I don’t really pay attention to local news. It’s mostly just bull crap, anyway. I read the blurbs and pick off what interests me, which is not much.
So it was a small surprise today when I was reading through the headlines and thought I saw my name there, I had to look twice…
Damn rebel leaders!!! Somebody give him a Mother’s Touch and play a Gang Beating!!! Umbra Kato will not go down easy!!!
As we move on from CCG Workshop, we want to remind you that we have not forgotten Rage. After the first two sets of Ahadi, our African block, we had a lot of cards which had fallen out of those sets for one reason or another. To keep things moving we put some of those into a small set called Rainfall (you can find this along with the rest of Ahadi).
Since there are only 9 cards, I can go into each card in a bit more depth than usual.
This is one of those themic cards that we like to include to give the block some shape. The Ahadi – a coalition of changing breeds - was created in order to take down the tyrant Black Tooth. Our block is set after Black Tooth has fallen. Since we are not producing a Black Tooth card (as such), this was our nod towards those people who wanted one. Those who know their stuff will notice that it mirrors the effect of Entrapment, one of the few good Quests produced by White Wolf. In case there aren’t any Bastet in other packs, we will be providing some additional prey which will qualify for the reward. Note that the card originally penalised you if you failed to kill (as Black Tooth reputedly took power from his enemies), but it was removed for simplicity.
Scavenger’s Quest
Sneak Attack has a lot to answer for. Without it, this card would have been much easier to balance. As it happens, although this Quest retains the original intent of the card submission, we had to both increase the reward and then restrict its usage. At its most powerful, Fenris used her already mighty Ajaba deck to cripple her victim, ended combat, then returned with one of her packmates to finish the job with a full hand and a Telling Blow. That is why you can now only slip in after another player’s combat. We ended up, however, with what we wanted – a playable quest that challenges Sneak Attack for a position in the right deck.
Prove Your Strength
This is the second of three aspect-themed Board Meetings that were due to be in War Council. One was dropped (we could not think of something really good for Defiler), and this one was pushed back for lack of art - twice. I was so keen for it to it to be released that I even attempted some art myself. Luckily, Fenris rejected it but just for laughs you can see it here:
As a counterpoint, we ended up with jaw-dropping art from Sandara – anyone think they know which of the combatants is winning? Theme-wise, it plays up the Wyrm’s self-destructive element, singling out their rivals so that they can be torn apart. In effect, members of the target pack must either win or escape combat, else die. In a Beast-of-War deck it is highly effective which makes up for their lack of other tricks.
There is not much to say about this card – it almost exactly as originally submitted, although it does have a few more users. In particular, we wanted a few cards for the animal breed of Ananasi (Arachnid) which are due out later in the block. Animal breeds of lesser shapechangers are hard to provide for, since any card specifically made for them is usable by so few creatures. This is why you will see a few of these breeds as additional users on some cards.
The card itself, while unexciting, does allow more decks to be based around specific Territories which would otherwise be vulnerable (and Caerns to a lesser extent). No longer are you restricted to the Moon Sisters Cult. Hereditary Castles and Hidden Lairs beware!
Considering how many Metis Characters there are, they have remarkably few useful cards. This was a step towards changing that, at the same time being a perfect example of a Gnosis 1 Gift. It is very difficult to make Gnosis 1 Gifts, given that they have to be weaker than every other Gift, but did they really have to be as bad as Scent of Distinction?
Until recently Primal Anger reduced the user’s Health by 1, until it became clear that this produced more complications than were comfortable (how would it work, for instance, with Survivor?). Taking a leaf from, of all things, Mage’s Permadox, it is now itself a damage card.
This card was inevitable after the limited success of Instinctive Attack. It was delayed until we were confident we had the rules for Instinctive cards ironed out, and I think there will be more in the future. It is not complete immunity to stymies, but it does make stymies much more tactical than they used to be.
