2 hours ago, JJ48 said:

As a loyal supporter of the Wasp Clan, I hope they get represented in some way, but I certainly wouldn't be opposed to the Wasp, Fox, Centipede, Mantis, etc. remaining minor clans. If making minor clan stuff Neutral would be too potentially unbalancing, maybe they'll have a Minor Clan faction with no stronghold, and all cards having an Influence cost. (That is, just as Neutral cards appear to be in-clan for all clans, Minor Clan cards would be cross-clan for all clans.)

I'll give anyone odds of 5 to 1 that the mentioned Clans above will appear in the LCG, most possibly within 3 or so years after the initial release.

I wouldn't be surprised at all when the short stories start to include Wasp, Fox and Centipde interactions and story arcs. We have already had a glimpse with the inclusion, albeit murky, of a Mantis personality, so FFG is slowly moving in that direction, imo.

2 hours ago, JJ48 said:

Oh, yeah. It was absolutely thrilling. In fact, it was far too high an honor for a bunch of ruffians like us. Really, the privilege of being destroyed and unplayable for an arc or two should have gone to one of the other, far more worthy clans. I promise we wouldn't have been too offended.

I honestly think they hit the exact wrong Clan with that whole mess... the Mantis fanbase had already been creating their identity since the beginning (I hated the Yoritomo-centric portrayal of the Mantis, but large or small, they were by far and away one of the most active fanbases in the game). Other clans would have been able to make some serious choices about who and what they were that had never been put on their plates. The Mantis, at best, would have gotten to hit the reset button.

So, speaking of sacred cows- Making decisions about the game's setting outcomes based on the size of a clan's fanbase. As an LCG, things will probably work differently, but avoiding popularity contests between factions designed to be evergreen looks like it'll be a lot easier.

Quote

For me, the Kolat.

They do nothing, really nothing. They exist as a group with very ill-defined motives and goals and are constantly paraded around as these very dangerous groups, with no payoff. At times the best they appear is just a spy mobster family of sorts.

Instead make them a true shadowlands conspiracy.

Yeah, uh, how about no? Bad enough that every form of supernatural problem in the setting turns into Shadowlands did it without the Shadowlands annexing one of the few not-actually-Shadowlands antagonist force in the Empire.

This is probably the worst idea I've read in this thread, and it has a few fairly terrible ones.

31 minutes ago, Himoto said:

Yeah, uh, how about no? Bad enough that every form of supernatural problem in the setting turns into Shadowlands did it without the Shadowlands annexing one of the few not-actually-Shadowlands antagonist force in the Empire.

This is probably the worst idea I've read in this thread, and it has a few fairly terrible ones.

I would settle for there being no Kolat at all, because almost anything is better than the Kolat as they were.

Another one that's going to be unpopular, and probably rightly so:

- The, for the lack of better word, fetishization of One Strike, First Blood dueling. I understand why people loved this back in the time, where fights in about every media were drawn out, long, and often pointlessly long. The climatic climaxes of samurai duels, where two swordmasters entered their stances and decided to end it with a final, single strike, was thrilling and full of tension. However, it was special because it was a climax, a special event, something that had to be first built to and which existed in contrast to "normal" fights. Turning it into the 99% picked way of resolving duels , while also often portraying it as "cowardish" and "making Crane force people to play a rigged game instead of a real fight", turning dueling into some kind of a ritualized joke and a way to say "we crane we win". It's kinda like deciding that Christmas is cool, so each and every holiday during the year will be, from now on, Christmas. Oh, and include weekends in that, too.

Almost bloodless, single strike duels as a method of dueling encouraged by Crane and, say, Phoenix? Great way to characterize these Clans, and contrast them with others, who would probably prefer longer, more classic "until defeated/until surrender" duels, like Lion or Crab. And ESPECIALLY Dragon. "How do you duel?" "Well, we are Crane, we prefer one strike duels to show our perfection and avoid needless bloodshed" "We are Phoenix, we want to make it quick and decisive", "We are Lion, we understand that tides of battle come and go, sometimes you have to suffer the first strike to deliver the last*", "I am Dragon, and I know that fighting is like breathing, so all rules are false and self inflicted chains", etc.

Single strike paper cut duels as the everyday standard turned dueling into a caricature enjoyed only by Crane, transforming unique and special climatic and epic events into munduane and almost "cheap" everyday events where you see a Kakita, and you go "welp, I could beat him in a real fight, but now he is going to paper cut me and I will be a loser, this is really dumb".

