1 hour ago, BlindSamurai13 said:

From a business standpoint, what is FFG's main priority; introducing a new audience over an established audience, maintaining the established audience over a new audience, or both?

Anyone who they might potentially lose because they don't incorporate every single element good or bad of the universe from the get go... or at all... and don't follow up Onyx which was set up to be a final story after which there really wouldn't be anywhere left for the story to go... well, there just aren't needed. But most fans will jump straight in regardless even if they are griping all the way.

The initial premise for the initial set was easy.

"8 gods fell to earth following the same basic premise of Greek mythology. They formed a new empire with the humans who were on earth. A 9th fell to hell and came to try to destroy the land, 7 heroes chosen by the gods who formed the empire destroyed him allowing the empire to be at peace for 1000 years. Now those 1000 years are drawing to a close and one of the 7 clans betrayed the emperor, killing him and his family and seizing control of the capital. With no emperor on the throne, the clans have no one keeping them at peace and now to go all-out war throwing the empire into chaos."

Its not the simplest of premise, but the premise of basically... some mythological things happened in ancient times, there has been nothing worth noting for 1000 years, now someone gets greedy and throws everything out of balance. Each of the clans is color-coded and has a basic theme, but there is a lot left for player imagination and the result of the story is not clear.

Onyx is a considerably more complicated starting position requiring the explanation of dozens of elements that are just... more nonsense the harder you think about it. It is built on designer-fiat and plot-hole. Worse.... if you understand that "and then everyone dies, the end" is not a possible outcome of the story, it can only go in two ways.... either the samurai defeat the largest challenge imaginable , take back their empire and everyone lives happily ever after.... or they spend the next many generations building a new empire.

Which... actually, is to say, if the starting point is "hundred of years later" you could very well start the game off with a fairly clean slate. Everything from Lotus to Onyx can simply be explained away with "The old empire got taken over by evil demon guys 500 years ago and no one has heard from it ever since" and the clans could imaginably have rebuilt themselves in some form over that many generations.

57 minutes ago, Obscene said:

I do believe it is both. And I do think you can reboot the universe to an earlier time period with out redacting future plot points that have happened(that were good) and still allow player input in the story line as well.
I know they have done some limited experimentation with this in A:NR and GoT.
I have a question to the the vets of the IP/community, what was the actual lead time in story line input. For instance, whatever tournament that was won or system that came to a conclusion that allowed players to affect the story line, how long did it take before you saw that in product?

Well, sure. If there are any things that happened in the game that you want to keep (Yasuki joining the Crab, Agasha joining the Phoenix and being replaced by the Tamori, etc.) then you can go ahead and just say those things happened a lot earlier. Or even that the final division of families in clans had always been the case.

Maybe there was never any "Wasp Clan" or "Centipede Clan" but those were always families within the "Mantis".

As for when storyline choices actually showed up? Well, big ones-- for the most part-- came out 1-2 sets later, so 6 to 9 months. Although there were a couple cases where it was surprising just how the very next set seemed to have card flavor text that supported the decided tournament result despite the fact that they came out way too soon after the tournament to think they had time to prepare. (For instance, the final Gold Edition tournament decided which of the Winds would be emperor... and somehow the Diamond set that came out shortly after had cards that, at least in flavor text, acknowledged the choice and there were no cards in the set that suggested that any other candidate had won.)

But that is talking about the cards. If by "product" you include the online weekly stories, there were cases where that would come out the very next day!

One of the VERY few things we know about L5R LCG is that there WILL BE an Interactive Storyline element to the Organized Play Experience.

How do we know this? Because FFG made the mistake of calling on me (a gaming journalist) during the InFlight Report at GenCon 2016, while expecting another easy lay up question to answer, or speculative question they could block with "We do not discuss anything which was not announced." line. They had announced that there would be the L5R LCG and that there WILL BE Organized Play support with a World Championship during November of 2017.

My question was: "The interactive storyline element of Legend of the Five Rings CCG was considered a cornerstone of the Organized Play experience. Do you have any comment on if this will be present as part of the L5R LCG Organized Play experience?"

