ReVamping VTES?

ReverendRevolver wrote:

@ livesbyproxy:
Now, my question is, would it feel less daunting with more mystery at the end of the road so to speak if when you started investigating vtes there was a simpler side presented, removing bloodlines, laibon, and thier disciplines, and focusing on 13 clans, the antitribbu and more importantly, just the regular disciplines limiting the tzimitsce, assamites, ravnos, Gangrel, giovanni,tremere, malk,lasombra, and setites to the only clans with "oddball" disciplines?
If I'm losing you, auspex, Celerity, animalism, fortitude,dominate, potence, presence, obfuscate, are the normal staple skills that cross all clans and bloodlines.
From those you have in clan skills of ventrue, Nosferatu, toreador, brujah, and all thier antitribbu counterparts. Now, the other 9 of 13 clans have 1 discipline that's stuck to that clan, and 2 disciplines that are one of the more universal ones.

If you came into the game knowing there were 3 levels to learning, and it was like MtG back in the late 90s, with "beginner, advanced, experienced" labels, would it feel as daunting?

I believe we can make the whole learning curve easier by limiting the amount if nonsense you need to go to get started.
8 clans, easily squishable into a 5 clan starter by both Nos one, or even removing!nos. Then merge brujah and torries, then merge !torries with ! ventrue and it all gets less crazy and more trackable.

Advanced add rest of thirteen clans, final level bloodline and laibon.

Would that have been easier?

Some interesting things here...

I would not say VTES was / is truly daunting, but I come from a card / board gaming background and I wanted to learn more about the game (specifically, what was the deal with the square and diamond icons?) There is a saying in Magic that you can't teach the game to someone who doesn't care / want to learn it. The art of teaching (and "selling" a game to your friends as being a fun and worthwhile experience) is worthy of it's own post, but "selling" the world of Vampire, and the concepts associated with it, seems to really be the challenging part and where the 'difficulty' comes from (I guess, I haven't taught anyone VTES yet.)

With most board-games and card-games the premise alone tells new players everything they need to know about the setting (which is often intentionally left vague, or generic, or the setting is tiny, like in Clue) but VTES comes with all the setting baggage of VTM. The premise of VTES is "ancient vampires manipulating younger vampires into political struggles and physical confrontations in an effort to undermine their opponents," but players then have to learn about "Methuselahs, the Camarilla, Princes, Justicars, Primogens, the Sabbat, the Anarchs" etc plus all the weird disciplines AND all the clans.

And, to be honest, I don't think VTES really world-builds very well. It would be interesting to find someone who had never played / heard of VTM and get them to play VTES and then ask them about the world they imagine the game takes place in. How similar would it be to VTM? How different? All the same "material" is there, but the way it is presented paints a very different picture, I think, of the WoD.

Also worth noting, MTG had the beginner, advanced, expert level products back in the late 90s, early 2000s, but they've since dropped that model, as Mark Rosewater said (paraphrasing) that it ended up not being that meaningful of a distinction and taught bad gameplay habits / did not introduce or communicate the higher level concepts of the game, despite the complexity / power-level of cards increasing with the "difficulty". (/paraphrasing.)

Blooded wrote:

The fact that it takes a while to play? Well, yes, how else do you develop a strategy. That, imho, is the missing part of all PvP 2 player games. very little strategy space.

So from someone who has been playing since the start, I don't think there is much need to change anything. It is the complex, intricate, WELL DESIGNED space this games cards and rules exist in that make it such an interesting and fun thing.

If you wanna revamp something, get rid of imb-ew-d

Well, not to get into semantics, but strategy (as I understand it) is the broadest scope of how you're aiming to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish. Strategy would be deck-building around a few particular disciplines and library cards (like playing Malk stealth-bleed) or choosing who you sit next at the table. Tactics would be your moment-to-moment decisions. As one antediluvian on this site quotes: "Strategy? Luck is my strategy, of course."

I do think the game is well designed on a macro-level but I still think it could be improved along the points I mentioned, especially graphically. I'm still curious, what would you consider to be the core elements of VTES? Obviously not the Imbued. (Which I would remove if I had my way.)

I think the counters are extremely useful and tend to give out the situation at a glimpse. Am indicator looks the same if it is indicating lowly 1 or the big pile of 11.

Besides most of the glass bead variety counters tend to look nice. Years ago some mates were playing VTES while on the ferry to Tallinn and mundies were oohing and aahing their game due to aesthetic value, especially due to the counters..

Since you can use whatever you want for counters, I think 5 point counters are extremely confusing and therefore A Bad Idea TM. I recall a game years ago where someone used such counters and it was less intuitive than playing without them.

