New Blog - Gaming with BS

In light of the poll about the future of VTES, I've been doing a lot of thinking about how the rules and structure of the game could be changed to make it better. But today's article is about how the addition of 1 card could change the entire game. No rule changes, no bans, just the printing of a single card. Very interested to hear what people think about this one. Hope you enjoy!

Musing on the Dominance of Dominate

First of all, thx for regular articles on your blog. I found most of them interesting.
As for the new article, while I agree that dominate is a single most powerfull discipline in the game and that the card proposed by you would change VTES I don't like proposed card(s). Here is why:
1. Disciplines should have their flavor and more or less unique effects. Bounce effect is quiette unique and should have unique requirements. When pursuing balance between clans/ disciplines, etc. we should remember about keeping clear differences between them. If we won't every discipline would be the same, every clan would have access to same effects and tools. While it would lead to perfect balance and the same time it would lead to perfect boredom.
Another question is: is it bad that some disciplines are better than others? In WoD rpg setting it was the case.
2. Bounce effect on non-discipline card would cause bleed strategy to be much worse. Is this the effect you want to achieve?
3. Bounce effect on non-discipline card would cause cards like Perfect Clarity or Touch of Clarity to be much worse. Is this the effect you want to achieve?
For those reasons I would love to see new good and interesting effects requiring disciplines (clans/ sects) other than dominate (it doesn't need any new tools ). This aproach speaks to me much stronger than giving same effects for everyone.

Few more thoughts about your text.
1. You don't always need proper defense to be succesfull in VTES. There is a number of veeery succesfull strategies in VTES that don't care about defense at all but rather go in opposite direction - full offense. This include most weenie decks, most s&b decks and a big part of political decks.
2. Defense options are not only intercept or bounce. Rush, political and master decks have a lot of different defence options.
3. Lost in translation is not that bad. It actually found its way to a number of TWDA decks.

alek wrote:

First of all, thx for regular articles on your blog. I found most of them interesting.

Thank you for saying so! That's exactly the point of the articles - to get people to read and think about VTES. Even if what I'm saying it totally wrong, and even if we never see another disciplineless bounce card, the fact that people are talking about it is a win for me.

alek wrote:

1. Disciplines should have their flavor...

Oh I completely agree! The color pie / discipline pie is absolutely essential to making the game interesting. I actually wish a little more thought that gone into this at the beginning. Most of VTES design seems to be based directly off the RPG powers, rather than a design document which talks about the types of effects a certain discipline should have. All that having been said, there are certain effects that we think all vampires should be able to do: bleed at +1 bleed, wake, dodge, maneuver, press, +2 intercept v bleeds, etc. So why not bleed bounce? Elder vampires have mysterious powers, why not influencing the minds of other vampires?

alek wrote:

2. Bounce effect on non-discipline card would cause bleed strategy to be much worse. Is this the effect you want to achieve?

While I see where you are coming from here, I'm not really sure I agree with you. From my own experience, I estimate that 3-4 players at a standard 5 player game (and at least this at tournaments!) have decks which include auspex or dominate. This already means that the majority of decks on the table have bounce, yet bleeding remains the dominant ousting mechanism. I'm not at all sure that giving the other 1-2 players access to bounce will destroy the ability of a stealth bleed deck to win. And let's face it, those archetypes are incredibly powerful... maybe knocking them down a peg is a good thing.

alek wrote:

3. Bounce effect on non-discipline card would cause cards like Perfect Clarity or Touch of Clarity to be much worse. Is this the effect you want to achieve?

Any efforts to reduce the power of dominate will have this effect. Personally, the usefulness of two Dominate hosers (who have failed in their mission to keep Dominate in line) would not enter into my mind if I was thinking about whether to ban Deflection, so I don't see why it should be important here. Niche cards like this are never really played in VTES. The only reason these cards see any play is because they attempt to counter the most over powered and most dominant discipline in the game. I don't see anybody crying about Shape Mastery (which cancels obtenebration, protean, and vicissitude cards).

alek wrote:

1. You don't always need proper defense to be succesfull in VTES.

You are correct that full offense is effective, but this is accomplished either through the use of Dominate (or another powerful bleeding discipline like Dementation), or with a weenie hoard. In either case, giving decks some measure of defense against decks like these is a big plus for me. Also, I think weenies have had their day in the sun. They've been a dominant archetype since 1994. Maybe it's time to give mid cap vampire the tools they need to not be completely overwhelmed by the weenie onslaught while also not playing Dominate.

alek wrote:

2. Defense options are not only intercept or bounce. Rush, political and master decks have a lot of different defence options.