The answer we got (after a look of shock from the FFG president and a quick lateral pass of the question over to Steve Horvath, the VP of Organized Play) was: "It is part of the Legend of the Five Rings brand and one of the reasons we purchased it. We are still working on the details, and it will be different in FFG, but it will be there."

2 hours ago, sndwurks said:

One of the VERY few things we know about L5R LCG is that there WILL BE an Interactive Storyline element to the Organized Play Experience.

How do we know this? Because FFG made the mistake of calling on me (a gaming journalist) during the InFlight Report at GenCon 2016, while expecting another easy lay up question to answer, or speculative question they could block with "We do not discuss anything which was not announced." line. They had announced that there would be the L5R LCG and that there WILL BE Organized Play support with a World Championship during November of 2017.

My question was: "The interactive storyline element of Legend of the Five Rings CCG was considered a cornerstone of the Organized Play experience. Do you have any comment on if this will be present as part of the L5R LCG Organized Play experience?"

The answer we got (after a look of shock from the FFG president and a quick lateral pass of the question over to Steve Horvath, the VP of Organized Play) was: "It is part of the Legend of the Five Rings brand and one of the reasons we purchased it. We are still working on the details, and it will be different in FFG, but it will be there."

Steve Horvath is on record saying this in a video interview with Team Covenant at Worlds 2015 so you can't claim all the credit.

8 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

Steve Horvath is on record saying this in a video interview with Team Covenant at Worlds 2015 so you can't claim all the credit.

here's the one he's referring two:

and here's a later comment here made about the l5r launch being ffg's "biggest lcg launch ever"

Hooray for sourced information

Although I do enjoy some good speculation too

for those not interested in watching videos, the relevant quotes from the 2015 video:

Quote

"it is going to continue to be the interactive story game"
"the game is going to go through some real changes, and thats going to be controversial, but playing it safe is not how you win"

it should be noted that that was posted in november of 2015, about two months after they sold the game. that is EARLY DAYS. no reason to doubt that any of these statements are not still true, but two years is a LONG time in development land, so they should be considered in that context.

Playing it safe is riskier than making bold moves.

It seems to me that all we can say is there will be an interactive storyline.

When or where it will start is no guarantee. Both as it seems, both continuing from Onyx and resetting to Clan Wars are possibilities starting from 7 clans.

I just think that starting from where the game left off would be a bad point to try to pick up new players.

If there is a demand for a Spider Clan, I see no reason not to introduce the idea of Chuda or Goju or corrupt monks even earlier. We could even introduce Daigotsu early on-- maybe there is even a way to make him the son of Fu Leng!

Maybe Toturi isn't the one who takes the throne. Maybe the Otomo, Seppun, Miya, Kasugi and Yotsu get ejected from the capital only to join up with the Brotherhood and a bunch of ronin creating that brotherhood/toturi army/imperial farms and ashigaru using honor/enlightenment faction as the "Owl clan".

People want Naga or Ratlings or other nonevil monsters? Cool, maybe they can be their own faction with different "strongholds" depending on which type, but maybe in terms of competition "nonhuman" victory is a singular thing. Maybe there could even be a Troll, goblin, Tsuna, etc. outside of "Spider Clan".

All of the best characters in L5R history can be recreated and players can drive their fates.

It just seems to me that the possibilities starting over are very wide. But forcing oneself to pick up precisely where the last set left off leaves one with few possibilities.

As for the idea of "playing safe vs risking", it seems like the designers took offense to previous editions where simply shutting down the opponent and collecting honor was a valid strategy as opposed to putting assets at risk to make gains as military inherently did.

Though, I wonder how one respects the concept of political paths in such a thought process.

In retrospect, this video feels sorrow, like it is saying "goodbye for now." or something. IDK, its just the emotion I feel by seeing/hearing this video again and again; with that music too... I am optimistic that L5R will do well under FFG, especially if brings new blood to the Emerald Empire.

