Vampire: The Eternal Struggle as a LCG?

By Karazax, in Living Card Games

If anyone has played this game based on the White Wolf world of darkness license which is now out of print, originally produced by Wizards, it seems like it would be a great fit for a living card game for it's multi-player appeal.

Here is the boardgamegeek entry for those unfamiliar with the original game:

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VTES was an ok game to start with, but mechanically it bogged down after WW released a few expansionsdied under it's own weight.

World of Darkness isn't really a big draw these days.

Would love to see this return as a LCG, great background, depth and scope.

WoD is pretty much dead.

There were over 60 different people playing Vampire at Origins Game Fair in June.

Thursday's Last Chance Qualifier had 55 players.

Friday's North America Championship Day 1 had 47 players while 17 different people participated in the Shadow Twin #1 event happening at the same time.

Saturday's North America Championship Day 2 had 25 players (all those that qualified after Day 1) and the Shadow Twin #2 event happening at the same time saw 24 more players.

Sunday's First Chance Qualifier had 43 players.

Pretty good for a game no longer being supported.

I have read posts that tournaments in Europe have drawn over 100 players.

I'd love to see Vampire become a LCG. With no new material I don't know how long it will continue to hold my interest.

Later,
~Rehlow

A dream would be a vampire: dark ages variant with the basic vtes rules as an lcg. our playgroup would by anything available babeo.gif

I pray for this constantly. I had a strong love affair with WoD back in the day, though, for a variety of reasons I didn't jump on VTES until...... late July 2010 preocupado.gif llorando.gif . I essentially got into the Game of Thrones LCG in order to soothe the sting.

Despite my desperate wishes, and with the caveat that I'm only really a dabbler in the whole CCG/LCG scene (the two previous games mentioned being my only real forays), I think that dude above has a point: the game seemed to suffer from hella bloat in it's latter days. Stuffing those into expansion packs at £10 a pop might be tricky.

Also... (oof, I'm on thin ice here) the art quality of VTES and other CCGs tend to be a LOT better than what I've seen of LCG cards so far (i.e CoC and AGoT). Are there any implications?

Nevertheless, I'd cry with joy if I ever see that VTES became an LCG. I really really really love that game.

I never played V:TES, but I like the concept, especially the game's emphasis on the social element. My wallet would absolutely back "Vampire: The Rebirth," or whatever they decided to call it.

Would it use the WoD, or NWoD for the setting?

I imagine it could only work as old World of Darkness if it wanted to maintain any form of backwards compatibility...

The prpblem with Vampire may be that there was not any card limit to individual card. So 30 same card to the deck was just fine. But it is not impossible. I can live with 3 card limit just fine. The strong point is that there are not any other vampire themed games around. The Call of Cthulhu comes near.

Vampire is/was strong multiplayer game. But the problem maybe the theme. I like Vampire but many friends of mine newer were interested in vampyre themed game… Vampire does have strong followers, but it was newer very wide group. Hard to say how well it would managa in lcg format. There is potential though!

I used to like the vampire ccg but everyone in my meta used to love playing the rage ccg game instead.

If Ffg did decide to make a world of darkness lcg I'd hope they put their own spin on it and not copy the original games too closely, maybe vampires vs. werewolves vs. hunters.

I wouldn't count on this ever happening, not unless White Wolf gets dumped by the Eve Online guys and bought up by FFG. White Wolf doesn't play well with others, which is why the Wizards CCG partnership didn't last.

VtES was one of my favorite CCGs (and I played a lot). I'd love to see this game made into an LCG. The LCG format is much better than the CCG, and this was a fantastic multiplayer game.

I'd be interested if they rebooted Vampire. I imagine that like Netrunner it would be updated and some of the mechanics changed, also I expect they would want to include rules for 2p. But if they did all that, I'm in.

Mylo said:

Also… (oof, I'm on thin ice here) the art quality of VTES and other CCGs tend to be a LOT better than what I've seen of LCG cards so far (i.e CoC and AGoT). Are there any implications?

The new star wars games has some fantastic artwork and I think the warhammer art is pretty **** good in parts also.

Janus said:

I wouldn't count on this ever happening, not unless White Wolf gets dumped by the Eve Online guys and bought up by FFG. White Wolf doesn't play well with others, which is why the Wizards CCG partnership didn't last.

Actually, if the question of licensing is in the hands of CCP (the Eve Online guys) now, there's a decent chance for a V:tES LCG remake down the line. CCP are working on a vampire themed World of Darkness mmorpg, so they might be interested in partnering with FFG, who by now have an impressive portfolio of licensed card games, along with their eventual marketing for that WoD mmo. However, that mmo is still in the very early stages of development of won't see the light of day for years, so I don't see CCP being interested in a vampire card game in the near future.

