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Yoshimo posted:Are there any good pregenerated/published scenarios? I know there's the one in the back of the book (which we've done) and the one that came out on Free RPG Day - Legacy of Disaster? But I don't really have the time just yet to start making my own stuff up. Any ideas? I ran my playgroup through 1st Edition's "Code of Bushido" in our 4th Edition game, and everyone had a blast! Just a few setting-related stuff needed tweaking for what we were playing, the actual adventure is mostly fluff and works just fine. There are also a ton of "Challenge/Focus/Strike" formatted adventure hooks on the AEG forums, as provided by fans. A lot of them are... well... not so great, but here's a thread with some decent hooks that give a GM a lot of leeway: http://www.alderac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=13670&start=3
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May 10, 2012 04:52
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Oh cool! An L5R thread! Regarding the Second City Boxed Set, I'm one of the guys who worked on that, and I have to say that I'm really proud of how it turned out. I wrote a decent portion of the "People" book and did all the graphic design and layout for most of the product. At it's inception, we were aiming for the kind of product that an L5R playgroup could potentially pool their money together and buy. Ideally, six players and a GM could contribute ~$12 each and have a campaign and setting that they could run a game in, and each of the players could get some dice, a playset of stance cards, the technique cards they carded about, a premium character sheet, and so forth. The concept sort of grew from there into what it ultimately ended up as. There were a lot of speedbumps along the way for this project, but in spite of a handful of flaws, I'm really happy with the finished product. I hope you guys like it!
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Oct 27, 2012 22:40
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An eclectic (to put it politely) canon is perhaps the biggest consequence of deriving the setting's major events from CCG Tournament wins and player choices. Sometimes you get a player's choice that directly undermines the feel of the setting, but it's difficult to deny because that player earned his or her victory justly. Plus, everything's got to be epic-level and "all-or-nothing" to drive players to the events and give the story wins some actual meaning. But honestly, it's the more mundane, personal, Kurosawa-style stories and conflicts that I enjoy the most. Not so much the "we have to save the world again" stuff that, while perhaps necessary for the CCG-side of things, tends to lose sight of the interpersonal samurai drama. I think one of the greatest appeals of the 4th Edition is that it seems to retain that 1st Edition feel that encourages the smaller, more personal kind of game that I love to play, without discouraging those who want to cut down entire ranks with their magical katanas.
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Feb 10, 2013 21:12
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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 |
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Mar 25, 2013 20:55
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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.
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Mar 25, 2013 21:58
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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 |
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Mar 28, 2013 01:17
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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. 
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Mar 28, 2013 15:01
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Just throwing this out there: I finished the layout for The Book of Fire just a few days ago, and it should go to print any day now. Expect a corresponding product page on the AEG site sometime in the near future. Not sure when it will actually go on sale, probably not until IH2 has had its adequate time in the spotlight.
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Apr 12, 2013 00:57
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Gravy Train Robber posted:Whats the delay usually between when the physical copy goes on sale and the digital version? It's usually a month or two, and that's only because of how Drive Thru handles the digital files. When I first started handling this, I'd assumed they just wanted the print-ready PDF, but that's not the case. They want all of the source files and they make their own PDF from that in-house. I was a little surprised when I learned that, but I can see why they prefer to do things that way. Alien Rope Burn posted:Thanks! I was curious, since Shawn mentioned it would be wrapped up early this month. As exciting as Imperial Histories has been, I admit I'm looking more forward to Book of Fire, since it'll provide a lot more immediate utility. I know, utility, how droll compared to Samurai! In! Spaaaaaaace. I got to write about swordsmithing and poetry, so I'm happy with it.
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Apr 12, 2013 18:04
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I got my City of Lies boxed set at GenCon last year. I felt very lucky to find it. It was only twenty bucks! They had a lot of "vintage" L5R books, come to think of it.
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May 29, 2013 16:39
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ScottyBomb posted:Not only is this awesome, this is better than anything the actual L5R story team is doing with the colony. An ironic thing to say, considering how many L5R Story Team members were involved in writing the boxed set.
