If you're trying to approach this simply as a mathematical problem (seems to be the case), then there is absolutely NO advantage in privileging monoclan. You're restricting available choices, reducing the appeal of the game for customers ( "we sell 200 cards, but you can only use 100 of them with your clan"), and forcing a certain play-style with each clan (something L5R players enjoy already, but others might not). Sure there are some advantages to monoclan, but they're not really mechanical.... they're mostly tied with playtesting (it is made simpler). And this is solved with a larger pool of playtesters.

However, this game, this IP, is not a simple mathematical problem. There are plenty of other objective and subjective factors to the game, and they have (arguably) much more influence than the mono/multiclan mechanical aspects of the CCG/LCG. So while it may be an interesting exercise to think in such restrictive scenario, you can't really take any conclusion from it, as the multiclan "question" was as important to L5R's IP in these 20 years, as a single grain of sand is to the Sahara.

Yeah, it really seems like an exercise whose value is, at best, questionable.

Much like almost all of the other threads hereabouts.

Yeah, it really seems like an exercise whose value is, at best, questionable.

Much like almost all of the other threads hereabouts.

Bah, humbug

So while it may be an interesting exercise to think in such restrictive scenario, you can't really take any conclusion from it...

Yep, didn't propose the question was anything other than a thought exercise.

A few advantages I could see for a "Monoclan" deck are:

• Better natural synergy between clan aligned cards.
• More effective use of cards that give benefits for having shared clan alignments.
• Less effected by cards that penalize having personalities different clan alignments.

The big thing is that each of these advantages require cards that do these things.

Right, but that's stuff that would be designed into the card pool, and could exist in both kinds of games: those oriented toward monoclan only, and those oriented toward allowing multiclan as well as monoclan. Existence of these kinds of cards is actually important to balance out the advantages of going multiclan, and is what keeps monoclan decks viable and unique. The first two definitely exist in FFG multifaction games right now. Actually, all three do, now that I think about it.

Which is my point. In the L5R CCG, the first point was there partially (more often than not natural synergy was better between cards with shared thematic keywords and effects), the second point appeared occasionally and was usually tied to either expensive cards or used exclusively by swarm military, and the third... I could only find a total of 4 cards that actually "metaed" multiclan decks over the CCGs lifespan.

A few advantages I could see for a "Monoclan" deck are:

• Better natural synergy between clan aligned cards.
• More effective use of cards that give benefits for having shared clan alignments.
• Less effected by cards that penalize having personalities different clan alignments.

The big thing is that each of these advantages require cards that do these things.

Right, but that's stuff that would be designed into the card pool, and could exist in both kinds of games: those oriented toward monoclan only, and those oriented toward allowing multiclan as well as monoclan. Existence of these kinds of cards is actually important to balance out the advantages of going multiclan, and is what keeps monoclan decks viable and unique. The first two definitely exist in FFG multifaction games right now. Actually, all three do, now that I think about it.

Which is my point. In the L5R CCG, the first point was there partially (more often than not natural synergy was better between cards with shared thematic keywords and effects), the second point appeared occasionally and was usually tied to either expensive cards or used exclusively by swarm military, and the third... I could only find a total of 4 cards that actually "metaed" multiclan decks over the CCGs lifespan.

Ah, I see. I misread your opening as an advantage of monoclan format, not as advantages for a monoclan deck in a multiclan format. Apologies!

A lot of this question comes down to what you define as "multiclan" and "monoclan". If you mean no deck building restrictions vs all the deck building restrictions, then ya, technically multiclan will be more diverse, save for the fact that you can't have as cool effects because they have to balanced around the fact that anyone can use them. If you start throwing loyal or other such mechanics into the game that keep that problem dealt with, then we have to look at giving monoclan an equivalent consideration.

And at that point, what is being said seems to boils down to "neither is the best, we need a blend". Which is what L5R really was, and honestly is generally the best best answer for most questions. Unless I am mistaken, no one is requesting that the game be remade in such a way that you can't run ANY out of clan people, just that there be mechanical insintive to at least focus on one clan, and not to see the top deck be a Mantis/Lion/Unicorn/Crab/Spider deck.

The only difference I see with this discussion and the one going/gone on in another thread is that OP has removed one of the main arguments in favour of clan specfic cards from the discussion.

Clan Specific cards provide many more benefits AND also hands much more design space over to the designer. It also makes corrective measures in the environment much easier to achieve and prevents competitve play falling into a state of homogeny. Here are examples of the how and why.

- If one clan is weak, you can design a card that is above the usual design power curve to help correct the failing decks. If every clan had access to that card, it would not help the ailing clan as all the decks above it would also have access to it. That is why the gold cost penalty works quite well. As an example, the 3f 5g naval mantis personality. Amazing for mantis at 3 gold but only ok out of clan for 5.

- If you wanted to tailor make what cards could go where by using a keyword like Loyal, you end up using the key word in a very blunt manner which just leads to cluttering of card text, which is a big concern to designers.

