Poll: Merge Antitribbu into base Clans?

Please vote after reading all the information. With reprints on the horizon and V5 being big for us (Paradox is how we have seen print, BC will be using them as a tie in because it makes too much sense to not do) this is the time to decide: Do we still need Antitribbu clans Separate? V5: Anarch and cam take the stage, Sabbat is a few boogie men or away at the crusades. Sabbat aren't that relevant currently. With sect lines being a thing, emphasis on them makes more sense than pretending a barely relevant sect splits a clan. It would be like making new clans for laibon HoS, !salubri, Assamites, and Lasombra. Not really needed for vtes. Moving several Sabbat esque things to Anarch culture has happened, it makes sense that we start looking at that for vtes; not Sabbat cards, but it's an easy fit for Antitribbu clan cards, they have a very Similar to anarch feel about them anyway. Timing: Doing something big now before we roll out hard on new player friendly stuff is key. 7 less nonsense symbols to remember is handy, and works more logically. Reprints will be worded right, symboled right. It allows abolishing default sect as well, which is important for us now. The upcoming Sabbat starters would be the first new templated or last old ones, depending on release. While I realize some of my opinions (like reassigning independent to less vagueness per vamp, like Anarchby V5 standard or Ministry, etc) is much work with little payoff, THIS is probably the right move long term. Many new players will be in favor. I ask those who've been at this as long as me or longer to take an unbiased look at where we were, where we are, and if this happening will help where we will be. Merging the antitribbu clans The numbers (I the parenthetical is base clan, labeled cam because non-antitribbu is double negative kinda) Crypt Brujah: 43 (73cam)=116 Gangrel:58(80cam)=138 Nos: 43(66cam)109 Malk:43(67)=110 Salubri:19(more on this later)(10cam)=29 Torrie:43(71cam)=114 Tremere:43(72cam)=115 Ventrue:43(74cam)=117 !Salubri: while a small case can be made that gangrel and ventrue antitribbu are a distinct bloodline with different disciplines, the Salubri are Scarce, and while Obeah won't break the game with Sanguine Instruction, base salubri become unplayable with !salubri if it costs you pool to flip Nahum when you have 4 !salubri out. Yes, Death Seeker Matthias looks cool, but at a price. And since !Salubri have both Laibon and Sabbat, wording would get messy. Also, V5 hasn't done anything with either yet. So, its cleaner to leave this bloodline as the last “antitribbu” for mechanic, fluff, and balance reasons. Library: -Hunting grounds- Its not game breaking to have 2 per clan. -paths- Are thematically Sabbat alternatives to humanity. So, make em sabbat. Lock to add pool to uncontrolled dude- These are currently either cam or Sabbat. Basically, the other side getting it doesn't hurt, because the more wall-inclined clans had it already, except maybe Nos. Key: Blank means change symbol and let whole clan have it.() means the other thing listed or possibly whole clan. *means sabbat only **means anarch only */** means Sabbat and anarch can use. Often could be non cam, but really Anarch or Sabbat is the aim. Bru Blood brother Ambush*/^(move out of clan?) Bruisers Dogs of war** Gang territory Spoils of war*/** Sword judgement * Unexpected coalition*/** Vendetta */** Waste management op*/** ~debate, Carthage remembered and new Carthage require testing with combos with Sabbat titles(Brenner, hektor, dark selena) and new Carthage may need non-sabbat. In fact, just make it that. Thematically, V5 is moving “promethean” Brujah toward anarch leaning. Gangrel Bay and howl BsBuddy City gangrel connections */** Follow the alpha Gangrel conspiracy** Leathery hide */**(noncam?) Marked territory Path of the feral heart * Satyr *or */** Talons of the dead */**or * Twisted forest** ~revel with city gangrel will be playable ish, but that's not bad. 2 problems: 2 stealth locations, so limit one to anarch. The other isn't huge but should be tested; bay and howl+ecoterrorists+thing+gather….you could theoretically get stuff out fast. But, gangrel suck, Slava, Enkidu, and Matusuntha are the fattest good ones and dont play as well in decks where 3 weenies come out to bring them out. So its probably ok. And let's them not be a bleed sink with no pool gain as often. Malk Cracking the wall()or*/** Marionette*/** Escaped mental patient*/** Malkavian gam Symbols tongue*/** Reality mirror Walk through Arcadia ~ I'm a huge malk fan, but Madness network with Artemis, Apache Jones, Rudulfo, Louhi, Marge Khan, imogen, Theron, and lily needs tested. Frankly, since or requires success to untap, it's less a problem than the crowd. But 2 10caps and an 8 cap with no to refill on votes and villein nerf is probably safe. Get ready for lots of stupid rock paper scissors and suck from new players with stealthbleed... Nos Courier Dirty little secrets */** Gang tactics */** Information network Inside dirt */** Nos kingdom Steam tunnels Using advantage Vermin channel ()or*/** ~none. Maybe power creep with so much available and Warsaw, or vermin channel Alexandria combo. Salubri Black beast* Blade bellona Blessing of the name Blooding by the code Brother in arms Code of samuel Death seeker Path* Trackers mark Righteous aura ~sight beyond sight? I don't know, this one isn't great to merge…. Torrie Art of pain */** Art of love ()or*/** Art scam */** Eccentric billionaire */** Foundation exhibit *or*/** Goth Band */** Palla grande* Patronage*/** ~aching beauty, TGB, and possibly KSGames need non-sabbat. You dont need palla grande and more in a cheesy strong deck. Tremere Gargoyle slave* Hexapod */** Infernal pact */** Nephundi* Recurve homeland */** Spirit summon chamber*/** Ruins ceoris */** Succubus*/** ~the following cards need “non-sabbat”: Ankara citadel, ponticulous, convocation, wasserschloss artif ,(maybe more for thematic reasons) Ventrue Demonstration */** Framing grudge */** Innocent bystander */** Kindred manipulation */** Loyalist * Political antagonist */** Recruiting party */**/non cam targets? Investment (non cam) ~ Ephor and island yairos may see play on new decks. Nothing huge. So, testing will be needed on several. Thoughts?

Yes, I would like to see this, they never should have been split in the first place, but IDK how such a thing can be implemented... Do you change the Gangrel / !Gangrel clan symbol to represent this unity? (Basically, introduce a third symbol for Gangrel?) You say you want to remove symbols and just have Sect identifier in the text box, but won't this still be confusing for new players seeing old cards? They will see Gangrel symbol and then see !Gangrel having a different symbol, but then the latter symbol no longer means anything, but its still in the card pool? It reminds me of the old pool cost icon situation which was too similar to the blood cost icon, creating confusion, so a new icon was introduced (the skull diamond) but the old cards still exist and require remembering and raise questions, etc. That's always the argument against changes to VTES, right? That the game permits using all these old cards that have outdated graphics, formatting, and terminology, and hence creates confusion among new players who are presumably playing with new cards. (As an aside, !Gangrel getting Rewilding would be sick.) 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.

Sabbat may not be relevant in the current V5 meta, but that's unlikely to be the case at some later date. They've already laid some of the groundwork by some questioning the looming threat of their eventual return, gorged on ancient vitae.

