite not having supported the game in years. Whereas with set blocks that’s just simply not possible. The prevailing attitude among the community seems to be this is a positive aspect the game. V:tes has been developed with a multiplayer focus. Most of the CCGs I’ve played were ostensibly two-player and provided multiplayer rules that were at best clumsy or at worst non-existent and relied on the players to craft house rules for multiplayer. V:tes using a predator/prey relationship puts a turn order, and helps drastically reduce the chaos of a free-for-all and fits in very well with the overall theme of the game*. In a two-player game there’s really only one goal: crush your opponent. However in a game with more than two players, there is a power dynamic that gets created and the gameplay will also involve deal making, politicking, and table talk. This is vital and for many a very attractive point of gameplay. There are two downsides to this: getting enough people together to play and have this experience, and the overall length of the game. Most CCG tournaments run at my Friendly Local Game Store tend to see 45 minute rounds between two players. These two players will play a best-out-of-three round for up to five rounds. So, you’ll get ten to fifteen games in before finals. V:tes games tend to run very long comparatively speaking, two hours or even more. The time invested into a single game, along with playing the game with several other people is more a hallmark of a board game, and less of a CCG. It feels like a game with the scope of V:tes in terms of number of players and length of play would appeal more to the serious board game players. It just comes down to how to best distribute the game and advertise to the ideal audience. The distribution of the game has been unwieldy, and at times nightmarish to accommodate the sheer volume of cards that now exist in the card pool and pose a frightful quandary to those working to bring V:tes. How do you distribute a game comprising of thousands of cards effectively? How do you hook new players into a game where veteran players can hold a substantial material advantage? How do you solve the conundrum of a player willing to start, but the theme they want to explore uses cards that aren’t readily available during this part of the distribution cycle? To me, the most difficult hurdle V:tes faces is just how do you distribute this monstrosity of a game? There's a lot of elements that could be streamlined or folded into others and if we came away with a game that could be 60% compatible with the old cards, that'd be good enough for me. The problem with this is that would require sweeping errata and reprinting of cards. I'm wondering: does the game need some kind of soft reset after twenty-five years? I've been thinking about it: So long as the core themes and gameplay don't change, I'd support a new V:tes even if if my entire collection were rendered invalid. TL;DR: I think V:tes is a board game that masquerades as a card game. _____ * has anyone else noticed just how thematic this is? Five Methuselahs sit down to a game with an equal amount of resources and work to manipulate their minions to oust their opponents. Think about it: Pool isn’t your physical life in this game, just the agreed-upon resources to be used in the game. When you’re ousted, you’re not dead, just out of the game. This also explains why each player starts with the same amount of pool. It’s a beautifully elegant meta explanation.

oh, and all of this talk about counters got me all bothered and creative: blood and pool could be printed on opposite sides, and aid new players in remembering the difference between paying Blood and Pool. edit: they look better without the numbers. also, an additional style.

I'll admit those are pretty sexy. Cardboard tokens spring first to mind when thinking about the counters, packing and weight. Distribution of 5 and 1 counters is elegant and widely used, and suits any board gamy approach. Old timers will always use onsies and glass beads could be sold as accessories. Omg, they would sell so well if the core product took wind... Otherwise i think the fuss about the counters is just silly. If we do agree that vtes is kind sorta similar to boardgames, it's true (as someone said) that vtes has a really simple set up and uses a very reasonable amount of different counters (i mean no one insists u use different tokens for blood, pool and life...). The whole token debate becomes a problem only of u make it one i feel. Of course all ideas are valuable when discussing the new distribution model. It's THE most important topic on vtes at the moment after all. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

> self wrote: > TL;DR: I think V:tes is a board game that masquerades as a card game. > Yes, yes, a kajillion times yes. Most complaints about this game outlined on these forums, both current and past, stem from the fact that the game is too random and swingy. In other words, it's too much like a card game. Perhaps it should be redesigned into something other than a card game? > I have no idea how people picked up the notion that he thought counters were bad. > Because he said " I could just imagine someone new to the game opening the box and wondering what on earth was up with all the counters." That's bad. > Kraus wrote: > Otherwise i think the fuss about the counters is just silly. If we do agree that vtes is kind sorta similar to boardgames, it's true (as someone said) that vtes has a really simple set up and uses a very reasonable amount of different counters (i mean no one insists u use different tokens for blood, pool and life...). The whole token debate becomes a problem only of u make it one i feel. > My view is the board game aspects (eg, the large amounts of counters that are moved around during play) distract from an otherwise excellent card game. Remove all the accounting that happens via counters, and the focus will shift to the mechanics of the card game. VTES will benefit as a result, because it has great card game mechanics.

> self wrote: > There's a lot of elements that could be streamlined or folded into others and if we came away with a game that could be 60% compatible with the old cards, that'd be good enough for me. The problem with this is that would require sweeping errata and reprinting of cards. I'm wondering: does the game need some kind of soft reset after twenty-five years? > > I've been thinking about it: So long as the core themes and gameplay don't change, I'd support a new V:tes even if if my entire collection were rendered invalid. > > TL;DR: I think V:tes is a board game that masquerades as a card game. > > _____ > * has anyone else noticed just how thematic this is? Five Methuselahs sit down to a game with an equal amount of resources and work to manipulate their minions to oust their opponents. Think about it: Pool isn’t your physical life in this game, just the agreed-upon resources to be used in the game. When you’re ousted, you’re not dead, just out of the game. This also explains why each player starts with the same amount of pool. It’s a beautifully elegant meta explanation.[/i] > Does VTES need a soft reset? To many here the answer would be "no," but I think that doing one would breathe new life into nuWW and I think the pros outweigh the cons. (To emphasize what you said:) For one, players' old sets wouldn't be rendered obsolete, as nuVTES would be a different game, despite all the many similarities. It doesn't need to be compatible, as like you said that would likely cause a ton of errata and create a weird environment for new players vs old players. Secondly, it gives WW free-reign to make nuVTES fit into whatever their aesthetic / vision is for the 1WoD / VTM 5E. Thirdly, related to the 2nd, it could let them avoid more licensing nonsense from WotC. 4th would be the opportunity to market / present itself properly as a "board game" and attract that crowd and do all the GenCon promo stuff as though it were a new IP. Also, while we're showing off graphics and such, I'm going to show you the ReVamped discipline icons I've made: Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> self wrote: > "There's a lot of elements that could be streamlined or folded into others [...]" & "I've been thinking about it: So long as the core themes and gameplay don't change, I'd support a new V:tes even if if my entire collection were rendered invalid." > So what are VTES core themes and gameplay? For me this would be: Terms: Pool / Blood- the games main resource, it is super thematic. Stealth - vampires are predators and they are stealthy, physically and socially, again very thematic Bleed - an amazing term for the abstract actions the vampires take to undermine and foil each other, but also super thematic Burn - love this term, which is VTES' term for 'discard' and it works for any card in any zone and is very thematic Hunt - wish there were more cards that made hunting worthwhile or more exciting, but this is a cool action, and flavorful Prey / Predator - this relationship that the players have is core to VTES, obviously Clans - every card game has its "colors" or factions with different strengths and weaknesses Voting - has to stay, its a really cool aspect of VTES and encourages deal-making Combat - who doesn't love vampires fighting each other? Card Cycling - playing cards feels good, drawing cards feels better Disciplines - the vampire powers, these are mostly all cool, and it is interesting and challenging to build a deck that works with certain disciplines. Vampire Uniqueness - almost all the vampires are unique, which is to say, they follow the "legend rule" from MTG. This is very cool and makes them feel like real characters and not just random dudes. Limited Actions - having your vampires determine (in most cases) the number of actions you can take during a turn is really interesting IMO. World of Darkness - the setting being our world but more dark, dismal, depressing, decayed, and decadent is very cool. So what would I change? (I asked what you guys would change, if anything, but since most people implied "nothing" . . . brace yourselves, its about to get heretical! Keep in mind that this is for a spiritual successor to VTES.) I would borrow some aspects from Vampire: The Requiem. 1. There are only 7 clans or "species / types / kinds" of vampire. Requiem had 5, Masquerade had 13 (both settings had 20+ bloodlines, but I would just include characters from the bloodlines as being members of the main clan.) 2. I would make all instances of 'intercept' -> 'stealth' because I think the two are conceptually similar and work the same way. Stealth represents the measures that the acting vampire is taking to conduct his business discreetly, to avoid attracting the attention of those who would oppose him BUT stealth can also represent a vampire’s efforts to secretly discover the plans of another, to stalk or pursue him in order to detain or delay him. Stealth works both ways, thematically. The prey hides, the predator prowls. 3. I would make all instances of 'blood' -> 'pool' because, like stealth & intercept, it is a false dichotomy. Both are conceptually similar. Pool is blood, but also wealth & assets, favors owed, status and prestige with the community, etc. 4. I would make all instances of 'strength' or 'damage' -> 'bleed'. Bleed is an abstract term, so it can be used to in many different situations. Conceptually, taking a bleed action represents the efforts of your minion to undermine the power and influence of the target Methuselah or another vampire. You might picture bleeding as armed robbery, changing bank records, planting incriminating evidence, etc. Or you might picture bleeding as a fist fight, car chase, or shoot-out. In the case of political actions, bleeding might be considered exposing dirty deals, spreading rumors, or delivering an argument winning quip or speech. If it is something that thematically make another vampire expend resources or harms them (physically, mentally, or socially) it can be / should be a bleed. 5. I would not have werewolves, mages, demons, wraiths, changelings, mummies, or imbued. I might be Red Listed for this, but I think Vampire can adequately explain away all of the other supernaturals. Or, put another way, all of the other supernaturals are encompassed in the vampire myth. The legends of werewolves were sightings of the Gangrel. Stories of mages and witches and sorcerers were inspired by the Tremere. Accounts of angels and faeries? Those were the Toreador (or Daeva, to borrow from Requiem.) Wraiths, ghosts, and spectres? Merge the Lasombra with the Ventrue, giving them the power of Obtenebration, and say that was them. Demons? The Tzimisce. There is a trope known as the 'fantasy kitchen sink' which WW helped perpetuate: basically, all the myths and legends are real and exist. The problem this gets into is: how is this a secret from anyone? How can you maintain the Masquerade when all these supernaturals are present? I think it requires a level of suspension of disbelief that undermines the 'gritty mature urban realism' that nuWW is going for. 6. Drop the Camarilla-Sabbat War. I don't get how the Masquerade can be maintained if significant numbers of Vampires are determined to break it or don't care to maintain it. To me, it would make much more sense if there was, in fact, ONE vampire government, and the Camarilla and Sabbat and Anarchs were all different political parties within that government. It makes no sense that a Sabbat Archbishop would be able to vote against a referendum called by a Camarilla Prince if - according the VTM - the two operate within completely different power structures. (I mean, I guess we could abstract it to thematically mean the voting Sabbat ~doing things~ that ultimately undermine the Prince's rule, but that seems like a disconnect gameplay-wise.) If they were political parties, then there is room for more intrigue and machinations since they can be bipartisan on some matters, but also work to backstab their colleagues on other issues and matters of policy. 7. I would have rules for deal-making. Basically, rather than players spending 5 minutes discussing the details of an agreement or terms of a vote or something of the sort, only for another player to then play Delaying Tactics, I would include a rule about deal-making. It goes like this: Each player may make ONE deal with one other player on their turn and one deal out-of-turn. The player says the terms of the arrangement and the other player can choose to 1) accept the offer, 2) make a counter-offer, or 3) decline. If a counter-offer is made, the acting player may choose to 1) accept it, or 2) decline. That way players are encouraged to think carefully about the offer they will make and not hold up the other player's as they beg for votes or allies. The rule for deal-making may or may not be legally binding via the game rules (i.e. if a player agrees to terms, that player MUST follow through.) Maybe this is a good idea, IDK. 8. I would make all 'allies, retainers, & equipment' cards -> 'attachment' or 'support' cards. They are played 'on' a minion and they stick with that minion. The terms ally, retainer, and equipment can be sub-types. 9. Remove 'range' and 'maneuvers' from combat and reduce the moves to Strike, Dodge, Press. I understand, I think, the idea behind 'determine range' and 'maneuvers' it is thematic, only certain things work 'at range' like guns, etc, but I think it could be simplified and expressed with a very similar vocabulary to what VTES already has. Strike is the actual attempt to hit and damage your opponent (i.e. to bleed them) by whatever means; Dodge, rather than be something done through a Strike, can be its own move and thematically takes the place of Maneuver and Range. Vampires would Dodge to End Combat, avoid damage, or do other neat effects. Press is thematically like Maneuvering and determining Range in a way, but is used to continue combat usually. I think this gameplay of strike->dodge->press is pretty clean and simple, mirrors the three snakes symbol of VTES, and makes for a rock-paper-scissors dynamic. Strike beats Press, Press beats Dodge, and Dodge beats Strike. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> self wrote: > Most CCGs follow set blocks for competitive play. Cards are rotated in and out of the current base set periodically effectively limiting the card pool for what is considered legal for tournaments. > I'm under the assumption that not that many CCGs actually rotate cards. A couple surely, but hardly "most"... Finnish Politics!

I think all comes to what target audience VTES wants to aim for. Do they want to bring back and fidelize all the players VTES used to have or do they want to make the game accessible to a broader audience? In the first case scenario I´d just try to remove redundant cards and game mechanics, improve the rules wherever is necessary and try to give some unique flavour to every clan and sect. I´ve always found odd how similar all win conditions are regardless of the deck you´re playing (vote, bleed and attack). In the second case scenario I´d try to make the game sessions shorter (30m - 1h), I´d redo a mayor portion of the game ruleset, keeping some of the well design cards intact and simplify what game mechanics that are cumbersome. I´d also create more than one game mode. Playing only with the last expansions is something that would help new players to hop in and join the player base (Crypt 5-6 only). I think honestly that the best place to be is in the middle. There are several examples of successful ccg out there. It´s just a matter of growing the player base while keeping what makes VTES so special.

> LivesByProxy wrote: > So what would I change? (I asked what you guys would change, if anything, but since most people implied "nothing" . . . brace yourselves, its about to get heretical! Keep in mind that this is for a spiritual successor to VTES.) > > I would borrow some aspects from Vampire: The Requiem. > > 1. There are only 7 clans or "species / types / kinds" of vampire. Requiem had 5, Masquerade had 13 (both settings had 20+ bloodlines, but I would just include characters from the bloodlines as being members of the main clan.) > > 2. I would make all instances of 'intercept' -> 'stealth' because I think the two are conceptually similar and work the same way. Stealth represents the measures that the acting vampire is taking to conduct his business discreetly, to avoid attracting the attention of those who would oppose him BUT stealth can also represent a vampire’s efforts to secretly discover the plans of another, to stalk or pursue him in order to detain or delay him. Stealth works both ways, thematically. The prey hides, the predator prowls. > > 3. I would make all instances of 'blood' -> 'pool' because, like stealth & intercept, it is a false dichotomy. Both are conceptually similar. Pool is blood, but also wealth & assets, favors owed, status and prestige with the community, etc. > > 4. I would make all instances of 'strength' or 'damage' -> 'bleed'. Bleed is an abstract term, so it can be used to in many different situations. Conceptually, taking a bleed action represents the efforts of your minion to undermine the power and influence of the target Methuselah or another vampire. You might picture bleeding as armed robbery, changing bank records, planting incriminating evidence, etc. Or you might picture bleeding as a fist fight, car chase, or shoot-out. In the case of political actions, bleeding might be considered exposing dirty deals, spreading rumors, or delivering an argument winning quip or speech. If it is something that thematically make another vampire expend resources or harms them (physically, mentally, or socially) it can be / should be a bleed. > > 5. I would not have werewolves, mages, demons, wraiths, changelings, mummies, or imbued. I might be Red Listed for this, but I think Vampire can adequately explain away all of the other supernaturals. Or, put another way, all of the other supernaturals are encompassed in the vampire myth. The legends of werewolves were sightings of the Gangrel. Stories of mages and witches and sorcerers were inspired by the Tremere. Accounts of angels and faeries? Those were the Toreador (or Daeva, to borrow from Requiem.) Wraiths, ghosts, and spectres? Merge the Lasombra with the Ventrue, giving them the power of Obtenebration, and say that was them. Demons? The Tzimisce. There is a trope known as the 'fantasy kitchen sink' which WW helped perpetuate: basically, all the myths and legends are real and exist. The problem this gets into is: how is this a secret from anyone? How can you maintain the Masquerade when all these supernaturals are present? I think it requires a level of suspension of disbelief that undermines the 'gritty mature urban realism' that nuWW is going for. > > 6. Drop the Camarilla-Sabbat War. I don't get how the Masquerade can be maintained if significant numbers of Vampires are determined to break it or don't care to maintain it. To me, it would make much more sense if there was, in fact, ONE vampire government, and the Camarilla and Sabbat and Anarchs were all different political parties within that government. It makes no sense that a Sabbat Archbishop would be able to vote against a referendum called by a Camarilla Prince if - according the VTM - the two operate within completely different power structures. (I mean, I guess we could abstract it to thematically mean the voting Sabbat ~doing things~ that ultimately undermine the Prince's rule, but that seems like a disconnect gameplay-wise.) If they were political parties, then there is room for more intrigue and machinations since they can be bipartisan on some matters, but also work to backstab their colleagues on other issues and matters of policy. > > 7. I would have rules for deal-making. Basically, rather than players spending 5 minutes discussing the details of an agreement or terms of a vote or something of the sort, only for another player to then play Delaying Tactics, I would include a rule about deal-making. It goes like this: Each player may make ONE deal with one other player on their turn and one deal out-of-turn. The player says the terms of the arrangement and the other player can choose to 1) accept the offer, 2) make a counter-offer, or 3) decline. If a counter-offer is made, the acting player may choose to 1) accept it, or 2) decline. That way players are encouraged to think carefully about the offer they will make and not hold up the other player's as they beg for votes or allies. The rule for deal-making may or may not be legally binding via the game rules (i.e. if a player agrees to terms, that player MUST follow through.) Maybe this is a good idea, IDK. > > 8. I would make all 'allies, retainers, & equipment' cards -> 'attachment' or 'support' cards. They are played 'on' a minion and they stick with that minion. The terms ally, retainer, and equipment can be sub-types. > > 9. Remove 'range' and 'maneuvers' from combat and reduce the moves to Strike, Dodge, Press. I understand, I think, the idea behind 'determine range' and 'maneuvers' it is thematic, only certain things work 'at range' like guns, etc, but I think it could be simplified and expressed with a very similar vocabulary to what VTES already has. Strike is the actual attempt to hit and damage your opponent (i.e. to bleed them) by whatever means; Dodge, rather than be something done through a Strike, can be its own move and thematically takes the place of Maneuver and Range. Vampires would Dodge to End Combat, avoid damage, or do other neat effects. Press is thematically like Maneuvering and determining Range in a way, but is used to continue combat usually. I think this gameplay of strike->dodge->press is pretty clean and simple, mirrors the three snakes symbol of VTES, and makes for a rock-paper-scissors dynamic. Strike beats Press, Press beats Dodge, and Dodge beats Strike. > Am I the only one who think that most of this makes absolutely no sense ? Even for a reboot. First of all: Requiem is no longer supported by White Wolf. So trying to take concept/name/power etc... from it is not relevant. 1/ I just don't get it. If White Wolf makes a reboot of VTES, they will probably want all of the 13 base clan in it, while gradually adding bloodlines. Beside that, the numbers of clans is not that important, you play mostly with disciplines not clan cards. Vampires clans are not MTG colors, L5R clans... 2/ 3/ and 4/ LOL. 5/ Werewolves, mages, demons, wraiths, changelings, mummies, or imbued are all parts of World Of Darkness. If anything, WW would probably wants more of them. 6/ Dropping Camarilla/Sabbat/Anarch war while it's one of the main story in Vampire: The Masquerade ? Yeah, not going to happen. 7/ Imo, deal making is on of the greatest thing about this game. Any rule like this would be dumb. 8/ Whatever, doesn't change anything. 9/ Yeah no, fight is not and should not be a rock papper scissor game. Maxime Socroun, 3200321

> Ezra wrote: > Am I the only one who think that most of this makes absolutely no sense ? > Even for a reboot. > No you're certainly not. To sum it up : - This guy wants to revamp VTES, without any request from WW on that account, and without being a part of the design team, or holding any sort of position which would allow him to know what WW wishes ; - He makes suggestions that are akin to throwing in the trash the game we love and making a totally new one ; but not really ; - The said suggestions don't take into account any reality of the WoD, old or future (yeah, sure, Auspex allows you to hide, Garous don't exist, etc etc)... - And based on the suggestions above it wouldn't even be a good game : it would be VTES Zero, without any sugar and leaving a bad taste in the mouth. But it wouldn't hold the advantages of a brand new game, like, I dunno being a fast duel game different from VTES and adressing a different players niche. In short, and to put it nicely, that's a complete and utter waste of time. Man, if you want to create a game, go for it, you'll see if some people buy it or not. But please stop trying to fix the best game in existence when absolutely nobody asked you to (Malkavian multiple personnalities don't count).