- For arguments sake, lets say a deck had 21 slots for personalities. And you could play out of clan guys with an influence type system, much like in Netrunner.(If you have influence of 15, you can play 15 out of clan personalities). You will end up with every deck of that deck type, using those 15 slots for the best personalites inthe environment. This makes decks homogenous, and means you end up not using a lot of cards in the environment.

- Many clan cards would simply not see play. No matter good design is, some cards will always be better than others, not by a lot always, but still better. By narrowing your selection to per clan, it means that a bulk of cards in the environment become a requirement.

- If you are going for a dual clan thing, then a sensei style card is a much more elegant and less restrictive way of implementing this. It is harder to reverese a relaxed movement of clan cards than to encourage it.

- Barriers encourage creativity and clever deck design. If the decisions are too easy as to what to play, the game would be boring and the core personalities would be obvious and prevalent. By having these problems to solve, like do I play this awesome card, like Kaneka in diamond edition, paying the 2 extra gold? Yes you did because he was *that* good, but some people might find him too expensive. If you could just slot him in without penalty then you remove decision making. Card games are problem solvers in nature, and that is why people enjoy them. You need these kinds of barriers to encourage decision making.

- Decision making when it comes to deck building actually distinguishes the good from bad players. If the decisions are obvious then the skill ceiling of the game lowers a little.

Those are just a few I thought up while writing

There is a reason why most card games have multiple factions. It enhances the game, enriches the environment, allows for in and the barriers it creates gives designers much more control over the environment. You just need to look to MTG, which is the benchmark for card games to see how they have implemented it.

A lot of this question comes down to what you define as "multiclan" and "monoclan". If you mean no deck building restrictions vs all the deck building restrictions, then ya, technically multiclan will be more diverse, save for the fact that you can't have as cool effects because they have to balanced around the fact that anyone can use them. If you start throwing loyal or other such mechanics into the game that keep that problem dealt with, then we have to look at giving monoclan an equivalent consideration.

And at that point, what is being said seems to boils down to "neither is the best, we need a blend". Which is what L5R really was, and honestly is generally the best best answer for most questions. Unless I am mistaken, no one is requesting that the game be remade in such a way that you can't run ANY out of clan people, just that there be mechanical insintive to at least focus on one clan, and not to see the top deck be a Mantis/Lion/Unicorn/Crab/Spider deck.

Every multifaction game, where faction is an actual mechanical thing and not strictly a flavor conceit, includes some mechanical incentive to stick to one faction. In magic, it's consistency -- the fewer colors you have, the fewer different lands you need to draw to play the cards in your deck. In AGoT 2, you have to take specific cards to "unlock" multifactioning, and there's currently a hard limit at 2 factions (as well as hits to consistency and synergy). Etc.

Likewise, many games that are primarily monofaction games include *some* way to included out of faction cards or units or whatever. I would call all of AEG's card games monofaction, but all allow for crossfaction characters. The degree to which you see it or don't depends on the specific design, but I would say every one of their games strongly leans toward monofaction. Do exceptional decks exist? Sure, L5R's been around for 20 years. Various cards and such have popped up that allow multifaction decks. But those are the exception, not the rule.

It's clear just from the way people discuss the game that it's been a primarily monofaction game under AEG, and suggesting otherwise is a bit silly. When people say, "This game should mostly be about clan decks," the fact that they used the word "mostly," doesn't mean they're not asking for the game to be primarily monofaction -- it means they are asking *exactly* that it be primarily monofaction. And that's fine if that's what they want, but let's not pretend it's a "blend," any more than adding cream to my coffee makes it a blend of coffee and cream. Technically, it's correct. But people still call it coffe, because that's what it is. Just like L5R has historically been a monoclan game.

"A blend is best," is fine to say, but almost every game is a blend if you denature the terms enough. It's more a question of what pushing the blend toward one pole or the other achieves (or doesn't).

I'm interested in discussing those mechanical effects, but again, if you don't see value in the thread, I invite you not to post. It's really not that difficult.

L5r isn't and hasn't been a monoclan game. You can build a Crane deck with only Lion clan personalities, and always could.

The only difference I see with this discussion and the one going/gone on in another thread is that OP has removed one of the main arguments in favour of clan specfic cards from the discussion.

If you mean theme/story etc., I make no bones about that, and as explained elsewhere, it's because I'm interested in breaking down mechanics themselves. It's too easy otherwise to get discussion confused with arguments about mechanics coming from story rather than pure gameplay. I realize this makes it a math problem, but that's exactly what I'm interested *for this thread.* I'm genuinely not sure why this is difficult to grasp, just as I would be unclear why someone would insist on bringing purely mechanical discussions into a thread where the OP specifically marks it out as about story.

That being said, thank you for actually engaging with the topic as set forth! I appreciate it.

- If one clan is weak, you can design a card that is above the usual design power curve to help correct the failing decks. If every clan had access to that card, it would not help the ailing clan as all the decks above it would also have access to it. That is why the gold cost penalty works quite well. As an example, the 3f 5g naval mantis personality. Amazing for mantis at 3 gold but only ok out of clan for 5.

