file So, I've been at it again... [Yet another background and layout thread]

12 Nov 2018 19:11 #91816 by LivesByProxy
Speculation here, but the old Malk background was probably thought of as outdated and is, IMO, ugly as sin. :side:

:gang: :CEL: :FOR: :PRO: :cap6: Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean :PRO: until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex :AUS:, Obfuscate :OBF:, or Potence :POT: for the current action.

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12 Nov 2018 21:54 #91818 by nergalmcl
You know the Full Art cards from MTG? Did you think about that?

I don't think you change anything, honestly. You just change object places. Thank god Amaranth web site has the option to the old layouts, still hope for no-Camarilla Edition layouts.

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13 Nov 2018 09:23 #91824 by LivesByProxy


Here's something I threw together. This is how I imagine VTES 2.0 :)

-Borderless cards
-Full art pics
-larger discipline symbols
-less clans and bloodlines, no 'antitribu', fold bloodlines into clans
-every clan gets a unique discipline: daeva get seduction, malks get dementation, etc
-disciplines now come in 3 levels: novice, advanced, expert in order to rebalance card effects and differentiate low-caps, mid-caps, and high-caps
-age and sex are written out on the card; they're stats to be played with
-bolded and italicized 'type' line listing each vampires clan, faith, and party
-symbol in top right, top left, and bottom right corresponding to clan, faith, and party
-ideally a cards color would indicate clan, the framing around their disciplines, name, title, text boxes indicates their faith, and the font indicates their party
-a vampires capacity is no longer their age, but instead the max number of cards they can have on them (i.e. retainers, equipment, plots, Fame, Abbot, etc.)
-capacity symbol is now on vampires where the pool cost is on cards you/they play, same goes for clan, faith, and/or party requirements on cards
-blood and life are now called pool; you have your pool, each vampire has their own pool
-there are no keyword titles anymore, instead each vampire gets a subtitle specific to them (this is something FFG has done with a lot of their unique characters in their games, think of it like flavor text)

There's more but I don't expect anyone to like any of my ideas. :side:

:gang: :CEL: :FOR: :PRO: :cap6: Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean :PRO: until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex :AUS:, Obfuscate :OBF:, or Potence :POT: for the current action.

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13 Nov 2018 12:42 #91825 by Kraus

There's more but I don't expect anyone to like any of my ideas. :side:

It looks astounding, and would be grand for another game.

Once again: make it happen, and I'll be the first one to show an interest. :)

But, sure enough, it's not VtES.

When are you putting up a development blog or something? Would love to chime in.

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13 Nov 2018 15:51 #91828 by self biased



Here's something I threw together. This is how I imagine VTES 2.0 :)


second go, because my browser ate my post.

I'll start on a technical note: you have a lot of elements of the card (discipliones, clan icon, 'faith' icon, sect icon) that are super close to the edge of the card. A bleed area is usually left to cover up variances that are inevitable in the printing and die cutting of a card. If you've ever punched out cardboard tokens for a board game you might have seen that the printing overlaps where the token is cut out. typically about 1/8th of an inch (3mm) is left as a 'safe zone' for the finished product, and a further 1/8th inch is printed but discarded. This is likely the reason that Vtes cards have black borders, to protect the actual content of the cards.

As for the actual look and layout of the card, It looks great and has a very crisp and modern feel to it! But as Kraus points out, it doesn't
look like a Vtes card. I get that you're adding a bunch of elements you'd like to see in a hard reboot of the game and i'll comment further on that, but that's a little outside the scope of what I'm trying to do. I'm aiming for a redesign of the cards for the current game, with minor changes for clarity of the information on the card, not to also make changes I'd like to see made in the mechanics of the game (because there are some that I'd love to see). The colors of your border element are super bright and vibrant, which I like, but they're also very monochromatic and lacking in contrast. There's not enough variance in the texture that makes me say 'This is a Daeva vampire' aside from the fact that it's very pink.