> LivesByProxy wrote: > Basically, introduce a third symbol for Gangrel? > they're the same image, just inverted (and with the big honking anti-tribu shield behind it). My very first deck I put together, I literally did not know the difference between regular and anti-tribu and put a bunch of "wrong" master cards in my deck. I don't think it'll be that much of a stretch to be honest. Re: Salubri "scarce" should get an update. If all clans can have scarce vampires it opens up design space (i've mentioned it before). So effectively, Salubri with Valeren are common, and those with Obeah aren't. oh, and the Sabbat Ventrue tend to have Auspex, instead of Presence, making them from the Ventrue Warrior bloodline. While cards may have been designed around what vampires could use them (and vice versa) there's nothing actually hard-coded in V:tes' rules about in-clan disciplines. to sum up: I've been a vocal supporter for streamlining this aspect of the game for years, and would very much like to see this happen.

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > Key: > Blank means change symbol and let whole clan have it.() means the other thing listed or possibly whole clan. > *means sabbat only > **means anarch only > */** means Sabbat and anarch can use. Often could be non cam, but really Anarch or Sabbat is the aim. > This makes life a nightmare for remembering what does what. If you know that on old cards (that don't say (C) Black Chantry or whatever) that "Toreador" means "Camarilla Toreador" and "Toreador Antitribu" means "Sabbat Toreador", that's relatively easy to implement. That's similar to how grouping was introduced - on a card without a group number, no set symbol meant "group 1", and a set symbol meant "group 2". This caused some issues - notably that putting any Indie vampires into group 3 was somewhat annoying, because group 2 was mostly full, whereas the Camarilla vampires were split over group 1 and 2, and Sabbat War didn't dump a whole load of new Sabbat vampires in the same way that Final Nights (prior to grouping) did for the Indies. But to offset these design glitches, it made the playability of the grouping rule much easier to explain and check. On a separate point, if you are planning to go through and adjust every card text that says a clan name, you also need to go through vampires who have clan-related specials e.g. Alexandra (does she now untap Toreador antitribu/Sabbat Toreador too?), does Lord Ashton work for any Gangrel including former Antitribu, does Lisandro Giovanni impersonating a Ventrue antitribu now allow him to impersonate a Ventrue (giving e.g. access to Ventrue HQ, which cares not at all for the sect of the Ventrue)? Plus you may also want to look at hosers. One or two hosers are actually just about usable in the right metagame, because they're extremely powerful. Does Malkavian Dementia allow you to steal a !Malk/Sabbat Malk - if so, that's now hitting a much larger pool of vampires than before.

Change is inevitable they say. Everything changes. We have V.5 of VtM now. We have 5.0 of D&D as well.People still play D&D Advanced and 3.5 or 2E or... Just because the pnp version of the game is changing, why must we change VTES even more? I understand that VTES & WW/the rest work hand in hand, but if you go and change everything, the game will no longer be the game we have all come to love & have played these many years. By going in that direction, I see nothing but MtG way of things where one plays whatever the current season is. It will bring even more confusion to any potential new players. let the changes be slow in progress with the combination of disciplines first and then... maybe.. look at other changes. With the talk of combination of disciplines already pisses me off. I feel that VTES should stick as is with discipline powers being separate with only a few of the new vampire powers and that goes with Sabbat. After all, I, like many of you have spent a small fortune on cards over the years to see them gain dust like old editions of MtG. I don't like change & V.5 brings too much. Just asking we slow it down to see how things go with V.5 & VTES before we talk about changing more. ~ Rowdy

@james: Key for my proposed adjustments. Cards would get errata and reprint. We've remembered more than this, and Frankly many cards aren't very good as is. The simplest thing would be broad strokes, if every card could just be both all members of the clan, that would be best. If a few cards got a new restriction, still fine, as the first few sets of the game have cards that changed, and most players know how much to pay for Gangrel Revel, Caitlin, or Misdirection, and know not to put Fame on your own vamp. Obviously change is rough, but this particular change (unlike more outlandish and counterintuitive things suggested by new players in the past) has been brought up for at least 10 years that I remember. Would LSJ have made Antitribbu separate if he had been at the reins before AE? Who knows, but players have been of both opinions for awhile. And NOW is the time, or never, before we get into reprints. @Rowdy: V5 changed too much all at once, and while I can stand back and accept that from a VTES viewpoint, I'm still salty that fir the first time ever the core rulebook doesn't feel like a whole core rulebook. I agree that changing the metaplot, mechanics, and social structure was too much, but I coulda dealt with that; they force you to play gen 8-16 , restrict travel, and omit like half the core clans. But. Vtes tying in with as little mechanical impact as possible means focusing on Cam & Anarch politics. We aren't removing Sabbat, but this seems like a good reason to stop dividing clans by antitribbu or base when both get independent and anarch members. It was never logical, and its even less so now. It's a more intuitive feeling thing than what we have. I'm generally opposed to change unless its needed to hurt non-interactive decks, but this one makes sense.

Some thoughts on this. 1) First, I think this is a great idea. Relatively streamlined (as far as the alternatives go), makes sense, opens up design space a little. 2) If VTES is truly looking to expand beyond its small but loyal player base, I think it needs to move to represent the game world it’s based on. Brand-new fans are not going to be particularly keen on picking up a TCG that’s based on an earlier iteration of the world they’re learning to play in. VTES’ heyday was during an era where hundreds of concepts were being lifted straight from the books into new sets: there was a real thrill in seeing how those worlds crossed over. We would miss an opportunity to not give that to players. 3) there is some contention around whether V5 is ‘real’ Vampire: the Masquerade (I know a lot of loyalists to ‘old White Wolf’ and Onyx Path), but like it or not, there are IP owners and they’re the ones shaping the direction of the game from here on out. That includes what gets printed and what doesn’t; their ideas about the WoD will shape future design decisions. It doesn’t impact all the cards we have printed already, but we need to be conscious of it and lean into the change rather than pretend it may not happen. 4) We may get to a stage eventually where only Black Chantry-printed cards are tourney legal (and I’m fine with that) due to the amount of text changes, so better to fix these things ASAP. 5) I would look at this like, what’s the choice between a number of potential changes open to VTES, rather than do we change or not? For example, another option could be another keyword. Pop ‘antitribu’ down into the card text and maybe you could open up new design spaces. But, it creates just as many rewrites of cards and doesn’t make it as elegant as simply referencing sect. Plus, you’ve got Lasombra antitribu in the Camarilla etc, so it’d get confusing. Cheers Disco Stu

A "solution" is to only add new vampires, disciplines to new sets. If Sabbat vampires are dwindled & different in the new V.5, then let that reflect in set 6,7,8...with a few Serpentis/Obtenebration/Necromancy still made but reflecting the new direction with new "combo"cards for the new way disciplines are done in V.5. Same can be said with Theo & friends, by making new vampires of them in set 7 or such, with contesting still. Going back & doing too many changes other then clarifying rules/wording on cards, destroys what we have & spent. Magic the Gathering makes you buy new cards to play in the years tournaments, while old cards collect dust unless you play with friends. There needs to be a way to play old decks/cards as well as new V.5 versions that are to come without making cards/stories from the past irrelevant. VTES never did anything with Requiem (thank god), so lets wait and see what all happens with V.5 as it comes into being. VtM Requiem failed. D&D 4E failed. For the most part they did. There are hopes for V.5, but it too might fail, where as VTES is still going, albeit in only loyal fans/players. Discussing all this is what these forums are for & trying to make VTES great again with new blood is the right direction. So, just throwing out my 2 cents worth of thoughts on it. Rowdy ~ Rowdy