As he said: > LivesByProxy wrote: > Does VTES need a soft reset? To many here the answer would be "no," but I think that doing one would breathe new life into nuWW and I think the pros outweigh the cons. > > (To emphasize what you said:) For one, players' old sets wouldn't be rendered obsolete, as nuVTES would be a different game, despite all the many similarities. > It's complicated to convince people that love the current game that the future of their game is a different game. It doesn't mean that people should get rude, or that there's no interesting ideas that could be included in the current game. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

> Ankha wrote: > It's complicated to convince people that love the current game that the future of their game is a different game. It doesn't mean that people should get rude, or that there's no interesting ideas that could be included in the current game. > This is a great response. I fully agree with it. > Orpheus wrote: > This guy wants to revamp VTES, without any request from WW on that account, and without being a part of the design team, or holding any sort of position which would allow him to know what WW wishes > First, none of the stuff you mention above is a requirement to post here. While you may not necessarily agree with the poster's suggested changes, you should realize that you can stop reading the suggestions at any time. You should also realize that you do not have to reply to those suggestions. What I don't understand is why you would read these suggestions, log in, hit the reply button, and write something trashing a complete stranger on the internet over their views of a card game about vampires. Let's settle down just a little bit and realize the scope of what is being discussed here. And let's also realize that if you don't like something you see here, you don't have to read it, and you certainly don't have to reply. Second, the original poster did get input earlier in this thread from someone who I believe is the current game designer. So there was input given. > - He makes suggestions that are akin to throwing in the trash the game we love and making a totally new one ; but not really ; > To some people, the game that you love is already trash. Including whoever officially releases the game, as evidenced by the game being inactive with no plans to become active. That's the reality. While you may not agree with this, it might behoove you to have an open mind to the opinions of those with this viewpoint. Change just might be a good thing for the game. > In short, and to put it nicely, that's a complete and utter waste of time. > > Man, if you want to create a game, go for it, you'll see if some people buy it or not. > > But please stop trying to fix the best game in existence when absolutely nobody asked you to (Malkavian multiple personnalities don't count). > Again, getting permission from someone to post here is not a requirement. It's 100% fine that nobody asked for these suggestions. You are acting like you have some authority over what is being posted here. You are not the VEKN police. What's the harm in someone posting their ideas, even if you don't agree with them?

I’ve been playing V:tes since ’96, Vampire: The Masquerade since ’98, and from 2010-2013 was a part of what is now the Mind’s Eye Society (which is the current White Wolf supported Live Action Roleplaying network) for its Vampire: The Requiem chronicle. I love the Requiem setting, and frankly it is a better fit to the way V:tes plays than the Masquerade setting. Using the Requiem setting would make politics in V:tes more believable, as well as how Bloodlines are still a part of their parent clans. There’s quite a bit of really good things about Requiem, and I personally like the setting better than Masquerade. But the heart of the matter is this: There’s a significant nostalgia for Masquerade; it’s inescapable. It’s one of the reasons why White Wolf has licensed out Chronicles of Darkness to Onyx Path and now we’re getting Vampire: The Masquerade V5. It’s also the reason why V:tes will, with almost every certainly, continue to be set in the Masquerade setting. Additionally, if White Wolf decides to renew production of V:tes it makes sense to create a product that dovetails with its flagship setting. @LivesByProxy Some of your suggestions show your unfamiliarity with Vampire: The Masquerade’s setting, but thanks for sharing nonetheless. For starters, a vampire’s clan isn’t analogous to color in Magic: The Gathering, or even Faction in Android Netruner or Clans in the classic Legend of the Five Rings CCG. A vampire’s clan tends to be more of a means to an end with regard to Sect and Disciplines rather than the other way around. My opposition to anti-tribu clans stems from the fact that clans have what amounts to a default sect and how that interacts with a few cards. It also opens up a big can of worms rules wise; seriously, go search for Clan Impersonation rulings. Smiply put, I don’t think the overall game benefits from that particular complexity, and I feel that the game would be better if Clan and Sect were completely separated from each other mechanically. For your points 2-4, I understand that you’re trying to streamline how things are done, but part of V:tes’s charm is tied to its complexity. While a certain amount of abstraction is used in the game and could be applied to the game in terms of restructure, I think your suggestions go a bit too far for me. Point 5: Other supernatural creatures are woven into the fabric of Vampire: The Masquerade. Mages, Wraiths, Hunters, Garou have all played their part in the setting. Indeed, how the kindred interact with these other supernatural creatures breaks up the monotony of the near-constant infighting. I like your justifications: they’re creative enough, but when you take into consideration the greater setting, it’d be extremely difficult to justify eliminating the supernatural creatures, and not eliminate the mortals/ghouls as well. Point 6: I actually agree with you wholeheartedly and this is the biggest reason I think that Requiem is the better setting for V:tes. That being said, there are all kinds of rationalizations and abstractions a player can use to continue to suspend disbelief. With the assumption that the setting remains Masquerade, we’ll just have to try to not think too hard about it. Point 7: I feel like codifying deal making in the rules is going to result in more arguments about the rules of deal making, and slow down the game further. Vampires are also notoriously unscrupulous and betrayal is commonplace. Point 8: Allies are minions in their own right and can take actions. Retainers and Equipment are already sort of the same thing, but Retainers can be removed from play a little more easily than equipment. The benefit of streamlining these card types into one seems small, but I could at least envision a generic “Asset” card divided into different types as the way Allies, Equipment, and Retainers are put into play the same way (i.e. a +1 Stealth Action). Point 9: Speaking of hard to rationalize abstractions, how does supernatural speed help someone fire an automatic weapon faster? According to the background, guns are supposed to do less damage to vampires than say, a machete or sword. I have to think some more on this, but I’m wondering if we couldn’t eliminate Maneuvers and make melee weapons viable in one fell swoop. It would require all guns to be completely rewritten, though, on top of figuring out what to do with all of the cards that currently provide maneuvers.

> TwoRazorReign wrote: > . What's the harm in someone posting their ideas, even if you don't agree with them? > more to the point, where is the benefit in being rude and dismissive to someone who has an interest in the game and is trying to discuss things in good faith? I don't agree with all of his ideas, but tersely shitting all over them doesn't actually gain me anything and could serve to push this guy's away from the community.

> Orpheus wrote: > - This guy wants to revamp VTES, without any request from WW on that account, and without being a part of the design team, or holding any sort of position which would allow him to know what WW wishes ; > I said I wanted to see their opinions!!!! First impressions and input from brand-new players and people who've never played the game is very valuable!!!! And you don't need my permission or White Wolf's permission or anyone else's permission to post ideas and commentary on the game.

> Lönkka wrote: > > > self wrote: > > Most CCGs follow set blocks for competitive play. Cards are rotated in and out of the current base set periodically effectively limiting the card pool for what is considered legal for tournaments. > > > I'm under the assumption that not that many CCGs actually rotate cards. > > A couple surely, but hardly "most"... > AFAIK, only MtG really does this, and I think they do it mostly because it supports their CCG model (i.e. getting people to buy cards and make them tons of $$$.) > manituan wrote: > I think all comes to what target audience VTES wants to aim for. > Who nuWW wants to aim for as target audience is very important. Some may consider this distasteful, but I think they need to focus on appealing to women, particularly European (white) women. Given the current pop-culture trends (Twilight, Vampire Diaries, True Blood, etc) dying down or coming to an end, nuWW can position itself to appeal to that demographic by focusing on the 'sexy vampires' - the Toreador / Daeva - and subversively get them hooked into the WoD. The Maven of the Eventide talks about why Kindred: The Embrace failed , while Buffy and Charmed succeeded a year later. The short answer is: female viewership. > Ezra wrote: > Am I the only one who think that most of this makes absolutely no sense ? > Even for a reboot. > > First of all: Requiem is no longer supported by White Wolf. > So trying to take concept/name/power etc... from it is not relevant. > I wouldn't call it a reboot, as that implies "discarding all continuity in an established series in order to recreate its characters, timeline and backstory from the beginning." (Source:Wikipedia.) That's why I use the term spiritual successor: "a type of sequel that is not part of the same world or story as its predecessor, but is nonetheless considered to be a successor because it's made by the same creators; or, shares common themes, styles, or elements; or, most likely, both. In other words, it's a sequel 'in spirit'." (Source:TV Tropes) The guys from nuWW fully support VTR, even though they are not involved with its development / publication. They are licensing out the ideas of their Vampires to Onyx Path, and fully give them their blessing: Also, I find it very interesting that nuWW's Lead Storyteller Martin Elricsson makes reference to them considering "a third model" for Vampire, as Masquerade was the 1st, Requiem was 2nd, and a 3rd would (hopefully) be a sort of fusion of both VTM and VTR, but its own separate setting like how VTM and VTR are separate settings. > TwoRazorReign wrote: > > > Ankha wrote: > > It's complicated to convince people that love the current game that the future of their game is a different game. It doesn't mean that people should get rude, or that there's no interesting ideas that could be included in the current game. > > > This is a great response. I fully agree with it. > @Ankha, @TwoRazorReign: I am not surprised by Orpheus' response. People are anti-change by default and my ideas are heretical, so it is understandable. > self wrote: > A vampire’s clan isn’t analogous to color in Magic: The Gathering, or even Faction in Android Netruner or Clans in the classic Legend of the Five Rings CCG [...] I feel that the game would be better if Clan and Sect were completely separated from each other mechanically. > @self biased: I appreciate the serious response, thank you. I wanted to focus on what you said above in particular (but I am not dismissing any of your criticisms.) I had been entertaining the idea of each vampire belonging to a clan, a religious group, and a political party. So they would have 3 subtypes or traits: Clan, Religion, Sect; or, Family, Covenant, Party; or X / Y / Z where X is the type of vampires, Y is shared beliefs about the vampiric origin or purpose (like the Ordo Dracul and the Lancea Sanctum from Requiem), and the political party (How to control the kine? What institutions do we infiltrate and influence?) For example, a vampire that reads: Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. as their subtypes or 'traits'. Another example: Tremere. Infernal. Sabbat. I think most people familiar with card-games expect subtypes, but VTES uses some of those traits as subtypes and others more like Keywords, i.e. Camarilla is like a subtype as other cards reference it but it has no inherent mechanical effect (IIRC) while Prince is like a keyword because it grants a mechanical effect (passive votes.) Another thing is that the players of the LCGs and MTG and Hearthstone and YuGiOh love playing with their character's subtypes / traits. Look at the two GoT characters in front. They both have subtypes: "Knight. Ranger." & "House Clegane. Knight. Lord." that have no rules associated in-and-of-themselves, but player's love building decks around and capitalizing on these subtypes. You said the vampire clans in VTM / VTES aren't the equivalent of colors in MTG, but my point is that they should be. The idea of colors is just grouping certain themes and player expectations together. Red is the color of fire, anger, passion, stone, and earth. Hence, the creatures and spells of Red magic in MtG fit the color. In VTES, the Gangrel are the most bestial and animalistic of the vampires, and (IMO) should have greater access to the physical disciplines (Potence, Fortitude, & Celerity, but nevermind that), and that if the artwork (especially) and card design really pushed that, new players would instantly make the connection upon seeing a handful of Gangrel cards without needing to read or learn anything about them. Ankha actually has a very interesting post about the graphic design of VTES , and he points out that the LCGs and CCGs (that have succeeded) have made readability and easy recognition a top priority. Associating a color with each particular clan (Green for Gangrel, Bluish-Purple for the Ventrue, Pink-Red for the Toreador / Daeva, etc) is like a mental shortcut for learning the game, and would be great for new players. Changing the framing for the different card-types (Combat cards are framed differently than Master cards) would also be a boon. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

Thread feels kinda derailed... so... > LivesByProxy wrote: > But yeah... enough of my ideas, what about yours? How would you ReVamp VTES? > I would leave VTES largely as is, backwards compatible, with new errata's and tweakage for game balance and some new shizzle periodically released as PDF sets or pray god PRINT! Use the knowledge of the last 20+ years to finetune the game more, but nothing drastic. The game is old and can have the complexity to show it, there's really no need to reduce the cardbase or simplify clans and whatnot. Any left over creative juices should go into a new WoD card/tabletop game, totally incompatible with VTES (could still be just about vampires, dark ages perhaps?) using lessons learned from 20+ years and other cardgames. No baggage from VTES, no more wasted efforts on how to make VTES more viable... Take the best ideas from VTES and start from scratch. Keep posting ideas and theorycraft, but keep in mind that an incompatible revamp of VTES simply means a new game anyways... So you might as well drop the VTES legacy and go totally nuts with new ideas -1 Strength

> self wrote: > The context Ben likely intended about the counters was more "How Do I Design A Complete Product?" thing, with the intention being to give a prospective group of players everything they need to play the game in one package. I have no idea how people picked up the notion that he thought counters were bad. > Yeah, that's basically it. I'm not saying we should ditch counters from V:TES, but if I were to go back in time and re-design V:TES knowing what we know now about V:TES and games in general, I'd seriously consider ditching the counters. For us veterans, the counters aren't a big deal. We're used to them in a few ways - in-game use, acquiring them, and the DIY, "found art" aesthetic of them. It's also how things were done 20+ years ago. Gaming was a lot more DIY, a lot less "matured" in terms of mechanics and product design. For that matter, there has never been an all-you-need-in-one-box product for a full table of V:TES players. So when you design a V:TES product to meet modern expectations of a game, you need to make an all-you-need-in-one-box product. And that means at least 150 counters. And yes, of course I know that the counters could be made out of cardboard or plastic instead of glass. We had plans for a Kickstarter campaign with stretch goals that included improving the quality of the components. Regardless of the component quality, 150 counters is a lot of freaking counters and it gets you wondering what, materially, you're really selling to the customer. Not wondering in a "do we not include counters" way, but in a "this looks pretty odd when you see all the counters in the box at once but that's V:TES so we gotta go with it" way. The Inside The Box video bloggers did a feature on V:TES and sure enough, they mention the counters:

> LivesByProxy wrote: > P.S. Do you have a link to the 5 player starter product you created? I'd be interested in seeing that, as I can't find it on DriveThruCards. > Alas, no, it was never printed. Just part of a product pitch.

> BenPeal wrote: > The Inside The Box video bloggers did a feature on V:TES and sure enough, they mention the counters: > I feel personally attacked by the 90's Nostalgia in this video.

> BenPeal wrote: > I'm not saying we should ditch counters from V:TES, but if I were to go back in time and re-design V:TES knowing what we know now about V:TES and games in general, I'd seriously consider ditching the counters. > > [...] > > So when you design a V:TES product to meet modern expectations of a game, you need to make an all-you-need-in-one-box product. And that means at least 150 counters. And yes, of course I know that the counters could be made out of cardboard or plastic instead of glass. We had plans for a Kickstarter campaign with stretch goals that included improving the quality of the components. Regardless of the component quality, 150 counters is a lot of freaking counters and it gets you wondering what, materially, you're really selling to the customer. Not wondering in a "do we not include counters" way, but in a "this looks pretty odd when you see all the counters in the box at once but that's V:TES so we gotta go with it" way. > The solution I came up with was to modify the card-backs slightly, but this is probably undoable. If we could go back in time and incorporate this slight change, it might be a good substitute for counters. Magic: The Gathering cards have these four little dots in the corner because the card-back was designed to resemble an old book (hence, the 'library' of spells flavor). A similar design could be used for pool. This would let players use their spare (unsleeved) cards as blood / pool. IDK, just what came to mind. Arranged for easy readability. IDK how cumbersome or convenient this would be. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> BenPeal wrote: > > > self wrote: > > The context Ben likely intended about the counters was more "How Do I Design A Complete Product?" thing, with the intention being to give a prospective group of players everything they need to play the game in one package. I have no idea how people picked up the notion that he thought counters were bad. > > > Yeah, that's basically it. I'm not saying we should ditch counters from V:TES, but if I were to go back in time and re-design V:TES knowing what we know now about V:TES and games in general, I'd seriously consider ditching the counters. > I think it would be impossible to rid the game of counters unless there is a major redesign. If not wishing to do a redesign, I do think a two-player format solves not only the issue with the counters (only need 80 [30 for each player and 20 for the blood bank]), but lots of other issues too (only one other player needed, takes less time to play, streamlines the mechanics, etc). I'd buy a VTES product that contains two preconstructed decks of existing cards, 80 counters, an edge counter, a rule book, a play mat, and a sheet of any necessary alternate rules/card text to make a 2-player format more playable. But that's just me. I realize the game was designed for 5 players who show up to the game with constructed decks. But I strongly believe 2 player VTES is tragically underrated, even when playing with 2 preconstructed decks where the cards are known to the players.

At risk of this becoming a personal blog of sorts, I (updated?) made some more icons. Yes, I know no one asked, but I'm doing it for fun. Auspex Potence -> Ferocity Thaumaturgy Mortify !NEW! Animalism Celerity So, Potence would be renamed Ferocity, as that gives us what is known as homoioteleuton - the endings of the words being the same. So we get Ferocity, Celerity, and Tenacity (Fortitude) as our physical disciplines, which are all pretty accurate words for what they do (strength, speed, and toughness.) The word 'Ferocity' also has a better flavor in conveying what it does, IMO. The discipline is not strictly "super strength" but tremendous wrath, aggression, savagery, frenzy, and violent action in general. This small change in word choice makes the discipline more intuitive (for English speakers) than "Potence" and fixes something of a problem that was present in the original VTM: "Being 'super strong' is a kinda weird power. We get that there are characters who are super strong and there are characters that are super strong. Dracula had the strength of twenty men, which is pretty impressive, but the Hekatonkheires picked up fucking mountains and beat Cronus with them, and that's a different scale of strength altogether. Unsurprisingly, we get our most easily accessible depictions of super strength from our current media: TV shows, movies, and comic books. [...] Potence didn't do one of the things that super strength does in every piece of source material you've ever seen or heard about: it didn't make you supertough. There are characters who are invulnerable without being super strong of course, but there is not now and never has been a character with super strength who wasn't also tougher than normal. However, in Vampire: the Masquerade, super toughness was 100% mediated by Fortitude, which wasn't normally even available to the same vampires. Even with maxxed out super strength, you would still go down when some completely normal person hit you in the face with a shovel." --- Frank Trollman, Anatomy of Failed Design: Vampire: The Masquerade The whole post is a very interesting read, and as someone who had learned about VTM, VTR, and VTES from YouTube videos, the WhiteWolfWiki, and forum posts, it points out and criticizes a lot of things I found puzzling about the WoD myself. There is also the new discipline of Mortify that I would add to a VTES 2.0 (while removing some of the other obscure or ultra-specific bloodline disciplines like Abombwe.) Mortify means 'to embarass, humiliate, or shame' someone, but I think it could also be used to mean 'to horrify or terrify.' An analog would be the Nightmare discipline of the Nosferatu from VTR. Mechanically I imagine it fitting into the 'Euro Stealth' style decks, forcefully tapping down younger minions and / or preventing them from blocking altogether. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

For the purposes of a "starter package", instead of including an impractical amount of counters, it would make way more sense to just include a couple dozen or so of those rotating cardboard wheels that you spin to display numbers which can be placed on minions, plus a bigger one with two rings of numbers to use for the Pool. Cheap to produce and servicable, IMO. You could even have numbers on them show the blood/pool symbols to make it visually simple.

