3 hours ago, Rinder5 said:

He's saying that, even if you are u sing the sun to your advantage, blade partially unsheathed, kicking dirt, if your opponent is doing the same, it somehow becomes A-Okay in the views of everyone else.

Oh. Thanks.

Still disagree. But that's moot at this point

3 hours ago, Rinder5 said:

He's saying that, even if you are u sing the sun to your advantage, blade partially unsheathed, kicking dirt, if your opponent is doing the same, it somehow becomes A-Okay in the views of everyone else.

Not A-okay, just that their relative feelings between the two of you don't change.

28 minutes ago, sndwurks said:

So, yes, I am working on an article about this, but here are my thoughts on the Dial and Dueling.

I love it.

Period. End of line.

Why? Oh, okay, I can explain this. As a games theorist, the Honor Dial in L5R LCG is what is called a Prisoner's Dilemma mechanic. Look it up on Wikipedia. It's a CLASSIC core pillar to game theory, and beautiful in its simplicity. Tying the card draw to this mechanic? Awesome! Tying dueling to this mechanic? Be still my heart. Before this, I hated dueling. Dueling was, always, a one-sided fist fight in the CCG. Now, while you may still be able to make it a one-sided fight, the influence of the dial can create interesting situations where you can control your opponent's choices.

For example, I can almost guarantee there will be a card in this game which creates a duel where the winner gains 2 Honor from the bank. I throw this down, creating a duel between my 3 Skill guy and your 1 Skill guy. What do you bid? What do I bid? If you want to stop me from winning, you HAVE to bid a 3. At least. A bid of 4 means you have a shot at winning. A bid of 5 is also a chance of winning. However, how much do I want that 2 honor? Do I have anything that keys off of winning duels? Will winning the duel make me Honored, and thus more likely to win this conflict? Or am I doing this just to get the 2 honor, and I'm going to bid 1 no matter what you bid, because then I am guaranteed 2 honor?

Is it really a prisoner's dilemma? Both players "defecting" (bidding 5?) is identical to both players "cooperating" (bidding 1?).

Just now, GoblinGuide said:

Is it really a prisoner's dilemma? Both players "defecting" (bidding 5?) is identical to both players "cooperating" (bidding 1?).

It is not the truest default position of the Prisoner's Dilemma, where both parties are given a choice of "Support" and "Defect", with limited information and simultaneous choice. The Draw mechanic is closer to the true Prisoner's Dilemma, but still divergent. The reason the Dial introduces the Prisoner Dilemma is because it posits a situation with limited, simultaneous, and equivalent choice with a cost / benefit ratio dependent upon the choice made by the other party. In a Nash Equilibrium sense, it becomes challenging to posit the "Best Possible Move" because it requires an understanding of your opponent's "benefit" state.

Or, in less jargony ways of putting it, you and I have to make a choice, and whether we benefit or lose is dependent on the other's choice.

It is not the default Prisoner's Dilemma, which is true. However, it relies on the same central game mechanic as the Prisoner's Dilemma.

While as a game theorist I absolutely agree with @sndwurks (that this mechanic will be quite fun), but flavor wise I feel like it it is a failure. I feel like it is counter-intuitive to my feel of L5R, which again, this might be a shift with FFG. There are some strong reasons to think about what you can gain when you bid in a duel, though I think the system will promote bully-dueling.

Mechanic-wise it makes sense. They could have used fate, but I think that could have been more punishing for giving your opponent the fate. I feel like this mechanic was derived after the game was mostly built, and they realized "Oh we need something interesting for duels or those whiners on the forums will lynch us, what can we do... Oh, honor dials!". You bid one of your important resources against your opponents, with the skewing based on the 'skill' of the participants. Fate and Cards in hand are far too valuable a resource, so that left Honor. From a game design aspect, this all makes sense. Without adding some new mechanic to the game just for duels, I don't see any other option.

However, from my experience with both the CCG and the RPG I feel like most samurai would not resort to dirty tricks in a duel. Its a matter of skill and Luck/Fate. If we assume bidding more honor means using less honorable means, then this method puts more emphasis on everyone using dirty tricks as more common place than I would expect. Thematically, I think Fate would have probably been a better choice than honor in the bidding, but see above. I would have preferred that dirty tricks be handled as a meta card of something like " Reaction Give your participant in a duel +2, lose 2 honor" sort of thing, not as inherent in the system.

I doubt we will ever reconcile this.

