|
If you've followed my F&F writeup for Way of the Scorpion, you'll know John Wick created the Wasp Clan. I was flipping through Fealty & Freedom for 3e, I was amused to see the following words at the start of the Wasp's history section:Fealty & Freedom posted:The origin of the Wasp Clan involves betrayal and revenge on a scale that one might only expect to find in a dramatist's hyperactive imagination. 
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2013 05:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 20:38 |
|
|
Why can't he do anything normal? It seems like he wants to 'crank it t' eleven!', only it's not the volume knob but the distortion knob.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2013 05:20
|
|
|
I ain't got no answer for that. What I do have is the FRPG Mailing List Archives, which I scrounged up last night when trying to find if there was any means of obtaining of Way of the Wasp online. And here's some John Wick highlights: On Way of the Wasp.... John Wick posted:John hears this: On the core rules... John Wick posted:>Something I just thought off (after sending the previous message, of On broken NPCs... John Wick posted:A lot of folks have been responding to my "the NPCs don't fit the rules and On using the metaplot... John Wick posted:Right now, Jim Pinto (hope he doesn't beat me up for mentioning him) is On leaving the game line (the whitespace is in the original)... John Wick posted:>Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 10:12:17 -0700
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2013 15:15
|
|
|
What the hell kind of face is :L, seriously. And drat, that letter to Kachiko. All that aside, I'm actually a bit curious to see what a game of L5R with Wick rules would look like in practice. I could imagine it might actually be pretty fun, if everyone at the table was on the ball enough not to go "...um..." and die in the first skirmish. I even kind of like his stance on canonical truths and NPCs as example characters. I mean, his canonical truths and NPCs are occasionally pretty awful, but the underlying principles are not terribad. Siivola fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Mar 25, 2013 |
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2013 15:41
|
|
|
I just read a Dear John from a man to his masturbation fantasy. I hate you, Alien Rope Burn. So, when "that John Wick" had to go away, did he take is "if I do paragraph breaks ever 50 words, everything I write will come across as super-important" writing style with him?
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2013 16:21
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I just read a Dear John from a man to his masturbation fantasy. I hate you, Alien Rope Burn. I honestly need to stop posting this stuff before I ruin the game for folks.  But I must share these terrible truths, I cannot bear the burden alone. That being said, I'd rather not speculate on what he flips his bacon to.Halloween Jack posted:So, when "that John Wick" had to go away, did he take is "if I do paragraph breaks ever 50 words, everything I write will come across as super-important" writing style with him? Nope. One thing that was weird when I was writing my F&F I found myself having a kind of John Wick cadence, but for different reasons - basically, I'll sum up a topic in a sentence or two, space, and then move on to the next one. Also, I type in notepad and things that seem to run on for lines in my small notepad box end up being one line on the board itself. I deliberately worked to quash that, so I guess Wick did teach me a thing or two about posting. I think for contrast I'd like to put up some posts by Ree Soesbee, who headed up story team head after Wick moved on. It's a lot harder because for whatever reason, her posts aren't as well archived and the majority of them have fallen to internet erosion, but here's two of the more interesting ones I found. On mysteries in the metaplot... Ree Soesbee posted:Greetings! That tagline is because was her insert character was Doji Shizue, for those who don't know. And on the Kolat infiltrating the Unicorn... Ree Soesbee posted:Greetings!
