What I want represented:

- Named personalities being important and center of the game. Not nameless soldiers, or "Crane Bushi" or something like that, but "Bayushi Bob, The Bobest".

- Duels. Duels are the action part of the Samurai fiction I like the most. So I want them represented. I would rather give up battles of armies than duels.

- Political intrigue being represented somehow.

- Honor being interesting and tangible force, which can be good or bad for you, depending on what you want to play.

So pretty much, I'm up for any game set in L5R, even if it abandons two decks, provinces, and gold.

What I want represented:

- Named personalities being important and center of the game. Not nameless soldiers, or "Crane Bushi" or something like that, but "Bayushi Bob, The Bobest".

Just out of idle curiosity, are you asking for *zero* unnamed personalities? Or is it okay to have some low cost chump personalities like "Scorpion Bootlicker," as long as you also have "Bayushi Bob" whose boots he licks?

What I want represented:

- Named personalities being important and center of the game. Not nameless soldiers, or "Crane Bushi" or something like that, but "Bayushi Bob, The Bobest".

Just out of idle curiosity, are you asking for *zero* unnamed personalities? Or is it okay to have some low cost chump personalities like "Scorpion Bootlicker," as long as you also have "Bayushi Bob" whose boots he licks?

If could decide that, then I would give every single peep its own name, the bootlicker would be just a follower, not a peep. Yes, even for goblin's and such I would prefer that method.

To be fair, L5R has always given every Personality a proper name. I mean, it's weird to have more than one of the same named dude in play. Whether it's too weird for FFG, though, remains to be seen.

To be fair, L5R has always given every Personality a proper name. I mean, it's weird to have more than one of the same named dude in play. Whether it's too weird for FFG, though, remains to be seen.

Yeah, I'm sure we'll see the unique pip pop up in front of some names. I'll be interested to see if it pops up in front of some and not others. I suspect whether or not we get personalities without names is going to depend in part on if that visual inconsistency bugs people.

To "fix" the honor vs. dishonor matchup just make it like the event Political Standoff. Have that built into the game would fix the boring stalemates.

Honestly, I could very easily see a two-deck system setup like GoT, with a main deck involving Personalities, Holdings, Attachments, and Strategies (or whatever you want to call them), and the other having "Provinces", or contested areas of Rokugan your Clan is trying to gain control of, with some sort of way to determine whoever gets X Provinces or Provinces with X value first being the winner.

I could see Personalities with four stats - Force (military strength), Chi (spiritual strength), Honor, and Glory (political strength) and probably no loaded keywords (you can handle most of those effects through an ability on the card), just basic stuff like Samurai (I know they are all samurai but honestly just for marketing if you have a samurai game you want to have cards on them that say samurai), Courtier, Shugenja, Shadowlands, Unique, and maybe some really flavorful ones like Ninja, Monk, Daimyo, or Ronin purely for card interaction purposes.

Perhaps the aforementioned Provinces have 3 sets of 'Province strength', Military, Spiritual, and Political, all with different values, and you try to contest those Provinces and claim them by attacking one of those types of values with your people, representing how your Clan tries to gain control of the area and its populace.

There could even be a mechanic for each of the Five Rings not unlike the Small Council, where you choose one of the Elemental Paths and try to achieve something in order to 'gain enlightenment' in that path, and you win an "enlightenment" victory bu achieving all five Ring Paths during the course of a game.

Just a quick couple of thoughts, with plenty of room to flesh out and develop, but I could see a basic framework with something like that in there.

Straightforwardly speaking the game mechanics must respond to several constraints, in priority:

1. Stick to the L5R atmosphere;
2. Keep it as simple as possible but stay open;
3. Differentiate each clan in how to interact in the game (victory condition, specificities, …);

The rest will be only more or less successful variation of the three points above

About victory conditions I’m used to play dishonor since the beginning but I know that it leads to a negative play experience, so gathering dishonor and honor in one political aspect seems more appropriate.

As well, it might be nice to gather magic, spirituality and enlightenment into one approach.

And of course, remains the military aspect, maybe with the duel aspect.

Needless to say I cannot wait to see what this game will look like

What causes Dishonor to be a more negative experience than Honor? I mean, yeah I was never crazy about having Kurumi seducing all my Battle Maidens, but it didn't bother me any more than Crane duelists cutting them all to pieces.

