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Spookyelectric posted:It's a fact that has caused me many a moment of futility. Especially when it comes to the portrayal of shugenja, which sort of became my pet issue as time went on... As a former Phoenix / Brotherhood player, I'm curious what that might be.
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Dec 19, 2015 20:54
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Wick wrote the corebook for a game about a fantasy samurai empire, and would go on to create an indie game about samurai as feudal vassals. But he earned a reputation for disdaining fantasy and pissing on samurai honour at every opportunity. It's odd. I don't think Wick hates samurai, or the fantastical per se. I think that a driving force in Wick's career is disdain for the cliche of the D&D murderhobo, and the desire to turn the hobby away from that. (See his explanation for why he wrote Houses of the Blooded.) So he likes to write games where you play someone with an identity, a family, and social obligations that you can't just cut through with a magic sword. Here's why the Jekyll-and-Hyde: Wick was a huge smuglord, and puts his themes across in as smug and spiteful a manner as he can muster. (For example, I'll defend his decision to exclude ronin PCs from Blood & Honour, but not his explanation. He could have said "This game is focused on playing in the society that cast the ronin out; if you must play a footloose warrior, there are hundreds of games for that." Instead he says "Fine, you can play a ronin, but you suck and your stuff sucks and everyone hates you." Just childishly spiteful.) He also has his pet faction that gets the lion's (or should I say scorpion's) share of attention, gets to break all the rules, and clowns everyone else by being so very very clever. The Scorpion Clan is all of these things about Wick wrapped up in one package. The Lion make a convenient punching bag for the Scorpion, who often only beat their rivals because their rivals are written as utterly oblivious.
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Dec 19, 2015 21:11
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Alien Rope Burn posted:As a former Phoenix / Brotherhood player, I'm curious what that might be. I'm going to sound like a total dork, but here goes. Briefly stated, my issue is that shugenja are inconsistently portrayed and that the CCG and story do not agree on what shugenja are. Not briefly stated: In L5R story and lore, even from the beginning of the game, Shugenja are priests. They are mediums of the kami. Rokugani spells are explicitly established as prayers to the elemental kami (with the Void being an exception). In essence, Shugenja talk to spirits and how those spirits manifest are referred to as their magic. It's not "arcane" and it's not "sorcery;" the kami are a natural part of the world and everything that happens through the kami is not considered supernatural as consequence. Shugenja make offerings to spirits, appease the Fortunes, divine the heavens' will, and so forth. Unless it's inconvenient, in which case they are wizards. Which makes no sense with the setting's lore whatsoever. There are a lot of reasons why this disparity exists. The setting was invented as they went along and early depictions of magic showed that they really didn't have a solid idea of what they were going for. But as time passed, it became more clear that they wanted Shugenja to be "divine casters," to borrow a D&D term. Granted, they still saw fit to follow D&D style tropes, but generally speaking it was established that a Shugenja was a priest and not an arcane wizard. Spells didn't just come out of the ether and Shugenja couldn't just do anything they wanted. Their magic was a sacred, personal art that had a role in the celestial heavens. The only shugenja that could reasonably be said to be wizards would be the Iuchi of the Unicorn and possibly Ishiken, although even then both groups are not capable of just outright "gimme anything" magery. My issue is that Story and RPG spends all of this time establishing that Shugenja are priests, that they're pacifistic (with a few exceptions), that spells are considered natural manifestations and not arcane, that Shugenja are very spiritual, they have to make offerings to the kami, etc. Players read that stuff and nod their heads. Then they sit down at the card table, attach a fireball spell to their shugenja and attack their opponent's provinces. Doesn't exactly say "pacifistic shamanistic sages," does it? Almost nothing in the CGG experience supports any of the stated lore about shugenja. They may as well be two different things. In lore, they are priests. In practice, they are wizards. And then, somewhere along the line, Story started portraying shugenja as wizards in the story too, possibly to match how they were handled in the game, possibly due to direction from superiors, possibly because it is easier to write for a wizard than for what shugenja were originally imagined to be. I'm not 100% sure as it was before I joined the team, but to me it all went downhill from there. This drove me crazy. It might seem like a little nickpicky thing. Very few people I worked with seemed very concerned about this disparity in portrayal. But to me, it's much bigger than it seems. Shugenja as another flavor of arcane wizard