what if YOU rebooted VTES?

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

1) Keywords, Keywords, Keywords. This game has lacked a specific word use format. There are multiple words used for the same concept and different rulings on cards which use the same words in a similar way.

I second this. VtES is very old and it show for little thing like this.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

2) Suck the power out of Dominate. It is too powerful and unbalances the game.

Well, evening out the playing field would be a good thing across the board. Dominate is not the only thing which is honestly much more powerful than any other alternative : 2nd trad/parity shift, carrion crow/aid from the bat, maybe Tatoo signal / Seraph Second ...

(not necessarily nerfing all thoses card, more like looking if they are evenly spread and assuring that there is alway more than one way to have a particular effect)

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

4) Nerf Voter Captivation.

I would say "nerf blood creation". Lillith blessing is not better, and even taste of blood can sometime became extremely silly.

As of I, I would not (alway) merge tribus and antitribu. In addition to make mixed sect deck even easier to do, there is quite a lot of case where antitribu and tribu aren't exactly the same thing. Ventrue and !Ventrue for example (even in the RPG where they have the same discipline).

Last thing, I would add an "ancien" keyword, to give specific card for all thoses vampires who are not known public figure but still govern significant domain, like Meneles and Helena.

the Allies are an interesting part of the game design. I feel like they became too all-or-nothing. originally they were too vulnerable to combat and it was too easy to play Entrancement and steal them away. then later there's Unmasking and Imbued and Flash Grenades, and ally decks are sometimes more resilient than the undead vampires the game's supposed to be about. I'd probably take out Entrancement and replace stealing with more balanced mechanics to interact with allies.

what do people think about VTES combat? there's many many discussions on how it's too weak compared to other strategies, but it's also very complicated to teach to newbies. at its core it seems nice & simple: (1) maneuver step, (2) strike step, (3) press step. but with all the combat cards available, there's really a dozen hidden steps for additional strikes, damage prevention, pre-range, grapples, taste, target vitals, etc. and you have to remember the proper order of them all.

would combat be improved in your ideal vision of VTES if you reworked the entire section in the rulebook (ex: make S:CE resolve after damage)? or maybe you think it's the cards themselves that are the problem (ex: take away S:CE from presence and give it only to protean)? I'm sure there's a hundred different answers to this.

Haze wrote:

example: One of my main ideas would be to tone down the game's world-spanning battles of Inner Circle members and Princes from multiple continents duking it out with fists and guns. Each game's theme would be more like it's a struggle over one major city, with all the localized politics and violence. Only one prince, no higher ranks directly involved (as minions). The "story" would be less abstract that way, and perhaps more relatable to the Vampire RPG crowd. I'm personally not much a fan of the hundreds of canon vampires that come from some guidebook or novel, they seemed shoehorned in.

I really like your example.

I'd keep the game MOSTLY the same. There are some rules and errata changes I'd make, though.

For example:

I'd make discard absolutely mandatory, not optional.

Too many times I see new players hanging onto a crap hand rather than getting rid of cards they don't need. Might as well force them to learn how to do that right off the bat, rather than allowing them to keep their bad habits, as well as forcing players of all levels to constantly decide what to discard - introducing a sort of zugzwang (chess term, means compulsion to move, look it up) into the strategy, where if players feel they have the perfect position they can't just hang onto it despite their best wishes.

Sorry, that's the tragedy of the undead, you can't always hang onto what's most dear to you

Also, in line with that I'd get rid of the cornercase withdrawal rule. If you have no library left, and since you MUST discard a card during your discard phase, if you can't, you're ousted. I think this would allow for somewhat more viable deck-depletion as a strategy (although of course it'd render something like Brinksmanship utterly useless)

As far as how it would be released? Well, there would be boosters and starters as before - but also, I'd copy the Magic strategy of releasing those 'deck builder toolkit' style of boxes, basically including some of the absolute common staples in it that people need...but in packages similar to the 10th anniversary set, that double as deckboxes - maybe plastic if metal's too pricy.

I guess sorta like 10th anniversary and BSC, but with a more regular release schedule and a wider variety of themes that tie into whatever the current set is to help new players jump into the game beyond the usual starters and boosters, they'd be mostly reprints, but maybe there could be a randomized chase card or two, perhaps nothing too unique, but maybe alternate art like pencil sketches or something.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

1) Keywords, Keywords, Keywords. This game has lacked a specific word use format. There are multiple words used for the same concept and different rulings on cards which use the same words in a similar way.

2) Suck the power out of Dominate. It is too powerful and unbalances the game.

3) Imbued would not be crypt cards.

4) Nerf Voter Captivation.

And these come from the top of my head.

Can't agree more.

1) No Antitribu clans, only vampires with both a clan and a sect. Reduce the number of clan cards and have only a few of them require both a clan and a sect.
2) Give a timing to all effects, including permanent ones and OOT masters, as it has been done for the use of Powers. Use the Reflex timing and maybe introduce a Referendum timing for cards played during votes. Play reflexes after replacing the card to make the game more fluid.
3) Recenter the game on its core: vampires taking actions. 2 changes for that:
-a methuselah can never have more than 2 master phase actions per table turn, no matter where they come from.
-during his untap phase, if a methuselah controls more allies than vampires, he must burn allies in excess.

The rest is just rebalancing individual cards.

Agree with 2 and 3, i just would change 1 in the opposite way: make antitribu independent clans and redesign some cards to work on tribus and antitribus (like hunting grounds).

I just would like to remark juggernaut's point 1: KEYWORDS, along with a clear statement of card secuence (combat chain, referendums, action mods vs reactions), not that is not already 99% clear, but declare a basic rule that gives directions to card design.

Oskar wrote:

I would possibly also want to do something with the Dark Ages setting, but not sure how or if it should even be part of the same game or just a separate game sharing the same base rule mechanics. Maybe with some new mechanism for controlling land.

I have always wanted to designate certain cards as "Modern" and same with certain Vampires. Then to play a Dark ages game you would be restricted to cards that were not "modern". Advanced Vampires could have the Dark ages base version and the contemporary modern/advanced version. Electronic equipment would be modern. Undead strength would be playable in both formats.