Imo

YES !

However,

A single tournament should not decide major factors in the game, however they should have an impact on the story itself.

Individual RPG or settings scenes should not also be able to alter major decisions.

Player voting as experienced still is the best way to decide major routes for a family, clan or the empire itself.

Only heavy major settings like Gencon or Winter Court should have a heavy impact on the story line, but only if taken as a whole.

ie

Voting - Players make a decision to make war against another clan, or decide who to aid and what resources to use

RPG and Tournament play - players decide which champions, families, resources to send, and on what quests, tasts, or goals ( ie: quests will still be subject to success/failure, would force the players to make good decisions like not sending a ronin to the imperial court just to have him killed before he reaches the gate)

I think the quick answer is yes, the player base should have some say in the game via tournament results. However, I'd rather they stick with largely story based things like what we've seen. The more prestigious the tournament, the better the story prize. I could see someone making a card (or helping to design) one as per the usual FFG prize that most of the other LCGs have.

The basis for story prizes and the way players can change the game are already there and FFG just needs to continue it with their own flair. Prize and tournament kits!

I could see someone making a card (or helping to design) one as per the usual FFG prize that most of the other LCGs have.

I'm sure we'll see this. Probably also stuff like The Chronos Protocol:

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2013/12/19/who-will-control-the-chronos-protocol/

Although a quick skim shows they haven't done anything like this for Netrunner for a while.

Did I overlook a more recent event of similar scope, Netrunner players?

I could see someone making a card (or helping to design) one as per the usual FFG prize that most of the other LCGs have.

I'm sure we'll see this. Probably also stuff like The Chronos Protocol:

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2013/12/19/who-will-control-the-chronos-protocol/

Although a quick skim shows they haven't done anything like this for Netrunner for a while.

Did I overlook a more recent event of similar scope, Netrunner players?

I was thinking that it would be much more expanded and not limited to just one of two cards. I also wouldn't want to see the cards prior to the reveal but more along which clan or faction. For example, say a vote to see which clan gets the new Topaz champion.

I actually hope player interaction is less than it was before.

I was thinking that it would be much more expanded and not limited to just one of two cards. I also wouldn't want to see the cards prior to the reveal but more along which clan or faction. For example, say a vote to see which clan gets the new Topaz champion.

Eh, the advantage of a limited selection is that it's easy to playtest along with existing sets and slot into an existing production cycle almost as soon as the choice is made. The more options there are, the harder that gets. Also frequency is an issue -- I wouldn't be surprised if, like Netrunner, this kind of thing only happens a couple times a year. Europe got this, America (just North? not sure) got a similar event featuring a different choice, and that was it.

i doubt if we'll get much more than that for L5R.

I want the concept of an interactive storyline game to stay, I just felt that a lot of times there were too many choices. Every single Kotei winner getting to pick a specific thing from a list always ended up with bizarre random feeling stories.

I'd like tournaments to have an impact on the overreaching story, and even certain specific details from winners of large tournaments being used, I just don't want *every* *single* *medium* *sized* *tournament* to have a choice.

Flavor text and artwork headnods can be pretty rewarding in their own right. Not everyone should get a trophy for participating, that should be reserved for the winners of the biggest events. I think it means more that way.

(Coming from someone who never won a tournament.)

I was thinking that it would be much more expanded and not limited to just one of two cards. I also wouldn't want to see the cards prior to the reveal but more along which clan or faction. For example, say a vote to see which clan gets the new Topaz champion.

Eh, the advantage of a limited selection is that it's easy to playtest along with existing sets and slot into an existing production cycle almost as soon as the choice is made. The more options there are, the harder that gets. Also frequency is an issue -- I wouldn't be surprised if, like Netrunner, this kind of thing only happens a couple times a year. Europe got this, America (just North? not sure) got a similar event featuring a different choice, and that was it.

i doubt if we'll get much more than that for L5R.

The designers couldn't play test selections behind the scenes?

I would personally be fine not having a prize to design a card. I'd be ok with choosing a card title or an experienced personality (if they keep some form of that). While designing a card is good in theory, being a great player doesn't make you a great designer. Good players can identify good cards and usually where to improve on bad ones, but that doesn't always mean they can make one from scratch, even with help.

I once had a card suggestion I sent in have a card with similar mechanics and title pop up *many years* later, but that was probably coincidence. If I'm being brutally honest, most of the card ideas I sent in when I was younger were absolute garbage, and I'd say most of the unsolicited ideas I saw posted in various places were as well. I'd really like for story decisions to truly be story decisions.

No.

To me, this never panned out to be more than an amateurish sales gimmick. Community-wise, I think it tends to reinforce player base insularity.

