Jade was a mess of an Edition but it had its moments. Also we were looking to expand the types of decks that cared about Focus Values going into Onyx. We just never really got a chance to dig too deeply into it before it all came to an end.

There was once an optional rule that you would lose 1 Honor when touching another player's cards without permission. There were few things more satisfying than either playing Scorpion and touching cards until you could Breach your opponent again or playing Junzo and just touching all their cards all the time. I may or may not have done both of those things at one time or another.

Revising or removing dueling entirely were discussions had during the development of Ivory and Onyx Edition. Ultimately, it was considered too thematic to remove entirely, and there were few options to change it significantly without making hundreds upon hundreds of cards in the L5R card pool either not work as intended or just not work at all, period. I personally was always a fan of the LBS system, and if dueling were to change, that was always the point I wanted to start from. Just a little FYI.

I pushed for a revamp of dueling going into Ivory, but we thought there were already enough changes. Briefly revisited it in Onyx design, but it ended up not working out. I really wanted to switch it over to some variant of the LBS system.

As the person who designed both the original, favor and proclaim oriented Susumu Sensei that was scrapped and the late replacement Token based one, I'm sure most people who point to design hating the Spider would point to me. All I can say is I wasn't thrilled with the ditching of the original for the token one, and the token one absolutely was designed to be 4G. Changing it to 3G was a decision over my head that I objected to at the time, and still very much regret. I wanted Susumu to be great because I knew how much the Spider players wanted it to be.

I can tell you with 100% certainty that nobody on the Design Team at AEG hated the Mantis Clan.

More power to them if they go a similar route, we were pretty sure the entire time we were talking about it that if and when we did, they'd be burning us in effigy on the AEG forums. (More than usual, anyway.) However, it was really something that needed to be done. There were just too many factions, so several would get lost a little in the shuffle, or otherwise get pigeonholed into a niche that wasn't fair to them. Having to make the game always backwards compatible was a curse from a design perspective, and I'm pretty jealous FFG gets to clean slate it in a way we never could.

There was a very brief time on the design team when we were lead to believe that we at AEG would be resurrecting L5R as an LCG before we found out it had been sold to FFG. One of the things we discussed was the likelihood that we would have only four factions instead of the normal amount, each faction representing one of the four "major powers" vying for control of Rokugan. Since it was a time jump after the conclusion of Onyx, it was basically a "War of three Emperors" situation. 1) The 'Rightful Emperor' Kanpeki and those loyal to him 2) An alliance basically run by Akodo Kano and Hida Toranosuke, the two champions of those Clans, with the possibility of a "Lion Heir/Son of Kaneka" angle being worked in there (probably to the chagrin of those two leaders), who were allied with the Naga, sort of the defacto "good guys" faction 3) An alliance of the Unicorn, Phoenix, and Crane operating out of the Second City, probably with Shibatsu as a figurehead, mostly masterminded by Suikihime 4) An unnamed fourth faction we were still fleshing out that might have appeared later. So the clans were mostly divided between one or more of these factions, with most Clans having people in more than one. I may be misremembering some of the details (we never committed any of this to documentation), but you get the jist of it. I could very easily see them doing something like that, regardless of the era they set it in.

I think we hit a good tempo with 20F, to be honest. I think we scaled back too much in early Ivory, an overcorrection from the end of Emperor (perhaps someday everything that was going on in Emperor design will come to light for the general public). One of the reasons I hope the Onyx stuff eventually sees the light of day is because I really do believe 20F/Onyx was hitting a sweet spot, or at least making strides towards it.

Someday I will forward you the literal tons of angry hate mail (and death threats!) from players complaining that games were far too short, and that we had ruined L5R whenever we encouraged any gameplay structure that lasted less than 8 turns. I'll send it with all the exact same stuff complaining about the game being too long.

Kempy is correct in what Zinser said. I can confirm that post-GenCon the DT were told that we should begin planning to make L5R an in-house LCG/ECG, similar to Doomtown. Early preparations for that were under discussion when we found out about the FFG deal, which was shortly before everyone else did.

I wouldn't count on hearing anything that will inform you of anything concrete until that GenCon mark. You may get a few cursory things here and there until then, but don't expect them to be highly substantive.

