In the Legend of the Five Rings CCG (L5R), players choose one of about 10 factions to construct a deck around. This isn’t unusual; except for Magic, most CCGs do this to some extent, whether an alien race in Babylon 5, Light Side or Dark Side in Star Wars, or a fantasy kingdom in Warlord. The factions in L5R are mostly Great Clans (Crane Clan, Lion Clan, etc.) plus the Ratlings and Shadowlands.

What’s unusual about L5R is the high degree to which players are encouraged to identify themselves with their factions. When registering for the fan club, players pick a Clan and get special story-related material specific to that Clan. The Great Clans are composed of families, and on message boards and personal Websites nicknames corresponding to those families are very common—perhaps 75% or more of L5R players use a faction-specific handle. T-shirts, hats, and highly decorated boxes and decks are all commonplace at tournaments.

More so than other games I’ve seen, players are encouraged to pick a faction and stick with it, like you would a sports team. In other collectible games, moving to the latest powerful faction is pretty ordinary. In L5R, “bandwagoners” are rare and scorned for their disloyalty (although often respected for skill; these players tend to care about winning and put lots of energy into deck construction and strategy)

What does this do for the game? On the good side, it makes people very excited in the game and ongoing storyline. Players maintain Clan-specific fansites, host popular forums that cater to players of that faction, buy faction-specific merchandise, look for canonical fiction that involves their favorite characters, write fanfiction… this keeps them excited in the game and, most importantly, buying cards.

On the other hand, it means that players feel very personally invested in their faction. If a faction is weak, players will become discouraged; hopefully they stick with it like loyal fans through a bad year (or decade), but they might also change factions or, worst of all, give up on the game entirely. In addition to the necessity for balance, every expansion must contain something new for every faction; if it’s not there, why should those players buy any new stuff, even if they’re still excited about the game?

In what I consider to be a terrific misjudgment, the Blizzard-sponsored World of Warcraft forums require you to log in as a specific character. The faction and class of the character show up as an avatar next to the discussion, which is 99% metagame. Added to what would already be the hostile and juvenile atmosphere of a large Internet forum dedicated to a computer game, players tend to pigeonhole one another as “typical” members of the class they happen to be posting as. Furthermore, players get very excited and angry when they feel that “their” class has been unfairly ignored or nerfed (reduced in power).

(In my opinion, a much better system for this board would be for players to choose a nickname not necessarily related to any one character. Then players could add “badges” that indicate that they have reached a certain level with various character classes, while not having to use any one of those characters as an avatar.)