Design Diaries: Rethinking Honesty
by Jeff Williamson
June 16, 2023
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The first expansion to follow Onyx Edition, Rise of Jigoku, would introduce the Honesty keyword to the L5R game. It was intended to represent revealing some information about your intentions in order to gain a benefit. As originally written, the effect was:
Honesty abilities are active when the card is face up. You may turn an Honesty card face-up as a Battle/Open action.
When we started revisiting the post-Onyx expansions, we realized that revealing an Honesty card as an Open action closed some design space to us, and that the tempo loss associated with the action was not as impactful in the Open phase. There was exactly one card that had been previously designed that this affected, so the decision was made to change it to Battle only.
Honesty abilities are active when the card is face up.
Honesty Repeatable Battle: Turn a face-down Honesty card in your hand face-up.
Similar to its complex Dynasty-side counterpart, Sincerity, Honesty as a keyword is also paired with Honesty as a trait, which grants an extra effect to the card while it is face-up your hand. The trait is templated in cards such as Wall Armor, which gives the Item the ability to be Equipped from hand as an Interrupt to any other player's action, or Face Your Destruction!, which draws you a card when played for its action.
In addition, the Honesty keyword is referenced indirectly by the game term "have Honesty", as on cards like Utaku Yukino. To "have Honesty" means to have one or more Honesty cards face-up in your hand. Card text using this term provides additional support for running cards with the Honesty keyword.
The action of revealing an Honesty card is a form of tempo loss in battle, since you do not receive any immediate benefit, as well as acting as a "pass without passing" action in many circumstances as you wait to see what your opponent will do. By changing the act of revealing to Battle only, we opened up a key bit of design space for cards which mitigate your tempo loss by allowing you to reveal some card(s) before battle takes place. The keyword is complex, but opens up another entire layer of Design space.
PLEASE PARDON OUR DUST
This article originally appeared on Facebook as a work-in-progress description of changes made during our initial Onyx Lives! design phases. The information in it may be outdated, but it is presented here as part of an ongoing attempt to consolidate all of the various public writings we have made along the way.
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