The psychology of having something taken away from you.

What causes Dishonor to be a more negative experience than Honor? I mean, yeah I was never crazy about having Kurumi seducing all my Battle Maidens, but it didn't bother me any more than Crane duelists cutting them all to pieces.

People tend to take it personally, I think, for whatever reason, when your victory is based on slandering them.

Over the many years I have played and designed, I see people disparage dishonor decks a fair amount more than any other, even when they aren't doing well in the environment. Dishonor decks also tend to have control elements, which cause several players to bristle, as they view any restrictions on how their deck does what it does as being 'unfair'.

Actually I found Dishonor the more enjoyable experience, because it made for a more interactive game.

I just think honor is more iconic and the dishonor-honor match-up was miserable so one has to go.

What causes Dishonor to be a more negative experience than Honor? I mean, yeah I was never crazy about having Kurumi seducing all my Battle Maidens, but it didn't bother me any more than Crane duelists cutting them all to pieces.

I can't speak for everyone, but in my experience it's a combination of two main factors, and some smaller ones: Firstly, when your opponent plays dishonour, you lose honour. When your opponent plays honour, they gain honour, but you don't lose anything. I understand that in both cases they're approaching their victory condition, but it always feels worse to lose something yourself than to have your opponent gain something. Secondly, dishonour effects often impose additional negative consequences, or force you to choose between multiple unpleasant outcomes. Being stuck in a situation where there is no good choice is never fun. Additionally, if your deck relies on Personal Honour at all, being dishonoured nerfs your deck even as it takes your opponent closer to their win condition. Also, 'dishonour' generally runs alongside 'control', whether through courtiers or through magistrates, and control is possibly the least fun deck type to play against. Being denied access to your own resources is not a good feeling. It's a valid strategy, and meta exists for it, it's just not fun, at least for me.

I will happily acknowledge, though, that other decks can certainly create NPEs. Blitz military is just awful, as are various other things, occasionally including dueling. I wouldn't say dishonour is unique in the degree of its unpleasantness, just that it's unpleasant in a quite distinctive way.

(EDIT: ninja'd by others, I see, but still worth saying, if only for emphasis by repetition.)

I truly do not understand why people hate on dishonor more than honor. They are so similar. The only difference is that Dishonor requires a dishonorable dude on their side. Dishonor is more interactive for that reason. At least what I have always thought

I truly do not understand why people hate on dishonor more than honor. They are so similar. The only difference is that Dishonor requires a dishonorable dude on their side. Dishonor is more interactive for that reason. At least what I have always thought

People don't like to be married to barbarians.

I always felt the opposite. I would have preferred if my opponent interacted with me instead of them playing a non-interactive minigame.

Oh its fine when you got Dishonor Vs Honor. Then there is whole world of interaction.

Dishonor has gone through lots of iterations and a lot of weird hang-ups.

- Early arcs, dishonor was capable of literally preventing you from playing the game. The ability to ignore honor requirements wasn't there. Not having - HR personalities in your deck meant you could be locked out of participating in the game if the dishonor player got a fast start and you dropped below zero. Then, dishonor took some time off as nonviable (or mostly trivial to outpace).
- Being the second instant-win condition along with enlightenment made it problematic. You tried your hardest to make your deck move forward and do your thing, and eventually your opponent offered his hand and informed you that the game ended. It's also had the bizarre fluctuation of "how big can the bomb get" that meant the increasing caution as the game approached the threshold of ending was nebulous. As an honor deck approaches 40, different decisions are made and mindsets shift. An honor deck at 35 with four cards in hand makes a military player wait a turn or plan to end the game that attack and be pleasantly surprised if they don't lose. Dishonor decks being able to bomb 10 points and up has been a thing since the beginning. Decks were being built only a couple arcs ago that ignored their opponent until they were ready to bomb them 40-70 points in a turn with no real need for interaction.

- Due to honor losses attached to personalities dying dishonorably, any increase in access to lethal effects shifts the pendulum in favor of dishonor decks versus high honor clans. If a dishonor deck kills one dishonorable personality each turn, it offsets or exceeds their opponent's dynasty gains.