really undermines the setting in a fundamental way. It robs L5R of something unique and special that other fantasy settings didn't have. It makes our message inconsistent and muddy, impairing our suspension of disbelief and investment in Rokugan. It especially hurts the Phoenix because they are primarily shugenja, and if shugenja are wizards and not priests than the lore of the Phoenix doesn't make sense, and it makes the Phoenix into the vanilla wizard clan, which falls way short of their potential. On paper, yeah a clan of awesome magical wizards seems really cool, but in practice it gets really boring really quick when your clan of all-powerful mages can go anywhere and do anything and spontaneously know whatever they need to at any time, but for some reason aren't in charge of everything. It's ultimately a disservice to the Phoenix, who should be way cooler but get relegated to punching bag mages. This is not to mention the inherent problems that most settings with D&D-based magic run into, namely "Why aren't wizards just running everything?" or "Why is there still disease/starvation/bad weather/ etc." I could go on, but I think you get the point. In every fiction where I portrayed Shugenja, I tried really hard to make them unique and not just another mage flavor, and it was frustrating to know that most of those efforts would be in vain. But again, this is mostly a personal gripe. It could be that everything is fine and all of this is just in my head. It may seem a little silly, but I really cared about this stuff. Little details add up in a setting like this. Spookyelectric fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Dec 19, 2015 |
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Dec 19, 2015 21:17
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If it's any consolation, Spooky, the FFG forums agree with you. They've got a real big thread on how shugenja should change, and IF they should change, and the overwhelming opinion is "yes, they need to stop being the "good at everything wizards" and start having their own actual focus on spirituality in Rokugan the same way Bushi have a focus on war and battle and courtiers have a focus on courtly demeanor." I think it's easier for some family then others to have a sorta "gimmick" there. Kitsu of course very easily have their own focus on spirituality regarding their ancestors. The Asahina could focus on the more quiet meditative branch, the Isawa the more studious branch, while both still being more spiritual then "asian wizards." The Iuchi could actually stand out for having a very different and "weird" focus that isn't based on worshiping the kami. But then there's other stuff. I'm not sure where the Yoritomo would fit in (maybe just remove them again and stick with Moshi for the Mantis? But they'd need something that isn't "zap everything with lightning" too.) The Kuni have sorta ALWAYS felt way more "wizard-y" to me. The Soshi have a somewhat interesting gimmick in L5R4 but it also feels real "wizard-y;" still, they're probably the best of this group with their focus on NOT worshiping the kami, but instead dealing with them like you would a business contract. Agasha ARE just straight up wizards, and would need to be changed; likewise Tamori. As for the Lion, I think they also suffer from being the best clan to lose when you want to show how cool someone else is. It's the old comic books problem. I want to show off how badass my totally new original character is, but I don't want to actually put in effort, so I'll have them beat up Batman. The Lion are supposed to be the super strong army, so I'll show off how dangerous this new threat is by having them beat the Lion! Other then that they do suffer at lest in part from Wick actually outright hating the same sense of bushido and honor the game was actually supposed to be about, which lead to them getting non-stop dunked on and becoming super bland early enough to establish that as a thing. The need for an easy baddie to beat is also I think what happened to the Phoenix. "They're arrogant wizards, right? Let's have them get corrupted." Only repeated over and over and over again until the big joke is "Shiba Training 101: What to do when your shugenja inevitably is taken over by jigoku." I will also say as someone who doesn't play the card game but does try to stay on top of the lore that there was probably way too many little bits and pieces to keep track of. The wiki may be often wrong, but it's sometimes the only way to actually stay on top of things. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Dec 19, 2015 |
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Dec 19, 2015 22:27
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Yoritomo have always been linked with Osano-Wo and Thunder, though, it's not just lightning magic.
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Dec 19, 2015 23:08
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Halloween Jack posted:I used to would get into debates about how unbalanced design doesn't equal good roleplaying, but now I have a stock answer: Writing things down on a character sheet isn't roleplaying at all. All in all I think FFG has a lot of good material to work with but they also have their work cut out for them in fixing/focusing/managing the tone of the game, from both a mechanical and a setting perspective.