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Sep 8, 2013 17:21
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ProfessorCirno posted:Wasn't IH2 supposed to be a physical copy only release? Nope. It was also supposed to be digital. I should know; I sent Drive Thru the files personally over a month ago. I honestly have no idea what the hold up is. Edit: Seems that it just went up today: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/120989/Legend-of-the-Five-Rings-Imperial-Histories-2 ...Yay? Spookyelectric fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Oct 27, 2013 |
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Oct 27, 2013 00:06
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If it makes you feel any better, I can only shed some light on the stuff I'm involved with... which admittedly isn't very much. AEG does need to step up their RPG promotions, though. No argument there. It took a long time to even get updates on the main page whenever a new book came out. Hopefully their new Community Organizer will help with that.
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Oct 27, 2013 00:26
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I'm one of the writers for that book, and I also did the layout and graphic design. I got to write the sections for my three favorite Minor Clans (Sparrow, Dragonfly, Oriole, in case you wanted to know), and I also got to do fictions for other sections, like the Monks and a few of the other Minor Clans. Got to help design mechanics too, which was fun. I'm to blame for the new weapon-forging rules.  One of the things I'm proudest of, though, are the new Minor Clan Mons, which I convinced the big-wigs was needed for the book. Also, the School Index in the back, which took me a long time to compile but I think it was needed.I'm especially pleased that I finally got to fill in one of the biggest mechanical, crafting-related gaps in the game... the fact that the Katana had no Koku value and, consequently, no Crafting TN. Edit: Obviously, I am very excited for this book.
Spookyelectric fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Dec 9, 2013 |
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Dec 9, 2013 22:26
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wargames posted:Do you play on FRO? I'm sorry, but I'm honestly not sure what that is. I've done L5R Play by Post on forums, if that's what you mean.
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Dec 10, 2013 04:26
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Ah! No, that's not me, I wrote the fiction introducing that Chapter, but not the Chapter itself. The vast bulk of my writing is contained to the Minor Clans Chapter of the book.
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Dec 10, 2013 04:43
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I posted about this in the CCG thread as well, but since I'm trying to get the message out to as many L5R players as possible: We're now looking for more people to join the Story Team. Right now it's just me, Shawn, and Brian writing fictions, and that's just not going to cut it. Story Team actually has more to do with the CCG-side of L5R than the RPG-side, but historically we've had better luck with RPG players, just because of the nature of the hobby. Plus, being on the Story Team sometimes means you get to write for the RPG, and that's pretty fun. In case you didn't know, the L5R Story Team is on a volunteer basis; the only members of the team that are AEG employees are Shawn as Story Lead, Fred as Continuity Editor, and Rob as RPG Lead. The L5R Story Team writes all the weekly fictions (now bi-weekly, during Ivory Edition), any other official fictions like those going in rulebooks and the Herald, flavor text, and so forth. We're basically in charge of 70% of all canon. Sometimes we get input on things like card themes and tournament story prizes, but not usually. There's no money, but AEG sends you free playsets of each L5R expansion and base set. You also get all the promos and sometimes some bonus stuff. They pay you in merchandise, basically. Oh, and sometimes they'll pay for your hotel room and badge at GenCon, which is pretty sweet. If you write for the RPG though, you get paid for that. If you know the setting pretty well, or you're willing to learn, and if you can write decently and want to try out, you can enter by submitting a 2000 to 3000 word short story to l5rstoryteam@gmail.com. It doesn't have to be set in the contemporary version of Rokugan, but it needs to be in some part of the canonical timeline. Details should be on L5R's website. If you are selected you'll enter the second round of choices. In all honesty, being on the Story Team has it's ups and downs. It's been a very eye-opening experience for me. But I'm glad I worked up the courage to try out and it can be very rewarding to see or hear people chatting about your work. You also get to see a side of the industry that is invisible to a lot of people, for better or for worse. I've made a lot of good friends and contacts through this work and I encourage any aspiring writer to give it a shot.