Thematically speaking, dueling in itself is a dirty trick, or ritualized and legal assassination. The dueling clans (Crane and Dragon first and foremost) have been able to introduce early in the Empire the concept of solving one's problem with a blade.

A Lion courtier challenged to a duel to the death by a Crane will most likely die (unless he has one hell of a duelist). In essence, the challenge itself could be considered a dirty trick if used dishonorably. Is there really a slight to your honor or do you just want to kill the guy because he is hindering your plan? You could justify the honor loss not because the duelist is using dirty tricks, but because the courtier issuing the challenge had no honorable reason to sentence the guy to death.

I'm torn over this duelling information.

Mechanically : On the one hand I like the mechanic from a gaming perspective; it seems fun and nuanced and, as pointed out by others, it removes some of the issues associated with duelling from the CCG.

On the other hand it means the skill of my Duelist will now rely to some degree on my ability to read an opponent. This may take me a while to adjust and judge how much to bid on any encounter, but that's a learning curve we will all have to face.

Discriptovly: I find this counter-intuitive to how duelling has always been discribed in the old setting. Duelling was a way of settling argument's and defending your honour, now you may lose honour in order to win. As other people have been giving examples one that came to my mind was of a Samurai overhearing a rival Courtier spread lies about his Clan. The Samurai confronts the Courtier and challenges him to admit his lies and apologise or face her in a duel. The Courtier is forced to defend his honour and accepts the duel. Said Courtier knows he cannot win the Duel and bids only 1, the Samurai bids the 3 that will guarantee the win. The Samurai has won the Duel, the Courtier has failed to defend his honour and been proven a liar, but still walks away from the duel with two extra honour. The reverse represents the Samurai bidding 1, assured in her ability, the Courtier bids 5 using tricks and slander to disrupt the Samurai's focus. The Samurai loses, the Courtier's words have been proven truthful, the Samurai's Clan has been shamed and she has been humiliated at the hands of an inferior opponent, but walks away with 4 honour. I just can't justify either of these scenario's in my head.

A friend suggested that rather than viewing 1 as being standard honourable practice and each raise being incrementally more dishonourable until 5 being the height of dishonourable behaviour, think of 3 as the standard for duelling. You can bid higher for dishonourable practices, or lower for taking honour to the extreme. This seems a little better but it's still doesn't completely satisfy my own feeling of a disconnect between rules and story.

Of course, we are yet to see how FFG choose to discribe duelling it's purpose and how it's perceived by others. They may redefine the concept with their own take on the Lore.

Finally, and I could be wrong here, but I suspect the people who will most struggle to accept this method are Crane players like myself. Honour Dueling has been a long standing deck type for the Crane, and paying honour to win duels does not lend itself to an honour duel deck type (based on the fraction of information we know of the new LCG). This could be because the focus of the Crane has shifted slightly. Again I could be wrong, but I suspect The Cranes primary victory condition is going to be through Political Conflicts and not so much honour victory. Time will tell I guess.

1 hour ago, Mirith said:

However, from my experience with both the CCG and the RPG I feel like most samurai would not resort to dirty tricks in a duel. Its a matter of skill and Luck/Fate.

Miyamoto Musashi, the real life 17th Century ronin duelist and philosopher whose Book of Five Rings inspired the setting and philosophy for L5R to the original design team over twenty years ago (and who racked up an unmatched 60-0 win/loss lifetime record in his own duels), is on record as saying the best way to win a duel is to hire a bunch of thugs to beat the hell out of your target. Then while they're laying on the ground, bleeding and recovering, you show up and stab them. This was a practical theory that he developed and used many times in his real life. And yes, he sure as hell counted the guys he backstabbed while they lay moaning in pain on the ground in his win column.

That's the official opinion on dirty tricks vs. honor by the greatest iaijutsu duelist the world has ever seen.

2 minutes ago, Gaffa said:

Miyamoto Musashi, the real life 17th Century ronin duelist and philosopher whose Book of Five Rings inspired the setting and philosophy for L5R to the original design team over twenty years ago (and who racked up an unmatched 60-0 win/loss lifetime record in his own duels), is on record as saying the best way to win a duel is to hire a bunch of thugs to beat the hell out of your target. Then while they're laying on the ground, bleeding and recovering, you show up and stab them.

That's the official opinion on dirty tricks vs. honor by the greatest iaijutsu duelist the world has ever seen.

Eh, idealized fantasy world.