Basically, it doesn't meet my expectations as someone who's familiar with the game. A part of my attraction to any game like this is the card frames. I fell in love with the lush and busy backgrounds featured in the early printings of Legend of the Five Rings CCG back in '96. I like my busy backgrounds, and your ideas just don't do it for me.

I do appreciate your efforts, though! I'd like to see what you come up with for the game as it currently is. I can also send you some fonts that may be helpful for you. hit me up at
self [dawt] biased [partypartyat] gmail and i'll send you some resources.

I'll respond to this here, but if you have a development thread post I can move it into that'd be preferable as it's not exactly on topic. I'm okay with a digression, but I don't want to completely derail the thread with the discussion. :)

I can see that you're very inspired by Vampire: The Requiem. In many ways that setting is a more fitting one for how V:tes plays and you have a lot of ideas that i've had myself years ago when I was involved with the Mind's Eye Theater global larp back in 2010 and wanted to make a sort of spin-off game that used a lot of elements from Vtes. However, the Requiem setting just wasn't as popular as the Masquerade setting, though that's a very muddy puddle to splash in with a whole lot of reasons why things ended up the way they did. Requiem continues to do well with Onyx Path Publishing, which is nice because I really do like the setting.

However, the bottom line is that we have Vampire: The Masquerade (v5) as our setting for V:tes and not Requiem. I'm going to try to frame my replies to your ideas from the perspective the Masquerade setting and V:tes as it is. I'd be more than happy to discuss V:tes as you feel it ought to be in another thread. :)

Borderless cards, Full art pics, larger discipline symbols


In general, I'm in favor of these things. Indeed, my own efforts have been focused on these things.

less clans and bloodlines, no 'antitribu', fold bloodlines into clans


I'm half with you on this. For the Vtes as it is I think we can fold antitribu clans into their counterparts without too many things getting crazy. However, doing so requires a significant errata of hundreds of cards. I'm against folding Bloodlines vampires into their 'parent' clans. In the Requiem setting, Bloodlines are openly accepted as members of a parent clan, but In Masquerade they work a little differently. In Masquerade, it's not always clear (or thematically important) what parent clan to fold the bloodline into. In Masquerade Bloodlines are often small clans that are distinct enough from their parent clan (not to mention Abominations). Folding bloodlines into parent clans for V:tes feels like it misses the point that these are small, but unique clans.

every clan gets a unique discipline: daeva get seduction, malks get dementation, etc


this is probably the biggest design flaw of the Masquerade setting that I feel Requiem gets right. Discipline spreads on vampires are an unfortunate legacy issue faced by a game that's drawing from five different versions of its source material. Personally, I'd love to see each clan have a unique discipline! I think it would add a lot to the game. But I don't see a way to change things to reflect this outside of giving clan 'enhancements' on certain cards in the same manner as Aire of Elation.

disciplines now come in 3 levels: novice, advanced, expert in order to rebalance card effects and differentiate low-caps, mid-caps, and high-caps


Another great idea! I had this very idea for my Requiem themed knock-off game. it's a simple change that would add quite a bit of needed depth in terms of design space and makes up for having a smaller number of disciplines. Unfortunately it requires a VERY hard reset (which we are equally VERY unlikely to see) of Vtes that would require errata for literally thousands of cards.

age and sex are written out on the card; they're stats to be played with


A vampire's chronological age and generation are two very different things. Age/capacity comparison is currently an underutilized mechanic that probably has some good design space to explore. I don't really see the need to broaden the mechanic any more, though. As for sex of a vampire, as I noted in your other thread I am vehemently against adding a completely new mechanic whose implementation has the potential to be mind-bogglingly problematic to ensure that marginalized groups are well represented in the game: it's a can of worms best left unopened.

bolded and italicized 'type' line listing each vampires clan, faith, and party
-symbol in top right, top left, and bottom right corresponding to clan, faith, and party
-ideally a cards color would indicate clan, the framing around their disciplines, name, title, text boxes indicates their faith, and the font indicates their party


