Keywording the cards

General GTG General Discussion
1

I was having a conversation with my nephew (also an avid SotM player) yesterday, who was describing how everyone in his college-age gaming group wishes that SotM were more like M:tG in the way it handles card text.  Specifically, they wish that card effects were more standardized and given keywords (a term which conflicts with the way SotM currently handles keywords, so some other terminology would need to be used) to improve the clarity and reduce the verboseness on the cards.

For example, M:tG cards will say they have "deathtouch" or "flying" or "haste", which makes it so that you don't have to list out the details of what the ability does right there on the card, you are just referring to it in the rulebook where the details can reside.  This also means that if you need to errata how an ability works, you don't need to reprint the cards.

Further, any M:tG card with "flying" operates the same as any other card with "flying", so you don't have situations like we have with, for example, the many different ways that cards can be put underneath other cards (Haka's "Savage Mana", Bunker's "Omni-Cannon", La Capitan's ability, etc.).  Instead, you'd just give a SotM card the "Consume" ability, perhaps with some additional text clarifying what the card can do with consumed cards, and they can all follow similar rules (i.e. consumed cards retain their type but not their text, when the main card goes away, all consumed cards are returned immediately to their respective decks, etc.).

Lastly, there's no denying that SotM cards are chatty.  Some might even call them expansively effusive in some cases.  If these kinds of keywords could be helpful in making the cards easier to quickly scan during an end-of-turn phase, that seems like a positive thing.

I'm not sure if I'm 100% behind my nephew's gaming group's complaints, but I see the merit in them and thought it was an interesting topic to bring up here to see what other people's thoughts are.  If nothing else, now is probably the time to be discussing this kind of thing, with a new rule book for Vengeance on the way.

2

I would be against it. I wouldn't want to go looking into a rulebook anytime I couldn't remember what a keyword would mean, when it could of just been printed on the card itself instead. Which I believe is one thing they have stated before, is they wanted people to look into the rulebook the first few times while playing and not have to explore it again.

3

The keywords are great for experienced MtG players, but I always found myself trying to figure out what they meant since I didn't play a lot. I think trying to explain keywords to new players in addition to the actual rules could turn some people off. But, I do wee where he is coming from.

4

I don't think we need keywords, but I would support a real rule regarding the timing of effects that would make clear what happens when, for example, Wrest the Mind is used on a Sonic Mine.  

Based on the End of Days rulings, it appears that a card has effects while in play, and ceases having them when it leaves play.  Sonic Mine kind of turns that on its ear.

If we used the End of Days rules on Sonic Mine, its text would have to change to something like "if Sonic Mine would be destroyed by damage, prevent all damage to it, then Sonic Mine blows up, then destroy Sonic Mine", which would make clear that Wrest the Mind would work on it.  

I think that all made sense... been a long day.

5

it appears that a card has effects while in play, and ceases having them when it leaves play.

I don't think that's completely true.  If a card says, "some effect is in effect until the end of your next turn", and then you destroy it, I believe the ruling is that the effect sticks around until the time limit stated has passed.

6

I'm agreeing with Ronway. The people I play with in "real life" are predominantly casual boardgamers who haven't played Sentinels much. If they had to look up a bunch of keywords every time they drew a card they'd get tired of the game extremely quickly, because we don't play frequently enough for them to be able to learn the keywords. Having to consult the rulebook a million times during the game wouldn't be much fun.

We have a couple of card games that someone gave us (Lunch Money/Beer Money and Grass). They have no card text other than the card title and some flavour text, and no-one wants to play them because you end up passing the rules sheet around all the time and asking, "What does Utterly Wiped Out do again? I know it's bad, but how many turns do I miss? How many points do I lose if I have it at the end?" or "Can I chain Uppercut with Big Combo?" and similar rather than, y'know, playing the game. Okay, they're crappy games anyway, but my point still stands.

I'm not against the keyword concept per se as long as we still have appropriately descriptive card text - maybe symbols or bolded bits of text in the main text or something, but the real problem would be that then the new cards wouldn't be terribly compatible with the older sets.

I really wish that the current cards indicated more clearly start- and end-of-turn effects though. I made my own tokens which helps, but they do make the game even more fiddly.

7

I went ahead and highlighted phrases "the start of turn" (green) and "end of turn" (red) on the cards themselves so I don't have to use the tokens. It took a while to get them all, and I am sure it will make purists cringe... but I found it really made the game so much easier and helped me get more people to play. 

 

I also agree that while keywords may seem like a good idea, they will turn potential new players away... and the seasoned players that would use the keyword probably play enough to memorize what the cards do fairly quickly anyway, so it wouldn't bethat huge a benefit anyway. 

I do, however, definitely wish there wwas more consistent language for effects throughout the game... the whole thing about taking damage vs being dealt damage vs would be dealt damage and all that can get a bit messy. 

8

I've wanted icons for "start-of-turn" and "end-of-turn" effects since day one.  There's never been any indication from the designers that they want to do that, though.

