Establishing the Base

By Mark Wootton
Lead Developer, Legend of the Five Rings

A few months ago I was asked to take on the role of Lead Developer for Samurai Edition. There have been many things written about the concept of leading or leadership. I am going to give you a view that you might not have heard before.

Leading is the art of picking and working with people who together are, in some way, better than you at every aspect of what is needed to do the job. I am very lucky that when it comes to Samurai Edition I am in exactly that position.

There is a lot to be considered when putting together a base set. You need to have an idea of what each clan should do, the pace of the game and the flavour of the story for the arc. You need to have a sense of the old and the new coming together in a way that is both fresh and exciting, but at the same time makes sure that a few well known and well-liked old friends are coming back to see you again. You need to have a sense of structure and purpose for the game and the set.

It would be pretty difficult for anyone to do all that on his or her own. That is why as a lead developer you have a team working with you. And in my case that team is very talented.

One of the big goals of Samurai is to be the best starting point for new players of any base set for a long time.

To do that we want to make sure that the rules are as clear as they possibly can be, not just in the way that they work, but also in the way that they are presented. Roger Giner-Sorolla has been working with the existing rules team from the beginning of the process to completely review the rules from top to bottom. We have looked at all of the rules in the game for clarity, function and enjoyment. We have deconstructed them and rebuilt them from the bottom up. Of course that does not mean we want to change everything. What it means is that we want to make sure that everything, from how cards are worded right through to how major rules function, is done in the best way that they can be.

I hope that you are starting to see the obvious benefits in Khan’s Defiance. Cards are templated and presented in a much clearer way than they ever have been before. Roger and the rules team are doing a great job

L5R is a game of flavour. Again we wanted to bring that back with Samurai Edition. Its not just about what the cards do, it is about how they feel. It is about what they say about the game, as well as how they contribute to the mechanical development. We have even gone back to dropping in flavour within the actual card text where we think it is appropriate. We want new and returning players to feel immersed in the game from the start of the arc.

A big part of that immersion is in the story. The support that the Design team has had from the Story team has been absolutely critical. They have provided us with a wonderful depth and texture of ideas and plots to work with.

I said at the start that the task of putting this together is daunting.

It is made less daunting by another thing that I feel incredibly lucky about. That is the team that we have put together to put all of these ideas into practice. The Design team has been incredible. And I am not just talking about the base set, but also about creating and maintaining the vision throughout the two preceding expansions. The Player Design Team of Bryan Reece, Eugene Earnshaw, Duncan MacPhail, Faber van Kraanen, Brandon Flores and Leon Philips have done a first class job.

They are an amazingly creative team. This is all the more the amazing when you consider that Khan’s Defiance was their first set. But from the start as a group they developed and realised the goals for Samurai. The great thing is the range of talents that they bring to bear on the design process. There is the obvious creativity, but it is not just about the mechanical design of the cards. It is the ability to link the mechanics to the story or background of the set. It is about designing cards that appeal to players at a range of levels – whether it be fun cards, competitive cards or just cards that have a strong “Wow!” factor. It is about creating cards that are simple to understand and yet fun and interesting to play. It is about the ability to design an environment and not just cards.

All of these things are critical in helping us create the Samurai arc. And in all of these ways each of these designers bring something original to the table. In particular Bryan Reece has taken on the role of leading the playtest process of the Samurai sets, keeping everyone focussed on the critical issues during playtest.

Which brings me on to the last component of the team that I am working with. The playtesters. Some are old hands, others are new. The thing that has delighted me is the way that like all of the others involved in this process have taken on the purpose of making Samurai a new and fabulous experience. These volunteers give an incredible amount of their time and energy to this process. They work amazingly hard to test everything that we throw at them. And in general they do it in good humour and with great enthusiasm.

And perhaps this last point is the one that has been most evident throughout the development of Samurai. The development of this arc has generated a greater buzz and a greater excitement than any other project I have been involved with in L5R.

As I write this we are early in the playtest process. We have tried and rejected over a hundred different cards, we have designed some new cards we are bringing some old cards back. Each week we add or remove more cards and tinker with those that we have. Each time we change things we see a different pattern and try to make sure that our playtesters focus on the new challenges that those changes bring or look at deck-types that we have not looked at in enough detail. I am sure that there will be many more changes.

But the thing that sustains everyone is that this set really seems to have a great feel and a great sense of teamwork in its production. And I feel incredibly lucky to have so many talented people to work with on this project. All of whom are better than I could ever be at every part of the production of this game.

I hope that you will be as inspired by Samurai Edition as we have been in making it for you…