38 minutes ago, Crawell said:

Finally, and I could be wrong here, but I suspect the people who will most struggle to accept this method are Crane players like myself. Honour Dueling has been a long standing deck type for the Crane, and paying honour to win duels does not lend itself to an honour duel deck type (based on the fraction of information we know of the new LCG). This could be because the focus of the Crane has shifted slightly. Again I could be wrong, but I suspect The Cranes primary victory condition is going to be through Political Conflicts and not so much honour victory. Time will tell I guess.

That's the point. Either you play by the rules and trust your innate ability to win and gain honor, or you put that aside and stack the deck to make sure you win, but lose honor. Crane honor dueling was able to do both, now you have to take risks and choose which one you value most. Let's say I'm on the receiving end of a duel and there is 4 points of difference between my peeps and yours. Do I bid five in hope you bid 1 and win (giving you 4 honor in the process), or do I accept defeat and bid 1, hoping you bid 2 (ensuring your own success) and make you lose 1 honor. It's a trade-off now rather than a complete and unavoidable defeat for me.

Just now, Mirith said:

Eh, idealized fantasy world.

The Book of Five Rings is the source of the Five Rings that, y'know, kinda make up the whole title of Legend of the Five Rings. Mushasi's Buddhist name, Niten Doraku, was the source of L5R calling the two-sword style of dueling "niten". You can go for the idealism all you want (and Rokugan is definitely no place remotely realistic), but Musashi's rather practical outlook to life has influenced the game in interesting ways.

Iaijutsu was originally developed as a fast-draw technique which could be used in a hopefully lethal attack when the bushi was sitting down and probably enjoying a drink at the local watering hole. It was later developed into turning the motion of drawing a sword into a potential killing blow, so you wouldn't have to waste time drawing and then striking.

Dueling against Scorpion with Bayushi Manipulator on the field will be a nightmare mind game.

Flavor note: interestingly, in eastern philosophy there is this idea that shifting between two extremes produces the most violent, powerful outcomes, and that if left unchecked, extremes will *always* end up shifting. That's why sweetest sweet love turns into darkest hate so easily, for example this thought sometimes influenced the martial arts, too (that's why balance was always so important in...everything.

So I always entertained myself with a thought that Iaijutsu is about capturing that thunderous spark produced by shifting from stanceless, motionless peaceful moment into a determined and focused moment of violence.

52 minutes ago, Tetsuhiko said:

Let's say I'm on the receiving end of a duel and there is 4 points of difference between my peeps and yours. Do I bid five in hope you bid 1 and win (giving you 4 honor in the process), or do I accept defeat and bid 1, hoping you bid 2 (ensuring your own success) and make you lose 1 honor. It's a trade-off now rather than a complete and unavoidable defeat for me.

This is a good example of why I like the new mechanic and it's elegant way of defusing issues of the past. My issue here is not in the way the mechanic works, it's in how it ties into the flavour of dueling as it existed in the CCG.

By equating the bidding to how honourable/dishonourable you are in a duel you have made the way a Samurai conducts himself in a duel more important than the reason and outcome of the duel. So my Crane duelist, seen as a paragon of Honour and Courtesy, fighting to protect the honour of her Clan will likely need to fight fair and lose a duel to be seen as honorable.

Follow that logic into other aspects of the setting - The Kakita Dueling Academy, most renowned Dojo of superior Duelists in the Empire (sorry Dragon). Lets assume Kakita superiority is represented by a card ability that grants a boost to the relevant stat used in a duel. What that translates to is the Kakita Acedemy is not training your Samurai in how to be better, more perfect, duelists, but actually how to minimise any dishonourable actions you may need to take in order to win a Duel.

-The Emerald Champion, winner of the Emerald Tournement, named the superlative Duelist in all the Empire, got his position through dishourable actions and trickery. This has only been the case for one Emerald Champion that I recall (**** you Jimen!).

Again, I like the mechanic, I don't think it connects with the flavour as we know it, that of Dueling being an honourable combat between two honourable opponents with dishourable actions the exception, not the norm.

The Kakita Dueling Academy teaches you how to be a superior duelist so that you don't HAVE to resort to dishonorable tactics. Just because bidding high increases your stats and represents using dishonorable tactics (including showing a lack of restraint - not necessarily trickery) doesn't mean that anything which increases your stats represents using dishonorable tactics. After all, being "honored" increases your stats via glory!

