7 hours ago, Kinzen said:

I don't know if FFG is ever planning on offering a story prize that isn't a binary choice, but I'll be surprised if they do. The amount of work involved gets grotesquely large, very fast.

I agree, though it increases the likelihood of someone winning a tournament and then being presented with a choice that they have absolutely no investment in. Aramoro or Toturi? I'm a Unicorn player, what do I care?

24 minutes ago, Yoritomo Reiu said:

I agree, though it increases the likelihood of someone winning a tournament and then being presented with a choice that they have absolutely no investment in. Aramoro or Toturi? I'm a Unicorn player, what do I care?

Which is a good argument for not making story decisions a "this person or that person" kind of matter -- at least not without additional implications being made clear to the players ahead of time. A Unicorn player might not care about Aramoro vs. Toturi, but they might very well care about "if Aramoro wins, he will do ABC that has consequences for lots of people" vs "if Toturi wins, he will do XYZ that has consequences for lots of people."

I mean, people seemed reasonably happy with the meishodo question being a story prize, even though on the surface it's specifically a Unicorn issue the Phoenix are upset about. That's because its potential isn't based simply on the tribalism of clan loyalty, but on much broader and more interesting consequences in the long term.

1 hour ago, Kinzen said:

Makes it vastly easier for those of us who are following the story, but aren't playing the card game, to find the threads we're interested in.

And the incidence of duplicate posts is dropping steadily as people get used to having subforums.

My impression has been the opposite, since I now have multiple places to look for story threads instead of just one, because they're still getting posted in general discussion as well.

Maybe that will go away in time.

2 hours ago, Kinzen said:

Which is a good argument for not making story decisions a "this person or that person" kind of matter -- at least not without additional implications being made clear to the players ahead of time. A Unicorn player might not care about Aramoro vs. Toturi, but they might very well care about "if Aramoro wins, he will do ABC that has consequences for lots of people" vs "if Toturi wins, he will do XYZ that has consequences for lots of people."

I mean, people seemed reasonably happy with the meishodo question being a story prize, even though on the surface it's specifically a Unicorn issue the Phoenix are upset about. That's because its potential isn't based simply on the tribalism of clan loyalty, but on much broader and more interesting consequences in the long term.

This is a really good point. I'd definitely love to see more story choices like these. I'll admit, I personally cared alot more about the Meishodo question than I cared about the potential of having a Dragon as the Emerald Champion. The former seemed like it'd have actual consequences.

8 hours ago, Kinzen said:

Which is a good argument for not making story decisions a "this person or that person" kind of matter -- at least not without additional implications being made clear to the players ahead of time. A Unicorn player might not care about Aramoro vs. Toturi, but they might very well care about "if Aramoro wins, he will do ABC that has consequences for lots of people" vs "if Toturi wins, he will do XYZ that has consequences for lots of people."

I mean, people seemed reasonably happy with the meishodo question being a story prize, even though on the surface it's specifically a Unicorn issue the Phoenix are upset about. That's because its potential isn't based simply on the tribalism of clan loyalty, but on much broader and more interesting consequences in the long term.

I agree that binary choices with broad implications that affect everyone would be good. But that's not what we've seen so far; both the Meishodo and Justice/Duty choices were story choices focused on interactions between two specific clans with little reason given why others should care. Call it tribalism if you want, but it seems that story prizes have shifted away from being something that can be won to benefit your clan or get it additional story time. That makes them a lot less appealing to me as there's fairly broad swathes of the L5R story I'm just not very interested in.

Besides the choose your own adventure style of releasing a 2 page story line, what really was the impact of the winning decision? It seems superficial and trivial to me personally.

4 minutes ago, Silverfox13 said:

Besides the choose your own adventure style of releasing a 2 page story line, what really was the impact of the winning decision? It seems superficial and trivial to me personally.

The full impact of it hasn't been revealed yet. In the case of the first decision on meishodo, we're left knowing Shahai is sent to Otosan Uchi to start teaching meishodo to the seppun... still waiting for the full ramifications of that plot. For Duty vs Justice, we're going to have to wait and see what happens with Kuwanan. The initial fiction pieces following each decision are hardly the end results in themselves, they're just the beginnings.

3 minutes ago, Zesu Shadaban said:

The full impact of it hasn't been revealed yet. In the case of the first decision on meishodo, we're left knowing Shahai is sent to Otosan Uchi to start teaching meishodo to the seppun... still waiting for the full ramifications of that plot. For Duty vs Justice, we're going to have to wait and see what happens with Kuwanan. The initial fiction pieces following each decision are hardly the end results in themselves, they're just the beginnings.

