thoughts on the usage of keywords in Vtes.

Lönkka wrote:

Never trust a Frenchie...

I concur. You should never, ever, follow the opinion of a frenchie.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

I also suspect that you could trim down that ability as well.

"Use a discard phase action to make your predator or prey randomly discard 1 card."

That would make his ability obligatory instead of optional.

I agree with Ankha here on the carriage return issue. I also agree that it would be ideal to go back and change the text templating across cards like Ambush/Charge of the Buffalo, but I don't think it's worth the effort, let alone possible. VTES is a text-heavy game and demands that players be capable of parsing variations across English sentences. That's okay. Going forward, the design team should follow the better text templates available. Obviously.

@DeathinaBottle
"Use..." in this sense is not an 'imperative'. It does not imply that there is no alternative. We can potentially remove the many "You may"s that turn up through VTES to reinforce the non-imperative nature of the statements.

"Your prey or predator randomly discards 1 card in your discard phase" would be imperative; either your prey or predator will discard a card.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

@DeathinaBottle
"Use..." in this sense is not an 'imperative'.

that's your opinion.
some other reader can state it is imperative, and there would be no way to say who's right or wrong, unless there is some kind of ruling.
Just sayin'...

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

@DeathinaBottle
"Use..." in this sense is not an 'imperative'. It does not imply that there is no alternative. We can potentially remove the many "You may"s that turn up through VTES to reinforce the non-imperative nature of the statements.

"Your prey or predator randomly discards 1 card in your discard phase" would be imperative; either your prey or predator will discard a card.

Well, VTES certainly could redefine standard grammar in order to save a few characters on a card, but I think that it would be much less confusing to just write "You may."

@Reyda & DeathInABottle

Grammatically "Use a ..." is not an imperative statement; it does not have an implied directive. Unlike if I said "Sit down" or "Leave here". "Use a DPA to..." may not be 'polite speech' but it is not an implied directive.

If it was phrased as "Your prey or predator..." there is no alternative given, it does not have an implied permission to not do it.



It seems really interesting that many of you, Reyda included, want to "change VTES without changing VTES". You would like it to be easier, or briefer, or similar but every time a suggestion is made on how to change it your immediate response is "Oh but we can't change that..." Hopefully the irony isn't lost on everyone. I'm not saying that every change I advocate is the one that must be done. I'm just saying that if you plan to change VTES for the better (by whatever means), will actually require CHANGES.