Dueling needs to stay, in one form or another, and while everyone should be able to it, 2-3 Clans should be better than anyone else. We alrealy lost Ancestors, Regions, and Celestials. The game should not lose so much of its flavor. Flavor and fluff is what made people care.

The game also needs to avoid a homogenized version where clans and abilities are vanilla and uninteresting so..

If you are Mantis, for example, sorry you are garbage at dueling and should continue to be garbage at dueling (even with your Ogre Bushi's on boats).

That should really go with every avenue of play (military, economics, political, etc.).

The game should keep it?

Or Mantis are garbage?

That every clan should have strengths in certain areas of play but weaknesses in others so that everyone isn't vanilla. However, the option to do X with Y clan should exist.

Dueling needs to stay, in one form or another, and while everyone should be able to it, 2-3 Clans should be better than anyone else. We alrealy lost Ancestors, Regions, and Celestials. The game should not lose so much of its flavor. Flavor and fluff is what made people care.

The game also needs to avoid a homogenized version where clans and abilities are vanilla and uninteresting so..

If you are Mantis, for example, sorry you are garbage at dueling and should continue to be garbage at dueling (even with your Ogre Bushi's on boats).

That should really go with every avenue of play (military, economics, political, etc.).

The game should keep it?

Or Mantis are garbage?

That every clan should have strengths in certain areas of play but weaknesses in others so that everyone isn't vanilla. However, the option to do X with Y clan should exist.

I agree; I was mostly being facetious.

I wouldn't be surprised to seeing Dueling out of the game at all, or at least is greatly overhauled (Personally, I like the Joust idea someone posted above).

I enjoy it, but it is clunky, very hard to balance (if it isn't strong enough no runs duels, if its too strong dueling dominates) etc... But one of hte biggest issues with dueling in the game is that they are too often one-sided, which isn't very fun OR thematic. If two people enter a contest both should have a good chance of winning, and often that isn't the case in L5R.....of course the problem that brings up is, if you're only going to win 50-60-70-80% of your duels, why play them instead of other, more reliable actions?

I'd agree with that, but I think it should include the other avenues of play too. I'd want some risk of losing if I duel someone but if I'm using a master duelist compared to some random bandit or courtier, then I expect a relatively high chance of success.

I agree, but in most cases dueling is used as if every personality with the duelist keyword is a "master duelist".

As I said, the problem with making dueling an actual contest were, in most cases, the challenger and the challenged have equal chances of success is that very few people would play with the mechanic. Why key your deck around something that you're only likely to be successful at 50-60, even 70 or 80% of the time?

Dueling needs to stay, in one form or another, and while everyone should be able to it, 2-3 Clans should be better than anyone else. We alrealy lost Ancestors, Regions, and Celestials. The game should not lose so much of its flavor. Flavor and fluff is what made people care.

The game also needs to avoid a homogenized version where clans and abilities are vanilla and uninteresting so..

If you are Mantis, for example, sorry you are garbage at dueling and should continue to be garbage at dueling (even with your Ogre Bushi's on boats).

The problem I've always had with the approach is that it makes no "in universe" sense for L5R.

Dueling is how a lot of political and legal issues are settled in this world, a clan to just accept being "garbage" at something would be accepting losing in those situations - no clan would do that.

I also think its silly to say that Mantis or Unicorn or Crab (or whatever) just will not produce good duelists, its like saying only the Lion would produce good field commanders, only the Crab would produce strong Samurai and only the Phoenix would produce Shugenja. I'm Canadian so I'll compare it to hockey - generally speaking we (Canada) produce the best hockey players in the world (think the Dragon and Crane), but its not like EVERY great hockey player is Canadian - Lidstrom, Sundin, Forsberg, Ovechkin, Malkin, Kopitar, Kane etc... All amazing hockey players from all over the world (the rest of the clans). So while I would agree that the Dragon and the Crane should, generally, have a couple more good duelist personalities then the other clans, the other clans should have more then enough to make dueling viable.

Absolutely. Every clan should feel as though dueling is an option for them. An option of last resort, perhaps, but an option nonetheless.

As long as there is a crane around, yes a very last option.