Was this stated somewhere officially?

9 minutes ago, Silverfox13 said:

Was this stated somewhere officially?

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/8/18/a-most-suitable-teacher/

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/11/5/the-fires-of-justice/

11 minutes ago, Silverfox13 said:

Was this stated somewhere officially?

Not sure what you're asking. As far as the Duty vs Justice decision made by the shogun, it was advertised as a decision that "will influence the very future of Rokugan." I'd say that hasn't come to fruition yet. Have they explicitly stated "To Be Continued..."? Not really, but seeing as the death of Satsume has been a point of interest from the first core set fiction, and it ties in directly with Kuwanan's mission to speak with his sister, I seriously doubt the story team plans to just drop it there. It may take a bit for follow up (we have a lot of plots going now from the various fiction pieces) but short of the game being suddenly cancelled I can just about guarantee there's more to come from that decision.

EDIT: @ElSuave for the ninja response. Guess they do explicitly say To Be Continued...

Let me clarify, has it been stated officially anywhere that the impact of any tournament winners decision would continue to effect the story differently after the delivery of the short story that they released immediately after the winners choice?
This seems like speculation that the winners decision will have any meaningful impact on the future of the story line in any way afterwords.

30 minutes ago, Zesu Shadaban said:

The full impact of it hasn't been revealed yet. In the case of the first decision on meishodo, we're left knowing Shahai is sent to Otosan Uchi to start teaching meishodo to the seppun...

This along with the existence of the second imperial heir (in O5R they were actually a couple and their son Kanpeki was the first official Spider champion) could lead to lots of story possibilities. Taint by way of Bloodspeaker (both of their original origins), a potential union bringing the Unicorn closer to the throne (we know that he seems to have some sort of play afoot from the Shizue story) thereby further opening the rift with the Lion as they contest for the role of Emperor's right hand, plus the Crane really like to have the Emperor's wife be crane so that could be another potential conflict. She could die in the fighting during the upcoming coup which could lead to her grief stricken father putting pressure on the Unicorn to avenge her death and hey more story conflict as the full might of the Unicorn hordes is unleashed on their foes.

2 hours ago, Yoritomo Reiu said:

I agree that binary choices with broad implications that affect everyone would be good. But that's not what we've seen so far; both the Meishodo and Justice/Duty choices were story choices focused on interactions between two specific clans with little reason given why others should care. Call it tribalism if you want, but it seems that story prizes have shifted away from being something that can be won to benefit your clan or get it additional story time. That makes them a lot less appealing to me as there's fairly broad swathes of the L5R story I'm just not very interested in.

My point is that I didn't see all the non-Unicorn, non-Phoenix players responding with a collective "meh, why should I care?" I'm sure not everybody liked it, but people mostly seemed to be engaged. And I think that's because the question was one with much bigger story potential than just "pick a personality for this slot." I can understand wanting to "benefit your clan or get it additional story time" . . . but a) given the number of complaints I've seen from AEG-era players about how frequently that turned out to consist of a couple of lines in a fiction without any real substance, and b) given the constraints on planning the story, offering a different and meaningful option for every single clan is really, really, really difficult (maybe impossible) to arrange. And FFG's approach is more likely to offer players choices that really will shape the fate of the Empire in the long term.

1 hour ago, Silverfox13 said:

Besides the choose your own adventure style of releasing a 2 page story line, what really was the impact of the winning decision? It seems superficial and trivial to me personally.

Give it time. Remember what I said above about lead time: many of the fictions you're seeing now were written or at least planned before that decision got made, so the longer-term effects haven't had a chance to show up yet. But if you think that the Story Team is going to send the character who in O5R was a powerful Bloodspeaker and Daigotsu's eventual wife to the Imperial capital to teach the Seppun a foreign style of magic and then go "okay, that's done, never gonna see any effects from that" . . . well, apparently you don't have a very high opinion of their storytelling abilities.

33 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

Give it time. Remember what I said above about lead time: many of the fictions you're seeing now were written or at least planned before that decision got made, so the longer-term effects haven't had a chance to show up yet. But if you think that the Story Team is going to send the character who in O5R was a powerful Bloodspeaker and Daigotsu's eventual wife to the Imperial capital to teach the Seppun a foreign style of magic and then go "okay, that's done, never gonna see any effects from that" . . . well, apparently you don't have a very high opinion of their storytelling abilities.