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2013 17:34
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:I honestly need to stop posting this stuff before I ruin the game for folks.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2013 17:39
|
|
|
Pretty sure your write-up in F&F made it clear Kachiko is one of Wick's ex-girlfriend he never got over. And that fact that the game is a love letter to her and he still isn't over her is probably not healthy.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2013 18:02
|
|
|
Tasoth posted:Pretty sure your write-up in F&F made it clear Kachiko is one of Wick's ex-girlfriend he never got over. And that fact that the game is a love letter to her and he still isn't over her is probably not healthy. I think she's a tribute to more than one woman, like his ex-girlfriend and his ex-wife, but it's best not to speculate too much about it. It's too easy to jump to conclusions about his personal life, and it's important to remind ourselves that we don't really know and don't need to know. Now, I know John Wick's character was Bayushi Yojiro. Ree Soesbee's was Doji Shizue. Rich Wulf had Yasuki Garou  . Does anybody know if any others? Or did the "tradition" stop there?It's also interesting to realize that Legend of the Five Rings became a fan-written setting in short order. Both Soesbee and Wulf were fan writers who made it to the big time - they weren't game writers before being the story leads. John Wick was also an first-timer, so to speak. I guess that's true of a lot of game writing, but it's interesting that AEG drew upon its fanbase rather than turn to established RPG writers.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2013 18:38
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:Now, I know John Wick's character was Bayushi Yojiro. Ree Soesbee's was Doji Shizue. Rich Wulf had Yasuki Garou Most recently, Nancy Sauer is Daidoji Gisei http://imperialassembly.com/oracle/#cardid=1634,%23hashid=d874cdd48e76af3c8c24b5ff319eb20b,%23cardcount=0 Isawa Hachiko is Lead Designer Bryan Reese's wife. * http://imperialassembly.com/oracle/#cardid=3828,%23hashid=41227498302d208cd2b482cf7c15dad9,%23cardcount=4 I know there are others, including forum members. The "best" one I can think of Moto Masakage. This 'special' forum member showed up on pretty much every clan forum, acting very naive and asking a lot of dumb questions. After having a 'please calm down' talk, he was ok. So I guess design wanted to give him a card. After that, he got banned for using a racial slur, but the card had already gone to the printer. * Also one of the sources of the most  over-reactions I've seen on a forum.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2013 18:48
|
|
|
Some guys on the CCG Rules Team have vanity characters, too. Yoon Ha Lee (of the Story Team until recently) had Kakita Maratai, although I personally didn't know that was her personification until after I'd featured the character in an official fiction. Oops! A lot of fans got characters too. Bayushi Makubesu, Mirumoto Taiskishi, Kakita Kae... But that's mostly CCG stuff, not having to do with the RPG. Edit: jadarx posted:I know there are others, including forum members. The "best" one I can think of Moto Masakage. This 'special' forum member showed up on pretty much every clan forum, acting very naive and asking a lot of dumb questions. After having a 'please calm down' talk, he was ok. So I guess design wanted to give him a card. After that, he got banned for using a racial slur, but the card had already gone to the printer. Now there's a name I haven't heard in a while. His is a particularly sordid story. One of the most enthusiastic newcomers to the forums in some time, his post count grew very fast, so the big-wigs wanted to give him a vanity card as a sort of treat. It went straight to his head, to the point where he'd post unironically as his vanity character. He was banned from multiple fan forums due to general rear end-hattery (long stories there), and then finally got banned from the forums for dropping racial slurs, among other things. When his character died in a fiction, he pretty much imploded. He was a legend among both fans and staff, and not in the good way. Spookyelectric fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Mar 25, 2013 |
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2013 20:55
|
|
|
Spookyelectric posted:Some guys on the CCG Rules Team have vanity characters, too. Yoon Ha Lee (of the Story Team until recently) had Kakita Maratai, although I personally didn't know that was her personification until after I'd featured the character in an official fiction. Oops! Much of it slips down the sluice to the RPG one way or another sooner or later, it's all good. Kinda surprised there doesn't seem to be an exhaustive list of this kind of thing, given how well a lot of lore is documented otherwise.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2013 21:32
|
|
|
I kind of expected to see a list on the wiki at least (marginally dependable as it is), but nope. With the community's collective knowledge, I'd imagine it wouldn't be too much trouble to put one together.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2013 21:58
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:Rich Wulf had Yasuki Garou Hey. Show some respect. That's Fuzake Garou.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 00:56
|
|
|
So who is this Garou guy besides someone copping a White-Wolf/Western European name for a werewolf? Was he some form of Yokai?