Dueling needs to stay, in one form or another, and while everyone should be able to it, 2-3 Clans should be better than anyone else. We alrealy lost Ancestors, Regions, and Celestials. The game should not lose so much of its flavor. Flavor and fluff is what made people care.

The game also needs to avoid a homogenized version where clans and abilities are vanilla and uninteresting so..

If you are Mantis, for example, sorry you are garbage at dueling and should continue to be garbage at dueling (even with your Ogre Bushi's on boats).

That should really go with every avenue of play (military, economics, political, etc.).

The game should keep it?

Or Mantis are garbage?

I see shots are being fired. =)

I challenge you to a duek on a rocky boat in the middle of a raging stormy sea. That or in the middle of a continuous earthquake being caused by an Isawa.

Its just a matter of finding the right place =)

That or cheat.

I wouldn't be surprised to seeing Dueling out of the game at all, or at least is greatly overhauled (Personally, I like the Joust idea someone posted above).

I enjoy it, but it is clunky, very hard to balance (if it isn't strong enough no runs duels, if its too strong dueling dominates) etc... But one of hte biggest issues with dueling in the game is that they are too often one-sided, which isn't very fun OR thematic. If two people enter a contest both should have a good chance of winning, and often that isn't the case in L5R.....of course the problem that brings up is, if you're only going to win 50-60-70-80% of your duels, why play them instead of other, more reliable actions?

I'd agree with that, but I think it should include the other avenues of play too. I'd want some risk of losing if I duel someone but if I'm using a master duelist compared to some random bandit or courtier, then I expect a relatively high chance of success.

I agree, but in most cases dueling is used as if every personality with the duelist keyword is a "master duelist".

As I said, the problem with making dueling an actual contest were, in most cases, the challenger and the challenged have equal chances of success is that very few people would play with the mechanic. Why key your deck around something that you're only likely to be successful at 50-60, even 70 or 80% of the time?

I wouldn't go with equal chances with a basic duel as I would favor samurai and whatever ability they key off of versus over other personalities like courtiers or geishas. Samurai versus Samurai with equal skill on the other hand should be around 50/50. Not counting actions and so on.

Absolutely. Every clan should feel as though dueling is an option for them. An option of last resort, perhaps, but an option nonetheless.

As long as there is a crane around, yes a very last option.

Dueling needs to stay, in one form or another, and while everyone should be able to it, 2-3 Clans should be better than anyone else. We alrealy lost Ancestors, Regions, and Celestials. The game should not lose so much of its flavor. Flavor and fluff is what made people care.

The game also needs to avoid a homogenized version where clans and abilities are vanilla and uninteresting so..

If you are Mantis, for example, sorry you are garbage at dueling and should continue to be garbage at dueling (even with your Ogre Bushi's on boats).

That should really go with every avenue of play (military, economics, political, etc.).

The game should keep it?

Or Mantis are garbage?

I see shots are being fired. =)

I challenge you to a duek on a rocky boat in the middle of a raging stormy sea. That or in the middle of a continuous earthquake being caused by an Isawa.

Its just a matter of finding the right place =)

That or cheat.

Who needs Isawa, your shugenjas are better at controlling weather than them !

And this "place advantage thing" actually physically works in RPG - Yoritomo first technique has a tiny perk of ignoring all penalties from bad environment. It looks cute and fangless...until you actually really, really have to fight that Yoritomo in a middle of storm on a rocking boat and everything in the world wants to give you some sort of penalty to not even fighting, but just existing .

Honestly, I'd probably just make it a rulebook keyword, like Tactician- give "Duelist" cards the ability to bow to bow an opposing Human card with lower chi, or something (I'm sure others can think of better ideas), then print actions that trigger off it as well (again like Tactician), but without having to introduce the complexity nd general awkwardness of duels in their current form. I agree that duels should absolutely be part of the setting, and having a separate 'combat phase' for them works in the RPG, but it probably causes more problems than it resolves in the CCG.

Of course, given they're redesigning the whole game, rulebook keywords may well no longer be a thing. We'll just have to wait and see, but I doubt they'll get rid of dueling entirely given iaijutsu's centrality to Rokugani society and culture.

FFG's other games have keywords (equivalent to rulebook-based keywords) and traits (equivalent to flavor-based keywords). They also have equivalents to L5R's traits. They reduced the number of keywords in AGoT 2nd ed (compared to 1st ed), but didn't remove them entirely.