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Dec 19, 2015 23:46
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MonsieurChoc posted:Yoritomo have always been linked with Osano-Wo and Thunder, though, it's not just lightning magic. Yeah, but they need a means to apply that to something that isn't "throw lightning bolts" Like the Moshi have this deep traditional stance focused on praising the sun, and that translates to "is REAL good at throwing fireballs," which is more or less the very text of the problem.
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Dec 20, 2015 01:03
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ProfessorCirno posted:Yeah, but they need a means to apply that to something that isn't "throw lightning bolts" Oh sure, I agree. But I think refocusing the Yoritomo on the spiritual aspects they already have is more interesting than just getting rid of them is all.
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Dec 20, 2015 01:28
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I'm confident there is a way to re-imagine the shugenja families and schools so that they were closer to the shamanistic elemental priest concept without losing what makes each of the families special. Part of that would rely on well-established clan identities (and not deviating to the point where such a thing is pointless), but I think it can be done. I definitely try to do it for my home games. If the concept was observed as a stronger guideline than it is currently, then when you had shugenja families who deviated, it would mean more. For instance, the Tamori being a martially-minded and combat-ready shugenja family is supposed to be a big deal in-setting, but when all shugenja are "combat ready" then that takes the bite out of the martial shugenja concept. If they were one of the only such families, then it would mean more. Part of that means having actual social consequences for the ways of the family too, but that's another can of worms. I'm happy to hear I'm not the only one who feels this way, especially among the playerbase. I tend to avoid the FFG forums so I hadn't realized there was a thread about this. Maybe I should give it a look. You know, I'm really jealous of FFG right now. They've said that L5R will relaunch at GenCon in 2017. That probably gives them a year-long break to develop not only the new games, but to step back and really look at the setting in a critical way, to re-imagine the clan identities, to freshen things up, to create a unified vision for the setting. It's a new chance to do something great. I only wish we'd had a break or an opportunity to step back and do the same, the ability to re-imagine things, to give a more significant timejump and refresh the setting, to put the clan identities into a healthier place. I really wish we'd had that opportunity. FFG could do something really great here.
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Dec 20, 2015 04:19
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I think a lot of it just comes down to the fact that the CCG was published before everything had been hacked out. The original shugenja material in the CCG, with scrolls, apprentices, faeries, etc. may as well have come from A Certain Fantasy RPG, but with kimonos on. I don't think the priest angle really came in until the RPG, but it's hard to say. In any case, the need for shugenja to read from scrolls has always felt like an artifact to me, because it's hardly something they do a lot in the fiction, and barely ever in the art.
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Dec 20, 2015 08:14
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ProfessorCirno posted:As for the Lion, I think they also suffer from being the best clan to lose when you want to show how cool someone else is. It's the old comic books problem. I want to show off how badass my totally new original character is, but I don't want to actually put in effort, so I'll have them beat up Batman. The Lion are supposed to be the super strong army, so I'll show off how dangerous this new threat is by having them beat the Lion! Other then that they do suffer at lest in part from Wick actually outright hating the same sense of bushido and honor the game was actually supposed to be about, which lead to them getting non-stop dunked on and becoming super bland early enough to establish that as a thing. The need for an easy baddie to beat is also I think what happened to the Phoenix. "They're arrogant wizards, right? Let's have them get corrupted." Only repeated over and over and over again until the big joke is "Shiba Training 101: What to do when your shugenja inevitably is taken over by jigoku."  , but Lion are definitely the Worf in that regard. Off the top of my head, if they want to give the clan more identity than "samurai but moreso," the foolhardiness of the Matsu ought to be balanced by the fact that they have a huge territory to defend and a lot of mouths to feed; they can't be ignorant of that. Presumably they pay more attention to their ledgers than the Dragon and Phoenix.I pay very little attention to the shugenja side of things--it's nice to play a game where the party doesn't need someone to be the wizard. It certainly seems inconsistent. One thing that bothers me in particular: shouldn't the Scorpion's Traitor's Grove be considered maho?
