Warrior/Courtier/Mystic

Warrior and Mystic are not Japanese words anymore but Courtier also never was a Japanese word... So why not... I like it!

Both warrior and mystic feel like change for the sake of change. I doubt that the target audience had trouble with either samurai or bushi, and shugenja isn't really that hard of a thing to explain.

You do realize that the start of the thing was to get rid of the Monk and the Ninja keyword, because they are faction specific?

Another solution would be to have more Monks and Ninja in the setting.

Crane get the Harrier back, now with Ninja keyword. Mantis also start to train Ninjas, they have stolen half of the Scorpion clan icons anyway and for historical reasons Lion Ninja in white are a thing...

The Unicorn (they adapted the tatoo thing from the Dragon) and the Crab (Hida Nichi) start opening up Monk orders and the Asako order grows.

Either direction is a good one because having a keyword with lots of card support which only two clans have access to is not a good thing.

Or they could not water down clan specific themes and just give kickers on actions that are performed slightly better by ninjas and monks, and keep those keywords in the clans that currently have them. Anything from increased effect to reduced honor loss would work. You can have a bushi type ninja, a courtier type ninja, and a shugenja type ninja, there have been in the CCG in the past. You also have monks that fall closer in line with one of each of those three spheres. Handing out keywords like candy in places where they don't make sense or fit was one of the big frustrations people had with EE.

There could also be a very small but style defining set of actions that key off of the niche classes could work too, they'd just have to make sure not to either over or under do it.

Warrior sounds like it belongs in a western themed RPG, not L5R.

Alternatively, have fewer "only [x] can play this card" actions, and more "gain [y bonus] if you are [x]" cards. Anyone can play Infiltrate to see a card in their opponent's hand- only Ninja can do so without bowing. Anyone can play Way of Hand and Foot, but only Monks get to take an additional action. And so on and so forth. I would generally prefer having fewer restrictions on what cards can be played by a given deck, even if some cards clearly have better synergy than others.

On a semi-related note, I liked Yandia's thought in the Dueling thread, of having Element-aligned personalities (yes, they already exist, but not in any significant number or with any significant effect), and having some abilities, not just duels, trigger off various Elements. It would mesh well with the setting, and potentially open up all kinds of interesting combinations and permutations.

This is what I was trying to articulate, but I think you did a better job of it.

You know, everything would be easier to design if you had greater control of what personalities you start with. Maybe say goodbye to 4 provinces and let everyone start with 4 chosen Big Personalities, so you can build your deck around them (so you are not crippled by having 100 ninja actions and not drawing a Ninja Personality to shoot them from). Win the game by fulfilling one of 3 Objectives (Military, Enlightement, Political) or lose it by having your four core personalities die.

Extra personalities could be recruited or represented as equippables.

This also helps communicate what your deck is about - if your opponent starts the game with 3 Courtiers and one Bushi, he is probably not going after Enlightenment.

Less personalities per Clan also allows more Clans in the initial release.

EDIT

Dishonored personality can function normally and do stuff, but for purpose of losing the game, she is considered dead . here is your Dishonor Victory Condition! And Assisnation Victory Condition ;p.

You know, everything would be easier to design if you had greater control of what personalities you start with. Maybe say goodbye to 4 provinces and let everyone start with 4 chosen Big Personalities, so you can build your deck around them (so you are not crippled by having 100 ninja actions and not drawing a Ninja Personality to shoot them from). Win the game by fulfilling one of 3 Objectives (Military, Enlightement, Political) or lose it by having your four core personalities die.

Extra personalities could be recruited or represented as equippables.

This also helps communicate what your deck is about - if your opponent starts the game with 3 Courtiers and one Bushi, he is probably not going after Enlightenment.

Less personalities per Clan also allows more Clans in the initial release.

I can totally get behind this. I wouldn't mind seeing less bodies on the table over the course of a game, and each body being a more important part of the game's narrative.

It would make for some interesting choices if you had to sacrifice your Crane Courtier to save your province because you were sure that your Daidoji had a trick that would win you the game next round - unless your opponent was predicting that. You could throw your Hiruma scout into the fray and hope that your flank with the Hida berserkers would make the sacrifice worthwhile. Your Akodo was disgraced at court and commits seppukku, but only because your Matsu Lion's Pride is fueled by your honor and is coming to avenge.

Right now you can get some big armies, and if they lose they get scooped up and unceremoniously dropped into the discard pile. I'd love to see an approach that got away from that. Obviously the exact mechanics will be ironed out from above, but that'd be a direction I loved.

