Kindred of the East

I like the '25% KJ Discipline as new' discipline spread. Some interesting matchings.

Great idea! And good job. Looking forward to more!

I once also started looking at this. But gave up quite fast. Wrote some down here: www.vtesbergen.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=780 on the local forum. Some is written in norwegian, but some are english. I thought of Yin/Yang as Aye/Orun for the Laibon.

What you have shown us so far is pure beauty, especially in the case of the vampires. I'm looking forward to seeing the whole thing.

That said I would strongly suggest that you keep all new disciplines. The reason for this is purely flavor. Speaking as a KotE fanboy, it would feel very weird to see all these western (and clan-specific) disciplines on kuei-jin. It would feel even weirder to see a Thousand Whispers/Gargoyle crypt. I don't think I'd even touch the expansion then.

Think about how many people would like to play an exclusively kuei-jin deck in their casual playgroup versus how many just want some new Visceratika cards for their old deck.

As to the new mechanics:
The tenets are cool.
The P'o cards are overcomplicated. More counters on the table is more confusion and the restriction is really non-intuitive. "...cannot perform nonmandatory undirected actions"? How about "must hunt or bleed" or something along these lines?

This would be my idea of a P'o card (not using your keyword):

Invoking the P'o
Combat
This Kuei-Jin has +2 strength for the remainder of combat. Put this card on this Kuei-Jin, burn it after its next action is resolved. In this Kuei-Jin's controller's next minion phase this Kuei-Jin must bleed.

Not sure about the balance, but you get the general idea.

name1 wrote:

That said I would strongly suggest that you keep all new disciplines. The reason for this is purely flavor. Speaking as a KotE fanboy, it would feel very weird to see all these western (and clan-specific) disciplines on kuei-jin. It would feel even weirder to see a Thousand Whispers/Gargoyle crypt. I don't think I'd even touch the expansion then.

You might be one of the very few that wouldn't. See: Bloodlines vs. Nights of Reckoning.

@Kevin: I don't know. Maybe a poll would be in order?

I just had a thought about the disciplines. I'd still prefer it if you kept the concept of all new, but... if we're already completely deviating from the source material, why not use western disciplines that are less clan-specific and more flavor-neutral? So as not to try to closely emulate the eastern disciplines (which I think wasn't going very well anyway), but rather show the theme of the dharma.

For example:
Song of Shadow
They are scholars.
They are also assassins.
They are unfeeling, walking corpses permeated with Yin.
4th: new discipline. Cultivation? Yin Prana? Bone Shintai?

and maybe would be sufficient for giving the right feel to the dharmas, I think.
This would make the Kuei-Jin look more like the african vampires. I just find the emulation with rare disciplines really strange.

Two other things:
Roughly 5 out of 6 vampires in the previews have specials. Maybe too many?

I'd love to help playtest this with my group.

Hi Name1,

Thanks for your thoughtful comments.

P'o: you're correct in saying that the restriction is a bit complicated. It was intended to depower vote/equip decks, without punishing players who wanted to Harass their opponents into oblivion (which suits the theme of P'o!). What if it simply became "can't perform non-mandatory actions?" or "can't perform an action except to hunt?" ... the latter probably makes the most sense, as it directly links to a Kuei-Jin's efforts to re-balance their blood versus P'o token totals. That'd make the cards more of a mixed blessing, of course, so their power curve would need to be tweaked accordingly. Or, I could take off any restriction and adjust the curve the other way.

The all-new Disciplines versus bloodline-Disciplines versus Core 8-Disciplines balance is a real chestnut, and one which isn't going to be solved to everyone's liking. I'd love to have all-new Disciplines - and designed the sets as such - but if it's only me and a few other KOTE fanboys who'd enjoy such a set then that's a fail. KevinM's comment gets to the heart of that; sometimes self-contained and stand-alone isn't necessarily a good thing.

Your suggestions on using the core 8 disciplines makes sense, but the concepts behind the Dharmas are sufficiently broad that it may be difficult to make clear linkages that don't exclude some aspect of their philosophy.

Devil-Tigers, say, are fanatical warriors bent on punishing wickedness and challenging the status quo. Celerity and Fortitude would make them fantastic warriors, but so too would Potence, or indeed Protean, or even Animalism (Bats & Crows trumps many great combat decks). So, I think whilst there's some merit in that approach it puts the cart before the horse a little. I'd prefer to let the Tenets and other Dharma-specific cards shape the various spirit of each faction, then let the Disciplines riff off those.

Back to the topic of the 'core 8', I figure that if people are going to add Kuei-Jin to their decks they'd like something a bit weird and unusual, rather than something that feels like 'Malkavians with Fortitude', 'Brujah with Quietus', etc. Throwing heretofore-unique Disciplines into the mix allows players a more accessible set without sacrificing too much of the exoticism. It does weaken the Bloodlines slightly, but Bloodline fanatics (like myself... the weirder the better!) wouldn't mind some additional support, I think. (To be honest, I think my general lack of interest in the Camarilla clans might be driving much of my resistance to core Disciplines, although I understand that the mileage of others will vary considerably.)

As to your comment on specials, yep, the majority of Kuei-Jin do indeed have these. I think that it is (/was) a growing trend in VTES anyway, but in my case it also goes back to the days when the KJ Disciplines were seperate and distinct; because there were fewer cards available, I wanted to create interesting in-built abilities that'd make for valuable mid- and high-cap minions even if you didn't have a great card selection in hand. On top of that, some smaller minions have inherent weaknesses to increase the number of Discipline 'points' they could have.

Note that Mike is busy with Real Life at the moment, so it'll be a couple of months before we have any revised card images up on the forum. However, I will be adding some polls once I can figure out how to do so so any such revisions will take into account the mood of the broader playgroup.

cheers all, and thanks for your continuing interest in this concept!

Disco Stu
Prince of Melbourne, Australia