I wouldn't be surprised to see Samurai, Ronin, Ninja, Courtier, Monk, Shadowlands, and Shugenja possibly be the only keywords retained (as well as Unique and possibly Daimyo).

Yeah some of the keywords were great, like YU, cavalry, Naval. Ninja from Lotus was one of the bad, very bad ones

Resolve a round in 10 minutes or less.

This is possibly the one big thing that would stop me buying a box on launch. Not every game needs to be Magic, and with CCGs/LCGs there's a nasty tendency for games that aim to be short and simple to end up being games entirely about deck building where actually sitting down and playing feels like an afterthought.

That's the point of distinguishing a round from game. A well-paced modern game that takes 30-45 minutes should require you and your opponent to engage in multiple interactive conflicts, relatively independent of one another - not vomit Gold for 3 turns, vomit personalities for 2 more, then be irrevocably decided by the snowball effect of the first battle fought or first Personality with attachments that eats a Duel or catches a fork in his ear. If they are going to make a modern game out of L5R it shouldn't involve Katamari Mechanics and "do a bunch of stuff, your turn, do a bunch of stuff, my turn - reuse a bunch of my stuff" design from the early 1990s. Have both players play some stuff, mess with stuff on the board, and then figure out who scored for the round. Then shuffle up and do it again. First one to 5 (or whatever) wins. Something like that simultaneously helps mitigate against gross variance in draws while also creating a layer of a guessing game in terms of each player's sequencing of actions (assuming you're each playing in the same cycle - I make a move, you make a move, I make a move).

That's much more the way that L5R's Stories tell themselves anyway. Nobody would read a story where the Lion took a castle somewhere and automagically spent the next 3 stories destroying the victim's other 3 castles as a foregone conclusion. That lacks drama and meaningful interaction.

Beyond that, dump every single keyword that ever came with an attached rule and consider if the same general theme can be explored through explicit card design instead of rulebook effects. We don't need Naval Invasion, Cavalry Phase, a Rulebook Tactical Action, automatic Seppuku for Samurai / Courtiers, or "only Shugenja may attach spells." You can do any of those themes justice by just having cards that key off of those traits appropriately. Only introduce keywords with implicit effects sparingly . Man, even Hearthstone can only get away with that because the program creates visual animations and enforces the rules for you.

Marty Lund

Monkey Clan * Random * Grognard

Just limit keywords to like 6 or 7 max and put more focus on cards that key off of traits instead.

Or, crazy idea, how about we mostly focus personalities on actual printed abilities that are actually on the card, instead of personalities providing you scout-mana or nina-mana or berserker-mana to play this or that red card?

I know, I know, crazy talk. But I absolutely despise the whole "You have to play this card because it enables you to play this card" approach to game design we saw in late gold. My personality base should be made of cards with stats and abilities that fit well in my deck, not cards that have the right magical words to allow me to play the right red cards.

All-scouts and all-duelists and all-ninja decks as in the last decade of L5R are one of the thing that most turned me away from that game. I want to play Crane or Scorpion or Phoenix, not Scout or Duelist or Ninja.

Yeah some of the keywords were great, like YU, cavalry, Naval. Ninja from Lotus was one of the bad, very bad ones

Ninja wasn't really that bad in theory.

The problem was that the templating on Ninja cards was so terrible that you never knew if a given interaction was going to work the way you thought it did. Ninja usually had reactions on them that were "Mess with an opponent for targeting me" -- they were gotchas like, hey, here are all my mystery ninja guys, you don't know which is which, and if you approach one something bad is going to happen to you. But the phrasing of the reactions was so inconsistent, you didn't actually know when your opponent targeted a ninja if the ability would actually work.

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?

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?

Was it as bad as MTG's Morph?

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?

This. So much of this. I piloted a ninjitsu deck, and I hated it. Opponents who don't have a great memory can't remember every detail of every ninja, which made it horrible in casual. Plus, I had to spend half of my game teaching my opponents the ins and outs of the rules and rulings regarding it. I called judges over more often for that deck than for the entire rest of my tournament participation, and at least once even the judge ruled wrong. It was a cute idea, but horrible horrible implementation.

All-scouts and all-duelists and all-ninja decks as in the last decade of L5R are one of the thing that most turned me away from that game. I want to play Crane or Scorpion or Phoenix, not Scout or Duelist or Ninja.

I wouldn't mind both being available. Like, you can play your Crane or Scorpion or Pheonix or whatever. I play my Ninja deck, that draws on expert Ninjas from all the clans assembling in a conspiracy to assassinate your daimyo or whatever.

One is not exclusive to the other. (I mean, unless you want to guarantee that's clan vs. clan, and force *every* player to play a clan deck, then we'll just have to agree to disagree.)

Although I agree, at least in a couple of arcs I played, that it become *more* about the keywords than the clans, and that wasn't good.

Although I agree, at least in a couple of arcs I played, that it become *more* about the keywords than the clans, and that wasn't good.

Absolutely agree. The intention of that design was noble - to allow for more of a shared card pool - but the result was that a lot of clan identities got spread thin and in ways that didn't always make a whole lot of sense. It felt really strange to have Unicorn, Lion, Scorpion and Spider partially sharing a set of cards keying on the paragon keyword, but some wanted high force, some wanted high personal honor, and others were agnostic to those stats. Then you'd have cases where the Scorpion paragons were also yojimbo like the Phoenix Shiba, and those cards usually checked for existence of a courtier or shugenja. Deck construction got a little wonky.

