replies to 22-24 June
A rules digest from the L5R CCG rules team, copied from the mailing list archive for Oracle of the Void. The askers' names are left out. Rulings are as they stood on this date; later rulings, the rulebooks and the Rules Archive may differ.
Older versions of Peeps
The major problem for most people in the same position I am is that they'll have about a month to get all the RARE, non-unique personalities who have been reprinted in Gold in time for GenCon.
Gold shouldn't have any rare non-Unique Personalities, Souls or otherwise. Gold shouldn't have any rare Dynasty cards that can go three-to-a-deck.
replies to 18 June
Remember, text box "real estate" is EXPENSIVE. The concept is word-intensive and will be appearing on multiple cards. That's a good enough reason to have a shortcut expression for it.
And is this the reason L5R has no 'Loyal' trait? Because so few cards have the trait 'can only be brought into play by X Clan Player'?
At no time has a large number of "Loyal" Personalities ever been introduced to the mix all at once, so no one ever thought to use a shorthand term for it.
It would seem that this trait, properly used, could be the salvation of the cheap personality, especially the low HR cheap personality (who is in large danger of being used out-of-faction). If it's good enough for Shinseken, and good enough for Mori (who, IMHO, should both only be brought in by their Clans), then it can be used for others, right?
I, personally, don't want to see "Loyal" appearing more or less by default on every Personality with a gold cost below 5. I don't think there's anything wrong with being able to use out-of-Clan Personalities. In fact, the game already has an across-the-board discouragement built in. Why make that redundant?
"Loyal" appears when the storyline warrents it or when the Personality will be even better to another, more-successful Clan than to its own.