Well, I'd rather not have to put gold producing holdings in the deck like we had to in the CCG.

Make the economy part of the controllable elements, via stronghold and/or plot/events deck...

It's always been too easy to suffer heavily from a bad gold start or getting only holdings on the turn where you need at least a body...

AEG improved it a lot in IvE+ introducing Legacy, Cycle, Kharmic and many refillable Holdings or really playable Event like Coronation Festival (with option for tutoring it). Have to say that, except overall dullness of first half of Ivory, these mechanisms helped a lot in term of game flow and reducing goldscrew/goldflow. So my opinion is - well designed cards/mechanism could easily utilize oldschool L5R gold system.

+

Cycle

Limited: If it is your first turn, choose one or more face-up cards in your Provinces. Put them on the bottom of your deck in any order. Then (after refilling Provinces), turn all cards in your Provinces face-up.

+

Kharmic

Players have the following ability relevant to Kharmic cards:

Kharmic Repeatable Limited, : Discard a Kharmic card from your hand to draw a card, or discard a Kharmic card from your Province to refill the Province face-up.

+

Legacy

A keyword on Holdings that refers to the following player ability:

Dynasty, : Remove a card in your hand from the game to search your deck and Provinces for a Legacy Holding and Recruit it. If you fail to find one, you lose the game.

Ok, but I'd rather not have to play around a third (at least) of the deck as ressources...

I know a lot of players of the CCG would like to keep the two-decks format, but I think a single 60-cards deck with a side deck of events/plots would be more enjoyable.

I also wouldn't say AEG improved it along the years, but rather they tried to correct it. But in my view, these legacy holdings and the cycling were steps they HAD to put in the game because of the inherent flaws of the gold-producing holdings.

And also, having a Clan Holding for each Clan/Faction is stupid. Just have one holding, make it generic, and everyone will play it in his deck anyway.


I also think we should avoid holdings with too much gold production. Think of Jade Works, or (gasp) Productive mine.

In the CCG, if both players had 4GP strongholds, before gold pooling, you had a massive advantage if you had the productive mine and your opponent didn't. From the introduction of Gold Pooling, You could get two 2-for-2 holdings instead of the 4-for-4, but if you didn't,you were (gold)screwed.

I can't speak of Netrunner or other FFG games other than AGoT, but in the case of AGoT, the average gold you have each turn is around 4, and it's enough to play most of the characters. Characters costing more than 4 are the more powerful characters. Comparing to the L5R CCG, these characters would cost around 6, which is what you couldn't get without at least a holding.

I think the play experience would be more enjoyable if you don't have to allocate around 22 out of 60 or 14 out of 40 cards to basic ressources just to reduce your chances of gold screw to an acceptable minimum.

Well rereading myself it may not seem clear, but in my head, it was.

And also, having a Clan Holding for each Clan/Faction is stupid. Just have one holding, make it generic, and everyone will play it in his deck anyway.

There's no printed Clan Holdings in base Twenty Festivals and they were meant to be completely removed in Onyx.

I also think we should avoid holdings with too much gold production. Think of Jade Works, or (gasp) Productive mine.

Jade Works paid external gold for some specific card type (Jade ones), so was up to you use them and built deck around them (with limitations). Productive Mine was standard 1:1 Holding (1gold paid for its 1 gold production) like 90% of L5R Holdings, so what's the problem?

In the CCG, if both players had 4GP strongholds, before gold pooling, you had a massive advantage if you had the productive mine and your opponent didn't. From the introduction of Gold Pooling, You could get two 2-for-2 holdings instead of the 4-for-4, but if you didn't,you were (gold)screwed.

Have you played any game in 20 Festivals? There's plenty of 1 for 1 Holdings in gold schems because of Forgotten Legacy and The Blessing.

And there were incoming other Legacy Holdings like one with 2 for 2 to make 2's much more playable again.

I think the play experience would be more enjoyable if you don't have to allocate around 22 out of 60 or 14 out of 40 cards to basic ressources just to reduce your chances of gold screw to an acceptable minimum.

That was beauty of CCG, keeping your Dynasty deck clean and balanced for your own designed purposes. In history of game there were Dynasty decks built with only Holgings/Events (so called Faceless) or these with only one or none (like Emperor Edition blitzes due to starting Border Keep), or decks with Holdings that morphed into Personalities (like Venerable Master) etc. All this variation came from this card type, and its possibilities.