There's always that, but I'd like to repeat the point someone already made about moving blood. Everything from Blood Dolls to Villeins, Governs and Steal Blood effects moves, transfers counters instead of (if not in rules terms, effect) decreasing and increasing them. Kinda. You get the point - you all now how to use Vessel. The point was that this happens all the time, frequently, in multiple phases, each turn, off-turn, in between turns. Moving a single counter from somewhere (from on top of it) to something else is really easy and comfortable. Compare to sliding wheels first from the vamp, then to pool, then to... And wheels are a bit harder to read from across the table as well. Then compare to the wee card tokens of blood/pool mentioned above. You'll have to do all of that shuffling (in that example) from underneath the card proper. Of course you can keep them somewhere else as well, but that takes space. VtES already takes quite a bit of room to play. For practical reasons I'd argue that, while wheels and using card backs as tokens are both rather reasonable ideas, counters on top of cards that move around quite a bit during a game is probably the easiest way to do this without giving a major headache to players. As I said, those things could work, but I'm really not sure if they're better than counters while actually playing the game. I get Ben's conundrum with packaging and selling the game. The alternate methods of tracking blood could be serviceable for packaging purposes, but I'd argue they're not better than counters per se for gaming. Again, not talking specifically about glass beads. They're just the fanciest way of presenting them. But whatever the counters are, clarity in presentation and countability from across the table should be issues to consider as well. Real tricky, so this is... Krausedit\\ If we assume that there'd be, say, 160 double-sided, little cardboard counters in the starter box (other looking like blood, other like pool [or life?]), or even 160 worth of counters (with fivers and onsies), could the box include a wee plastic storage container? I mean something that kitchen players could place in the middle of the table and just pour all the counters in there? Of course peeps have those at home, but that could make the game a bit more approachable. The starter box might have to be a bit bigger but some board game boxes are pretty big for what they have in them. Make it just small enough for roughly 200 counters, might have an overflow issue and wouldn't even be a problem, and produce from the cheapest, thinnest plastic possible. Even with that, imagine all the 'unboxing' youtube videos where they're, like, "it even comes with this cool bowl for your counters!". Fancy is fancy, and people love fancy. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

To be clear, I'm refering to the type of thing shown , only smaller: You don't need hundreds, maybe 50 small ones, and 5 large ones for the Pool. It's worse than counters, which I enjoy, but like I said, for a starter package, it's far more practical and cheaper to produce.

Yeah, I thought that's what you meant... I think they're using the similar thing in X-wing, Heroclix, and (as someone stated) old L5R? They're really pretty! I'll give them that! For games where the amount of things (in X-wing's case, models) is limited and doesn't change that much during the game they work great. I feel that if I played a game with them it would instantly make myself as a player a bit more involved in whatever was tracked through that sorta wheel. It's really kinda big and personal. Is it any easier to store though? If you'd have big ones like that for pool, and way smaller ones for vamps (going from 0 to 12, say), you could... probably... When I think about it 50 should be more than enough, even though a breed deck might need almost 15 + locations alone (still manageable), but are they really any easier to store or print than little cardboard tokens? Why is it cheaper to produce? It's a sheet of cardboard anyways, and to be honest the single blood token could be really small - it doesn't have to be even a 5c (euro) in diameter, IMO. You could fit plenty on a A4. Then you also need the plastic bolts to keep the wheels together. I mean they look great, but are they seriously any more practical to put in a box? Krausedit\\ To make things even more pretty, you could take the wheel into account in card templating though. Then again you could for the counters as well. I mean, reserve a round space from top right corner of the card to indicate where the wheel would go; but you could have wee slots circulating the (presumably oval) vampire artwork as well for glass beads/cardboard tokens. People could use them if they wanted, it would look great, but no obligation. Okay, so that wasn't really an argument to either direction... "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

Well, I did mean in comparison to a bag of glass beads, not cardboard tokens. Cardboard cutouts would be OK too, I guess, although I think using hundreds of those might be a bit much.

@Cat_in_Exile, @Kraus: I think you guys are focusing on the wrong thing. Yes, Ben Peal is right that the number of counters are an issue, but I don't think it is THE issue. The counters are not going to be what is off-putting to potential players / buyers of the game - the artwork and graphic style and rules complexity is. Potential players are going to be drawn to the game by the artwork and graphics first and foremost, and this is what will "sell" the world of Vampire to them. They will most likely be willing to put up with counters or tokens in whatever form, cardboard or otherwise, since it is expected that every "complete game in a box" which the LCG Core Sets market themselves as (more or less) will come with some kind of counters / tokens. And it isn't like there are 3-5 different counters for things. There is really only one (1) counter type (that would be present in a 'core set') and that would be pool (or blood, which is pool by another name.) Not trying to be snappy, I just don't get the fixation on the issue of counters. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

Well, on my part, that would be because I like the game as it is. I don't like any of the changes you are proposing, really, other than agreeing that there's some poor art on some of the cards. And BTW, I've only been playing this game since January of last year, so this isn't nostalgia talking. VTES is awesome.

@Cat_in_Exile: It certainly seems like fun, I just think it suffers from a lot of unnecessary mechanics and unhelpful complexity (for the purposes of convincing others to play it, why they should be interested in it, etc.) Care to share anything / great experience that epitomizes why VTES is fine / perfect / great as is? I would genuinely like to hear your (all of you wonderful people) best stories. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

I've had tons of cool and intense moments playing, but, sorry, recapping what made them so fun feels like too much exposition for me to write here. Maybe someone else will be inclined to do so, though. I wish there was more high level gameplay videos on youtube for people to enjoy. However, I would at least recommend actually experiencing gameplay for yourself before deconstucting it and deciding what you find unneccessary or not. Maybe what you suggest could make for a good game, I dunno, but it would be a completely different game disconnected from Masquerade (or Requiem, even). It's kind of like suggesting revamping Axis & Allies and then making it more like Risk, after opening the box and deciding there's too many different types of units and too many countries involved, changing it to World War 3, all without having played it.

> LivesByProxy wrote: > @Cat_in_Exile: > > It certainly seems like fun, I just think it suffers from a lot of unnecessary mechanics and unhelpful complexity (for the purposes of convincing others to play it, why they should be interested in it, etc.) > In my experience as someone who has been teaching to play V:TES for ages, the complexity of the game is one of the main reasons why people get attracted to this game. In fact, the first thing I say to them when they ask me for information about V:TES is: "You may not be ready for this game, because it may be too complex for you to handle". This reverse psychology technique has been working great so far. And once they start to play on a regular basis, they love the fact of discovering more and more aspects of the game. Therefore, I see the complexity of V:TES as one of its main assets. V:EKN Website Coordinator

The thing I love in this game is that it's very hard to have lucky as an excuse. Or at least, luck involves little about cards but regards mainly your seating. In this game, you can't say "I lost because I did not draw my combo", due to the high flexibility of deckbuilding and crypt management (even during the game), and the huge card flow. Lurking in the underground of Bologna, Italy

> Cat_in_Exile wrote: > Well, on my part, that would be because I like the game as it is. I don't like any of the changes you are proposing, really, other than agreeing that there's some poor art on some of the cards. > > And BTW, I've only been playing this game since January of last year, so this isn't nostalgia talking. VTES is awesome. > Jesus, I wrote a super long reply to this whole thing, but misclicked somewhere I suppose and it deleted the whole thing. >.< Okay, so briefly: I've been demoing with these decks just now and plenty last summer, and they're super fun basic vampire. Just add the votes and rest of the combat to introduce a very basic, good and fun vampire experience that sure as hell isn't TOO complex to anyone who can keep track of a moderately complex board game. Try them out. This goes to say that VtES as it's core isn't really too complex. It just isn't. It's multi layered, but it's not too complex. The abundance of card interactions is what makes it 'complex' at times, and that's true. That could be sorted out by not reprinting Forearm Block, but Target Vitals. I mean that's the only combat card people are playing anyways. But that's another story. The point here I'm trying to make would be that VtES isn't too hard. But a more board-gameish card-kinda game to illustrate VtES lite, so to say, isn't far fetched as an idea at all. It doesn't need to replace VtES though. There are many fun board games to WoD, like Prince of the City, and it's not to replace VtES. Rather those complement it's existance. So I'm beginning to be with anyone who said that if you want to revamp VtES, you could, but you should probably make it a game of it's own altogether. There's no harm in that. Anyways, I'm with you guys with that if VtES would relaunch with the aesthetics and layout design on par with anything FFG pulls off, that would most certainly add to the game's appeal. The art budget for VtES has always been shaky at best. Which is a damn shame. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

> thelonius wrote: > The thing I love in this game is that it's very hard to have lucky as an excuse. > You must be joking. ps. I want to give my ten cents on this topic at some point, but I know the posts will be very lengthy and I just haven't had the time to concentrate on the matter. At some point though I will do it. Smoking craters tell no tales. —Tex talks Battletech

> LivesByProxy wrote: > > > Lönkka wrote: > > > > > self wrote: > > > Most CCGs follow set blocks for competitive play. Cards are rotated in and out of the current base set periodically effectively limiting the card pool for what is considered legal for tournaments. > > > > > I'm under the assumption that not that many CCGs actually rotate cards. > > > > A couple surely, but hardly "most"... > > > AFAIK, only MtG really does this, and I think they do it mostly because it supports their CCG model (i.e. getting people to buy cards and make them tons of $$$.) > Android Netrunner is moving through its first rotation right about now. It has also launched(launching?) a new version of its core set, with a different permutation of cards. Cards from the old core set which were not included in the reprint are no longer tournament legal. This was done to revitalize the somewhat stagnant tournament metagame and to get rid of certain problematic cards afaik. www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/9/11/system-refresh/ edit: more on the reasons behind rotation www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2014/11/5/a-new-stage-of-growth/ Smoking craters tell no tales. —Tex talks Battletech

> Bloodartist wrote: > > > LivesByProxy wrote: > > > > > Lönkka wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > self wrote: > > > > Most CCGs follow set blocks for competitive play. Cards are rotated in and out of the current base set periodically effectively limiting the card pool for what is considered legal for tournaments. > > > > > > > I'm under the assumption that not that many CCGs actually rotate cards. > > > > > > A couple surely, but hardly "most"... > > > > > > > > AFAIK, only MtG really does this, and I think they do it mostly because it supports their CCG model (i.e. getting people to buy cards and make them tons of $$$.) > > > Android Netrunner is moving through its first rotation right about now. It has also launched(launching?) a new version of its core set, with a different permutation of cards. Cards from the old core set which were not included in the reprint are no longer tournament legal. This was done to revitalize the somewhat stagnant tournament metagame and to get rid of certain problematic cards afaik. > > www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/9/11/system-refresh/ > > edit: more on the reasons behind rotation > www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2014/11/5/a-new-stage-of-growth/ > Being a player of, I can say that rotation is more, more, more than welcome in that game. It's a great game, but certain cards really needed to rotate. I think rotation is the right direction for ANR (if it does survive past the first rotation). There's really no need for that in VtES though, where it's really unique and one of a kind. Yu-Gi-Oh doesn't have a rotation, but it does have an excessive ban-list, something that Vampires doesn't have. Or need, even. It's great and unique, but most of it comes from VtES being a multiplayer game (where multiple people balances a lot of things that would be beyond broken in a duel game). Not to say that some players shouldn't enjoy VtES as a duel game, but if someone were to tailor anything vampiresque into a duel format, that should probably be made and balanced outside of the scope of VtES per se, completely independent. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

> Damnans wrote: > > In my experience as someone who has been teaching to play V:TES for ages, the complexity of the game is one of the main reasons why people get attracted to this game. > > In fact, the first thing I say to them when they ask me for information about V:TES is: "You may not be ready for this game, because it may be too complex for you to handle". This reverse psychology technique has been working great so far. > Interesting. Whenever I've mentioned VTES (talking to MTG players) I frame it as being the 2nd CCG ever made, a year after MTG was made i.e. 1994, based on a game that was made before MTG in 1991, which is the game that gave MTG it's name (lol) which usually gets a couple of inquisitive responses. But alas, I have no cards to show or play with, so me Embracing new players ends there. > thelonius wrote: > Or at least, luck involves little about cards but regards mainly your seating. > I would consider this a a failure in design IMO. It is understandable that the predator-prey relationship would skew things one way or another, but getting a predator or prey that you basically can't or don't interact with is a failure in design IMO. I've read where VTES at its worst is just 3-5 player solitaire, since each player's deck is non-interactive with their predator//prey. For example, a Ventrue Vote deck, a Malk stealth-bleed deck, and a Gangrel rush Combat deck sit down at a table. Are these decks / players likely to change their tactics / strategy based on what their predator-prey is playing? Can they even do that? It would seem to be a race for who can oust quickest. The Malk stealth-bleed is going to play cards that neither player can really do much about, aside from the Ventrue Vote guy bouncing the bleed. The Gangrel rush combat deck is going to get in fights that the Vote deck and Stealth-Bleed deck can't interact with because their decks aren't built for combat - they just get beat up and torporized. The Vote deck can't really interact with the other two, because what it wants to do - pass referendums like KRC and Parity Shift - is something the other two can't do anything about since they have no votes. I would love to have someone tell me how I'm mistaken and break it down for me, but this is what it seems to be like just reading about and watching VTES games. > Bloodartist wrote: > > ps. I want to give my ten cents on this topic at some point, but I know the posts will be very lengthy and I just haven't had the time to concentrate on the matter. At some point though I will do it. > I am looking forward to it. > Kraus wrote: > a more board-gameish card-kinda game to illustrate VtES lite, so to say, isn't far fetched as an idea at all. It doesn't need to replace VtES though. There are many fun board games to WoD, like Prince of the City, and it's not to replace VtES. Rather those complement it's existance. > > So I'm beginning to be with anyone who said that if you want to revamp VtES, you could, but you should probably make it a game of it's own altogether. There's no harm in that. > That was the premise of the OP. To make a spiritual successor to VTES, one which complimented and payed homage to its existence. Also, I'm looking forward to the Prince's Gambit game by Justin Achilli. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

Oh, as for not having cards, check out Amaranth deck builder. If you haven't already. I'll tell you that even though plenty of our people have been playing the game for, like, ages, the tournament legalization of proxies sparked a whole new deal of interest and (un)life into our meta. Having no cards to use shouldn't be a problem, it's more than fine to print proxies. And the seating thing is one of the most random things, and does influence strategies a great deal. But, the more you play, the more you might find that Govern+Obfuscate stealth bleed gets fixed on a single VP, maybe two, each game before that rush player from cross table learns to finish him off before they get too powerful, the voter learns to use more Banishment than KRC, and the bleed and combat builds learn to use titled vampires to do their thing instead of non-titled to have a say in votes. Seating is random. There's always some discussion about that, but not yet any worthwhile ideas on how to deal with it. Rather, the players have to deal with it with their politics and tactics (strategy coming in with including interactive cards in your deck). Lot of dealing. You really should play the game more, you'll know why it's so awesome. Print the cards! It might take plenty, plenty of work to get even a few people to try, but it'll be worth it. Krausedit\\ But yeah, sorry, now I've been derailing the original topic of getting ideas for a new game, to which I don't exactly have so much to say - or, rather, I'd have way too much to say. Can't at the moment. Just came in for those few cents of mine about getting a game in and what I think about the counters. Sry for not being much more helpful in your design ideas. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

> Bloodartist wrote: > > > thelonius wrote: > > The thing I love in this game is that it's very hard to have lucky as an excuse. > > > You must be joking. > > ps. I want to give my ten cents on this topic at some point, but I know the posts will be very lengthy and I just haven't had the time to concentrate on the matter. At some point though I will do it. > My point is that any other card game I played is far worse in giving you the chance to control and reduce the chance to draw dead cards in bad moments. Of course it's a card game and of course luck in drawing card is involved at some level. But after 3 or 4 a got tournament you will see what I mean Lurking in the underground of Bologna, Italy

> Kraus wrote: > > This goes to say that VtES as it's core isn't really too complex. It just isn't. It's multi layered, but it's not too complex. The abundance of card interactions is what makes it 'complex' at times, and that's true. That could be sorted out by not reprinting Forearm Block, but Target Vitals. I mean that's the only combat card people are playing anyways. > (@Kraus: First, I like the look of those demo decks you mentioned, not quoted here. Second, also not quoted here, VTES has some very good art in some instances... and some questionable art in others... so getting on par with FFGs production and graphic design would be amazing.) But about complexity, I disagree that it is the card interactions that make VTES complex (assuming I understand what you mean by card interactions). Rather, I think it is such things like the wording, templating, layout, use of keywords or lack there-of, some rules in particular, and the general graphic design which make VTES artificially more complex than it really is. So let me explain: @:Anyone / Everyone / All VEKN Users REVAMPING VTES (WITHOUT DUMBING IT DOWN), PART 1: COMPLEXITY VS DEPTH There's a lot of talk about complexity vs depth in game design, and from what I've read (being a casual gamer) the goal is to get the maximum amount of player engagement i.e. fun, which is usually done via having a high depth-to-complexity ratio. Depth and complexity are intertwined, but complexity without depth is generally bad while it is difficult to achieve depth without some complexity. Fortunately, VTES has a lot of depth (or seems to, remember I've never played, only observed) but the complexity I dislike and desire to reduce is that which doesn't add much to the depth to the game (IMO.) FEWER CARD TYPES For example, the overabundance of card types. As previously stated, there are a lot of card types in VTES. There are Masters, Actions, Political Actions, Combats, Action Modifiers, Reactions, Allies, Retainers, Equipment, Events, Convictions, and Powers, not including the Crypt cards. So why are there all of these different types of cards? Well, call me crazy, but I think it is a hold-over from the early days of MTG / VTES where Richard Garfield conceived of all these card types (yes, I know there were no Convictions and Powers in the base Jyhad set.) The point of a 'card type' though, is that there were built-in rules associated with the timing and abilities of certain cards. (In MTG for example, its the difference between Sorcery and Enchantment. The one is played, its effect happens, and it is discarded. The latter remains in play. Creatures remain in play, but have an additional rule associated with them: Summoning Sickness. They can't attack the turn they are played. Instants are like Sorcery cards, but you can play them at any time, etc.) What do all of these below have in common? They had very specific card types, but MTG eventually simplified things (i.e. they cleaned up) which eased the learning process and made the game more elegant in its appearance. Ironically(?), Richard Garfield had these worded like this because it was for purposes of clarity: Of course Animate Artifact would be 'Enchant Non-Creature Artifact', that is what it functionally does. Of course Counterspell was an 'Interrupt' - it had to be "faster" than Instants in order to counter Instant spells. Why is Black Lotus a 'Mono Artifact'? Because you had to {T}ap it, which meant it could only be used once per turn, nevermind the whole "and then is discarded" clause. The real kicker is that the majority of card types could basically just be 'Actions' or, if we were trying to modernize VTES, just 'Event' cards (different from what VTES Event cards are). Basically, these are the "You play it, do what it says, and then discard it." I think ALL of FFG's LCGs have used 'Event' cards in this way. Things get weirder. The whole point of having different card types was the associated rules and timing restrictions and play restrictions, right? But in VTES, there are tonnes of cards that ignore the conventions / reasons for having card types in the first place. Tonnes of cards have very specific timing instructions written on the card, resulting in very... unelegant (not aesthetically / visually appealing) and wordy cards. PART 2, tomorrow evening Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