I think a similar effect can be achieved by simply designing synergies (in this card and in the broader card pool) to make it more attractive to Mantis, in general than to other clans. A game doesn't need to be monoclan to be able to design a card that is best with a certain kind of deck, even to the degree that it is a bit above the curve for that deck, and still a bit below or other decks. Though I will of course grant you that monoclan makes this *easier,* both in a playest and design sense, and that's something I think has come up before.

- If you wanted to tailor make what cards could go where by using a keyword like Loyal, you end up using the key word in a very blunt manner which just leads to cluttering of card text, which is a big concern to designers.

Given that the loyal keyword, or some mechanical variation on it that makes specific cards faction exclusive or prohibitive to play in another faction, has appeared in every FFG LCG with the exception of Lord of the Rings, this doesn't seem like an issue for FFG's designers at least. Note also that it doesn't need to actually be in text -- AGoT 2, for example, modifies the faction icon on the card slightly (in the same way across every faction) to indicate loyalty.

- For arguments sake, lets say a deck had 21 slots for personalities. And you could play out of clan guys with an influence type system, much like in Netrunner.(If you have influence of 15, you can play 15 out of clan personalities). You will end up with every deck of that deck type, using those 15 slots for the best personalites inthe environment. This makes decks homogenous, and means you end up not using a lot of cards in the environment.

I think the key here is to make sure there are enough deck types, and enough variations within a type, to make sure that different cards are best in different decks. Which is kind of the point of games where one custom builds decks.

With a couple of exceptions, I don't think Netrunner is at a place where deck types, regardless of faction, keep taking the same cards in their out of faction pool, and those exceptions are cards that are just obviously over the curve. There was a specific...contact? asset? I forget the term that I recall people were saying was an "every deck" card for a while, but I would imagine it's been managed by FFG since via some kind of restriction. Someone who actively plays Netrunner would know more.

Generally speaking, the factions themselves and the way they achieve things (even within the same deck type) are distinct enough that what helps a Shaper rush deck achieve its goals may not be the same thing that achieves a Criminal rush deck achieve its goals. I would expect the same of say, a Dragon mil deck vs. a Scorpion mil deck (or whatever).

- If you are going for a dual clan thing, then a sensei style card is a much more elegant and less restrictive way of implementing this. It is harder to reverese a relaxed movement of clan cards than to encourage it.

That's one way of implementing it, sure. AGoT does it, and it seems to work well. There's a lot more deck diversity in the AGoT core than there would be without it, that's for sure.

- Barriers encourage creativity and clever deck design. If the decisions are too easy as to what to play, the game would be boring and the core personalities would be obvious and prevalent. By having these problems to solve, like do I play this awesome card, like Kaneka in diamond edition, paying the 2 extra gold? Yes you did because he was *that* good, but some people might find him too expensive. If you could just slot him in without penalty then you remove decision making. Card games are problem solvers in nature, and that is why people enjoy them. You need these kinds of barriers to encourage decision making.

- Decision making when it comes to deck building actually distinguishes the good from bad players. If the decisions are obvious then the skill ceiling of the game lowers a little.

There is always decision making in card games. Every card you play means you don't play another card. And note that I never said multifactioning should be "without penalty." If factions exist in a mechanical sense there is some penalty to cross-factioning, by definition, or factions have no mechanical bearing. As stated above, that could be as simple as factioning resources to create consistency issues for decks that play too many factions, as Magic does with their colors, or a deeper design approach of creating internal synergies in factions that don't apply across faction. It could also be some combination.

Again, these arguments seem to boil down to, "Designers are incapable of balancing cards, such that different cards are good for different decks." There is nothing about making multifaction decks available that inherently means there will be no decision making. It means there will be *more* decision making, because there are many more cards that are not simply dismissed because they are either completely inaccessible because of faction, or practically so (as was the case with L5R's 2 gold penalty on many cards). If there are cards that are clearly "best," that's a design failure, and it happens in both mono and multifaction games, and games with loyalty, or influence, or whatever mechanic you choose to allow access to cross-faction card pools.

There is a reason why most card games have multiple factions. It enhances the game, enriches the environment, allows for in and the barriers it creates gives designers much more control over the environment. You just need to look to MTG, which is the benchmark for card games to see how they have implemented it.

L5R and Magic don't use factions in a way that's even remotely similar. In fact, they're great examples of games that take very different approaches, with L5R being strongly oriented toward monofaction decks, and Magic toward multifaction decks, even if the default is only 2.

I would add also, that where it concerns L5R specifically, Magic's approach is a little too multifaction even for me. I imagine a lot of players big on clan loyalty and keeping things the way they are would scream bloody blue murder if L5R used that system...and well they should.

L5r isn't and hasn't been a monoclan game. You can build a Crane deck with only Lion clan personalities, and always could.

All of AEG's ccgs games are primarily monofaction, or as the subject line puts it, "privilege" monofaction compared to FFG's games, or Magic, or many other games.

As with almost all things, there's a spectrum, and AEG's games are far toward the monofaction side of the spectrum.

