OK, as an old CCG player, I really like the new naming convention that FFG is following.

Specifically, any personality with an actual name is a Unique, and the other personality cards are more of a generic description (Intimidating Hida, Togashi Initiate, etc).

I would imagine it will make it much easier to target specific characters for story time (as there are not dozens of specific samurai in each clan).

I could even see cases where new specific characters can "evolve" from one of the generic personality cards.

Just my two cents, carry on.

29 minutes ago, jcharpjr71 said:

OK, as an old CCG player, I really like the new naming convention that FFG is following.

As old CCG player i don't.

And what was great about CCG - TRUE uniqueness of significant Personalities (one per deck).

In LCG you can have Toturi in play, and another totally SAME Toturi(s) in other Provinces. Then you go into Captain Planet mode and merge all of them into SUPER TOTURI.

reylap R5L dlo na sA,

My friend was saddened by the lack of people with names for the non-uniques. To be fair, they were supposed to be a representation of that sort of person (You know, the sort of person who runs out and chokeslams people on the battlefield, or laughs maniacally and jumps in front of duels), but it gave a little more personality to the cards.

31 minutes ago, jcharpjr71 said:

OK, as an old CCG player, I really like the new naming convention that FFG is following.

Specifically, any personality with an actual name is a Unique, and the other personality cards are more of a generic description (Intimidating Hida, Togashi Initiate, etc).

I would imagine it will make it much easier to target specific characters for story time (as there are not dozens of specific samurai in each clan).

I could even see cases where new specific characters can "evolve" from one of the generic personality cards.

Just my two cents, carry on.

As an old CCG player, I agree! I like that there are now generics, rather than having three Tsuruchi Rins all fighting side-by-side.

2 minutes ago, kempy said:

As old CCG player i don't.

And what was great about CCG - TRUE uniqueness of significant Personalities (one per deck).

In LCG you can have Toturi in play, and another totally SAME Toturi(s) in other Provinces. Then you go into Captain Planet mode and merge all of them into SUPER TOTURI.

As an old player of many other card games (with rules of uniqueness similar to the LCG's), this doesn't really bother me. To me, limiting your deck to only one of a character didn't set the game apart so much as it just made it very frustrating when your opponent was able to get out four of their powerful Uniques and none of yours even showed up.

2 minutes ago, Mirith said:

My friend was saddened by the lack of people with names for the non-uniques. To be fair, they were supposed to be a representation of that sort of person (You know, the sort of person who runs out and chokeslams people on the battlefield, or laughs maniacally and jumps in front of duels), but it gave a little more personality to the cards.

You forgot to begin your post with "As an old CCG player..."

As not an old player...

I'm fine with it. Means I don't have to remember a lot of different already hard to remember names.

Obligatory 'as an old CCG player' - I liked that each character had their own name, it made me grow more attached to the character and the card. I just can't get that invested with Hiruma Yojimbo, or Eager Scout. It's kind of like a Star Trek Red Shirt, why even bother with them? For me it helped to paint a more complete picture of the world we were fighting in. Generic character 3 defends against generic character 29 just doesn't have the same effect on me as Hiruma Todori defends against Akodo Daiken.

Then again, I haven't played with these guys yet, so I'm trying to keep myself open to them growing on me.

14 minutes ago, YasukiKaito said:

Obligatory 'as an old CCG player' - I liked that each character had their own name, it made me grow more attached to the character and the card. I just can't get that invested with Hiruma Yojimbo, or Eager Scout. It's kind of like a Star Trek Red Shirt, why even bother with them? For me it helped to paint a more complete picture of the world we were fighting in. Generic character 3 defends against generic character 29 just doesn't have the same effect on me as Hiruma Todori defends against Akodo Daiken.

Then again, I haven't played with these guys yet, so I'm trying to keep myself open to them growing on me.

For me, it's actually the opposite. Akodo Daiken and Hiruma Todori are practically meaningless to me unless they have backgrounds fleshed out in some way, for example in fictions. "Hiruma Yojimbo", "Seeker of Enlightenment", or "Shrewd Yasuki" flesh out the world much more for me than some names, because they have a meaning on their own, and thus help characterize their clans and families. I mean, what defines you more - your name, or what you do? One is basically a relatively meaningless ID (well, names *should* tell you something about the characters in Rokugan, due to how gempukku was supposed to work, but well), and one is emergent function of your life.

7 minutes ago, WHW said:

For me, it's actually the opposite. Akodo Daiken and Hiruma Todori are practically meaningless to me unless they have backgrounds fleshed out in some way, for example in fictions. "Hiruma Yojimbo", "Seeker of Enlightenment", or "Shrewd Yasuki" flesh out the world much more for me than some names, because they have a meaning on their own, and thus help characterize their clans and families. I mean, what defines you more - your name, or what you do? One is basically a relatively meaningless ID (well, names *should* tell you something about the characters in Rokugan, due to how gempukku was supposed to work, but well), and one is emergent function of your life.