Vtes failed, also. Twice, actually. If steps were taken by the designers back in Sabbat War to course correct, we'd probably not be having this exact conversation. The Vtes community has, in general, been extremely and notoriously resistant to change, which has resulted in a lot of mechanics being added to the game over the years instead of a few big changes. Mechanics that weren't really well supported until VEKN took over. If Black Chantry's plan is to continue to support a very niche game in a limited fashion, then it really only needs to keep doing what it's doing: release a handful of new cards every year and provide reprints when needed, so it can tread water financially and maybe put a few buckazoids in the pockets of the people who are putting very real work into doing so. If Black Chantry's plan is to grow the amount of people who play the game, then that's a whole different kettle of fish. Personally, I'd advocate what is essentially a soft-ish reset to the rules and the card pool. Give everything a big look over and streamline the rules to bring things into line with what is expected of a modern product. Sand down all of the rough edges on cards that have been covered by rulings. Make a huge, splashy re-release of about a third of the current card set and have that be the new 'core set.' Most of the cards should in the initial release be virtually unchanged in how they work. Now here's the kicker: Ban from tournaments any card not currently 'in print.' Then re-introduce these banned cards in future sets to re-expand the card pool, thus making them legal in tournaments (and ensuring that they're not wallpaper). As a concession to ancient players with extensive card collections, I'd allow the use of proxy cards with the new text, provided it was backed with an old version of the same card. This would cover the very common complaint that the old cards are still around and available and thus a barrier to making changes. > Rowdy wrote: > Going back & doing too many changes other then clarifying rules/wording on cards, destroys what we have & spent. Magic the Gathering makes you buy new cards to play in the years tournaments, while old cards collect dust unless you play with friends. > @rowdy: I don't see how buying the game to support the company that makes it is a bad thing: it's a business model to sell cards. The notion of being able to 'play with all of my cards,' while not unique to the V:tes community, seems to come up frequently. The Grouping Rule for vampires was contentiously received, but preserved a space for older vampires and making room for new ones, allowing the designers to curate these groups effectively. If we still want to preserve these old cards, the grouping rule could be expanded to library cards. nobody's collection would become invalidated, but there'd still be room to curate what cards can be used together. As ReverendRevolver says, we're at the point where there exists an opportunity to make the game more marketable to people who don't already play it. > ReverendRevolver wrote: > And NOW is the time, or never, before we get into reprints. >

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > @james: > Key for my proposed adjustments. Cards would get errata and reprint. > Gosh, how silly of me to not realize that errata to cards would be *checks notes* errata to cards. Creating a metric ton of errata for every card interacting with a clan is not small. The old cards won't go away. Changing them in a systematic way has enormous benefits when people are trying to remember whether Nikolaus Vermeulen works for Camarilla Nosferatu, Anarch Nosferatu, Sabbat Nosferatu, Laibon Nosferatu, Independent Nosferatu, or any other sect that might be implemented or created by White Wolf, or whether Sword of Judgment can be played by Camarilla Brujah, Sabbat Brujah, Laibon Brujah... Grouping was in a very similar position. Yes, pretty much every relevant card was errata-ed and later re-printed to deal with grouping. No, that doesn't mean that arbitrarily lumping vampires into different groups in a way that follows no discernible pattern would have been a good idea. > ReverendRevolver wrote: > We've remembered more than this, > And now you're adding errata to dozens upon dozens of cards to remember on top, at a time when people are trying to revive the card game. Every time you errata a card in a whimsical manner, you increase the learning curve for newbies. Existing players may well have had to remember more than this, but they're existing players who have done so over a period of years. New players get to cope with that and literally dozens upon dozens of library cards and vampires that may or may not work the way they think.

> SelfBiased wrote: > If Black Chantry's plan is to grow the amount of people who play the game, then that's a whole different kettle of fish. [...] As ReverendRevolver says, we're at the point where there exists an opportunity to make the game more marketable to people who don't already play it. > @Rowdy: SelfBiased mentions a few things here: 1) VTES is currently very niche. Vampires and card games are niche enough to begin with alone, but together they're even more niche. The WoD setting does not help. I can't prove it, but I've got this hypothesis that the longer an IP exists (and evolves) the less appealing it is to people who aren't already invested in said IP. Look at WH40K, Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Dr. Who, Star Wars, etc. Each of these began with a very generalized not-so-specific setting. As each IP grew, the lore got deeper and deeper, and inevitably, the stories got more and more convoluted and sometimes contradictory. The same thing happened to the WoD. The setting became more and more specific and White Wolf focused on appealing to people who were already fans of the setting. That's essentially what they're doing with V5. I get that old fans are their foundation, but if they want to capture a new generation I think they've basically got to do a soft-reboot of their setting. VTES kinda needs the same thing. The more general and cohesive it appears - the lower the barrier to entry - the easier it will be to get new people on board. 2) I understand that old players have huge card-pools to draw from, and have spent a bunch of money on said cards, and that errata'ing or making a 'revised' card-pool that banned half of their collection sucks. I get it. But from a new player's perspective, they're left high-and-dry with limited card selection, have to compete with old players with huge card-pools, and the implicit understanding that they're going to have to pour a bunch of money into this game to get the cards and quantities they need to play. Magic has several different formats. The whole point of the Standard format - the format where cards rotate out every 2 years or so, losing a lot of their monetary value - is that it makes it easier for new players to compete in tournaments. The only cards they really have access to are the newest cards, ergo WotC created a format specifically for the newest cards. A VTES tournament is the equivalent of the Magic Vintage format - the format where all the cards since the beginning are played. This, of course, hugely favors players who've been playing since the beginning and have amassed massive card-pools and powerful rare cards. VTES could easily have different formats for different players - implementing some kind of grouping rule for library cards would be a neat way to do this. 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.

> jamesatzephyr wrote: > [ > ........ > Creating a metric ton of errata for every card interacting with a clan is not small. The old cards won't go away. Changing them in a systematic way has enormous benefits when people are trying to remember whether Nikolaus Vermeulen works for Camarilla Nosferatu, Anarch Nosferatu, Sabbat Nosferatu, Laibon Nosferatu, Independent Nosferatu, or any other sect that might be implemented or created by White Wolf, or whether Sword of Judgment can be played by Camarilla Brujah, Sabbat Brujah, Laibon Brujah... > ....... > And now you're adding errata to dozens upon dozens of cards to remember on top, at a time when people are trying to revive the card game. > > Every time you errata a card in a whimsical manner, you increase the learning curve for newbies. Existing players may well have had to remember more than this, but they're existing players who have done so over a period of years. New players get to cope with that and literally dozens upon dozens of library cards and vampires that may or may not work the way they think. > So, back to the best case scenario of changing only what's too good to make work across the board; Palla Grande. Paths are Sabbat only. Add something about ballots to New Carthage. Then test. Obvious problem spots will present themselves, ones we thought were problems but weren't will be seen as such, and then we can evaluate cards. Also, I never mention moving Osebo to Bruhah, Ishtari to Torrie, Guruhi to Nos, or Akunanse to gangrel. So laibon of all those (Mozambique Alure?) Would count as themselves for playing whatever is thier clan. The sect restrictions I threw up there are the ones that would make sense if it were necessary. But other than the 3 cards of obvious concern I just mentioned, ideally Volker could call dogs of war and it allows Amelia to rush Hardestadt. Or Skryta gets Ritual Challenge with stealth from Backways and twisted forest. Or Annabelle Triabelle gives your torries +1 bleed and untaps and then you bleed with Sheila and lolita who both get bleed pump from Palla grande as well If the resulting powercreep is even across the affected clans, then it's not inherently bad, since multiple clan specific cards reside in the area between barely playable and almost playable.

