Today, FFG posted an article Battle of the Trident detailing how players of the A Game of Thrones LCG will be able to influence their game. I'm been wondering if this is one way that FFG will allow L5R LCG players to influence the upcoming game. Is this a good thing? A bad thing? What sort of alternatives could work?

Seems like a decent topic to actually discuss.

I'm for it.

I can see what they are doing there. The idea is if they can get a ton of retweets of their tweets, they can trend on Twitter and hopefully make a lot more people aware of the game than they could through traditional marketing methods. Other ballot-casting methods would not work as advertising.

On the other hand, it moves the emphasis of the game away from who can play it the best or who can buy the most or who can sway other users to their point of view... and instead puts the emphasis solely on who can set up (or has access to) the most puppet twitter accounts.

I feel like if one is not going to set up big tournaments with story prizes being awarded to the winner, the prefered method of ballot-casting would be instead to either have players set up accounts that track their play progress and have them use those to vote.... had the idea been thought up sooner, the company could even include serial codes with their products and users could link those serial codes to their account to 'level up' their account and have a larger influence. So those who bought the most product would have more heavily weighted votes-- and it would prevent or discourage others from simply making lots of accounts because accounts with no product serial codes linked to them wouldn't have any impact on the vote.

So, for instance, if I bought 2 starter sets and 2 expansion sets, in each box I would have a card and I could set up my account by entering the codes from those cards. Then when it comes time to vote, my vote would have the weight of 4-- or 6, if starter sets (being more expensive) were weighted more heavily, each time Then in the future I would be able to add to this each time I bought more product. This would encourage those with interest in the story to buy more product rather than setting up more twitter accounts. It also means that if someone had 10 email addresses and set up 10 accounts to try to sway the vote, they wouldn't have any vote unless each was linked up to a code-- in which case they may as well have just linked all their serial codes to a single account because it would carry the same value either way.

What I am proposing there is no doubt far more complicated to code the system to work that way and one would have to have that idea from the get-go, but at least it would mean the story was being influenced by people who actually purchased the product rather than allowing those who do not even play the game or buy the product, but have set up 100 puppet twitter accounts to be able to sway the vote. But, again, I think the idea is that "marketing gurus" still think twitter is a massive marketing platform and simply getting lots of tweets will somehow materialize into actually making money. Even though there is no indication that has ever worked.

Wow, I was going to start this thread, but you got me to it.

Yes, I think it's a warmup for what's coming up for L5R !!!

The only thing that I found bad is the usage of social media. Some people just don't like social media, so these people are kinda left out of this mechanism.

I'm fine with the use of social media, as it's where online interaction is going (even Wizards closed up their web forums a few months back). What I found bad, though, is the mostly unthematic interpretation of the Trident as a literal river that can lead (presumably via metaphor) either to knights, armies or maesters. Hopefully L5R votes will have more of a flavor spin on them.

I'm fine with the use of social media, as it's where online interaction is going (even Wizards closed up their web forums a few months back). What I found bad, though, is the mostly unthematic interpretation of the Trident as a literal river that can lead (presumably via metaphor) either to knights, armies or maesters. Hopefully L5R votes will have more of a flavor spin on them.

That's a start. Since they cannot have any impact on the storyline of aGoT, I understand why it is only a gameplay choice.

If they do the same thing with L5R without any impact on the story (if there is a story at all), then I'll be mad.

This actually aligns with a lot of the proposed ways of handling the Interactive Storyline aspects of L5R.

1) Have a Kotei season where every entry gets a Vote about the path of the NEXT Storyline Block. Sign up for multiple Kotei to get multiple votes!

2) Win a Kotei for prizes and entry into a World Championship (probably held at GenCon or an FFG Special Convention similar to what they have for). Win the World Championship, make a major decision about how the current Storyline Block ends.