As for making the conduct of the participants more important than the outcome of the duel itself, we don't know for sure. That'll depend on the card that started the duel. If that card gives you honor, then you may come out ahead by bidding slightly higher and winning, rather than just trying to take honor from your opponent. On the other hand, if the consequence is death, winning might be everything.

I also believe "Duelist" doesn't appear to have an innate rulebook thing associated with it. If we look at "Doomed Shugenja" it has "Limited" and an explanation. The Mirumoto Prodigy has duelist, and no such thing extra text. Might be that duel actions will only target duelists to start, or give a bonus to them.

10 minutes ago, Mirith said:

I also believe "Duelist" doesn't appear to have an innate rulebook thing associated with it. If we look at "Doomed Shugenja" it has "Limited" and an explanation. The Mirumoto Prodigy has duelist, and no such thing extra text. Might be that duel actions will only target duelists to start, or give a bonus to them.

Correct. In FFG's LCG world, Duelist is clearly a Trait, while Limited is a keyword. Keywords have innate rules meaning, which will be defined in the Rules Reference. Traits have no innate meaning, but may be called upon by other cards.

So far for Keywords, we've seen Limited (which they use in all of their games, I believe), and we've seen Restricted (which so far has only been used in their Lord of the Rings cooperative game). And they've both been used for their established meaning from other games (Limited=you may only play one Limited card per turn; Restricted=a personality may not have more than two Restricted cards attached to them at once).

5 hours ago, Mirith said:

However, from my experience with both the CCG and the RPG I feel like most samurai would not resort to dirty tricks in a duel. Its a matter of skill and Luck/Fate. If we assume bidding more honor means using less honorable means, then this method puts more emphasis on everyone using dirty tricks as more common place than I would expect. Thematically, I think Fate would have probably been a better choice than honor in the bidding, but see above. I would have preferred that dirty tricks be handled as a meta card of something like " Reaction Give your participant in a duel +2, lose 2 honor" sort of thing, not as inherent in the system.

I doubt we will ever reconcile this.

Dirty dueling happens. Samurai are human, and no more noble than we are, as much as we'd like to romanticize it.

6 hours ago, Crawell said:

This is a good example of why I like the new mechanic and it's elegant way of defusing issues of the past. My issue here is not in the way the mechanic works, it's in how it ties into the flavour of dueling as it existed in the CCG.

By equating the bidding to how honourable/dishonourable you are in a duel you have made the way a Samurai conducts himself in a duel more important than the reason and outcome of the duel. So my Crane duelist, seen as a paragon of Honour and Courtesy, fighting to protect the honour of her Clan will likely need to fight fair and lose a duel to be seen as honorable.

This doesn't solve the flavor disconnect of possibly having to "act dishonorable" (bidding high) to win a duel but Old L5R had a card that was legal for quite some time. Hamstrung often led to its player issuing a challenge with the intent of losing to gain honor via the Focus Effect. As much as I disliked that card at the time (lost to it in that way more than a few instances ), it did makes things interesting.

13 minutes ago, BCumming said:

This doesn't solve the flavor disconnect of possibly having to "act dishonorable" (bidding high) to win a duel...

The idea is that if you beat someone in a duel who was clearly better than you, others will believe that you cheated, resulting in a loss of honor. Also, using the honor dial makes the bid secretive, which is also dishonorable -- the same reasoning behind bidding for card draw.

9 hours ago, Crawell said:

I find this counter-intuitive to how duelling has always been discribed in the old setting. Duelling was a way of settling argument's and defending your honour, now you may lose honour in order to win. As other people have been giving examples one that came to my mind was of a Samurai overhearing a rival Courtier spread lies about his Clan. The Samurai confronts the Courtier and challenges him to admit his lies and apologise or face her in a duel. The Courtier is forced to defend his honour and accepts the duel.

I've never been deep into the L5R lore, although I've dabbled in both RPG and CCG, but this entire structure feels dishonorable to me. The duelist in this story is basically a bully - they know they're far superior to an opponent, but challenge them to something they know they'll win at. I can't say if this idea motivated the mechanics, but it does fit very well. Nobody is going to respect you more for picking on an inferior opponent, and on the flip side standing up and taking the challenge even when you know you're outclassed earns respect.

Considering the starting points, and adding the dials, I think you find scenarios that make sense. If I start at a disadvantage and we bid equal, I lose but nobody's honor changes - it all went just as expected, just another day in Rokugan. If I bid high and you go low, then I win but probably had to cheat to do it because everyone knows you'd take me apart in a fair fight, so I lose honor and you gain it, because you fought fair even when I didn't. If I bid low and you go high, then you're showing off and pummeling a weaker opponent, which is pretty much always tacky and it's going to cost you respect.