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > So, back to the best case scenario of changing only what's too good to make work across the board; > Palla Grande. > Paths are Sabbat only. > Add something about ballots to New Carthage. > > Then test. > Obvious problem spots will present themselves, ones we thought were problems but weren't will be seen as such, and then we can evaluate cards. > Yeah, while it's tempting to better fit old cards within the new framework for thematic reasons, I do agree with James that it's probably best to make the least amount of changes on the least amount of cards, and then get a little bit more specific for a handful of cards. "Clans and their anti-tribu are now interchangeable. A few cards [ List of cards here ] have been updated to reflect a sect-specific requirement for that clan." or something to that effect. That being said, testing is key. I know I don't have the encyclopedic knowledge of the cardset, errata, and rulings that others have, so it'd be interesting to see where the chips would fall.

VtES should be a good game - any decision about changes should be evaluated on just one scale - will it make the game better or worse. All this talk about setting, costs of players card collections etc are irrelevant. NC Russia

The more I look at the cards, both library and crypt, the more I think removing the split for the vast majority just works. Sure, it will duplicate some effects, or create some doubling down on certain tactics, but the end result of that will be the core themes of clans will come out even more strongly. A deck packing both Demonstration and Ventrue HQ will be a stronger vote deck as a result - but Ventrue were already good at that, so it plays up an existing archetype rather than undermining it. Ayelea’s special ability may see a little more play, Kemintiri gets a little stronger, Barbaro can mess about with the Ankara Citadel, etc. - that is, cornercase specials become ever so slightly better. Cheers Disco

> Disco_Stu wrote: > Sure, it will duplicate some effects, or create some doubling down on certain tactics, but the end result of that will be the core themes of clans will come out even more strongly. > If the duplicate entries (say Hunting Grounds) is deemed broken or problematic then just banning one (or rewriting both so they can't be in play at the same time. Contest?) shouldn't be problematic. But I'd rather avoid banning. Allt he other distinctions can be handled easily by following wordings: "Usable only by Camarilla vampire." "Usable only by Sabbat vampire." Examples: "Art Museum During your influence phase, you may lock this card to move 1 blood from the blood bank to a Toreador in your uncontrolled region." changed to: "Art Museum During your influence phase, you may lock this card to move 1 blood from the blood bank to a CAMARILLA Toreador in your uncontrolled region." "Palla Grande Put this card in play and put 3 debauchery counters on it. Toreador antitribu get +1 bleed. Remove a debauchery counter from this card at the end of each of your turns. Burn this card if it has no counters." changed to: "Palla Grande Put this card in play and put 3 debauchery counters on it. SABBAT Toreador antitribu get +1 bleed. Remove a debauchery counter from this card at the end of each of your turns. Burn this card if it has no counters." Finnish Politics!

what about anarch, independenant or laibon variants then. edit: as I see it (disregarding lore), antitribu maps to sabbat non-antitribu maps to non-sabbat, camarilla is a more narrow match edge case maybe, but for some crypts and may matter

> Lönkka wrote: > > > Disco_Stu wrote: > > Sure, it will duplicate some effects, or create some doubling down on certain tactics, but the end result of that will be the core themes of clans will come out even more strongly. > > > If the duplicate entries (say Hunting Grounds) is deemed broken or problematic then just banning one (or rewriting both so they can't be in play at the same time. Contest?) shouldn't be problematic. But I'd rather avoid banning. > > Allt he other distinctions can be handled easily by following wordings: > > "Usable only by Camarilla vampire." > "Usable only by Sabbat vampire." > > Examples: > "Art Museum > During your influence phase, you may lock this card to move 1 blood from the blood bank to a Toreador in your uncontrolled region." > > changed to: > "Art Museum > During your influence phase, you may lock this card to move 1 blood from the blood bank to a CAMARILLA Toreador in your uncontrolled region." > > "Palla Grande > Put this card in play and put 3 debauchery counters on it. Toreador antitribu get +1 bleed. Remove a debauchery counter from this card at the end of each of your turns. Burn this card if it has no counters." > > changed to: > "Palla Grande > Put this card in play and put 3 debauchery counters on it. SABBAT Toreador antitribu get +1 bleed. Remove a debauchery counter from this card at the end of each of your turns. Burn this card if it has no counters." > Palla grande is strong enough to need it, Art Museum is already in the hands of the more wall-oriented side of the clan. Just like Art Scam is already with the side that has the most with low capacity. Obviously, testing is key. If we start with only restricting Paths and Palla Grande, I think we can test and find out.

> Lönkka wrote: > Allt he other distinctions can be handled easily by following wordings: > > "Usable only by Camarilla vampire." > "Usable only by Sabbat vampire." > > Examples: > "Art Museum > During your influence phase, you may lock this card to move 1 blood from the blood bank to a Toreador in your uncontrolled region." > > changed to: > "Art Museum > During your influence phase, you may lock this card to move 1 blood from the blood bank to a CAMARILLA Toreador in your uncontrolled region." > > "Palla Grande > Put this card in play and put 3 debauchery counters on it. Toreador antitribu get +1 bleed. Remove a debauchery counter from this card at the end of each of your turns. Burn this card if it has no counters." > > changed to: > "Palla Grande > Put this card in play and put 3 debauchery counters on it. SABBAT Toreador antitribu get +1 bleed. Remove a debauchery counter from this card at the end of each of your turns. Burn this card if it has no counters." > I think the separate clan icons / background was made to recognize Sabbat vampires. So replacing those distinctions by words achieves little on that level. I don't think that having separate clans for Toreador and Toreador antitribu is a problem rule-wise. After all, you just have to match the icons to see if your vampire can play a card that requires a certain clan. Lore-wise and design-wise, well, that's not my scope. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

Dear Ben Peal and Hugh Angseesing and all of Black Chantry, Reboot VTES. Please. Black Chantry you guys are fantastic designers. Start over with the new source and give us a fresh take on the game. The current rules are convoluted and you have to reference tons of rulings made by a guy who is currently not involved in the game at all. This benefits new players and will allow BC to clean up the rules and the clans and create cards that are worth playing. Don't let the people clinging to this 24 year-old game and complaining about changes deter you from what needs to be done. You guys play the game so I know you see where it falls short. The best way to preserve this game is to start over.

> Lönkka wrote: > Allt he other distinctions can be handled easily by following wordings: > > "Usable only by Camarilla vampire." > "Usable only by Sabbat vampire." > Except the distinction is between Sabbat and non-Sabbat. Being clan doesn't mean Camarilla; it means non-Sabbat. Antitribu means Sabbat always with the lone exception being !Gangrel Joseph Fischer, who's Anarch. Your rigidity with Camarilla hear actually harms some existing decks. Using "Usuable only by a non-Sabbat vampire." is a better choice for the first option.