We have an awareness that producing more dodge cards only helps those annoying decks which pack nothing except defensive cards and escapes. I don’t think that not producing dodges is the way around that, and I am sure this is a point we will return to. Certainly, this is not a ‘better’ dodge than some already printed or released.
This is another card in our bid to give more options for Combat Actions. Go Dead Zone!
While I don’t generally encourage more use of Umbral Escape, the Wyrm has many ways to reduce the Gnosis of Gaia creatures and this was largely submitted as a counter to that. It also adds to the surprisingly short list of Spirit Victims.
This is, in fact, part our nefarious plot to make Juntas more fun. Firstly, it gives Bastet a special Moot bonus. Secondly, it gives Hellcats a special Board Meeting bonus. These are really the same point, but also a conscious decision. One of the themes of War Council was to make Board Meetings work. That has been achieved, but we now want to take it them out of the niche of a couple of Characters and spread them among everyone else. You will see more cards sprinkled through Ahadi to do this.
Thirdly, the gossip network allows cross-faction voting. There are several cards which do this (e.g. Blood Diamond), but we wanted Bastet to be better at it. It also is noticeable as a side-effect: mostly it will be played as the largest continuous vote boost (outside the Silver Fangs) in Rage; this ability to mess across factions is just a bonus.
There special brand of uniqueness comes from both a power-level (multiples could be too strong) but also to represent the fickleness of this group. The idea that different packs would be vying to control them is very appealing, plus the way they can keep bugging you even if you don’t want them to. It is also a way to sneakily absorb small amounts of damage…
~Picks-at-Flies
While I hope the facts are correct, this article is inevitably written from my own perspective. I am sure you can cope.
The death of CCG Workshop and the Gatling Engine had been remarked upon in various forums, but it has not been officially announced. (Due to hope, lack of information and a certain element of disbelief.) So this is it:
The gEngine is no more.
There is more information on the CCG Workshop forums (which are still up), but I will state the reason for its demise here. The creator and owner of the program, Bugladen, suffered an enforced degrading of lifestyle. As a result, when there was a serious problem with the server, he did not have the time or energy to find the right fix. It is unlikely to return to functional use any time in the foreseeable future.
There are three alternatives being looked at:
Through all my investigations, I have yet to find any program that comes close to the Gatling Engine in usability and customisation. The first two programs are fairly short on customisation, the latter has far too much (i.e. the coder has to think of everything). The best bet, I think, will be Lackey.
The loss of CCG Workshop hit Rage hard. While there are some people who play it in hard form, most players can only play online. Every time a player tries to use the engine and fails, that is another loss from the Rage community. It has also set back the releases of Ahadi, another key driver of the game, since we have not been able to do anything very much in the way of playtesting. With some luck, we will have online Rage again within a few months. Please be patient while we find new ways to play and remember to look again before the end of the year.
All the best,
Picks-at-Flies
Due to insistent public demand, what little public there is, at least, as well as the fact that I’ve been in a site building mood for the past few weeks (3 personal sites put together), I’ll be rebuilding Rage: Apocalypse.
*pause for applause*
Now, don’t expect this to be something that’s going to happen in a blink of an eye as I’m awfully busy right now. “How did you manage to build three other sites if you’re busy then,” you may ask. Well, they were pretty simple and straightforward.
To rebuild Rage: Apocalypse, we’re going to have to redo the whole card database, recode the rules and FAQ, tinker with anything else that’s available and adjust everything from an ancient version of WordPress.
You’ll notice the site is a mess right now, but assuming you’ve been here before, you’ve probably read what’s readable and worthy of interest already, anyway.
So this site is going to be trashier than ever before for a while. I don’t know what will work and what won’t but eventually, it will come back together. I ask Rage fans from all over the world, those of you that still remain, to keep an eye out on this site. Hell, it’s cost me some solid cash to keep it running this long, show a little gratitude. Visit once in a while.
With that, I’m off. It’s now running the latest version of WordPress and fucked up. But that will change soon enough.
Here are the links again:
The first hint of changes was when I looked at the Character section. There was no mention of Allegiance (Gaia or Wyrm). The term itself had been in use since The Wyrm (it was on the rules cards inserted in each booster), but had not made it into the online rules.
