Theme returning to games.
Jun. 11th, 2009 04:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwangoOnce upon a time, Magic: the Gathering was a game about casting spells and summoning creatures. Then, as the rules evolved over the years, it became a game about just playing cards...terms like "summon" and "cast" disappeared.
The same sort of thing happened to Legend of the Five Rings. When the game first came out it had cards that said things like "the samurai performs seppuku in a fit of despair." Over the years, wording like that vanished under a wave of carefully worded text that required several readings to actually figure out what the card did, but left less room for debate about what that effect was.
Legend of the Five Rings is getting a fancy new overhaul of the appearance of the cards and how they are worded that makes the cards stylish and tries to recapture some of that lost flavor. Previews have been trickling out for a while now, and even though I havn't played for a long time I've been checking back now and then to see what's up. It looks like Moto Chen's newest printing will feature the following text: "Target an enemy unit with lower total Force than Chen's Unit. Chen tramples it. Destroy it." I'm happy to see thing like "Chen tramples it" return to the card text, because I think the flavor really adds something to the enjoyment of the game.
This evening I wandered by the site for Magic: the Gathering, and was amused to see something similar. It looks like Magic is currently being managed by people who miss its original thematic feel, and who are making at least a nod towards recapturing some of it. The newest edition of the rules will change the wording used in the game so that cards are no longer "played" or "put into play" or "removed from the game." Instead, cards will once again be "cast" to reinforce that they're supposed to be magic spells. Cards that enter play some way other than being cast will "enter the battlefield." Cards that were removed from the game (which sometimes returned to the game, making it a rather misleading term) are now "exiled." It's unfortunate that they chose that particular term, since "exile" means something else in their game Hecatomb, but I think Wizards would like to forget Hecatomb ever existed.
Anyway, there are also a few mechanical changes (at least one of which will cause people to abandon the game in droves because it returns the game to the logical way of handling combat damage that it had several years ago), but I'm far more interested to see that someone at the company finally realized that their game about wizards and magical spells had completely lost its theme over the years, and that they're trying to do something about it. Good for them.
The same sort of thing happened to Legend of the Five Rings. When the game first came out it had cards that said things like "the samurai performs seppuku in a fit of despair." Over the years, wording like that vanished under a wave of carefully worded text that required several readings to actually figure out what the card did, but left less room for debate about what that effect was.
Legend of the Five Rings is getting a fancy new overhaul of the appearance of the cards and how they are worded that makes the cards stylish and tries to recapture some of that lost flavor. Previews have been trickling out for a while now, and even though I havn't played for a long time I've been checking back now and then to see what's up. It looks like Moto Chen's newest printing will feature the following text: "Target an enemy unit with lower total Force than Chen's Unit. Chen tramples it. Destroy it." I'm happy to see thing like "Chen tramples it" return to the card text, because I think the flavor really adds something to the enjoyment of the game.
This evening I wandered by the site for Magic: the Gathering, and was amused to see something similar. It looks like Magic is currently being managed by people who miss its original thematic feel, and who are making at least a nod towards recapturing some of it. The newest edition of the rules will change the wording used in the game so that cards are no longer "played" or "put into play" or "removed from the game." Instead, cards will once again be "cast" to reinforce that they're supposed to be magic spells. Cards that enter play some way other than being cast will "enter the battlefield." Cards that were removed from the game (which sometimes returned to the game, making it a rather misleading term) are now "exiled." It's unfortunate that they chose that particular term, since "exile" means something else in their game Hecatomb, but I think Wizards would like to forget Hecatomb ever existed.
Anyway, there are also a few mechanical changes (at least one of which will cause people to abandon the game in droves because it returns the game to the logical way of handling combat damage that it had several years ago), but I'm far more interested to see that someone at the company finally realized that their game about wizards and magical spells had completely lost its theme over the years, and that they're trying to do something about it. Good for them.