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 01:02
|
|
|
Yasuki Garou (pronounced more like Gah Roh than the werewolfy gar ooh, from loup-garou) is Rich Wulf's character. Wulf took over from Soesbee and eventually passed the line to Carman, who runs it now. Garou shows up in one adventure, Bells of the Dead, as a minor NPC, is mentioned a few times in Way of the Ratling (Wulf was a huge fan of the nezumi and Garou was the Ratling Guy, basically) and in this fan-fiction parodying roughly from the Clan War through Hidden Emperor. He's also mentioned briefly in Emerald Empire, where it is revealed that the Crane pushed for him to get his own family name--Fuzake--in light of his unyielding efforts to bring laughter to Rokugan during the dark times. (i.e. he got a family name because of the fanfic.) He was not granted a clan, and joined up with Toku, making the Monkey the only minor clan to have two family names. That bit of fan fiction was basically my introduction to Rokugan and L5R. I still reference it on occasion, especially on the subject of ninjas versus bedtime.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 01:09
|
|
|
I have to wonder about some of the in-jokes created by other L5R groups and the stories behind them. I think a lot of the deep culture of L5R, and one of my favourite parts of the game, comes from how the individual Clans are represented by the characters and the world around them at each individual table. And let's face it, in-jokes are a great way to see the effect of the game on the players. As an example, at a table I used to be in(and this has since carried to every table I've been to), Hida wives are the most frightening force in Rokugan. We don't need the Kaiu wall to keep the Shadowlands out, we just need a line of Hida wives standing there holding various cookware menacingly. If the Crab want to take a fortress, all they need to do is send in three Hida wives and one tetsubo. It's okay, they can share. Seven Thunders? Nah, seven Hida wives would send Fu Leng screaming back to Jigoku, sealing up the hole to make sure they don't follow him. Only reason they haven't is because the men would never hear the end of it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 06:54
|
|
|
I think Clan Monkey is my favorite CCG joke turned actual lore. From what I recall hearing, Toku was essentially a brutally cheap ronin that any deck could field for close to nothing - and thus, in turn, just about every deck DID send him out. The end result is that they more or less declared Toku was legitimately at like every goddamn fight and somehow survived them all, and because he was always the weakest or always outnumbered, when he did become an ACTUAL character, they gave him the minor clan built around willpower and fighting against the odds. Even better, being so easily sacrificed meant he was nearly always teamed up with Toturi, so they made the two best friends with a karmic tie to boot.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 07:04
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:I think Clan Monkey is my favorite CCG joke turned actual lore. Yes. This is the original Toku:  A free for every clan (0 gold, no honor requirement) unaligned dude with no attack power, almost no dueling power, that gave two honor to the Toturi's Army faction (when they came around - his original version didn't have any clan alignment). This was during a time when almost every faction lacked low-cost, weak personalities of their own, so many turned to him. He served as a warm body for many early decks that needed someone to be at a battle to blow a Bridged Pass, to bravely stand up for your important people with He's Mine, to take the blame for any dishonor with The Fault is Mine, and most importantly, as a sacrifice to things like A Terrible Oath and Oni no Tsuburu. Despite all this, he survived and got a promotion:  Followed by another promotion, and his own minor clan:  And a further upgrade:  And continued to be a badass, even in the "Fu Leng wins" alternate reality: 
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 15:32
|
|
|
There's a lot of times the sanctioned tournament and evolving lore L5R uses can create strange stuff and complicate things. But then something awesome like Toku and the Monkey Clan happens, and you wonder why every game with a metaplot doesn't do the same thing. If you're going to tie your product into that sort of nonsense, at least make create some opportunities for cool and unexpected things to happen.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 16:13
|
|
|
Toku is legitimately my favorite L5R character. Literally everyone connected to him is completely awesome. The best part is he was not a samurai. Toku's backstory is that dude is a peasant farmer who lucked into a katana when the Seven Samurai happened around him.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 16:18
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:Toku is legitimately my favorite L5R character. Literally everyone connected to him is completely awesome. Given that and the whole Monkey thing, I wonder if he's supposed to be a nod to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was a peasant farmer warrior who bluffed and lucked his way into running Japan for a while. (And got called "Monkey" by his first boss, based on his looks.)