Let group 7 and 8 reflect v5 changes and older groupings reflect WoD history. I see zero reason to retrofit v5 on existing card base. Oblivion etc. can be introduced in group 7 and 8. Challenge is to make g7/8 competitive against older groupings. Heck g7/8 can even powercreep over older groupings imo. *edit* Tournaments can also be timeline restricted: 1990’s tournament = group 1-3 2000’s tournament = group 4-6 2010’s tournament = group 7-8 Which can also be persisted in casual games and make it easier for new players. You could also drop groupings and introduce ‘timeline’ keyword which can be used for more than vampires. -1 Strength

Ps. Would be awesome if Black Chantry would eventually publish a new WoD card game that can co-exist with vtes as is, but lets not call it a reboot -1 Strength

Why do a reboot? Continuing this game is quite practical, and transitioning broad rule changes have been done with other card games (combat damage an the stack, interrupts disappearing, changes in mana spending, removal of mana burn, combat damage not using the stack, frame changes, format rotation changes......steel and dark energy becoming basic, gust of wind getting constantly redone at lower power levels, introduction of supporter subtype and subsequent retrofits, changes to certain names to make card limits and evolution cleaner..... I don't actually care about the other game of top 3, I have no idea how it competes with the other 2. It's a mystery...) Our biggest changes in like 25 years are: Removal of ante Changing the name to something with less negative association in modern society. No repeat action rule. Changing "tap" to "lock" From a design expansion point, this happened: Add non-camarilla clans (independent big4) Add Sabbat clans(2) and "evil goatee Spock" versions of first clans to tie in with(at the time) current edition of the game. Add bloodlines. (Enter LSJ) Add anarchs Add newly implemented laibon Add imbued to tie in with year event Add 2 not really discipline disciplines The logical path forward is basically, as mentioned, groups 6&7 at LEAST are going to reflect current happenings in the WoD. So antitribbu isnt a thing that matters largely. Cam Assamites matter. Anarchs matter. Of course we have a more in touch group of people than before at the helm, so whatever happens it will be good, and move us forward. If someone else designs another game, cool. But my concern is vtes.

@ReverendRevolver a reboot would allow for a fresh start, since most people who are veteran V:tes players are adamantly against set rotation. Or any sort of change that might make the game accessible to more players. There's a lot of concern about perceived value of cards l, too. I'm sitting on a collection of about 30k cards myself, but i realize that the value of those cards is all of the hours I've spent playing the game, not a cash value.

> self wrote: > @ReverendRevolver a reboot would allow for a fresh start, since most people who are veteran V:tes players are adamantly against set rotation. Or any sort of change that might make the game accessible to more players. There's a lot of concern about perceived value of cards l, too. I'm sitting on a collection of about 30k cards myself, but i realize that the value of those cards is all of the hours I've spent playing the game, not a cash value. > But that's not capitalizing on one ofthe attributes that defines Vtes: we dont rotate. You say "reboot" "soft reset" and "spiritual successor" and I keep being confused; it's either a new game or we are forcing the whole card pool into nonexistence, except a new reedited group of them. I would call that: releasing a new core set by canceling a game. I think the Intent is good, less clutter and easier new player acquisition. But new products and possibly a "compatibility patch" if you will, accomplish this and retain the card pool and player base. If we ban imbued, we dont lose most of the playerbase and the game doesn't change. If we remove Sabbat, Events, and Trifles, redesign all of combat and politics and stuff everything into 14 clans with no bloodlines then the players who aren't that attached to vtes get a new game, but most of the playerbase just sits and ignores everything made after 2018. Hence why proposals that look at ONE thing that doesn't fundamentally kill the game and opens up deck building options and design space is what I've been pushing. My crusades have been: more cam gangrel, more no nonslave gargoyles, nerf MMPA decks, make cards that enable strategy XorYbutnotZ, make anarchs more accessible, and obviously look at antitribbu merging to base clan.. All seeking opinion and insight, the most useful of which often comes from whoever's saying what my own reasons against the idea, but saying it better than I would have. All is conjecture. But it's still something to think about, and it's more fruitful to think about when others say a better version of the idea, or more solid opposition. Anyway, what I want is the "kill it and rebuild " group to throw up thier take on what the proposed merger would/could do in fixing the problems they perceive with the game. I see a good game and want more out of it. James, who's right depressingly frequently, sees an idea that creates more problems than it could ever solve. What, on the topic at hand, could happen in they eyes of players actively opposed to just continuing and not canceling and restarting?

@ReverendRevolver: Proposed merger would be mostly great, I actually don't have a problem with it. My issue is this: where do you draw the line? This merger you're talking about is errata, plain and simple, so at what point do you stop errata'ing cards? Because there are many cards which could use errata to make them more playable and thematic. The proposed merging is a large clan-sect based errata on most cards. It makes me want to see further errata on cards that should play with age, discipline, torpor, and number of vampires. But then we get into the Ship of Thesus territory, which VTES has been in for a while, admittedly. As someone who doesn't have 30K cards, and isn't deeply invested in the WoD or WW lore (I just like a lot of concepts and themes of VTM, and vampires in general) I don't have a problem with sweeping errata because obviously it would impact me much less. And as someone in the "kill it and rebuild" diablerize VTES crowd, the problems it would fix, for me, would be just the perceived cohesiveness of the game. I think one of the reasons Magic is such a huge success is that it is generic enough to be universally applicable. Five colors that can be represented and abstracted and metaphorically used in so many ways. The disciplines occupy the same sort of space that colors do in Magic, they form the core of deck-building but only kinda. (Disciplines should be the primary deck building restriction IMO.) But the disciplines are tied to the clans, and I'm not sure how much the clans actually add to the game. I find VTM's (and even VTR's) clans to be odd conceptually. We have clans based on social class, geographic location, physical characteristics including race and sex, very specific curses, pseudo-religious practices and/or ideology. And there are 22 or so of them. Merging the antitribu with their counterpart clans would go a long way toward making the setting more consumer-ready because it avoids a lot of the weird conceptual gymnastics you have to do to explain the setting. Oh, and mechanics-wise, the merging would power-up clans all around, but I think the clans without Dominate would benefit the most, which is good. 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 really hard to have a discussion if we start from a point where you don't see problems. The list of frustrating or limiting effecys is quite large.

> DJHedgehog wrote: > Dear Ben Peal and Hugh Angseesing and all of Black Chantry, > > Reboot VTES. Please. Black Chantry you guys are fantastic designers. Start over with the new source and give us a fresh take on the game. The current rules are convoluted and you have to reference tons of rulings made by a guy who is currently not involved in the game at all. > > This benefits new players and will allow BC to clean up the rules and the clans and create cards that are worth playing. Don't let the people clinging to this 24 year-old game and complaining about changes deter you from what needs to be done. > > You guys play the game so I know you see where it falls short. The best way to preserve this game is to start over. > I would love nothing more than Jyhad 2.0 to be released in concert with V:tM V5. This is really probably what should happen, given all the major changes V5 is introducing. The problem is, if a reboot happens, who will this reboot be marketed to? I'm guessing the average TCG player will not be that interested in a card game based on source material from a role playing game that was a phenomenon 24 years ago and just had some weird controversial update happen. That leaves established VTES players as the target market, and I think established VTES players do not want any part of a reboot because their collections will become useless. So it seems the game is kind of stuck with bolting on incompatible V5 changes to the current VTES. Unless I'm really underestimating the demand for Jyhad 2.0 among the average TCG gamer. If I was an established VTES player with a huge collection (which I'm not), I think I'd be a little concerned that the makers of V5 didn't really seem to take into account VTES when they made the changes in V5.

