Rules & FAQ

How many cards are in Vantage? Do they need sleeves?

There are around 1300 cards in Vantage at several sizes. The 400 large cards are printed on both sides–different location on each side–as if they’re 2 cards back to back (it’s essentially 1700 cards worth of content, with well over 1600 unique illustrations by 3 wonderful people: Valentina Filip, Soren Meding, and Emilien Rotival).

The cards in Vantage are never shuffled (this is not a randomly generated world; i.e., if you’re on location 623, it will always lead north, east, south, and west to the same specific locations), so they do not need sleeves. The box would need to double in size to fit sleeved cards.

How does Vantage scale from 1-6 players? 

There are individual turns in Vantage (due to the way the action system works, it isn’t simultaneous), but every player is involved in every turn, and you have abilities you can use on any turn. There’s a mechanical scaling element via the number of challenge dice in the game. I’ve designed and playtested the game to sing just as well at higher player counts as it does at 1-2 players.

As a cooperative game, is there potential for bossy alpha players in Vantage?

You have complete agency over your choices in Vantage. There’s potential for discussion, to be sure, but you choose your actions, not the other players. This is a game where only you can see your current location, so you have crucial information that none of the other players have–it’s entirely up to you how you share that information (generally it’s a good idea for collaboration and cooperation to talk about what you’re looking at and what your actions are, but if another player is being bossy, you can simply not tell them what you see and make your choice without input from them). After all, this is a game about being separated by vast distances across an entire planet–both thematically and mechanically, it doesn’t make sense for there to be alpha players in Vantage.

Is Vantage a campaign game?

No, you start every game from scratch, and you put everything away when the game ends after 1-2 hours. The only persistent element from game to game is your increased knowledge of the world.

What does it mean that Vantage is a “roguelike” adventure game?

Vantage shares the following elements commonly attributed to roguelike games often feature the following:

• Start each game with random/variable elements: There are 6 different characters, 21 different missions, and over 100 locations where each player might crash.
• The game is a series of encounters/interactions determined by the direction you choose to move.
• You gain frequent rewards after each encounter/interaction, all of which are specific to the action you chose (sometimes random from a set pool). Progression happens quickly (not a slow, incremental grind).
• Your character’s composition evolves differently every time (each player will typically only earn and use around a dozen of the 900 discoverable cards in the game.
• You try to get as far as possible into the game. If you win or lose, the game ends; if you play again, you start over fresh the next game with no progression or persistence.
• There is increased mastery and knowledge from one game to the next–explore and discover how the world works and how you can thrive in it.

All of that said, I really am not trying to shoehorn in the term “roguelike” for this game. Heck, when I started working on the game 7 years ago, I didn’t know what a roguelike game was. It wasn’t until the game was fully formed that I had played a number of digital roguelikes and realized that Vantage shared many characteristics with them. Starting a new run in Vantage–especially after a failed run–absolutely feels like a roguelike (it was playtesters who pointed this out to me before I ever added it to the description). Before I finalize the rules, I’ll poll playtesters about the term, and if they don’t think Vantage fits into this genre, I’ll listen to them and will remove the term from the rules and marketing.

How much text is in Vantage?

The action system involves some storybook text, though I really focused on keeping the text per action to 1-2 sentences for most of the 6,000+ actions in the game (not long paragraphs).

Does Vantage really only take a few minutes to set up? What about cleanup? How much table space does it require?

During setup, you just put the box of cards–all in numerical order–on the table along with some tokens, dozens of custom dice, central board, and storybooks, and you all begin on the first location (the spaceship).

Each player can only see their current location card, which is set vertically in from of you. Beyond that, each player needs about a square foot for their tableau and a little extra space for storybooks, and players share the space on the table for a small board, the box of cards, and room to roll dice.

During the game, if I move from location 100 to location 456, I’ll have a placeholder card in the box where location 100 goes to make it easy to return that card and then find card 456–in that way, locations are quickly coming in and out of the box during the game, not piling up until the end. This facilitates fast cleanup. And since Vantage is not a campaign game, there is no need to save the endgame state.

Will Vantage feel the same every time you play since the world isn’t randomly generated?