I tend to agree with you, but then you get personalities like Hiruma Nikaru and Kaiji (I played berserkers), so you get to attribute stuff to them, even when they aren't unique yet. It felt like a lot of the "unique" cards developed from these sorts of things because people were identifying them in tournaments. Or at least because a lot of people were playing them.

Oh, I would love to, say, see the courtier from Lion Pride Brawler card evolve to Unique, and see her around in some fictions or something.

But what I enjoy way more is that she gave birth to a whole *idea* and *concept* of Matsu courtiers. And I value that storybuilding way more than "crowd favorite" ascension.

8 minutes ago, WHW said:

Oh, I would love to, say, see the courtier from Lion Pride Brawler card evolve to Unique, and see her around in some fictions or something.

But what I enjoy way more is that she gave birth to a whole *idea* and *concept* of Matsu courtiers. And I value that storybuilding way more than "crowd favorite" ascension.

I think that is part of what I'm afraid of losing though too. I would certainly concede the point that not every named character had an interesting story, or any mentions in the story at all. But having them as named characters allowed for character growth through out the story and the game. You could see characters get a new experienced version of themselves, or be worked into the story in a meaningful way - and I don't think that is really possible with Lion Pride Brawler, or another generic card.

I think both sides are looking for the story building, just in different ways.

Old player here,

The new way makes much more sense and makes me happy.

As an old RPG player, I love the way that the LCG-style names make Rokugan feel full and populous. When I look at a card list for the old CCG it makes it seem as though there were only, like, twelve people in the entire Kitsu family, instead of tens of thousands. The archetypal names in the LCG work against that feeling and create the sense that the families are much larger.

Compare the Kaiu Engineer and Daidoji Iron Warrior schools in the LCG, who are each represented by a single unique character, to the Miya and Seppun schools, who are represented by a non-unique character. There's no sense of who the rest of the Kaiu or Daidoji are; it's just this one dude who might be a total black sheep for all we know. By contrast, the Miya and Seppun feel like examples from a broader class of people, which gives a very rich sense of what Rokugan is.

As an old L5R ccg player, I mostly played casually. The friends I played with NEVER liked having multiples of the same named character out at the same time. We'd use multiple copies of non-uniques in our decks, but we gave them all the "singular" keyword, even before that keyword existed.

Now, I don't have to worry about this "house rule" cause it's built into the game.

2 hours ago, JJ48 said:

As an old CCG player, I agree! I like that there are now generics, rather than having three Tsuruchi Rins all fighting side-by-side.

As an old player of many other card games (with rules of uniqueness similar to the LCG's), this doesn't really bother me. To me, limiting your deck to only one of a character didn't set the game apart so much as it just made it very frustrating when your opponent was able to get out four of their powerful Uniques and none of yours even showed up.

You forgot to begin your post with "As an old CCG player..."

1 per deck rules are horrible! They make the game way too luck based.

As an old player... I am glad that they are going with generic names at this point because it allows a new person to see the personality of the card more directly without having to have familiarity with the game to know which family is the Shugenja family, or the Merchant family. Further I really liked it most in the old game when a non-unique with a generic name actually evolved into a unique, like Ninja Mystic. I would love it if there were eventually an "exp shrewd yasuki" who had a name when a character in the fiction embodied that card and had a story to go along with it. Without a story, the name is just as generic as the title, with the difference of being less clear to an observer / new player.

Another thing I like:

With the exception of the Crab (and the few Unicorn cards we've seen) most of the cards thus far don't have specific family names on them. An Eager Recruit could belong to any Lion family. This makes it much easier to construct thematic decks with personal headcanon. This may not be important for anyone else, but I get a lot out of it.

Also I wrote it earlier in other thread, don't forget that CCG had FOLLOWERS, a special card type where all generic-named-groups-of-beings were placed. So imagine game where you attach Angry Deathseekers Attack Group to Angrier Deathseekers Unit etc. That could be totally mess.

And CCG had, in perspective, much more more individual cards to name than any LCG.

4 hours ago, JJ48 said:

To me, limiting your deck to only one of a character didn't set the game apart so much as it just made it very frustrating when your opponent was able to get out four of their powerful Uniques and none of yours even showed up.

Build/play better decks.

As cards in any resource-based card games are costed by some pattern, now try to prove me that every X Unique Personality was better than having Y and Z in play where Y + Z cost = X costs.

Bringing Unique in CCG also gave you information that if you lost him you'll never had chance to buy him again (with really small exceptions) that made a lot of dramaturgy and effort to save him on the table or even if he appeared in face-up province. Named characters in this LCG are temporary and you care less, there's always one or two copies of them in deck anyway.

4 hours ago, RandomJC said:

I'm fine with it. Means I don't have to remember a lot of different already hard to remember names.

What? I'm wondering how many players in card games remember cards by name not by image. Especially cards that are visible on the table since they appear in play. Hidden cards (in hand) are a bit different thing.

2 minutes ago, kempy said:

What? I'm wondering how many players in card games remember cards by name not by image. Especially cards that are visible on the table since they appear in play. Hidden cards (in hand) are a bit different thing.