I think adding Icons for Sect would be a great idea, provided they free up space in the text box. Adding faith as what is effectively a keyword seems to be a bridge too far. Clan and Sect are already ubiquitous keywords. Representing clan by color isn't a great idea because colorblindness is a thing. Changing the font of the text based on the vampires Sect also seems like a nice detail touch But when I take that with just how many different variables you're putting into the design space it feels like it clutters the design down by adding too many variables to it, and it would lack a certain elegant simplicity in how the information is presented on the card.

a vampires capacity is no longer their age, but instead the max number of cards they can have on them (i.e. retainers, equipment, plots, Fame, Abbot, etc.)


As I mentioned previously, A vampire's Generation is unrelated to their chronological age. I'm also not understanding what this is intended to fix, as it feels like it's rare to see a vampire with more than 5 cards attached to it.

capacity symbol is now on vampires where the pool cost is on cards you/they play, same goes for clan, faith, and/or party requirements on cards


so, by your design, If there's a card that requires a particular 'Faith,' i'd have to look at the top right of the card, but if a different card required a Clan it'd be in the top left? why is this information scattered around the card face? that feels like it would contribute to a cluttered layout. I'm okay with moving the capacity over to the other side of the card. it's effectively a cost, and that's where they're usually located.

blood and life are now called pool; you have your pool, each vampire has their own pool


I see what you're trying to do with this, and I half agree with it. Cards would have to be carefully calibrated so there isn't any confusion as to where the bead goes.

there are no keyword titles anymore, instead each vampire gets a subtitle specific to them (this is something FFG has done with a lot of their unique characters in their games, think of it like flavor text)


so you want to add keywords but take away the equivalent? I'm super confused here.


Overall, you're purporting a large number of changes to Vtes as currently it is. There's some good ideas there, some of which would be easier to implement than others. I feel that several of your suggestions delve into territory that i feel is far more detailed than is really appropriate for the scope of the game. Abstracting concepts for the sake of mechanics isn't necessarily a bad thing, and having very intricate details isn't always a good thing. I feel that expanding the detailed elements of the game opens up enough design space at the end of the day to ultimately justify it. I feel these detailed elements are much better suited to be explored in the corresponding roleplaying game than in the format V:tes currently has.

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13 Nov 2018 20:46 #91831 by Lech



Here's something I threw together. This is how I imagine VTES 2.0 :)

-Borderless cards
-Full art pics
-larger discipline symbols
-less clans and bloodlines, no 'antitribu', fold bloodlines into clans
-every clan gets a unique discipline: daeva get seduction, malks get dementation, etc
-disciplines now come in 3 levels: novice, advanced, expert in order to rebalance card effects and differentiate low-caps, mid-caps, and high-caps
-age and sex are written out on the card; they're stats to be played with
-bolded and italicized 'type' line listing each vampires clan, faith, and party
-symbol in top right, top left, and bottom right corresponding to clan, faith, and party
-ideally a cards color would indicate clan, the framing around their disciplines, name, title, text boxes indicates their faith, and the font indicates their party
-a vampires capacity is no longer their age, but instead the max number of cards they can have on them (i.e. retainers, equipment, plots, Fame, Abbot, etc.)
-capacity symbol is now on vampires where the pool cost is on cards you/they play, same goes for clan, faith, and/or party requirements on cards
-blood and life are now called pool; you have your pool, each vampire has their own pool
-there are no keyword titles anymore, instead each vampire gets a subtitle specific to them (this is something FFG has done with a lot of their unique characters in their games, think of it like flavor text)

There's more but I don't expect anyone to like any of my ideas. :side:


Wtf, Daeva with superior auspex and no vigor? Also, expansion symbol is too big. I like capacity on that side of the card btw.

:laso: :CEL: :DOM: :OBT: :POT: :cap8:
Sabbat.Black Hand Shakar: Lech loathe ranged weapons. Once each action, he may burn 1 blood to become Camarilla Prince of Krakow until the end of the action.

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