The Art of Power: Design Conundrum

I'm working on a new game for this year, working title The Art of Power. I've got a little practical design issue I'm running into.

In the game, I have four attributes and they are associated with the four suits on playing cards.

The attributes are:
Violence, Authority, Affection, and Influence

These map metaphorically to the card suits, at least in my mind: Spades (originally swords) is Violence, clubs is Authority (club relating the the scepter), Affection is naturally hearts, and Influence is diamonds (or coins, since money falls in this category).

This is great, pretty logical, but runs into a problem. The order in which I list these above is the proper hierarchy in the game, but when mapped to the suits this goes against the standard suit hierarchy of card games (spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs). I could remap the attributes, but that separates hearts from Affection, which will seem counter-intuitive to a lot of players, but I am also worried that changing the standard card hierarchy makes things difficult, since many players will be familiar with this.

Thoughts?

L5R to AW: Updates

It's been more than a little while since I posted anything regarding my L5R to AW hack. I had been thinking about attending 11/11/11 and running it there, which would have prompted me to do a lot more work on it, but unexpected family business sent me on a trip that weekend. My L5R group hasn't met since October, either, and it's definitely been out of my mind. The good news for those of you waiting for more info is that we meet again this month, so I will have some fresh motivation to work on this.

The bad news is that I've got a big, aggressive publication schedule this year for Galileo Games, so I may not have much time for projects that can't ever be legally published! I'll post what I can, maybe a playbook or two over the next two weeks, when I can squeeze it in. Bear with me!

[This post prompted by a New Year's Eve conversation with my L5R players. On a recent visit to Chicago, they ran into someone from a podcast I won't name, who complained about the long wait for me to post more info on this topic. As the conversation went on, my players gradually realized that the topic was their own game. Anyway, if you are interested in what I'm doing here and want more, make sure you comment! When I post files and hear nothing, I assume nobody's reading. :) ]