This is just an outline of an idea, not anything fully thought out.
I personally find the new multi-role stuff pretty confusing, and it doesn't really feel like it adds to the ongoing narrative

I personally would like to see some more variety on the way roles worked and players affected the game. .

Ideas for 'Tournaments' that make more sense than "for the next 3 months the Wolf clan is 'Keeper of Mud' and 'Seeker of Nothing'

'Crane' vs 'Lion' - choose either Crane (any role but Alliance with Lion) or Any Clan (Alliance with Crane) to side with the Crane clan, same for Lion
The winner of the tournament decides whether Crane or Lion will take the stronghold!

'Keeper' vs. 'Seeker' - decide whether the Emperor will direct the (Unicorn?) clan to look outward for new allies or the direct the 'Phoenix' clan to focus on traditional magics (Unicorn can only be Seeker, Phoenix can only be Keeper ... all other clans must choose either a Keeper or Seeker role)

'Fire' vs. 'Water' - The shugenja of the Dragon want to summon the rains to alleviate starvation while the Crab attempt a scorched earth policy to hold back the shadowlands ... which policy will go forward? Pick a fire role or a water role and do battle!

Those feel like meaningful events to me, build a connection to the story and give some context to build a deck around.

I like the sound of those, in addition to being perfectly happy with the secondary roles!

I'd love to see some more OP along those lines!

The story prize is who gets Toshi Ranbo. I don't think the story and the cards need to interact too much more than this right here. But I've been pretty gun shy since the Rain of Blood and when AEG blew up my poor Nezumi for no reason q.q

I like the idea of this, but I'm worried about how it would be in practice. Think it might help the story team abit too as they don't have to come up with reasons why every clan wants the price all the time.

What worries me with that approach though is that it might lead to certain clans *cough* Dragon *cough* having little to do in a story and mostly being noted as "they were also there". It would also lead to the story being narrowed down TOO much with just binary choices. That would take away some fun and unexpected turns and twists.

Maybe for things at a smaller scale that lead up to the bigger thing?

I probably didn't explain myself very well; I was more thinking of having the choice of a role be something that influences the narrative (not just the choice of a clan.)

(I don't think linking 'advantages' to winning tournaments is a great approach; if anything, the losing clans need something to boost them, rather than having the strongest clans choose first.)

Just in terms of narrative; you can still have 'free-for-all' events; but not every event needs to be like that.

On ‎7‎/‎26‎/‎2018 at 8:35 PM, ColinEdwards said:

I probably didn't explain myself very well; I was more thinking of having the choice of a role be something that influences the narrative (not just the choice of a clan.)

That'd be cool: basically make your role and your splash count for the storyline (or if you have a tainted deck). The issue with this is that while cool for the story, it'd be a nightmare to balance for the game-designers: right now certain decks would naturally gravitate towards certain splashes or roles. If you want those things to matter for the story without having too much bias, you'd have to make sure that you are not forced to choose a role/allied to make your deck competitive. The sheer amount of combinations would make this a nightmare to balance.

I can understand the desire for that, though I've been really pleased with how FFG has handled story prizes so far. A very controlled "turn right or turn left" sort of decision that helps reign in some of the silliness that was happening in the old game (usually directly caused by card game design imposing stuff on the story or story prizes getting out of hand). If writers like DGL want to draw inspiration from the choices the players are making then that's one thing (since he could easily filter out anything too unreasonable). As far as the officially advertised interactions between card game and story I for one am more happy with the current arrangement. Less is more. Just make sure the decisions we do get to make are impactful and not just superficial.

The story inspiring limited format tournament structure on the other hand sounds real fun to me. A Crane/Unicorn versus Lion/Phoenix team tournament could be cool. If we get more Shadowlands and Maho card I'd love to see a tainted versus untainted format surface.

I think "Hisu Mori Toride" is a really good example of what might make a cool tournament: Support Unicorn or Support Lion. Doesn't need to change the cards, but could affect the flavor text in the future.

(I am not entirely sure the "winners choose the role" is a very good model - it tends to reinforce existing strong combinations and discourage experimentation. The current voting seems pretty flawed too.)