There has been much discussion about how much text there is on the cards. There have been some ideas floated out there to have text like start of turn and end of turn highlighted in colors or have icons before them. I think one user has even done this for some cards available for print.
With the printing of Vengeance being a stand-alone entry into the game system, is >G considering improving on the cards?
This game is so good, I just get tired of being taken out of the story of the game as I check every single part of all cards (all in caps text which is no help).
Please don't respond if you are just a fan who is going to say that I should just accept it this way. I am a fan with a question to the company and I see many posts from people who discuss that the gameplay would be improved by changing the text area with highlights or icons.
It's been brought up, often by me, often asking for icons to represent the start- and end-of-turn actions on a card so you can avoid having to read "at the start of the environment turn" over and over on all the cards (think of how much space it would save, if nothing else). Then the conversation turns to a general discussion of icons on cards, a bunch of people say they like reading a novella's worth of text on the cards each time they scan the table for some reason, and it goes nowhere. The usual ending is for someone from >G to point out that they considered using more icons when they designed the game, but they didn't want people to have to consult a rulebook during play, so we got the overwordiness.
I still think the game would be vastly improved by the use of icons in the incredibly ubiquitous situation where you have a start- or end-of-turn effect. Not enough people agree (in public) with me though to build an actual movement around it, though.
I see the potential for icons and the like, but I worry that it would clutter up the cards, especially on the villain cards. Definitely good for the oversized cards though.
Because an icon would have to be large enough to be distinctive and still have the information for what has to be done. Also, I was actually agreeing with the idea of the icons, but I questioned the logistics of them, rather than saying "I like to read all the information".
Incidentally, I don't read the whole 7 words. Though the whole sentence is there, all I need to see when scanning over that part is "start, environment".
The one issue I can think of now is consistency. Being this far into the games life cycle and with only 2 more expansions after vengeance, making such a large format change might not be in the games best interest. They would have to reprint everything yet again and I don't know how many copies of the base set I can handle.
I like what Theta Stigma said about scanning the text. The idea of highlighting the text would just make it easier to scan without getting into the icon argument.
For instance, every "start" is green, every "end" is red.
Then blue for environment, brown for villain, pink for hero (or better graphic designers pick colors). I think Spiff already did this but I don't have the link. I don't think >G should refrain from improving their product like this.
Since at least two people I play Sentinels with regularly are colour-blind, I wouldn't suggest red & green, but I do like the idea of highlighting the text.
I highly doubt anyone would complain that the new cards receive a 'design' improvement and expect backwards compatibility in future printings (well, there's always someone who complains about something, but that's just because it's impossible to please everyone).
Just having the words START and END highlited (I would add WHENEVER, freaking whenever...), iconized like the (H) (which come on, it doesn't take more space and it's most often on Villain cards) or anyting that let's you know at a glance if you have to take a card into considerations or not without memorizing the card. Really, just have them in CAPS should be enough.
The strong point of the game is the story the gameplay tells and having to stop, re-read, resolve, start again, etc. detracts you from that.
I love what Spiff's done with his oversized villain cards (which reminds me, I still haven't got round to printing them and I must rectify that ASAP) with the SV and EV icons. Very easy to follow, you only have to look it up once if you don't grok what it means straight away and you'll never have to look it up again. What else could SV possibly mean in that context?
The big advantage of it is in ease of scanning the card during play. I'm always missing effects unless I use my homemade Start and End tokens, and even then I have to read a good chunk of the card every time because there's nothing to "point" me at the relevant section of text. This is especially problematic in the cards that say essentially, "At the end of the whatever turn, do X. At the start of the whatever turn, do Y." because I expect the start stuff to come before the end! (I know, 9 times out of 10 you'll apply the end-of-turn stuff first since the card's played during the play phase, but it's still unintuitive for me.) A quick glimpse at the table doesn't tell you how many things will go off at the start of the villain turn either - you have to read every card unless you have them memorised (I most certainly don't).
Icons have the advantage that if they're well designed, colourblindness isn't an issue. If you use a mixture of colour, shape, pattern, etc, you can accommodate everyone. As an example, something similar to Spiff's icons:
Icons are basically two letters in a box.
S for Start, E for End. Maybe something different for special "out of the usual order" effects if necessary, just to add an extra visual anchor.
V for Villain, H for Hero, E for Environment.
Therefore, we get SV (start of villain turn), EE (end of environment turn), etc.
Start is green, End is red - this works with our "red=stop/green=go" prior knowledge. Using white for the background of one and black for the other makes them even clearer and very colourblind-accessible.
Different shaped boxes for Villain, Hero and Environment - maybe square for villain, round for hero (to co-ordinate with the H icon we have already) and hexagon for environment (since hexes are associated with terrain), to add another layer of recognition.
The disadvantage of highlighting the text is that it's much fiddlier to do this in a way that's both intuitive to people who associate green and red with start and end (which is probably most of us) yet is still accessible to people with red-green colourblindness.
But the big problem is of course, as Foote says, we're probably way too far into the series now for it to be sensible to redesign and reprint the cards. I can't justify essentially buying everything again either in terms of cash or environmental impact. I'm very sad that this wasn't considered right from the start - I'm sure it would have made playing easier for a lot of people.
Edited to correct red/green confusion on my part: that would never have happened if I'd used the actual colours instead of just the words!
I think Silverleaf meant "Start is green, End is red", since she's the one who talked me into making that change on my cards. But she's right on all those points.