Based on how they handled Got 2.0 and Netrunner, I dont really see that being the case. Some things will change, but I dont see end of the world, everything is different changes, based on the names internally that wanted L5R. They've made it no secret that the game they develop will not be compatible with previous versions of L5R in any way. Whether this is a positive or negative thing is up to the individual.

That they won't have to worry about having any of the previous 20 years worth of cards be any way compatible with their new product gives them a freedom to address certain systemic issues that we never quite could, in that context. I'm a little jealous. There were many things we often discussed needing to change, but several were non-starters due to that.

The FFG L5R will likely be so mechanically different from existing L5R, that it's unlikely that much of the essence of what we call L5R (ie Strongholds, Sensei, the Provinces, two decks, et all) will remain. And yes, Suikihime was deceptively quite strong. Much like Sukihime herself.

Some of the former DT and I have been talking about releasing a digital "expansion" sometime this year or early next year to help keep the community active and involved leading up to 2017. We planned to set it during a Senpet Rebellion against the Yodotai, and feature the Senpet, Yodotai, Merenae & Thrane (as a single faction), and a revivied Rhumal cult, sort of a mini LBS L5R expansion. Would you mind too terribly if we borrowed some names and such from this rundown? As people say, information on these cultures in the setting is a bit sparse.

Perhaps someday we can toss out some of the alternative Susumu Sensei designs that were tabled during the PT process for one reason or another, just so people could see 'what-if' scenarios.

I wouldn't bet on it anytime in the near future. They will not do something like that unless and until they are ready to state outright that they plan to do something with the RPG line. To do so beforehand would represent essentially a commitment that they intend to do so, which they wouldn't (rightly) want to make and mislead people if L5R RPG is not going to be something they want to take up. Even if they made it blatantly and abundantly clear that they were opening an RPG subforum only as an act of goodwill towards the broader L5R community? Most likely. Right now there is no reason to do anything that could be interpreted as a commitment to anything by any party unless there was a serious, obvious necessity to do so. People interested in posting about RPG could simply tag their posts with [RPG], for example, so people could more easily find threads relating to RPG content. It's better to allow the community to develop these things when there is so much uncertainty, than to wait for the company to act, when they've given no indication that they can or will at any future date.

I wouldn't bet on it anytime in the near future. They will not do something like that unless and until they are ready to state outright that they plan to do something with the RPG line. To do so beforehand would represent essentially a commitment that they intend to do so, which they wouldn't (rightly) want to make and mislead people if L5R RPG is not going to be something they want to take up.

Bearers of Jade is an excellent counterpoint to what has become tendancy in the fan base to associate corrupted beings with being mindless monsters, such as the belief that the pro-jigoku side of the Spider Clan vote meaning that the Clan would revert to some sort of monster horde. It is disturbing, debauched, and deeply horrific, but it is far, far, from mindless.

Bearers of Jade, to me, is the definitive resource on how the Shadowlands 'should' be. When I think of the Shadowlands, I think of that book.

Yeah. ...yeah. If it makes you feel better, maybe someday it'll get converted to a PDF form if FFG approves. Raw, untested, uncut designs! For the masses!

The PDT were so unaware that we were actually in the midst of working on the second Onyx Expansion at that time, which now exists only as a spreadsheet.

We've only kind of jokingly talked about it at this point, nothing too serious until we basically know a little more of the developing situation. Still, good to know there is interest if we decide to pursue this!

More information about it? I'm really curious, especially this LoBS themed expansion. Based on unreleased rethemed Onyx stuff? It wouldn't be based on Onyx stuff, no, mostly because everything associated with that belongs to FFG now, and it wouldn't be proper or appropriate to do anything with that without their express prior approval. This would be more some things done by us in the capacity of fans who happen to have designed the game for years, rather than in any official capacity. Think of it sort of like the Continuing Committee for the Decipher Star Trek card game, more or less. Really, we just like designing L5R cards, we enjoyed the mechanics of the game. FFG has stated that mechanically the new game will have no compatibility with the older ones, so there's some desire to see the mechanics of the L5R system preserved in some fashion. Plus, I just really enjoyed LBS, and I know that R2K had a fairly large following, so that might be fun. Like I said, this was just something we were kicking around, also as a way to keep the player base engaged during this long break.