https://www.cardboardrepublic.com/articles/dave-of-the-five-rings/dotr-chapter-forty

Wherein I do a bunch of GenCon shout outs, and talk about the lack of news in July.

Couple of minor points.

Tyler isn't 'one of the lead designers'...he is, by all accounts, the sole member of the L5R Design Team right now.

While I share your concerns about communication, I think you do a disservice to the sterling efforts of Matt Holland recently. He's been wonderful keeping people as informed as possible, and reacted with astonishing speed to try and rectify the PR nightmare regarding the new promos.

Really interesting read as always, Dave.

" Mari Murdock continues to excel in her depiction of Aramoro, giving us insight into a character it would be easy to hate but contains a full depth that belies a simple villain."

lol what. Every scene Aramoro has just reinforces how terrible a person he is.

57 minutes ago, HamHamJ2 said:

" Mari Murdock continues to excel in her depiction of Aramoro, giving us insight into a character it would be easy to hate but contains a full depth that belies a simple villain."

lol what. Every scene Aramoro has just reinforces how terrible a person he is.

He is a terrible person. He is a terrible person with great depths to his terrible-ness. Like, in the duel against Toturi? He is straight up having a panic attack that he might not actually win. You don't have to be a LIKABLE person to be a well-written person. In fact, as a writer, making a solidly unlikable character is actually harder than a likable one.

1 hour ago, Hinomura said:

Couple of minor points.

Tyler isn't 'one of the lead designers'...he is, by all accounts, the sole member of the L5R Design Team right now.

While I share your concerns about communication, I think you do a disservice to the sterling efforts of Matt Holland recently. He's been wonderful keeping people as informed as possible, and reacted with astonishing speed to try and rectify the PR nightmare regarding the new promos.

Really interesting read as always, Dave.

On the first note about Tyler - while I do believe you are correct, there is an opacity to FFG's daily operations, especially in the design space of this game. I am not a playtester, so I do not have direct, QUOTABLE authority to refer to Tyler as more than "one of the Lead Designers". Brad Andres, for example, was listed on the Crane Clan Pack along with Tyler as a Lead Designer. It would be nice for FFG to address this directly, and provide some solid answers so I do not have to couch my statements in ambivalence.

Regarding the lack of communication, this was written before some of Matt's recent statements. Like, this was written last Monday, as my first thing I did after I got back from GenCon. I plan on addressing Matt's increased communication and engagement in my article about August.

And as always, thank you for the response, Mark!

1 hour ago, sndwurks said:

He is a terrible person. He is a terrible person with great depths to his terrible-ness. Like, in the duel against Toturi? He is straight up having a panic attack that he might not actually win. You don't have to be a LIKABLE person to be a well-written person. In fact, as a writer, making a solidly unlikable character is actually harder than a likable one.

On the first note about Tyler - while I do believe you are correct, there is an opacity to FFG's daily operations, especially in the design space of this game. I am not a playtester, so I do not have direct, QUOTABLE authority to refer to Tyler as more than "one of the Lead Designers". Brad Andres, for example, was listed on the Crane Clan Pack along with Tyler as a Lead Designer. It would be nice for FFG to address this directly, and provide some solid answers so I do not have to couch my statements in ambivalence.

Regarding the lack of communication, this was written before some of Matt's recent statements. Like, this was written last Monday, as my first thing I did after I got back from GenCon. I plan on addressing Matt's increased communication and engagement in my article about August.

And as always, thank you for the response, Mark!

The L5R design team is getting carried by their incredible freelancers that glue the story together and produce the arts. Mechanic wise, well...

3 hours ago, sndwurks said:

Regarding the lack of communication, this was written before some of Matt's recent statements. Like, this was written last Monday, as my first thing I did after I got back from GenCon. I plan on addressing Matt's increased communication and engagement in my article about August.

Matt helped resolve the promo issue while GenCon was going on. He took on board complaints and found a way to help fix things from afar during the convention. And his increased level of communication in the month before GenCon has been a welcome and positive change.

My apologies if I appear to be labouring the point, but someone just reading your article will be presented with what I feel is a misrepresentation of someone working hard in a difficult role. I would, as I'm sure you also agree, much prefer his job wasn't any harder than it needed to be. While I'm very happy that you're presumably going to present a more positive impression of Matt in the August article, it's unfortunate that this is the current recognition he receives.

4 hours ago, sndwurks said:

It would be nice for FFG to address this directly, and provide some solid answers

I think this can be said about every single element of L5R currently. It would be nice for *somebody* within the company to layout the state of OP, release schedules, future of the game, *anything* and in a news article on the FFG website and not fragments scattered in the blizzard of social media.

Two years is indeed a long time...

I have to concur with David Gordon even with yesterday's first L5R LCG update in awhile, the amount of actual new news and even acknowledgement of Gencon tournament results etc. I felt was still disheartening.

My current but bold prediction based on quick analysis of the trending data as compared with previous end of life on other LCGs, is that soon after the Dragon Clan Pack is released, that there will be something about L5R LCG going on an hiatus. It will be somewhat vague but IMO will be FFG/Asmodee looking into the profitability etc. of L5R as a LCG or so on.

The funny thing is I recently started, looking at my Legend of the Burning Sands cards and re-building decks. One reason was the Unicorn in the FFG L5R was referencing/channeling a Burning Sands vibe in some of the cards and then there really hasn't been much about the result of that 2018 letter about sending a Unicorn Clan representative back to the Burning Sands to find out what is happening there. Secondly, it was a great theme and fun change to the oL5R way of playing.

I mean I guess that's possible, though they've at least stated they have monthly releases planned out through next year...

While I agree with FFG needing to support their competitive games more, I strongly disagree with the criticism of Tyler not giving a definite response. We have only 2 bigger tournaments and while the results of GenCon could lead to the conclusion that Phoenix is OP, the results of Sydney paint a different picture. Furthermore GenCon could be an outlier, because Phoenix had probably the biggest density of high quality player and decks were for the most part not tuned for the new iteration of the charge bird deck. I think that Tylers reaction to wait for more tournament data to see if the meta can adapt to the deck is the right one.

I will note that the use of "planned" is not actually a firm action word. Planned is not as firm as scheduled as an example of a stronger business word usage. 'We scheduled monthly releases of L5R in 2020." is more direct, and if they can not met a deadline these can be rescheduled. As plans can change as there is no action to commit to complete them, one doesn't have to replan them if there is not a firm direction.

What data points did you use for your "quick analysis of the trending data as compared with previous end of life on other LCGs"?

Your Analysis seems especially odd, because some stores got the ordering info for the next cycle.