One Strike duels in media are often awesome because they aren't the standard occurrence, and when they happen, they usually highlight the badassery of people involved while also emphasizing how quickly and swiftly motionlessnes can transform into swift and beatiful brutality. Defanging it and turning it into a way for one of the clans to game the system and go oh-oh-ohing around because they can swift-cut you if you don't agree with them always looked to me as...kind of...missing the point of the dueling.

You know, I was complaining earlier about the lack of moral gray in the setting, but I realized that one of the few changes so far actually adds some. I'm referring to the bandits we saw in the first fiction. It's hard to fault them for doing whatever they had to do to get food for their families. And of course, you can't blame the Crane either for defending their rice shipment. Due to lack of space we never saw things from the bandits' POV, but despite that neither side really seemed like the bad guys.

So things are looking good for disposing of that particular sacred cow.

Sacred cows that that I would lead to the slaughter:

1. Methods of defeating/destroying threats in a very short time-frame that have previously confounded all the experts for thousands of years. No more magic bullets or special snowflakes.

2. Big Bad confronts the empire and all the Clans join hands, sing Kumbaya and win without consequence. This while the Big Bad simultaneously goes into trope mode, losing all intellect, spelling out the grand scheme, becoming overconfident, and being defeated without consequence (see #1). No more forgone conclusion or dogpile 8v1 scenarios.

Make the Big Bad divisive. Make it reasonable for Clans to choose opposing sides. Big Bad doesn't need to be Shadowlands or gaijin incursion over and over again. Also, make it matter which Clans are allied. Show how fragile and problematic this can be.

1 hour ago, Kyoden Kurosora said:

Sacred cows that that I would lead to the slaughter:

1. Methods of defeating/destroying threats in a very short time-frame that have previously confounded all the experts for thousands of years. No more magic bullets or special snowflakes.

2. Big Bad confronts the empire and all the Clans join hands, sing Kumbaya and win without consequence. This while the Big Bad simultaneously goes into trope mode, losing all intellect, spelling out the grand scheme, becoming overconfident, and being defeated without consequence (see #1). No more forgone conclusion or dogpile 8v1 scenarios.

Make the Big Bad divisive. Make it reasonable for Clans to choose opposing sides. Big Bad doesn't need to be Shadowlands or gaijin incursion over and over again. Also, make it matter which Clans are allied. Show how fragile and problematic this can be.

I am against Big Bad's in L5R. Their become a 'plot gimmick' to get to your #2.

The point about divisiveness, is pretty much what I think L5R plots SHOULD be about. Shifting alliances, political and military conflict. Ideological, cultural, even spiritual strife, not Immortal god monsters.

Supernatural 'evil' is a major component of L5R, and it deserves its place in the story. I just don't think it should be the ENTIRE story.

A lot of people are hating on the Coup, but it could be a useful domino that starts all the others falling. Fight for control of the capital. Advance conflicting heirs. Install your clan's shogunate, and then try to get allies on board or bend enemies to your rule. The Clan Wars were the original storyline. I'm not sure how L5R will be L5R without the Clan Wars happening. They just don't have to play out the same way they did in the original timeline.

L5R can be L5R without coup pretty easily, as people "raised" on the 1st ED of RPG (which was set pre-coup) can tell.

34 minutes ago, Kiseki said:

A lot of people are hating on the Coup, but it could be a useful domino that starts all the others falling. Fight for control of the capital. Advance conflicting heirs. Install your clan's shogunate, and then try to get allies on board or bend enemies to your rule. The Clan Wars were the original storyline. I'm not sure how L5R will be L5R without the Clan Wars happening. They just don't have to play out the same way they did in the original timeline.

The major issue imo, is you're turrning one clan into a bop clown for the other 6.

There is almost no way a clan that attempts a coup comes out ahead. Either they get curb-stomped right away, or they 'win',..and just get curb-stomped later. Who wants their clan disbanded or exiled?

They Empty Throne bit is a road to nowhere. Either its endless turnover, or turning to plot gimmicks to legitimize a new 'chosen one'.

The Clan War WAS L5R. Now its a 'classic' L5R story. Let's leave it there.

8 hours ago, WHW said:

Almost bloodless, single strike duels as a method of dueling encouraged by Crane and, say, Phoenix? Great way to characterize these Clans, and contrast them with others, who would probably prefer longer, more classic "until defeated/until surrender" duels, like Lion or Crab. And ESPECIALLY Dragon.

You see, I think the problem here is not the way of dueling, but how they made it an almost exclusively Kakita thing. Supposedly, every bushi can do one-cut dueling, the Kakita is only better at it. Also, first blood duels are (again, supposedly) for minor transgressions, duels over real problems go until someone drops. But really, this is the problem of presentation, not the idea itself.