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 17:05
|
|
|
Yea it has to be a nod there.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 17:42
|
|
|
Toku is amazing. I am a fan of that entire card and its growth.unseenlibrarian posted:Given that and the whole Monkey thing, I wonder if he's supposed to be a nod to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was a peasant farmer warrior who bluffed and lucked his way into running Japan for a while. (And got called "Monkey" by his first boss, based on his looks.) I wouldn't say it was him bluffing and being lucky, Hideyoshi was clever and knew what he was doing. Which would probably fit the concept of Toku as someone who is self made and achieved what he has through skill and earned achievement.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2013 18:07
|
|
|
Tasoth posted:Toku is amazing. I am a fan of that entire card and its growth. It's actually because in his very first battle, as a peasant, Toku caught the Lion taint, and the Lion taint is stronger than anything in the L5R universe.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2013 00:15
|
|
|
Lion taint? Never really owned a L5R product, so bear with me.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2013 00:54
|
|
|
Tasoth posted:Lion taint? Never really owned a L5R product, so bear with me. The Lion taint is honor, and it's been shown as strong enough to literally redeem an oni. It may also have redeemed a Dark Oracle of Water, but I haven't been watching the storyline since my cards got stolen, so I don't know if that ended up sticking. The oni, though, ended up being cleansed of taint and made the guardian of the gates of heaven.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2013 11:09
|
|
|
He became a Fortune after he died didn't he? Like the Fortune of Luck? He may have done it kind of clumsily but I find myself agreeing with a lot of Wick's stances. Even then I didn't notice how overblown his drama was until it was pointed out to me. I guess it's largely due to the fact that he sticks to settings where you expect high drama so I went in expecting it. Has anyone else read Houses of the Blooded? It feels a lot like Wick is describing the way he runs L5R but with Renaissance Italian Opera instead of samurais.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2013 13:58
|
|
|
Macdeo Lurjtux posted:Has anyone else read Houses of the Blooded? It feels a lot like Wick is describing the way he runs L5R but with Renaissance Italian Opera instead of samurais. I'm slowly reviewing it for F&F. But I think if you really want to see Wick L5R,you look at Blood & Honor, the samurai Houses re-skin he did.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2013 14:24
|
|
|
I'm admit I'm pretty torn between Wick's everything must be a tragedy forever and later story teams where an alarming amount of characters seem to be carrying Get Out of Tragedy Free cards. I admit I found Okura more convenient than compelling, to be blunt. I think it's one of the big issues of having a faction-based metaplot is that no faction can ever suffer permanent harm - you can't have a clan turn out to be wholly antagonistic or doomed (unless it's being removed from the game, like the naga). This wasn't always true, but has gotten more and more to be the case as things have gone on as far as I se. Even the Shadowlands has shifted over to the relatively politic (and more morally grey) Spider Clan. I think that's why we have such rapid Imperial turnover, because it's an big dramatic faction you can totally change and it doesn't ruin anybody's playability. Either way, it's why I can enjoy the metaplot as a curiosity, but don't find it as nearly as compelling as it was early in the game's history.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2013 14:44
|
|
|
You're right in that a consequence of having a player faction-type game means every faction has a "sacred cow" that cannot be threatened. I mean, they could threaten, say, the Great Clan status of the Unicorn, or the naval superiority of the Mantis, but then if an eighth of the playerbase leaves in a huff, then it was a bad business decision, regardless of how compelling the story may have been. A lot of potential story-lines get watered down or dropped because of business-related reasons (or fan protesting, which is more often than one might initially think), but you can't really blame them for that when the entire brand depends on it's identity and the faction-oriented playerbase. One might be surprised how much story-related stuff isn't even decided by the story team! Then again, considering how much of the franchise's past canon is based on ccg tournament prizes, fan votes, inside jokes, and sometimes those who purposefully choose things with the goal of enraging fanboys, maybe one wouldn't be surprised at all... I guess what I'm saying is the Story Team's job sometimes boils down to: "Here are the things that have to happen, make it work." Spookyelectric fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Mar 28, 2013 |
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 01:17
|
|
|