I started Revised as War Council headed for release and the playtesters were starting to look at Rainmakers. I knew that we had other cards up for playtesting, like Doppelganger, which wanted to refer to Special Abilities and so I defined the contents of the text box, which led to defining keywords, which led to expanding and reordering the keywords section (expanded by the addition of more Bastet information in preparation for the rest of Ahadi). By the time I was done, the keywords section was almost the same size as the rest of the Cards section combined. The decision to move the keywords to their own page was not difficult. The only important question in my mind was whether it would confuse players, but in reality there are very key rules associated with keywords: they are largely flavour and advanced rules.
Timing has always been a dilemma for the rules team and so it inevitably came up for revision in Revised. Pressure was added when it came up on the CCG Workshop forums, and so in February we passed a couple of ideas back and forth. The Open Play timing (known unofficially as “Mother, may I?â€) is a balance between order and chaos. There is still an element of first-come, first-serve when it comes to aggressive effects, but in every case non-aggressive effects can be used before the aggressive effect is revealed.
The idea of closed play, I am afraid, is all mine. It originated from perceived errors in how the Resource phase and combat was played (withdrawing after combat actions were revealed?! healing after you have seen what is about to hit you?). I do not believe I am alone in thinking that effects were only meant to be used at the ends of the round, although I am sure that there will be people who dislike this change. More important is that the rules are now a lot clearer.
A particularly widespread change is the rephrasing of parts of the rules. This was rarely done for its own sake, rather that moving a rule from one context to another necessitated rewording it. In addition, new terminology was creeping in and to standardise the text meant to change it. In many cases there was nothing wrong with the old wording but, even where I thought I could leave it unchanged, Fenris found something that needed clarifying. But at least the Introduction is still the same!
Big on Fenris’s and World Dancer’s agenda was making the rules accessible to people whose first language is not English. According to a recent survey, this covers about a third of our players. To be honest, I am always very impressed with the language skills of the Brazilians, Europeans and Indonesians (and everyone else) I bump into on CCG Workshop, but it would be unfair to expect you all to cope with the long, complicated sentences that I prefer to use. I even confuse friends and colleagues. So, they flagged sections which they think are too vague or two complicated, and we found a way to improve them without losing the meaning. I have been learning that "correct English" does not necessarily mean "clear English".
Last year I introduced a colour scheme to highlight when changes were made, since it made it easier for experienced players to track changes. When I wrote Part I, the (draft) Revised rules were covered in purple ("Revised Rulings (2007)"). Some sections have been so completely rewritten that I felt that they needed to be highlighted to make sure that the proof-readers paid close attention. However, it made for hazardous reading, so I have removed as much as I can (generally where the wording has changed but the meaning pretty much remains the same). The rewording also means that many paragraphs attributed to previous revisions have been split up and the contents no longer attributed. We do have some rules still in playtesting though, so suggestions for the next colour would be appreciated.
There are a lot of paragraphs where we have tweaked just one or two words, lost extraneous sentences or added a small clause. These are rarely large modifications but do serve to clarify previously unanswered questions. Between answering rules questions, in-game observations, development team discussions and poring over the rules in fine detail I came across contradictions, oddities and, most often, omissions. I have sent Fenris a barrage of questions and requests which she has patiently approved, countered or rejected. Fenris also spotted places in need of revision or reconsideration. In a couple of cases where we could not agree we put it to the players; unfortunately, we have found that opinion there is in just as much disagreement.
Additionally, there were rules in playtesting and rulings in the FAQ that we thought were ready to be incorporated into Revised. Unfortunately for Fenris, that also means that the FAQs will need to be rereleased for Revised. We hope to do that at the same time, but it was not possible to touch the FAQ until Revised was almost ready (plus, we do have day jobs!).
The following are some of the large changes we have made:
Juntas across the Gauntlet
Old rule - Characters in the Umbra may not vote in Moots, nor are they affected by any Moots while they are in the Umbra.
