Nonetheless people do it a lot and (I assume) it resonates, so I think there is some meaningful difference. (I think it comes with an implied ‘basically like Magic the Gathering, except’, which maybe makes it more like selling non-red apples than non-apples)
I think that ‘non-mana’ makes a bad development plan (“ok, but what should we have instead of mana?”) and possibly a bad official marketing strategy (“ok, but why should I trust that you found something actually good to replace it with?”). However in other contexts I think ‘non-mana’ style descriptions can be very useful, primarily for their brevity. One of my favorite games is Epic Card Game (despite the terrible name), and my one-sentence description of it is that it’s similar to Magic except that I like it better, in large part because they drastically improved Magic’s mana system and Magic’s distribution model and (unlike Magic) created a great 2-player draft format. And sure, I haven’t actually told you how it accomplishes any of those things—what specific features instantiate those antifeatures. But you can always ask for the details if you want to hear more, or if you trust me for whatever reason (which may be easier than trusting the company’s marketers) then you can just take my word for it, and so this quick description is enough for my friend to go try the game.
Selling a card game as ‘non-mana’ is like selling non-apples, sounds like.
Nonetheless people do it a lot and (I assume) it resonates, so I think there is some meaningful difference. (I think it comes with an implied ‘basically like Magic the Gathering, except’, which maybe makes it more like selling non-red apples than non-apples)
I think that ‘non-mana’ makes a bad development plan (“ok, but what should we have instead of mana?”) and possibly a bad official marketing strategy (“ok, but why should I trust that you found something actually good to replace it with?”). However in other contexts I think ‘non-mana’ style descriptions can be very useful, primarily for their brevity. One of my favorite games is Epic Card Game (despite the terrible name), and my one-sentence description of it is that it’s similar to Magic except that I like it better, in large part because they drastically improved Magic’s mana system and Magic’s distribution model and (unlike Magic) created a great 2-player draft format. And sure, I haven’t actually told you how it accomplishes any of those things—what specific features instantiate those antifeatures. But you can always ask for the details if you want to hear more, or if you trust me for whatever reason (which may be easier than trusting the company’s marketers) then you can just take my word for it, and so this quick description is enough for my friend to go try the game.