Spookyelectric posted:A lot of potential story-lines get watered down or dropped because of business-related reasons (or fan protesting, which is more often than one might initially think), but you can't really blame them for that when the entire brand depends on it's identity and the faction-oriented playerbase. Ha ha, I imagine it's literally happening at every moment! There's always something to be bothered about from one angle or another. I remember Hidden Emperor having a lot to complain about, especially when (unknown to the players) the ninja were manipulating things and so all we saw as players was our faction characters suddenly taking deep whiffs from the idiot pipe and wondering what the hell the writers were thinking! I know the whole situation is just part and parcel with the format at this point, and it works the way it works because it works. Thankfully, the RPG nowadays aimed at being more of a toybox, which has been a great shift in foccus. Spookyelectric posted:One might be surprised how much story-related stuff isn't even decided by the story team! Then again, considering how much of the franchise's past canon is based on ccg tournament prizes, fan votes, inside jokes, and sometimes those who purposefully choose things with the goal of enraging fanboys, maybe one wouldn't be surprised at all... As I've mentioned elsewhere, I remember John Wick detailing to me all the folks that were supposed to get horrible heroic sacrifices during the Clan War. But characters were popular and Wizards wanted more mileage out of folks like Yakamo and Hitomi, and so they lived on. So it goes. I can only imagine that sort of thing has gotten more intense for the writing team since then, not less. Not to say a fun narrative and stories can't come out of it, but it's almost like vast narrative program with many, many inputs, existing programming, and kruft mucking up the works. That metaphor just got way out of hand, but it's the best way I can think to describe it. I don't think anything in any medium has really done a metaplot as complicated to hash out, with players and writers and designers and marketers all kind of mashing together, and it feels like a miracle it's as coherent as it is.
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 05:47
|
|
|
Okay, so I was given a suggestion to try this game out. I haven't played a whole lot of different games (just a couple games of 3.5) and I really am not sure I understand what is going on in this setting. Okay, so it's Super Magic Samurai or something right? I've seen lots of talk about Taint and Redemption and apparently there's some sort of Meta-Plot thing going on tied in with a card game? As a first timer who is possibly interested in playing this on PbP, where would I even start other than with the core book?
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 14:56
|
|
|
The fourth edition core book is all you need. It has a simplified version of the setting's history, and a lot of information on culture and etiquette for new players. You don't need to know anything about the CCG metaplot to play it. Just read the first 80 or so pages of the book and you're ready to go.
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 14:57
|
|
|
My favorite thing is people who get carded and then show up in one fiction just to die.
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 15:00
|
|
|
FactsAreUseless posted:The fourth edition core book is all you need. It has a simplified version of the setting's history, and a lot of information on culture and etiquette for new players. You don't need to know anything about the CCG metaplot to play it. Just read the first 80 or so pages of the book and you're ready to go. He's 100% right. The metaplot is only as important as the GM makes it for his particular campaign. Just give the Core book a look and the rest will take care of itself. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 15:01
|
|
|
Okay, thanks! Once I get myself a copy I'll see about looking it over.
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 15:06
|
|
|
The only problem I have with the setting history in the corebook is that the most recent history features a lot of super-NPCs and divine intervention, which leaves me confused about character background questions like whether or not it's reasonable for my relatively young samurai to have been a veteran of the last big war (or of a minor clan war or any war, really), what kind of political climate a courtier character probably grew up in, etc.Fallorn posted:My favorite thing is people who get carded and then show up in one fiction just to die. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Mar 28, 2013 |
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 15:37
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Wow, the penalties in samurai soccer are pretty extreme.
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 15:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 20:38 |
|
|
Crono S. Magnum posted:Okay, so it's Super Magic Samurai or something right? I've seen lots of talk about Taint and Redemption and apparently there's some sort of Meta-Plot thing going on tied in with a card game? It's basically classic samurai stories only with much more in terms of fantasy and some Western aspects mixed in. It's more inspired by period Japanese dramas than really trying to ape them, and it's really become its own thing than easily comparable to anything else. It has various clans of samurai themed after various creatures battling, from the battlefield to the court, to constantly try and gain advantage over the other, but also facing external threats (most often being the Shadowlands, a land literally corrupted by hell to the south). Generally the war is small-scale, as there is an Emperor (or more rarely, an Empress) who oversees the empire, but the larger plots see the empire falling into more open war. It's definitely larger than life, and has priests who use elemental magic, courtier characters who excel in social affairs, monks with magic martial arts, and lots of other stuff besides. A lot of it centers around classic samurai themes, like the constant tug of war between honor, desire, and conscience.
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 18:48
|
|