P. S. This is also the video I show anybody that is interested in playing the RPG (I know its for the CCG but still...).

17 minutes ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

We could even introduce Daigotsu early on-- maybe there is even a way to make him the son of Fu Leng!

that would certainly be a different way to take Dags. part of what made him such an interesting character, to me at least, was the tension between his faith (which had no room in it for anyone or anything, especially anything as soft as love) and his family and his ambition to put his son on the throne. his ability to walk the line between those two, successfully, was one reason why he was such a rich character. that said, i think we told that story, and if you're rebooting the line and bringing him back, i think doing something different isn't necessarily a bad idea, its just dangerous ground. Daigotsu is rare in so much as more than maybe any character in the game, the ENTIRE clan is built around him. Fu Leng makes a rare couple appearances, and never really shaped the clan, as a personality. other clans have influential indviduals, who shaped their history and their lore, but no clan has ONE that looms over them as large or for as long, so tinkering with him is big. changing him from a hantei to a descendent of Fu Leng, direct or distant, is an interesting way of replacing one noble line with another.

Well, you could have the idea of a lost Hantei heir introduced earlier in the game. Or maybe Daigotsu ends up as the child of Hantei the 39th post possession and Bayushi Kachiko.

I think both offer possibilities. Whenever a writer has a good idea of where the story is going, they can do better. Imagine going back to clan wars and dangling either of those plot threads out there.

"The empress and her newborn son were ambushed and presumed dead."

The fanbase goes wild.

Kachiko gave birth to a son and he is immediately taken away by strange robbed figures.

The fanbase goes wild.

2 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

I just think that starting from where the game left off would be a bad point to try to pick up new players.

What makes you say that? Seems like the perfect time to me. The fate of the Empire itself hangs in the balance, and a sinister pretender has claimed the throne for himself. That sounds like a good setup for what to many players is going to be an entirely new setting.

Just because we're so used to L5R being static and timeless doesn't mean it has to be, or even should be.

Also, cielago, you're forgetting Togashi and the Dragon, who did the other way of sticking around for a long time and guiding the clan - the subtle one.

There's enough space for both and I generally agree with your point on Daigotsu.

3 minutes ago, Builder2 said:

What makes you say that?

Hey, I can answer this: fluff baggage. You hafta explain a lot to the new guy for Onyx. You should talk about Daigotsu (obviously), the Four Winds / Toturi era (important to understand Daigotsu), the Iweko (and thus the Race for the Throne / the Destroyer War / the Age of Exploration), and finally what's the deal with the Spider Clan, Fu Leng, and the Hantei dynasty. You also have to explain why Kanpeki gunning for the throne is a bad thing (Emperors come and go a lot nowadays, after all), and why the Mantis Clan getting blown up is a big deal... among other things.

12 minutes ago, Builder2 said:

What makes you say that? Seems like the perfect time to me. The fate of the Empire itself hangs in the balance, and a sinister pretender has claimed the throne for himself. That sounds like a good setup for what to many players is going to be an entirely new setting.

Just because we're so used to L5R being static and timeless doesn't mean it has to be, or even should be.

3 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Hey, I can answer this: fluff baggage. You hafta explain a lot to the new guy for Onyx. You should talk about Daigotsu (obviously), the Four Winds / Toturi era (important to understand Daigotsu), the Iweko (and thus the Race for the Throne / the Destroyer War / the Age of Exploration), and finally what's the deal with the Spider Clan, Fu Leng, and the Hantei dynasty. You also have to explain why Kanpeki gunning for the throne is a bad thing (Emperors come and go a lot nowadays, after all), and why the Mantis Clan getting blown up is a big deal... among other things.

AtoMaki is pretty on point here, but also, as i've harped on a lot before, narratively its wonky. Onyx was the middle of a story. its the "empire strikes back". Kanpeki being in power is interesting because its an inversion of the status quo, which a new player won't get if theres no status to quo.

14 minutes ago, Builder2 said:

What makes you say that? Seems like the perfect time to me. The fate of the Empire itself hangs in the balance, and a sinister pretender has claimed the throne for himself. That sounds like a good setup for what to many players is going to be an entirely new setting.

Just because we're so used to L5R being static and timeless doesn't mean it has to be, or even should be.

I covered this in a previous post, but AtoMaki covered it pretty well.

Despite the convoluted elements involved.