3) Switch between a "Present Day Rokugan" Storyline Block and a "Historical Rokugan" Storyline Block. Alternatively, make your Storyline Blocks small-scale vs large-scale to give your team the development time to show the changes in the fiction.

This actually aligns with a lot of the proposed ways of handling the Interactive Storyline aspects of L5R.

1) Have a Kotei season where every entry gets a Vote about the path of the NEXT Storyline Block. Sign up for multiple Kotei to get multiple votes!

2) Win a Kotei for prizes and entry into a World Championship (probably held at GenCon or an FFG Special Convention similar to what they have for). Win the World Championship, make a major decision about how the current Storyline Block ends.

3) Switch between a "Present Day Rokugan" Storyline Block and a "Historical Rokugan" Storyline Block. Alternatively, make your Storyline Blocks small-scale vs large-scale to give your team the development time to show the changes in the fiction.

Well, #1 and #2 can more or less work. #3 seems like it is something far too late to consider trying. Those supposed "1,000 years of peace" have already been considerably filled in by events that more and more seem to add up to making the initial state of the game not particularly canon. There is always the risk of that when doing prequels-- anything too terribly big that you try to do is going to be something that feels like it would have had a much larger affect on the present and likely clashes with previously established information. Run too far off the rails and you may as well nix it having ever been a prequel and instead propose it is an alternate dimensional timeline.

Although the new set up of this card game does present a challenge that didn't previously exist. There is an equal chance this might cause the game to succeed or fail.

Players won't have near the investment in clan loyalty they used to. Previously the main reason to be loyal to the clan, aside from whatever headcanon you had and were invested in, a good chunk of it was that you likely only had the cards you needed from your particular clan. Most players would either go trading the cards with others to get as complete a set of their own clan, particularly its essential cards without which you couldn't remotely have a feasibly competitive deck, or they skipped the whole buying boosters and trading all together to buy the cards from online shops which would break open tons of boosters and sell the cards individually.

Even when moving from edition to edition when tons of cards would be deemed no longer valid, there were always some subset of the cards that would remain in the game or would be "soul of" some previous card. So even in that case it would have been a much larger investment to switch clans than to stick with the one you have.

But in this new printing format, that isn't going to be the case-- as long as the players are very much buying most of their cards from the company itself. Obviously, a group of players could all pitch-in and then divide the cards between them which would then create the previous situation once again-- but it looks to me as though it will be far less costly to have a whole set of cards giving you everything that every clan has to offer than it used to be just to get the most critical cards to make a competitive deck previously.

So if players don't remotely have to be as invested in their particular clan, what is that going to mean?

Previously the story team could have the faction take all its most important actions and decisions in the intermediary time between editions and then the rest of the edition was spent cleaning up whatever that was. So even though it really was only ever the Spider Clan and, to a slightly lesser degree, the Scorpion Clan who signed up to be the bad guys, some clan would have to take the villainous or just selfish and conceited actions to cause peace to go totally awry and the rest of the edition was spent sorting that all out. Whatever your faction was doing, it was what your faction was doing.... most of the time... which is totally suitable to the thematic concept, but... I wonder how well it works when players aren't nearly invested in having to remain with one faction.

Now, granted, there have always been those who play a clan and then specifically attempt to play them against type or actually envision their effort as rebelling against whatever the stated storyline for their clan claims-- that goes right back to imperial edition. And always writers have had to throw those crowds a bone.

Once you also account for the fact that this whole Twitter method obviously isn't going to be dividing the playerbase up into 'clans' or whatever... what can it do.

So if players don't remotely have to be as invested in their particular clan, what is that going to mean?

This is something I've been dwelling on myself. I don't think FFG is going to modify the LCG model in any way so as to encourage clan loyalty.

A question I had never considered asking because it seemed to be common sense until now is, what does clan loyalty do for the game and the fandom? I mean beyond building the rivalries between players of different factions, which already exists in Thrones . As near as I can tell, the fact that you had to focus specifically on one clan when building your playset was more limiting, whereas the LCG model encourages players to embrace all of the setting. For example, I am and will always be loyal to the Unicorn, but there are other clans that I'm very fond of as well, particularly the Crane and the Spider (Shourido Above All plz).