VTES shouldn't even have anything to do with V5 until it has been out a few years. Jyhad didn't come around until V2 was starting. There is really no idea how well VtM V5 will do... they have already shown that they can't get their s**t together after the Chechnya screw up. Talking these points is inevitable as post show & good to do, but changing VTES as much as talk is talking is not going to screw up the game. My opinion of course, but I am sure others feel the same as well. Those not reading the forums need say as well. But getting rid of Sabbat because they aren't really in V5 is just outlandish in prospect. They still exist and unsure what may come eventually with the Sabbat if V5 survives. The books aren't out yet (for most part) so hold off on getting rid of a sect or combining cards. One or two voices on the forum does not speak for the many. mine, or the anti-sabbat crowd. Played the game since '94, because of VtM. Played ever since with friends in home settings. Never did tourney play until last year, and I'm very quiet on forums, but this Poll touched a big nerve. Rowdy ~ Rowdy

@Rowdy: I don't think anyone is suggesting we get rid of the Sabbat. ReverendRevolver was musing that such a hard reboot might get some new players, maybe, by simplifying things, but would not appeal to the existing fan-base at all. And the poll is whether or not antitribu clans could just be folded into their clan. They would still retain the Sect status, but would no longer count as a separate clan for the purposes of card effects. For example, Patronage, rather than saying a Toreador Antitribu would say Sabbat Toreador instead. --- For my part, even though I would like to see some sort of spiritual successor or soft reboot to VTES (really I just want a card game about vampires) I don't think VTES should jump on the V5 ship. By all means, use some of the V5 material for inspiration, but tying this game so closely to the RPG is what made it so very niche in the first place. My expectation is that VTES will outlive VTM, just as it did before. And the great thing about VTES is that it offers so many storyline possibilities to play out: What if the Setites joined the Camarilla? What if the Brujah diablerized all the Tremere they could find and got Thaumaturgy? What if the Gangrel started mixing it up with Werewolves to get super Abominations? What if the Masquerade was truly broken but the kine, rather than exterminate the vampires, wanted to capture them to get their powers? All of these different storylines or fantasies could be supported by printing cards that enabled them. That's what Black Chantry should do, IMO. You don't need official WW publications and books of WoD lore to think of interesting scenarios or directions the setting could take. And wasn't it the case that WW said "these are the Final Nights, Gehenna is upon us" back in 2004 or whenever, only to offer a bunch of possibilities for how Gehenna plays out, only to say "this is canon, this is how it the worlds ends", only for VTES to ignore all that, only for WW - now resurrected - to say "No, it actually didn't happen like we said it did." 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.

As we can see, some time pass and there are only 30 people who really care about this question. Maybe it's not so important one? NC Russia

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > But that's not capitalizing on one ofthe attributes that defines Vtes: we dont rotate. > You say "reboot" "soft reset" and "spiritual successor" and I keep being confused; it's either a new game or we are forcing the whole card pool into nonexistence, except a new reedited group of them. > I would call that: releasing a new core set by canceling a game. > Yeah that's what I would call it too. There are some fundamental problems with the cards that have been created to the point where I would advocate for the removal of vast amounts of cards. So what is good about the game? The core functions of the rules are really great: predator prey relationships, life as a resource, card replacing and the flow of your play-hand, politics (to a degree), the way the game captures the theme of Vampire so thoroughly. Hell, even combat is really cool even tho it needs some work. That's the stuff worth keeping and makes up the core of the game. That's what draws people to it. Not their worn out copies of Govern from '94, or the KRC they've played 1000+ times in 24 years. People are reluctant to move on because there isn't a better option and they suffer from the sunken cost fallacy. If you create a reboot and make it in the LCG format that people are already buying into I suspect you can get a majority of player rollover and make an updated product that coincides with V5 so it has built in marketing. Plus it will appear to be new. > ReverendRevolver wrote: > I think the Intent is good, less clutter and easier new player acquisition. But new products and possibly a "compatibility patch" if you will, accomplish this and retain the card pool and player base. > If we ban imbued, we dont lose most of the playerbase and the game doesn't change. > If we remove Sabbat, Events, and Trifles, redesign all of combat and politics and stuff everything into 14 clans with no bloodlines then the players who aren't that attached to vtes get a new game, but most of the playerbase just sits and ignores everything made after 2018. > Here are a list of things I would remove or change without getting as granular as individual cards I would remove (that list is super long). Multiple Master Phase Actions Events (I don't hate the idea, but probably should just be master cards) Easy/non-standardized Pool Gain Easy/non-standardized blood gain Amaranth/blood hunts/diablary Multiple actions (2 should be most, maybe some cases 3 actions) Contesting rules Lack of standard card templating Balancing large capacity vampires (Erlik is what a 10 cap should look like) Clan Balance Look at new method for political actions (currently it's either highly contested and interesting as part of the game or one player just passes votes that might as well be bleeds) Combat speed and phases > ReverendRevolver wrote: > Anyway, what I want is the "kill it and rebuild " group to throw up thier take on what the proposed merger would/could do in fixing the problems they perceive with the game. I see a good game and want more out of it. James, who's right depressingly frequently, sees an idea that creates more problems than it could ever solve. What, on the topic at hand, could happen in they eyes of players actively opposed to just continuing and not canceling and restarting? > Quite simply, we need someone to make cards that make sense. We have a lot of LSJ worshipers, but he made a lot of really bad cards and a lot of cards that are poorly templated and inconsistent, as well as made bad inconsistent rulings about the game based on what was on his mind and not what is in the rule book or printed on the card. A new base set would create a power floor and ceiling, would allow for a revisit of the basic rules, it would allow for a standard templating of cards, it would allow for the implementation of the new V5 universe without a shoehorn, it would draw in new and old players alike. These are the tip of the iceberg so to speak.

> DJHedgehog wrote: > ...quite reasonable stuff... > The problem of all such discussions is that here, obviously, we got community (actually just like dozen of people now) who are seriously dedicated to the preservation of the game - all others left long time ago. BC also consists of such people, so idea to reboot VtES, even if it got some merit in general, will not be very workable here. I was trying to advocate compromise idea of gradually introducing small changes to slowly move the game to more generally playable state without losing continuity, but after several years of trying I'm losing all hope - the position of the general community is always "the game is fine", the extremely minor changes which are implemented are designed somewhere in the dark and just dropped in RTR announcement and usually met with outrage. By now we got more tournaments from 11 month of 2018 than whole 2017, so it looks like there is some growth when the game is in print. If it's fine for BC and IP owners, than whenever. Maybe when my kids grow old the game will finally stop being overbloated disorganized mess. I see no way to speed this process. NC Russia

> DJHedgehog wrote: > Quite simply, we need someone to make cards that make sense. We have a lot of LSJ worshipers, but he made a lot of really bad cards and a lot of cards that are poorly templated and inconsistent, as well as made bad inconsistent rulings about the game based on what was on his mind and not what is in the rule book or printed on the card. > All of what you state above is what happens when someone with a scientific/mathematical mind acts as a game designer without any help. You also get rules like "impulse," wherein if the game was played to the letter of that mechanic, it would be such a bad idea that it is not really codified anywhere in the rules. "Start Combat. I don't have a card, you don't have a card. [Repeat 30 times]. Hands for 1, hands for 1. End combat." VTES functions too much like a computer program, right down to the lead designer acting as the creator of the program and being the only person who really knows how it all should function, while everyone else looks on and goes "uh, what is this person thinking?" I read the rulebook, detailed play summary, card text, and rulings and think to myself, "whoever wrote this probably had a brilliant scientific mind, but they really, really needed an editor to clarify and communicate their ideas better." Anyway, I agree that how rules and rulings were historically vetted in VTES definitely should change.