Lönkka wrote:

Since you can use whatever you want for counters, I think 5 point counters are extremely confusing and therefore A Bad Idea TM. I recall a game years ago where someone used such counters and it was less intuitive than playing without them.

The context Ben likely intended about the counters was more "How Do I Design A Complete Product?" thing, with the intention being to give a prospective group of players everything they need to play the game in one package. I have no idea how people picked up the notion that he thought counters were bad.

ranty and rambly message ahead:

V:tes was sold to us as a CCG. It’s the second game in the Deckmaster Series by the famed Magic CCG creator Richard Garfield. At the time it was created there were no Living Card Games and the board game culture that exists today was still in its infancy. But is it really a CCG? True, it was traditionally packaged and distributed as such, but I feel that V:tes is actually a board game that thinks it’s a card game.

Most CCGs follow set blocks for competitive play. Cards are rotated in and out of the current base set periodically effectively limiting the card pool for what is considered legal for tournaments. This presumably helps drive sales and provides easy entry points for new players when the Block resets. V:tes is different in that it does not follow this pattern. Outside of a handful of cards on the banned list, cards from the first printing are as equally valid for use in tournament play as cards printed in the final set. Furthermore, members of the community have opposed the notion of adding a set rotation mechanism, and some even still oppose the Grouping rule that was introduced back in 2002. The grouping rule puts a limit on what vampires could appear together in crypts, but also does not invalidate or remove cards from the overall pool so it’s possible to see vampires from very early sets and from very late sets at the same table (but not in the same deck, barring a few exceptions). In theory it’s possible to show up to a tournament using your first edition cards play, and in some cases do well, despite not having supported the game in years. Whereas with set blocks that’s just simply not possible. The prevailing attitude among the community seems to be this is a positive aspect the game.

V:tes has been developed with a multiplayer focus. Most of the CCGs I’ve played were ostensibly two-player and provided multiplayer rules that were at best clumsy or at worst non-existent and relied on the players to craft house rules for multiplayer. V:tes using a predator/prey relationship puts a turn order, and helps drastically reduce the chaos of a free-for-all and fits in very well with the overall theme of the game*. In a two-player game there’s really only one goal: crush your opponent. However in a game with more than two players, there is a power dynamic that gets created and the gameplay will also involve deal making, politicking, and table talk. This is vital and for many a very attractive point of gameplay.

There are two downsides to this: getting enough people together to play and have this experience, and the overall length of the game. Most CCG tournaments run at my Friendly Local Game Store tend to see 45 minute rounds between two players. These two players will play a best-out-of-three round for up to five rounds. So, you’ll get ten to fifteen games in before finals. V:tes games tend to run very long comparatively speaking, two hours or even more. The time invested into a single game, along with playing the game with several other people is more a hallmark of a board game, and less of a CCG.

It feels like a game with the scope of V:tes in terms of number of players and length of play would appeal more to the serious board game players. It just comes down to how to best distribute the game and advertise to the ideal audience.

The distribution of the game has been unwieldy, and at times nightmarish to accommodate the sheer volume of cards that now exist in the card pool and pose a frightful quandary to those working to bring V:tes. How do you distribute a game comprising of thousands of cards effectively? How do you hook new players into a game where veteran players can hold a substantial material advantage? How do you solve the conundrum of a player willing to start, but the theme they want to explore uses cards that aren’t readily available during this part of the distribution cycle?

To me, the most difficult hurdle V:tes faces is just how do you distribute this monstrosity
of a game? There's a lot of elements that could be streamlined or folded into others and if we came away with a game that could be 60% compatible with the old cards, that'd be good enough for me. The problem with this is that would require sweeping errata and reprinting of cards. I'm wondering: does the game need some kind of soft reset after twenty-five years?

I've been thinking about it: So long as the core themes and gameplay don't change, I'd support a new V:tes even if if my entire collection were rendered invalid.

TL;DR: I think V:tes is a board game that masquerades as a card game.

_____
* has anyone else noticed just how thematic this is? Five Methuselahs sit down to a game with an equal amount of resources and work to manipulate their minions to oust their opponents. Think about it: Pool isn’t your physical life in this game, just the agreed-upon resources to be used in the game. When you’re ousted, you’re not dead, just out of the game. This also explains why each player starts with the same amount of pool. It’s a beautifully elegant meta explanation.

oh, and all of this talk about counters got me all bothered and creative:



blood and pool could be printed on opposite sides, and aid new players in remembering the difference between paying Blood and Pool.

edit: they look better without the numbers. also, an additional style.