Treat Holdings as part of your plan not a card that only purpose is to "clog" your deck. And let's talk about totally unplayable cards you HAVE to put in your deck in SW LCG (part of pack) or in Conquest (signature cards). And you want to say there's no breakers-screw in Netrunner? No agenda overflow?

And no, Holdings were not pure gold productions resources. In IvE/20F there's plenty of them with various usable abilities or traits. So on later turns they mostly were used for interaction, not money.

PS. Have to add that old gold system was imho much superior in term of visibility and game structure even if gold pooling brought new possibilities (and was totally f****d up by reprinting Clan Holdings and creating Mantis Stronghold).

Awww. No response from Sparks Duh, and it's been so long!

Also, I never played old L5R with old gold rules. Can someone please briefly explain them?

Based on my own experience with ivory, I'm kind of inclined to agree with Ser Nakata that rules like cycling and kharmic seem like corrections to make a pretty broken based mechanic more playable.

Which was absolutely a good move. But since FFG has the opportunity to come up with a different economy (and since I like their economy in netrunner so much), I kinda think they should.

Old gold rules were basically that you couldn't pool. So a paying for a 6g guy could be spent with a 444 and a 242. But if you used, say, a 444 and a 444 then you would produce 8 gold and the extra 2 was lost "to taxation"

Pooling was better for approachability of the game, but I do admit I liked the old way more. For me, it was a very cathartic experience to budget out my holdings onto my provinces after the flop. And I also really liked figuring out a gold scheme that was more about single points and not a curve.

My first deck was Scorpion Parajimbos and if I remember right, since back then Personalities had a gold reduction bonus of -2, the deck was based around 5g (242 plus clan holding) and 6g (box + 242) guys. It also used prosperous village as a 645 to buy the 5g guys by itself.

So yea, new gold can pool and old gold couldn't. New gold was probably better, but, for not good reasons, personally, I liked old gold.

It should be noted that dice are not allowed as counters in sanctioned FFG LCG tournaments (as per their official rules), so I doubt that L5R will allow you to use them as well for pool Worlds, store championships, etc.

While I understand why, God that's dumb.

You say that you understand why. Can I ask you to say what you think the reason is? Because what I think the reason is doesn't seem dumb to me.

FYI: I believe they made that ruling because: it's more difficult to accidentally do something wrong with tokens than with dice; they can't be knocked onto a different face; they provide tokens with the core game; it's easier for a player to know what type of tokens something is, because they're defined in the rules, unlike dice.

That is fair and more likely. I admit I was/am salty about being forced to use tokens and assumed it was a cash grab for proprietary parts. I took a step back and remembered that FFG (to my knowledge) does not sell token packs, so that was unfair.

It just seems to me like the line could get silly. It's like if Pokemon said you can only use Pokemon produced coins for flips and not a quarter.

@BayushiCroy thanks!

Awww. No response from Sparks Duh, and it's been so long!

So sorry... been on vacation!!!!

How's this thread at 6 pages?? lol

I took a step back and remembered that FFG (to my knowledge) does not sell token packs, so that was unfair.

Not only do they not sell token packs, Their OP events typically have acrylic tokens as part of the prize packs.

The closest they've come to selling token packs is the dice packs for the Arkham games, but those aren't required, they're just fancy d6's

You could say that they sell token 'packs'. It's just called a second (or third) core set.

Can I just say? I love that this thread has five pages!

Also, @Sparks Duh… You asked token likers why they liked tokens, and I, a humble token liker, explained, in a point-by-point, easily accessible fashion. I don’t know if it’s your intention, but I’m finding your replies kinda hostile. Personally, I don’t want to be hostile back…. Unless you wanted to be hostile! It’s been forever since I’ve been in a senseless flame war, and my caps-lock finger is itchy… >:]

But, by way of reply...

1. For me, they're super easy to manage. ...

Ummmmm. Which is easier to manage here? Keeping a bag for each of your million tokens or none at all? I'm pretty sure not having any bags of tokens is much easier than having multiple bags of tokens to manage...

2. They can easily represent different sorts of information, which as pointed out by others, increases design freedom.

More design freedom is really the only perk I can see to having tokens. But I'm still not convinced that card games need that in order to be great card games.

3. I have a pretty terrible memory, and they help me keep track of things.

Sorry not sorry. I can't feel bad if you can't remember that you gave my guy -2f. Get better at remembering? It's a competitive game. Games take skill. Remembering things is a good skill to have.

4. They're real estate friendly. ...

... How can having a lot of tokens (especially broken up in to multiple bags like you like to do) take up less real estate than having none? Really????