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Dec 21, 2015 21:12
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Scorpion fluff is weird and real inconsistent at times because who the Scorpion are has changed a lot. Going off second hand memory, Scorpion started off as unplayable bad guys. They were literally just flat out the bad guys, the end. They morphed over time as the "shady clan who uses all the forbidden stuff," aka their shadow ninjas that tapped into Nothing, their traitor's grove, their underhanded ways, etc. Unfortunately, they were also Wick's pet Clan (see again Wick's open loathing for honor and bushido that the game is nominally supposed to be about), so it ALSO became an established thing of "the Scorpion openly break the law and aren't actually sneaky at all about their stupid lovely evil, but have immunity." Wick's adoration for the Scorpion just ended up making them even MORE one note. Since then there's been attempts to crowbar the Scorpion into something a lot more usable then "the bad guys who always get away with it," but I always got the sense that there was too much dumb stuff from early on that had become impossible to get rid of.
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Dec 21, 2015 22:16
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Halloween Jack posted:I pay very little attention to the shugenja side of things--it's nice to play a game where the party doesn't need someone to be the wizard. It certainly seems inconsistent. One thing that bothers me in particular: shouldn't the Scorpion's Traitor's Grove be considered maho? It totally should be. It's not even terribly secret, most of the clan supposedly knows, and it's not even that far off one of the main roads. Way of the Scorpion didn't explain why, though, and I don't know if any other books did. ProfessorCirno posted:Scorpion fluff is weird and real inconsistent at times because who the Scorpion are has changed a lot. Going off second hand memory, Scorpion started off as unplayable bad guys. Well, not quite. The scorpion were just a sub-faction in the original set of L5R cards (Imperial Edition), which had about two known scorpions, the well-known Bayushi Kachiko and the much more obscure Bayushi Togai. There was also the ronin named Hisa, who in later sets would turn out to be Bayushi Hisa, a scorpion spy. Finally, there was Yogo Junzo, but he had already left the clan by the events of the first set, and it was a good while before we found out the name Yogo was associated with the Scorpion at all. You could play with them under the other six clans but their clan affiliation meant you played them like any unaligned card (i.e. like a ronin or monster). It was the first expansion set, Shadowlands, added then as a playable clan (even though at that point their clan status had been stripped, they gave no fucks). In fact, the first deck I played was Scorpion because I was told they were the equivalent of Magic's gently caress-you-blue, and that was true except they were lovely and awful to play for a number of reasons I got into in my Way of the Scorpion review. The point I'm getting around to is by the time Wick has been brought into write the first storyline, most of the clans had been defined - Crab, Crane, Dragon, Lion, Phoenix, and Unicorn. The Scorpion were added in as part of the story by John Wick himself. So unlike all the other clans, they weren't just figuratively his clan, they were literally the only one at the time that were his creation, and they reflect the kind of sneaky bastard he plays himself up as. When the RPG came in, it took place well before the events of Imperial Edition, which then gave us Scorpion as a playable clan from the start, since they hadn't fallen yet - in addition to the aforementioned six plus begrudging support for ronin. So they've been in for awhile, and they were always attached to Wick in a way the other clans just weren't. (The Wasp are his second child, but that's another story.)
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Dec 21, 2015 22:57
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Alien Rope Burn posted:It totally should be. It's not even terribly secret, most of the clan supposedly knows, and it's not even that far off one of the main roads. Way of the Scorpion didn't explain why, though, and I don't know if any other books did.
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Dec 21, 2015 23:01
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Alien Rope Burn posted:So they've been in for awhile, and they were always attached to Wick in a way the other clans just weren't. (The Wasp are his second child, but that's another story.) Hmmm I wonder what the Wasp think of samurai and bushi - oh, of course.
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Dec 22, 2015 01:47
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Halloween Jack posted:Wick wrote the corebook for a game about a fantasy samurai empire, and would go on to create an indie game about samurai as feudal vassals. But he earned a reputation for disdaining fantasy and pissing on samurai honour at every opportunity. It's odd. I'm hoping FFG can scrub this influence from their edition of the L5R RPG when it comes out. Ronin have improved over the years, but they still carry a bit of this baggage with them. The archetype is an incredibly potent one, so I'd like to see them become a more viable option. I'm not saying they should be equal to the clans but you should be able to do Yojimbo and Sanjuro in Rokugan with zero problems.