New rule - Creatures only in the Umbra may not be targeted by Juntas, nor call or vote in them. Creatures in both worlds can call, vote in and be targetted by Juntas as normal. Juntas which do not target a specific creature work across the Gauntlet.
The old rule relied purely on intuition. Yet, as written, it led to some very strange effects. Were spirits immune to Close the Bawn? Could Gaia Characters in the Umbra ignore The Litany’s Guidance? Characters in the Umbra could actually call Juntas, even though they couldn’t vote in them.
Pack attacks across the Gauntlet
There was no old rule here, there was just an assumption that it could not be done. We challenged that assumption and decided that there was nothing wrong with cross-gauntlet pack combat. Just bear in mind a couple of things:
a) creatures without valid targets soon leave combat
b) most abilities cannot cross the gauntlet, so Bum Rush (a Combat Event) will work but Allison/Thomas Kachina won’t.
Once per creature:
Creatures may never have more than one copy of any sept card attached to them, unless it is a damage card. We had already applied this rule to Gifts, Rites, Weapons and Armour. It was not much of a stretch to make it apply to all Sept cards and was mainly to cut down on such silliness as a Character with 3 Medicine Bags attached.
One trade per turn:
This followed discussions about errata for Fool’s Gold. Like the previous addition, it will not affect most decks and should feel fairly intuitive.
Additional Conditions:
This is one of the more subtle points. Take Razor Claws, which needs the user to be in non-Homid form. Yet many Mages can use ANY Gift. By labelling such text as “additional conditions†rather than requirements, we stop creatures using Gifts that common sense says that they should not be able to use.
Prey Gift Users
Prey can only use Gifts during combat. This is one of the many consequences of the obscene Marauder decks that emerged last year (the idea being to constantly recycle Geas in order to send attackers against dangerous opponents). Between this rule and the release of the fixed version of Marauder (Gifts it recycles are then removed from play), we are able to remove errata from several Gifts (including Every Day is Halloween and Geas). Note that we did consider that Prey could only use Gifts during combats they are participating in but for the moment we settled for the more flexible version.
Combat Timing
This is an extension of the tightening up of combat timing we made in Least Wanted last year - playing under those rules for a year gave us an idea of what worked and what needed another look. Combat was one of the original stimuli behind Closed/Open Play timing. This and some fresh eyes gave scope for further clarification of the timing. Part of this was making the timing more accessible, by giving each step a name and putting secondary points into bullets. Part was bringing in rules (or rules summaries) from elsewhere. We also added the Targeting and Withdrawal steps, while removing the redirection step (redirection has its own section clarifying timing and other issues).
Related to combat timing is one of the biggest reorganisations in the rules. Various “combat complicationsâ€, “special rules†and additions to the Combat Phase description were grouped together by the combat step they most related to. Here for your benefit are how they lie:
There are no options that fall specifially under the Withdrawal and Between-rounds steps (yet!), although alternative combat actions are used during targeting (see Combat Cards).
Withdrawing: It was never clear when this happened, or what effect Maim had in pack combat.
Death: What happens at death is clarified.
Damage redirection: The timing was clarified so that The General would work properly with Skin of the Hellbound (as an example).
Destroyed weapons: The bluff step options now clarify that nothing after that point can change whether a Combat Action is legal or bluffed, so even if you are hit by a fast Dis-Arm, it won’t stop your Cleft in Twain hitting.
We have not finished with Revised, and as long as new questions arise I doubt we will be. However, the bulk of the work is now done, for both us and you players. For the most part, anything that crops up now as needing changing relates either to a very occasional event that remains unclear, or one of those niggling problems that we find it very hard to settle on a solution for.
~ Picks-at-Flies
While I hope the facts are correct, this article is inevitably written from my own perspective. I am sure you can cope.
(As proof of the ongoing changes, just before I posted this article I put in four additions to the rules that came out of in-game rules questions and the CCG Workshop forums, and had to quickly edit my draft for this article. Can you spot them?