Clearly I'm one of the people who tries to remember card names, otherwise I wouldn't have made that point.

5 minutes ago, kempy said:

Also I wrote it earlier in other thread, don't forget that CCG had FOLLOWERS, a special card type where all generic-named-groups-of-beings were placed. So imagine game where you attach Angry Deathseekers Attack Group to Angrier Deathseekers Unit etc. That could be totally mess.

And CCG had, in perspective, much more more individual cards to name than any LCG.

Build/play better decks.

As cards in any resource-based card games are costed by some pattern, now try to prove me that every X Unique Personality was better than having Y and Z in play where Y + Z cost = X costs.

Bringing Unique in CCG also gave you information that if you lost him you'll never had chance to buy him again (with really small exceptions) that made a lot of dramaturgy and effort to save him on the table or even if he appeared in face-up province. Named characters in this LCG are temporary and you care less, there's always one or two copies of them in deck anyway.

Yeah, followers often didn't make sense in the CCG. I mean honestly; heavy cavalry, a bunch of ashigaru, and a naga, all following a boar? Ludicrous! As to followers and characters having almost identical names, that would be almost as confusing as having, say, a single character with multiple experience levels (what a ridiculous idea)! However, since we've seen no indication of such yet, it sounds more like you're just hating on the game a straw man just for the sake of hating.

As to your point of deckbuilding, I'm sure your decks were always perfectly tuned in some way that removed any negative effect of chance whatsoever. The rest of us, however, occasionally had games where the opponent just got all the right cards at the right times and we got all the wrong cards at the wrong times. Yes, it was part of the game, but that didn't make it any less frustrating. Not to mention, even when Uniques aren't more powerful, they generally have some pretty fun abilities, so anything to make getting them slightly more consistent is good in my book.

15 minutes ago, kempy said:

What? I'm wondering how many players in card games remember cards by name not by image. Especially cards that are visible on the table since they appear in play. Hidden cards (in hand) are a bit different thing.

When playing the game with the cards in front of you? Not a lot.

When having a conversation about the cards without them sitting in front of you? Quite a few.

("So, what do you think of that one Crane card?" "Which one?" "You know, the one with the picture of the guy in blue?")

5 hours ago, kempy said:

In LCG you can have Toturi in play, and another totally SAME Toturi(s) in other Provinces. Then you go into Captain Planet mode and merge all of them into SUPER TOTURI.

I feel it important to point out that during Imperial and Hidden Emperor it was possible to have 4 different version of Toturi in your provinces and that by buying the lowest XP version you could overlay them into Super Toturi.

All 3 copies of Toturi does in the LCG is let him stay around for 2 more rounds.

14 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

As to followers and characters having almost identical names, that would be almost as confusing as having, say, a single character with multiple experience levels (what a ridiculous idea)!

Prepare yourself for something like this in L5R.

18 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

However, since we've seen no indication of such yet, it sounds more like you're just hating on the game a straw man just for the sake of hating.

No, i just don't like generic names personalities in LCGs and wanted to say it same way as someone who says he liked it (creator of this thread). I even explained why i liked this old design better.

1 minute ago, kempy said:

Prepare yourself for something like this in L5R.

I'm not familiar with this game. Are those different card types? Because they look like they're using pretty much the same template, at least. How is having multiple versions of a unique character any different than having multiple experience levels of a character (except that in the former case, having one in play would prevent you from playing the others)?

5 minutes ago, kempy said:

No, i just don't like generic names personalities in LCGs and wanted to say it same way as someone who says he liked it (creator of this thread). I even explained why i liked this old design better.

If you say that's what you were trying to say, I believe you. I'm just saying how it came across.

4 hours ago, JJ48 said:

("So, what do you think of that one Crane card?" "Which one?" "You know, the one with the picture of the guy in blue?")

You know, the guy in blue with long bleached hair. I mean, how many of those can there be?

Having many named characters is all well and good when they each do something different. I think they loved Hida Amoro so much when they made him they reused his mold for all other berserkers since he came out: high cost, a difference of 4 or 5 between force and chi and no useful traits or abilities. Most berserkers are only worth remembering when they get their first XP card as they then have to do something useful, usually.

As a new CCG player (I didn't start until late Samurai), and a somewhat pious one at that, I honestly prayed that FFG would stick to their guns. I completely respect those who differ on the point, but it drove me absolutely batty that non-uniques would have specific names. Some have said this allowed them to grow more attached to the character; for me it had the opposite effect, for I had no idea which Shinjo Byung was the real Shinjo Byung, and which were samurai like her. And for those who feel like they will have no affection for the non-unique characters in this game, I encourage you to hold off judgment until the game is released and you've had a chance to play it a bit. For when I played Star Wars: The Card Game , I never felt happier as the light side than when my good friend, the non-unique Guardian of Peace, joined the fray on my side, nor felt a greater sense of dread as the dark side than when she did so as my opponent's protector. Those Wookiees were bastards, though.