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Dec 22, 2015 04:39
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Halloween Jack posted:It's mentioned in their writeup in the 4e corebook, which leads me to assume that it's not a deep dark secret. Canonically, it is a HUGE secret outside the clan, but not a big secret inside the clan. Some know of it outside the clan, but usually there are things keeping them "in check." There was a time when all the clans had at least one huge, "would-destroy-their-image-if-discovered" secret that each samurai was super invested in keeping. Most had more than a few. But as time passed, those secrets started to get exposed in story, and now there are relatively few. And since players generally don't want their clans accumulating those kinds of secrets (or fighting other clans, or being antagonists, or acting like samurai, or...) the whole carefully-guarded secret cache has gotten pretty low. In the same vein, Sleeping Lake is canonically secret to the Empire, but after the most recent Kotei season and a chosen story prize (sigh) it was slated to be discovered and then occupied by the Lion Clan. But then they sold L5R before we could write that fiction. So the Scorpion win again I guess? 
Spookyelectric fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Dec 22, 2015 |
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Dec 22, 2015 05:11
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Alien Rope Burn posted:So they've been in for awhile, and they were always attached to Wick in a way the other clans just weren't. (The Wasp are his second child, but that's another story.) I understood the Wasp were created by Rick Dakan, not John Wick. In fact, John Wick didn't create any of the Minor Clans, from what I was told. Although they could have still become his pet project after the fact, I suppose.
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Dec 22, 2015 05:27
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Spookyelectric posted:In the same vein, Sleeping Lake is canonically secret to the Empire, but after the most recent Kotei season and a chosen story prize (sigh) it was slated to be discovered and then occupied by the Lion Clan. But then they sold L5R before we could write that fiction. So the Scorpion win again I guess? The sale is itself a Scorpion machination. FFG is infiltrated.
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Dec 22, 2015 05:30
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Spookyelectric posted:I understood the Wasp were created by Rick Dakan, not John Wick. I'm not surprised - I honestly didn't know who did create the Minor Clans - but Wick was the first to detail the Wasp in a Shadis article. For some reason that writeup basically got completely rewritten by another author for Way of the Minor Clans (nothing was changed, it was just rewritten), but Wick gave us their backstory and concept beyond just "bow guys". Anyway, Traitor's Grove to me was always weird to me because:
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Dec 22, 2015 07:20
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I think if you swing too far in the pacifist direction with shugenja you end up undermining the whole bit of the Asahina's shtick of abject pacifists. Thinking of shugenja as priests might be an issue because of western connotations of the word. While their powers stem from paying respect to the spirits, the spirits are still below humans in the celestial order and are duty bound to serve them as necessary. This plays a part into why maho is so reviled. The tsukai is subverting the natural order by submitting himself to the spirits. There's also the class issue of it putting too much power into the hands of the lower class.
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Dec 23, 2015 21:35
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That still does not make them wizardly, however. One could argue that their role in the celestial order just further reinforces them as priestly mediums and not arcane casters.
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Dec 23, 2015 21:48
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I'm not saying they should be, I just think they should be thought of as something outside the arcane/divine binary DnD has set as the standard.
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Dec 24, 2015 16:00
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Am I the only one who really just does not have any problems with (at least some) shugenja acting like "wizards"? Because personally I think it's a nice bit of differentiation for the Agasha/Isawa to treat their spellcasting as "look it's basically math, you input these words and out comes a fireball" and other families to have any of the other opinions on shugenja magic. And yet I got loving chewed out in an L5R game I was thinking of joining because I did the unspeakable deed of calling shugenja spellcasters. It just seems like an odd thing to pick a fight about when there's more than enough room for all the different notions, and in fact having them all makes for a great point of tension between shugenja of different schools.
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Dec 24, 2015 16:08
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The entire point of having different schools is some dudes are all "I SPEAK TO THE GODS I AM BUT A VESSEL FOR THE POWER" and some dudes are all "Yo check my magic math out" and yea, some guys are just 'I'm a goddamn wizard, boom'. Getting mad over the word 'spellcaster' is the actual definition of missing the forest for the trees in L5R.