)
Before I begin, have some links:
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The idea of tidying up the rules originally came to me some time after I joined the development team as a playtest lead (I was not a full member at that point). I think it started when I asked that the definition of Unique was added to the rules – and it was pointed out that this was already in the glossary. After that, I started noticing more and more rules that were in strange places. Throughout the writing process, and in the period before where I was too busy with War Council to start writing, players started finding holes in the rules which only confirmed my thoughts.
The original rules produced by White Wolf were incredibly small, and in hindsight very vague. I am not exactly sure of the origin of the current rules – they don’t use any of the White Wolf wording that I can tell. However there current form is the result of taking a set of a rules then expanding existing sections and adding additional rules to the end. While not wrong, I came to the conclusion that they were unwieldy. The librarian in me wanted to rewrite them in an order that was logical and navigable.
As it turns out, the task was far bigger than I had imagined. The rules text was so wrapped up into the context that it was written in that I ended up having to rewrite whole chunks of text – paragraphs of old rules would end up spread over several new sections, while new rules paragraphs contained rules pulled from all over the old rules. Now, I don’t mind writing – many of you will have noticed that – but there are three significant reasons why this task was difficult:
Notice that at this point there is no mention of changing the rules. The original plan had no concept of changing the rules, although admittedly I wanted to make many rules clearer. Unfortunately, life doesn’t follow a plan. For more on the changes, see the next article: Rules Revised Part II.
I started reordering the rules where you would expect, at the beginning. Except that the beginning at the time was, after the table of contents, The Cards - the description of each card type. As I got to the end of that, I realised that most of the rules had ended up there and that there was very little left to go in the phase descriptions. Finishing up the last of what was then Chapter 1, I had to think about the next stage. Sometimes life is kind, because this inadvertently gave us the opportunity to make the rules more friendly for new players, and this is why Chapter 1 is now Chapter 4.
h) Sidebars
The first sidebar was “Rage sets and glyphsâ€. This is not an original idea: the Middle Earth: the Wizards rulebook used boxed areas for clarications and asides, as do White Wolf roleplaying books; I had used them previously for ST notes on roleplaying logs, based on a layout used by my friend Nimrod Jones.
In this case they serve very much the same purpose as the METW boxed areas, to put paragraphs we would prefer not to clutter up the main text with – plus they visually break up the text.
The rules are now structured so that new players see in order:
a) An overview of the game and its history.
b) Areas of play, so players know what they are looking at.
c) Timing rules, so players get a feel for the flow of the game (and prominent so that experienced players have no excuse for not knowing them!).
d) The Basic Game, which is now little more than a skeleton yet actually contains everything necessary about the turn structure.
e) Finally we get the detailed rules that are The Cards in Depth – at a rough estimate they make up about a third of the rules.
f) Rules for the Umbra
g) Combat, the other large section (about a quarter of the rules).
I will admit that I never envisaged it this way when I started, but serendipity passed the right way. However, there is now little or no duplication in the rules. Inevitably there is some duplication between The Basic Game and The Cards in Depth, since the former contains summaries of how the in depth rules work. My biggest regret is the number of times using Caerns appears despite the fact that they only have one function.
In case you have not been paying attention, I am British and I write in the “Queen’s English†by default – look at the last sentence of the paragraph above and you will find ‘colour’ rather than the American ‘color’. Rage, however, was made in the US and before me all the rules had been written by Americans. I had to make a serious decision which to use, but I settled for the American spelling in the end. You may well think this is a trivial point, but internal consistency is important to making a document look good, plus writing in ‘the heathen tongue’* sends a shiver down my spine. You will continue to get good old British English in my articles.
* I will admit that the US spelling is reputedly closer to the older English spelling, but there is a lot more character to rumour and centre.