The greatest tangible benefit of clan loyalty I can think of, is that the most loyal players would remain with their clan, even if -or e specially if - it wasn't doing well in the current season. But there were also competitive players willing to play whatever was good at the time, so I don't see it as a hard-and-fast trait that the game will lose with this new setup.

Does clan loyalty have any other observable benefits that I might not be seeing?

So if players don't remotely have to be as invested in their particular clan, what is that going to mean?

This is something I've been dwelling on myself. I don't think FFG is going to modify the LCG model in any way so as to encourage clan loyalty.

A question I had never considered asking because it seemed to be common sense until now is, what does clan loyalty do for the game and the fandom? I mean beyond building the rivalries between players of different factions, which already exists in Thrones . As near as I can tell, the fact that you had to focus specifically on one clan when building your playset was more limiting, whereas the LCG model encourages players to embrace all of the setting. For example, I am and will always be loyal to the Unicorn, but there are other clans that I'm very fond of as well, particularly the Crane and the Spider (Shourido Above All plz).

The greatest tangible benefit of clan loyalty I can think of, is that the most loyal players would remain with their clan, even if -or e specially if - it wasn't doing well in the current season. But there were also competitive players willing to play whatever was good at the time, so I don't see it as a hard-and-fast trait that the game will lose with this new setup.

Does clan loyalty have any other observable benefits that I might not be seeing?

Odd that you jumped to the building rivalries part and ignored the building communities part. Rivalries were almost always shifting, it was rare for two clans to continually be at each other for more than two story arcs in a row. But the cohesion caused by players almost necessarily belonging to a specific faction simply for financial reasons if they wanted to be competitive meant that there were cohesive subgroups within the fanbase.

At the height of L5R there were big fan sites and mailing lists for every clan, even the minor clans had them. When people showed off their fan artwork, cosplay, craft projects, etc., at least approximately 1/7th to 1/10th of the players would care. AEG even supported these groups via special faction letters where the writers would take on the voices of big wigs in the particular faction. People got really, really into it because others were pulling one another more and more into it. It also meant that people found it more difficult to leave the game behind because they were emotionally invested in the fates of one of the clans as well as likely connected to others who had also chosen the same clan.

I'm of mixed feelings about a generic vote for everything in the L5R game. I don't necessarily mind it for very generic kind of new card. For example, players voting on what new initiative the Emperor or a Governor takes. Say something that helps out magistrates, ashigaru, or some other keyworded card. However, I would like to see other voting for more narrow minded cards (clans specific or cycle specific cards) skewed by tournament wins in addition to a 1 for 1 vote.

I do feel that clan voting should be among the clan players themselves. I suppose you could register players as a clan at the start of a league or by whichever clan they use in a tournament.

It does feel like this voting for aGoT and the Star Wars X-Wing game are there to help build the infrastructure for the future. A good thing!

Should clan registration be temporary or permanent? There have been occasions where I have thought about becoming a Crane, but each time I've remained with the Unicorn, as that kind of flexibility does not seem in the spirit of things. Why even claim your allegience if it can shift like leaves on the wind?

That's my thinking, though. I understand there are situations where a clan has gone so far afield of what made players join them in the first place that not having an opportunity to switch would be undesirable. It should not be something you can just do whenever, though, or there's no point.

Should clan registration be temporary or permanent? There have been occasions where I have thought about becoming a Crane, but each time I've remained with the Unicorn, as that kind of flexibility does not seem in the spirit of things. Why even claim your allegience if it can shift like leaves on the wind?

That's my thinking, though. I understand there are situations where a clan has gone so far afield of what made players join them in the first place that not having an opportunity to switch would be undesirable. It should not be something you can just do whenever, though, or there's no point.