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Apr 20, 2014 22:03
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FreshFeesh posted:Has anyone else picked up Sword and Fan? I bought it while waiting on the Book of Void to come out and have been pleasantly surprised with the amount of history/setting that was put into it. I highly recommend Sword and Fan! But then I'm pretty biased.
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Sep 19, 2014 21:25
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AmiYumi posted:Does anyone know what has been up with AEG's distribution since 4e launched? Every book I try to order online (especially anything pre-ordered on Amazon) ships well after release, from weeks to 3+ months. Book of the Void has been delayed over and over to the point that it now just says "will ship at some unknown future date". The Book of Void doesn't release until September 29th, so it's not even out yet. AEG has this way of not announcing when their books will release, giving vague estimates like "3rd quarter" or "fall," etc. I have noticed that a lot of online vendors will basically guess a release date, display that as if it is a solid release date, and then push it back when the book fails to release. Amazon does this a lot. So does Diamond. Maybe that accounts for it?
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Sep 22, 2014 13:20
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FreshFeesh posted:Book of Void had a proposed release date of "August, 2014" for a good long while; I put in a preorder with my FLGS in early July. I'm not holding my breath for the 29th, sadly. AEG brought a bunch of copies of Book of Void to GenCon for early release and sold them. That's where I got mine. I did the layout for the book months ago and it went to print in June. It's been on the website listed as September 29th for a long time now. I think you can hold your breath. Although I guess how soon FLGS get them/order them is another matter.
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Sep 23, 2014 12:35
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Ardulac posted:So I've just been reading through some of the books and most of it makes sense, but sometimes the rules seem intentionally vague. For instance, the Mirumoto Taoist Swordman's Rank 3 ability (p.221 of Emerald Empire) seems nearly worthless to me. It lets you spend void points on damage with swords, but the katana already allows that (and Rank 3 is specifically mentioned as "stacking" with that ability). Since you can't spend multiple void points in a round (barring a special ability), it doesn't seem like they mean the abilities stack by allowing you to use both separately in a round (or if it did, it would hardly matter). On the other hand, if they mean that they stack by allowing each void point to give +2k2, then they wrote it in a very confusing way and the rank 5 ability would be absolutely disgusting. 1) The rank three Taoist Swordsman technique allows you to spend Void for a damage roll using any non-katana sword. So it basically gives you the katana's Void-spending option for any sword. 2) The last paragraph's clarification that this ability "stacks" with the existing ability of the katana creates an exception to the "one Void Point per round" rule. It's basically them giving you an additional ability to spend (another) void if you're using the katana. So if you're wielding a katana and you have this ability, you can spend 2 void to add +2k2 to the katana's damage roll. In other words, it's like a limited version of the Shiba Rank 1 technique. At least, that is how I understand it.
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Sep 25, 2014 22:10
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Speaking as one of the GMs for the WC4 event, and as a member of Story Team: the GM messed up on the spreadsheet. It's as simple as that. Sadly the Heir I wanted to win, didn't.
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Feb 23, 2015 05:20
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You know, I think Rob actually told me that story at the last GenCon. I guess you made an impression!
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May 12, 2015 06:52
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A good story, I recall. It's pretty amusing!FreshFeesh posted:Some months ago there was some hubbub about an atlas or map book coming out soon – did that ever materialize or is it still pending? I'm actually laying out that book as we speak.
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May 12, 2015 07:28
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The "easiest" way would be for the Emperor to just swoop in and appoint someone to be the new Daimyo. But usually that is the last thing that the Clan would want, because the Emperor can be unpredictable in that regard, and the Sparrow would lose face for their inability to handle their own affairs, especially the Champion for not tending to his clan. I'd imagine the Gozoku probably would not want the Emperor to do this either, unless it somehow enabled their mechanizations. So even though this is the easiest way to resolve this, and technically it's how Rokugani society should work, it doesn't benefit the Sparrow to draw the attention of the Emperor and resolve that way. So ironically, they'd probably want to avoid this outcome. One thing about Rokugan is that often things devolve into "might makes right." Depending on the mindset of the Sensei, a few duels could resolve who should take charge. Or you could go the classic fantasy route and have the sensei issue a challenging task, rewarding whomever accomplishes it with lordship over the domain. If the sensei is Dragon, then the task could even be an obtuse riddle.