Another trend prevalent in Revised is giving names (“termsâ€) to things. For instance, defining Resources and Open Play cards. This has several functions:
The following terms have had unofficial use or were not properly defined (in order of appearance):
Allegiance - Gaia, Rogue or Wyrm (there are now rules for Rogue Characters);
Keywords;
Resources;
Opponent;
Attack;
Escape;
Pack actions – yes, pack actions were not actually defined before.
New terms:
Constrained: Generic word for any card with restrictions of numbers player or numbers in play at once (including Unique and Restricted).
Open Play cards: Known for a while as “At any time†cards. Covers Actions, Events, Gifts, Past Lives, Quests and Rites.
Feinting: The effect of Feint and Dr. Spencer.
Instinctive Combat Actions: As per Instinctive Attack
Iksakku: A stick-fighting art as practiced largely by Children of Gaia and the Ajaba. It was introduced for Ahadi, although in the end we had to remove it for space reasons. It will be back!
It may sound like I did most of this alone, but I could not have done it without Fenris (well, I could but it would be a seriously flawed document). Every change to the meaning went passed, even places where I was unsure if I had correctly recaptured the original meaning - not to mention dozens of dead links and missing sections. I also need to mention the work that took the rules from the original thin booklet to their current form, which I barely hit the end of.
I have been ‘testing’ the rules on new players and I have had very positive feedback, despite the draft document still being filled with my working notes (and purple). While I get a warm glow from positive feedback, I won’t pretend that we have covered everything. If you spot a possible mistake or omission, please let us know – there might be a good explanation but equally there might not be.
Next time I will cover the changes that were made – and why there were changes – and perhaps cover some of the changes to the errata/FAQs.
~ Picks-at-Flies
While I hope the facts are correct, this article is inevitably written from my own perspective. I am sure you can cope.
When new players make their decks, they see all sorts of wonderful tricks they can use, cards they want to try, combos they want to exploit. Consistently, however, I find that they forget about what happens if their opponents foil or get around their plans. Although some Rage decks are better than others, all decks have their weaknesses and inevitably at some point a player will be in a fight that they want to get out of. Fortunately Rage has a ton of ways to escape combat.
Fox Frenzy
Let’s start with a card that is frequently overlooked by experienced players – and find out why. Fox Frenzy seems to have everything going for it, since it allows you to get out of combat before combat even begins, or in response to an opposing True Fear or other combat trick, and it has no side effects. Unfortunately, it has two weaknesses: it’s biggest is that it cannot be used by Prey (more on this later); the second is that it is a frenzy – this not only leaves it vulnerable to all those cards which cancel frenzies, but also makes it incompatible with any other frenzies in your deck.
Run Like Hell
This is a card which is better than it looks. Unlike Fox Frenzy, the downsides to this card are self-evident. In its favour, it can be played by most creatures in most circumstances. There is a bit of gamble when you hope that you don’t play Run in the same round as an opposing Entrail Rend, but it does add some tension to the game (especially if you are playing for a Prey that you are planning to attack next). If you are into cheese, Run works well in conjuction with a Submachine Gun + Evasion or following an Umbral Escape. The second drawback notably has no effect on most Prey and Allies; only worry if you are putting big characters in combat and there are Junta being played.
Submission Hold etc
There are a few attacks which can remove opponents from combat. Generally, they require your opponent not to be frenzied, and they always require that they actually damage their target. As such, they are generally unreliable but worth remembering as possibilities.
Forceful Wind
It looks like it falls under the above category, but this acts more like Run Like Hell (especially with an Etherial Wind in play), but with the possibility of some parting damage (and ending combat rather than removing a participant).
Umbral Escape
Despite it’s name, Umbral Escape does not actually remove anyone from combat. Facing a Spirit, a creature in the Umbra or someone with an Incarna Sigil, this card does nothing. Yet a surprising number of decks are played which cannot deal with it (it acts as fast, free escape). Umbral Escape uses the Umbra as a 3rd dimension to combat, and both playing it and dealing with it requires an understanding of how the Umbra affects gameplay. While it is not a card for true novices, mastering Umbral Escape is a big leap forward in understanding Rage mechanics and stategy.
