Hear the rumor about the WoD Living Card Game?

Look, we all know that VTES has problems. Disciplines which outstrip the others, unequal rewards for possessing titles, the power gap between 10 and 11 caps, clans that lack an in-clan path to victory. The list could go on and on. We play the game despite these problems, but they do exist. Would a reboot really be so bad (other than the very regrettable fact that we would all have to buy new cards!)? If it's a terrible game, the question is mute, but if it turns out to be a great game (keeps the core of VTES, has a fun rewarding multiplayer experience, and maintains better balance between clans/factions and disciplines), then we get to have an improved gaming experience. Personally, I'll wait and see what FFG produces before passing too much judgement.

Oh, and on the subject of balance, I think that this will inherently require that the game take a step back from the RPG source material, which is directly responsible for many of VTES' problems. Dominate is a very flexible discipline in the RPG, sometimes held back only by the storyteller (who might have to resort to throwing lots of older vampires at the players to prevent dominate abuse). Adherence to canon has also caused problems for clans like !Gangrel, who have been forced to have a discipline split that doesn't help them in the card game, and makes crypt formation much more difficult. Again, the list goes on and on. So, please FFG, give us a game inspired by WoD, but not completely beholden to its every nuance!

Suoli wrote:

Lech wrote:

1. No big deal, it's just a different game like thousand others.

Based on the rumours posted here, it's not a different game like a thousand others. It's repurposed V:TES. Yes, it will attempt to leech players specifically from the V:TES playerbase. It would be an idiotic business move not to. This thread is basically about gauging to what extent the players are willing to migrate.

VtES is just as undead as it was before. New game can be boon just as likely as it can be burden.

Only if it turns out to be a) V:TES lite, an introductory course for real V:TES or b) backwards compatible. I don't see any other way V:TES could benefit from it.

Of course it will try to leech some players (burden), it can also be easy way to introduce someone to vtes (boon). And players can play more than just 1 game.

brettscho wrote:

Look, we all know that VTES has problems. Disciplines which outstrip the others, unequal rewards for possessing titles, the power gap between 10 and 11 caps, clans that lack an in-clan path to victory. The list could go on and on. We play the game despite these problems, but they do exist. Would a reboot really be so bad (other than the very regrettable fact that we would all have to buy new cards!)? If it's a terrible game, the question is mute, but if it turns out to be a great game (keeps the core of VTES, has a fun rewarding multiplayer experience, and maintains better balance between clans/factions and disciplines), then we get to have an improved gaming experience. Personally, I'll wait and see what FFG produces before passing too much judgement.

Oh, and on the subject of balance, I think that this will inherently require that the game take a step back from the RPG source material, which is directly responsible for many of VTES' problems. Dominate is a very flexible discipline in the RPG, sometimes held back only by the storyteller (who might have to resort to throwing lots of older vampires at the players to prevent dominate abuse). Adherence to canon has also caused problems for clans like !Gangrel, who have been forced to have a discipline split that doesn't help them in the card game, and makes crypt formation much more difficult. Again, the list goes on and on. So, please FFG, give us a game inspired by WoD, but not completely beholden to its every nuance!

No, adherence to the lore isn't problematic at all. Card balance and design choices are responsible for the poor state of some clans. I'm not saying i would do it better out of the box, but most problematic cards were printed in two first expansions, and now are easy to identify and fix.

Forgive me for disagreeing with you most strongly about adherence to lore. How can one possibly strengthen a clan without also strengthening all the other clans that share that discipline? Take for example, !Gangrel. Maybe we should provide an Obf card that would help them out. But now suddenly, every other vampire with Obf is made better by virtue of access to that card. Inner Circle decks would dance for joy.

The fact is that each discipline has a “realm” of abilities (think colors in magic, but generally not well defined or adhered to, sadly). And some of these realms inherently compliment each other better than others. Take Toreador – Auspex for defense, Presence for offense (bleed and vote) + combat defense, and Celerity for combat offense (particularly when paired with guns) + a little stealth. This allows the Toreadors to actively participate in every aspect of the game. I suppose their weakness is that they are stealth light. Compare this to say Nosferatu (certainly not a weak clan!) - Animalism for combat + minor intercept, Obfuscate for stealth, and Potence for more combat. So they sneak past you or beat you up, but in either case, their actions carry no weight to them. No potency, if you will.