L5r isn't and hasn't been a monoclan game. You can build a Crane deck with only Lion clan personalities, and always could.

All of AEG's ccgs games are primarily monofaction, or as the subject line puts it, "privilege" monofaction compared to FFG's games, or Magic, or many other games.

As with almost all things, there's a spectrum, and AEG's games are far toward the monofaction side of the spectrum.

In terms of resources, MTG is far more mechanically restrictive to "factions" than L5R ever was. In l5r, as aeg had it, gold pays for anything, whether it is crab, crane, dragon scorpion or an attachment, Gold is gold. In MTG cards need a particular type of resource. The way MTG Gets around it is by printing dual lands, which essentially turns it into an economy much like l5r. It is the card design that get's around the issue, by printing monster cards like Siege Rhino, which require different "types" of resources but are ridiculously cheap for what they do they encourage it. The same model doesn't really transfer over to L5R because A)Single resource Economy, and B)L5R is a much more theme driven game.

None of my arguments boil down to "Designers are incapable of balancing cards, such that different cards are good for different decks.", so please do not belittle my points if you wish to discuss this. Nor did I say that multifaction clans removes decision making...take down your scarecrows please.

I think what you are missing is, if you coupld play out of clan guys, without the gold cost penalty, it would be really too easy, and only a handful of personalities would ever be played in the environment. It is a pretty fundamental part of the design that is being overlooked. It essentially makes decisions for people already.

Again as I said, L5r is and always has been a game where you can play any factions in your deck (aside from cards that said otherwise). The gold penalty was a thing, and was in essence a deterrent, and one that was necessary. What you are actually proposing, and I don't even think you are away of this, but is to have personalities that are accessible to multiple clans, like lion/crane/crab, but also for them to be more powerful when played out of clan (ie, a bonus for paying the out of clan gold penalty). And then there comes into the issue, which you deliberately tried to prevent being discussed on this thread, that it absolutely does not fit with the lore of the game to have multiclans, no matter what the mechanics of the game, it would not fit very easily into the theme of Rokugan, it would get very messy very fast (and many many players would hate being railroaded into alliances).

And to quickly address this, because I think it is important

"I think a similar effect can be achieved by simply designing synergies (in this card and in the broader card pool) to make it more attractive to Mantis, in general than to other clans. A game doesn't need to be monoclan to be able to design a card that is best with a certain kind of deck, even to the degree that it is a bit above the curve for that deck, and still a bit below or other decks. Though I will of course grant you that monoclan makes this *easier,* both in a playest and design sense, and that's something I think has come up before."

Explain to me these simple "synergies"? I see you using a lot of buzzwords a lot on this thread, but not actually proposing anything of substance, what "synergies" do you mean? Printing a broader pool of cards is not something that should be a solution to a problem that A)Doesnt really exist already and B)Could be easily solved with the printing of 1-2 cards.

And seriously, L5R is not monoclan. You can put whatever you want into your deck, you always have been able to. What you are actually asking for is that multi clan decks be more powerful or competitive.

As an aside, how long have you been playing L5R? Im curious as to what environments you have played in.

I wouldn't call a system in which, in order to play any other clan's cards except your declared clan, you explicitly pay more for out of faction cards and utilize them despite an artificially inflated gold cost "multifaction" at its heart. Magic's required resource system is much less restrictive than this, because for any deck, you weight the consistency of your resource draw against the advantages gained by going to multiple colors. "Pick your clan, you a premium on anything else," is much more oriented toward motivating pure clan decks. Specific cards and card pools may vary, of course (particularly sensei) but the game's basic structural incentives push toward monoclan.

As to synergies, I've cited several examples in various threads. The word actually does have a specific meaning despite it's appropriation by corpspeak. Most obvious is from AGoT where, for example, cost reducers given to each house work only on cards of that house. If you go out of house, you start playing cards that your main cost reducers don't work on, you rely solely on neutral gold, or you play more cost reducing cards of the allied house, which dilutes your deck. Likewise, there are many abilities on cards that target/trigger off shared-house cards only (note that cost reducers are unusual in that they tend to be very similar across all the houses, but even they have subtle variations). It can also be more subtle, and not explicitly targeted to house, but to common effects. Greyjoy, for example, has many effects that make them want to go first in most cases (which is unusual in AGoT), and that stops them from taking full advantage of many cards that are better when you go second. The list goes on.

The upshot is that despite an alliance system that makes it fairly easy to ally with another house, mono-House decks still get played, because both are competitive (allowing for variance in individual houses, of course).

I'm talking about monoclan being privileged, not being the only option, if you want to be correct about the language. Which includes leaning heavily toward monoclan on a spectrum that includes pure monoclan only on one end to play anything you want on the other. Hopefully we can all agree that both of those extremes would be silly, and it's true that L5R has never been all the way to the "pure monoclan only" end of the spectrum. But in the wider context of card games in general, L5R is clearly more toward monoclan on the spectrum than average. That's by design. The ability to splash in a couple of guys because they're undercosted enough to make up the 2G clan discount doesn't move the needle enough to call it a multifaction game at its heart.