Taking the Death Blow
Not so much an escape as a way of saving a Character. I am sure I will return to this card another time.
The concept of defending prey is something peculiar to Rage. The death of an Enemy rarely directly affects your pack, and sometimes even helps you (if your opponent kills The Piper for instance). Yet it does affect you because it brings (normally) your opponent closer to victory. Moreover, you might have been wanting to kill that Enemy yourself. There is a three card combo of Moon Sisters Cult, The Black Room and Kinfolk Cop which, under most circumstances, prevents anyone attacking your pack ever. Except by itself this combo does nothing if your opponents attack prey: if you cannot defend the prey, you are likely to lose.
So when considering your escape options, think about what you can play for prey.
The are any number of cards that end combat or remove participants. Most of these are Gifts, and most packs are likely to have something available to them. The most common combat ender, though, is Friends in High Places. While reduced to a more sensible power level by Least Wanted (specifically making it once per pack per turn) and by its interaction with Dominance, Friends in High Places remains the default combat ender for many people since it works in most circumstance. Gaia packs also have access to equipment such as Veil of Phoebe and Nightmare Coin.
There are also cards which do not specifically end combat but which nevertheless can serve that role. Any card which removes creatures from play for a space of time can end combat, cards such as Airt Mastery and Chant of Morpheus. If there is only one opponent, Sands of Sleep, Spiral Boomerang and Nerve Agent all will end combat (and Nerve Agent can also serve to end frenzy). The other large set of cards that can end combat is stymies – those cards which prevent opponents from playing Combat Actions. If you prevent your opponents from playing Combat Actions, then decline to play one yourself, combat will end. Beware, though, of opponents playing cards like Instinctive Attack which can be played if stymied.
I will end this article with the difference between using your combat and sept decks to end combat. The advantage of the combat deck is fairly obvious: it recycles and you can use your escapes over and over again. The disadvantage? Sometimes you do not want to escape and sometimes you wish that escape card was more damage. You also may not have the escape card when you need it, and if your opponent stymies you then you will not even be able to play it. The disadvantages to Sept combat enders are that for the most part you can only use them once (or have some restriction on their use); to their advantage, they will often work when your combat cards fail you and, moreover, you can hold onto a combat ender in your sept hand until you need it in a way that is not always possible or sensible for combat cards. The reality is that most decks benefit from mixture of both.
Buried deep in Mark Rosewater’s A Day in a Life “article” he gave good list of approaches to designing cards:
As mentioned in Board Design, the most common approach in Rage is top-down. That is, we find something interesting in the Werewolf: the Apocalypse sourcebooks and we turn it into a Rage card. With over one hundred source books for Werewolf alone, not to mention those for the other gamelines in the same World of Darkness, we have plenty of source material.
The Green Dragon, for instance, is the personal totem of Zhyzack which gives her such strength that she was stronger in Homid form than many garou had in Crinos, and the Green Dragon is also a very arrogant totem. This is a perfect example of an effect that fits its source material extremely closely. The only concession we had to make was to make it a Pack Totem, since the Zhyzack card already printed could not have personal totems.
Most Gaian Gifts, Rites and Fetishes come from source material. In the case of Ahadi, we looked through the sourcebooks for the factions being introduced and put down card ideas for anything that we thought would make an interesting mechanic. There are a lot of Gifts in these books, so how do we decide what makes a good card? I can go into more detail after we have released a bit more of Ahadi, but the way I approach it is this: if I can think of a good, interesting – and hopefully novel – effect that captures the nature of the Gift, then I write something down.
War Council – the first set I worked on from the beginning – was mostly designed around concepts (guns and Board Meetings), however I did come up with Trick Shot. In fact, Trick Shot (a Gift originally found in the wild west setting) was so themic we had several attempts to find something good for it. The original Gift gave a large bonus when performing “impossible” shots, as long as they did not directly damage anyone. There are any number of ways you could come up with ideas that fit the concept. I didn’t see previous attempts, but the two other versions I submitted cancelled or destroyed Gifts and Equipment, since it fitted “indirect destruction”.