5. Tokens are good for representing durable-but-easily-changeable chunks of information. Like how much gold you have. Or advancement.

There's a lot of netrunner in your post, but to me, tokens are not needed for telling you how much gold you have. I can math with or without tokens.

6. Coming from number 4 & 5, a token-based economy (like Netrunner) is, to me, more interesting than the card-based economies (like L5R and Magic). ...

This would only be a thing if gold carried over through turns. Incidentally, most card games do not. ...

1. Literally literally literally, I promise, tokens are easy for me. I wasn’t making a comparison before, but I will now. The token economy of Netrunner is a) easier and b) more fun for me than L5R gold.

2. For sure. You can have great games with tokens, and great games without them… I think? Come to think of it, I’ve only ever played card games with tokens… Can you recommend any that don't use them? I played Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Yu-Gi-Oh, MtG, and Netrunner, and they all used tokens.

3. If you’re going to criticize people for their cognitive function… maybe don’t? Also, I’ve never played L5R with people who didn’t ever use tokens or dice to track stuff. I’ve got a snarkier answer if you wanted to fight, though.

4. … Do you not believe me? Why would I lie about this? Again, I was there. I’m pretty sure I know what happened. Do you want pics? Gimme a couple months; I’m working away from home/gaming, but when I get back I can show you. But like really, I’d rather you just believed me when I describe my own experience.

5. Yeah, because Netrunner is great! And I have some recent experience with it. But My point was not that tokens make arithmetic easier. My point was that they can represent information that can easily change, but that might last longer than the average duration of a chunk of working memory. L5R gold isn’t in that category. Netrunner credits are.

6. I can’t say that gold/credits/mana/currency do or don’t carry over turns in most games. But they do in Netrunner. And I think it’s fun.

Alright... I can admit when I've become irritated. My apologies if I came off as being a **** to you. You made a post as to why you like tokens and I turned it in to an argument.

As to your points:

1 - I turned it in to a comparison because I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around why someone would prefer to do this than not worry about any tokens at all.

2 - For the most part, I've played the L5R CCG. Tokens actually came in starter decks for the game. However, they weren't required to play the game. This is the biggest difference that I can't seem to get through to people. L5R had a LOT of tokens that you could use. I chose to throw mine in the trash because I didn't need them to play.

3 - I was out of line in my original response. I know everyone has different ways of remembering things and even have hard times with it. I totally understand this. I believe I said this earlier in the post, but I will repeat it. I don't mind other players using tokens to help them remember things. I don't mind if other players put their tokens on my cards to help them. I just hate that I'm required to lug them around in order to play.

4 - I turned this one in to a comparison again. All I know from playing various LCGs that love having tokens is that two players sit down for a game, take out their decks, dump their tokens out and have a mess of tokens on the table. That's what I see. I never see anything like what you are describing. To me, this isn't clean real estate.

5 - I still can't get all the Netrunner reference out of this one mainly because L5R didn't have the same type of resource as Netrunner. I'd rather resources be a part of the deck than a bunch of tokens any day.

6 - This is almost a breakaway from point 5...

Anyway, I hope that clears up some things.

5 - I still can't get all the Netrunner reference out of this one mainly because L5R didn't have the same type of resource as Netrunner. I'd rather resources be a part of the deck than a bunch of tokens any day.

As far as actual game design goes, separating resources from the deck to prevent "mana"-screw or -flood makes for a far better casual experience, which in turn helps drive sales.

5 - I still can't get all the Netrunner reference out of this one mainly because L5R didn't have the same type of resource as Netrunner. I'd rather resources be a part of the deck than a bunch of tokens any day.

As far as actual game design goes, separating resources from the deck to prevent "mana"-screw or -flood makes for a far better casual experience, which in turn helps drive sales.

I can see that, but like I said, I prefer to make deck construction one of the reasons you win or lose a tournament. And a large part of that was making sure your deck did what it was supposed to do. Making sure your deck didn't get gold screwed was all a part of that. Just like making sure you had the right amount of strategies to attachment ratios.

5 - I still can't get all the Netrunner reference out of this one mainly because L5R didn't have the same type of resource as Netrunner. I'd rather resources be a part of the deck than a bunch of tokens any day.

As far as actual game design goes, separating resources from the deck to prevent "mana"-screw or -flood makes for a far better casual experience, which in turn helps drive sales.