> TwoRazorReign wrote: > > > DJHedgehog wrote: > > Quite simply, we need someone to make cards that make sense. We have a lot of LSJ worshipers, but he made a lot of really bad cards and a lot of cards that are poorly templated and inconsistent, as well as made bad inconsistent rulings about the game based on what was on his mind and not what is in the rule book or printed on the card. > > > All of what you state above is what happens when someone with a scientific/mathematical mind acts as a game designer without any help. You also get rules like "impulse," wherein if the game was played to the letter of that mechanic, it would be such a bad idea that it is not really codified anywhere in the rules. "Start Combat. I don't have a card, you don't have a card. [Repeat 30 times]. Hands for 1, hands for 1. End combat." > > VTES functions too much like a computer program, right down to the lead designer acting as the creator of the program and being the only person who really knows how it all should function, while everyone else looks on and goes "uh, what is this person thinking?" I read the rulebook, detailed play summary, card text, and rulings and think to myself, "whoever wrote this probably had a brilliant scientific mind, but they really, really needed an editor to clarify and communicate their ideas better." > > Anyway, I agree that how rules and rulings were historically vetted in VTES definitely should change. > I strongly disagree with this notion of a 'scientific mind' at the core of this game. This game shows the hand of an absent minded lawyer. Cards get printed with random words (i.e. no templating) and after the fact it is determined what they do based on these words when this should have been determined before printing them. The rules are a mess to accommodate the random words, allowing odd timing windows to make some cards work and removing timing windows due to accidental words in others. As players we have to pore through years of unaccesable legal precedant to figure out how carfs work and when the legal code is revised we are hard pressed to find any sort of history or change log. It isn't uncommon to look up a ruling and find lsj make a ruling then reverse his own ruling and wonder if there aren't further positional shifts you don't know about. If this is how effective science was practiced we would still be arguing over how to burn a log. Tldr... Garfield is a mathematician and lsj an addled lawyer

Have you ever talked to a scientist? "Addled" is often an apt description. Anyway, I think you're being a little unfair to the previous designer (and a little too complementary to "effective science," which has more in common with your "addled lawyer reversing rulings due to personal shifts" description than you seem to think it does). If I had to guess, I'd say the previous designer was a computer programmer. Nobody else can understand how this program is supposed to function, even other programmers. It would completely make sense to me why VTES is the way it is if it was overseen by someone in that field. Back to the point at hand, though: merging antitrbu into regular clans just isn't going to work unless there is a reboot, and a reboot doesn't seem likely to happen. The "addled lawyer" way of managing VTES is likely to continue.

> elotar wrote: > As we can see, some time pass and there are only 30 people who really care about this question. > > Maybe it's not so important one? > In a thread full of opinions, this statement is an impossible to ignore fact......

> TwoRazorReign wrote: > All of what you state above is what happens when someone with a scientific/mathematical mind acts as a game designer without any help. > Absolutely not. Opposite is true. > You also get rules like "impulse," > Impulse isn't a rule. Its something created by the community to help understand the rules. Technically it doesn't exist since its not defined in the rulebook. > VTES functions too much like a computer program > Completely false. Laughable. If it worked like a computer program it would be clearly defined. VTES is not clearly defined. There are tons of cards that have no rule supporting them except their own text. For example immortal grapple is played at a timing window that that doesn't exist as per the rules. After maneuvers and before strikes. Rulebook doesn't recognize any timing step there. > , right down to the lead designer acting as the creator of the program and being the only person who really knows how it all should function, while everyone else looks on and goes "uh, what is this person thinking?" I read the rulebook, detailed play summary, card text, and rulings and think to myself, "whoever wrote this probably had a brilliant scientific mind, but they really, really needed an editor to clarify and communicate their ideas better." > > Anyway, I agree that how rules and rulings were historically vetted in VTES definitely should change. > While the criticism about VTES rules is well-founded, I don't think you have much experience of computer programs or scientific approach for that matter. The LACK of scientific approach is what is at fault with VTES rules, and why I am constantly at odds with the pile of manure that is VTES rulebook. > TwoRazorReign wrote: > Have you ever talked to a scientist? "Addled" is often an apt description. > It definitely doesn't sound like you are one. Smoking craters tell no tales. —Tex talks Battletech

> TwoRazorReign wrote: > Have you ever talked to a scientist? "Addled" is often an apt description. > > Anyway, I think you're being a little unfair to the previous designer (and a little too complementary to "effective science," which has more in common with your "addled lawyer reversing rulings due to personal shifts" description than you seem to think it does). If I had to guess, I'd say the previous designer was a computer programmer. Nobody else can understand how this program is supposed to function, even other programmers. It would completely make sense to me why VTES is the way it is if it was overseen by someone in that field. > > Back to the point at hand, though: merging antitrbu into regular clans just isn't going to work unless there is a reboot, and a reboot doesn't seem likely to happen. The "addled lawyer" way of managing VTES is likely to continue. > I have spoken to many scientists and mathematicians in the lofty towers of academia. There is a premium on 'elegant solutions' sometimes even at the expense of data. A scientist wants a very simple concept that can have ass piles of math with it, but still a simple concept. On of the most hilarious things I read was from a physical scientist discussing how 50% of scientific publications are wrong and 40% are correct but useless. This is part the nature of the scientific method and part the structure of academia. I am well aware of these limitations. Vtes rules is just memorizing a bunch of unrelated factoids and the exact opposite. The creator of vtes was, in fact, a mathematician. His doctorate was in combinatorial mathematics. Most of the current state of vtes is due to lsj and I have no idea what his training is in. As far as the programmer analogy, code that is constantly altered and added to eventually becomes so bloated that it is easier to just rewrite the entire thing than try to figure out what each line of code from dozens of previous contributors does. Let's call this a code reboot for fun.