I'd say do it "temporary" on the premise that a player picks the clan at the start of the league or some other determinate (say at the start of a new cycle) and it lasts for a short duration. Maybe until the end of the cycle or season. There should be some way for a player to be able to change but it shouldn't be something they can do all the time or at the drop of a hat. Maybe a free switch once during the duration?

I'd even add the option to drop the clan loyalty if the player chose something flavorful like a ronin, unaligned faction, or story faction that suddenly popped up, was released through a deluxe expansion, or a story event. Gotta be balanced!

This has been around since at least two years ago when winners of a Netrunner tournament circuit could vote on identities being added to the game. So this isn't new.

I don't get it, you had to register as a clan member? FFG will never force you to only play one type of deck at tourneys. Besides, LCGs have a regularly changing meta game, unlike TCGs. There will always be that shiny deck that performs better than a lot of decks.

I don't get it, you had to register as a clan member? FFG will never force you to only play one type of deck at tourneys. Besides, LCGs have a regularly changing meta game, unlike TCGs. There will always be that shiny deck that performs better than a lot of decks.

The Imperial Assembly was the AEG play network, and when you joined the IA, you chose a clan. Two to four times a year, you'd get the magazine (Imperial Herald) for the game, along with a Clan specific piece of fiction (Clan Letter). Nothing said you HAD to play your Clan in tournaments, but many fans of L5R were diehard members of their faction and would ONLY play decks of their faction competitively. There were rewards for the factions in the mega-games for participation by Clan, but there were just as many personal rewards out there just for winning tournaments. Most of the top tier competitive players in the world had preferred factions, but would play whatever won tournaments in that environment.

The challenge that AEG chased was an environment with at least 9 competitive decks which were all balanced with each other (1 for each faction). This was never achieved.

So if players don't remotely have to be as invested in their particular clan, what is that going to mean?

This is something I've been dwelling on myself. I don't think FFG is going to modify the LCG model in any way so as to encourage clan loyalty.

A question I had never considered asking because it seemed to be common sense until now is, what does clan loyalty do for the game and the fandom? I mean beyond building the rivalries between players of different factions, which already exists in Thrones . As near as I can tell, the fact that you had to focus specifically on one clan when building your playset was more limiting, whereas the LCG model encourages players to embrace all of the setting. For example, I am and will always be loyal to the Unicorn, but there are other clans that I'm very fond of as well, particularly the Crane and the Spider (Shourido Above All plz).

The greatest tangible benefit of clan loyalty I can think of, is that the most loyal players would remain with their clan, even if -or e specially if - it wasn't doing well in the current season. But there were also competitive players willing to play whatever was good at the time, so I don't see it as a hard-and-fast trait that the game will lose with this new setup.

Does clan loyalty have any other observable benefits that I might not be seeing?

At the height of L5R there were big fan sites and mailing lists for every clan, even the minor clans had them. When people showed off their fan artwork, cosplay, craft projects, etc., at least approximately 1/7th to 1/10th of the players would care. AEG even supported these groups via special faction letters where the writers would take on the voices of big wigs in the particular faction. People got really, really into it because others were pulling one another more and more into it. It also meant that people found it more difficult to leave the game behind because they were emotionally invested in the fates of one of the clans as well as likely connected to others who had also chosen the same clan.

I don't get it, you had to register as a clan member? FFG will never force you to only play one type of deck at tourneys. Besides, LCGs have a regularly changing meta game, unlike TCGs. There will always be that shiny deck that performs better than a lot of decks.

In L5R when playing even a single clan meant you were open to various decktypes. Your fe Dragon clan was able to create two different military builds, one honor and one enlightenment. They were at various competetive level but provided different playstyles. Main Tier 1 victory conditions also changed between editions, so mostly military clan like Crab has a really great dishonor deck in Emperor edition. And so on...

As i visited tourneys for 9 years i noticed that 90% of people played same clans and also had a one or two clans as backup.