I can see that, but like I said, I prefer to make deck construction one of the reasons you win or lose a tournament. And a large part of that was making sure your deck did what it was supposed to do. Making sure your deck didn't get gold screwed was all a part of that. Just like making sure you had the right amount of strategies to attachment ratios.

Is Hearthstone is a bad game?

How is deck construction not a factor because resources are independent of the deck? By mostly divorcing the resources from the deck, it lets fewer games be determined by resource factors which is an unfun way to lose a game.

5 - I still can't get all the Netrunner reference out of this one mainly because L5R didn't have the same type of resource as Netrunner. I'd rather resources be a part of the deck than a bunch of tokens any day.

As far as actual game design goes, separating resources from the deck to prevent "mana"-screw or -flood makes for a far better casual experience, which in turn helps drive sales.

I can see that, but like I said, I prefer to make deck construction one of the reasons you win or lose a tournament. And a large part of that was making sure your deck did what it was supposed to do. Making sure your deck didn't get gold screwed was all a part of that. Just like making sure you had the right amount of strategies to attachment ratios.

Is Hearthstone is a bad game?

How is deck construction not a factor because resources are independent of the deck? By mostly divorcing the resources from the deck, it lets fewer games be determined by resource factors which is an unfun way to lose a game.

I never said that games like Hearthstone is bad. I actually like Hearthstone. I said that I just prefer to have the resources included in the deck making process. It isn't fun to lose a game to gold screw. But you learn from it and get better and build decks so that it doesn't happen again. It's another form of skill to acquire, imo. But I think this is getting off topic to the tokens discussion. I know I brought it up, but I was trying to make a point on the difference to Netrunners token use in resources.

I agree with sparks in this instance. I like games where the resources are part of the design of the goal of deck. Not to say that games that don't do this are bad, but it does necessarily mean that by removing that element it also eliminates any choices that could be made to that design.

Now I am pretty firmly in the camp that more choices is better. But they still have to be meaningful and fun choices. If you can't have meaningful and fun choices in the resource game, then you should scrap the resource managmemt.

Now, I'm just peculiar, and like managing resources no matter what. So having resources at all is a plus for me. I realize this is not the case for everyone, and goes back to my second point. Resource management design therefore should have meaningful and fun choices.

Probably has been said, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a card game that doesn't use tokens in some manner.

Probably has been said, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a card game that doesn't use tokens in some manner.

Hahahahaha

Probably has been said, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a card game that doesn't use tokens in some manner.

I agree. Earlier I mentioned Yomi and Trieste. Both are excellent games but they are both much more board games since there is no deck construction. Play them both.

Yomi has f2p pnp decks.

I don't recall early ccgs using tokens out of the bag or at least tokens in the way we usually associate them.

sad that in certain events - dice are not allowed as an alternative to track what tokens do
(though i wasn't able to see this in the Fundamental Event Document)

afaik, wotc still allows dice in high level tournaments.

in any case, it would be nice if (for these events), the TO will supply the tokens instead (if only people didn't have itchy fingers).

tokens/dice/written info can be manipulated in the right (err wrong hands). i tend to do active judging on players with such history.
do tokens mitigate this from happening? i doubt it - but i do see potential in lessening player mistakes.

so do i like tokens? i honestly prefer dice.

The rules for tokens would be in the rules for each game, this way if FFG ever comes out with a game that isn't token-intensive, their "fundamental event document" doesn't need to change.

I've never seen or heard of anyone intentionally walking off with anyone's tokens, especially the cardboard ones that come with the game.

I prefer a token-less game as well, but this is something we all have to accept if we want to partake in the future of Rokugan.

The only ccgs i've played that didn't require tokens was Overpower and Animeyhem. If a card gave a bonus to the end of the term or end of the game you left it on the board. The only token intensive ccg I've played was Magi Nation: Duel. Your whole economy was tokens.

I don't recall early ccgs using tokens out of the bag or at least tokens in the way we usually associate them.

There were cards that used tokens in Magic: the gathering Alpha edition.

Jyhad used big piles of blood tokens.

Dixie used tokens to represent damage to units.

INWO had money as a resource.

I'm not sure what way you usually associate tokens with play, but from my point of view, they've been with us since day one.

The only ccgs i've played that didn't require tokens was Overpower and Animeyhem. If a card gave a bonus to the end of the term or end of the game you left it on the board. The only token intensive ccg I've played was Magi Nation: Duel. Your whole economy was tokens.

Forgetting the greatest of them all, SWCCG. Your deck was pretty much your life and resources.