L5R is a good brand but it has been cut off from potential customers by this kind of practice for too many years.

The designers couldn't play test selections behind the scenes?

You're missing the point. When it's only two cards in addition to all the other cards seeing print, it's not a big imposition on an already existing playtest process. You test slip them both into the mix and let the playtesters have at it. It works because the infrastructure is already there, and not thrown out of whack terribly by one card give or take.

If you have 7 impactful cards, say (or however many clans there are) that has a significant impact on the card pool being tested -- and the kind of character you're suggesting, one of the champions, *should* be significant. It's not just a matter of testing 6 extra cards for a deluxe box or whatever. It's texting 6 extra cards and their impact on a meta when they're mutually excluded.

Regardless, my point is more that I wouldn't expect to see a lot of these events, than their specific nature.

And the point of playtest is to catch things that design doesn't. Designers playtesting behind the scenes without an additional external test sort of defeats the point.

Once again, FFG has a process. I very much doubt L5R, or any game, is going to change that process significantly. One game is far more likely to be changed by FFG. And that's for the best, as far as I'm concerned.

Agreed. It's not disrespectful to AEG to recognize that FFG has developed into a far more successful company than AEG. It's hard to imagine FFG following AEG's example in any respect.

What made L5R so appealing is the ability for the player base to have an impact on the direction of the story with tournament wins. Some of those choices may have been a bit too open (offering the bad guys to win, Nonhumans for Emperor, etc.), but with proper moderation the story choices can be exciting.

The designers couldn't play test selections behind the scenes?

You're missing the point. When it's only two cards in addition to all the other cards seeing print, it's not a big imposition on an already existing playtest process. You test slip them both into the mix and let the playtesters have at it. It works because the infrastructure is already there, and not thrown out of whack terribly by one card give or take.

If you have 7 impactful cards, say (or however many clans there are) that has a significant impact on the card pool being tested -- and the kind of character you're suggesting, one of the champions, *should* be significant. It's not just a matter of testing 6 extra cards for a deluxe box or whatever. It's texting 6 extra cards and their impact on a meta when they're mutually excluded.

Regardless, my point is more that I wouldn't expect to see a lot of these events, than their specific nature.

And the point of playtest is to catch things that design doesn't. Designers playtesting behind the scenes without an additional external test sort of defeats the point.

Once again, FFG has a process. I very much doubt L5R, or any game, is going to change that process significantly. One game is far more likely to be changed by FFG. And that's for the best, as far as I'm concerned.

If there's some title or champion, it can be as easy as simply adding the text to the card. Look at Ide Hideshi and it's pretty easy stuff.

I'm sure the designers and playtesters for most of the LCG games are making and playtesting the cards for expansions down the road so it's not as difficult as you might think it is to adjust the environment by adding or removing cards. You might be putting way too much emphasis on card power.

The designers couldn't play test selections behind the scenes?

You're missing the point. When it's only two cards in addition to all the other cards seeing print, it's not a big imposition on an already existing playtest process. You test slip them both into the mix and let the playtesters have at it. It works because the infrastructure is already there, and not thrown out of whack terribly by one card give or take.

If you have 7 impactful cards, say (or however many clans there are) that has a significant impact on the card pool being tested -- and the kind of character you're suggesting, one of the champions, *should* be significant. It's not just a matter of testing 6 extra cards for a deluxe box or whatever. It's texting 6 extra cards and their impact on a meta when they're mutually excluded.

Regardless, my point is more that I wouldn't expect to see a lot of these events, than their specific nature.

And the point of playtest is to catch things that design doesn't. Designers playtesting behind the scenes without an additional external test sort of defeats the point.

Once again, FFG has a process. I very much doubt L5R, or any game, is going to change that process significantly. One game is far more likely to be changed by FFG. And that's for the best, as far as I'm concerned.

If there's some title or champion, it can be as easy as simply adding the text to the card. Look at Ide Hideshi and it's pretty easy stuff. You might be missing the point.

All possibilities must still be tested (which means that if a clan will receive a champion, the future cardset must be tested with the champion in each clan). If multiple prizes (each with several possibilities) have to be included, it becomes a nightmare.

The designers couldn't play test selections behind the scenes?

You're missing the point. When it's only two cards in addition to all the other cards seeing print, it's not a big imposition on an already existing playtest process. You test slip them both into the mix and let the playtesters have at it. It works because the infrastructure is already there, and not thrown out of whack terribly by one card give or take.

If you have 7 impactful cards, say (or however many clans there are) that has a significant impact on the card pool being tested -- and the kind of character you're suggesting, one of the champions, *should* be significant. It's not just a matter of testing 6 extra cards for a deluxe box or whatever. It's texting 6 extra cards and their impact on a meta when they're mutually excluded.

