ReVamping VTES?

Orpheus wrote:

- This guy wants to revamp VTES, without any request from WW on that account, and without being a part of the design team, or holding any sort of position which would allow him to know what WW wishes ;

I said I wanted to see their opinions!!!! First impressions and input from brand-new players and people who've never played the game is very valuable!!!!

And you don't need my permission or White Wolf's permission or anyone else's permission to post ideas and commentary on the game.

Lönkka wrote:

self wrote:

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.

I'm under the assumption that not that many CCGs actually rotate cards.

A couple surely, but hardly "most"...

AFAIK, only MtG really does this, and I think they do it mostly because it supports their CCG model (i.e. getting people to buy cards and make them tons of $$$.)

manituan wrote:

I think all comes to what target audience VTES wants to aim for.

Who nuWW wants to aim for as target audience is very important. Some may consider this distasteful, but I think they need to focus on appealing to women, particularly European (white) women. Given the current pop-culture trends (Twilight, Vampire Diaries, True Blood, etc) dying down or coming to an end, nuWW can position itself to appeal to that demographic by focusing on the 'sexy vampires' - the Toreador / Daeva - and subversively get them hooked into the WoD. The Maven of the Eventide talks about why Kindred: The Embrace failed , while Buffy and Charmed succeeded a year later. The short answer is: female viewership.

Ezra wrote:

Am I the only one who think that most of this makes absolutely no sense ?
Even for a reboot.

First of all: Requiem is no longer supported by White Wolf.
So trying to take concept/name/power etc... from it is not relevant.

I wouldn't call it a reboot, as that implies "discarding all continuity in an established series in order to recreate its characters, timeline and backstory from the beginning."
(Source:Wikipedia.)

That's why I use the term spiritual successor: "a type of sequel that is not part of the same world or story as its predecessor, but is nonetheless considered to be a successor because it's made by the same creators; or, shares common themes, styles, or elements; or, most likely, both. In other words, it's a sequel 'in spirit'." (Source:TV Tropes)

The guys from nuWW fully support VTR, even though they are not involved with its development / publication. They are licensing out the ideas of their Vampires to Onyx Path, and fully give them their blessing:

Also, I find it very interesting that nuWW's Lead Storyteller Martin Elricsson makes reference to them considering "a third model" for Vampire, as Masquerade was the 1st, Requiem was 2nd, and a 3rd would (hopefully) be a sort of fusion of both VTM and VTR, but its own separate setting like how VTM and VTR are separate settings.

TwoRazorReign wrote:

Ankha wrote:

It's complicated to convince people that love the current game that the future of their game is a different game. It doesn't mean that people should get rude, or that there's no interesting ideas that could be included in the current game.

This is a great response. I fully agree with it.

@Ankha, @TwoRazorReign:
I am not surprised by Orpheus' response. People are anti-change by default and my ideas are heretical, so it is understandable.

self wrote:

A vampire’s clan isn’t analogous to color in Magic: The Gathering, or even Faction in Android Netruner or Clans in the classic Legend of the Five Rings CCG [...] I feel that the game would be better if Clan and Sect were completely separated from each other mechanically.

@self biased: I appreciate the serious response, thank you. I wanted to focus on what you said above in particular (but I am not dismissing any of your criticisms.)

I had been entertaining the idea of each vampire belonging to a clan, a religious group, and a political party. So they would have 3 subtypes or traits: Clan, Religion, Sect; or, Family, Covenant, Party; or X / Y / Z where X is the type of vampires, Y is shared beliefs about the vampiric origin or purpose (like the Ordo Dracul and the Lancea Sanctum from Requiem), and the political party (How to control the kine? What institutions do we infiltrate and influence?)

For example, a vampire that reads: Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. as their subtypes or 'traits'. Another example: Tremere. Infernal. Sabbat. I think most people familiar with card-games expect subtypes, but VTES uses some of those traits as subtypes and others more like Keywords, i.e. Camarilla is like a subtype as other cards reference it but it has no inherent mechanical effect (IIRC) while Prince is like a keyword because it grants a mechanical effect (passive votes.) Another thing is that the players of the LCGs and MTG and Hearthstone and YuGiOh love playing with their character's subtypes / traits.



Look at the two GoT characters in front. They both have subtypes: "Knight. Ranger." & "House Clegane. Knight. Lord." that have no rules associated in-and-of-themselves, but player's love building decks around and capitalizing on these subtypes.

You said the vampire clans in VTM / VTES aren't the equivalent of colors in MTG, but my point is that they should be. The idea of colors is just grouping certain themes and player expectations together. Red is the color of fire, anger, passion, stone, and earth. Hence, the creatures and spells of Red magic in MtG fit the color. In VTES, the Gangrel are the most bestial and animalistic of the vampires, and (IMO) should have greater access to the physical disciplines (Potence, Fortitude, & Celerity, but nevermind that), and that if the artwork (especially) and card design really pushed that, new players would instantly make the connection upon seeing a handful of Gangrel cards without needing to read or learn anything about them.

Ankha actually has a very interesting post about the graphic design of VTES , and he points out that the LCGs and CCGs (that have succeeded) have made readability and easy recognition a top priority. Associating a color with each particular clan (Green for Gangrel, Bluish-Purple for the Ventrue, Pink-Red for the Toreador / Daeva, etc) is like a mental shortcut for learning the game, and would be great for new players. Changing the framing for the different card-types (Combat cards are framed differently than Master cards) would also be a boon.

Thread feels kinda derailed... so...

LivesByProxy wrote:

But yeah... enough of my ideas, what about yours? How would you ReVamp VTES?

I would leave VTES largely as is, backwards compatible, with new errata's and tweakage for game balance and some new shizzle periodically released as PDF sets or pray god PRINT! Use the knowledge of the last 20+ years to finetune the game more, but nothing drastic. The game is old and can have the complexity to show it, there's really no need to reduce the cardbase or simplify clans and whatnot.

Any left over creative juices should go into a new WoD card/tabletop game, totally incompatible with VTES (could still be just about vampires, dark ages perhaps?) using lessons learned from 20+ years and other cardgames. No baggage from VTES, no more wasted efforts on how to make VTES more viable... Take the best ideas from VTES and start from scratch.

Keep posting ideas and theorycraft, but keep in mind that an incompatible revamp of VTES simply means a new game anyways... So you might as well drop the VTES legacy and go totally nuts with new ideas

self wrote:

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.

Yeah, that's basically it. I'm not saying we should ditch counters from V:TES, but if I were to go back in time and re-design V:TES knowing what we know now about V:TES and games in general, I'd seriously consider ditching the counters.

For us veterans, the counters aren't a big deal. We're used to them in a few ways - in-game use, acquiring them, and the DIY, "found art" aesthetic of them. It's also how things were done 20+ years ago. Gaming was a lot more DIY, a lot less "matured" in terms of mechanics and product design. For that matter, there has never been an all-you-need-in-one-box product for a full table of V:TES players.

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.

The Inside The Box video bloggers did a feature on V:TES and sure enough, they mention the counters:

LivesByProxy wrote:

P.S. Do you have a link to the 5 player starter product you created? I'd be interested in seeing that, as I can't find it on DriveThruCards.

Alas, no, it was never printed. Just part of a product pitch.

BenPeal wrote:

The Inside The Box video bloggers did a feature on V:TES and sure enough, they mention the counters:

I feel personally attacked by the 90's Nostalgia in this video.