Hear the rumor about the WoD Living Card Game?

Madness has been around for ages and most of the issues with Planeswalkers was bad wording of rules not bad design. They have steamlined combat greatly just a few years back and cleaned up things like The Stack. Only the cleaner and easier Keywords are printed in newer sets and even a bunch of those got reworked.
Magic has been highly cleaned and reformatted over the last few years.

V:TES on the other hand had a bunch of loaded keywords that are often not explained on the card (Titles and such), Many subsystems that interacted oddly or did not interact at all (Politics, Combat, etc), and was all around designed in an age when there was little mastery of game design. It is a clunky and complex game that came out of an age of clunky and complex games, you might not see it now as some one who was part of that age but younger gamers (I spend 50% of my time at least teaching games to people under the age of 20) hate that kind of thing. They enjoy clean and simple to learn games that still allow for deep play (yes you can have both).

Netrunner for the example did get a bunch of changes, The entire way deck building works, Tracing, the Factions system, many of the card designs got cleaned up, keywords and such got cleaned up. It went threw a massive cleaning and reworking to come out much better and attractive to the modern gamer.

So anyway the point I am making is what really matters is two things: Clean design and frankly advertising. The games that do well get out into the public and hit big. One of the reasons FFG is doing so well now it it grabbed the public eye buy getting some big names like Warhammer 40k, Starwars, WoW, Starcraft, etc. They are well known and now any time they make a game it gets talked about. If V:TES comes back to life as it is now than it will still just be a tiny side game in the CCG market that is mostly played by the older crowd (See Legend of the Five Rings and it's slow death it is having). People need to welcome change and that is really the only way V:TES can live again.

LordNat wrote:

If V:TES comes back to life as it is now than it will still just be a tiny side game in the CCG market that is mostly played by the older crowd (See Legend of the Five Rings and it's slow death it is having). People need to welcome change and that is really the only way V:TES can live again.

Very well put.

One quick comment, and a more general thought.

Quick comment is that everyone should remind themselves that we are making conjectures based upon rumors. And, even if the rumors are true, the game might not get released, or could be substantially different from the playtest version being discussed, by the time it gets released.

More general thought is to give a few possible outcomes if a non-VtES WoD LCG does come out :

(1) The game is good but isn't really compatible with old cards. This will be an awkward situation, but is it really so bad to have to sit and decide which of two really good games to play?

(2) The game is good, and fairly compatible with VtES. Probably would require some fan effort to convert / ban some cards, but this would be a pretty cool situation I think. Play just the new game with new players, play the expanded hybrid game with people who have VtES cards, etc.

(3) The game is good but the flavor and source material is bad or unfaithful or whatever. A lot of VtES players I know like the source material but don't find it essential, it's not the main thing that brings them to the game.

(4) The game is not good, it gets bad reviews, and it dies off or limps along. VtES still could re-emerge, but the IP licensing issues get even more complicated.

(5) The game is never released; see (4) above.

(6) The rumors are false and we got all agitated about nothing.

Of course, life is never that simple, and instead we'll have lengthy forum flame wars about whether the game is good or not, or how best to adapt old cards, etc etc. But when I look at the scenarios above, (2) seems the best to me, with (1) and (6) tied for a distant second place.

Ohlmann wrote:

LordNat wrote:

Magic has been highly streamlined. Modern Magic looks vary little like the older magic. Take a gander at the Standard format some time.

I actually play standard. I believe you are utterly wrong, since the fifth edition there have been no real evolution ; the only one was a slight complexification of the rule, with the stack disappering in one specific case.

Do you mean 6th Edition? That was THE major rules update.

The rules also changed significantly in 10th Edition.

prunesquallor wrote:

One quick comment, and a more general thought.

Quick comment is that everyone should remind themselves that we are making conjectures based upon rumors. And, even if the rumors are true, the game might not get released, or could be substantially different from the playtest version being discussed, by the time it gets released.

More general thought is to give a few possible outcomes if a non-VtES WoD LCG does come out :

(1) The game is good but isn't really compatible with old cards. This will be an awkward situation, but is it really so bad to have to sit and decide which of two really good games to play?

(2) The game is good, and fairly compatible with VtES. Probably would require some fan effort to convert / ban some cards, but this would be a pretty cool situation I think. Play just the new game with new players, play the expanded hybrid game with people who have VtES cards, etc.

Not compatible at all. New card only, and will stay this way.

prunesquallor wrote:

(3) The game is good but the flavor and source material is bad or unfaithful or whatever. A lot of VtES players I know like the source material but don't find it essential, it's not the main thing that brings them to the game.

(4) The game is not good, it gets bad reviews, and it dies off or limps along. VtES still could re-emerge, but the IP licensing issues get even more complicated.

(5) The game is never released; see (4) above.

(6) The rumors are false and we got all agitated about nothing.

Of course, life is never that simple, and instead we'll have lengthy forum flame wars about whether the game is good or not, or how best to adapt old cards, etc etc. But when I look at the scenarios above, (2) seems the best to me, with (1) and (6) tied for a distant second place.

Rumors seems legit.

Reports from last nights playtest a FFG Event Center:
Each player gets a faction card that has an extra power related to your group. Vampires get +1 Drain (Bleed) on their first Drain action on their turn, Mages get to discard an extra card before drawing. Hunters and Werewolves did not get tested.

Votes for political actions are gained from your faction card and characters that grant votes, titles are power cards you put into play that give a set number of votes and an extra effect you can use in a referendum.

Actions still work on stealth and intercept but each time you target a player with an action in a turn they get +1 intercept for the rest of the turn.

Vampires seem to be Drain focused using stealth and bonus drain.

Mages used a bunch of combo actions that lead to killing resources and locations that slowly build them power.

The game seemed to be over all in early beta so we might not see anything official for awhile but I will be keeping an eye out for more playtest reports as it sounds like official FFG stores are going to be getting playtest events soon.

Not so happy that vampires are bunch of malkavian wannabees.

Now that we know there is going to be a World of Darkness Living Card Game from FFG lets speculate about what they are doing with it.
What we know:
The game heavily influenced by V:TES.
Core set will focus on Vampire, Hunter, Mage, and Werewolf.
Politics will make a return but players will gain titles in place of characters having them.
Combat is being fully rewritten.
The Core set will be designed for 2-4 players with a single box, rules are written for unlimited players.
V:TES's Predator/Prey system for multiplayer will make a return.

Rumors:
Each faction is going to have 4 "disciplines" for a total of 16 in the Core set.
The Blood system from V:TES is returning and be reflavored as fighting over the power in a city. Bleeding will become Draining, Hunting will be Gathering, etc.

Good, there will be both 4(+) tables and some 1vs1 option. 4 disciplines per faction is a bit low. Even considering nWoD that have less disciplines. City focus is good.

prunesquallor wrote:

(1) The game is good but isn't really compatible with old cards. This will be an awkward situation, but is it really so bad to have to sit and decide which of two really good games to play?

Half the playerbase migrates, V:TES stops getting new players as they are more attracted to a simpler game with official support. The rest of the playerbase then has the choice to either stick with the sinking ship and play 5-man tournaments for the rest of it's lifespan or dump nearly 20 years worth of cards in favor of a blank slate.