- Military strength can be measured by the value of your best unit if it has resistance, but dishonor's strength is measured by the honor of YOUR most honorable personality. Buying your clan champion against dishonor may actually cost you the game.
- Actual dishonor meta is surprisingly costly. The reliance on dishonored personalities means dishonor rolls over and dies if they can't keep a target up. If an opponent can re-honor fast enough, the dishonor deck is dead in the water. It's either a brutal strategy of leaving the dishonor player twiddling his thumbs, or having utterly ineffective meta strategy. The alternative is honor gains that only work if the dishonor player is ahead?
PERSONAL: The "bad choices" design personally left me mentally drained after every game against a dishonor deck, win or lose. A nail-biter bushido brawl loss leaves me walking away pretty damned cheerful. I might gripe, but I'm doing it with a smile on my face. A nail-biting win against a dishonor deck leaves me wanting to take two shots and have a nap. Highly interactive, but pretty much every interaction felt bad.

In short, dishonor is a pile of inconsistent problems that can be fit into the overall balance, but it still boils down to being a deck that makes you lose instead of a deck that wins - through the flavor of trying as hard as you can to be the very bestest, most upstanding kid on the playground, but the never-ending gossip ruins your life. *runs off crying*

Streamlining Honor and Dishonor into a single Political Victory was always something we talked about, akin to the DC Comics board meetings where they would always suggest killing off Superman. The closest we got to implementation was the aforementioned Political Standoff, for a number of reasons.

I would personally prefer a political victory like Political Standoff, albeit re-tweaked of course if we are re-tweaking D/H.

Yes a political vicotory condition like standoff is the far better choice. Important here is that we still keep honor and dishonor and maybe we can get back the honor rquirement restriction even when soemone lost honor from a card effect. How I really hated that I actually help the Lion to get his high honor peeps when I dishonored him. Like what the hell the most honorfull people in rokugan ally more readily with an honorless scum than with a honorrable lion ?

I could see some political victories as being a mix or balance of the honor and dishonor strategies, rather than a focus on either extreme. Three avenues is better than two in my opinion.

I also started a discussion of this topic on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/l5r/comments/3l6ooq/ffgs_l5rwhat_would_you_like_to_see/

It seems 2 decks is very important to most. From my, admittedly uncredentialed, prespective the 2 decks limit design space in a strange way. In my amatuer attempts at designing L5R, since the announcement, I find it much more freeing to eliminate the dynasty deck. I also still have provinces, represented by cards with their own stats (PS, GP, etc..). I am definitely looking forward to what FFG will come up with.

Honor (as a concept, not as a decktype) should be a good thing in the game. That has not always successfully translated into design. In fact, quite the opposite:

Honor requirements make your deck unreliable. You want your guys as scummy as possible.

High Personal honor makes you more vulnerable to dishonor (Actually having personalities in the game makes you vulnerable, there are situations where faceless decks are preferable.) Again, when in doubt, go for the bottom of the barrel.

Honorable peeps are typically more expensive because PH is priced as a positive stat despite being a mixed bag. You'd go for the more competitively priced option, the scumbag.

Honor or switch decks can't really use unaligned cards, because they can't proclaim them. As a consequence, a high PH on a ronin is a disadvantage.

These weird rules artifacts need to go.

Honor (as a concept, not as a decktype) should be a good thing in the game. That has not always successfully translated into design. In fact, quite the opposite:

Honor requirements make your deck unreliable. You want your guys as scummy as possible.

High Personal honor makes you more vulnerable to dishonor (Actually having personalities in the game makes you vulnerable, there are situations where faceless decks are preferable.) Again, when in doubt, go for the bottom of the barrel.

Honorable peeps are typically more expensive because PH is priced as a positive stat despite being a mixed bag. You'd go for the more competitively priced option, the scumbag.

Honor or switch decks can't really use unaligned cards, because they can't proclaim them. As a consequence, a high PH on a ronin is a disadvantage.

These weird rules artifacts need to go.

I don't mind some of them going but I'd like to see some of those 'artifacts' stay, albeit in much more limited numbers. Fore example, a highly honorable samurai or personality should find it objectionable to join a player who is dishonorable.

You can solve this by text on the card.
"Akodo Tactican won't attach or provide any benefits to Personality harboring Dishonor [tokens]."