I’ve designed Vantage to be big enough–nearly 800 locations, 900 discoverable cards, and over 6,000 actions–so that you have a vastly different experience every time you play. Even though the world itself isn’t randomly generated, there are random/variable elements to the game, including 6 different characters, 21 different missions, and over 100 locations where each player might crash. Even if all of those elements end up completely the same, upon arrival you could interact with the location in a different way than before or walk north instead of south, east, or west.

If everyone is doing their own thing on different parts of the planet, are 6 players mostly playing their own game? Do I care what other players are doing?

I’ll answer with an example: I’ve never been to the Origins Game Fair, but let’s say you have. I show up at a specific entrance there, but I’m not sure where to go, what to eat, or who to talk to. But maybe you do. So I give you a call, and you give me some advice and input, wisdom that I can put into practice right away. We’re cooperating despite a vast distance between us (and in Vantage, this isn’t just through verbal communication–there are mechanical ways to advise and help other players too). I’ll get into the weeds of that cooperation in a design diary post–I’m just demonstrating here that being in the same place isn’t a prerequisite to cooperation.

You might care about the other players because you all came to the planet for the same reason (1 of 21 different missions). But you also might decide that the mission isn’t priority and you really want to do something else instead. But you’re still incentivized to help each other no matter what you pursue, because if one player reaches a fail state, the game potentially ends for everyone.

How does movement work in Vantage?

In Vantage, because players are stranded far from each other on a vast planet, only you can see your location (just as you cannot see other locations). Your location is a large card placed upright in front of you in a card holder. You’re always facing north, literally looking through your character’s eyes–instead of a miniature, you are your character.

Among the various actions to choose from on your turn is to move from your location to an adjacent location in any cardinal direction. In the example below, the compass shows that you can easily walk east or south. If you do, after completing the action, simply return the current location card to the box in numerical order (its place reserved by your placeholder card) and find location card 103 or 576 to place in your card holder.

You could instead move north or west, but the difficulty of these directions is unknown. This is one of the ways that using your eyes matters in Vantage. Are you adept at moving–or, specifically, moving across water? Does the water appear calm or stormy? Do you or other players have advice to offer (mechanically) for such movement? It is only after you commit to moving north or west on this location that you will learn the difficulty, perform the action, and go to the resulting location.

Also note that even though you’re always facing north, you can still discern from the terrain shown near the bottom of your location as to what you’ll find to the south. If it’s a particularly perilous journey south, the text on your location will describe what’s behind you.

This is how movement works in Vantage. Nearly every location (of close to 800 unique locations) allows you to move in any direction as your turn. In this way, whenever you move, you’ve created a new branching path in your story. Even if luck has it that you crash on the exact location (a 1 in 126 chance), you can move in a different direction for a new adventure.

How do you win Vantage? Can you lose?

The short answer is yes, there are specific, clearly defined victory and loss conditions in a game of Vantage. But the full answer is more nuanced than that: Victory in Vantage depends on whether you’re extrinsically motivated or intrinsically motivated (or a mix of both).

Completing the mission is a victory state (as is figuring out your group’s “destiny”–where you want to end up after having crashed on the planet), but it’s also baked into the rules that if you decide to pursue something in the game that’s important to you (an intrinsic motivation) and you achieve it before reaching a fail state, that is also a form of victory. I get that this is unusual for a tabletop game, but here’s an example that may help: Have you ever played The Mind? Technically, you win The Mind if you get through all 10 levels without failing. I’ve never done that. Yet I’ve still had games of The Mind that felt like we won–perhaps we played once and lost after 3 levels, and we decided to play again to do better; if we got to level 5 the next time, we met our goal and felt like we won. You may have felt this way in digital roguelike games too–maybe you decided to try to build a Slay the Spire deck around a certain card or to do something clever with a new joker in Balatro.

With all that said, if you’re someone who dislikes these types of intrinsic motivations in games, you can instead pursue the mission (the reason you came to the planet in the first place) or a destiny. The mission is the victory condition for those who are extrinsically motivated (or even those who just want something to focus on in the face of so many different options and paths).

Why did you announce Vantage nearly a year before its expected launch and release?

I talk about this topic in detail in this article.

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