2 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

You see, I think the problem here is not the way of dueling, but how they made it an almost exclusively Kakita thing. Supposedly, every bushi can do one-cut dueling, the Kakita is only better at it. Also, first blood duels are (again, supposedly) for minor transgressions, duels over real problems go until someone drops. But really, this is the problem of presentation, not the idea itself.

This.

In old5R, duelling got ignored unless it was the central purpose of your deck; and only certain clans could make it the central purpose of their decks. This is a waste of what should be an important part of the game for everyone. One-on-one contests between champions should be a climactic and decisive scene that happens a lot.

What does this mean in game design terms? To me, it means that:

1. The number of cards which make characters better at duelling should be kept as low as possible, to prevent the "bully decks" emerging.

2. Cards which create duels should be available to all clans.

3. Cards which key off won or lost duels should have antisynergy with one another but should have synergy with non-duel cards, so that they get spread across decks rather than concentrated into duelling decks.

4. The dueling mechanic should be used for lots of things other than iaijutsu. Two tacticians facing off against one another? Why not use the dueling mechanic! Two Go players, or master orators, or a magistrate trying to detect a ninja? Run it as a duel!

17 hours ago, JJ48 said:

Oh, yeah. It was absolutely thrilling. In fact, it was far too high an honor for a bunch of ruffians like us. Really, the privilege of being destroyed and unplayable for an arc or two should have gone to one of the other, far more worthy clans. I promise we wouldn't have been too offended.

That's why I said that I understand why they would steer away from temporarily destroying a clan, because players wouldn't all like it. Regardless of which clan would've been destroyed I thought the idea of the community getting to rebuild the Mantis how they wanted to, from scratch, would have been such a cool story. I think it would've brought together the player base in a unique way to rally behind the Mantis and restore them to their rightful place. I mean if you're looking for a game/environment driven by community results with an epic story, it doesn't get a whole lot better than that. In some senses it could be the Hero's Journey played out on a clan scale.

Again, I totally get that some players wouldn't like it and the reasons not to do something like this. But I also think it would make for an amazing story, buy in from the entire player base, and would install the Mantis as a clan that everyone had a personal attachment to.

10 hours ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

The major issue imo, is you're turrning one clan into a bop clown for the other 6.

There is almost no way a clan that attempts a coup comes out ahead. Either they get curb-stomped right away, or they 'win',..and just get curb-stomped later. Who wants their clan disbanded or exiled?

They Empty Throne bit is a road to nowhere. Either its endless turnover, or turning to plot gimmicks to legitimize a new 'chosen one'.

The Clan War WAS L5R. Now its a 'classic' L5R story. Let's leave it there.

Sorry reading this gave me an idea. What if there was an Alliance for the coup? If Crab isn't getting the food they need, scorpion finds corruption in the court, and or the Dragons for tells some crap and join in. Begin the death of the empire and fighting over the heirs.

That could work. The first coup came about because of a prophecy this one could start with the dragon.

That being said, I don't think we need a coup.

14 hours ago, WHW said:

Another one that's going to be unpopular, and probably rightly so:

- The, for the lack of better word, fetishization of One Strike, First Blood dueling. I understand why people loved this back in the time, where fights in about every media were drawn out, long, and often pointlessly long. The climatic climaxes of samurai duels, where two swordmasters entered their stances and decided to end it with a final, single strike, was thrilling and full of tension. However, it was special because it was a climax, a special event, something that had to be first built to and which existed in contrast to "normal" fights. Turning it into the 99% picked way of resolving duels , while also often portraying it as "cowardish" and "making Crane force people to play a rigged game instead of a real fight", turning dueling into some kind of a ritualized joke and a way to say "we crane we win". It's kinda like deciding that Christmas is cool, so each and every holiday during the year will be, from now on, Christmas. Oh, and include weekends in that, too.

Almost bloodless, single strike duels as a method of dueling encouraged by Crane and, say, Phoenix? Great way to characterize these Clans, and contrast them with others, who would probably prefer longer, more classic "until defeated/until surrender" duels, like Lion or Crab. And ESPECIALLY Dragon. "How do you duel?" "Well, we are Crane, we prefer one strike duels to show our perfection and avoid needless bloodshed" "We are Phoenix, we want to make it quick and decisive", "We are Lion, we understand that tides of battle come and go, sometimes you have to suffer the first strike to deliver the last*", "I am Dragon, and I know that fighting is like breathing, so all rules are false and self inflicted chains", etc.