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May 13, 2015 17:07
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I just finished the layout for the Atlas of Rokugan today. It should go to print within the next day or so. It's very big. Not Core Rulebook Big, but maybe closer to Imperial Histories big.
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May 22, 2015 21:44
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I don't really know with 100% certainty, but I think there will at least be a map of Rokugan, and I'd be surprised it if wasn't a fold-out map, at least the size of the City of Lies foldout map from 1st Edition. The image file can certainly accommodate one of a decent size. Sorry I can't be more helpful on that front.
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May 23, 2015 07:50
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Yawgmoth posted:How many of these maps will have a scale attached to them? I would hope "all of them" but that seems like too much to expect. There's actually a rough scale attached to most of the maps, but if you're hoping for a geographical survey with modern-era accuracy, then you will be disappointed. The maps are "accurate enough" to give a good idea of how far apart things are, how long it might take to get from one spot to another, etc. But they're also drawn similarly to how a Rokugani cartographer might draw them. The size of cities and castles, for instance, vary based on their political importance and the influence of their lords, not their actual size, and some things have been represented with an emphasis on aesthetics rather than accuracy. The cartographer would not want to insult certain lords by implying certain locations are "more important" or "grander" than their own, and certain borders are disputed between clans, resulting in compromises on the map. This is touched upon in the book. I did my best to find a middle ground between "this is exactly how far these are apart" and "this map is loving useless." It won't please everyone, but hopefully it will please most. It's better than the 2nd Ed maps, at least. And although I'm not a cartographer, I can promise at least that I was consistent in scale. The maps are also attempting to make some sense of the often contradictory nature of L5R lore in regards to where things are. For instance, prior to 4th Edition, the Hare Clan lands are described to be in three different locations based on the era, as are the magical teleporting Centipede lands. Or the Kitsune Mori, which is simultaneously snaking thin and extremely vast, bordering lands that later are described as not sharing a border, etc. We had to somehow reconcile this in the Atlas. With contradicting sources, and earlier sources making less sense than newer ones in some cases, which one do you go with? And don't get me started on Zakyo Toshi, it's supposed to guard the borders of clans that don't share borders! Some locations, frankly, just don't make sense, and our challenge is that we have to somehow make sense of them on the map. The magically-changing size of Rokugan is also addressed and we attempt to "fix" the problems of inconsistency of size between editions. We seriously had so many headaches trying to make a map that was as faithful to all of the existing material as possible, and in the end, we had to make some difficult gut calls. But honestly, I am extremely proud of how it all turned out. I am proud to say that this is the definitive map of Rokugan, and I honestly feel that it is better and more complete than any previous map to be released. At the very least, it will be more dependable than the maps of 3rd Edition, more consistent than the 4th Edition map, and more useful/accurate than the 2nd Edition maps. A lot of time and love went into these. I hope most people like them. Macdeo Lurjtux posted:More important, are the any sections that say "Here there be oni" ? Not exactly, but there is... something. Spookyelectric fucked around with this message at 19:32 on May 23, 2015 |
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May 23, 2015 19:28
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They released the map of Rokugan at GenCon as RPG swag. The Atlas, which includes the same fold-out map, will release in September.
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Aug 6, 2015 20:56
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Plague of Hats posted:Wasn't AEG going to do a new print run of some books? What happened with that? They had new prints of old books at GenCon this year, even books that have been out of print like Great Clans. I know there are guys at Fantasy Flight that are big fans of the RPG, so I suspect there will be something. There's a lot we don't know yet (like how many of us will continue to work on the game), but hopefully we'll hear something soon. I have a lot of confidence in Fantasy Flight. I think L5R is in good hands.
