15 minutes ago, profparm said:

My personal low moment of Old5R, and what led to me and a friend quitting, was actually more to do with how a local TO cheated with a new card.

Holdings, which were basically land that cost money, were crucial. AEG realized this and added a holding that you could tap your stronghold to find from your deck on turn 1.

At the time there were about 6 of us showing up every week. The TO who organized leagues and tourneys started winning a lot more suddenly once that card came out, because he started getting godly draws. My friend and I realized that while he obviously offered to cut when he first shuffled his deck, he wouldn't after searching for this holding turn 1, and it was common card game etiquette to "tap" (or not cut) mid-game, especially among groups so small and casual as ours. So I started insisting on cutting after he searched, and he angrily let me, and he stopped getting godlike dynasty deck draws. We would see him use this trick against potential new players, in what would otherwise be learning games for them.

That combined with the already stale scene meant I had to say good bye to a game I loved. Hopefully he doesn't try to get involved in the new one.

Edit: to clarify, otherwise I loved Old5R and may have played it beyond that point, no matter what silliness arose.

I never really understood why some people cheat against newbies (or at all, really). For one, you risk turning them off of the game when they may otherwise have been interested, and two, what are you really proving by beating someone who doesn't even know the rules, especially if you had to cheat to do so? Our FLGS told us they expect a huge interest in the rebooted game, and that our group will grow considerably (not too difficult, as currently there are only two of us who regularly show up). Hopefully, no one with the like the jerk you described decides to join in.

Some people get really invested in "winning," and it doesn't really matter to them how they achieve that coveted status. I've even played with people who would concede games because in their mind conceding wasn't as bad as a legitimate loss. Personally I'd rather have fun playing and see neat things happen.

35 minutes ago, Ryric said:

Some people get really invested in "winning," and it doesn't really matter to them how they achieve that coveted status. I've even played with people who would concede games because in their mind conceding wasn't as bad as a legitimate loss. Personally I'd rather have fun playing and see neat things happen.

I don't mind an opponent conceding so long as it's done gracefully.

1 hour ago, Ryric said:

Some people get really invested in "winning," and it doesn't really matter to them how they achieve that coveted status. I've even played with people who would concede games because in their mind conceding wasn't as bad as a legitimate loss. Personally I'd rather have fun playing and see neat things happen.

While I am not a super fan of losing, it is part of anything you do in life. In the CCG's case, as long as I had fun playing, winning or losing was not that big of a deal (outside of store tournaments). Plus the whole thing of sharing a hobby with other people is more important than the actual results to me.

That being said, my last games against a friend playing Crane "Sitting on my ass honor victoring" were the worst. I would play just because of him but I knew (and so did he) know it was autolose* for me and not fun at all to me to play. If it had been someone else, I would not have played those games or would just conceded when I stimated the game to be lost, because for some decks there was no "neat things" happening out of "severe gold screw of the opponent". At least dishonor Scorpion against Shadowlands was a matter of mechanics, not cards and style.

* access to Crushing Attacks would have helped but they were very difficult to obtain

1 hour ago, Yoritomo Reiu said:

I don't mind an opponent conceding so long as it's done gracefully.

In a daylong tournament, conceding when you can see you're toast is just good manners.

Which is why I'll never concede; I don't accept my fate, I set my dial to 5 for the match...and usually still end up losing both the game and honor.

5 minutes ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

In a daylong tournament, conceding when you can see you're toast is just good manners.

That can depend on how tiebreaking is determined...if you concede in such a way as to deny your opponent tiebreaker points, you're being kind of a jerk.

Just now, Ryric said:

That can depend on how tiebreaking is determined...if you concede in such a way as to deny your opponent tiebreaker points, you're being kind of a jerk.

...

You must have had some dogmeat TOs in your time, because everywhere I played, conceding was a straightforward, "the person who says they lose, loses, and the manner of the loss has zero bearing on standing."

Now, if you're doing so badly that you've conceded to EVERYONE, you're going to hurt their strength of schedule.... but you'd do the same thing by playing to time and losing your games that way.

1 minute ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

...

You must have had some dogmeat TOs in your time, because everywhere I played, conceding was a straightforward, "the person who says they lose, loses, and the manner of the loss has zero bearing on standing."

Now, if you're doing so badly that you've conceded to EVERYONE, you're going to hurt their strength of schedule.... but you'd do the same thing by playing to time and losing your games that way.

Let me give an example. Back when I played Gen Con, I don't recall how many people advanced from each qualifier round, but let's say 16 for the purpose of this example. Now imagine in 7 rounds, you have some 7-0 people. They advance. Next you have the 6-1 people, they advance too. That uses up, say, 13 of your slots. So now you have 3 slots for 5-2 players, but there are more than three of them. So you use a tiebreaker, in this case a formula based on their ending honor, how many provinces they had left, and how many rings they had in play. Conceding before your honor-running opponent actually hit 40 honor, for example, screwed them out of those points. (A concession was always considered a military win). And yes, it was a fairly imperfect system and Shadowlands got screwed.