Saying "nothing all that dramatic or important has happened for hundreds, even a thousand years, and now **** is going down in a pretty static environment where this is new to everyone" is a lot easier than having to explain the absolutely complicated and convoluted series of events that led to the situation at hand and the multitude of ties the primary cast already has to one another.

And, sure... the fate of the Empire is in balance, but it can only be resolved in a few ways...

1) The Samurai try to take back the empire, fail miserably, crash on the shores and all die. Shadowlands wins-- game over, no more story to tell.
2) The samurai without any serious preparation or gain of strength take back the empire from the single greatest possible threat imaginable, defeating the prince of hell and an entire empire under his control... the next story is well... inevitably seriously anti-climatic and petty in comparison.
3) The samurai who evacuated decide NOT to kill each other and instead spend the next 500 years creating a whole new empire from scratch. Engage in the jaw-dropping suspense of building watchtowers and deciding where to place the various roads and fields to maximize both production and trade.

Which of those is going to lead to any more future story possibilities? They are all effectively dead-end choices... an ideal final curtain-call, but about as far from a good launching point as you can get.

Consider, in comparison, "the throne is vacated, the capital has been seized and literally any clan can get in there, take control and claim rulership of the empire itself." Surely you can see how this later scenario makes the choice of clan far more important and makes the end result far more unpredictable and exciting.

I mean, exciting and unpredictable is relative... there are those who seriously think "oh, man! Goku is in trouble now! I wonder how he is going to possibly beat this enemy who is a million times as powerful as him and is just fooling around with him.... oh, wow! He just got a new power up that increases his power by 100 million and now he is entirely untouchable by the enemy at all! Who could have ever seen THAT occurring-- totally 'unpredictable'" But putting aside such totally un-genre-savvy people who are impressed by literally anything....

Onyx just could not possibly lead to any good or positive outcomes... so if they want new players, they ought to go back to the point where things were as simple as possible to explain and the future of the story had the most potential possibilities.

Hobgoblyn,

You forgot to consider they could pick option 3+)Skip all of that stuff but tell us it happened, and it becomes the story of reclaiming their storied lands. Which could be very compelling. They would not need to give us a detailed rehash of the history of Rokugan. This point in time is compelling enough to bring in new players, but would leave FFG the option of re-telling or re-doing anything from AEG's L5R.

8 minutes ago, MMeinhardt said:

Hobgoblyn,

You forgot to consider they could pick option 3+)Skip all of that stuff but tell us it happened, and it becomes the story of reclaiming their storied lands. Which could be very compelling. They would not need to give us a detailed rehash of the history of Rokugan. This point in time is compelling enough to bring in new players, but would leave FFG the option of re-telling or re-doing anything from AEG's L5R.

So... "let's just entirely skip over the climax and final battle of a 20-year story and skip straight to the epilogue where they are doing janitorial work across the land, with the last few survivors of each clan sweeping up whatever remnants of the Shadowlands forces remain."

That is your supposed "very compelling" story? It would still require explaining a massive rehash of the entire history of the entire setting before one could even begin to grasp what is going on or why anything matters. Plus, everything would be so broken at that point it is hard to imagine any sort of major dispute remaining between the clans.

The better alternative to that would just to be to time skip 500 or so years and say they have been in the colonies all this time and have created a whole new empire having all but forgotten the old one under control of Jigoku... and something occurs to get everyone to go at each other's throats followed by the invasion of the Onyx Empire.

The first entry in the Star Wars saga is A New Hope, which starts in media res, so I see no reason something similar can't happen here.

Hobgoblyn,

I apologize if my point did not come across clearly.

They could skip over the 500 years of build up in the colonies. And pick-up with the clans planning to re-take Rokugan. That is what I feel would be a compelling story, the clans working, or not, together to reclaim their ancestral lands.

38 minutes ago, MMeinhardt said:

Hobgoblyn,

You forgot to consider they could pick option 3+)Skip all of that stuff but tell us it happened, and it becomes the story of reclaiming their storied lands. Which could be very compelling. They would not need to give us a detailed rehash of the history of Rokugan. This point in time is compelling enough to bring in new players, but would leave FFG the option of re-telling or re-doing anything from AEG's L5R.

That line of thought goes something like this:

1.- We must keep the old storyline because Players made a difference and it must be recognized.