@Kraus: I love Amaranth deck builder, I just don't know if the deck I'm putting together will be good or terrible. XD Also, what matters is not really a spiritual successor to VTES, but helping nuWW get back on their feet and making Vampire a pop-culture force to be reckoned with. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> thelonius wrote: > > My point is that any other card game I played is far worse in giving you the chance to control and reduce the chance to draw dead cards in bad moments. Of course it's a card game and of course luck in drawing card is involved at some level. But after 3 or 4 a got tournament you will see what I mean > 60-80% of my VTES games seem to be decided by me not drawing the cards I need from my deck. (Usually cards that comprise 10-15% of my deck, ie. not singleton cards or anything) I would say that luck is a bigger factor in VTES than in any other CCG or LCG I have played, because not only is there the random element of card-draw, there is also the randomized seating that affects the game. This is further augmented by the fact that certain cards and situations have a higher impact in VTES than in many other games, Probably because VTES is modeled after 'old' Magic the gathering, where strong hoser cards were prevalent (think Fall of the camarilla). Its worth noting that Magic the gathering has moved away from narrow high impact cards in its modern design for the most part. (By this I mean cards that have a very narrow window of application, but when they do work, they win you the game instantly) Wizards noticed during the years that its not fun to be locked out of a game. "You play this card and the opponent can't do anything? Well thats not very fun for the opponent." Thus they moved away from this kind of design. As an example I give a game from last week, where our local playgroup was playing at a restaurant. One unlucky person had: - His 11-cap star vampire was not in his starting crypt. - His prey was a weenie wall which got out 3 minions quickly with bowl, ivory bow and heart of Nitzchetus. - His predator was me, with Unnamed boosted out quickly with the help of Zillah's valley. Combine this and he was basically a non-factor in the game thanks to a combination of luck-related events. You can say that playing a star vampire deck makes you prone to this sort of thing happening, but ultimately it was still pure luck that caused him to be a pile of pool waiting to be devoured. Some people like their games decided entirely by luck, some don't. I belong in the latter group. Smoking craters tell no tales. —Tex talks Battletech

> Bloodartist wrote: > 60-80% of my VTES games seem to be decided by me not drawing the cards I need from my deck. (Usually cards that comprise 10-15% of my deck, ie. not singleton cards or anything) > I'm surprised by such a ratio. Bad luck is normally mitigated by 2 factors: - there's a lot you can do without any cards, including bluffing. If you play a weenie ANI deck, everybody is expecting you to be able to play Carrion Crows and Aid from Bats... even when you don't have any in hand, but that is a thing that other players don't know. (For the record, I know players who won games with a Tzimisce deck and playing less than 10 cards in the game.) - since it's a 5-players game (or 4-player game for those who are unlucky), it's uncommon to have a bad hand AND allies that can't do anything for you (or against your predator). > Bloodartist wrote: > As an example I give a game from last week, where our local playgroup was playing at a restaurant. > > One unlucky person had: > - His 11-cap star vampire was not in his starting crypt. > - His prey was a weenie wall which got out 3 minions quickly with bowl, ivory bow and heart of Nitzchetus. > - His predator was me, with Unnamed boosted out quickly with the help of Zillah's valley. > Was it a 3-players table? Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

> Ankha wrote: > Was it a 3-players table? > No, four. Smoking craters tell no tales. —Tex talks Battletech

> Bloodartist wrote: > > > Ankha wrote: > > Was it a 3-players table? > > > No, four. > It's harder to balance the odds on a four players table because you have only one ally, and that ally has only one ally (you). So if either of you both breaks, the other is likely to be weakened as well. On a five players table, you have 2 allies, and each of them has 2 allies, so it is more than twice the interactions on a 4-player table, and since players are more tied to each other, the "bad luck" is less impacting. Of course, the more stable your deck is, the better it is for you, and the table. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

REVAMPING VTES (WITHOUT DUMBING IT DOWN), PART 2: Last time I mentioned Depth vs Complexity, and talked about how certain aspects of VTES made it artificially more complex than it needed to be - such as the abundance of card types. IMO, not only are fewer card types are possible, reducing complexity, but they are desirable since they would not harm the game's depth. RULES MINUTIAE Did you know that in Magic's Alpha days and until 6th Edition, there was a rule that "tapped Artifacts have no effect" i.e. they don't work. What about the rule that tapped blockers don't deal combat damage? No? OK, what about the rule that if you had unused mana in your mana pool at the end of steps and phases, it disappeared and you took a point of damage for each unused mana, AKA "mana burn"? How about the rule that players with 0 life did not lose the game until the end of their turn? Maybe the VTES crowd isn't that familiar with MTG, but all of these rules have since been discarded, despite being part of the game since the beginning. Now, I'm not sure how the VTES rules have changed over the years, but I see a couple of odd little rules that make the game more complex but don't seem to add any additional depth. Basically, why does this rule exist? +1 Stealth For X But Not Y? Most actions come at a base +1 stealth: employ Retainer, recruit Ally, equip Equipment, call Political Action, and Hunt all get this bonus. Additionally, so does Leave Torpor, Rescue From Torpor, and Diablerie. For some reason though, the basic Bleed action is at 0 stealth, as is play Action card. Now, presumably, this is because bleeding at base of 1 stealth would mean vampires would need to have external +1 intercept bonuses, like that from Raven Spies, or their special ability . So the basic bleed action is at 0 stealth so your prey can (attempt to) block. Fair enough. However, 95% of Action cards come with "+1 stealth" written on the card. Why? Why clutter up valuable card text space with something that could just be a simple rule (all actions are at +1 stealth)? Again, it's not overly complex - this is not brain straining mental activity. It's just a weird pattern in the rules that doesn't have any perceivable (to my novice eyes) benefit. The Blood Hunt So after a vampire diablerizes another, a Blood Hunt is automatically called. However, this Blood Hunt is not an action, so it can't be blocked, nor can action modifiers and reaction cards be played. I think the political action aspect of VTES is very cool, but for the game to have this feature which basically ignores the entire normal voting process and takes power and decision making away from players is very odd. Odder still, the game has this keyword feature: Red List, but rather than creating interaction with the Red List, the game rules have players forego all of that. What if, for example, the rules were: any vampire could call a referendum (at +1 stealth) to Red List any vampire that had diablerized another vampire? Presume the automatic non-interactive Blood Hunt rules were gone. Wouldn't such a change be, by its very nature, more interactive? More complex, certainly, but the interaction is what gives it depth, yes? Healing & Damage So... rather than damage simply subtracting blood from a vampire, a vampire is required to burn blood to heal damage if able. Functionally, this does not seem to make much difference, but rules-wise it could matter? Except it doesn't, apparently. I only found 3 cards that interact with this "burn blood to heal damage" rule (Regenerative Blood, Sword of Nuln, and Repair the Undead Flesh) which makes me wonder, why is this rule here? The design space seems cool, but it is basically under-explored and under-used. It could just be that damage burns blood, period. There is also aggravated damage, which has vampires burn blood without any pretense of 'healing' it (because they can't), and the added benefit of instantly wounding the receiving vampire and sending him or her to torpor. Yet, the conversion rate is not 1:1. A vampire being dealt aggravated damage must first burn 1 blood as they become wounded, and then burn X blood where X is the aggravated damage they've received. It's a little added bit of complexity that I'm not sure what purpose it serves. So, with so few cards that interact with the 'healing' factor, and with agg damage basically being normal damage+1 why not just make all damage burn blood? SUMMARY Maybe these are nitpicks, but I'm bringing them up to elicit feedback. I'm think these things can be simplified or tweaked without losing any depth to VTES. What do you think? Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> LivesByProxy wrote: > REVAMPING VTES (WITHOUT DUMBING IT DOWN), PART 2: > Elotar, is that you? Not for a single moment buying that you are a neonate who actually hasn't played VTES. I'm extremely suspicious on this kind of attempt to hide your true identity (whoever you might be) while advocating fundamental changes to the system that works well and one that has several times been selected as the (one of the) top CCGs. Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > Elotar, is that you? > NC Russia

@Lonkka: I go by many aliases but "elotar" isn't one of them. I also don't mean any harm to VTES or the VEKN, I'm just bouncing ideas around. I don't see how any of those minor rules I critiqued would damage the game if they were simplified or removed. I am tickled you think me anything more than a neonate though. Edit: P.S. I haven't played VTES before, but I'm looking into getting some cards via EBAY. Don't go outbidding me! Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> Edit: P.S. I haven't played VTES before, but I'm looking into getting some cards via EBAY. Don't go outbidding me! > Still can't overstate the importance and coolness and awesomeness and freedom and everything that comes through printing proxies. But physical cards are cool too. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

All right, I'm going to start attempting writing on this subject now. Talking about revamping VTES is a huge undertaking and there will likely be lots of walls of text in the future. I might start a blog or something to keep my ideas ordered. First, the reasons why I think VTES is in need of reboot/rewrite, or a completely new version of the game. These two reasons are independent of each other, which is important to note. 1.) Cleaning up the card rulings and design errors. While VTES may be a great game at the core, it carries a massive amount of unnecessary baggage in the form of bad design and unnecessarily complex rulings, which usually stem from badly written cards. This has troubled me tremendously since I started playing few years back. I'm a problem-solver at heart. When I see issues, I want to fix them. I feel that the issues with the cards are so numerous, that simply using errata to fix them would be too much. It would just create too much confusion. So rewriting cards from scratch with a new version of the game could be one solution. 2.) Making VTES more popular. I'm sure everyone (even) here can agree that the more players VTES has, the better. However, bringing more players to the game is easier said than done. Issues I think negatively affect the popularity: - Its not sold at your local game store (yes, its a dead game) - The artwork and cards look woefully outdated - Its difficult to get real versions of the cards, you have to go to Ebay for the most part. I personally feel that having real cardboard versions of the cards is important. I hate playing with proxies. Its a collectible card game after all. As others have pointed out elsewhere, VTES shares remarkable similarities with modern tabletop games. The number of players is similar and you need more than 4-5 players for a meaningful game. I think that creating a "starting core set" of the game with 5-8 preconstructed decks (preferably with revised artwork), packaging them into a tabletop game-sized box along with a big bag of blood counters, cool-looking edge, colourful and instructive rulebook etc might be a good way to make VTES more known. It would say the number of players on the cover so people wouldn't have wrong expectations. After all, most people expect two-player game when you mention "card game" to them. They expect multiplayer game when you say "tabletop game". Advertise this starting box to your local game store, and see what happens. This sort of thing feels like something that could be a kickstarter campaign, even though I believe White wolf is against such. Now a separate issue is whether this should be combined with rewriting cards/rules. Thats a different but worthwhile discussion. I do feel that VTES might benefit from having a two-player version of the game, but it seems that this is impossible to achieve without rewriting the game completely. Smoking craters tell no tales. —Tex talks Battletech

> Lönkka wrote: > > Elotar, is that you? > > Not for a single moment buying that you are a neonate who actually hasn't played VTES. I'm extremely suspicious on this kind of attempt to hide your true identity (whoever you might be) while advocating fundamental changes to the system that works well and one that has several times been selected as the (one of the) top CCGs. > a.) Admins can see through most common impersonation attempts by taking a look at posters IP-address. b.) I consider your post to be unrelated to the topic and poor taste(like most of your posts, tbh). LivesbyProxys posts appear constructive in nature so I don't see why you feel the need to police him. Whether he is new or old is irrelevant, he has the same right to post on these forums as any other. If you don't like the topic, don't read it. Smoking craters tell no tales. —Tex talks Battletech

> Bloodartist wrote: > > * First, the reasons why I think VTES is in need of reboot/rewrite, or a completely new version of the game. These two reasons are independent of each other, which is important to note. > > * 1.) Cleaning up the card rulings and design errors. > > * I think that creating a "starting core set" of the game with 5-8 preconstructed decks (preferably with revised artwork), packaging them into a tabletop game-sized box along with a big bag of blood counters, > Very interesting. I'm curious, why do you note that the two reasons are independent of each other? They seem linked to me. Also very curious to know what aspects of VTES you consider to be design errors. I have my own list, but I'm looking forward to your thoughts. It is known that I would support a new version of the game that featured cleaner cards and some simplified or cleaned up mechanics. A real "big box" product would go a long way, but I have to mention: If we must have a lot of counters, then I think it imperative that "taking from the blood bank" and assorted bloat cards / strategies be kept to a minimum. The game is, at its heart, about diminishing resources and collapsing game state, no? Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> Bloodartist wrote: > 1.) Cleaning up the card rulings and design errors. While VTES may be a great game at the core, it carries a massive amount of unnecessary baggage in the form of bad design and unnecessarily complex rulings, which usually stem from badly written cards. This has troubled me tremendously since I started playing few years back. I'm a problem-solver at heart. When I see issues, I want to fix them. > > I feel that the issues with the cards are so numerous, that simply using errata to fix them would be too much. It would just create too much confusion. So rewriting cards from scratch with a new version of the game could be one solution. > Unification and rewriting of all the cards and what they do has already been done by Vincent and Pascal quite some time ago. AFAIK, the only thing that is keeping this implemented is getting the game back in print. IMO, now that proxies are allowed I see little reason why the changes shouldn't be applied right now. Finnish Politics!

> Bloodartist wrote: > b.) I consider your post to be unrelated to the topic and poor taste(like most of your posts, tbh). LivesbyProxys posts appear constructive in nature so I don't see why you feel the need to police him. Whether he is new or old is irrelevant, he has the same right to post on these forums as any other. If you don't like the topic, don't read it. > Out of courtesy I'm not saying what I consider of your posts. Or opinions. You have played the game for a very very short while, LivesbyProxys keeps on claiming he hasn't played the game at all (appears to show way more understanding of the game though which is rather strange, hence my suspicions). Both of you are keen on tearing down what you now perceive to be problems with the game. Fiddling with fundamentals with little wisdom accumulated during the years is a pretty darn sure way to bungle things up. (not that even years of being around will necessarily give much wisdom to everyone). You are voicing opinions on changing plenty of stuff. I am advocating on the opposite view so that people in the power do not perceive that your opinions are universally accepted. Finnish Politics!

@Lonkka: I've been interested in VTES for years, I've just never played nor owned any cards. I've read the rules and read many blogs and watched Cause & Effect and gameplay videos on YouTube. Since you have played the game for so long, it would be great to get your insight into what the best attributes of VTES are. You've already pretty much stated that everything is sacrosanct for you, but what is the holy core of VTES in your opinion? Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

Can you PLEASE not put walls of text into quotes? The thread will become very annoying to read. Just quote the part that is important. > LivesByProxy wrote: > > Very interesting. I'm curious, why do you note that the two reasons are independent of each other? They seem linked to me. > What I consider to be faults in the game and how to make the game more interesting to the wider audience are two very separate things. Addressing the former requires making some changes to the game, the latter may be achieved by making changes to the game, but not necessarily. I don't claim that I know how people think, but I have some ideas after playing CCGs for couple decades. > Also very curious to know what aspects of VTES you consider to be design errors. I have my own list, but I'm looking forward to your thoughts. It is known that I would support a new version of the game that featured cleaner cards and some simplified or cleaned up mechanics. > I will post these thoughts of mine in manageable doses. I can't even remember them all at the same time, but I wanted to get started. Let it be said that I do not mean VTES' general rules are faulty. What bothers me are several cards being worded in a way that is less than optimal. Because of Richard Garfield's golden principle ("If game rules and card text contradict, you obey the card") rules complexity issues directly follow. As someone said earlier, complexity and depth are two different things. Games that have low rules complexity but high strategic depth are considered 'good' games. Example of such a game: chess. Example of a bad game: any board game that has too many moving parts for players to keep track of, but these moving parts overall don't improve the strategic depth. We should consider rewriting the problem cards (what is perceived as a 'problem' may vary) in a way that makes them more understandable but maintains the games strategic depth. Much of the unnecessary complexity in VTES revolves around combat. Once upon a time there may have been a step structure for combat in VTES. Then somebody started writing cards that purposefully did not adhere to it. We have off the top of my head: - cards that are played before pre-range "about to enter combat" (obedience) - cards that are played after obedience-window but before pre-range; "If this vampire is blocked" "successfully blocks". (Dawn operation, mental maze) - Damage that is dealt in pre-range (outside the hourglass) - Cards that are played after maneuvers but before any strikes (immortal grapple) - Strike cards that resolve outside strike phases (most of strike: combat ends), which are very common cards but are defined in a non-intuitive way. Since you can play combat end to your opponents combat end, its basically a step of its own yet not defined as such. To further confuse the issue, we have hand strike: combat ends which work differently. Also combat ends in pre-range for some reason (alpha glint) - damage inflicted by combat ends (catatonic fear). How does this work with dawn operation btw? Since we have combat cards played after combat ends (taste of vitae) makes me think this step is still part of combat - cards with very confusing timing (Rotschreck). I was about to write "after strike:combat ends would resolve but before actual strikes", then realized I'm not actually sure if this is correct. Can you negate combat end with Rotschreck? - Cards can be played during the resolution of another card (Psyche vs Rotschreck interaction). I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that you allow this. - We have first strike (its very lonely in here since its an underused keyword, yet defined in rulebook) - We have two different strikes rolled into one (stutter-step) - We have cards that can be played at pretty much any time after combat has started but which can create confusing situations in combination with other cards (claws of the dead for example. Dealing aggravated damage outside normal strike step ends the combat prematurely, and creates confusion involving cards that are played once combat ends. See rotschreck) - strike resolution is handled in a non-intuitive and confusing fashion. Mainly because we have strikes that don't have a strike resolution apparently (strike:combat ends negates carrion crows for example). - Multiple different uses for same words create confusion, particularly "strike resolution" (resolving actual cards/strikes vs a step in combat) and "combat ends" (which can mean both the strike and a point of time in combat; ironically not defined as a step in combat sequence despite having several cards playable during it) - We have press step which I'm not convinced needs to be a step of its own, similar to maneuver step. Btw I consider the ordering of presses vs taste of vitae non-intuitive. - We have combat cards that are played basically after combat ends (taste of vitae) and when combat is about to end (psyche, telepathic tracking) I don't think end of combat is defined very well. It is not a step of its own defined in the rulebook, but in my opinion it should be. Now.. Does anyone else think that this could be streamlined a little? Is it just me? Is all of this necessary to keep the game deep and enjoyable to play? Personally I felt nothing but frustration trying to understand how combat cards work in combat. We still regularly come across rules issues in weekly games. Notice that all of the above issues stem from having a card text that contradicts the rulebook in a problematic way. Errata:eing and then reprinting the these cards could be a way to weed out some of the unnecessary complexity in my opinion. To make a new version of the game from this would solve the problem of people playing with wrong versions of the cards (all those jyhad cards..) Certain issues are probably a result of not having a lead designer or someone to oversee card development as a whole. At least thats what it looks like. For example: VTES has (according to my lackey) 1475 vampire cards. Out of these, number of vampires that have the keyword "first strike" unconditionally is... ONE. (Elimelech the twice-damned) Five other vampires have or may gain first strike conditionally. Does anyone else think that first strike is underused? First strike is a real keyword, defined in the rulebook even. Do you think that it was worth the inclusion in the rulebook (as opposed to its effect just defined in card text) when its used by 0.4% of vampires? In my opinion first strike would be a good way to make vampire A 'slightly' stronger than vampire B in combat, particularly useful when you want to represent specific clans who are traditionally considered better in combat than others in RPG such as gangrel or brujah. Did anybody designing vampires for the new sets consider the option of giving them first strike? (btw: yes, I'm aware that there are combat cards that grant first strike. Theres slightly less than 20 of them) > A real "big box" product would go a long way, but I have to mention: If we must have a lot of counters, then I think it imperative that "taking from the blood bank" and assorted bloat cards / strategies be kept to a minimum. The game is, at its heart, about diminishing resources and collapsing game state, no? > In my opinion "hoarding stuff" in games is cool. This includes counters. What else would make you feel rich in-game than a big pile of counters? My main and pretty much only issue with VTES counters is how blood counters tend to cover the face of a high-cap vampire card completely. I use red plastic counters that are smaller than the glass beads most VTES players use, despite this I feel the blood pile on a vampire is cumbersome, especially since vampires need to ta...lock and unlock. In my opinion vampires are really cool cards and I want to keep looking at their artwork, not cover them with counters. I don't have a solution to this problem though. If someone has, I'd be interested in hearing it. We could potentially use dice, but the way blood counters move from pool to cards and back works great as is. If only I didn't have to keep the counters on the vampire.. Smoking craters tell no tales. —Tex talks Battletech

