Black Chantry Productions

The delicate art of Vampire: The Eternal Struggle

Fifth Edition now in stores – An interview with art director Ginés Quiñonero

With Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Fifth Edition now in stores, we continue to peek behind the scenes. Something that generally render praise is the card illustrations of the game. This is the domain of Ginés Quiñonero.

Ginés, you are an artist and art teacher, but also the art director of Vampire: The Eternal Struggle (VTES) at Black Chantry Productions. What exactly do you do as an art director?
– My job mainly consists of these activities:
• Commissioning new art.
• Creating art myself when I am motivated by a specific art description or card.
• Finding new artists in order to increase the variety of VTES art.
• Writing some art descriptions. Most are written by Ben Peal.
• Keeping track of any art projects for VTES products, which means having art contracts signed, sketches approved, deadlines met, final artwork delivered, artists paid, etc.
• Submitting art to Paradox Interactive for approval.
• Preparing art files containing old VTES art for future projects, for example updating color space, resolution and aspect ratio when necessary.
• Ascertaining which cards need replacement artwork.
• Designing logos for any expansion sets.
• Supervising our graphic designer.

The “mothergame” of VTES is Vampire: The Masquerade, which has changed its art direction with the most recent edition. How has it changed, and how does that affect VTES?
– Previous art directions were more eclectic style-wise. The current one places more emphasis on the dark horror mood of the World of Darkness, and on making it believable to the audience. That immediately rules out comic-like styles that look childish, for example, which were becoming more and more present in VTES over the years.

Under the current art direction, adult themes are of the highest importance, and therefore need to be properly depicted with the dramatic lighting and contrasting colours they deserve. Now, some acceptable art styles for VTES are: concept art, photo art, artistic graphic novel art, traditional art, etc.

The impact this new art direction has on VTES is conspicuous in any new cards or in any old cards with new art published by Black Chantry. Their art has to adhere to the above-mentioned criteria and to the current World of Darkness lore. A clear example of that is the difference between the previous art of Govern the Unaligned, released in Heirs to the Blood, and the Fifth Edition replacement art for that same card.

*Three versions of Govern the Unaligned – 1995, 2009 and Fifth Edition 2020.*

Especially for VTES Fifth Edition, what was the general art direction for the new art?
– The most important thing was basically making sure the art guidelines mentioned earlier were met. However, I am well aware of some issues that negatively affected some artists’ performance in the White Wolf era (2000-2010), that I try to avoid. Therefore, I tend not to overwhelm artists with many art comissions to be delivered within a short period of time, so I give them enough time to complete their illustrations and provide them with flexible deadlines when possible, if asked for.

For this project, I hired artists who were proficient either in photo art or in human figure and/or in urban landscape drawing, who were capable of creating believable portraits of vampires as well as dramatic scenes.

When you discuss with the contributing artists, what are the most common issues?
– Fortunately, I seldom have to discuss any issues with the contributing artists. But when I have to, the most common issues are: misproportions, inadequate lighting, inconsistent perspective and the need to make an illustration look more pictorial, with visible brushstrokes.

You are a VTES artist yourself, with many contributions in recent years. How do you work? Your technique has changed, right?
– My early illustrations for VTES were oil paintings: Masai Blood Milk (2005), Gran Madre di Dio, Italy (2006), Claudio Severino (2010), as well as the ones I created later for the Danse Macabre set (2013). However, even though I had more time available back then, I realised those pieces would take me too long to complete.

So I decided to use a faster technique, pastels and colour pencils, in the sets The Unaligned (2014), Storyline Rewards (2015) and Anarchs Unbound (2016). This time it took me an average of 6 hours to complete an illustration (not counting sketching time). However using pastels also had its drawbacks. Colours changed a bit after fixing the painting.

After that I opted for using acrylics in the Lost Kindred set (2018), a technique that was not ideal, because acrylic colours can change a lot after drying off, but which was fast enough for me. For example, I had to create replacement art for Field Training and Under Siege in two days for the Berlin Anthology, which were urgently needed for print.

Due to the dark nature of VTES illustrations, taking photos of some of them to create image files was really a pain, because of the constant reflections appearing in the darker areas. Regardless, photos never looked exacly like the painting.