Regardless, my point is more that I wouldn't expect to see a lot of these events, than their specific nature.

And the point of playtest is to catch things that design doesn't. Designers playtesting behind the scenes without an additional external test sort of defeats the point.

Once again, FFG has a process. I very much doubt L5R, or any game, is going to change that process significantly. One game is far more likely to be changed by FFG. And that's for the best, as far as I'm concerned.

If there's some title or champion, it can be as easy as simply adding the text to the card. Look at Ide Hideshi and it's pretty easy stuff. You might be missing the point.

All possibilities must still be tested (which means that if a clan will receive a champion, the future cardset must be tested with the champion in each clan). If multiple prizes (each with several possibilities) have to be included, it becomes a nightmare.

Are you saying that favor prizes have to be tested? That's a bit much.

The solution is you DON'T make the cards mutually exclusive.

You let the tournament determine which one of them has the "Emerald Champion" title. You print the others without titles, as just typical powerful personalities of their clans, or experienced versions of the championship contestants.

Yes.

How to handle story prizes? That is something that needs to be planned for the long term.

Let's split the Story Arc:

Regional Tournaments: 4 major ways to influence the story

Kotei's: 40 choices

Store's Tournaments: 20 choices

This is an example, and the actual list was bigger, but seeing that I came up with more than 60 choices per year, we need to understand that in order to give power to the players, this needs to be thoroughly designed.

The bigger the tournament, the bigger the impact in the story.

You can have 4 major twists in the story per year, but you can have the rest of the story impact to be cards with your name at the side, cards or characters you name, flavor text from your own, or anything that was inspired from your deck choices.

If you include Clan pools and stuff like that, then you need more microsegmentation.

The solution is you DON'T make the cards mutually exclusive.

You let the tournament determine which one of them has the "Emerald Champion" title. You print the others without titles, as just typical powerful personalities of their clans, or experienced versions of the championship contestants.

Kind of makes sense that you also print the other contestants, they usually survive the tournament, don't they?

The solution is you DON'T make the cards mutually exclusive.

You let the tournament determine which one of them has the "Emerald Champion" title. You print the others without titles, as just typical powerful personalities of their clans, or experienced versions of the championship contestants.

Yeah. I don't understand why a card currently in playtest with the working title Crane Clan Unique Duelist can't be retitled to be whatever character wins a story prize and/or get a vanity title like "Amethyst Champion" added in the keywords. That same tourney prize could just as easily been "Lion Clan Honor Guy", "Crab Clan Angry Smash", or ""Unicorn Clan No Horse No Problem".

The story choice doesn't have to impact the mechanics of the card, especially not right away.

*shrug* I suppose if the only difference to pre-existing cards was adding a specific keyword (particularly if that keyword never has relevance to other card interactions) there wouldn't be anything required in the way of playtesting.

Of course, then it falls under the, "Don't want keywords that don't matter to gameplay cluttering the card," discussion. But you could do it like...uh...I think Cthulhu did this? Where unique versions of the same character have subtitles right under their names. So you'd have "Cthulhu/That Which is Eternal" and "Cthulhu/Never Dies" with the descriptors as subtitles rather than keywords. No effect on gameplay, no need for testing.

As said earlier, though, my main point was more that I wouldn't expect many more interactive choices than what Netrunner offers.

That's one good thing AEG did - putting flavor titles in the card titles, not the keyword.

So it's not even a pointless keyword, it's just an extra bit of the card title.

The solution is you DON'T make the cards mutually exclusive.

You let the tournament determine which one of them has the "Emerald Champion" title. You print the others without titles, as just typical powerful personalities of their clans, or experienced versions of the championship contestants.

There you go. As simple as going from "Lion Samurai #34v5" to "Akodo Tokai, Amethyst Champion". Easy easy easy stuff.

For most players knowing that they were the one who "did that thing" is a reward in itself. I've seen players with cards named for them that were total coasters, and in almost every case the player in question has still been thrilled. Story prizes don't need to create a new "Moto Pwnlazerz" to be cool. The one impact I had on the story was initially a single line in an RPG book, and I almost fell out of my chair when I first read it.

For most players knowing that they were the one who "did that thing" is a reward in itself. I've seen players with cards named for them that were total coasters, and in almost every case the player in question has still been thrilled. Story prizes don't need to create a new "Moto Pwnlazerz" to be cool. The one impact I had on the story was initially a single line in an RPG book, and I almost fell out of my chair when I first read it.

That does sound like quite the prize to me.