2.- We need to launch a new game and have new players buy in, but the storyline is so convoluted.

3.- We can't possibly explain everything that happen from Imperial Edition up to now.

4.- Lets just gloss over and say "it is what it is"

So, if you're going to gloss over the details of WHY things are what they are RIGHT NOW, then what's the point of having the storyline team do mental gymnastics to work with a narrative that jumped the shark ages ago?

3 hours ago, BlindSamurai13 said:

In retrospect, this video feels sorrow, like it is saying "goodbye for now."

I really feel sorrow. Not for the game, but for what AEG has become.

8 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

The first entry in the Star Wars saga is A New Hope, which starts in media res, so I see no reason something similar can't happen here.

Okay, but it is worth noting in that example, all main focus characters were entirely ignorant of one another and any previous ties they had. Both the characters and the audience were starting from a blank slate, helped through the fact that the particularly main characters were extraordinarily ignorant and naive about the world they lived in. So things had to be explained to them and through that explained to the audience.

And while it is fair to note that it was indeed a case where it seemed like the bad guys had already won and taken control of everything-- the rebel alliance was a single united front-- not a distinct 7 different factions expected to compete in a cut-throat manner against each other despite being on the brink of absolutely annihilation.

The game is fundamentally about the competition between these various clans. But if everything that gave them identity and pride is gone, everything they have ever been fighting over is gone, if the very reason for their existence and basis of their identity has been stolen and all that remains is whatever number of their people willingly chose to turn tail on their ancestral everything and flee across the sea to fertile grounds...

Well, at that point-- why are there even distinct clans? How are not whatever few handfuls of samurai left not a singular united front-- effectively a single clan aligned against that force that stole everything from them, much like the rebel alliance in Star Wars?

Imagine if a New Hope was somehow complicated with Mandilorians and Confederacy survivors and four other groups beyond the "rebels" all aligned against the empire, but still somehow rivaling among each other and unwilling to work together yet all having an equal impact on the outcome? That would surely be a complicated mess to try to write!

If Unicorn vs Crab is a legitimate competition for players to play through, you cannot say this takes place in a situation there a singular villainous force has devoured their everything there are less than a dozen of each left alive and there is every reason for them to be working together to grasp onto survival... that's fundamentally not the scenario the card game has to playing through.

The problem with thehobgoblyn is that his points are usually very good and his attitude is usually very bad

5 minutes ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

Okay, but it is worth noting in that example, all main focus characters were entirely ignorant of one another and any previous ties they had. Both the characters and the audience were starting from a blank slate, helped through the fact that the particularly main characters were extraordinarily ignorant and naive about the world they lived in. So things had to be explained to them and through that explained to the audience.

And while it is fair to note that it was indeed a case where it seemed like the bad guys had already won and taken control of everything-- the rebel alliance was a single united front-- not a distinct 7 different factions expected to compete in a cut-throat manner against each other despite being on the brink of absolutely annihilation.

The game is fundamentally about the competition between these various clans. But if everything that gave them identity and pride is gone, everything they have ever been fighting over is gone, if the very reason for their existence and basis of their identity has been stolen and all that remains is whatever number of their people willingly chose to turn tail on their ancestral everything and flee across the sea to fertile grounds...

Well, at that point-- why are there even distinct clans? How are not whatever few handfuls of samurai left not a singular united front-- effectively a single clan aligned against that force that stole everything from them, much like the rebel alliance in Star Wars?

Imagine if a New Hope was somehow complicated with Mandilorians and Confederacy survivors and four other groups beyond the "rebels" all aligned against the empire, but still somehow rivaling among each other and unwilling to work together yet all having an equal impact on the outcome? That would surely be a complicated mess to try to write!

If Unicorn vs Crab is a legitimate competition for players to play through, you cannot say this takes place in a situation there a singular villainous force has devoured their everything there are less than a dozen of each left alive and there is every reason for them to be working together to grasp onto survival... that's fundamentally not the scenario the card game has to playing through.

You're drawing too many direct comparisons to Star Wars that are not relevant to the point I made. I'm only saying that we can jump ahead to some point in the future and let the text on the Core Set box fill in the blanks.