14 hours ago, Suzume Tomonori said:

If my memory serves, I think that originally a single personality card was supposed to represent a unit of people in a very real sense of a named hero leading a group of retainers and attendants etc., which is how, say, "one" personality could destroy an entire province.

So the suggestion of having cards that are generic groups of soldiers and monks does make sense in that way, but I can't help but feel such a card would lack...

...personality.

Originally, sure, some personalities could be described as a samurai and retainers, but so many personalities are pretty much just by themselves through the art, their station, flavor, or story tidbits. Bayushi Kachiko, and many other, just illustrate that idea of the lone personality.

I have to disagree with lacking personality with groups of people. For example, you could easily have a "group" personality like Kyuden Hida Berserkers, Tortoise Archers, or Toritaka Genzo's Scouts could work well through art, mechanics, or flavor. Even something simple like a Yasuki Trader can really give a different picture of the world or clan if, say, most of the previous Crab cards are berserkers/samurai or siege cards.

It could just as easily be assumed that a card like Bayushi Kachiko represents her and her retinue (bodyguards, servants, ladies in waiting, and all of the other assorted entourage that would probably accompany her to court), though game-wise it has no effect either way; it's just an abstraction.

The point I'm trying to make in regards to naming personalities is that while you could still provide flavor and world building with unnamed "personality" cards, you could do the same and also provide an enhanced level of player involvement in the story of the game if the personality cards have names that are tied to real characters in the story.

More to the point, I don't think players would have nearly as much interest including "Scorpion Seductress" in their deck as they do "Bayushi Kachiko."

1 hour ago, Suzume Tomonori said:

More to the point, I don't think players would have nearly as much interest including "Scorpion Seductress" in their deck as they do "Bayushi Kachiko."

Hmmmm, I'd be down with having a horde of seductresses.

1 hour ago, Suzume Tomonori said:

The point I'm trying to make in regards to naming personalities is that while you could still provide flavor and world building with unnamed "personality" cards, you could do the same and also provide an enhanced level of player involvement in the story of the game if the personality cards have names that are tied to real characters in the story.

More to the point, I don't think players would have nearly as much interest including "Scorpion Seductress" in their deck as they do "Bayushi Kachiko."

I agree. I think identifiable characters are much more relatable. Proper names go a long way toward affixing an experience to an object; whether they be person, place, or thing. Even the difference between "Scorpion Seductress" and "Seductress" is meaningful. One is specific to a clan, a tradition, and an association, while the other is generic and bland. Personally, I'm a fan of flavor and spice.

Even decks which spammed out hordes of generic stuff, like Breeder did undead zombies, had cool corrupt shugenja who were the nostalgic touchstones, such as Udo, Shuzo, Atsuro, and Inisi.

20 minutes ago, FunTimeTeddy said:

Even decks which spammed out hordes of generic stuff, like Breeder did undead zombies, had cool corrupt shugenja who were the nostalgic touchstones, such as Udo, Shuzo, Atsuro, and Inisi.

That is a better balance: having enough named guys as the core to give a deck meaning (or theming) and appropriate mooks supporting that. We don't need every undead zombie, oni, goblin, ashigaru, courtier, or samurai to be named for that effect.

23 hours ago, muzouka said:

Most cannon fodder in other clans are cheap and have proactive abilities at least. Crab cannon fodder have flavor text. Some of them have reactions or other non-proactive traits and most of them have the same cost as uniques or clan champions in other clans.

That's just how berserkers worked. They were 7 force minimum in a theme that was all about delaying and redirecting effects and being so big that even if the enemy dealt with all but one guy that one guy was enough to win it on his own.

Plus, berserkers had plenty of actions. Nikaru, Yamadera, Kaiji, Sakti, and Chiisai all had decent abilities. You combine them with Bakari and a few uniques like Kisada and Renyu and you have half a Dynasty deck.

On the subject of nameless personalities... What are people's thoughts on the idea of dojo holdings that generate token personalities like 'Charter of the Legion of Two Thousand' did?

7 hours ago, Kubernes said:

That is a better balance: having enough named guys as the core to give a deck meaning (or theming) and appropriate mooks supporting that. We don't need every undead zombie, oni, goblin, ashigaru, courtier, or samurai to be named for that effect.

We need. Because we love zero-to-hero stories. Names are memorable and i still remember small Pokku that earned his own fame. I don't know if i would if he will be "sneaky goblin" instead.

Go to Oracle and type Hida Kuon in Card Title. Would be possible if this first basic was just nameless Mighty Hida Samurai?