The third version was a True Fear vs. frenzied creatures, the concept being that the shot disorients the raging target. This version was taken because we wanted more cards to hose frenzies (they are meant to be a bad thing). It was powered up to include cancelling the frenzy (it is harder to play than Serenity), and was changed to the discard effect when we decided that we did not want another stymie and Savage Beatdown turned out to be so popular in playtesting. In fact the random discard fits with the whole trick shot thing since you cannot quite predict how effective it will be (hint: try playing Trick Shot and then cancelling their frenzy).
Not all concepts come from the roleplaying books. Ahadi is meant to be a set about the whole of Africa, not just Egypt and not just the Fera. Blood Diamond captures one of the essences of Africa, or at least African business – not a very pleasant one, but then this is not the World of Fluffiness. That it is also the name of a recent blockbuster did not hurt. Outgunned and “Eat Hot Lead, Dogbreath” were clearly inspired by guns. Board Meetings I have already talked about.
While the initial approach is top-down, the act of interpreting a concept into a card takes many factors into account. There are examples of all the above:
Characters are more tricky. Some Characters such as Leila the Veil-Shredder are taken directly from the books. While Gifts tend to have a narrow application and so a fairly neat concept, Characters have abilities, habits and quirks that go in all directions. Leila is a Homid who pretends she is a Metis; she is an extremely ruthless business woman and leader in a male dominated world; she remains traumatised by a childhood of religious hatred; and she has an almost fanatical ambition to reopen an ancient caern. Picking the most relevant bits and turning them into a Rage Character took a few attempts. It may seem simple in hindsight, but there is a large amount to get in a small space.
The rest of the Characters are made up based on a couple of things. Firstly, we are trying to fill Renown holes for factions (so, for instance, that we might have Silver Fangs with Renown 1-10). Secondly, we try to capture the flavour of the faction, whether it is some peculiar aptitude or their attitude to each other, other factions and Gaia (or the Wyrm). Sometimes the smallest line in a sourcebook can make you think, “Oh, that would be a cool thing to put on a Character”.
However, the trickiest cards to design are probably those specific to creatures without much source material. Despite having solid writeups in the sourcebook, Ajaba and Hellcats are pretty short on Gifts, Fetishes and the like. Mokole are moving towards being focussed on Rites, yet very few rites are actually given to them (but lots of Gifts). The new factions, Cults and the Unbound, have almost nothing. Caerns especially seem unbalanced – Rage Across Egypt, the main sourcebook for Ahadi, contains huge numbers of Garou Caerns in Egypt, but there are almost no Caerns given for other creatures in Africa (or anywhere else for that matter). Wyrm factions in general have very few of anything given except, ironically, Caerns (and Characters).
We solve this in part by cheating – giving them other people’s stuff. This is most noticeable with Gifts (where we often add one or two extra users) and Rites and Equipment (where faction-specific becomes available to anyone). This is generally good for the game since it gives more options for new cards rather than restricting them to one type of deck. We also borrow from elsewhere. Hellcats mainly use Ceilican Gifts (since most Hellcats originate from that tribe), while Walid Set (the Cult scheduled for later in the block) draws on Disciplines from Vampire: the Masquerade. Finally, we just make stuff up. This is not new – Gaia’s Will Corrupted, as best we can tell, was made up for the Wyrm expansion. It is a matter of taking what is known about the faction and making cards that seem appropriate (all the non-Gift cards for Hellcats are, I think, made up). It is these cards which are most tricky because you have to both make a good card and keep it in theme.
~ Picks-at-Flies
While I hope the facts are correct, this article is inevitably written from my own perspective. I am sure you can cope.
Fenris put up an article about beating the evil Flame Spirit up on BoardGameGeek.com. You can read about that by clicking this link.
I have my own ideas about dealing with Flame Spirits, though… Errata the little buggers!!! That ought to keep them at bay.
In the meantime, though, you’ll have to settle for what’s in the article.