I think it would be positive for multiclan decks to be more powerful and competitive, yes, to the point where there's parity between primarily monoclan decks and (at least) dual clan alliance decks, and maybe even multiclan (3+ clan decks oriented on some other identifying axis) if they can make that work from a balance standpoint. This isn't mutually exclusive with each clan having a couple of mechanical themes (which is all that I think any clan will get in the core box in any case), or more than that going forward.

I dabbled in Jade around Rolling Thunder, played heavily in Gold through Diamond, dipped back in for late Emperor/early Ivory but ran away with the quickness.

[. . .] from what I've seen of L5R in my years in comparison to say Magic, it is that L5R has always had a more diverse environment in terms of deckbuilding. Magic has more often than not been dominated by a select few number of deck-types on the tournament scene and leaves little room for creativity, as Magic design is more open to running all sorts of colors in their decks (as long as they got enough Mana covered to bring them out, or Mana-tricks), but thus limiting the number of competitive decks due to it all becoming incredibly focused on only the best cards.

Exactly! This is what I was trying to get at in this post

OP may dismiss it as "theme" or "story" but the concept of faction is a mechanic. The design purpose of this mechanic is summed up nicely by the Dragon Clan poster as "diversity" -- which is to say, that the various decks available to players are actually distinctive rather than simply numerous.

IMO, you can't fully separate "theme" and "mechanic", at least not when discussing how L5R has been for 20 years, and I think FFG will be taking such things into consideration. Not only because people involved in FFG have played L5R in the past, but also by just judging from cards in AGoT1 where you had dual-aligned Tyrell and Lannister cards to reflect the political alliance of the two houses (or Dothraki as its own subtype for Targaryen, and similar things).

L5R has always been a game *strongly* flavoured by theme in its mechanics. There really isn't a mathematical discussion because it's not about numbers; it's about creative design that sets the rules and framework of the game and gives the tools to the players to make something within that frame. Again, I've found that L5R's design has allowed for more creativity within that frame, even remaining viably competitive in the tournament scene, in comparison to other CCGs.

Anyone remember the Shattered Peaks Hero-deck in early Celestial that had only 2 Crab Personalities (Hida Tatsuma, and Hida Kuon <- a Win condition in his own right for a while too) while the rest were almost any other Personality within reasonable cost that had the Hero-keyword? Not mono-clan. You can build a deck with Personalities from other factions, it's just that it will usually have better keyword-synergy or cost-efficiency within clan (like how Unicorn personalities' Gold Cost for a long time was higher than it would be in other clans because of their higher starting Gold as well as their access to having many in-clan Cavalry cards, and Cavalry being considered a powerful keyword).

L5R has had plenty of examples with decks breaking the molds. As someone said above: placing restrictions make people more creative.

IMO, you can't fully separate "theme" and "mechanic", at least not when discussing how L5R has been for 20 years...

a) You're mistaken. Yes, it reduces it to a math problem. But on one level, design should absolutely be concerned with if the math works. If it doesn't, no amount of mechanics echoing theme is going to make a game work. (And note that this doesn't mean there's only one right solution to the math.) All games can be reduced to the math. L5R is not unique in this regard. Note also that I've said upthread that the math shouldn't be the *only* concern for the overall game, only that I'd like it to be for *this thread* in order to discuss design principles. If you're not interested in that, that's fine. But in that case, why post? There are plenty of threads to discuss the relationship between theme and mechanics, or if not, you could start a new one. A "my favorite thematic mechanic thread" would be pretty cool. It's just not this thread. And I wouldn't go to that thread and say, "You have to look at mechanics as a math problem! Theme doesn't matter!" Because that's a different thread.

b) This thread isn't *just* about L5R, though obviously people keep pulling it back to that because it's a game (almost?) everyone here has in common, at some level. But that doesn't mean it's not relevant to L5R. The point is, the discussion applies to L5R, as well as other, less story-oriented games, equally. Because it's not about story or theme or setting. It's strictly the math of the game, and principles of design as they relate to factioning or not.

L5r isn't and hasn't been a monoclan game. You can build a Crane deck with only Lion clan personalities, and always could.

You can build any deck out of any house given that you are willing to suffer the consequences of it. Crane out of Spider. Yes !!

>.> Mainly, it is a mono clan game, hence clan loyalty is a specialty apparent in games like L5R

Its not like im saying you can run lets say a MTG deck without any mana source, you can actually... (w/o mana source means your deck produces literally no mana from any source, land, spell or artifact) ( an extreme case)

You can place a personality with -20 honor in Crane or a Crane with 10HR in a -19 deck. These are the extremes. You can make this possible using tricks to bring such people into play like cards that ignore honor, or raise your honor. There are people who place cards that may only enter play given a specific condition just for the heck and love of it.

(remembers Kamoto well with his 10HR in a mantis deck.)

L5r isn't and hasn't been a monoclan game. You can build a Crane deck with only Lion clan personalities, and always could.

