14 minutes ago, ricefrisbeetreats said:

OK, wasn't War of Honor AEG's attempt at multiplayer? (I think I have my Mantis tiles around here somewhere...)

Why not have some sort of regional system where conflicts are you vs. 1 opponent? Other players may contribute to the fight but maybe you lose honor if there's 1 v 3 going on.

This could work, its a multiplayer game, but restrict each round to a 1v1 encounter.

Not sure if this has been brought up yet, but how would you balance conflicts?

Let's say it is first turn in a three way match. Player A and B have both decent/strong military and political options and player C is in weaker position (missing one of the two or is more of a duelist set up) Therefore players A and B target player C for both types of conflict. Player C cannot defend against all 4 conflicts at once Player C is out on turn one. Not fun.

Possible fixes: limit how many times a player can be targeted by each type of conflict or if multiple players target one player with the same type of conflict they effectively "team up" for that conflict.

34 minutes ago, clanmccracken said:

This could work, its a multiplayer game, but restrict each round to a 1v1 encounter.

But still with allying that was dependent of board position.

22 minutes ago, Spawnod said:

Not sure if this has been brought up yet, but how would you balance conflicts?

Let's say it is first turn in a three way match. Player A and B have both decent/strong military and political options and player C is in weaker position (missing one of the two or is more of a duelist set up) Therefore players A and B target player C for both types of conflict. Player C cannot defend against all 4 conflicts at once Player C is out on turn one. Not fun.

Possible fixes: limit how many times a player can be targeted by each type of conflict or if multiple players target one player with the same type of conflict they effectively "team up" for that conflict.

I think that if conflicts become a 2 on 1 scenario or even 3 on 1, the opponents lose honor and the solo player gains honor.

"Did you see all that? The Lion and Dragon all attacked us poor Scorpion at the same time and we held them back! This proves that the Lion are not as honorable as they claim to be and perhaps the Mirumoto's niten fighting style is not as powerful as they have been claiming.

2 hours ago, Spawnod said:

Not sure if this has been brought up yet, but how would you balance conflicts?

Let's say it is first turn in a three way match. Player A and B have both decent/strong military and political options and player C is in weaker position (missing one of the two or is more of a duelist set up) Therefore players A and B target player C for both types of conflict. Player C cannot defend against all 4 conflicts at once Player C is out on turn one. Not fun.

Possible fixes: limit how many times a player can be targeted by each type of conflict or if multiple players target one player with the same type of conflict they effectively "team up" for that conflict.

I don't see how this is a problem. In Magic, Thrones, VS or any other game system that involves a free for all there is nothing stopping all the players from ganging up on one them and eliminating them. What usually happens is the opposite though. The weak player is ignored in the face of bigger threats. And the strong players typically don't go after the weak as this typically weakens their board position allowing the other strong player to attack them.

2 hours ago, JRosen9 said:

I don't see how this is a problem. In Magic, Thrones, VS or any other game system that involves a free for all there is nothing stopping all the players from ganging up on one them and eliminating them. What usually happens is the opposite though. The weak player is ignored in the face of bigger threats. And the strong players typically don't go after the weak as this typically weakens their board position allowing the other strong player to attack them.

That is the point. In other games the permanents stick around and it becomes an arms race between the strong. The weaker player will most likely not be an issue except for maybe a random clutch "suicide" maneuver. new L5r seems much more volatile as you are not garranteed to keep a strong board position from turn to turn.

The bigger idea I was trying to get across is the balance of trying to block a potential 4 (or more depending on the number of players) conflicts. At some point you will run out of resources and the other players would have a enough reason to go after you for no other reason than to "simplify" the game. It would make one player to be taken out early on and wait a potential 20 to 30 mins. The game seems to force its players to attack every turn, unlike other games that are designed for its players to sit and wait for the right time to attack. Why as a player would you not want to piggy back off someone else if you are guaranteed a successful attack? Even more so if you get to choose latter down the lign.

2 minutes ago, Spawnod said:

That is the point. In other games the permanents stick around and it becomes an arms race between the strong. The weaker player will most likely not be an issue except for maybe a random clutch "suicide" maneuver. new L5r seems much more volatile as you are not garranteed to keep a strong board position from turn to turn.

The bigger idea I was trying to get across is the balance of trying to block a potential 4 (or more depending on the number of players) conflicts. At some point you will run out of resources and the other players would have a enough reason to go after you for no other reason than to "simplify" the game. It would make one player to be taken out early on and wait a potential 20 to 30 mins. The game seems to force its players to attack every turn, unlike other games that are designed for its players to sit and wait for the right time to attack. Why as a player would you not want to piggy back off someone else if you are guaranteed a successful attack? Even more so if you get to choose latter down the lign.

As the LCG is designed, the other big problem, that you are somewhat pointing out, is that your characters bow after a conflict, regardless of Attack or Defense. This means that each conflict you engage in, you will lose some people. So a series of attacks on one person could easily knock out that player in larger games, and it would be hard to balance around this.

1 hour ago, Spawnod said:

That is the point. In other games the permanents stick around and it becomes an arms race between the strong. The weaker player will most likely not be an issue except for maybe a random clutch "suicide" maneuver. new L5r seems much more volatile as you are not garranteed to keep a strong board position from turn to turn.

The bigger idea I was trying to get across is the balance of trying to block a potential 4 (or more depending on the number of players) conflicts. At some point you will run out of resources and the other players would have a enough reason to go after you for no other reason than to "simplify" the game. It would make one player to be taken out early on and wait a potential 20 to 30 mins. The game seems to force its players to attack every turn, unlike other games that are designed for its players to sit and wait for the right time to attack. Why as a player would you not want to piggy back off someone else if you are guaranteed a successful attack? Even more so if you get to choose latter down the lign.

However when you attack, you bow your guys. If you go after the weak player, you have now bowed part of your force, leaving yourself open to the other strong player. I still don't see how this is different than any other card game out there. In thrones you kneel/bow/tap your characters to defend and attack with challenges. If every player gangs up on 1 guy he will run out of resources to defend with. In Original VS (not sure about new VS) your defenders are getting stunned leaving you an open board if another player decides to attack you. If anything, I think the ephemeral nature of characters in L5R will decrease this issue as the strong players will not stay strong as their guys will go away as well.

Lets look at your example. Player A and B have good mil and pol board while player C has only Mil. Player A goes first and declares a Pol conflict on C. He commits guys (probably at least a third to half his units due to the fate system). Player C commits nobody and Player A breaks the province and bows all the guys he committed. Player A might now only be strong in Mil as all his Political guys are tapped. Player B now goes. His options are declare a Political Challenge against a weakened A, a Political Challenge against Weak C or a mil challenge against strong either. Why does he not go after A in Politics?

However, if you are still worried about this, an easy fix is stating that a player may not be the defender in more than 2 conflicts per turn. The bigger issue, that I've yet to see addressed is the rings. In a 3 player game, there are 5 rings yet 6 possible conflicts. In a 4 player game its worse and there are only 5 rings and 8 possible conflicts. As each ring can only be claimed once per conflict phase, do you end the conflict phase as soon as the last ring is claimed? If so this gives the early players in turn order a bigger advantage as not every player will get their 2 conflicts. The only solution I can see is to allow rings to be claimed multiple times a conflict phase. Maybe set a limit to this?

The key to win in multiplayer is not the strenght, as alone we're not more powerfull than all others, it's to be humble: being the less hated, appearing the less threatening.