Share ideas how to use community more in new card design

Now that Vtes is community driven I feel there is lot of chances to make community more involved with game. It just requires more initiative. I feel also some cards in new PDF sets should be in secret and I don't believe in total public play testing. But there should be some public cards to make whole community more excited. Here are some my ideas:

Make a card designing competition with some guide lines. Like first vote for sect or clan. Then card type vote. After that players can design card text or effects and other can vote for them etc. Bit similar design has worked in MTG also.

Other thing I would like to see is cards designed by winners of championships of different continents. Designing a card and getting your name to it is cool bonus for winning of tournament.

Also there could be big storylines for every continental championship which effect things. Like ADV version of old vampire with Prince of Melbourne or Manila (depending where tournament is). Then clan managing best in all storylines tournaments of the year could get something more major.

Share yours ideas also. I feel there is lot to get when players get more involved.

The best open development processes allow people to participate late in the design process to clean up rough edges - it lets community members feel good about contributing, without allowing democracy to derail the design process (and honestly, the community doesn't real affect design at all).

White Wolf recently did this with their V20 development and it seems WotC is doing something similar with D&D 5th.

As I've said before, this 'populist' approach to VTES will potentially be counter-productive. I honestly see far more problems with these sorts of ideas than the negatives you percieve from a 'closed shop'.

The advantages of a small design team are simple:
- Easy to establish
- Easier to reach consensus
- Less problems with internal politics of the design team
- Easier to meet deadlines
- Easier to establish consensus of 'viewpoint' (e.g. Sabbat, Blackhand, Princes, Indies, etc)

The Playtesters are there to take the role you talk about: being a group with varied opinions who act as a counter-balance to the Design Team. It is a fairly large team at the moment (I'd estimate around 75 people around the world are participating). It's our job to be your reference, to be a proxy for your views, to represent the opinions of the broad player base of VTES and to ensure that the VTES set produced is the best it can be FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF PLAYERS. So, your insistence that a 'populist' and 'transparent' system would be better tells me that you think that my own efforts in this process are inadequate or faulty or even incompetant. I may not always agree with people, I may argue my point of view aggressively and may antagonise countless people with my thoughts on how we can improve VTES (JamesatZephyr... I think you'd count yourself in that list), but I want to be able to turn around with even a "Final Text Version" of this new set and show it to the members of my playgroup and have them be genuinely excited by the possibilities. I figure, if the set doesn't excite me to play more VTES and make new decks... then it won't excite anyone else. So please, let the Playtest Team do what we have been asked to do: Represent you all so that the cards you get will EXCITE you to play VTES.

I second both of Ashur's ideas, and remind that collaboration does not necessarily entail design-by-committee. One can use both small group executive decisions as well as open community collaboration.

For example:

The small group can pick set theme, sect/clan focal points, and recommended slots per card type/discipline/etc. That's fine, this is mere setting of baseline parameters.

Rolling out brainstorming ideas can include both processes Ashur mentioned at this stage. All community people hammer out the brainstormed cards' ramifications.

Small group makes an executive decision to pares down the top candidates that fit within the slotted parameters.

The newly shrunk card pool is again fielded by the community to test popularity and any rules issues.

Small group makes another executive decision of which card ideas make the cut.

These now selected card ideas receive tentative card texts. They are provided to the community to playtest its stress points.

The Small Group and Rules Team collaborate on finalization of slotted card ideas' card texts.

Community is given opening for art submissions of new card's art. Also Small Group introduces professional artists' gracious submissions and petition community preference for usage upon slated cards.

Again, pool is culled by Community open polling and Small Group executive decisions.

Rinse and repeat until the process is done.

In this way deadlines can be met without having to wait for unanimity AND the process doesn't have to feel like a power struggle to get to completion. It's the give and take between the two groups that keeps things on task, while at the same time refining.

I honestly don't see how it's hard to include both technique's strengths. But then I'm likely a pie-in-the-sky dreamer to others, too.

For me the most important thing to use community more is to get players more excited. I would like to give message for normal not so hardcore players like "This game is in good hands now. There gonna be more expansions and it is designed by players for players."

Now it is harder to give that message when there is not much information. I feel more hardcore players will stay in game no matter what, problem is more normal players and how to keep their interest. Also I wouldn't like total open playtesting. Just to get feeling that there is some progress happening with the new set and someways to get all players more involved and excited would go a long way.