> Lönkka wrote: > > Out of courtesy I'm not saying what I consider of your posts. > Or opinions. > > You have played the game for a very very short while, LivesbyProxys keeps on claiming he hasn't played the game at all (appears to show way more understanding of the game though which is rather strange, hence my suspicions). > Your attempt at avoiding the classic internet ad hominem arguments is admirable. Wait. Personally, I'd rather stick to the topic. Smoking craters tell no tales. —Tex talks Battletech

> Now.. Does anyone else think that this could be streamlined a little? Is it just me? > Oh no, it's more or less clear that combat is the most convoluted and kind-of-a-mess in the game. I wouldn't drop any phases as such (but rather introduce the pre-range as a a real thing), but I'll admit many things you said are really all over the place. That's mostly what I was thinking about when I talked earlier about card interactions making the game too complex for it's own right. No one even uses Stutter Step. Or some might, but no one's going to cry any tears if Acrobatics just replaced that when reprinting the new set. To be honest though, some combat cards could be rewritten for clarity, but many problems in there are solved just by never reprinting those cards again. As opposed to some decisions I can't just understand, like never reprinting strong staple combat cards for Obtenebration from late 90's. Those things are not problems in written rules or game design at the moment though, I'd say. Many of them are actually remnants of bad design choices, but their impact on the game anymore isn't that meaningful. I'd say that the issue of healing damage is very similar. Just never reprint those few cards that reference it, or rewrite them and rebalance them. The whole healing damage thing seems like a lore reference that could be rewritten once we know more about V5's terminology. Then again, I don't think there are problems in ALL of the situations you mentioned. Some are features, not faults, like pre-range damage. It's all right actually. Just needs a couple of entries in the FAQ, but hey, it's a must in any game. But I do agree that combat is the most all-over-the-place of any VtES mechanics. It would require a rewrite of sorts. Of course any other new game of your choosing that you might be making could handle combat in any way you want. But some of it's complexity and detail is integral to Vampire, as no other game goes to such depths with it. Interesting stuff happens in combat. People love it. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

> Bloodartist wrote: > Much of the unnecessary complexity in VTES revolves around combat. Once upon a time there may have been a step structure for combat in VTES. Then somebody started writing cards that purposefully did not adhere to it. > [...] > Now.. Does anyone else think that this could be streamlined a little? Is it just me? Is all of this necessary to keep the game deep and enjoyable to play? > [...] > Does anyone else think that first strike is underused? > [...] > In my opinion "hoarding stuff" in games is cool. This includes counters. What else would make you feel rich in-game than a big pile of counters? > > My main and pretty much only issue with VTES counters is how blood counters tend to cover the face of a high-cap vampire card completely. [...] In my opinion vampires are really cool cards and I want to keep looking at their artwork, not cover them with counters. > Copied from Gaming With Brett S. WordPress Blog (because it is relevant): "So the first and most damning problem is that combat results in wild swings of power. By which I mean that it either does very little (Rush, Torn Signpost, Slam… oh, you played Majesty…), or it utterly prevents a player from playing the game (Oh, did Arika just come out? Rush, Acrobatics, punch for 1, Disarm, Decapitate… hope you are ok with losing your first minion and 11 pool!). Neither extreme is any fun and any redesign of the game is going to need to seriously consider how to help nudge combat back into the middle ground. One element at play here is the arms race between defensive and offensive combat, and Strike: Combat Ends lies at the heart of the issue. It’s the ultimate trump and if left uncountered, it allows a deck to completely ignore combat. Given that combat is one of the central elements and strategies to the game, I think we can all agree that this is a bad thing. But many of the counters have created more problems than they solve. Take Immortal Grapple as a prime example – it introduces yet another combat phase (did we really need a “before strikes” step?), kills off melee weapons, and creates yet another situation where only one party wins. Either I play Immortal Grapple and make you powerless to resist me, or I don’t and you escape unharmed. It creates a “winner take all” scenario that I think it unhealthy. Don’t even get me started on cards like Charismatic Aura that cancel grapple cards. Do we really want special counter cards to counter the other special counter cards designed to deal with the ultimate combat counter? I stated earlier how I think combat can be simplified into being Strikes, Dodges, and Presses, with the 'Range / Maneuver' steps being functionally and thematically included into Dodging or Pressing. I said that this created a sort of rock-paper-scissors gameplay but was told that VTES combat should not be R-P-S. But it seems to me that this is already the case. A vampire 'rushing' another vampire will lose (have combat be meaningless) if the opponent maneuvers to long and he can't maneuver back to close, or the opponent plays S:CE (and as per the rules, the acting vampire plays combat cards 1st, so it is like rock-paper-scissors but with you showing your opponent your choice rather than a simultaneous reveal.) I also think many of the weird timings you mention can be included in the effects of the strike itself. Lets look at Immortal Grapple. (Assume S:CE is less prevalent and / or more costly to use, so it is less of the ultimate defense.) Immortal Grapple could read: <inferior> Strike: Non Hand Strikes cannot be used this round of combat. <superior> Strike: As above, with 1 optional Press. If combat continues, Manuevers cannot be used for the remainder of this combat. Functionally, I think this mostly turns out the same, but I could be wrong. The reason Immortal Grapple has "only useable before strikes are chosen" is because of the prevalence and abundance of S:CE. I do think First Strike is under-used, but I think it is counter-intuitive to have it be called First Strike when Strike: Combat Ends resolves first, and until S:CE is powered down or the cards it is seen on are fewer, First Strike remains lackluster. Hording stuff is fun, and maybe the number of counters wouldn't be an issue if the "big box" product was big enough. Ben Peal's concern was that he would be selling an aquarium's worth of glass counters, which is a legitimate one, but marketed properly as a table-top board game, I guess that would make up for having most of the components and weight be counters. High quality card-board counters would also help, obviously. One solution (maybe not ideal) to having counters cover-up the high-cap's artwork would be having all vampires whom you influence out return half of their blood to your pool (rounded up.) This would mean that the weenies come out exceptionally weak and low on blood, with the smallest weenies being required to Hunt before doing anything else. It would also mean that the high-caps wouldn't be quite so painful to get out, and contribute to the feeling of being rich, since you'd have more pool to spend overall (because half of that 10 or 11 cap would be reinvested back into your pool), which means getting more vampires into play over the course of the game, which creates a more interesting board state and more interaction, I think. Oh, and because they come out with fewer counters on them, you get to see their art. IDK just an idea (influenced from the same Gaming With Brett article I linked to.) Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

Once you play vtes for a bit, you will see that both frustrations for your 11cap burned at turn 1 and your killing machine getting s:ce are just part of the game. If you want to play an 11cap, you expose to the early burn frustration. If you play rush deck you can't hope that every combat will torpor or burn something. Again, it's in the player, not in the game. If a player just rush everything on the table and then gets ousted with 0 vp, that's a bad player and hopefully will learn that some well aimed disruptive rush is better, or that relying on attrition combat instead of the burn burn burn will pay on a longer game strategy. Tl;Dr. Just remove a bunch of too wordy and convoluted combat cards (twisting the knife, anyone? ) and reprint same old fashioned combat cards and everything will be ok Lurking in the underground of Bologna, Italy

> Kraus wrote: > To be honest though, some combat cards could be rewritten for clarity, but many problems in there are solved just by never reprinting those cards again. > [...] > I'd say that the issue of healing damage is very similar. Just never reprint those few cards that reference it, or rewrite them and rebalance them. > [...] > But I do agree that combat is the most all-over-the-place of any VtES mechanics. It would require a rewrite of sorts. > [...] > Of course any other new game of your choosing that you might be making could handle combat in any way you want. But some of it's complexity and detail is integral to Vampire, as no other game goes to such depths with it. Interesting stuff happens in combat. People love it. > I would support some cards not being reprinted again, particularly if the goal is to have a self-contained core set of around 400 cards in a big box product. If we're not going to reprint the cards that deal with healing damage, is it necessary to have the rules refer to healing damage? (The rules could just be that X damage burns X blood, and that X aggravated damage burns X and sends to torpor, which is slightly simplified from the current rules of X agg damage being X+1 blood burned [the 1 blood from the vampire becomes wounded. Coincidentally, there are no cards that interact with this 1 blood from becoming wounded.]) I've often thought that the combat model in VTES is strong enough and interesting enough to be a game in its own right. It is fascinating that Richard Garfield chose to include it in Vampire and not make a separate game out of it. If I were to rework combat (in a spiritual successor) I would have both players pick which combat cards (if any) they want to play, place them face-down, and them simultaneously reveal them. Everything resolves simultaneously. Strikes beat Presses, Presses beat Dodges, and Dodges beat Strikes. By default, combat resolves with both players Striking for 1 damage. However, combat continues indefinitely until both players decline to play any cards or use effects. To simulate ranges and maneuvers there would be cards like "Press: You get an optional Press next round." (Which means your opponent's Dodge card has no effect, since Press beats Dodge, but also their Dodge cards become ineffective next round, since you have an optional Press - the implication being that they were maneuvering to long range and you were pursuing them.) To simulate a gun like the Saturday Night Special we would have: "Dodge: Deal 1 damage to the opposing minion. (Limit: 2)" Because you use guns at long range, which is simulated by Dodging (that is, fleeing or putting distance between you and your enemy.) And since Dodge beats Strike, the opponent's Strike is ineffective. The "Limit: 2" is to signal that this effect cannot be used more than 2x per combat but you could, for example, use the effect on different rounds. To simulate the AK-47, we'd have: Dodge: Deal 2 damage to the opposing minion. Presses do not cancel this effect. (Limit: 2)" Trying to run up to or chase after someone with a gun is a bad idea, but it is conceivable that a vampire could do it quickly (like before they draw the weapon, or them missing their shots) but trying to get into melee range of someone with an AK-47 would be difficult. Personally, I really like the format of [KEYWORD]: [Bonus Effect]. Here is how I would do Immortal Grapple in a spiritual successor: <inferior> Strike: The opposing minion cannot Dodge for the remainder of this combat. <superior> Press: As above, and you get an optional Strike this combat. Anyways, combat in this manner would likely include a more bluffing and trying to read your opponent. ("Will they suspect me to Strike on the 1st round? If they do I need to Press. But if they think I'm going to Press, what if they Strike? Do I try to Dodge until they run out of Strikes to play, then I can Strike repeatedly and they won't have a response...") I was actually inspired by the game Yomi by David Sirlin (and the concept that game is based on) which when I realized how combat in VTES worked I thought the similarities uncanny. It's interesting how Richard Garfield got so close to the gameplay of Yomi (and the concept) way back in 1994 (or put another way, how Yomi's gameplay is so similar to combat in VTES!) Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> LivesByProxy wrote: > If I were to rework combat (in a spiritual successor) I would have both players pick which combat cards (if any) they want to play, place them face-down, and them simultaneously reveal them. Everything resolves simultaneously. Strikes beat Presses, Presses beat Dodges, and Dodges beat Strikes. > I can't see why randomizing combat would make it more interesting. A combat deck wouldn't have any advantage over a political deck, because the number of combat cards doesn't matter. Just throw in a mix of presses, strikes, and dodges, and try to guess what your opponent will play. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

> Bloodartist wrote: > Your attempt at avoiding the classic internet ad hominem arguments is admirable. > Wait. > > Personally, I'd rather stick to the topic. > You the one who started it. So no need to try to paint yourself as a martyr here. Finnish Politics!

> thelonius wrote: > Once you play vtes for a bit, you will see that both frustrations for your 11cap burned at turn 1 and your killing machine getting s:ce are just part of the game. If you want to play an 11cap, you expose to the early burn frustration. If you play rush deck you can't hope that every combat will torpor or burn something. Again, it's in the player, not in the game. If a player just rush everything on the table and then gets ousted with 0 vp, that's a bad player and hopefully will learn that some well aimed disruptive rush is better, or that relying on attrition combat instead of the burn burn burn will pay on a longer game strategy. > > Tl;Dr. Just remove a bunch of too wordy and convoluted combat cards (twisting the knife, anyone? ) and reprint same old fashioned combat cards and everything will be ok > I think the point Brett Scho was making is that it is often one extreme or the other with very little middle ground. Certain strategies effectively remove any semblance of choice from your opponent and greatly limit their ability to respond and interact, which is arguably a bad design philosophy, since gameplay is primarily about player interaction. In Magic: The Gathering, land destruction and blue control decks have basically been depowered because the amount of fun you got out of playing them was not surpassed by the amount of unfun your opponent got from playing against it. Yes they were both part of the game, but Wizards of the Coast realized that the health of the game depended on these things being fixed. Your example is also very extreme - I don't even think new players would be quite so foolish as to indiscriminately rush combat random vampires around the table. But assuming they did, their target would likely not be able to respond at all (they don't play combat cards), or would have an answer that completely shuts down the rush combat player (like Presence S:CE.) I would support removing wordy and problematic combat cards in favor of basic old-fashioned combat cards, as you suggest. > Ankha wrote: > I can't see why randomizing combat would make it more interesting. A combat deck wouldn't have any advantage over a political deck, because the number of combat cards doesn't matter. Just throw in a mix of presses, strikes, and dodges, and try to guess what your opponent will play. > You must have misunderstood me. > LivesByProxy wrote: > Combat continues indefinitely until both players decline to play any cards or use effects. > The number of combat cards would most certainly matter. Each combat round consists of a player playing a card or using effects, so if an opponent could not or did not play any cards or use any effects, then you could play your combat cards with impunity. Assuming you had 4 combat cards in hand (not counting the replacement draws), each round you would play one and, if your opponent played nothing, the effects resolve (your card effect vs the opponents default Strike for 1 damage.) The power of a combat deck (like how VTES currently works) would come from stacking combat effects that increase your damage with each Strike, or make your opponents moves ineffective. Using the example above, lets assume that our 4 combat cards are: * 1 copy of "Press: +1 damage on all Strikes this combat."; * 2 copies of "Strike: +1 damage."; * 1 copy of "Dodge: You get an optional Strike this combat." You would probably Press, Dodge, Strike, Strike, Strike. And since Strikes have a default of 1 damage, your minion would deal 0 on the 1st round, 0 damage on the 2nd round, 3 damage on the 3rd round, 3 damage on the 4th round, 2 damage on the 5th round. Maybe an extreme example, but hopefully it makes sense? And combat decks would most certainly have an advantage over political / vote decks. Currently, most VTES political decks play Majesty to S:CE. In my hypothetical spiritual successor, that would most likely be "Dodge: Combat Ends." Knowing the Vote deck had Majesty then, would you use your Strike on the 1st round of combat? Or do you Press? What do you think your opponent thinks you think? That's the concept of yomi, which is Japanese for "reading" as in "read the mind of the opponent" - it is a sort of guessing game, but it is not random. Both players are rational actors, so we can assume they will choose what they believe to be the best move for them to make. With this setup there is more bluffing and mind-games. There is also the metagame aspect, which is a big deal in VTES. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of other players, their mannerisms, their decks, all factor in to your choice of what card to play and when to play it. This sort of combat model would also make effects that let you see cards in your opponent's hand or library, even more valuable. That's not so say the idea is perfect for VTES, or that it can't be improved on, but I think it captures the essence of combat in VTES, maybe. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> LivesByProxy wrote: > @Lonkka: I've been interested in VTES for years, I've just never played nor owned any cards. I've read the rules and read many blogs and watched Cause & Effect and gameplay videos on YouTube. > All that, especially the C&E, is good but nothing comes close to hands on experience. Here is a good example why experience beats new out of the box ideas: > > Ankha wrote: > > > LivesByProxy wrote: > > If I were to rework combat (in a spiritual successor) I would have both players pick which combat cards (if any) they want to play, place them face-down, and them simultaneously reveal them. Everything resolves simultaneously. Strikes beat Presses, Presses beat Dodges, and Dodges beat Strikes. > > > I can't see why randomizing combat would make it more interesting. A combat deck wouldn't have any advantage over a political deck, because the number of combat cards doesn't matter. Just throw in a mix of presses, strikes, and dodges, and try to guess what your opponent will play. > > LivesByProxy wrote: > Since you have played the game for so long, it would be great to get your insight into what the best attributes of VTES are. You've already pretty much stated that everything is sacrosanct for you, but what is the holy core of VTES in your opinion? > Don't know about my abilities in trying the evaluate or fix (or "fix") the game. VTES is a solid game designed by a solid designer, Garfield, to which talented people later on added plenty of material that mostly works (LSJ) or works really well (B. Peal et al ). Some years ago before we got any of the new PDF sets out a group of experienced players (actually part of the design team) independently put out cards that they though were brilliant and what the game needed as they were frustrated in the design team's slow progress. These were mostly rather bad designs and their whole planned coup fizzled up into oblivion especially after the actual design teams sets started coming out. Now if such long time players, most of whom have been with the game since day one, with plenty of hands on experience with the game, have problems in understanding how to tweak the game (me included), it is pretty safe to bet that those with still limited experience, or no hands on experience at all, have even less chance. We have amazing design team as well as rules team. Plenty of inconsistencies have already been addressed but the unified card text changes haven't been implemented. Before that happens I'd stay away from the mob rules -like attempts in changing (most) anything with he game. I trust that the people who have already done a stellar job with design and rules will keep on delivering similar stuff. If we start thinking that this is some sort of democracy where everyone's voice is equal the game's quality will plunge into downward spiral. Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > Now if such long time players, most of whom have been with the game since day one, with plenty of hands on experience with the game, have problems in understanding how to tweak the game (me included), > Well it depends on what you mean by tweak and what goal you have in mind. The ultimate goal is to get VTES back into people's hands and get people playing it again, and build up Vampire's popularity and such, yes? How would you do that? First and foremost on my list is new / better artwork and new / better graphic layout. 2nd would be having a core set based around the Camarilla that keeps things simple. > it is pretty safe to bet that those with still limited experience, or no hands on experience at all, have even less chance. > I'm sure this is one of the logical fallacies, but I understand. > Plenty of inconsistencies have already been addressed but the unified card text changes haven't been implemented. > Where can I find these changes? Amaranth appears to show updated card text, but the text appears inconsistent in some instances. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> Lönkka wrote: > VTES is a solid game designed by a solid designer, Garfield, to which talented people later on added plenty of material that mostly works (LSJ) or works really well (B. Peal et al ). > I agree with this. The game is definitely solid and I don't think any of the suggestions in this thread are needed. I will say, however, that the reason why we see threads like this is directly related to the rulebook, detailed play summary, and rulings. As you mentioned, there are people who are in the process of fixing problems, which is great. These fixes have not made it into the official rules. If fixes are happening, but they aren't being communicated within the official rules, then people may start to assume there is something mechanically wrong that needs fixing. For example, take the combat fixes proposed in this thread. Combat has long been a target for those who wish to fix something with the game. Had the rulebook and detailed play summary really mapped out all the timing windows, phases, and sequencing rules in combat, I'm willing to bet the amount of threads discussing changes to combat may be much less. > Some years ago before we got any of the new PDF sets out a group of experienced players (actually part of the design team) independently put out cards that they though were brilliant and what the game needed as they were frustrated in the design team's slow progress. These were mostly rather bad designs and their whole planned coup fizzled up into oblivion especially after the actual design teams sets started coming out. > If I remember correctly, support for cards produced by that team fizzled partly because the text on the cards was so, so dense. That tells me maybe the complexity in the game should be taken seriously, as there appears to be a certain point of overkill people don't want to deal with. > Now if such long time players, most of whom have been with the game since day one, with plenty of hands on experience with the game, have problems in understanding how to tweak the game (me included), it is pretty safe to bet that those with still limited experience, or no hands on experience at all, have even less chance. > That's an interesting stance. What if those long-time players couldn't see the forest for the trees, but a relative newcomer can? > We have amazing design team as well as rules team. Plenty of inconsistencies have already been addressed but the unified card text changes haven't been implemented. Before that happens I'd stay away from the mob rules -like attempts in changing (most) anything with he game. I trust that the people who have already done a stellar job with design and rules will keep on delivering similar stuff. If we start thinking that this is some sort of democracy where everyone's voice is equal the game's quality will plunge into downward spiral. > Changes to the game have always been a "democratic" process. Take a look at rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad and count how many posts there are trying to fix the game through redesign since 1995. Also, I know you've seen the rules team responding to ideas posted in this thread. Did you also see the current designer's posts in this thread, expressing a willingness to hear ideas from new players? That has fostered some of these posts. The current designers don't seem to have the same stance you do.