9

Or even just something like:

 

START: This thing happens

Card text as normal

END: Some other thing happens

 

That'd be helpful. Jut some visual way of reminding us about those effects, since the way they are now it's really easy to miss them. Even bolding phrases like "at the start of the villain turn" would have been better than nothing, and I honestly don't see why something wasn't done from the beginning.

10

Except you also run into edge case cards like End of Days which is Start of Environment.

Or Start of that target's turn not the Hero that played it :S (eg, Jinx cards)

11

Yeah, but they're the exception rather than the rule. The majority of cards with start/end effects seem to be just that - do this thing at the start of the villain turn, do this other thing at the end of the hero turn, whatever.

With the exceptions you could use a modified symbol - a "start" symbol with a star for example, clarified with ordinary text as normal. Or to use my text example:

 

End of Days

START (of ENVIRONMENT): At the start of the environment turn, destroy all the things, unless they are awesome special things. Then destroy this thing. Get cursed by the other players because you're a bastard who didn't bother to tell them you were planning to play this card like 4 turns ago when you drew it.*

 

*Card text may not be 100% accurate.

12

Agreed.  A simple "SV" or "EV" for "start of villain turn" or "end of villain turn" would get the job done.

13

Yeah, I find the color-coded SV and EV on Spiff's oversize villain cards to be quite useful.  SE, EE, SP, and EP could just as easily be applied to environment and player start/end triggers, and would take up less space and easier to identify.

I don't really agree with keywording the rest of everything, however.  While it's good to have consistency, I would prefer that the card text simply be updated to be uniform (as needed) rather than replacing whole chunks of text wholesale.  As a veteran MtG player, I think the keywording frenzy in that game got out of hand 5 years ago, and has only gotten worse since.

14

~5 years ago was Time Spiral block, which is a horrible example to use for basically anything. :stuck_out_tongue:

I like keywords in MTG. They keep the card texts mostly clean and allow for cards to reference each other (and/or their effects) more easily. Reminder text still exists on commons and core sets, which kind of defeats the purpose from a veteran's perspective but would be invaluable to newer players if they would actually RTFC.

ahem

 

But I don't think Sentinels needs them – any more than it already has for types and what MTG would call "keyword actions" like destroy or discard. Some of the other suggestions in this thread would be nice, though.

15

Well a few keywords are fine, but when you have to remember the difference between phasing and fading, or any of the Ravnica keywords (x2!), or morph versus ninjutsu versus shadow versus lifelink versus deathtouch versus banding versus hexproof versus wither versus intimidate versus fear versus provoke versus rampage versus shroud versus scry versus annihilator versus flanking, it starts to get pretty ridiculous.

SotM is great because you don't necessarily have to memorize dozens of pages of rules and abilities, you just have to remember the card order and phase order, and do what's written on the cards.

16

We had an extensive discussion about Keywords when first designing SotM, and very consciously chose not to include them for many of the reasons people have already mentioned. Here are some of our thoughts:

Pros of Keywords

  • Similar effects are *guaranteed* to work in an identical way if they share a keyword.
  • More experienced players have to spend less time reading.
  • A given effect takes up less space on a card, ergo more effects can be fit on a card.

Cons of Keywords

  • Teaching the game takes longer.
  • Less experienced players have to spend more time reading.
  • More effects can be fit on a card.

 

We came down firmly on the "no Keyword" side of the debate, and, as much as I like the idea of Keywords aethetically, our experience with the game and its fans since its launch has done nothing but give us even more confidence in our decision.

17

I like how more effects can fit on a card are both a pro and a con!

18

Ha, yeah.  Paul, what about shortening "at the start of the villain turn" (etc.) to an icon or an abbreviation for improved readability?  That seems like a pretty easy win.  What's your experience with the game shown with regards to that?

19

The card pool is small and consistent enough compared to MtG that keywords aren't strictly necessary. I'm likely to know approximately what all the cards in a deck do (and hence not need keywords) by the time I'd learn all the keywords.

Also, keywords have a way of mentally limiting the design space of the game. In a game as sprawling as MtG, that's actually a good thing because the selection of keywords they introduce or highlight for certain blocks imbues them with character and gives texture to the meta. In SotM, that would be a bad thing because inventing wacky new things for each deck is kinda the point. If you have to invent a keyword for each new deck, you're losing most of the benefit of having keywords in the first place.

That's my $0.02, anyway.

20

@Spiff

 

We decided not to include Start and End icons for the same reasons (they are something to look up in the rulebook, etc), and and are going to stick with that design choice for the rest of SotM. We are trying out the concept of "phase icons" with GSF, in large part because there are a wider variety of phases, and the game itself is somewhat more complex than SotM.

And, for those who do really want phase icons for SotM, we have the "Start of Turn" and "End of Turn" tokens in the bonus token pack that we sell on our website (and, coming soon to a FLGS near you!).