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Dec 24, 2015 17:19
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Shame on you for calling them what they are. gently caress, the Spells and Magic section in 3e starts with "If a shugenja wishes to cast a spell..." gently caress those idiots. They're spells in the form of prayers to the spirits. Shugenja cast those spells by praying. It's pretty goddamned autismal to yell at you for that.
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Dec 24, 2015 18:47
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Yeah, it's the exact terminology. It's not a term you'd use in-setting, but as an OOC term it's perfectly descriptive.
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Dec 24, 2015 18:55
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Who was the guy behind the Dark Sword of Bitter Lies school? Was that Wick or was that someone else?
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Dec 24, 2015 20:36
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The original Dark Sword of Bitter lies technique thing was Wick, except he thought he was showing off how dumb honor-obsessed characters who tried to earnestly follow bushido -really- were and then other folks were like "But wait, this is actually pretty awesome" and so it became an ongoing thing with a school for it later on Or at least, that's how I understand it.
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Dec 24, 2015 21:14
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The Dark Sword of Bitter Lies was based around Bayushi Tangen, and - you know, I covered him in my FATAL & Friends writeup of Way of the Scorpion. He's basically a character who Wick created as a gag as a character who's really really excited about being a part of the Scorpion clan but has no actual sense or subtlety. He's loyal and eager to a fault and has his own idiot savant technique, and his higher-ups keep trying to get him killed but he's too lucky to die. People liked him a lot and later developers canonized his fake poser "school" into an actual bushi school. Not sure who was precisely responsible for that, though. Edit: in you want to see a Scorpion who follows bushido, that's actually Wick's character (Bayushi Yojiro), and his adherence to bushido is basically his key flaw. Well, other than lusting after this champion's wife, but Yojiro is too noble to act on it because of bushido. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Dec 24, 2015 |
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Dec 24, 2015 23:06
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Yawgmoth posted:Am I the only one who really just does not have any problems with (at least some) shugenja acting like "wizards"? Because personally I think it's a nice bit of differentiation for the Agasha/Isawa to treat their spellcasting as "look it's basically math, you input these words and out comes a fireball" and other families to have any of the other opinions on shugenja magic. And yet I got loving chewed out in an L5R game I was thinking of joining because I did the unspeakable deed of calling shugenja spellcasters. It just seems like an odd thing to pick a fight about when there's more than enough room for all the different notions, and in fact having them all makes for a great point of tension between shugenja of different schools. Like, having one or two shugenja do it is fine, the problem is that all shugenja do it. It's what leads to the issues of shugenja becoming great at everything - just as with almost any other RPG, "spellcaster" isn't a role, it's how you perform a role, and if your only role is "spellcaster," it becomes "do everything." Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but you also kinda showed the problem. The Isawa DON'T treat spellcasting like one big math problem. Because spellcasting ISN'T a math problem. This is the fluff issue that plagues shugenja - you aren't supposed to be a D&D-rear end wizard. You're praying to the kami and asking them to do a thing for you. This is real important: the shugenja has no actual magic power of their own outside of "talk to the elemental kami." The family that actually does boil all this poo poo down is the Soshi who treat the whole thing as a business transaction.
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Dec 25, 2015 00:01
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ProfessorCirno posted:Like, having one or two shugenja do it is fine, the problem is that all shugenja do it. It's what leads to the issues of shugenja becoming great at everything - just as with almost any other RPG, "spellcaster" isn't a role, it's how you perform a role, and if your only role is "spellcaster," it becomes "do everything." ProfessorCirno posted:Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but you also kinda showed the problem. The Isawa DON'T treat spellcasting like one big math problem. Because spellcasting ISN'T a math problem. This is the fluff issue that plagues shugenja - you aren't supposed to be a D&D-rear end wizard. You're praying to the kami and asking them to do a thing for you. This is real important: the shugenja has no actual magic power of their own outside of "talk to the elemental kami." The family that actually does boil all this poo poo down is the Soshi who treat the whole thing as a business transaction.
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Dec 25, 2015 01:43
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Re: Wick and Dark Sword of Bitter Lies: When 4e was coming out, there was a thread on RPG.net that had a few quotes that I found pretty funny on the subject: John Wick posted:That's a joke, right? Bitter Lies. John Wick posted:
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Dec 27, 2015 09:52
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If Wick added anything good to this game, it was entirely by accident.