Not to mention, "Crab Shugenja", "Daidoji Bushi", "Dragon Samurai-ko" "Matsu Bushi", "Wasp Archer", "Shiba Yojimbo", "Bayushi Ninja", "Unicorn Battle Maiden", and "Armed Peasant"

Or, as they are much more interestingly and famously known, `Kuni Yori, Daidoji Uji, Mirumoto Hitomi, Matsu Gohei, Tsuruchi, Shiba Tsukune, Bayushi Aramoro, Otaku Kamoko and Toku, all of them who grew from their nobody beginnings into some of the most defining figures of L5R history.

18 hours ago, kempy said:

We need. Because we love zero-to-hero stories. Names are memorable and i still remember small Pokku that earned his own fame. I don't know if i would if he will be "sneaky goblin" instead.

Go to Oracle and type Hida Kuon in Card Title. Would be possible if this first basic was just nameless Mighty Hida Samurai?

If it's a case of zero-to-hero, what's more interesting than someone emerging from a crowd? Having a name seems to imply importance, but the vast majority of personalities in l5r were nothing more than footnotes and rather wasteful. So much so that the whole "Soul of" thing came around.

AGoT accomplishes the idea of uniques and non-uniques together very well in it's core set.

11 hours ago, Himoto said:

Not to mention, "Crab Shugenja", "Daidoji Bushi", "Dragon Samurai-ko" "Matsu Bushi", "Wasp Archer", "Shiba Yojimbo", "Bayushi Ninja", "Unicorn Battle Maiden", and "Armed Peasant"

Or, as they are much more interestingly and famously known, `Kuni Yori, Daidoji Uji, Mirumoto Hitomi, Matsu Gohei, Tsuruchi, Shiba Tsukune, Bayushi Aramoro, Otaku Kamoko and Toku, all of them who grew from their nobody beginnings into some of the most defining figures of L5R history.

The problem with this is that these guys are exceptions to the general rule.

The other problem might be the idea that game must be either named personalities or generics. I think that is the worst wave to approach the issue. As above, I'd rather see a balance that helps the game rather than drowns it in waves of generic named guys that usually add nothing.

A third problem is the idea that everything would be that generically named. I've already added easy ways to name a generic personality or group into something far more flavorable. Do you really believe the creators would just go with Crab Shugenja or Lion Bushi with a generic?

Well....maybe the Ogre Bushi, but he's an exception!

11 minutes ago, Kubernes said:

Well....maybe the Ogre Bushi, but he's an exception!

Actually, while Ogre Bushi also happens to be an ogre bushi, Ogre Bushi is the name his parents gave him.

7 hours ago, Kubernes said:

If it's a case of zero-to-hero, what's more interesting than someone emerging from a crowd? Having a name seems to imply importance, but the vast majority of personalities in l5r were nothing more than footnotes and rather wasteful. So much so that the whole "Soul of" thing came around.

312 "Soul of's" peeps out of 4600+ of all printed for twenty years. Is it large number? Also as LCG has a lot less cards than CCG, oldest LCGS reached fe cardpool similiar to 1,5-2 editions of CCG, so what's the problem to avoid any Soul of thing and pick most interesting to reincarnate/reprint? Looks so easy.

6 hours ago, Kubernes said:

If it's a case of zero-to-hero, what's more interesting than someone emerging from a crowd? Having a name seems to imply importance, but the vast majority of personalities in l5r were nothing more than footnotes and rather wasteful. So much so that the whole "Soul of" thing came around.

But in world of nameless buds if you name one of them he will just get big red mark over head "i'm important". Where's the surprise? What's the point?

6 hours ago, Kubernes said:

The other problem might be the idea that game must be either named personalities or generics. I think that is the worst wave to approach the issue. As above, I'd rather see a balance that helps the game rather than drowns it in waves of generic named guys that usually add nothing.

A third problem is the idea that everything would be that generically named. I've already added easy ways to name a generic personality or group into something far more flavorable. Do you really believe the creators would just go with Crab Shugenja or Lion Bushi with a generic?

This whole discussion is academic becasue we all know that FFG will do it like in their other games. There's will be few "unique/singular" guys and plenty of old L5R follower-like guys. Meh.

Well, it would be a lot less confusing if the non-important characters don't get a name on their card.

It is about the heroes, anyway, isn't it?

20 minutes ago, Ser Nakata said:

Well, it would be a lot less confusing if the non-important characters don't get a name on their card.

It is about the heroes, anyway, isn't it?

It was never confusing in CCG, so? More, that was birthmark of this game.

And it was about ordinary samurai/shugenja who became heroes.

Or about ordinary guys who became famous becasue their gameplay impact. All of you remember Saya, Hachigoro, Karachu and all of you wanted they die/be eliminated becasue you remembered their names. They're physical beings you could focus your feelings on.