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > Palla grande is strong enough to need it, Art Museum is already in the hands of the more wall-oriented side of the clan. > You're focusing on details. I used those two cards just as examples how the idea I proposed would be executed. Instead of these examples it could've been any Tor or !Tor card. Or just card X and !X. No need to start pondering if these certain cards need something done to them or whatever... Finnish Politics!

from my perspective of being a new player, the separation into antitribute was something that took a moment to grasp. once i understood that they are their simply their own clan though it made more sense. will the game benefit from folding antitribu? maybe sorry for repeating the obvious, but "his is my understanding + it reduces some of the initial overload of details (the confusing term antitribu-xyz not same as xyz), subjective but i think is a lot cleaner + it reduces number of clans + it opens up some more flexibility, maybe, in crypt and lib selection - revising cards adds some confusion beteeen old and new players alike - design and test cycles required as to not cause any unintential overpowered new combos, wording to retain some restrictions ... for me, its mostly about weighing the confusion +/-

> Rowdy wrote: > VTES shouldn't even have anything to do with V5 until it has been out a few years. Jyhad didn't come around until V2 was starting. There is really no idea how well VtM V5 will do... they have already shown that they can't get their s**t together after the Chechnya screw up. > > Talking these points is inevitable as post show & good to do, but changing VTES as much as talk is talking is not going to screw up the game. My opinion of course, but I am sure others feel the same as well. Those not reading the forums need say as well. > > But getting rid of Sabbat because they aren't really in V5 is just outlandish in prospect. They still exist and unsure what may come eventually with the Sabbat if V5 survives. The books aren't out yet (for most part) so hold off on getting rid of a sect or combining cards. One or two voices on the forum does not speak for the many. mine, or the anti-sabbat crowd. > > Played the game since '94, because of VtM. Played ever since with friends in home settings. Never did tourney play until last year, and I'm very quiet on forums, but this Poll touched a big nerve. > > Rowdy > The man speaks little but is brutally to the point! I'm so much in agreement. Finnish Politics!

> Rowdy wrote: > But getting rid of Sabbat because they aren't really in V5 is just outlandish in prospect. > I'm sorry, but why did this statement even need to be said? Merging antitribu clans in VtES has nothing to do with removing Sabbat from the game, even if that were a thing.

> kschaefer wrote: > > > Rowdy wrote: > > But getting rid of Sabbat because they aren't really in V5 is just outlandish in prospect. > > > I'm sorry, but why did this statement even need to be said? Merging antitribu clans in VtES has nothing to do with removing Sabbat from the game, even if that were a thing. > Yes. Which is why it would have been helpful to read the "please read all of this before jumping to conclusions " part of the first post. Nothing Sect wise is in the crosshairs, just changing the clan logo on some cards and the word antitribbu. Literally all but on !gangrel have "Sabbat" in the text box. To Ulphs point: I started playing because of Vtm, like Rowdy. Ulphs points sum it up neatly, because as a vtm fan, I bought a Malkavian starter deck from CE. The rules were confusing as shit, and it was strange the clans thing had separate logos for sabbat versions of cam clans and salubri, but not cam versions of Lasombra and not Serpents of the Light, because I knew that they had additional weaknesses than setites and thus must be a different bloodline. Then I started playing vtes years later and initially it was a minor thing that Dolphin couldn't recruit Muddled Vampire hunter. But it's much more annoying that Artemis couldn't act via madness network with Anatole, a problem that came up once I was more experienced. I understood why vtes wise, but vtm wise, a sizable chunk of the clan being cut off mystically from the Network when they all had was dumb. Then seriously everything to do with antitribbu had to be just politically geared. But why the hell was Enkidu a bloodline that he predated? But I love vtes, so it's still one of those things we joke about, like Hardestadt using a sport bike or something. Nobody said kill off the sabbat. The whole problem is merely splitting some clans into not the Same clan because of political standings. Points of validity have been made, on both sides, but most of it comes back to it's just huge to do, and not that its out of the question, but the current variable of the future metaplot is kinda too big to dedicate to anything yet. Its obviously going somewhere, but Paradox and (maybe) Onyx Path will be the writers of it. Which is why I threw up the organically possible thing instead of changing discipline and clan names. V5 will be part of our future. I'm not a hater, but it's a very different feeling game than Vtm2nd,rev,20. It's like parts of v20/rev, mixed with req, but less storydriven in the overview. Mechanically interesting, but if we go on merit of dice system, requiem was great, it just sucked as a game otherwise compared to masquerade AND the non-core games in Nwod(Changeling, Vigil,Promethean all kicked its ass) . Anyway, I'm not advocating immediate change to straight V5 reflection. Just cannibalize things that fit and work. The masquerade elements I don't see "right" in the V5 3books this far are the gothic punk grit n violence blended into the horror that make it feel more personal and believable, allowing my disbelief to be suspended easier. Also the not-quite lovecraft level of part of something huge and unknowable quality of 13+gen is lost, because part of the feel was knowing someone may be pulling your strings, then realizing more than one someone was made hella good storytelling for Vtm, and it wasn't more than an outlier background plot half the time. With Vtes, you know your a Methuselah moving your pawns. The lack of that FEEL for V5 makes vtes integration only FEEL proper in pieces; we exist in the same metaplot setting, we should make anarchs matter more, make a card about splitting from Cam for Brujah, can Assamites, Sabbat Gehenna Crusader stuff, Rudi as a card...... But the whole damn thing doesn't come to us as easy as V20, so I apologize for my RANT but Rowdy is at a viewpoint that I feel is important and I do not want the wrong idea coming off.

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > Nobody said kill off the sabbat. The whole problem is merely splitting some clans into not the Same clan because of political standings. Points of validity have been made, [...] but most of it comes back to it's just huge to do > One of the things that gets touted as a strength of V:tes is the size of the card pool. But when someone says "hey, we could streamline the game to a net positive for the future," and the response is "But we'd have to errata too many cards, and that will confuse people." it makes me wonder if the set size is a positive. The bottom line however is that Black Chantry will likely make changes to the game based on what White Wolf/Paradox wants, to make the Vtes better support V5. We've already seen it happen with Anarch becoming a sect and no longer being just a keyword whatever it was. I would not be surprised to see more of this sort of thing happening in the future.

As a long-term VTES player but NOT a VTM player, I truly don't see the benefits for a game in merging antitribu and 'parent' clans. Furthermore, lately we've had somewhat of an resurgence of a game (VTES) locally and several new players (without any RPG background) have emerged and, so far, the existence of antitribu clans hasn't been any issue, with regards to game's complexity or densness or confusion. The same was, many years ago, when I was a new player, for me - it took two sentences of lore explanation and never was it a rule issue...

> Kiddo wrote: > As a long-term VTES player but NOT a VTM player, I truly don't see the benefits for a game in merging antitribu and 'parent' clans. > I think there are a number of folks, such as myself, who want to see the game made more concise and cohesive. Besides, what is the harm in merging them as suggested? That someone will have to take the time to errata the cards in a database or whatever card templating program they use? The biggest benefit of the split clans getting merged would be that it opens up deck-building options and powers up under-powered clans. 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 think there are a number of folks, such as myself, who want to see the game made more concise and cohesive. > On the other hand, I belive there are a number of folks, such as myself, that actually enjoy the vastness of this game and wouldn't want to, let's say, lessen the scope. I don't think a cohesion is needed or welcomed. For me personally, the sheer volume of cards is a big part of the appeal. > LivesByProxy wrote: > That someone will have to take the time to errata the cards in a database or whatever card templating program they use? > How about the actual physical cards? What you are talking about would result in literally hundreds of cards being altered... > LivesByProxy wrote: > The biggest benefit of the split clans getting merged would be that it opens up deck-building options and powers up under-powered clans. > While that may be the case (and I guess you are alluding to !Gangrel - imho the only antitribu clan that could use a power-up), it would at the same time give a vast boost to all the other clans (like Tremere, Toreador or Ventrue) that truly don't need or deserve a boost.