If that system was no longer in use I'm glad; I was just thinking of times when conceding hurt your opponent. Sometimes players back then did it to be spiteful, especially if they were RPing Shadowlands or Scorpion.

21 minutes ago, Ryric said:

Let me give an example. Back when I played Gen Con, I don't recall how many people advanced from each qualifier round, but let's say 16 for the purpose of this example. Now imagine in 7 rounds, you have some 7-0 people. They advance. Next you have the 6-1 people, they advance too. That uses up, say, 13 of your slots. So now you have 3 slots for 5-2 players, but there are more than three of them. So you use a tiebreaker, in this case a formula based on their ending honor, how many provinces they had left, and how many rings they had in play. Conceding before your honor-running opponent actually hit 40 honor, for example, screwed them out of those points. (A concession was always considered a military win). And yes, it was a fairly imperfect system and Shadowlands got screwed.

If that system was no longer in use I'm glad; I was just thinking of times when conceding hurt your opponent. Sometimes players back then did it to be spiteful, especially if they were RPing Shadowlands or Scorpion.

If I recall, that system wasn't used for a long time, and when it was used it was to break a tie between two opponents when time was called and NEVER to determine final placing. If your final opponent conceded to you as soon as you flipped strongholds, you would be in the same position as if you beat him getting to 122 honor.

I freely concede I might be misremembering.

49 minutes ago, Ryric said:

I freely concede I might be misremembering.

You aren't. I remember a major Jade tourney went like that. I remember making a Naga player mad because it looked like he was stomping my face. He was actually leveling up my Tetsuko swarm and got hurt when I took 3 of his provinces back because it ruined his tiebreak. We recorded honor/provinces/rings on each game report.

IIRC, that was the only tourney run like that. It was at Origins? Milwaukee Gencon? The carpet was red.

The Gen Con I played at was Milwaukee, 1999. War in the Heavens. That's where I remember this from.

There was also a reason it took 13 hours to play seven, 45 minute rounds. The in between round wait times were huge, probably because the TOs added in all this crazy math to do on each player.

Lowest point for me was the whole lying darkness story arc...

25 minutes ago, Taki said:

Lowest point for me was the whole lying darkness story arc...

I wouldn't call it the lowest point for me, but it was definitely a muddy, awful scramble for a new Big Bad while Fu Leng was dead.

2 hours ago, Taki said:

Lowest point for me was the whole lying darkness story arc...

I still think that the finale of Hidden Chicken made more sense than the finale of Hidden Emperor...

To be fair, Hidden Chicken was the best l5r lore around.

31 minutes ago, profparm said:

To be fair, Hidden Chicken was the best l5r lore around.

By far.

34 minutes ago, profparm said:

To be fair, Hidden Chicken was the best l5r lore around.

I dunno, R2K is pretty good, and Empire of the Emerald Stars really needs more love.

12 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

I dunno, R2K is pretty good, and Empire of the Emerald Stars really needs more love.

Too bad Rich Wulf never did came back to R2K after his joined then left the Story Team. I'd have loved to read the end of this story.

1 hour ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

I dunno, R2K is pretty good, and Empire of the Emerald Stars really needs more love.

The extent of Emerald Stars I've read was at the end of Imperial Histories, and I didn't feel there was enough content for a full game. Is there more somewhere else? Because I will read it all.

16 minutes ago, profparm said:

The extent of Emerald Stars I've read was at the end of Imperial Histories, and I didn't feel there was enough content for a full game. Is there more somewhere else? Because I will read it all.

No That's part of the problem. I have run a one-off, using a Battletech Halloween scenario.

The Scorpion Clan [House Liao] have hired a group of Ronin [Mercenaries] to investigate what's happened to one of their outposts on a border world. Turns out the Spider Clan [Word of Blake] have invaded, but that's just the start...

25 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

The Scorpion Clan [House Liao]

Lost it .

For me, Lotus was where the ball started rolling downhill. I played religiously/fanatically before then, and I had trouble justifying my purchases while I wasn't enjoying the wacky mechanics.

I came back at intervals in Samurai, Celestial, and Emperor, but I never got back to the same level of dedication. To me the clan themes had echo of the bizarre pigeonholed personality bases that started with Lotus. In later arcs almost you couldn't pay a Scorpion player to use a non-magistrate samurai in a magistrate deck, no matter how good the card. Most other clans had similar non-choices for their character bases, and each set either printed direct upgrades to the existing lineup or coasters.

The lowest time for me as a player was definitely the tail end of Lotus Edition. It was the one time I took a break from the game until the new arc started. It was just a little too much for me at the time. I enjoyed the insanity of Lotus to a point, but eventually it got a bit out of hand, and it killed off a LOT of our local player base in the process.

As a designer, the lowest point for me was probably the Susumu Sensei that was released. Without getting into too fine a bit of detail, what came out was absolutely not what I had wanted for them, and I knew that the Spider community had really wanted it and I wanted it to be good. Even though I fought hard against the version that came out, I always think I could have perhaps done more, and I still consider it a personal failing.

For the game overall, the lowest point was probably the time after Jade, when we all assumed the game was dead and gone after WoTC ditched it, and we existed in limbo until AEG surprised everyone by buying it back.