I think we're far enough along in the game's evolution that a refresh of this kind is absolutely warranted. Imagine if the designers had used the text "the number of heroes in the game" instead of the simple, easy to understand "H" icon. That's essentially what's happening here.
I support iconizing the "Start/End of your/villain turn" actions, even if it is done just for the last expansions and all printings only (I wouldn't re-buy everything, but it would make the game better for the next generation).
I understand that this would cause a certain lack of consistency between the cards, but come on... it's not like there aren't ten thousand threads already pointing out other inconsistencies in wording and stuff... at least this inconsistency will have not change the way a card is played.
I currently highlight the "Start" and "End" of turn actions with green and red sharpies, respectively, and it has made a HUGE difference in gameplay.
One of my players is red/green colorblind, so I'm with you there. We use dice to track HP, so I try pretty hard to avoid using ones that he has trouble reading.
On the subject at hand, I have nothing against using icons and if there was an icon designed that was simple and straightforward that didn't require a lot of study to understand, I'd be all for it. That being said, I don't typically find reading the cards all that tortuous, since I've learned most of the texts and can recite a number of them from memory. If this is a problem that other people feel needs to be addressed, I could see an icon being a positive thing.
However, I'm quite surprised at how passionate people are on both sides of this argument. I felt that the Sot/EoT promo tokens did wonders for zipping along the card and finding the right information. That's not to say that I'm against a symbol, but the amount of text on the cards has never been something that made me want to pull my hair out.
Thanks, that's exactly what I meant. But my brain is often an idiot and gets confused very easily (I have a medical condition which affects my cognitive ability at times). All the more reason for icons, right?
Yeah, for people who have everything memorised it won't make any difference, because you're not reading the cards anymore. You've compartmentalised the information in your head and no longer need the visuals. Icons would make a whole lot of difference to those of us who can't or won't memorise though.
I would't want to play a physical game without my tokens - they do help a lot in cueing me that I need to check out what the effect is at the appropriate part of the turn . But on the other hand, they don't really address one of my main problems which is that the bit of text i'm looking for blends into the rest of the text and I have to spend extra time and effort finding it.
The way I'm seeing it, we have people on one side saying, "This could be improved to make games go faster/easier for at least some people," and others saying, "Well I don't have any problems, so keep things as they are". I don't understand that second group at all.
That argument from the second group you're describing does seem a little solipsistic.
I can definitely understand people saying it doesn't really seem necessary to get a SoT/EoT symbol on the cards, but I can see how it would make things more convenient. I personally don't have a strong opinion either way. If they change it then I'll be interested in finding out what they'll use, and if they don't then my group will just continue to read out the whole card when we check for timing or special circumstances.
let's start rehashing our arguments over and over!
- Is it fun to read the same card each turn to see if X condition applies?
Not to me!
- Does reducing the time you need to check if X condition applies increase your time-to-fun ratio in the game?
Yes to me!
- Does making an easily visually identifiably reminder of when to check X condition reduces the time to check when X condition applies?
Yes to me! Two in a row!
- Is it possible to create such reminder without cluttering the cards? Or with adding to much iconography?
The (H) icon would imply that it is in fact possible. There are 3 important keywords (IMO) to take into consideration: Start, End and Whenever. These are 3 times as many icons as before, but are also intuitive ones that fit in the back of the reminder rulebooks. The issue I can see with this though is the question of why was this not taken into account when the (H) was introduced. The threshold of icons to be introduced (I saw mention of Villain, Environment...) is really subjective, but I'd say above 7 is too much.
So, besides the argument "not needed / don't care", (where the most criticism the game receives is around the amount of booking is needed) and "why this wasn't being done before" which is unavoidable in any new/future printing of the game (since then the argument is "why didn't the fix this already"), what are the downsides of taking this approach? I'm really interested in actual arguments against this rather than "if you are going to do it, do it right".
PS: I don't have the promo tokens but will try different things on how to make easy reminders for different conditions/triggers. I often forget the Nemesis bonus. I do have some spare tokens from the Tomb Raider CCG that could help. Will try doing the highlighting thing too on one Villain (probably will try it out with Spite,since I don't care much for him anymore and he has a lot of situations to check).
Having played a bit of Magic: The Gathering in my younger days, I definitely had a really hard time bringing myself to put a sharpie to the cards (had to use a sharpie because highlighters were way too light to stand out). However, once I did the first set it was a very liberating experience... until in my zeal and excitement I noticed I had marked up Promo Bomber Blade's character card, which I had not originally intended to do. Oh well...
I'm going to start off with the assumption that reprinting/rebuying all the released stuff is not an option. I'm still trying to get my act together and get the EE over year after getting and playing the first edition non stop.
Assuming that, I am against redesigning the cards in future expansions (in this case, add icons/highlights for start and end). I'm big on consistency, but that's a personality trait of mine and realize not everyone shares that.
However, a problem I see that I don't know if brought up yet:
Since this game is modular, you will constantly be mixing old with new. I personally don't want the same rules acting different ways in a game. Once people start to just look for pertinent icons with a quick glance of the table, they are going to forget they still have to fully read the old cards to know/remember any start/end actions needed. I can see this leading to more missed start/end actions than currently.
Anyone know how many total cards have this "problem"? If not overwhelming, perhaps a solution (if >G deems necessary) would be to release an update pack with just those cards to have icons or highlights. For purchase of course, I wouldn't expect it to be free.
