Ten commandments of VTES demos
Ten commandments of VTES demos
I think the two most frequent demo problems I see are that 1) people often try to teach from the rulebook, and 2) demo-ers get caught up in explaining the details of play for this or that card. The Rulebook is great as a collected reference, but as a such, it isn’t organized to run through the basic concepts of the game quickly (nor should it!)…
The basic principles (the Ten VTES Demo Commandments) I try to teach are (in order)
- Setup
- How to Win
- how to play a master card (introducing concept of pool cost)
- How to influence vampires
- how to take, and resolve, an action (first a simple bleed, later other actions; equip, rush, retainers, etc.)
- how to block
- how to resolve a simple combat (no maneuvers, strikes for hand damage)
- Stealth/intercept concept, which segues nicely into
- action modifiers and reaction concept(s).
The absolute VTES timing rules (ie. there is no ‘interrupting’ another person’s card play)
The above gives a framework that is sufficient to play a game with the demo decks, and is a foundation upon which the player can categorize more detailed card play (equip actions are just like any other action; something your minions do to generate a game effect). The first four are absurdly simple concepts, which take all of three minutes to explain. Items 5, 6 & 7 go hand in hand, and take about ten minutes. 8 & 9 are another five minutes. 10 is a one minute explanation, but is important enough to merit its own Commandment.
From there, I generally focus a little more on “why” you would do, or not do, any of the above in a given situation (ie. why you won’t generally spend yourself down to three pool). As others mentioned, I’d leave off on political actions for the first session, but then roll them in quickly.. Given more time to demo, I’d elaborate on combat phases, and show what you can do there to get various combat outcomes. If it comes up as a result of play, you can address things like political actions, contesting, etc, as needed. Let player questions be the way to raise the niche issues, rather than trying to voluntarily address them all of them yourself.
Regards,
DaveZ (former Prince of Boston and Charlotte)
Atom Weaver
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