Well, rush is it's own story. I'm currently writing an article about combat, but in short, the basic problem with it in VTES is that it either does nothing (you rush only to run into S:CE, and now you've wasted your action), or it moves to prevent somebody else from winning. Neither extreme is desirable, and the game is at it's most fun when combat manages to do something, but not reduce a player to impotence. Watching somebody sit there with all their minions in torpor just discarding a card each turn and waiting to be bleed out turn after turn is one of the most depressing things I've ever encountered in my gaming career.

But you are correct, there are other forms of defense. I outline what I consider to be the other two viable candidates in my article - block and bleed reduction/bloating. I don't see how Master cards provide a reliable defense. Even the mighty Pentex will do nothing more than waste an action if you aren't backing it up. Politics does admittedly have access to a few interesting cards like Banishment, but I have yet to see any deck rely on that for defense. Most political decks that I see include OTQV and Deflection or Telepathic Misdirection.

alek wrote:

3. Lost in translation is not that bad. It actually found its way to a number of TWDA decks.

Those decks include 1 or 2 copies as a surprise. Much the same reason that a deck might include 1 or 2 copies of Archon Investigation. It's not the basis of your defense, it's the occasional surprise punch you can throw that nobody is expecting. Personally, I keep including LiT in my decks, but I have a predilection for bad cards, and I don't see anybody else interested in spending two blood to bounce a bleed with a ton of restrictions. At 1 blood it might be playable, although it would only help fatty decks, not mid-caps.

Hope I addressed all your points! Thanks for the comment and the continuation of the discussion.

Reply on two posts.

First: about succes of FFG's LGC - on what information this is based? Obviously FFG got great distribution channels and high quality standards, so they can move large number of products using their formula "geek friendly setting + fine rules", but I seriously doubt the real economy under all this. Production and distribution costs money, support cost money, and it's LCG, so there are no rare chase bulk buys.

It was said by somebody from WW several (10?) years ago that on starters company looses money and boosters are needed for profitability.

And their actions confirm this - discontinuing CoC, introduction of rotation to other LCG ets.

And any publisher of new VtES not only will got all the same problems, but also will need to solve them without FFG's resourses.

Second: Deflection to all of them.

I don't like this idea at all.

Yea, dominate is better then celerity and clans without it are not so competitive. But is it a problem? No!

You yourself mentioned - if somebody really want to play "very competitive" gangrel they got crypt with dominate, if you really in need you can add it to blood brothers with skill cards.

But are you really in need?

Not really. TWDA clearly shows that you can win nearly with any deck, maybe not so often, but it's impossible to got absolute equallity. VtES I think by now got the widest diversity of winning decks from all ccg.

The other problem - criteria of diversity itself. We can easily get GtU, Conditioning and deflection to all disciplines, as vell as Vignes, Arika e t.s. Will get more diversity in clans (maybe) in TWDA.

But will it be real diversity if all the decks will be generally the same with different variants of the same cards?

Lack of bounce is the feature of the "lesser clans", the game will be less fun without it.

Hi Elotar, thanks for contributing. I appreciate your posts, but I'm not entirely sure that I understand what you are trying to say here. It seems that you are suggesting that its not only ok that some clans aren't competitive, but desirable. That players should be forced to play Dominate if they want to be competitive (so anybody playing Gangrel without Stanislava is purposely choosing to have a less competitive deck. And thats ok.