All of AEG's ccgs games are primarily monofaction, or as the subject line puts it, "privilege" monofaction compared to FFG's games, or Magic, or many other games.

As with almost all things, there's a spectrum, and AEG's games are far toward the monofaction side of the spectrum.

In terms of resources, MTG is far more mechanically restrictive to "factions" than L5R ever was. In l5r, as aeg had it, gold pays for anything, whether it is crab, crane, dragon scorpion or an attachment, Gold is gold. In MTG cards need a particular type of resource. The way MTG Gets around it is by printing dual lands, which essentially turns it into an economy much like l5r. It is the card design that get's around the issue, by printing monster cards like Siege Rhino, which require different "types" of resources but are ridiculously cheap for what they do they encourage it. The same model doesn't really transfer over to L5R because A)Single resource Economy, and B)L5R is a much more theme driven game.

None of my arguments boil down to "Designers are incapable of balancing cards, such that different cards are good for different decks.", so please do not belittle my points if you wish to discuss this. Nor did I say that multifaction clans removes decision making...take down your scarecrows please.

I think what you are missing is, if you coupld play out of clan guys, without the gold cost penalty, it would be really too easy, and only a handful of personalities would ever be played in the environment. It is a pretty fundamental part of the design that is being overlooked. It essentially makes decisions for people already.

Again as I said, L5r is and always has been a game where you can play any factions in your deck (aside from cards that said otherwise). The gold penalty was a thing, and was in essence a deterrent, and one that was necessary. What you are actually proposing, and I don't even think you are away of this, but is to have personalities that are accessible to multiple clans, like lion/crane/crab, but also for them to be more powerful when played out of clan (ie, a bonus for paying the out of clan gold penalty). And then there comes into the issue, which you deliberately tried to prevent being discussed on this thread, that it absolutely does not fit with the lore of the game to have multiclans, no matter what the mechanics of the game, it would not fit very easily into the theme of Rokugan, it would get very messy very fast (and many many players would hate being railroaded into alliances).

And to quickly address this, because I think it is important

"I think a similar effect can be achieved by simply designing synergies (in this card and in the broader card pool) to make it more attractive to Mantis, in general than to other clans. A game doesn't need to be monoclan to be able to design a card that is best with a certain kind of deck, even to the degree that it is a bit above the curve for that deck, and still a bit below or other decks. Though I will of course grant you that monoclan makes this *easier,* both in a playest and design sense, and that's something I think has come up before."

Explain to me these simple "synergies"? I see you using a lot of buzzwords a lot on this thread, but not actually proposing anything of substance, what "synergies" do you mean? Printing a broader pool of cards is not something that should be a solution to a problem that A)Doesnt really exist already and B)Could be easily solved with the printing of 1-2 cards.

And seriously, L5R is not monoclan. You can put whatever you want into your deck, you always have been able to. What you are actually asking for is that multi clan decks be more powerful or competitive.

As an aside, how long have you been playing L5R? Im curious as to what environments you have played in.

* Loyal *

I think the key here is to make sure there are enough deck types, and enough variations within a type, to make sure that different cards are best in different decks. Which is kind of the point of games where one custom builds decks.

With a couple of exceptions, I don't think Netrunner is at a place where deck types, regardless of faction, keep taking the same cards in their out of faction pool, and those exceptions are cards that are just obviously over the curve. There was a specific...contact? asset? I forget the term that I recall people were saying was an "every deck" card for a while, but I would imagine it's been managed by FFG since via some kind of restriction. Someone who actively plays Netrunner would know more.

Generally speaking, the factions themselves and the way they achieve things (even within the same deck type) are distinct enough that what helps a Shaper rush deck achieve its goals may not be the same thing that achieves a Criminal rush deck achieve its goals. I would expect the same of say, a Dragon mil deck vs. a Scorpion mil deck (or whatever).

The Corp does indeed worship at the alter of Jesus Howard. But, the reason he is so strong is due to some of the inherent randomness of the game. Especially since the made one of the Core IDs a mill ID, somewhat as a way to try and get the second victory condition for the runner. The issue is, most of the time, the Runner would just be able to win via scoring since they had a good chance of getting a bunch of agendas into the discard pile. Granted, he may have been a bit excessive and has caused some abuse. But, he will be one of the first stuff rotated out, and the next big box has a suitable replacement, if a bit less utilitarian.

I don't know. As an outsider looking in, how they have done alliances in AGOT seems perfect to be applied here. A surprise alliance sounds fun for story stuff.

I don't know. As an outsider looking in, how they have done alliances in AGOT seems perfect to be applied here. A surprise alliance sounds fun for story stuff.

While I'm not committed to the idea - just spitballing here - it might be interesting to see certain clans barring from allying from time to time, in conjunction with story developments.

I wouldn't call a system in which, in order to play any other clan's cards except your declared clan, you explicitly pay more for out of faction cards and utilize them despite an artificially inflated gold cost "multifaction" at its heart. Magic's required resource system is much less restrictive than this, because for any deck, you weight the consistency of your resource draw against the advantages gained by going to multiple colors. "Pick your clan, you a premium on anything else," is much more oriented toward motivating pure clan decks. Specific cards and card pools may vary, of course (particularly sensei) but the game's basic structural incentives push toward monoclan.