Single strike paper cut duels as the everyday standard turned dueling into a caricature enjoyed only by Crane, transforming unique and special climatic and epic events into munduane and almost "cheap" everyday events where you see a Kakita, and you go "welp, I could beat him in a real fight, but now he is going to paper cut me and I will be a loser, this is really dumb".

One Strike duels in media are often awesome because they aren't the standard occurrence, and when they happen, they usually highlight the badassery of people involved while also emphasizing how quickly and swiftly motionlessnes can transform into swift and beatiful brutality. Defanging it and turning it into a way for one of the clans to game the system and go oh-oh-ohing around because they can swift-cut you if you don't agree with them always looked to me as...kind of...missing the point of the dueling.

You know. Something always bothered me a little bit about dueling but I never could put my finger on what exactly. That is pretty great.

...also, I would like very much to know how one insert something on "spoiler tags" like that, if someone can explain to me.

1 minute ago, Devin-the-Poet said:

Sorry reading this gave me an idea. What if there was an Alliance for the coup? If Crab isn't getting the food they need, scorpion finds corruption in the court, and or the Dragons for tells some crap and join in. Begin the death of the empire and fighting over the heirs.

That could work. The first coup came about because of a prophecy this one could start with the dragon.

That being said, I don't think we need a coup.

Yes, the Coup being the work of a single clan always sounded amazingly stupid to me. Better yet, instead of it being an alliance of clans "all or nothing" with or against it, they should introduce division among clans, among families, make it a true civil war with everyone on everyone's throats.

10 minutes ago, Devin-the-Poet said:

Sorry reading this gave me an idea. What if there was an Alliance for the coup?

I read this like you wanted the Minor Clan Alliance to do the coup. I was, like, that's a cool idea, but then I realized my mistake .

13 minutes ago, Mirumoto Saito said:

Yes, the Coup being the work of a single clan always sounded amazingly stupid to me. Better yet, instead of it being an alliance of clans "all or nothing" with or against it, they should introduce division among clans, among families, make it a true civil war with everyone on everyone's throats.

As I remember the fiction, Shoju had reason to believe he would have an alliance. He went to the Dragon champion for advice about the prophecy, and based on the advice he received, he expected the Dragon to either support him or stay out. Similarly, the Crab were angry at the Emperor for his lack of strength, and Shoju thought they'd respect his strength in taking the throne (also, as I recall, the Crab were marching to support him until he asked for their help, thus showing weakness...)

Of course, for all that FFG is starting in the pre-coup era, it's worth remembering that this wasn't the case for old L5R. The coup was already back story when the game started, and all we really had was that it had happened -- it wasn't a case of all-against-the-Scorpion, just a bit of backstory showing how the Empire was already fraying at the seams.

31 minutes ago, agarrett said:

(also, as I recall, the Crab were marching to support him until he asked for their help, thus showing weakness...)

That is correct. And is also the single most stupid thing in the entire L5R story (maybe paired only by Kisada's Heel-Face Turn that made negative sense).

I guess my "Sacred Cow" for the slaughter is: stupid stories. They where almost an institution back then. Please, lets not have them.

1 hour ago, Mirumoto Saito said:

You know. Something always bothered me a little bit about dueling but I never could put my finger on what exactly. That is pretty great.

...also, I would like very much to know how one insert something on "spoiler tags" like that, if someone can explain to me.

[ spoiler] [ /spoiler], but without spaces.

I started thinking about dueling last night because I can't sleep due to MY LANDLORD LITERALLY DIED AND I NEED TO FIND A NEW APARTMENT anxiety, and started looking at character sheets of my friends from a few years back. I noticed that they had 0 iaijutsu, and started remembering why - they disliked the minigame in RPG so much and felt so oppressed by Kakita and Crane stuff, that they literally decided to put zeroes in their iaijutsu to be so incompetent that anyone with a tingle of Honor would ask them to pick a champion instead of dueling them themselves.

5 hours ago, Kitsu Seinosuke said:

This.

In old5R, duelling got ignored unless it was the central purpose of your deck; and only certain clans could make it the central purpose of their decks. This is a waste of what should be an important part of the game for everyone. One-on-one contests between champions should be a climactic and decisive scene that happens a lot.

What does this mean in game design terms? To me, it means that:

1. The number of cards which make characters better at duelling should be kept as low as possible, to prevent the "bully decks" emerging.

2. Cards which create duels should be available to all clans.

3. Cards which key off won or lost duels should have antisynergy with one another but should have synergy with non-duel cards, so that they get spread across decks rather than concentrated into duelling decks.