Please feel free to correct me, but if that is your point, I'm honestly not entirely sure how to respond to that. I have to admit that this idea is rather contradictory to everything I think should be true in game design. Why even bother printing cards or clans or disciplines if they have no way to win or meaningfully interact with the game? If your best option is to slap Dominate skill cards onto your Salubri Antitribu, then why are there Salubri Antitribu in the first place? For that matter, if we want to have weak clans, why print anything to help them? Should the VEKN design team simply stop designing cards for those clans? If this imbalance of power is so desirable, maybe we should focus on printing better Dominate cards!

Looking at the TWDA, we indeed see that almost every clan is represented (save for Abombination and Nagarasa, but they basically aren't clans), but the numbers of representation simply aren't the same. Looking at the decks that I've separated into clan (2008 to prsent) major clans (so no bloodlines, no liabon) with Dominate got, on average 70.8 wins. Compare this to an average of 34.5 win for clans without Dominate. And that figure includes clans like Malkavian and Gangrel where a majority of the wins are coming from those crypts that have access to Dominate. If we remove those, the disparity becomes much worse.

And then we get to the truly pathetic clans like Nosferatu Antitribu. In those 8 years, they've managed to scape together a total of 5 wins. Without doing something to help that clan, we effectively say that they don't exist outside of "for fun" games. I agree that not every clan needs to be equally competitive, but saying that it's ok for a clan to have fewer than one victory every year (or claiming that this fact is desirable) is... well again, I don't know what to say. The idea that the only way you should play Blood Brothers is to add Dominate skill cards to them is again... odd to me.

As a quick aside, I think it is impossible to compare VTES to other card games to see which game has more "diversity" in their winning decks. It's really not a metric that gains us anything, and it's really impossible to say. But to suggest that VTES with it's 3667 has produced more distinct winning decks than Magic with it's 15625 cards is... statistically improbable. Hell, every year when they release a new set of cards, the same basic winning deck would change because some cards rotate out, while new ones become available.

Finally, I'd like to address this comment because it brings up a very good point:

elotar wrote:

Lack of bounce is the feature of the "lesser clans", the game will be less fun without it.

Well, it could also be said that not winning very much is a feature, and we should rigorously defend that "feature." But perhaps the more important question is why? Why is bleed bounce something given to Dominate and Auspex? Because Richard Garfield decided to give that ability to those disciplines. Really, all we're going on here is precedent. Jyhad gave those discipline bounce, and we've never thought to change that equation. Given how horrible the game balance was in Jyhad and the vast number of errata that the set sparked, I would suggest that it's a rather poor precedent to be following. And if nothing but precedent will sway you - look to Lost in Crowds. Even LSJ saw that confining bleed bounce to those discipline was causing problems. Even he wanted to extend that defense to other clans. He did so in a very tentative way, and it's failed to have any impact on the game. All I'm suggesting is that we take the next step, and make Lost in Crowds playable.

I'll leave you with this last thought. If we accept that that the best way to make a deck viable is to add dominate to it and that we should do nothing to help the unsuccessful clans, then I submit that tournaments should ban decks without Dominate. That would be in accordance with the rule that you must attempt to win.

It's more challenging and in-turn satisfying to win with a deck that does not play GTU and Deflections (or bounce in general). Add "Deflections" to all deck types and that challenge disappears.

Yes, many decks will be greatly improved with access to bounce. But if everything is essentially dominate then why bother playing something other than dominate?

The disciplines dominance is quite fitting given it's name and I believe having a clear "benchmark" discipline has probably helped a lot in terms of balancing the game.

When you're predator's first minion pops out with DOM you know you that any miss play could cost you 6 - 7 pool which raises the stakes, intensity and definitely adds to the game. If all decks had the same power level you wouldn't have that reaction.

Very reasonable points, but let's be clear. The proposal is to provide all clans with a bleed bounce card that is strictly inferior in every possible way to Deflection. I'd argue that it's strictly inferior to every existing bleed bounce card with the exception of Lost in Translation. Nobody (not even somebody as crazy as am I) is suggesting giving Deflection or Govern or Conditioning to all disciplines.

Also, if you like challenging yourself, I think that's great. And there are a plethora of tools available to you: play a atypical clan strategies, play with powerful disciplines but not their most powerful cards (we have a local player who has a personal ban list), make unique combinations of disciplines, try to make a thematic deck (all primgoen!), etc. The list really just goes on and on. I happen to really like making cards that heavily feature bad cards. That's my own personal challenge.