I dunno, I think a school could also make a good hate sink. It could even lead to some interesting rivalries among the fandom, if certain school personalities are good counters to certain strategies. Interschool rivalry has always been a big thing in-setting, why not make it a thing for the players, too?

I'm for the majority of the characters having names. It made me care more about later versions of a character just to see how different or stronger they became.

I don't mind some nameless characters but I would prefer it was kept to stuff like the peasants or the nameless hoards of Shadowlands monsters. Although I would like to see some of these named, especially the major threats from the Shadowlands.

Sigh. Still far too many months away for this games release and we still know next to nothing about it.

To me, I don't think it matters one way or another if all peeps get a name or not. I remember when telling stories of my games between rounds at a kotei that I couldn't remember peeps names anyway and Id refer to them as 'copy ninja' or whatever they did. Lol

I'm all for naming characters instead of generic no-name cards.

There are tens of thousands of people in each clans, I don't see any problem in seeing a few Hida Kuroda each generation. That's why there was the possibility of having multiple cards of the same non-unique personality in the AEG version. And I like much more having names for everybody, with a few iconic names that are taken again generations after generations (the names in the core set and the deluxe boxes) than going with "11th Tower 2nd Floor Hida Bushi with a Tetsubo" after a few sets.

1 hour ago, Sparks Duh said:

To me, I don't think it matters one way or another if all peeps get a name or not. I remember when telling stories of my games between rounds at a kotei that I couldn't remember peeps names anyway and Id refer to them as 'copy ninja' or whatever they did. Lol

Your poor memory can't be excuse.

I think we are missing the point. Named personalities aren't and never were a problem (in classic L5R) as long as they were non-Unique and represented a broad type of character; we dealt with that type of implicit abstraction fine, so I don't see were all this talk of "Lion Clan Bushi" and other generic titles comes from. That problem comes exclusively with Uniques, most significantly Clan Champions and other major movers and shakers. On one hand, FFG has this policy with their LCGs of making cards in both the CS and the deluxes "eternal"; so, if we want some kind of developing storyline where we wouldn't want to see them there; on the other hand, it's difficult to imagine they won't be in the Core Set or in the future deluxes clan boxes.

Who knows?. The FFG people are smart, and I expect they have accounted for it somehow in their new L5R. Maybe the "eternal" legality will be explicity waived either for the whole Core Set (or, more likely, for some key cards). May be there is are several modes of legality: regular, and storyline-strict. For instance, for the regular legality you can only have one card the trait Lion Clan Champion in you deck; while in storyline strict, the release of a new Lion Clan Champions forces the previous one out of legality. We know they are handling player interactivity in a different way to AEG, may be that means "activating" those storyline-strict deck construction rules only for a few key stoyline tournaments around the year.

14 minutes ago, Mon no Oni said:

so I don't see were all this talk of "Lion Clan Bushi" and other generic titles comes from.

Because that's what FFG usually does with their games. They only name unique peeps while non-uniques usually get generic names. You can probably expect this from FFG just like you can expect there to be tokens.

58 minutes ago, Sparks Duh said:

Because that's what FFG usually does with their games. They only name unique peeps while non-uniques usually get generic names. You can probably expect this from FFG just like you can expect there to be tokens.

Even generic non-unique peeps typically get far more interesting names than "Lion Clan Bushi" in the FFG games. The argument that FFG can't make generics "interesting" thus they have to be named for any connection isn't best one to be made. There's plenty of examples that would say otherwise, not to mention how easy it is to simply come up with some off the top of one's head.

That whole character bloat with L5R more than points to another drastic problem with that line of thought. I'd have to add that I use the word character lightly for 90% of them.

1 hour ago, Kubernes said:

Even generic non-unique peeps typically get far more interesting names than "Lion Clan Bushi" in the FFG games. The argument that FFG can't make generics "interesting" thus they have to be named for any connection isn't best one to be made. There's plenty of examples that would say otherwise, not to mention how easy it is to simply come up with some off the top of one's head.

Por ejemplo:

"Lion's Pride Berserker."

"Firestorm Legionnaire."

"Tsuruchi Bounty Hunter."

"Moto White Guard."

"Baraunghar War-Priest"

"Deathseeker Gunso"

And so forth.

7 hours ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

Por ejemplo:

"Lion's Pride Berserker."

"Firestorm Legionnaire."

"Tsuruchi Bounty Hunter."

"Moto White Guard."

"Baraunghar War-Priest"

"Deathseeker Gunso"

And so forth.

Look like Followers for me.

And such things were part of keywords section of CCG's Personalities. Now they're going to be placed in card's names. Honestly, i don't like it but i know it will be made this way.

wow kempy you know so much!! where do you get all that information from? I mean you KNOW the names which will be used and everything! if only rest of us would have such sources of information like you do!