All-scouts and all-duelists and all-ninja decks as in the last decade of L5R are one of the thing that most turned me away from that game. I want to play Crane or Scorpion or Phoenix, not Scout or Duelist or Ninja.

I wouldn't mind both being available. Like, you can play your Crane or Scorpion or Pheonix or whatever. I play my Ninja deck, that draws on expert Ninjas from all the clans assembling in a conspiracy to assassinate your daimyo or whatever.

One is not exclusive to the other. (I mean, unless you want to guarantee that's clan vs. clan, and force *every* player to play a clan deck, then we'll just have to agree to disagree.)

Although I agree, at least in a couple of arcs I played, that it become *more* about the keywords than the clans, and that wasn't good.

I'm fine with that kind of deck ; my problem is more with the whole "theme" mentality of the last few arcs where you weren't playing the clan ; you were playing a subset of the clan with a specific keyword.

A "Clan all star" deck that ISN'T focused on this or that keyword should be as good as one that is. This means avoiding at all costs over-reliance on actions that require Scout-mana or Ninja-mana. Having a few is fine ; but you need a lot of actions, including good actions, that require broad trait/keywords or none at all. And synergy between the different keywords a clan might have.

A "Clan all star" deck that ISN'T focused on this or that keyword should be as good as one that is.

Yep! Although early on there probably won't be much choice in a small card pool. If you're playing a clan deck, you're probably playing every keyworded dude that clan has to offer.

This'll be an interesting balance to strike in FFG's cycle model, as core and deluxe boxes are evergreen. So anything in there is in the environment forever, which means anything included in those boxes will accumulate over time and be able to constitute larger and larger portions of a deck.

Whereas if that stuff comes in chapter packs, it'll (eventually) cycle out, and new cards can be produced in the same vein that don't let you go 100% lion tactician (or whatever).

I want to see the "Samurai" keyword change to "Bushi" personally. If you don't know why, go pick up a book.

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.

Honestly, if we just had three keywords - Bushi, Courtier and Shugenja - that cards interacted with, I'd be happy. Bushi would trigger cards that interact with combat, Courtier would trigger cards that interact with politics and Shugenja would trigger cards with prayers (spells) which could do both. That seems like a strong basis for the game as we know ALL clans have those three types of characters. Then you'd have faction specific cards like the Kakita Technique for the Crane, a Scorpion Political Scheme or Phoenix Secret Spell.

I recently thought about Ninja and Monk. You really can see that these two cards were factions at one point.

Only Dragon, Spider and very rarely Phoenix have the Monk keyword.

Scorpion and Spider have the Ninja keyword.

If Ninja become Bushi (which is not a stretch I mean we have Ogre Bushi) and Monk becomes Shugenja (which is more of a stretch but a helpful one).

We could get rid of these two keywords and wrap them into the trinity of Bushi, Courtier and Shugenja.

Perhaps we can find a word which combines Shugenja and Monk a bit better. Kiho User perhaps or kihotsukai. Well not sure.

Ninja and Monk could still be existent as fluff keywords that I mentioned before.

I recently thought about Ninja and Monk. You really can see that these two cards were factions at one point.

Only Dragon, Spider and very rarely Phoenix have the Monk keyword.

Scorpion and Spider have the Ninja keyword.

If Ninja become Bushi (which is not a stretch I mean we have Ogre Bushi) and Monk becomes Shugenja (which is more of a stretch but a helpful one).

We could get rid of these two keywords and wrap them into the trinity of Bushi, Courtier and Shugenja.

Perhaps we can find a word which combines Shugenja and Monk a bit better. Kiho User perhaps or kihotsukai. Well not sure.

Ninja and Monk could still be existent as fluff keywords that I mentioned before.

Maybe Samurai/Bushi/Berserker/Ninja and all that stuff could become Warrior (so to make the Naga and Ogre and that folks better also fall under a single trait).

And Shugenja/Monk/Shaman coule all become Mystic

Priest who casts spells is a Shugenja, and a Priest who meditates and blesses crops without magic and provides counsel is a Monk. Priest who kicks butts is a Sohei .

Thought you might want to substitute "Priest" with a more oriental word.

Having 3 types of personalities that are used mainly to progress one out of three victory types sounds like a healthy design. Bushi make Military go on, Courtiers make Political work, and Priests pave the road to Enlightement. In addition to that, give them secondary uses that are nice even outside their preferred victory type - for example, Bushi can duel which can help during Political phase, and Courtiers can use favors and political pull they gathered to influence military campaigns.

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!

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!

Not a fan of it. It gets into the realm of "over-simplification".

EDIT: It makes the game more shallow. It strips away the identity of any of the nine specific clans.

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.

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.

Make Monk and Ninja a subtype of Priest and Bushi/Courtier, Respectively. Monk Actions can be only played through a Monk, and Ninja Actions can only be played by a Ninja.

Then, in order to not make cards that are useful only by specific clans, introduce cards that allow you to count as a Ninja and a Monk. For example, a retainer/follower/equippable card that represents a shadowy advisor who listen to problems of your personality, and arranges them to be, ekhem, eliminated.

Or a Monk advisor who guides your personality to enlightement, allowing playing Priest Actions (but leave Spells as something inherent to Shugenja Personalities).

This way, even if you are playing a Lion Clan and having a Ninja Personality would make zero sense (Ekhem Lion Shadows Ekhem), you can play into idea that even the most honorable samurais had that one smiling advisor who called all the hard choices in order to bring them glory, making him [the advisor] available as clan neutral equippable card.

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.