But the question is - should there always be horrible clans so that you can feel challenged? Or put another way, should the VEKN sets specifically include bad cards so that I can feel challenged? Well, I'd say no to both. It's not worth telling a player "Oh, you like Clan X... yeah, we designed them to lose, so that other people could be challenged. Here's a Malk 94 deck." I assume that many players were introduced to the game from the RPG, and I assume that this remains one of our best sources for new players. Imagine if you wanted to play Legend of the Five Rings (another card game based around clans), and you read the theme & lore on one clan and really fell in love with it, and you wanted to go and play it. You'd be pretty devestated if you found out that clan had been designed as a "hard mode" for players who had already won with everything else.

Also, allow me to comment on benchmarks. What's the point of having a benchmark that is better than anything else? I think that it would be rather easy to create cards that are simply better than any. A more important benchmark (to my convoluted mind) is a middle of the road situation. Or a guideline for how powerful an "average" discipline should be for a specific aspect of the game. That way you can have some disciplines that surpass the benchmark (or average power) in one area, but fall short in another. As an example, let's say that Obtenebration is our benchmark for stealth (4 total cards, 3 cost blood, can get up to 5 stealth). Now we can start talking about disciplines that are worse at stealth, but better at something else like bleeding (like Vicissitude), or disciplines that are worse at stealth, but have a stronger focus on combat (like Celerity). To me this is useful.

But having a benchmark which is superior to everything else ever provides no useful information. Imagine creating a free card that says "Bleed with +100 bleed and +100 stealth, this cannot be bleed bounced." That would certainly be better but I have no idea what it means if we set that as the benchmark. Now obviously this is a ridiculous example, but if that benchmark is useless, why is a benchmark that is just a little bit better than everything else useful?

Ke. wrote:

Yes, many decks will be greatly improved with access to bounce. But if everything is essentially dominate then why bother playing something other than dominate?

Forgive me, but I don't see how giving bleed bounce to other clans make everybody play Dominate. This seems akin to saying that Weighted Walking Stick or Target Vitals are similar to Potence cards and once they were released, everybody stopped playing other forms of combat and just used Potence. I don't know about your Meta, but I see WWS and Target Vitals a lot more than pure Potence combat.

Brett, I do agree with your thinking that Lost In Translation is not good enough for its cost. I've almost included it in several decks but always cut it out before playing. It would be nice to have a slightly better version, and I do like your suggestions. It'd be a great tool for any deck to have.

However, my worry would be that it would then suddenly appears in almost every deck.
Y'see, I hate playing against someone with bounce - it's just so damn frustrating!
Ive seen bleeds get passed back and forth around the table like a tennis ball many times as it is - I dont like the prospect of that becoming even more common!

...or maybe I just need to find better strategies to deal with bounce?

brettscho wrote:

Ke. wrote:

Yes, many decks will be greatly improved with access to bounce. But if everything is essentially dominate then why bother playing something other than dominate?

Forgive me, but I don't see how giving bleed bounce to other clans make everybody play Dominate. This seems akin to saying that Weighted Walking Stick or Target Vitals are similar to Potence cards and once they were released, everybody stopped playing other forms of combat and just used Potence. I don't know about your Meta, but I see WWS and Target Vitals a lot more than pure Potence combat.

Let me flip my comment, both apply: "But if everything is essentially dominate then why bother playing dominate?". Diversity is good.

Target Vitals is a good example of a highly effective low cost (not monetary) card weakening the appeal of a discipline. It's a great card — but why bother playing potence when you can just play TV + whatever ousting mechanic. I'm not convinced it's added to the game; if anything it's decreased diversity — the fact that it's commonly played doesn't negate that.

If every deck could bounce then that may lead to more diversity in terms of the types of decks played; however it I don't think that would necessarily increase diversity in terms of gameplay as by definition every deck could and most likely would bounce. The end result is less diversity in terms of game play.

I think it's a difficult thing to theorise — probably best to test it.