Having Personality death be mostly something you, controller of it, declare in order to save the day, instead of something that usually happens from enemy overpowering you would be a interesting idea. After all, Samurai usually die because they commit all in to the case they are in and die to achieve something greater. This being reflected in game would be cool.

Of course, your opponent also should have ways to kill them, but not as easily as it was in CCG.

Having Personality death be mostly something you, controller of it, declare in order to save the day, instead of something that usually happens from enemy overpowering you would be a interesting idea. After all, Samurai usually die because they commit all in to the case they are in and die to achieve something greater. This being reflected in game would be cool.

Of course, your opponent also should have ways to kill them, but not as easily as it was in CCG.

It could create some interesting dichotomies between honor (staying in the fight and dying) and dishonor (fleeing the fight in shame, but living to fight again). I have no idea how that would be reflected in the cards, but it would be thematically appropriate. You'd see a lot of Lions and Cranes picking the first choice, a lot of Scorpions and Crabs picking the second, and a lot of Dragons and Unicorns picking one or the other depending on board position and their personal style. I think it would give good flavor to the high, low, and mid honor clans. The same kind of choice could be applied to the dueling mechanic - draw your sword knowing you might die with honor or back down, concede victory, and try to win later on your terms.

Less dying, more bitter rivalries . Death duels should be some kind of rare, powerful situations you worked to engineer for past few turns in order to create that Game Changing Moment.

On the other hand, to make losing challenges/duels/battles not "free", each time a Personality loses it, give them a Scar/Failure/Wound token. Get X Failure Tokens, die.

Having Personality death be mostly something you, controller of it, declare in order to save the day, instead of something that usually happens from enemy overpowering you would be a interesting idea. After all, Samurai usually die because they commit all in to the case they are in and die to achieve something greater. This being reflected in game would be cool.

Of course, your opponent also should have ways to kill them, but not as easily as it was in CCG.

It could create some interesting dichotomies between honor (staying in the fight and dying) and dishonor (fleeing the fight in shame, but living to fight again). I have no idea how that would be reflected in the cards, but it would be thematically appropriate. You'd see a lot of Lions and Cranes picking the first choice, a lot of Scorpions and Crabs picking the second, and a lot of Dragons and Unicorns picking one or the other depending on board position and their personal style. I think it would give good flavor to the high, low, and mid honor clans. The same kind of choice could be applied to the dueling mechanic - draw your sword knowing you might die with honor or back down, concede victory, and try to win later on your terms.

Disappearing World Style

It was a mess. I remember my early Castle of the Wasp orochi (before raiding orochi had real card support) deck getting murdered at gencon so cal because the ninja rules were a clusterduck. Did I bother to read the half of page dedicated to the ninjitsu rules, or just try and kill one with arrows?

Trying to kill them with arrows would involve reading the ninjitsu rules, because that would be targeting them, and targeting ninjas was what most of the ninjitsu rules covered.

And when you tried to kill a given ninja with arrows, what would happen? Nobody knew, the abilities were worded so inconsistently!

If they keep to the two decks then to be competitive the two decks will have to have some synergy. So odds are they'll keep the class traits like samurai,shugenja,etc because actions key off them all the time. Though things like naval, cavalry and such tend to clan specific but that is not always the case it's also a way to let let a player know how strong a personality is and gives a clan diversity. It would suck to be limited. FFG needs to never make a trait / keyword that has no relevance to the game in any way shape or from, if a trait does not interact with anther card never print it on a card...AEG was bad about this.

Personally, I'd rather see more traits (=AEG's keywords) on FFG's cards. You can always add cards later that expand on a trait and let you build around it in a deck. But once a card is printed, you can't go back and add traits to it (unless you're giving it attachments), so it's better to give things more traits rather than less.

Oh, you can add all of the stuff to the card, that's what erratas are for! Who cares if card said "Bushi personalities cost +1 G", now it says "Non Courtier personalities cost +1G" .

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But seriously, you are right. Better safe than sorry. Unless cards are printed on magical electrical paper that automatically checks for the latest errata and updates the text, it's better to design them in a way where you may need to change as less things on the card in question as possible.

edit

http://imperialassembly.com/oracle/#cardid=11708,#hashid=12ced70a2e029b2aebdc32c5e0703c8e,#cardcount=33

Personally, I'd rather see more traits (=AEG's keywords) on FFG's cards. You can always add cards later that expand on a trait and let you build around it in a deck. But once a card is printed, you can't go back and add traits to it (unless you're giving it attachments), so it's better to give things more traits rather than less.

My thing is, as long as they can be reasonably expected to carry mechanics, fine.