I'm a huge fan of the VTES CCG… hell my playgroup play one week vtes the other agot … but I see the problem on card limit…

Richard Garfield created several amazing collectible card games. Jyhad (later renamed Vampire: The Eternal Struggle for reasons I'm not fond of) is easily one of his best. I think it would make a great LCG, especially if they tightened up some of the balancing issues the game had such as the overpowered rares and no card limits. On that note, all of Garfield's CCGs would make great LCGs.

The real problem would be the reason the game failed originally. As great as it is, the game really only shines with 5+ players. You can have fun with it with 3-4, but it's not the same. Forget about playing 2 player. The other issue is that the theme was niche back in it's day. Today one might call it unpopular. Combine an unpopular theme with the necessity of quite a few players don't lend to a game being successful.

I would like to see Fantasy Flight only make the game if it was right for them. It would be nice to see new life breathed into the game encouraging new players to try out this under appreciated classic. As of now, FFG has six LCG's, and I'd hate to see the support for those watered down in order to support a game that might not have enough demand for it (no matter how great it is). Perhaps in the future the gaming climate will change.

I agree, requiring 4-5 players for best results is a killer for most people and would seriously hurt player adoption. At a minimum they would need to also develop a good set of 2p rules so you could play it as a duel. A Game of Thrones is more or less like this now with two modes of play.

I don't know if the theme is a big issue or not. Personally, rival vampire clans is fine with me. Or rival alien civilizations. Or rival mafias. Or rival fantasy races. etc… You almost have to go out of your way to find a theme bad enough to be a stumbling block as long as the gameplay is good and the art is at least reasonable.

Now granted, FFG seems to have a preference for licensed themes since most of the LCGs are licenced theme games. Netrunner can probably be viewed as a conglomerate of whatever hacker and cyberpunk themes you're familiar with - it doesn't really have to start from scratch, and many other "generic" themes don't either. Call of Cthulhu is much the same, it's based on the ever-widening Lovecraft mythos but can also tie in with some general horror/magic/ancient evil/forbidden knowledge themes.

Plus, with a non-licenced theme game there are fewer limits as you don't have to worry about matching canon or introducing new concepts that may not exist in the source material. And, it's cheaper too :)

I'm less worried about the number of LCGs though. They had 3 for a long time, and the 4th one (Lord of the Rings) didn't ruin the others or suck. Then they had 4, and the 5th one (Netrunner) didn't ruin the others or suck. Then there were 5, and the 6th one (Star Wars) didn't ruin the others or suck. I'm pretty sure that number 7 or even 8 are probably going to be fine too. It seems like over time the top/most experienced LCG designers are helping create the new games and get them off the ground while the older games are gradually transitioned over to newer designers after a suitable joint-control tutoring period.

Bored last night I did some reading up on the Vampire back-story. It seems like a pretty rich world, I can definitely see people getting sucked into the lore.

It does look like the mmo is a long way out, though and may not even be released if their upcoming DUST mmo doesn't do well enough. If it DID come out the chance for a card game tie-in seems reasonable, and as pointed out FFG has a good track record. Plus, since it sounds like CCP isn't doing well financially selling the license would provide an influx of up-front cash that they could probably use :)

Thanks to Netrunner, I would buy all of this, sight unseen.

With the rumors going around of FFG working on an LCG based on the World of Darkness with different factions such as Vampires, Werewolves, Mages and Hunters, I am VERY excited!!

I absolutely LOVED V:TES back in its day and I have been longing for another great multiplayer LCG. I love AGoT but I need something else in a more Fantasy or Sci-Fi setting

I was hoping for an LCG based on Tannhauser or Warhammer 40k, but WoD would do just nicely!

gdotbat said:

With the rumors going around of FFG working on an LCG based on the World of Darkness with different factions such as Vampires, Werewolves, Mages and Hunters, I am VERY excited!!

Here's the thing, though. As far as I can tell, the only evidence for these rumors are a couple of threads on 4chan, from people who allegedly attended playtesting sessions. Since these posters were anonymous, they could've all just been one troll making up the whole thing out of thin air, and then replying to themselves.

Here's a link to an archive of one of threads.

For one thing, obviously people are violating NDAs. Somebody's been talking about Fight Club. More than one person, if you believe that thread. However, I was part of the Netrunner playtesting group, and it was done entirely differently. It wasn't held at an FFG Event Center, it was all online. (PDFs distributed, printed out, and sleeved, etc.) I figured that with the success of Netrunner, any further LCG playtests would probably be done in a similar manner. Maybe they're doing it in a more controlled environment, because they're worried about leaks? (Which is funny, because Netrunner didn't have any leaks, and this one has had a HUGE one!)

However, if I had to bet, I'd say this is a hoax. There is currently zero evidence for it.

skwizzle said:

However, if I had to bet, I'd say this is a hoax. There is currently zero evidence for it.

While I would be throwing my money at FFG if it turned out to be true, I also feel that the sources of these rumours are very dubious.