3 insights, 4 sudden movements and 1 a magistrate falls in one battle - not counting on board actions. He was unhappy with me.

That was me.

The uncertainty of what focus values people were putting down made dueling interesting. You might not be bluffing at winning but you could be bluffing in the sense you were trying to get your opponent to discard useful cards. This was completely lost when your focused cards were free.

I would be interested in a dueling mechanic similar to the aforementioned 7th sea. It needs to be really carefully designed however. In the original Doomtown it was really easy to get 5 of a kind in the poker parts of the game.

Really like the idea of implementing the elements (5 Rings) on (almost) every card as they're supposed to be central to the culture. Putting them on personalities would tell us something about the character without even having to read up on them. Of course this means that shadowlands would likely be bereft of these traits but that would make sense.

This.

I would be interested in a dueling mechanic similar to the aforementioned 7th sea. It needs to be really carefully designed however. In the original Doomtown it was really easy to get 5 of a kind in the poker parts of the game.

The new version fixed that problem by introducing a limit (4) on how many cards with the same suit and value you can put in your deck (the limit on card name still exists). It's not that hard to get a 5 of a kind in the new version if you build your deck for it (and you're ready to cheat - punishment can still hurt, but no more Jackalope Stampede), but you're more likely to get a full house (since at most a third of your deck can be filled with only 1 value). I'm not saying the same approach would work, but there is certainly a solution.

That's cool, I haven't had an opportunity to play the new version. We are spoiled for choice these days in gaming.

I love the elemental duels idea from earlier in the thread. As a Spider player, I would support different clans having different storyline "reasons" for being good at duels. Spider boost themselves (sometimes - ok often - through nefarious means) Scorpion cheat with poison, Crane have better swords/technique, etc. etc. But I also like the idea of a duel being a rulebook action, as it were. It can be frustrating when you need a card to start a duel.

I love the elemental duels idea from earlier in the thread. As a Spider player, I would support different clans having different storyline "reasons" for being good at duels. Spider boost themselves (sometimes - ok often - through nefarious means) Scorpion cheat with poison, Crane have better swords/technique, etc. etc. But I also like the idea of a duel being a rulebook action, as it were. It can be frustrating when you need a card to start a duel.

It's an interesting idea, with the different elements replacing the focus values. I'd rather it be centered around the four natural elements (I suppose something like water over fire over air over earth over water and others forcing a re-focus?) with Void being the element that can beat the others. I'd still have focus effects with that system.

If every character has a specific Ring/element association, a character in a duel might gain an advantage based on his or her Ring if the opponent is of a different Ring.

Fire-->Water-->Earth---Air-->Fire

Void no strength or weakness.

Burning Sands had a form of dueling and it was very familiar to those who played 7th Sea. What with the Counter-attacks/Thrusts/Parrys/etc/etc.

Although I can see how people would like a fixed form of Rock/Paper/Scissors/Dynamite.

Crab - Earth

Crane - Air

Dragon - Fire

Lion - Water

Mantis - Earth

Phoenix - Void

Scorpion - Air

Spider - Fire

Unicorn - Water

Dueling should stay.

Ogre Bushi with a Bo of Ritual Blessing demands it to be so!

That's cool, I haven't had an opportunity to play the new version. We are spoiled for choice these days in gaming.

If you do, go for it.

Crab - Earth

Crane - Air

Dragon - Fire

Lion - Water

Mantis - Earth

Phoenix - Void

Scorpion - Air

Spider - Fire

Unicorn - Water

Mantis is thunder

Too many clans have two or more elemental attributes, won't go well with a lot of people, except for Cranes who have mostly air.

Sneaky Crane...

Eh. I'm not a fan of the 7th dueling system for a couple of reasons, but if you go down that road, you can't have one element for each clan.

1) It's too many choices for an effective R/P/S mechanic. Edit: Never mind, didn't notice elements were repeated.

2) It's too predictable in clan or alliance oriented decks, even if there are exceptions to the elemental "rule" in each clan.

Thunder is not one of the five rings.

Instead of giving Duelists some OMGWTFBBQ bonus, you could make them special by giving them two elements, and they can choose which one they are using in the duel.