My comments were never directed at the abilities of the FFG design team, my opinions and comments are directed at community members and their optimistic beliefs that the the tournament winners are affecting the story in any significant manner.
In fact, I have enough confidence in the story telling team, that I believe the foundation for the timeline is already outlined and fleshed out in advance of a year or more, and that they no way intend to allow a card game choice to interfere in a way that would significantly impact their plans.
But again, this is speculation on my part as well, and I'm simply providing a counter point to others' speculations.
I bring it up because of the OP's topic, and I have my doubts that anything of note will happen in the card game because of a story line choice, i.e. they were never going to allow the Emerald Champion to be determined by a winning player, because the ground work has already been laid. I might be wrong though.

A good DM has a story arc planned out thoroughly, but is also ready to make concessions to a players' actions. I want to believe the creative team for L5R knew the interactive style the game would have and is ready to roll with the punches. I bet they have plenty of story beats they'll hit no matter player decision, but resolutions of those conflicts and the characters involved in those conflicts will probably change.

I keep wondering if the Talisman of the Sun would have been printed if Meishodo were banned. I feel like they had the cards already printed at the point the decision was made, so I'm super curious about it.

48 minutes ago, AradonTemplar said:

A good DM has a story arc planned out thoroughly, but is also ready to make concessions to a players' actions.

This. I'm strongly constrained (as in, an actual NDA) in what I can say about the real story, but I'll use the hypothetical example I made up a while back:

Let's say the Story Team has planned a plotline that revolves around a powerful and dangerous yokai escaping control and wreaking havoc*. There's a story prize linked to this, but the Story Team doesn't publicly announce what all the effects of the choice will be, because otherwise people will choose based on the outcome they want to see rather than on what seems like a good idea in the present moment. Either way you're going to get this yokai causing destruction -- but down one path, the yokai gets released in Kyuden Doji, while down the other, it gets released in the hinterlands of the Empire. The former means much more immediate destruction and risk to important characters, but it also means that the threat gets put down more rapidly, because people are there to deal with it. The latter means it's a slower burn, with the damage being initially limited to rural areas (and who cares about peasants, amirite), but the yokai has more time to grow in strength and cause lasting trouble before anybody takes the problem seriously and goes out there to take care of it.

That's a level of divergence the Story Team can plan for. Either way they still have their "escaped yokai" plot, and can do things like print a card for it . . . but within the story, it makes quite a difference whether the problem crops up in the middle of a major city or out in the boondocks, what gets damaged by the threat, who winds up taking it down, etc. The long-term effects will, surprise surprise, take a while to become apparent, but they're there.

*No, this isn't a badly-coded hint about the meishodo plot.

2 hours ago, AradonTemplar said:

I keep wondering if the Talisman of the Sun would have been printed if Meishodo were banned. I feel like they had the cards already printed at the point the decision was made, so I'm super curious about it.

You say Talisman of the Sun......

I say Ruby of Iuchiban..........

Tomato/Potato

Or Harik's Ruby, from the LBS game.

There are only 999 jinn. Before Harik made his ruby, there was one more.

8 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

Or Harik's Ruby, from the LBS game.

There are only 999 jinn. Before Harik made his ruby, there was one more.

Pffft!

Harik is a clown. Long live Iuchiban, destroyer of......................er I mean may we all bask in the warms of the light of the sun.

On 12/7/2017 at 0:33 PM, AradonTemplar said:

I keep wondering if the Talisman of the Sun would have been printed if Meishodo were banned. I feel like they had the cards already printed at the point the decision was made, so I'm super curious about it.

I was under the impression that those packs were already at the printer when the story choice was made, although I could be wrong. I guess it's also possible that they printed two Unicorn cards, the Talisman and something else, and chose which one to put in this pack based on the story choice while holding back the other one for a possible future release. I'm not involved in the business, so I don't know whether that would be completely impractical or something that was easy to do. Personally, I think we were getting in this pack either way.

Wasn't Meishodo Wielder in the core set? You can ban it but that guy is going to be wielding until the end of time!

Just because it's banned doesn't mean there can't be cards for it. I mean, ninjas don't exist but that doesn't stop us from having multiple shinobi characters as cards. Plus I doubt Unicorn would have given it up so quickly if it had been banned.

I thought of the story choices more as choices of theme, than of specifics. Maybe When a choice is presented it’s about Rokugan as a whole, the first choice was tradition vs experimenting with new ideas, the group chose the new. The second choice was classic crane v lion violence focus, or an investigative story focus....

What the f*** is the cutting paper test?!

Toshimoko: in my days we finish the emerald championship with a iajutsu duel at first blood!

Hotaru: calm down grumpy

yeah that paper thing bothered me too. That's the type of thing I would expect for a novice student training. Not to mention, is it actually even possible to cut both pieces of paper, both on opposite shoulders, in one stroke, without actually cleaving the person in two?