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Sep 12, 2015 05:31
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This post went up from Dave Laderoute on the L5R Facebook group today (Bolded stuff is RPG-relevant, it's at the bottom. You can skip everything else if you're only interested in the RPG): quote:Samurai of Rokugan, Hope it's okay that I posted the whole thing.
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Sep 12, 2015 20:01
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ProfessorCirno posted:Oh, and the Phoenix kinda bizarrely made this giant screed about blood purity and how mixing races was sinful and all this poo poo, aimed directly at the Unicorn, and the Unicorn told them to put the gently caress up or shut the gently caress up, and I'm not sure where that went. It was that the Moto are still cursed and they're passing that curse through blood lineage without telling anyone. As for where it went... I'll hopefully finish writing that fiction by the end of this week. ProfessorCirno posted:I skipped over some of the minor stuff, but he's done stuff like "enter the Emerald Championship, which more or less threw off the legitimacy of the whole event, because he felt like it" or "rolled into the Second City unannounced, told everyone else to gently caress off, and claimed rulership for no given reason." No, that was his brother Shibatsu. And he had a reason, restoring order to the city. How flimsy or strong that reason may have been could be up for debate, however. Point being, that wasn't the guy you're talking about. Edit: If I ever do an L5R Story Team AMA (why the hell would anyone be interested in that, though?), I would have a lot to say about the Unicorn-Phoenix conflict and the circumstances surrounding that little story arc. Sometimes everything goes right and sometimes everything goes terribly, horribly wrong... Spookyelectric fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Dec 19, 2015 |
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Dec 19, 2015 09:07
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ProfessorCirno posted:I thought Seiken was the one who rolled in and told the Crab to demolish the entire city and rebuild it from scratch as a Proper Rokugan City apropos of nothing? Ah, I thought you were referring to an earlier event. No, Seiken didn't even go to the Second City until after the event you're talking about. As I recall, what happened was that Seiken attempted to garner colonial support by rebuilding parts of the Second City that were destroyed by the whole P'an Ku/Fudo mess, asked the Crab to handle it and help him "shape the city into something more worthy", and they took it as an excuse to demolish a bunch of Spider-controlled holdings and buildings that were of gaijin origin to "make room." Basically as a middle finger to anyone the Crab doesn't like. That's not what the wiki says, but don't trust the wiki. The wiki is often wrong. If I can go on a little rant here: This was a story point that needed more than just a slew of clan letters to portray, but there was no other place to put it. I don't think it was very clearly communicated as consequence. But then, that specific batch of Clan Letters were a lot of trouble for us anyway. As I recall, about half of them weren't even written by Story Team due to how slammed we were. They were contracted out to other writers and I believe they got published without anyone from Story Team even having the chance to look at them and see if they actually said what we wanted them to say (they were turned directly in to brand). I honestly think that less fictions with more personal focus would have served us better than one fiction per week. The guys above us looked at the fictions as "Free Content" and a product we gave away to add value to the brand. Which is true, to a point. But at the same time, all of these stories and so-called "required reading" to make sense of the metaplot also created a barrier to entry. To get what's going on, players would have to read a ton of fiction, and ain't nobody got time for that. Add to that the rapid accumulation of story prizes (every Kotei gets a unique story prize, and there are like sixty Koteis or something insane), and the mandate that every expansion get its own story and three fictions devoted to that story, plus a "focus story" for each clan, and we quickly find our metaplot diluted. Instead of all the fictions adding up to one evolving storyline with concurrently-evolving characters, we end up with a bunch of "flash-in-the-pan" events that pick up and resolve very quickly, storylines being dropped abruptly, and everything completely divorced from whatever is supposed to push the story. So when the story needs to be pushed, it's basically forced. I never thought I'd say this when I joined the team... but we made too many fictions. Less fictions, where each fiction had greater impact on the main story but a smaller focus, would have served us better. I think. I'm not complaining, and I don't "blame" anyone, per se. Their priorities are different from ours and they're trying to protect and market the brand. The success of a story for them is through the lens of how well it could be marketed, and it's easier to market the kinds of conflicts they were asking us to write. But I do find it a little ironic that mere months after Story Team finally got the autonomy we've been wanting for years, they up and sell the brand. Oh well. FFG will do a good job. I have no worries about that. But if they decide to continue the focus on story during their tenure, my advice to them would be less fictions with more actual content, and focus the story on a limited cast of bigger-than-life characters whose actions are affected by players, rather than a bunch of stories with a massive cast of interchangeable spuds via story choices that are practically unlimited. If that makes sense. Spookyelectric fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Dec 19, 2015 |