> TwoRazorReign wrote: > The game is definitely solid and I don't think any of the suggestions in this thread are needed. [...] Combat has long been a target for those who wish to fix something with the game. Had the rulebook and detailed play summary really mapped out all the timing windows, phases, and sequencing rules in combat, I'm willing to bet the amount of threads discussing changes to combat may be much less. > If there is one takeaway from my opinion / thoughts on combat, let it be this: I think that many of the clauses and qualifiers for timing windows such as "before range" (Carrion Crows, Alpha Glint), "before strikes are chosen" (Immortal Grapple, Death of My Conscience), "after strikes"(?), "only usable at the end of round" / "end of combat" (Taste of Vitae, Telepathic Tracking, Psyche!), and so on and so forth, could be simplified by following the [Keyword]: [Effect] model that virtually all strike cards do. For example, Carrion Crows becomes: > Manuever: The opposing minion takes 1R damage each round this combat. A vampire may play only one Carrion Crows each combat. > As above, but for 2R damage. > Taste of Vitae would become: > Press: This vampire gains blood equal to the amount lost by the opposing vampire this round. Not usable by a vampire being burned or going to torpor. A vampire may play only one Taste of Vitae each round. > This would very likely be a buff to those cards, but I really don't understand why the [keyword]: [effect] format is only used for strikes. I think the consistency across the combat cards would at least look cleaner, and reduce the wordiness. I'd also try to figure out a more elegant way to phrase: "can only play one of X each round" and "not usable by a vampire burned or going to torpor". Those qualifiers seem extraneous, even if necessary. I'm also not sure why some cards are marked as Frenzy or Grapple when those words don't appear to be keywords (i.e. they don't appear to be words that have rules associated with them.) They seem to follow the sub-type rule that other games (like MTG and the LCGs) use, since their only purpose is to be referenced by other cards that depend on them for an effect. Maybe Grapple, Frenzy, and IMO Dodge could / should also follow the [keyword]: [effect] model? So for example: Maneuver: [Effect] Strike: [Effect] Dodge: [Effect] Grapple: [Effect] Frenzy: [Effect] Press: [Effect] Alternatively, maybe Grapple and Frenzy should be specific Strike effects, like how we have Strike: Dodge, we would also have Strike: Grapple and Strike: Frenzy. As a side note, why are so many combat cards discipline-less? In fact, why are so many cards discipline-less? Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> LivesByProxy wrote: > I'm also not sure why some cards are marked as Frenzy or Grapple when those words don't appear to be keywords (i.e. they don't appear to be words that have rules associated with them.) They seem to follow the sub-type rule that other games (like MTG and the LCGs) use, since their only purpose is to be referenced by other cards that depend on them for an effect. > That is correct; Some vampires are immune to Frenzy cards. Some cards allow you to cancel Grapple cards. [quote > LivesByProxy wrote: > As a side note, why are so many combat cards discipline-less? In fact, why are so many cards discipline-less? > Because in some cases, having X different versions of the same card but with a different requirement doesn't make sense. Taste of Vitae is designed to be usable by any vampire, not a sub-category of vampires; Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

@LivesByProxy I’m on the fence with regard to your Strike/Press/Dodge mechanic. I really like it conceptually, but I don’t think it would work for V:tes due to the sheer momentum of legacy the game has. That legacy is likely the culprit as to why Master cards still don’t have an icon like every other library card in the game. Why don’t Master cards have an Icon? Because they’ve never had one. The other thing is that things get really weird when you take keywords and change what they do. It’d be utterly alien to play a Press card as a “strike” for most seasoned players. Like Bloodartist said, Combat is a hot mess and could really use some more precisely described timing windows for cards, followed by volumes of errata. For example, the phrase “play before range is determined” is misleading. In practice each player plays “Before Range is determined” cards before maneuvers are played, however that’s not that what that phrase literally means. Range isn’t determined until after each player passes when maneuvering, and I know my group played it incorrectly for years until one of us spotted “Note: Effects that are played “before range is determined” must be played before the acting minion decides whether or not to play a maneuver at the start of this phase.” in the rulebook. @Kraus “Just never reprint those few cards that reference [healing damage]” This would only work for a full-scale, oh-Jibbers-Crabst-my-entire-billionty-thousand-card-collection-is-worthless-now reboot, because otherwise these problem cards are still in the card pool, and get discovered by new players who then go through the five stages of confusion. @LivesByProxy You’ve mentioned card layout a few times, and I agree that the card frames could definitely use a facelift. I did some work a few years ago (holy hell, it really has been almost four years) with the Full Bleed project that’s mentioned in the blog you linked to. This sparked a lively series of conversations about V:tes’s layout. Overall the Full Bleed vampires were well received, but Full Bleed Library cards were problematic because of the size of the text box. I still have some notes for similar full-art Library cards that have no actual game text on them and maybe a truncated text box with some flavor text in it. The idea being this style of card could be used as promotional versions of staple cards like Govern the Unaligned, Conditioning, Taste of Vitae, &c, much like how basic Land cards in Magic no longer have text. When I first saw Legend of the Five Rings being played at a local game store back in ‘97, it was the lavish card frames that drew me in and made me want to play this game about samurai. More to the point, however, I did a lot of goofing around with the layout in those threads and it inspired Ke to create the Amaranth Layouts with the intention of giving a more modern look to the game. I really like what he did with most of the vampire clan backgrounds, but the overall design is too austere for my personal taste. The trend right now seems to be these very simple layouts with backgrounds that are subtle in their texture. I am very much not a fan of this trend, probably because of nostalgia. As evidenced in some of these old threads, people seemed to want a mix of the two: a recognizable texture that evoked a ‘dark’ or ‘gothic’ feel, but wasn’t so busy that it overwhelmed everything. However, personal preference plays a huge part in this, and each person is going to draw the line somewhere different. There’s even a thread where I took the current backgrounds, made some alterations, and removed the green bar. The results were overall pretty positive (though I think some people didn’t realize the skins were directly derived from the current ones), and they’re the default for when I print my personal proxies. In conversation with Ben, we realized that the way the current layout is structured is very effective at conveying all of the needed information, and it’s pretty hard to escape that orbit. While redundant, the card requirement space that’s used for disciplines becomes necessary when there’s a clan requirement (side note: why aren’t there clan-specific discipline cards? The closest we get is something like Aire of Elation where a clan gets a bonus. Come to think of it, why aren’t there more cards like that, too?), otherwise the card just looks weird without it. Lastly, you mentioned simplifying stealth and intercept to a single term “stealth” and making the process a little more abstract. Mechanically the abstraction works well enough, but it struggles thematically; “why does Auspex, the discipline focused on heightened senses and sight give me stealth? Auspex is for finding things, not hiding from them!” Again, legacy issues related to the background get in the way of having more succinct/abstract mechanics.

> self wrote: > I still have some notes for similar full-art Library cards that have no actual game text on them and maybe a truncated text box with some flavor text in it. The idea being this style of card could be used as promotional versions of staple cards like Govern the Unaligned, Conditioning, Taste of Vitae, &c, much like how basic Land cards in Magic no longer have text. > There are still players that don't know or can't remember if Taste of Vitae can be played against an ally or not. I don't think there is such a thing as a staple cards whose cardtext could be omitted. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

FFG handles full bleeds with transparent text boxes. A mixture of such, with the oval, smaller borders of MTG lands and a smaller text within a translucent text box might work. For promotion only, of course. Promotional alt-art cards are the new today - the present of the future! (Of course if everyone's doing it now it might be way out of style once printing resumes...) As for the whole layout thing, I also think Amaranth has done great with the clan colour schemes. That it definitely has going for it. It retains the marble green well as well. Other than that WoD and Vampire would greatly benefit from a nudge to 'old' as an aesthetic, anything 'gothic' (with plenty of gritty detail, u know what gothic means), and going a bit 'overboard' with detailing (in borders). Simply put Amaranth suffers a bit from 'boxiness'. This artistic style doesn't have to make for a convoluted and messy mechanic layout, as in blood/pool cost, card type icon, any requirements and text. Modernism isn't simplism, for all I know. Which isn't much, admittedly... But, as someone stated, it's always about personal preferences. Amaranth overall is doing good. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

> self wrote: > @LivesByProxy I’m on the fence with regard to your Strike/Press/Dodge mechanic. I really like it conceptually, but I don’t think it would work for V:tes due to the sheer momentum of legacy the game has. > I'm just tossing ideas around. If truth be told, I look at the Manuever / Range, Strike, and Press steps of VTES and think, "Richard G. could've made a game entirely around just these steps and themed it as a gun shootout battle arena or ' most dangerous game '." > @Kraus “Just never reprint those few cards that reference [healing damage]” This would only work for a full-scale, oh-Jibbers-Crabst-my-entire-billionty-thousand-card-collection-is-worthless-now reboot, because otherwise these problem cards are still in the card pool, and get discovered by new players who then go through the five stages of confusion. > It might work if it was understood that cards from 1994-2017 could not be used in a big box core set game, but if players were going to a VTES tournament, cards from the new core set could be used. So they're legal for play one way, but not the other? Maybe not ideal... > Overall the Full Bleed vampires were well received, but Full Bleed Library cards were problematic because of the size of the text box. > This is actually how I would do things. To make the vampires feel really unique and special, I'd have them all with gorgeous art and full bleed, revamped the textures and textboxes, and maybe make the icons a little larger. The library cards can stay more 'traditional'. > When I first saw Legend of the Five Rings being played at a local game store back in ‘97, it was the lavish card frames that drew me in and made me want to play this game about samurai. [...] inspired Ke to create the Amaranth Layouts with the intention of giving a more modern look to the game. I really like what he did with most of the vampire clan backgrounds, but the overall design is too austere for my personal taste [...] people seemed to want a mix of the two: a recognizable texture that evoked a ‘dark’ or ‘gothic’ feel, but wasn’t so busy that it overwhelmed everything. > I was drawn to magic by the artwork, so I am a big believer that if VTES had top-tier artwork it would garner some new blood. I really like most of the clan textures, and I think the difficulty of creating great textures / skins would be lessened if we didn't have 20+ clans, which may be heresy to some, but IMO most of the clans are bloodlines anyway and very little is hurt by merging them with their main clans. > In conversation with Ben, we realized that the way the current layout is structured is very effective at conveying all of the needed information, and it’s pretty hard to escape that orbit. While redundant, the card requirement space that’s used for disciplines becomes necessary when there’s a clan requirement > The marble bar is very effective at conveying information, but I think the information can still be conveyed easily without needing the bar. Note how the elements on the Action card mirror the requirements on the Vampire. The blood cost is where her capacity is, the clan symbol is where her clan symbol is. In both cases I've moved the expansion symbol down to the credit line. I've never understood why Vampire had these huge expansion symbols taking up card space when there is zero gameplay significance. From the very beginning they've been the biggest symbol on the card! > (side note: why aren’t there clan-specific discipline cards? The closest we get is something like Aire of Elation where a clan gets a bonus. Come to think of it, why aren’t there more cards like that, too?) > If there were a spiritual successor to VTES, I would like to see every card require either a clan, sect, or discipline, or some combination of the three. I mentioned earlier in this thread that people who love MTG and the LCGs love playing with sub-types / factions, so whenever they see cards like Aire of Elation (which is a good card already) but then gets even better with a specific sub-type / faction, they really want to build a deck around it. I'm also really surprised VTES has so little discipline manipulation. I've often thought it would be cool if a Tremere's special ability was like, "Burn 1 blood to grant another Tremere with inferior Thaumatury, superior Thaumatury until end of turn." or "While you control 3 or more Tremere, [this vampire] gains [inferior discipline] and [inferior discipline]". Stuff like that. > Lastly, you mentioned simplifying stealth and intercept to a single term “stealth” and making the process a little more abstract. Mechanically the abstraction works well enough, but it struggles thematically; “why does Auspex, the discipline focused on heightened senses and sight give me stealth? Auspex is for finding things, not hiding from them!” Again, legacy issues related to the background get in the way of having more succinct/abstract mechanics.[/i] > Because stealth, as a real-life process, is closely tied with having an information advantage on the target you are trying to avoid / stalk. Heightened sense would be a huge boon to anyone who is seeking to avoid being discovered, as they can ascertain where the danger is coming from if they were at least as clever as you or I. Most predatory animals usually have some means where they gain information on their prey, usually heightened senses (as in the case of birds of prey or big cats) or some hunting technique (like a spider's web or a crocodile being submerged.) Most prey animals also have heightened senses, whether its a hare's hearing or a deer's 310 degree vision, in addition to their size (in the case of the rabbit) and countershading camouflage (in the case of the deer.) Most stealth video games also closely tie-in avatar perception with stealth, as in order to successfully avoid discovery, the games give you tools or camera perspective that let you get superior information on your enemies. You can see where they are looking, hear them before you see them, and you know their patrol paths, for example. I'm actually surprised the card Spying Mission doesn't require Auspex. It's right there in the title - spy: to observe discreetly. If we take the Masquerade as a whole it is Auspex (if taken more abstractly) which maintains the Masquerade. If vampires managed the surveillance state, controlled the flow of information, and owned and operated the news outlets, it would make sense that they haven't been found out, since they 'see' everything that's happening. Even going back to VTM 2E, the abilities are Heightened Senses, Aura Perception, The Spirit's Touch, Telepathy, and Psychic Project. I could imagine all of these being used in situations where you're trying to get an information advantage on someone, keeping them in the dark about your movements and intentions, letting you go undiscovered. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> It might work if it was understood that cards from 1994-2017 could not be used in a big box core set game, but if players were going to a VTES tournament, cards from the new core set could be used. So they're legal for play one way, but not the other? Maybe not ideal... > Not really no. Rather, reword them and reprint not in the core but in later expansions. With this errata older cards would be playable but with updated text. No bias towards older players and their collections, but updated rules. > The marble bar is very effective at conveying information, but I think the information can still be conveyed easily without needing the bar. > It can be. But to be honest the marble is very effective at also tying the cards to be the same game as the crypt cards. Also, as I found out in the earlier Amaranth designs, without the marble colour to tie in the cards all the colours associated with different types made it really messy. The marble bar ties the game together. Especially so when we have the MINION cards - those are the cards the minions play. Minions have marble sides. Minion cards have marble sides. The green marbleish colour on masters is cool I think in that it differentiates the card type from the minion cards (the minion cards have a hint of the power [marble] that the Methuselah master cards have, still the same creature though). I'd like to have a drastically different layout for Events, since they're not exactly played by vampires at all. My point here: the marble actually unifies the cards, which is more important here (to me) than information. Krausedit\\ I'm with you considering the set icon though. It should be kinda no-information, but it's supersuper-information. That info could be a wee tiny symbol at the bottom of the card to be honest. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

> BenPeal wrote: > So when you design a V:TES product to meet modern expectations of a game, you need to make an all-you-need-in-one-box product. And that means at least 150 counters. And yes, of course I know that the counters could be made out of cardboard or plastic instead of glass. We had plans for a Kickstarter campaign with stretch goals that included improving the quality of the components. Regardless of the component quality, 150 counters is a lot of freaking counters and it gets you wondering what, materially, you're really selling to the customer. Not wondering in a "do we not include counters" way, but in a "this looks pretty odd when you see all the counters in the box at once but that's V:TES so we gotta go with it" way. > I just checked the android netrunner core set box (the first one) and it contains slightly less than 100 counters of different types, all made of cardboard. For some reason I had difficulty finding this information online. Considering that most of the box was actually empty when I opened it, divided with cardboard cut-outs, there would hypothetically be enough room for those 150 cardboard blood counters should our own starter box contain them. I also just realized an extra positive about cardboard blood counters: unlike glass/plastic beads, you can actually stack cardboard counters, so they take less space on a vampire card. As I mentioned earlier, my only issue with current blood counters is how they take up too much space when placed on a vampire. > LivesByProxy wrote: > As a side note, why are so many combat cards discipline-less? In fact, why are so many cards discipline-less? > I guess allies need to play combat cards too occasionally. War ghoul wants a press and so on. Smoking craters tell no tales. —Tex talks Battletech

> LivesByProxy wrote: > I would support some cards not being reprinted again, particularly if the goal is to have a self-contained core set of around 400 cards in a big box product. > I do think that one option could be a "soft reboot" of VTES, in which we don't change the rules (at least not much) and start reprinting cards, but only cards that aren't confusing rules-wise or have convoluted texts. This way all old cards would still be viable in tournaments but the burden on new players (who would buy our new hypothetical starter products) would be lessened. I think the best way to make this "starter product", would be to make a number of clan-specific preconstructed decks (5- 8 ) along with a rulebook, counters and edge in a box roughly the size of the netrunner core set. (normal tabletop game size). After that we could make further preconstructed decks for other clans and/or card collections á la anthologies to print afterwards so new players could 'expand' their game. But that first starter box would contain anything to get started playing VTES. To solve the issue with problematic cards I see three options: 1. reprint the card with a more clear wording. (in cases where the wording is stupid but the card itself is sound) 2. Reprint the card with an errataed wording 3. Reprint a new card that does the same job as the replaced card, but without the rules complications. Several cards could also benefit from having a reminder text that clarifies what the card actually does. Smoking craters tell no tales. —Tex talks Battletech

All y'all bitching about the core game, go play something else ;D All y'all bitching about counter sizes, just use pogs, man. Seriously dropping a stack of 9 super sayan goku on Hektor is fucking hilarious, and takes up almost no space. They stack nicely, they are easy to track, and are quite cheap.