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Dec 27, 2015 14:12
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Just consider yourselves lucky there isn't a Fudo school. (Except there is) Spookyelectric fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Dec 27, 2015 |
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Dec 27, 2015 15:55
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Hah, Ree Soesbee. Isn't she the writer that made her author insert a club-footed Crane poet/dancer/whatever that was super graceful and lovely at everything she did and died a valorous and tragic death?
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Dec 27, 2015 20:11
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In the OOC thread for Honor Sharp as Steel, we were just talking about Shiba Tsukune... I'm kinda fascinated by the Dark Sword of Bitter Lies school, as in how that would actually work from a technical point of view. I assume it's the kenjutsu equivalent of teaching somebody only the most flashy moves that show up in "I can't believe he did that" MMA YouTubes without any underlying basics. So everything they do is wild desperation attacks that aren't supposed to work.
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Dec 27, 2015 20:51
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As egregious as Tsukune Shiba is, she really isn't the worst out there. That goes to just about every pet character Wick had, but most especially Kachiko, who is the very embodiment of "this character only continues to exist because the writer mandates it."
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Dec 27, 2015 22:47
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TheWyrmDude posted:Hah, Ree Soesbee. Isn't she the writer that made her author insert a club-footed Crane poet/dancer/whatever that was super graceful and lovely at everything she did and died a valorous and tragic death? Doji Shizue. She's a special snowflake, to be sure, but not egregiously so by Legend of the Five Rings standards. She ends up turning out have been massively manipulated by the Kolat and though she has a noble death to prompt some sort of redemptive arc for Akodo Kage (that we never actually see), it's not one that has much of an impact on the storyline itself.
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Dec 27, 2015 22:57
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm kinda fascinated by the Dark Sword of Bitter Lies school, as in how that would actually work from a technical point of view. I assume it's the kenjutsu equivalent of teaching somebody only the most flashy moves that show up in "I can't believe he did that" MMA YouTubes without any underlying basics. So everything they do is wild desperation attacks that aren't supposed to work. It is supposed to be a tiny school that is a joke to pretty much the entire clan. It exists only to save face and because it is useful to have a place to send the gently caress-ups who won't excel anywhere else. They are essentially brainwashed into believing they are invincible and thus make good sacrificial troops. The result is that the Bitter Lies school has a lot of students during peacetime and barely any after a war, and their Sensei is inevitably someone with insane luck and insights he doesn't share with students. Canonically, over 95% of Bitter Lies students die off during times of war or clan conflict. The remaining 5% have the luck of demons. But this is yet another aspect of the canon that is often contradicted by the CCG. Because the Bitter Lies stuff is so popular with Scorpion players, "Bitter Lies Swordsman" was literally a theme Design built into Scorpion military decks for two arcs. This meant that virtually every Scorpion samurai printed at the time also had the Bitter Lies trait. Those characters also happened to be generally good and designed to be as "cool" as possible. As consequence, Bitter Lies characters were constantly being chosen for story prizes, resulting in a lot of story time for the dojo. This resulted in the common perception that the Bitter Lies samurai were both super common and good at what they did. The same problem that happened with the Harriers, actually. It's hard to argue that this tiny elite group of samurai that go against the grain of the clan are an exception to the rules and very uncommon when there is an entire decktheme around it, every printed samurai of the faction is one of these elites, and they're constantly being featured in story. The CCG Design Team had arguably more power to shape the story and perceptions of the canon than Story Team did, ultimately even when it comes to the RPG. Significant Story bandwidth was concentrated on rationalizing Design decisions and CCG winner choices. Design and Marketing never really saw that as a problem, though. Edit: Alien Rope Burn posted:Doji Shizue. She's a special snowflake, to be sure, but not egregiously so by Legend of the Five Rings standards. Agreed. Compare her to the masked man Daigotsu, who began as an interesting and complex villain, lost most of what made him interesting after Gold Edition, and eventually became literal Rokugani Jesus. In my opinion, they should have left the guy dead. Spookyelectric fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Dec 27, 2015 |
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Dec 27, 2015 23:01
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