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Dec 19, 2015 17:18
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Sega 32X posted:If you ever do one, I can back you up with story team evidence from earlier eras! L5R Story Team Bros! High Five! We should start a
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Dec 19, 2015 17:24
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The Lion need some serious TLC. Every clan has flanderized to a certain degree, but I think the Lion have suffered the most, with the Phoenix at a close second. In First Edition and at the start of the game, they were one of the most interesting clans, if only for the dynamic between the families. The Ikoma were extremely colorful and one of the only families that could show open emotion in court without being shamed. Matsu brashness was only one aspect of their warrior bragging culture, and they were almost like a matriarchal re-imagining of the mythical Spartans. The Kitsu were priests who could commune with and channel the dead before anyone else could (and they didn't even cast spells in the 1st Edition RPG) and lived their lives in atonement for the ancient race that Akodo killed. Arguably, they were the most Shinto-inspired priests (everyone else is more like a mix between Shugendo and D&D Tropes). And the Akodo were an extremely prestigious and honorable tactician family that were nonetheless completely disgraced. Furthermore, while all of the clans adopted specific aspects of Bushido, only the Lion embraced the entire code. It was their thing. This was a clan designed with interesting stories in mind. Now, the current Lion portrayal is extremely vanilla. And in my opinion, in a setting as fantastic as Rokugan, no clan should be the vanilla samurai clan. I don't fault any one party with this, there are a lot of forces at work in a game like this over a long period of time. But they need some TLC. If I could choose three clans to "refresh" and redesign their identities, it would be the Lion, Phoenix, and Dragon, all for different but related reasons. Of course, there were some obstacles to just outright doing this (most of them not being AEG-related), but maybe FFG will have the ability to refresh all of the clans who need some new life. Spookyelectric fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Dec 19, 2015 |
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Dec 19, 2015 18:50
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I think the Lion has always struggled, mainly because things like being "clan of honor and war" makes it harder to distinguish them, because all the clans are about honor and war, save maybe the Scorpion. The Lion are chiefly "like the others, but more" in their elevator pitch, and though they have some interesting cultural angles, that overall notion tends to wash out those differences when you don't have a strong vision for their portrayal. This is a problem that got even worse as time went on. Compare the original Ikoma to the current super-plain version portrayed now. Spending the entire Clan War as a punching bag didn't help matters either, I agree with you there. I'm extrapolating a bit here, but I think the original idea was for the Lion's military failures to be seen as heroic tragedies rather than incompetence or being "losers." Their strengths are also supposed to be their weaknesses, and the Coup was the falling of their star. This is not how it was consistently portrayed, however. Toturi's fall was tragic specifically, but the other losses were seen through the eyes of the other clans, and because (most of) the clan books are purposefully written from an in-clan bias, that angle is completely lost. That's just the impression I got, though. I can't really speak with authority as to the intentions of the setting's architects. John Wick was but one of L5R's creators and his motivations were not always in synergy with the rest. So it may just be that the Lion were pulled in a dozen directions at once from the get go.
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Dec 19, 2015 20:06
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In many ways, the CCG is a stronger influence on players' understanding of a clan's identity than the story or RPG can ever be. 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...
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Dec 19, 2015 20:48
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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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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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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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