4. The dueling mechanic should be used for lots of things other than iaijutsu. Two tacticians facing off against one another? Why not use the dueling mechanic! Two Go players, or master orators, or a magistrate trying to detect a ninja? Run it as a duel!

To be fair, I'm talking more about the representation of dueling in fiction and RPG books (RPG books went all over the place with dueling; in some editions, TO THE DEATH / TO FIRST BLOOD were binary and only options, in some you could duel only with katanas, in some you could duel with anything, and in some everyone and their dog had a special dueling rules and you would play a game of chicken because dueling protocol was that the challenged picked the dueling style so everyone picked assymetrical duels where unicorns demanded duels on horses and wasps demanded archery duels and so on :V). This was also kind of rekindled by a post on Facebook where a proposed fix for dueling in 4th edition was to make it so if you lose the focus roll, you die, and it's ok that it will favor the Kakita, it's in the flufffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.

I personally am very invested in anything dueling related, both setting and rules wise, mostly because I just don't like playing Shugenja and Courtiers - so duels are, for the most part, one of very few reliable ways of getting my bushi fighting fix in social settings where there are no bandits to ambush you and no shadowlands monster to spawn inside your bedroom.

So dueling that instead of enabling me to play a bushi character in non-war and non-skirmish friendly PRETTY STANDARD I WOULD SAY social setup of court intrigue instead is a binary check of "are you kakita or not" also pisses me off. Especially because I don't like playing characters that are too mechanically similar two times in a row

1 hour ago, Mirumoto Saito said:

You know. Something always bothered me a little bit about dueling but I never could put my finger on what exactly. That is pretty great.

...also, I would like very much to know how one insert something on "spoiler tags" like that, if someone can explain to me.

Yes, the Coup being the work of a single clan always sounded amazingly stupid to me. Better yet, instead of it being an alliance of clans "all or nothing" with or against it, they should introduce division among clans, among families, make it a true civil war with everyone on everyone's throats.

This seems like a far better way for a Coup to be depicted. If samurai are plotting to overthrow the Emperor then there is no reason why they should continue to act in line with their broader Clan agenda.

In fact that's probably another sacred cow I'd like to see butchered. Clans/families as monolithic entities where everyone thinks the same thing and acts the same way (roughly).

27 minutes ago, WHW said:

[ spoiler] [ /spoiler], but without spaces.

...seriously? That simple!?

27 minutes ago, WHW said:

I started thinking about dueling last night because I can't sleep due to MY LANDLORD LITERALLY DIED AND I NEED TO FIND A NEW APARTMENT anxiety

Holy ****! Hope everything goes alright!

About the rest of your dueling points: I absolutely agree.

2 minutes ago, Fumo said:

This seems like a far better way for a Coup to be depicted. If samurai are plotting to overthrow the Emperor then there is no reason why they should continue to act in line with their broader Clan agenda.

In fact that's probably another sacred cow I'd like to see butchered. Clans/families as monolithic entities where everyone thinks the same thing and acts the same way (roughly).

Absolutely agree, specially with the bolded part!

I definitely agree with Shadowlands being non-playable. Don't give people the "evil" deck, but just release maho and oni and other corrupted cards that are super tempting to use... but taint your deck. Give them favorable stats with an honor penalty. No Spider clan either, just tainted crab, or tainted crane. Let the players identify with some of the shadowlands characters and creatures, but don't pigeon them into any single faction. In this way a shadowlands player can better embody spider clan and shadowlands from within the empire, switching clans as needed to best suit their sub-card pool and clan players can always be tempted to include a few... especially if they can reconcile not caring as much about honor...

Like in the good old days when I'd include 3 corrupted Geisha Houses in my Scorpion deck. I wasn't going to get an honor win anyway So I sell myself to the darkness for some quicker cash and an easier win. As long as my honor losses don't catch up to me... lol

As long as deck construction doesn't directly get imported into the setting and fiction (like it was in ye olde days), then sure.

But let's remember that most of the truly competitive players over the years haven't cared one whit about story and would corrupt in a heartbeat if it meant winning the round. I'd rather not spread that much corruption around just for wins. xD

On 6/19/2017 at 1:41 AM, Kitsu Seinosuke said:

I'd like to see L5R abandon its habit of throwing in supernatural or fantastic elements which work against the consistency of the setting.

In my RPG group these are generally referred to under the heading of "pirates riding dinosaurs", after probably its most egregious example, but there are others.

What? L5R is entirely supernatural in it's makeup and DNA.