Therefore I finally decided to use a Wacom tablet, that I already had at home, and the ArtRage software for natural painting. So I went down the path of digital art! It is even faster than pastels, and I do not have to waste any time taking photos to the final piece. It also provides me with a plethora of tools that make painting an even better experience. My first digital illustrations were released in Lost Kindred (2018) and subsequent sets.

When I have to create an illustration, I write down any ideas that come to my mind after reading the art description, and then start sketching until the composition of the illustration pleases me enough to proceed with the final piece.

Afterwards, I try to find any references that can be useful, and then I start drawing and painting in ArtRage, following these steps:

My style has been evolving over these years because I have always been looking for inspiration in the artists I admire, among whom are several VTES illustrators. Most recently I am trying to make my illustrations look more pictorial with evident brushstrokes.

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Fifth Edition is available for all stores and distributors. For more information please visit www.blackchantry.com. Contact us by mail or social media.

Copyright © 2024 Paradox Interactive AB. www.paradoxinteractive.com. All rights reserved. Vampire: The Eternal Struggle and Vampire: The Masquerade® are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB. All rights reserved.

“If Magic is a hand of poker, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle is a poker tournament”

Fifth Edition now in stores – An interview with original designer Richard Garfield

Richard Garfield vampire style Gines Quinonero — Art by Ginés Quiñonero.

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Fifth Edition is now in stores! It´s been a long time since the original game designer Richard Garfield was involved in the game – he has been busy with many other creations; Magic: The Gathering, Netrunner, Roborally, King of Tokyo, Keyforge, to name a few. We at Black Chantry Productions of course owe him enormous gratitude and we wanted to ask him some questions about the game and game design in general. Gladely, he agreed to answer!

Let´s start from the beginning, back in the early 90´s. How did Vampire: The Eternal Struggle begin?
– When Magic: The Gathering was published and a great success, the first publisher Wizards of the Coast was completely on board with the idea that trading card games were a new form of game, of which there could be many versions. They anticipated many trading card games made within the hobby industry and we wanted to use our expertise to make some of them. I think the first license we got was with White Wolf for a game set in their World of Darkness. I was more interested in working on a new trading card game than working on Magic, so I threw myself into this project – and it became my first design based on another company´s world.

I probably couldn’t have had a better license to work with – role playing worlds are very deep so there are a lot of resources to use for a card game, and those resources were flavorful and filled with exciting possibilities. The company we were working with, White Wolf, was open to reinterpreting and adding elements to the world that would make it as good as possible for the card game. In future projects I would learn that this was not always the case, some companies are less interested in the card product being good than it reflecting other expressions of the world. I did my part as well as I could – trying to honor the spirit of the World of Darkness with as few impositions as possible.

I don’t remember ever getting any pushback on the designs, though it is long enough ago that I might not remember. It certainly must have helped that many people at Wizards were enthusiasts of the World of Darkness and so I could check my work without necessarily involving White Wolf.

How did you feel about the assignment back then? How was the mood in the team?
– I think we worked hard but I don’t remember hurrying. As a personal goal, I wanted to explore the possibilities trading card games had to offer – I was not interested in using standards created by Magic. It was exciting testing the possibilities this game form opened up – and it was a really new experience for me to be limited by someone else’s world but at the same time have so many world resources to draw on.

Since that time, I have learned to appreciate standards that have been laid down by previous designs as useful not only for the designers and developers – but also the players. Were I to go back now I would think twice about changes to this game relative to Magic – making sure it was worth the player learning something new in each place that I broke the norms. However, I doubt I would have reigned myself in much, the temptation to explore was probably too great – and, honestly, the players probably wanted to see what else was possible as well.

The “replace each played card immediately”-mechanic in Vampire: The Eternal Struggle is rather odd and stumps many who are used to other card games. How did you come up with that?
– I believe it is only odd because it breaks the standard that Magic presents. There are many ways to manage hand size, and I played with many of them in various prototypes – including systems like are used in deckbuilders today – where you draw a complete new hand every turn, or like we see in Keyforge – where players fill their hand to a particular size at the end of their turn. It is good to see some variation in these methods because the method of accessing cards can dominate the sorts of strategies that emerge. Immediate replacement makes the game more about using what you have as best you can – rather than saving it to the best effect.