Is this a play style difference? Certainly. Is it balanced... well, balance is very hard to judge (in my opinion) in VTES, but I would claim no. The Toreadors have more flexibility, and have more paths to victory available to them. Why? Because of the lore. Not the card game.

The final problem that I see if that you have disciplines that are inherently flexible. I understand from a flavor / lore perspective why Presence should allow you to vote well, bleed well, and have Strike: Combat Ends. But it hard to stand that side by side to Obfuscate (which essentially has one purpose in the game), or Potence. This imbalance in the disciplines (both in potency and flexibility) is a direct result of adherence to the lore. For better or worse.

brettscho wrote:

Forgive me for disagreeing with you most strongly about adherence to lore. How can one possibly strengthen a clan without also strengthening all the other clans that share that discipline?

Clan-specific cards would do that trick.

brettscho wrote:

Compare this to say Nosferatu (certainly not a weak clan!) - Animalism for combat + minor intercept, Obfuscate for stealth, and Potence for more combat. So they sneak past you or beat you up, but in either case, their actions carry no weight to them. No potency, if you will.

Is this a play style difference? Certainly. Is it balanced... well, balance is very hard to judge (in my opinion) in VTES, but I would claim no. The Toreadors have more flexibility, and have more paths to victory available to them. Why? Because of the lore. Not the card game.

...This imbalance in the disciplines (both in potency and flexibility) is a direct result of adherence to the lore. For better or worse.

I wanted to disagree with you, but I have to admit you're right. It is true for the most part that the clans that are most influential in the lore are the most influential in the game. Dominate and Auspex are the most important disciplines in the Jyhad, with Presence and Obfuscate a close third and fourth. In Chicago by Night, the two most influential Brujah, the sleeping Methusaleh Menele and ancient primogen Critias, are most served by their highly developed Dominate and Auspex respectively, not their clan disciplines. Mental disciplines have more weight in the Jyhad. (That doesn't mean that physical disciplines have no weight, though.)

The original game was designed that way. I don't think the Nosferatu are a strong clan at all. If there weren't Nosferatu princes and justicars, Deep Song, or Beast, what would they have? I mean, there are mid- and high-cap / that never, ever get played. I love adherence to lore, but I think that more could have been done to craft winning archetypes for all the clans. The designers were certainly thinking in those terms when they designed the cards for Temporis, Melpominee, Spiritus, Mytherceria, and Sanguinis.

With the stupid antitribu/non-antitribu split, do we really want more clan-specific cards? I saw in PCK's Sabbat set that they tried to "help" , , and in just that way. It didn't deal with the underlying issue of discipline inadequacy. I hope that VEKN's set doesn't try to shoehorn in sweeping bleed defense for just one of those Sabbat clans, for instance. If new cards are being imposed on the game, I think that dual-discipline cards are the way to go. For example, an / plus bleed card with limited pool gain.

I don't really want the game to start from scratch, but I think a revised version (in LCG format!) could be a very good thing.

AaronC wrote:

I don't really want the game to start from scratch, but I think a revised version (in LCG format!) could be a very good thing.

Well, it's hard not to like it when people agree with you . But this is exactly where I am right now. I like VTES, I think it has many strengths, but I also consider it to be a deeply flawed game with significant problems. And I think that some of those problems were either created or made worse by a strict adherence to the lore.

The difference between a card game and an RPG is the storyteller. If I'm in a game, I have faith that my storyteller will find a way for my weird insane character to be useful, and I'll get to shine (and in that case, who cares about "balance"?). Unfortunately, there is nobody adjudicating the card game, and nobody whose job it is to make sure everybody at the table is having fun. That task falls to the game designers.

Of course, this is all simply my opinion....