I think it's definitely a game system first and thematic second, but I don't think it's impossible to reconcile with the theme.

Where the argument that dueling shouldn't somehow be tied to honor falls flat to me is that L5R has always been an "honor matters" game. When the game first came out I know of playgroups that had house rules that would force you to lose honor if you said "tap" instead of "bow" or if you didn't actually bow the table to your opponent at the end of your turn......that all went away when people would purposely commit one of the offenses to play Breach of Etiquette against their opponent. And speaking of BoE no other card is the source of more tales of woe from old school players, yet it was one of the pillars of the game because it demonstrated just how important honor was.

I like the way dueling and card draw is honoring (no pun intended) the old game by emphasizing the importance of honor where it can. I think it fits rather well the way FFG has implemented it and described their reasoning for doing it this way. Can't wait to see it in action.

If duel outcomes scale dependant on disparity, then i think this duelling system is fine.

16 hours ago, sndwurks said:

So, yes, I am working on an article about this, but here are my thoughts on the Dial and Dueling.

I love it.

Period. End of line.

Why? Oh, okay, I can explain this. As a games theorist, the Honor Dial in L5R LCG is what is called a Prisoner's Dilemma mechanic. Look it up on Wikipedia. It's a CLASSIC core pillar to game theory, and beautiful in its simplicity. Tying the card draw to this mechanic? Awesome! Tying dueling to this mechanic? Be still my heart. Before this, I hated dueling. Dueling was, always, a one-sided fist fight in the CCG. Now, while you may still be able to make it a one-sided fight, the influence of the dial can create interesting situations where you can control your opponent's choices.

For example, I can almost guarantee there will be a card in this game which creates a duel where the winner gains 2 Honor from the bank. I throw this down, creating a duel between my 3 Skill guy and your 1 Skill guy. What do you bid? What do I bid? If you want to stop me from winning, you HAVE to bid a 3. At least. A bid of 4 means you have a shot at winning. A bid of 5 is also a chance of winning. However, how much do I want that 2 honor? Do I have anything that keys off of winning duels? Will winning the duel make me Honored, and thus more likely to win this conflict? Or am I doing this just to get the 2 honor, and I'm going to bid 1 no matter what you bid, because then I am guaranteed 2 honor?

In this situation I would bid 2 honour, depending on how ties work.

They bid 1: I give 1 honour, and gain 2, net honour=1

They bid 2: they have no reason to bid 2, they gain no benefit, net honour=2

They bid 3: they are trying to assume I bid 1 and want to tie, but I still win, net honour=3

They bid 4: They actually manage to tie, assuming we don't get honour on ties we just get what they pay, net honour=2

They bid 5: they win, but we get honour for them dishonouring their ancestors with their shameful conduct, net honour=3

Of course they also know this. So their best bet is to either bid 4, or not contest. In which case it is beneficial for you to bid 1. Now that I have thought this through, bidding 1 is better. And it is better for you to just gain honour from the bank instead of you taking it from them, so they will just bid 1 and let you have it.

This is a weaker example because the outcome is easily determined. It will be much more interesting when there is other benefits to winning duels, like removing fate from characters. You have to assess how much they value that fate, and how much they think you value their fate. It isn't just a 1-for-1 trade of honour vs honour.

Sigh, looks like I am in the minority here. This is one of the few things they've announced that I really dislike. The idea that I would have to lose honor to win duels is something I really hate as a Crane player. It looks like this is something that will happen nearly every duel. Thematically, I can see Scorpion and Crab players losing honor to win a duel but it doesn't work for Lion or Crane, especially the Crane. Why would a clan known for honor and skill in dueling need to "cheat" every duel to win when they are among the best duelists?

I'd prefer to see Fate used as a resource and duels with some conflict cards allowing you a bigger bonus at winning a duel by sacrificing honor do to cheats. Fate still uses a valuable resource and I think it works better thematically.

I really hope we learn more about dueling that will change my mind but it doesn't look good.

12 minutes ago, TechnoGolem said:

will happen nearly every duel

You cannot know as no one here has played the game yet. Surely you will be able to keep the tradition of one-sided duels when dealing with Clans like the Unicorn, which will not present much threat in the form of Political skill. Have you seen that Crane Fashion condition that gives +4 political to a character?