Design Diaries: Visual Interest

II. Iconised Keywords and Keyword Inheritance

The next set of changes will, we are certain, be controversial, but were among the categories of change we were always going to start making to cards. The reality of comprehensive rules edits when making these expansions is that abilities Design thought would read straightforwardly often require lawyerly treatises and expanded language to prevent misinterpretation and unintended usage. As a result, the textbox on cards often becomes crowded real estate.

This, combined with the sensibilities of modern game design, has led us to start testing the waters with replacing overused phrases and words with shorter forms -- including iconisation of some keywords. "Iconised keywords", introduced with Gates of Tengoku are icons designed to replace commonly used keywords, and are considered identical to those keywords for purposes of card compatibility and the resolution of effects.

Our internal discussion had us originally wanting to wait until Three Dynasties, our tournament format reset and next full base set (still at least two more expansions to go in Shattered Empire first!), to incorporate these ideas, but the more we talked about the desire to make cards visually distinct in various ways, the more we came back to rolling some of them out early. The current set started with the five "element keywords", Air, Earth, Fire, Void, and Water, as these appeared on many Spell cards as well as Monk and Shugenja Personalities (and some others).

When we started mocking up examples for those, we figured we might as well do the common, non-element Spell keywords, so there are icons for Jade, Maho, Pearl, and Thunder as well. Our final foray for the current pass was a lengthy keyword referenced many, many times across multiple cards of all types: Shadowlands.

Some examples are included to illustrate how these appear on cards. Rules for how to treat these keywords will be included with the GoT rulesheet update. One thing in particular to note: with the introduction of the iconised keyword suite, we will be reversing the 20F rule on Keyword Inheritance. In practice, the 20F rule created much needless redundancy and inconsistency, more so than it ever fostered better design or served an actual practical purpose. Now, unless there is explicit language to the contrary, a keyword appearing on a card will be inherited by its ability, whether that keyword appears as text or as an icon representing text.

III. Fear, Melee, and Ranged: the "Attack" Icons

Finally, this change was long overdue, and was actually one of the places we'd started when we were brainstorming ideas of what text to replace. The Imperial Favor icon which we'd created around the time we were polishing Rise of Otosan Uchi last year was the springboard from which our icon creativity would be unleashed. Having a set of icons for these attack effects meant that we could replace the clunky wordings of various traits, and shrink text on cards to reclaim more territory, if necessary.

To that end, we are replacing text describing these attack effects on cards with icons representing each: a Skull icon for Fear, a Fist icon for Melee Attacks, and a Bow (long o!) icon for Ranged Attacks. Some examples are included along with this diary.

All of this together serves to create a more visually interesting cardscape, even as we strive to acquire art from the larger community to draw people's attention. We hope you will contemplate these changes with that goal in mind.

There will be one more GoT Design Diary to follow, in which we revisit an old mechanical concept and update it for our own purposes. Please look forward to it!