As to synergies, I've cited several examples in various threads. The word actually does have a specific meaning despite it's appropriation by corpspeak. Most obvious is from AGoT where, for example, cost reducers given to each house work only on cards of that house. If you go out of house, you start playing cards that your main cost reducers don't work on, you rely solely on neutral gold, or you play more cost reducing cards of the allied house, which dilutes your deck. Likewise, there are many abilities on cards that target/trigger off shared-house cards only (note that cost reducers are unusual in that they tend to be very similar across all the houses, but even they have subtle variations). It can also be more subtle, and not explicitly targeted to house, but to common effects. Greyjoy, for example, has many effects that make them want to go first in most cases (which is unusual in AGoT), and that stops them from taking full advantage of many cards that are better when you go second. The list goes on.

The upshot is that despite an alliance system that makes it fairly easy to ally with another house, mono-House decks still get played, because both are competitive (allowing for variance in individual houses, of course).

I'm talking about monoclan being privileged, not being the only option, if you want to be correct about the language. Which includes leaning heavily toward monoclan on a spectrum that includes pure monoclan only on one end to play anything you want on the other. Hopefully we can all agree that both of those extremes would be silly, and it's true that L5R has never been all the way to the "pure monoclan only" end of the spectrum. But in the wider context of card games in general, L5R is clearly more toward monoclan on the spectrum than average. That's by design. The ability to splash in a couple of guys because they're undercosted enough to make up the 2G clan discount doesn't move the needle enough to call it a multifaction game at its heart.

I think it would be positive for multiclan decks to be more powerful and competitive, yes, to the point where there's parity between primarily monoclan decks and (at least) dual clan alliance decks, and maybe even multiclan (3+ clan decks oriented on some other identifying axis) if they can make that work from a balance standpoint. This isn't mutually exclusive with each clan having a couple of mechanical themes (which is all that I think any clan will get in the core box in any case), or more than that going forward.

I dabbled in Jade around Rolling Thunder, played heavily in Gold through Diamond, dipped back in for late Emperor/early Ivory but ran away with the quickness.

So just because YOU wouldn't call a system that allows any clan card to be played in any other clan deck as multifaction, does not mean that it isn't. You intended this thread about purely mechanical perspectives, and from a purely mechanical perspective l5r is multifaction oriented. There were even kotei wins last season with decks like that. (Greg Wong).

The cost reducer per house is the exact same as what l5r has. Clan personalities cost two gold less for a clan player than an out of clan player. The old system l5r had, where you got the 2 gold clan discount was modified to be a 2 gold penalty for out of clan instead to help new players learn, the effect is the exact same. L5r also has many cards with clan kickers that are otherwise useful (EG Way of the X cards).

Monoclan is easier to build yes, but that does not mean it is not possible to build out of clan decks..ask Greg Wong, ask people playing ninube shiho, Bayushi Akagi, Ikoma Ayumi. There are so many cases of it. Just because a scorpion deck, with 50% spider personalities might not be as competitive, does not mean that the game is unnecessarily unfriendly to multi clans.

With regards to magic. I entirely disagree that it is more friendly to multi colour, and that is EVEN with huge amounts of design effort to alleviate it. Building a deck out of 5 colours, while possible opens you up to mana screw. Every time you add a new colour, you are increasing the chances of getting screwed. If you go way back in magic history, some of the early OP decks were decks that abused artifacts, this was doable because all lands could pay for the best artifcact cards, and every deck would play them. Because L5R uses one currency, if you removed the out of clan penalty, it would experience a similar difficulty.

In magic, if you don't have black mana in your deck you can't play black cards. In L5r that restriction doesn't exist, hence the gold penalty.

There is also a collapse of logic with regards to how to balance them...It would not be incredibly difficult to design (to the point where it would be a mechanically disastrous endeavour) monoclans to be as good multi clan decks because a multi clan deck would have a larger pool to pick from. If you have a larger pool to pick from, you have the pick of the best of both worlds. So to try and balance mono clans against that would mean you would have to have some seriously above the curve kicker cards for playing monoclan, which would lead to cards being ridiculously wordy (word count on cards is a big thing for design to consider). Wordy cards make the game less accessible to new players and more laborious to older ones.

A question. What would your actual mechanical implementation of multiclan be? If you were to build l5r from the ground up, how would you design it and balance it? I'd be interested to know what you had in mind.

I don't know. As an outsider looking in, how they have done alliances in AGOT seems perfect to be applied here. A surprise alliance sounds fun for story stuff.

Yeah AGOT is a pretty close model for L5r. The only problem I think is because of how player driven L5R should be (something I think FFG will continue..hopefully) if you for example printed a card that was Scorpion Crane, that card would be in the environment for X years. The story could of moved on to a point where scorpion and crane are enemies. Mechanically that is fine, and if you are someone not interested in the story or theme then it doesn't matter. However, there are a large number of players who really would care.