Nowadays, we use a 2-hour time limit for games in tournaments, but in the first rulebook there was no time limit. How long did you expect a game to take?
– I estimated that it was about half an hour per player – at least that is what I remember, things have changed a lot since then. It certainly was not designed for tournaments, though any game players love to play can be adapted in some way or another for that purpose. A game played in a tournament typically needs to make some sort of time rule.

While I think a half hour per player is a fine length for boardgame standards I think it is also something that somewhat undercuts Vampire: The Eternal Struggle as a trading card game. After its publication I realized and began to appreciate the ability to play many games of Magic in a sitting and modify my deck between and missed that in Vampire: The Eternal Struggle – where the games typically ran too long to do that. Once people are into a game – that is fine – the time frame over which they modify their deck is just longer. But when people are getting into the game, if they only play it once they are missing one of the fundamental parts of a trading card game – varying your tools.

How do you remember the first reception of the game?
– I remember mixed reactions. Part of this is inevitable, we were just learning back then how one could not measure a trading card game against Magic’s success, that it was almost always going to fall short. The other negative reaction would have come from some enthusiasts of the World of Darkness who were role playing devotees, and while they may have been excited about a product like this in principle, role playing and tactical style card games like this are two very different things, and there were bound to be players who didn’t want to do both.

On the other hand – there were a lot of players who didn’t care for the two player nature of Magic, who liked the flavor of the World of Darkness and were keen to experience that as opposed to Magic, and who liked more lengthy and deep play sessions that hours gave them rather than the 20 minutes a Magic game would have. These players flocked to the game and found something they liked a lot – and many of them have made it clear to me that it is a favorite of theirs that they always return to given the opportunity.

How come you left design of the first expansions to other people?
– For the same reason I left Magic design, I was more interested in seeing what else could be done with trading card games than what could be done with a trading card game that had already been designed. Also, I believed that for any game like this to reach its potential it was required to get more people in on the design and my presence on the team would limit them. I made myself available for feedback on all the games I started but I wanted designers to take ownership.

There are a lot of rumours about what order your first games were designed, of what came first and took ideas from what etc. What is the true order of those first games – Magic, Vampire, Roborally, Netrunner, etc.?
– Roborally was designed first, then Magic, Vampire, Netrunner, Battletech… and somewhere in there was Great Dalmuti. Maybe after Magic. It is always guesswork, however, because my designs always are influenced by each other and the roots go back very far – so – for example – my first Magic themed games that had some of the trappings of Magic appeared about the time I was first doing the Robot themed battle and race games that became Roborally.

What do you think distinguishes Vampire: The Eternal Struggle from other similar games?
– As far as I know this was the first game that used ‘attacking left’ as a rule to allow a large group of players to play a very interactive game without being dominated by politics of who to attack. We certainly tried this in Magic, but it wasn’t a very big part of the game, and, of course, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle was built around it. It never really caught on with Magic, the more social games are generally more free-for-all, but I think giving players natural targets makes the game more social. I know that when I play a very interactive game, I don’t want to target anyone because I don’t want to make enemies – and that is not a fun way to play if everyone plays that way. Giving me a target gives me a place to start.

I think this game was unusual in the length of time it allowed itself. As I mentioned above – I think in general that is the wrong decision for a trading card game, but it has its merits – you can get a game that feels more epic when you play it. If Magic is a hand of poker, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle is a poker tournament.

Are there things that you think were especially good in Vampire: The Eternal Struggle that you have used in later games too?
– The attack left mechanic – certainly – is one that comes up again and again. It isn’t a cure-all for the problems with a free-for-all game, but it is a good place to start and for a casual player it is just fine.

Something I particularly liked in Vampire: The Eternal Struggle that I have not used since, but will if appropriate, was the voting. I liked the flavor and mechanics of cards being put up for vote during play.

During 2019, 210 sanctioned Vampire: The Eternal Struggle tournaments were played all over the world. Some annual tournaments have over 100 players. Black Chantry Productions has published the game in English, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish and French, and Italian and more translations are coming. Why do you think the game is still played, all over the world, 25 years after its birth?
– I guess the flavor and strategy built into the game spoke to a lot of players and didn’t have much offered in the same game-space. It is gratifying to see my work have such endurance and I am happy some players take pleasure in it.

We thank Richard Garfield for these answers and wish him good luck with his current endeavors, most recently the trivia game Half Truth together with Ken Jennings, and his ongoing project Keyforge.

