Alternate VP system

Goals of VP system
Offer mechanics to regulate average game speed and add more depth in terms of story telling.
Even if this idea is discarded by game designers, this system is still 100% compatible with cards in existence and casual players can use this system to regulate their game length.

Victory conditions in a nutshell
- The game ends when:
--- X points are reached and a player claims victory
--- Only 1 player is left
--- Arbitrary timeout is reached
- The player with the highest VP count wins
- Ousting your prey nets 2 victory points
- Objectives net 1 victory point
- A player can only claim victory in his or her turn.
- All current rules still apply save for the changes above

Objectives (no cards)
For casual players, objectives can be anything the player group can think of and agree upon.
I would not advise this for anything official, but more as something individual playgroups can agree on themselves or for specific story line events.

Objectives (cards)
Objectives could be an action you need to put into play. The action card would list conditions you need to fulfil in order to gain 1 VP after you put the action into play. Conditions you have fulfilled before you put the card into play, do not count for that objective card.

Objectives could also be a new card type you can put into play as a discard phase action, thus competing directly with events.

Formats
With this alternative VP system, many formats are possible to regulate game length or game style by offering varying victory conditions.
- Tournament victory condition: Amount of players * 2 victory points required.
- Speed: 5 victory points required.
- Story line: 5 victory points required, Ousting does not grant any VP, only objectives count.

Request for decency before I list examples
I kindly ask people to view the below text as examples and not points for debate or platform to pronounce your opinions on a certain aspect of the game that you dislike. Thank you.

Example disclaimer
The examples are just inspirational examples and should be further fleshed out and balanced. They merely show what could be done with objectives and are by no means intended as proposals for new cards or rules.

Example default Objectives (no cards)
- Show of force: When counting victory points to claim victory, add 1 temporary VP for every 3 minions you control.
- Butcher: When counting victory points to claim victory, add 1 temporary VP for every 3 minions in your preys torpor region.
- Conniver: You can put your passed vote cards in a separate pile out of game, every 3 cards in this pile counts as 1 VP.
- Intimidation: You can put each bleed action in a separate pile out of game, every 3 cards in this pile counts as 1 VP.

Example Objective cards
Feel free to design your own objective cards and print them if your play group want to try out this alternative VP system.

Reputation of the Slayer
Card type: Objective
Card text: Any red list minion burned by you or your minions is put on this card. Each minion on this card counts as 1 VP. Any vampire can take a action costing 2 blood to remove this card from the game, any victory points granted by this card are lost.

Aggression Mastery
Card type: Objective
Card text: Put 1 counter on this card for every pool you successfully bleed from your prey. Every 5 counters on this card count for 1 victory point. Any vampire can take a action costing 2 blood to remove this card from the game, any victory points this card granted are lost.

Hardly a balanced system.

For example, Torporing 3 minions is WAY harder than calling 3 votes or bleeding three times (Night Moves and Superior Obfuscate horde anyone? Or just your friendly neighborhood smallcap voter?)

Also, shouldn't those be SUCCESSFULLY calling a vote/bleeding etc?


Might be a nice change of pace as a one off but even then probably enterprising players will easily find ways of breaking this system...

Though, I think that bets could be hedged, as it were. make it like, at the end of a turn in which you bled 4 or more pool, gain a VP. using extra "objective" cards, might be interesting and give it a Legend of the Five Rings/Legend of the Burning Sands vibe.

Lönkka wrote:

Hardly a balanced system.

For example, Torporing 3 minions is WAY harder than calling 3 votes or bleeding three times (Night Moves and Superior Obfuscate horde anyone? Or just your friendly neighborhood smallcap voter?)

Also, shouldn't those be SUCCESSFULLY calling a vote/bleeding etc?


Might be a nice change of pace as a one off but even then probably enterprising players will easily find ways of breaking this system...

(added a disclaimer for the examples in the OP)

The examples listed are not really well thought through I admit. They're just inspirational examples of what could be done with objectives. I personally prefer card objectives over default objectives, but both have merit for casual or storyline gameplay.

It won't be hard to balance default objectives, there's no card needing reprinting I can also envision multiple sets of community driven default objectives, pick a set and start play

The system itself is just the "Victory conditions in a nutshell" part, which theoretically also works without objectives to reduce average game length. For example you could set X as 4 in a 5 player game, so the first to oust 2 players wins the game. It helps substantially in shortening average game length, but promotes certain speedy decks too much (which might not be a bad thing though), so I added objectives to make things more interesting and make it possible to set X at a higher number.

The example default objectives unnecesarily punish people for playing toolbox or star minion decks. For that reason, this proposal fails.