L5r is a very thematically driven game and the fundamentals are rooted in that. IMO Regardless of what the new mechanics of the game are, it is the theme that will remain the main driving force of the game. You really cannot extrapolate theme from a discussion about the game when it is so integral.

I don't know. As an outsider looking in, how they have done alliances in AGOT seems perfect to be applied here. A surprise alliance sounds fun for story stuff.

Yeah AGOT is a pretty close model for L5r. The only problem I think is because of how player driven L5R should be (something I think FFG will continue..hopefully) if you for example printed a card that was Scorpion Crane, that card would be in the environment for X years. The story could of moved on to a point where scorpion and crane are enemies. Mechanically that is fine, and if you are someone not interested in the story or theme then it doesn't matter. However, there are a large number of players who really would care.

L5r is a very thematically driven game and the fundamentals are rooted in that. IMO Regardless of what the new mechanics of the game are, it is the theme that will remain the main driving force of the game. You really cannot extrapolate theme from a discussion about the game when it is so integral.

It is just something that is going to have to be adjusted to FFG's policies. Cycles will be legal for a good 4-6 years. The Core will always be legal, as will the big boxes.

I think L5R veterans are going to have accept a bit more fluid story to accomodate this.

L5R could take the approach of the My little Pony CCG. (Yes, it exists. Yes, it's good)

In this game they also only have one recourse similar to the Gold in L5R but they also have 6 factions/colors based on the Elements of Harmony.

Some ponies have a requirement how much force of a specific faction/color you need to have on the battlefield to recruit it.

In L5R we have many different stats which have a quite huge variability among factions... except for one the gold cost.

Let's say we get rid of the clan discount or out of clan penalty and reinterpret the Honor Requirement as Clan requirement, we would end up in a similar situation.

If you have a Spider Clan personality with Clan Requirement (CR) 11, this would mean (also for Spider player) that they need to have 11+ combined gold cost among all Spider Personalities in play.

So if you have let's say two 6G personalities with the Spider Clan alignment you can bring in Spider personalities with a CR up to 12.

This way we would gate stronger personalities from the Clan without making them loyal.

A question. What would your actual mechanical implementation of multiclan be? If you were to build l5r from the ground up, how would you design it and balance it? I'd be interested to know what you had in mind.

I'm agnostic on specific implementation. There are many examples of multifacion games, particularly in FFG's library, that can be drawn on for inspiration, or it could be a completely new mechanic.

As to your other points, cost reducers as cards are not the same as a built in cost reducer in the game mechanics, although both multi and monofactioning can be achieved through both rules and cards, or with the two in tension with each other. Note that in AGoT, the house cost reduction no longer exists in 2.0. Instead you simply can't go out of faction without a banner. In practice, that still creates a more multifaction game than L5R, because card design makes it so. If you're going multifaction, you have the option to include cost reducers for both, either or neither of your factions. L5R's (and AGoT 1.0's) in-clan discount is fixed to your single (mono!) clan.

Going multi-color (which remember, includes dual color) in Magic is trivially easy, even with the consistency hit (though more colors makes it harder). Just because you have to play mana of each color you use doesn't mean it isn't a heavily multifaction game. That's silly. A huge number of multi-faction games have faction-privileged resources, some with neutral resources to supplement, some not. Do monofaction decks appear in magic? Sure. Do they constitute most of the field at any level, competitive or casual? No.

Again, monoclan vs. multiclan is a spectrum. While I can't say you haven't engaged with the question in other areas, why the bloody-mindedness on calling L5R a multiclan game? It is *clearly biased toward monoclan.* If you want it to stay that way, that's fine. That's your preference.

But why pretend it already is multiclan? You even say monoclan decks are easier to build in your post. And while there is some truth to the fact that "easiest" does not always mean "best," if you take the various competitive (in the loosest sense) deck archetypes available over 20 years of L5R, I think there's little doubt they're going to be weighted far more monoclan (even with a few splashes here and there) than not. Even the language you use implies it: "There were *even* kotei wins last season," indicates that it's unusual for that to be so.

And even if literally every single deck splashes an out-of-clan samurai or two, that still doesn't make the game purely multiclan, because, as explained, it's a spectrum. It bears repeating that I don't *want* L5R to be purely multiclan, but there's room for L5R to mover further in that direction, just as there is room to make it more monoclan. Though I hasten to add that the discussion was begun on general design principles for card games, not specifically on what L5R is or should be, and others have insisted on dragging it there. If you don't like the terms of discussion in this thread, why bother to post? This mystifies me. You seem actively hostile about this.

You say there is a collapse of logic with regards to how to balance mono vs. multiclan, but given that any one of a number of solutions are available, I would say the collapse of logic is assuming that it cannot be done. Especially given that FFG has done it in several of their games. Are their games perfectly balanced? Of course not, no game is. But both mono and multi faction decks are viable in several of their games. Some are overpowered, some are underpowered, but it isn't *because* they are monofaction or because they are multifaction.