> Blooded wrote: > All y'all bitching about the core game, go play something else ;D > I realize that this comment is most likely intended in jest, but the joke falls flat for me. It feels too much like "You're enjoying your game the wrong way!" Believe it or not, some people get an immense amount of enjoyment from complaining about games. And for the most part the conversation in this thread has been remarkably civil. > Blooded wrote: > All y'all bitching about counter sizes, just use pogs, man. Seriously dropping a stack of 9 super sayan goku on Hektor is fucking hilarious, and takes up almost no space. They stack nicely, they are easy to track, and are quite cheap. > You do You, man. The conversation about counters got blown way out of proportion, and I have no idea why it's being brought up again. @LivesByProxy, I'm cooking up some responses for you, soon.

> self wrote: > > > Blooded wrote: > > All y'all bitching about the core game, go play something else ;D > > > I realize that this comment is most likely intended in jest, but the joke falls flat for me. It feels too much like "You're enjoying your game the wrong way!" Believe it or not, some people get an immense amount of enjoyment from complaining about games. And for the most part the conversation in this thread has been remarkably civil. > To be honest, i was attempting make a joke, but frankly, if you dont like playing vtes, dont play it. go play something else. Really that simple. There are vast numbers of players who like the game exactly as it is. This entire thread was spawned by someone who self admits to not having had any meaningful play time, yet wants to make it into MtG. All the complaints that come up are parts of what make this one of the most thought provoking, interesting and entertaining games i have ever played. I dread the thought that the developers read this thread and think that this is the mind set of the greater community, when by and large most of the community seem to like vtes just the way it is.

> Blooded wrote: > I dread the thought that the developers read this thread and think that this is the mind set of the greater community, when by and large most of the community seem to like vtes just the way it is. > Hence I've tried to oppose a different voice in this thread. Then again I think that the developers are just being nice and letting people voice their opinions without themselves participating or killing off stillborn ideas. You know, just to install a feel of participation and meaningfulness for everyone so no one gets alienated or annoyed. Which is all good and proper. Finnish Politics!

@Blooded Sand: I don't know how you reached the conclusion that I want VTES to be more like MTG. I explicitly said I had grown to dislike MTG. Also, the game *has* changed over the years, and while some of my ideas may be extreme, others are very tame by comparison. I would also not call my musings complaints, more like observations. And there may be a fair number of players who love VTES as is, but I have to wonder what is more important: appeasing veteran players or gaining new players? Ideally both, and we all have a part to play in trying to get new players on board, but I can't help thinking that some changes may be necessary. The extent of those changes is up for debate. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> Blooded wrote: > ] > To be honest, i was attempting make a joke, > i understand this. I just found your joke to be more dismissive than funny. > Blooded wrote: > but frankly, if you dont like playing vtes, dont play it. go play something else. Really that simple. > given the amount of time I've spent on things like the Proxy Demo Decks so people can have consistent cards to teach new people how to play and the Full Bleed project, not to mention posting here, I'm struggling to understand how you've come to the conclusion that I don't like playing the game. For the record, because apparently I need to emphatically state this plainly: I love V:tes as a game, and love playing it. > Blooded wrote: > There are vast numbers of players who like the game exactly as it is. [citation needed] > is there room for improvement? If there isn't, the game is complete and doesn't need anything more added to it. Given the enthusiasm in other threads for new cards, I think it's safe to say there's still more to add. > Blooded wrote: > This entire thread was spawned by someone who self admits to not having had any meaningful play time, yet wants to make it into MtG. > im going to go ahead and take ownership of this. I levied the same accusation without thoroughly reading LiveByProxy's post, and was in error by doing so. > Blooded wrote: > All the complaints that come up are parts of what make this one of the most thought provoking, interesting and entertaining games i have ever played. > which ones? Be specific. Show your work; tell us why you feel the way you do. > Blooded wrote: > I dread the thought that the developers read this thread and think that this is the mind set of the greater community, when by and large most of the community seem to like vtes just the way it is. > maybe Ben wants to chime in here, maybe not. I think it's pretty clear what's what when you read the thread. My own opinion is that I like Vtes just the way it is, but I'd like it even more if some of the finer details in the mechanics were more consistently applied across the respective ideas. I've been pretty vocal about what I feel would make the game even better, so I'm not going to repeat myself. If a game doesn't make an effort to improve the things that don't work as well as they should, it's going to stagnate. Stagnate games die, or in the case of V:tes, stay dead.

> Lönkka wrote: > > > Blooded wrote: > > I dread the thought that the developers read this thread and think that this is the mind set of the greater community, when by and large most of the community seem to like vtes just the way it is. > > > Hence I've tried to oppose a different voice in this thread. > See, here's the thing: it's totally fine to have an opposing view in a thread. But, what happens a lot around here is that instead of communicating that opposing view in a thoughtful manner, there's been a lot of posts like "quit bitching," "nobody asked you," "you don't have the credibility to post here" etc. These types of posts are not interesting, lazy, and rude. Numerous people have said the same thing, but I think it bears repeating: if you don't like the thread, you don't have to read it. But, if you really feel the need to reply, I think everybody, especially those giving their ideas in a particular thread, will appreciate a thoughtful and respectful response. And if whoever has control over the game is actually reading this thread, they'd probably be more receptive to thoughtful ideas that are contrary to another post in a respectful way rather than dismissive "joke" posts or those that try to police what another poster is saying.

The thread has went far from where it started. It is too generalized and broad to help with much, but it shows there are some players vocal about wanting to change huge swaths of the game. Obviously, this isn't the primary opinion, as only a few people seem to take issue with 50% or more of the game, and are a minority. The OPs opinion and view matters because seeing these views from before playing ever, then after just starting to play, then getting more into the game are crucial in getting new players and marketing future vtes for acquisition. Also obvious is most of the player base and presumably the IC are about this game, and both retention and acquisition, because making a new game has nothing to do with keeping the current one alive. All the talk of another game like this is cool, but not about vtes or killing vtes, and I think the worry that this is the approach is what makes some players angry and hostile where they're not normally. So, the obvious lesson to take is where to apply these opinions in teaching new players, and applying these observations into designing starter geared future vtes product. It's plainly not and never will be about scrapping the game to do something else. Because this is THE vtes site. Not where you go to tell people you hate playing it, but where you talk about vtes.

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > The thread has went far from where it started. > It is too generalized and broad to help with much, > Really? I thought I was being pretty specific. I think the game needs a fresh coat of paint (graphic design), including but not limited too: Better 'skins' or textures for the vampire clans and different types of library cards. Better artwork. Some of the more recent artwork for the PDFs is nice. Size up the icons important for gameplay. It is silly to have the expansion icon be the largest on the card when it is the least relevant. Update some icons so it is more obvious what they are. I think Dementation and Protean are some of the worst offenders here. > > ReverendRevolver wrote: > but it shows there are some players vocal about wanting to change huge swaths of the game. > There was no one who agreed with my more extreme ideas about changes to combat or the setting details. I'm alone here. > ReverendRevolver wrote: > Obviously, this isn't the primary opinion, as only a few people seem to take issue with 50% or more of the game, and are a minority. > I wouldn't even say a few people. Everyone in this thread have said that my more extreme ideas go to far, which is understandable. When people have agreed with me it was mostly about how VTES would benefit from better graphics or the LCG distribution model. I think BloodArtist and Self Biased agreed that combat had some messy or confusing cards that were unsuitable for a beginner product. > ReverendRevolver wrote: > [...] getting new players and marketing future vtes for acquisition. [...] both retention and acquisition, because making a new game has nothing to do with keeping the current one alive. [...] where to apply these opinions in teaching new players, and applying these observations into designing starter geared future vtes product. [...] It's plainly not and never will be about scrapping the game to do something else. > That's the major cross-roads we are coming to. Do the powers-that-be opt for 1) continuing VTES as is, preferably getting it back into print, 2) doing a "soft reboot" with some minor tweaks and graphical updates as a "core set" all-in-one starter box, or 3) do what FFG did with NetRunner and make a full-on spiritual successor like Android: NetRunner. It's worth mentioning that they've done this with L5R as well, and it seems to be working out all right. Fans of the old games are pleasantly surprised, and the new version has captured the attention of potential new players. All three options are fine for me, as I like the game well enough as is, even though I think options 2 and 3 are equally valid, since I'm not invested in it like someone with a 10K card collection. But what option is the mostly likely to help WW get new fans and customers? That's ultimately what the question amounts to IMO. Is it worth sacrificing the collections of veteran VTES players in the potential prospect of gathering new players, customers, and fans? That's a tricky question, and I don't envy the person who has to make that call. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

It's not really those 3 options though; it's a definitive option 1, and a question of how much of 2 is also valid. Option 3 is only not an option because you aren't doing a "reboot", you're trying to sell a new game to people immidiately after killing the one they're invested time, money, and emotion into, which nobody truly believes is likely to succeed with the existing player base accepting and the public actually giving a toss. Now, we have 2 large things poised to help the game: Vampire the masquerade getting a new edition and having the potential to coincide with getting back in print. I feel the most likely course of action for acquisition and retention is the creation of something that coincides with v5 and has appeal to both demographic of player (existing and potential ones). We create a 5 starter decks based on probably cam clans, for simplicity, and streamline them in a way that makes the game somewhat easier to learn but also make it obvious that there's this endless abyss of possibilities to look into later. Such a thing would need to be made of old cards and new ones made for this endeavor, but I do agree that is would be beneficial to have updated asthetics. Such a product would be in several ways it's own standalone board game that's actually a card game, possibly considered a LCG, but in all actuality just be a renewed starter box for Vtes. Then we see what sticks with people design wise and go from there.

> self wrote: > [My own opinion is that I like Vtes just the way it is, but I'd like it even more if some of the finer details in the mechanics were more consistently applied across the respective ideas. > I got no problem in tweaking some finer details but most of the ideas that have been brought up in this thread haven't actually been that small... Ke did some great looking redesigns for how the cards look an not everyone was that happy about those modifications. IIRC, lead designer was rather vocal about his dislike, but I might recall wrong. Anyhow, plenty of discussion in those relevant threads regarding the redesign of how the cards look. No need to try to reinvent the same points here again. Go to that thread (those threads actually), see what was discussed and chime in if need be. Once again, if I were to start playing new game, say, MtG and after a few games would start pushing for (major) changes to the game in the vein: "I think these changes would really make the game rock. At least to me. And it would then be up to par with what is considered cool today by some people.", what would you think would happen and how the players would react? Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > > > self wrote: > > [My own opinion is that I like Vtes just the way it is, but I'd like it even more if some of the finer details in the mechanics were more consistently applied across the respective ideas. > > > Once again, if I were to start playing new game, say, MtG and after a few games would start pushing for (major) changes to the game in the vein: "I think these changes would really make the game rock. At least to me. And it would then be up to par with what is considered cool today by some people.", what would you think would happen and how the players would react? > I would expect reaction in a much less disrepectful way than has been happening. It's a card game about vampires. Why take it so seriously?

I'm going to be honest, as a former MtG player, there are far far more rude asshats who I encountered playing that than I have played vtes with. Which is saying something, since as a rule, vtes players are a global assortment of for a lack of better terms, really smart people. I mean, off the top of my head a random smattering of careers of vtes players are professor, programmer, pharmacist, Broker, healthcare professional, you get the idea. You'd think that vtes people would feel more entitled to being pretentious, but the college kids and $40k average a year jobbers I played mtg with we're way less pleasant. More to Lonkkas point, I have never understood why we gotta be so hostile about everything all the damn time. My favorite facility manager used to do this thing where he would say something terrible but add "respectfully" to the beginning or end, so the joke was we'd say things like "eat shit and die, respectfully..." Why do we as a community tend to act like this (but not In jest) so often? You'd think we could be more clever about shooting down bad ideas, at least more passive aggressive than openly hostile. I'm just happy the OP stuck around. Proves he may have the tenacity for some of the longer games that happen sometimes......

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > More to Lonkkas point, I have never understood why we gotta be so hostile about everything all the damn time. > > My favorite facility manager used to do this thing where he would say something terrible but add "respectfully" to the beginning or end, so the joke was we'd say things like "eat shit and die, respectfully..." > Why do we as a community tend to act like this (but not In jest) so often? > You'd think we could be more clever about shooting down bad ideas, at least more passive aggressive than openly hostile. > I'm just happy the OP stuck around. Proves he may have the tenacity for some of the longer games that happen sometimes...... > I think it's the result of the anonymity of the internet making normally nice people act rude. It's the same reason one would say "excuse me" if a complete stranger were to walk in their path, but honk at a complete stranger who cut them off in their car. I like to think the way one acts online says a lot about that person. If one is normally nice but acts like a dink online, that person's a phony with Internet beer balls.

Honestly, I'm not seeing these rude or disrepectful replies here from either side. Expressing contrary opinions, even strongly so, isn't the same thing as hostility, right?

I agree with Cat_in_Exile. I'm thinking I'm perhaps blunt, a national trait after all, but I don't recall being rude (at least not on purpose). In my case it is pretty easy to see who I am based on the title I give in my posts. Doesn't require much sleuthing... Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > I agree with Cat_in_Exile. > > I'm thinking I'm perhaps blunt, a national trait after all, but I don't recall being rude (at least not on purpose). > > In my case it is pretty easy to see who I am based on the title I give in my posts. Doesn't require much sleuthing... > I am now the second person in this thread to tell you that, yes, you are one of the people whose posts are in poor taste. You accused the original poster of being someone who they are not and insisted that they are not who they claim to be. Posts like this are not funny, not interesting, and are rude. Again, I'm the second person to respond to you about your posts, so please keep an open mind to this critique. That said, some of your other posts are actually very interesting and have some good ideas. I think we'd all like to see more of those interesting posts from you. I actually tried to respond to one of them.

summary thread in chronological order: - Questions & suggestions - Discussion - Arguments, rants and flames - Circle jerking Proceed -1 Strength

I'm not even upset or put-off at anything Lonkka has said. I actually expected such a response. It is understandable that veterans of this game would want to defend it. That being said, I think defending VTES from a hypothetical spiritual successor product is... Fallacious? Misconceived? As I said previously, it wouldn't kill VTES as it would be a completely separate product despite many similarities. Also, VTES is basically dead, or torporized, or if you prefer, kept in a vegetable state on life-support by its die-hard community. There are maybe 1000+ active players world-wide? I'm not trying to disparage VTES or its players. I just think the pros of a spiritual successor outweigh the cons. It wouldn't invalidate or obsolete VTES anymore than Super Mario N64 invalidated or obsoleted Super Mario Bros. > Lönkka wrote: > Once again, if I were to start playing new game, say, MtG and after a few games would start pushing for (major) changes to the game in the vein: "I think these changes would really make the game rock. At least to me. And it would then be up to par with what is considered cool today by some people.", what would you think would happen and how the players would react? > If MTG in your scenario was virtually dead, kept alive by a handful of players (vs the millions it currently has) and your suggestion was a spiritual successor, one that keeps the best parts of MTG but tweaks a few things and gives it a new coat of paint and a fresh start, with the intention of avoiding a lot of problems the old game ran into, then maybe the community would be inclined to discuss such a possibility, but surely some would say that MTG was already perfect and needed no changes. @GreyB: I read your replies on the "What is VTES missing?" post, and I agree with you that a change to the VP system could speed up games and facilitate interesting gameplay. My suggestion, for the record, was: "The Edge grants 1 pool and 1 VP if you have it during your untap phase." This would encourage players to actually bleed one another, and give combat decks the boost they need without necessarily giving them more bleed power (since they could bleed for 1 and then try to hold onto the Edge) and make things interesting for intercept / wall decks. Anyways, I hope to hear your thoughts on the topic. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> TwoRazorReign wrote: > I am now the second person in this thread to tell you that, yes, you are one of the people whose posts are in poor taste. Yaddayaddayadda... > Finnish Politics!

So I had an idea that I'd like to get some feedback on. Hand jam can be a problem for even the best built decks, and because the turn structure only has one phase (the end phase) which allows a player to discard a card (1 card) in order to draw a new one. This results in players experiencing hand jam to try to create situations where they can play cards sub-optimally in order to get them out of hand and cycle into something better. My proposal is to introduce a new basic action alongside bleed and hunt: the 'plot' action. A vampire can 'plot' at +1 stealth, which results in them tapping in order to put a card on them face-down. That card can later be played from that vampire, following all its normal timing rules and costs. Of course, because the card is no longer in your hand, you draw to replace it. I'm curious to know what you guys and gals think of such a rule. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

my knee-jerk reaction is that it's going to give an unfair advantage to weenis decks, even if you limit it to one card per vampire. It's effectively "tap a minion, get +1 Hand Size," no? I feel like that's what the Discard Phase is for.

It seems like Weenies are the larger problem here. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

There is no larger problem here, just you looking for windmills to fight.

> Non-existant user wrote: > There is no larger problem here, just you looking for windmills to fight. > This. Card flow is a thing youll have tp sort out for your deck. Youll get experienced in this as you play. It is a unique feature in vtes that rewards good playing and deck building. It is the first thing i would not touch in this game in particular. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

> LivesByProxy wrote: > So I had an idea that I'd like to get some feedback on. > > Hand jam can be a problem for even the best built decks, ... > > My proposal is to introduce a new basic action alongside bleed and hunt: the 'plot' action. A vampire can 'plot' at +1 stealth, which results in them tapping in order to put a card on them face-down. That card can later be played from that vampire, following all its normal timing rules and costs. Of course, because the card is no longer in your hand, you draw to replace it. > Hm, there already is a good number of cards that can help your deck in avoiding hand jamming. And as already written above it is part of the game to build decks which don't jam easy. Otoh your idea is worth to think about. Still I also see the danger of exploitation of this rule by weenie decks. To weaken the power of this action you could make it an action without stealth or one for vampires with a generation above a certain number i.e. 6+ or s.th. Baron of Frankfurt

> LivesByProxy wrote: > So I had an idea that I'd like to get some feedback on. > > Hand jam can be a problem for even the best built decks, and because the turn structure only has one phase (the end phase) which allows a player to discard a card (1 card) in order to draw a new one. This results in players experiencing hand jam to try to create situations where they can play cards sub-optimally in order to get them out of hand and cycle into something better. > > My proposal is to introduce a new basic action alongside bleed and hunt: the 'plot' action. A vampire can 'plot' at +1 stealth, which results in them tapping in order to put a card on them face-down. That card can later be played from that vampire, following all its normal timing rules and costs. Of course, because the card is no longer in your hand, you draw to replace it. > > I'm curious to know what you guys and gals think of such a rule. > If you feel 'hand jams' don't have enough solutions, create a card that solves it and post it on the forum. There's a template on how to post card ideas on the forum. New cards are THE means to extend the rule book and sometimes overrule the rulebook. That said, there already are a lot of vampires and cards that adress the handjam problem, part of the game is finding a right balance of cards that allow you to play the game as uninterrupted as possible, if a deck suffers handjams a lot, it needs more cards that adress that problem, tweakage is in order. -1 Strength

> LivesByProxy wrote: > @GreyB: I read your replies on the "What is VTES missing?" post, and I agree with you that a change to the VP system could speed up games and facilitate interesting gameplay. My suggestion, for the record, was: "The Edge grants 1 pool and 1 VP if you have it during your untap phase." This would encourage players to actually bleed one another, and give combat decks the boost they need without necessarily giving them more bleed power (since they could bleed for 1 and then try to hold onto the Edge) and make things interesting for intercept / wall decks. Anyways, I hope to hear your thoughts on the topic. > There's no community willingness to adapt (towards extremes that is), so those kind of post have zero chance of getting a community driven design going, even if just for entertainment value, there will always be many outstanding community members raining on your parade. Any proposed change of the status quo will anger the conservatists. Also keep in mind there are members of this community that put in a lot of work into fixing this game, through either theorycrafting on the forum or actual handsdown rewording of card texts. After such an investment, any proposal that seriously alters this game will emotionally be in bad taste. -1 Strength

Thank you all for the responses. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

Hand jam occurs in 2 flavors in vtes: The most common is having the wrong cards for your current situation, and often means you play a deck that is a toolboxy one or a wall. The other is having too much of something compared to other somethings, most often happens in combos (no means for soul gem but lots of ways to burn combo vamp) or, most common of all, playing stealth bleed and choking on stealth because your prey knows he can bloat and jam your hand. Cards to fix these in order I've listed roughly are: Heart of cheating, magic of the Smith, dreams of the Sphinx, the art of memory, forschrit library, the summoning, and for stealth bleed, specialization and there are plenty more that exist and aren't used as often. You just have to play and build and get better at it, it's like in MTG learning how to correctly include proper number if lands, new ppl suck at it and think 30 is right, anybody who knows thier shit will go no higher than 24, typically using between 17 and 21 most often. Unlike mtg, we don't hand jam as often.