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Fifth Edition is available for all stores and distributors. For more information please visit www.blackchantry.com. Contact us by mail or social media.

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Fifth Edition designers: Ben Peal, Mike Nudd, and Ginés Quiñonero.

Download the Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Fifth Edition rulebook for free!

We at Black Chantry Productions want to make Vampire: The Eternal Struggle as available as possible for everyone. That is why you now can download PDF versions of the brand new illustrated rulebook and the five Fifth Edition clan helpsheets totally free from our site!

Vincent Ripoll is the very busy Rules Director for Vampire: The Eternal Struggle at Black Chantry. We asked him some questions about his role and what is going on ruleswise with the game:

Vincent, what do you do as the Rules Director?
– My role is quite technical, since it consists in ensuring the consistency of the rules with the existing rules – notably by taking into account all the existing rulings that complete the rules – while continuing to develop them. This includes among other things eliminating certain unnecessary complications, introducing new concepts to reunite certain rule points, and adapting the rules to the needs of game designers, for instance to follow some evolving aspects of the World of Darkness. I also spend a lot of time ensuring that cards we reprint follow those rules and use consistent patterns, not only in English but also in the various languages our game is printed in.

The Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Fifth Edition box set is now in stores. Were any particular rules changed for this set?
– The Fifth Edition is a perfect example of how the evolving lore has an impact on the game design, and by capillary action, on the rules themselves. For instance, Anarchs have taken a predominant part of the course of events in the World of Darkness. This was a perfect occasion to make them a sect, rather than a trait that behaved like a sect.
Another example is that clans are no longer tied to a sect by default. Previously, you had to know the default sect of a clan in order to properly play cards such as The Embrace, and some interactions were odd. For instance, if a Gangrel Prince created an Embrace, that Embrace would have been Independent, since clan Gangrel became Independent with the release of the first Anarch set in 2003, with no retroactive effect on the printed vampires. In both cases, removing those unnecessary details makes the game easier to play for all players, old and new.
Finally, some clan symbols were changed as well as some clan names – Assamites become Banu Haqim, Followers of Set become The Ministry, etc. These are cosmetic changes with no impact on the rules. For instance, the Assamite clan is now called Banu Haqim, but they are strictly equivalent: an Assamite is a Banu Haqim and can use cards requiring that clan, whatever name is used on the card.

Fifth Edition has a brand new, illustrated rulebook. What differs from the old rulebook?
– The previous rulebook was very thorough but needed some refreshment. It is a good, solid, technical document, but not a very user-friendly one. We wanted a new illustrated version as complete as the old one but easier to dive into, especially for new players. We used the services of Gaming Rules!, a company specialized in the writing of rulebooks for board games, since Vampire: The Eternal Struggle is very similar to a massive board game, and of Elisabet Pérez for the graphic design who both did an amazing job. It took us more than a year to create it, with a lot of feedback from everyone, and we cannot wait for everyone to be able to use it.

You also answer rules questions online. What are the most common questions?
– Many questions are from new or returning players, which is a good sign despite the pandemic situation. Some questions are about recent changes in cards, and some are about exotic situations that happened in the game. It is quite varied, but most of them already have an answer – I strongly advise everyone to use the search button on the VEKN forum or to use Codex of the Damned, a wonderful tool that collects all the rulings about the cards!

PDF downloads (also in ‘Utilities’ at Blackchantry.com):
– Fifth Edition Rulebook (English, Spanish, French)
– Helpsheets (English, Spanish, French)

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Fifth Edition now all over the world!

Hi all!

The first shipments of Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Fifth Edition have been sent to distributors and stores – some have already arrived. The map above shows what countries got parts of the first batch, and more is on the way. Thanks to all you out there that support the game – please keep on playing, and spread the word!

Complete decklists and previews from the Fifth Edition decks:
– Fifth Edition: Clan Malkavian
– Fifth Edition: Clan Nosferatu
– Fifth Edition: Clan Toreador
– Fifth Edition: Clan Tremere
– Fifth Edition: Clan Ventrue

Production update November 9th, 2020

Hi all!

Good news: Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Fifth Edition has begun shipping from the printer! Our raven spies report that some distributors already have received stock, so expect products to appear on store shelves really soon.

Note: The official release date of Fifth Edition is November 30th regardless of when you get your hands on it, so the new cards in the set will be legal for sanctioned tournament play no earlier than December 30th.