But, for example, giving one guy the "Madman" keyword is unlikely to result in meaningful gameplay considerations. At least, not in anything except Cthulhu.

Personally, I'd rather see more traits (=AEG's keywords) on FFG's cards. You can always add cards later that expand on a trait and let you build around it in a deck. But once a card is printed, you can't go back and add traits to it (unless you're giving it attachments), so it's better to give things more traits rather than less.

My thing is, as long as they can be reasonably expected to carry mechanics, fine.

But, for example, giving one guy the "Madman" keyword is unlikely to result in meaningful gameplay considerations. At least, not in anything except Cthulhu.

I totally agree.

Wait ... did that appear on 1 card in the CCG?

Personally, I'd rather see more traits (=AEG's keywords) on FFG's cards. You can always add cards later that expand on a trait and let you build around it in a deck. But once a card is printed, you can't go back and add traits to it (unless you're giving it attachments), so it's better to give things more traits rather than less.

My thing is, as long as they can be reasonably expected to carry mechanics, fine.

But, for example, giving one guy the "Madman" keyword is unlikely to result in meaningful gameplay considerations. At least, not in anything except Cthulhu.

I totally agree.

Wait ... did that appear on 1 card in the CCG?

http://imperialassembly.com/oracle/#hashid=ccbe15a2289433a4ff89bb8d27e9d807,#page=1

Wow 3 Madman cards in 20 years. Yeah, that's a little excessive.

Wow 3 Madman cards in 20 years. Yeah, that's a little excessive.

It was an OP keyword. That's why it's only on two different personalities (one experienced). I know I didn't want to go up against a whole field of madmen.

Madness.

Personally, I'd rather see more traits (=AEG's keywords) on FFG's cards. You can always add cards later that expand on a trait and let you build around it in a deck. But once a card is printed, you can't go back and add traits to it (unless you're giving it attachments), so it's better to give things more traits rather than less.

My thing is, as long as they can be reasonably expected to carry mechanics, fine.

But, for example, giving one guy the "Madman" keyword is unlikely to result in meaningful gameplay considerations. At least, not in anything except Cthulhu.

I totally agree.

Wait ... did that appear on 1 card in the CCG?

I was pretty sure it was more than one, but practically speaking, that's the impact.

It was also the one I thought of off hand. I'm sure there were many more. Random keywords like that have been a thing frequently enough that it got to the point where design was making policy statements about how they would or wouldn't be using them in the future.

I suspect it's one of those things that started as a joke, ("Wouldn't it be funny if this guy had the madman keyword?"), got positive reinforcement when a few people laughed about it on the internet, and then design and story BEAT THE JOKE TO DEATH.

Well, someone probably thought that if you have a 3 lines space of text that utilizes only 3 words, adding some flavor keywords wouldn't do much harm and add some extra atmosphere.

Then, I tried to show the game to someone new, and they were like "the ninjas all these keywords mean" and "this is bloated and ugly and god".

Madness.

Madness...THIS. IS. ROKUGAN!

Well, someone probably thought that if you have a 3 lines space of text that utilizes only 3 words, adding some flavor keywords wouldn't do much harm and add some extra atmosphere.

Yeah, "Wouldn't this be funny," is probably excessively reductive. Also include, "Wouldn't this be cool?" or pick your desired effect.

Well, someone probably thought that if you have a 3 lines space of text that utilizes only 3 words, adding some flavor keywords wouldn't do much harm and add some extra atmosphere.

Then, I tried to show the game to someone new, and they were like "the ninjas all these keywords mean" and "this is bloated and ugly and god".

I was in the camp that found the one or two off non-functional keywords fun. It was a way to show people what kind of character this was without having to spell it out in the flavor text or hunt down the character in the story. Once we got used to it, it wasn't that big a deal.

That said, I expect those kinds of keywords to be on the chopping block. But in the end I liked them better than the functional rulebook keywords they kept introducing that didn't get a whole lot of support.

They can also do that via card names. The coils of madness set had lots of personalities with tacked on "titles" and it didn't wreck gameplay while still adding flavor.

I still expect flavored keywords like Madman, etc. GoT has them and once in a while a card comes out that supports them, or they have 1 card that ends up supporting that strange niche. But not always. Sometimes it's intentional and sometimes it gets through the cracks.

As long as it's not 3 lines full of tightly packed flavor keywords and one, literally one, gameplay relevant keyword sneaked between them, I'm okay with flavor keyword. Bah, as long it looks aesthetically pleasing, I can even agree to always having one flavor keyword per personality .