> Lönkka wrote: > > > TwoRazorReign wrote: > > I am now the second person in this thread to tell you that, yes, you are one of the people whose posts are in poor taste. Yaddayaddayadda... > > Hey! An actual funny post! Nice work! > GreyB wrote: > There's no community willingness to adapt (towards extremes that is), so those kind of post have zero chance of getting a community driven design going, even if just for entertainment value, there will always be many outstanding community members raining on your parade. > As there should be. The ideas given by the original poster are clearly at odds with how most of the other posters here think about the game. The constant raining on the parade makes total sense. > Any proposed change of the status quo will anger the conservatists. > Really? Anger? It's a card game. > Also keep in mind there are members of this community that put in a lot of work into fixing this game, through either theorycrafting on the forum or actual handsdown rewording of card texts. After such an investment, any proposal that seriously alters this game will emotionally be in bad taste. > And to those people, I would say that these ideas are coming from an anonymous poster on an internet forum and have very little chance of gaining traction with whoever controls the game. Emotion should not enter into any of the discussions happening here. Anyway, back to the topic of hand jam in VTES: This game has a card called Heart of Nizchetus. Any discussion of hand jam being a problem in this game ends right there, at least for me.

Regarding the handsjams, there is already a master card that works a bit like Livesbyproxy would want to: Storage Annex. ReverendRevolver mentioned quiet a few cards but some other are Infernal Pursuit (play a couple in combat and you should have a totally new hand), Distraction, Barrens. And basically anything that increases your handsize. Guillaume Giovanni is a favorite of mine. I think I've had hand sizes of 14 or more with him. Which actually is a bit too much as it slows your game down and makes you miss what the others play... Finnish Politics!

Hey, I'm back by unpopular demand, because similar to how the community refuses to let VTES die, I refuse to let this thread die. REVAMPING VTES (WITHOUT DUMBING IT DOWN), PART 3 So in Part 1 I spoke about how I think the card types could be reduced and condensed, since many are similar in function, if different in the details. In Part 2 I talked about some rules minutiae that I think can be removed or tweaked without harming the game. WEIRD DESIGNS In this part, I'll be talking about some designs and mechanics that I find odd. For me, these are cards or elements of the game where there is a flavor disconnect - a separation between what the card appears to be about, or what I think it should do given its art and name and related context, and what the card actually does. HUNT & HUNTING GROUNDS I find it strange that there are these cards, the Hunting Grounds which are unique locations, and yet these cards have nothing to do with the gameplay mechanic of Hunting. It would make much more sense, IMO, if they gave vampires an additional blood when a Hunt was successful, or some other cool effect. The entire design of the Hunting Grounds feels like a missed opportunity, and the Hunt mechanic is largely underused. DOMINATE Could not be more appropriately named. Dominate is the best bleed discipline in the game, but oddly enough, also happens to have some of the best cards AGAINST bleed - Deflection, Redirection, and Murmur of the False Will. I think this was, in part, due to Richard Garfield thinking it would be good to make one discipline really, really good? (He did the same thing with Blue in Alpha MTG. They got all the best cards for some reason...) And the later designers wanted to cement this fact, which I find strange indeed. You may notice that Garfield was no longer designing MTG cards after the first couple of sets, only occasionally joining in years later as a generalist guest designer (like he did with the set 'Ravnica' in ~2004.) The overall design of Magic has veered away from his initial designs, but it looks like VTES has remained true to him. NERFS & CARD ERRATA Once upon a time, there was a card named Army of Rats. This card was very neat and offered Animalism a win condition that wasn't based on combat cards like Aid From Bats or Carrion Crows, nor direct bleed bonuses like Deep Song or Computer Hacking. Army of Rats was subsequently nerfed by WotC, and reprinted to be strictly worse. I don't understand why. Was it over-powered? When this game supports plenty of (what you could call) degenerate strategies like Weenie Computer Hacking or Malk' 94 Bleed that can end the game just as quickly, how could it be considered over-powered? Why were cards like Fame and Fifth Tradition: Hospitality hit with the nerf hammer while cards like Govern The Unaligned (arguably the best Bleed card in the game since it can double as a crypt accelerator) and Voter Captivation (refill your big-caps AND bloat at the same time) are left untouched? It just seems like schizophrenic design. What do you have to say about all of this? I look forward to your responses. Join me next time when I talk about why I think Grouping is counter-productive *gasp!* Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

@ Hunting Ground design: The design actually makes a lot of sense. With favorable terrain the vampires do not have to go through the trouble of taking an action to hunt - they can feed easily and continue with other, more pressing actions. I do agree with hunt actions being underused, even though we do have some special hunt actions. I'm still sad that Loki's Gift does not steal blood as a hunt, but just burns one from a specific vampire; it could be used for cool combo effects to make a Sabbat or Anarch, Protean based steal-blood archetype if it did. We do have special hunt actions, but arguably the design space could be further investigated. @ Dominate: Not sure what to say here. Garfield's best dominate cards are still the best dominate cards. Govern, Deflection and Obedience were all printed in Jyhad, weren't they? They're all the powerhouses of dominate, and none better have been printed. So I'm not sure if your argument really holds true here. @ Army of Rats: The difference is that big effects for big cap vampires have been adjusted (Hospitality), while Army of Rats could be abused by weenies. Weenie ANI is super strong even in today's meta. There's really no reason to look back at their balance revisions. Tournament winning deck archives serves as proof for this. If you do require a more thorough reasoning, I can't tell you why Army of Rats was errated per se, but I'll have you know that through Antediluvian Awakening and Anarch Revolt weenie ANI has plenty of table damage even without spammable rats. At least this is the situation today. Weenie Comp Hack and Malk '94 are not degenerate strategies. They are abusive and strong, but ultimately very fragile and win tables less often than they take a first random VP. If players are not prepared to deal with S&B, they are not prepared for the game. There're plenty of ways to deal with S&B, and it is a strategy this game needs. It speeds up games. It's all good. Voter Cap is fine. It enables PRE voters, and makes them strong. Once again, if players are not prepared with vote defense and deliberately give free, filling vote caps, you're playing it wrong. It's an interactive card. It's fine. I'm not really sure what you would suggest with these cards. The game is filled with powerful, big effects, and they are roughly as competitive as more grindy strategies. Balancing is a complex effort. VTES has had excellent history with bans and erratas, and doesn't have a restricted list even after all these years. The only other major game I know that still doesn't do cycling for balance is Yu-Gi-Oh. They can still use the cards from alpha or whatever in competitive play. They are however restricted by a vast and complex restricted list, as far as I know. Discussion on a game on a purely theoretical perspective should never touch singular cards. Theory never gives enough leeway to judge cards as played and their relative power. Cards designed for big caps should enable big effects for said big caps. Cards designed for weenie strategies should have their power level adjusted accordingly. Picking singular examples from a card pool of thousands of cards, with all their interactions, is not productive at all I think. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

I was not clear with my overarching point perhaps. Some very odd designs choices were made with VTES. These are just the ones that I find particularly strange. To elaborate: @Hunting Grounds: I agree that the design space around the Hunt action could be further explored, and that having the flavor of hunting grounds and how they operate as they do can be justified by your explaination... but I still think it is a missed opportunity. @Dominate: My point here was that the best Bleed discipline is also the best discipline against Bleed defense, which I find strange. They did somewhat correct this with cards like Telepathic Misdirection for Auspex but it is a weird design choice IMO. @Army of Rats: My point here was that Army of Rats, Fame, and 5th Tradition: Hospitality (among others I'm sure) were all deemed too strong or abusive for one reason or another, and hence saw serious errata, but that other really, really strong cards (like Govern, Deflection, Heart of Nietzsche, etc.) are deemed perfectly fine? That's odd. Also, the majority of the responses I've gotten that defend some aspect of VTES have made the claim that 'You would adapt to the table situation' implying that if a player was spamming Army of Rats, all the players would turn on him (adapting to the table situation, as it were.) That this was for some reason not the response at the time, and now, is also strange. This wasn't about specific cards, it was more or less about some specific designs, which all of my posts have been about really. The design to have 7+ card types, to use symbols for the types instead of words, to have 20+ clans and bloodlines, rules minutiae that exist even though the number of cards that interact with those rules is only slightly greater than 0, disciplines that aren't disciplines, the expansion symbol being larger than the clan symbol or disciplines, the flavor of some of the cards, some disciplines being tremendously powerful while others are lackluster, the inclusion of ultra-specific combat cards meant to counter other specific combat cards, the timing of the combat windows, grouping, is ALL very strange. I'm not a designer, but like everyone else I've got my own aesthetic tastes and preferences, and as much as VTES appeals to me, I don't find it elegant. It's design reminds me less of a beautiful Toreador and more of a WarGhoul. Thank you for the response though. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> LivesByProxy wrote: > HUNT & HUNTING GROUNDS > I find it strange that there are these cards, the Hunting Grounds which are unique locations, and yet these cards have nothing to do with the gameplay mechanic of Hunting. It would make much more sense, IMO, if they gave vampires an additional blood when a Hunt was successful, or some other cool effect. The entire design of the Hunting Grounds feels like a missed opportunity, and the Hunt mechanic is largely underused. > There's already plenty of other cards that give >1 blood for the default hunt action (Aaron's Feeding Razor, Hungry Coyote, Harvest Rites, Hospital Food, Festival dello Estinto, Abactor, etc.). Changing hunting grounds to do this would be redundant. Also, those listed cards get played less than hunting grounds, because it is a weaker effect. You'd essentially be unintentionally nerfing hunting grounds. Master cards need to have a very useful effect, or they will be seldom played. > DOMINATE > Could not be more appropriately named. Dominate is the best bleed discipline in the game, but oddly enough, also happens to have some of the best cards AGAINST bleed - Deflection, Redirection, and Murmur of the False Will. I think this was, in part, due to Richard Garfield thinking it would be good to make one discipline really, really good? (He did the same thing with Blue in Alpha MTG. They got all the best cards for some reason...) And the later designers wanted to cement this fact, which I find strange indeed. You may notice that Garfield was no longer designing MTG cards after the first couple of sets, only occasionally joining in years later as a generalist guest designer (like he did with the set 'Ravnica' in ~2004.) The overall design of Magic has veered away from his initial designs, but it looks like VTES has remained true to him. > I'm going to pick on your writing here. You say that dominate is the best discipline in the game, but then don't give any ideas on how to fix this issue. You instead try to get in the mind of the original designer. I'm not sure what your point is about dominate. I think your point is that other games have evolved away from a single aspect of a game being super powerful, and VTES should do the same. The prevailing thought is that sticking to the original design with dominate being so powerful helps the game more than it hurts it. Anybody can buy a box of Jyhad and play at a high level because of dominate. Also, people who bought a box of Jyhad in 1995 can still play the game today at a high level because of dominate. For a game with a relatively small player base, this is a strength, not a weakness. > NERFS & CARD ERRATA > Once upon a time, there was a card named Army of Rats. This card was very neat and offered Animalism a win condition that wasn't based on combat cards like Aid From Bats or Carrion Crows, nor direct bleed bonuses like Deep Song or Computer Hacking. Army of Rats was subsequently nerfed by WotC, and reprinted to be strictly worse. I don't understand why. Was it over-powered? When this game supports plenty of (what you could call) degenerate strategies like Weenie Computer Hacking or Malk' 94 Bleed that can end the game just as quickly, how could it be considered over-powered? Why were cards like Fame and Fifth Tradition: Hospitality hit with the nerf hammer while cards like Govern The Unaligned (arguably the best Bleed card in the game since it can double as a crypt accelerator) and Voter Captivation (refill your big-caps AND bloat at the same time) are left untouched? It just seems like schizophrenic design. > Army of Rats changed because it was determined very long ago that the original intended design was for Army of Rats to burn 1 pool per turn, no matter how many Army of Rats are in play. The original card text was the issue because it did not clearly explain the intended effect. This is the same story for Fame; the updated text follows more closely to the original intended design.

> TwoRazorReign wrote: > Changing hunting grounds to do this would be redundant. Also, those listed cards get played less than hunting grounds, because it is a weaker effect. You'd essentially be unintentionally nerfing hunting grounds. > My point was that this was what Hunting Grounds should've been doing all along, and that they could also afford to grant some other cool effect. If not even more blood due to clan bonus (i.e. "this vampire gets 1 additional blood from a successful Hunt, and another additional 1 blood if they are Gangrel"), then some other effect like "Untap and gain +1 stealth even if it is not yet needed" or "+1 bleed" or "+1 hand size until end of turn." It seems like there is a lot of design space beyond "get 1 bonus blood" that all the Hunting Grounds currently follow and all those cards you listed basically follow. > You say that dominate is the best discipline in the game, but then don't give any ideas on how to fix this issue. > Why would I offer more ideas on how to fix Dominate when 99% of the ideas I've put forth have been shot-down as being unnecessary. > > I'm not sure what your point is about dominate. I think your point is that other games have evolved away from a single aspect of a game being super powerful, and VTES should do the same. The prevailing thought is that sticking to the original design with dominate being so powerful helps the game more than it hurts it. > My point was that making the best discipline for Bleeding in the game simultaneously the best defense AGAINST Bleed is a very strange design decision. It would be on par with making Potence the best combat damage discipline and then giving it all of, or most, or the best Strike: Combat Ends cards. It's weird. It would be like making the Zerg from StarCraft not only the cheapest units that could rush-swarm your opponent, but also giving them the best area-denial units. Or if you prefer, it would be like giving the color Green in MTG the best mana ramp spells AND land destruction. Do I need to go on? It's so bizarre. Dominate being the best Bleed discipline is cool, and players need Bleed bonuses since Bleeding is the primary form of ousting. Bounces are also cool, but for Dominate to get BOTH is beyond my comprehension. It would be like if Blue magic got the best card draw, counter-spells, mana ramp, removal, and direct damage..... OH WAIT, Blue did have all of those things in early MTG, which is why it was the best color of Magic. > > Anybody can buy a box of Jyhad and play at a high level because of dominate. Also, people who bought a box of Jyhad in 1995 can still play the game today at a high level because of dominate. For a game with a relatively small player base, this is a strength, not a weakness. > And that's fine, I think it is a great thing that a box of Jyhad boosters costs 100$ and not the $200K that a booster box of MTG Alpha costs. I think making the cards accessible and not over-powered or broken is key to having a long running healthy card-game. I don't think Dominate is broken or over-powered, I just think it having the best defense and offense regarding Bleeding is overkill, and that the game would benefit if Bleed was more common in other disciplines and Dominate was the 'tap down' or 'control their minions' discipline. > Army of Rats changed because it was determined very long ago that the original intended design was for Army of Rats to burn 1 pool per turn, no matter how many Army of Rats are in play. The original card text was the issue because it did not clearly explain the intended effect. This is the same story for Fame; the updated text follows more closely to the original intended design. > Fair enough. Still, it is a shame that such a cool card is basically written not to be a win condition. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

> LivesByProxy wrote: > My point was that this was what Hunting Grounds should've been doing all along, and that they could also afford to grant some other cool effect. If not even more blood due to clan bonus (i.e. "this vampire gets 1 additional blood from a successful Hunt, and another additional 1 blood if they are Gangrel"), then some other effect like "Untap and gain +1 stealth even if it is not yet needed" or "+1 bleed" or "+1 hand size until end of turn." It seems like there is a lot of design space beyond "get 1 bonus blood" that all the Hunting Grounds currently follow and all those cards you listed basically follow. > I mean, I see you working here. But my perspective is that hunting grounds, while not very interesting design wise, have a pretty decent effect, and are so versatile. They fit in any deck type as long as the required clan is included. Their functionality makes up for any missed opportunity design wise. Hunting grounds provide the blood of hunting without requiring the high cost of the hunt action. And other cards provide the things you suggest above, some of which are locations (although, not hunting grounds). > I don't think Dominate is broken or over-powered, I just think it having the best defense and offense regarding Bleeding is overkill, and that the game would benefit if Bleed was more common in other disciplines and Dominate was the 'tap down' or 'control their minions' discipline. > So dominate is not overpowered, it's just overkill. I really still don't get your point. Is dominate fine as is, or does it need to be fixed? re: Army of Rats: > > ...it is a shame that such a cool card is basically written not to be a win condition. > People win with Army of Rats as currently written. All the time. Where did you get the idea that Army of Rats is under-powered?

> LivesByProxy wrote: > Admittedly, I have never played VTES > I'm not buying it anymore either. -1 Strength

Overkill was a poor word choice. I don't think Dominate needs to be 'fixed' so much as I would seriously tweak what it's core strength / mechanics are if there were ever a spiritual successor to VTES, which is the heart of this thread. Army of Rats isn't under-powered in its current form per se, but it isn't a win condition the same way Parity Shift or Kine Resources Contested is. @GreyB: I assure you, I am. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

Dominate as is happens to be the most versatile discipline in the game because as you say it bleeds and bounces. Because of govern and deflection, everything truly is better with dominate. Why both for one skill? It's what it does. There are no plans to exceed power of either of those cards, ever for dominate. It works. I get your confusion, but trust me that since '94, things have been designed with those cards in mind. Army of rats is one card in many that decks use still to oust. I have a Gotsdam &! ventrue deck that even includes 2 of them. It's a consistent reoccurring pool damage to just your prey and wall decks and combat walls (animalism is great at both) WANT another reason to block and fight it's prey. It's good. Ditto with fame. And majesty. All got reworded strongly, I wish other cards got this treatment instead of banned. For example, protect thine own is stupid good, but could have been changed to kill some random 3 or lower cap or an ally. Memories of mortality became STUPID broken when imbued became a thing, but even adding the words "non-imbued" would have made it not as brutal. Now, do we need a way for IC fatties to burn things with a vote? Not necessarily, but that's because fatties are strong again finally. Do we need more help for allies? Universally not exactly, since tunnel runners and nephundi are strong, war ghouls still ate super viable, shamblers are dead hookers still punch and bleed great respectively, and we aren't bad off in general. Hunting grounds: You play, you get used to it. When I was learning to play MTG, I had Searing spear Askari and the sorcery flaming spear. I owned these from boosters before learning to play, and thought the creature played the spell. The same level word pairing mentality is the only thing that would associate the two, and as stated, once you play even a little, you no longer make that association or get confused at all, as they are completely separate means of blood gain.