ReVamping VTES?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.