My clan > Your clan Edition
Links
https://sites.google.com/site/mistralceleste/TRPG/l5r/resources
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/vx477quhxz4vt/Regend5Ling#btf4cvsidtj6f
What's your favorite clan? Why?
What do you want to see in the reboot?
What should be taken out forever?
What's the best bit of advice for GMs new to the game?
What's that samurai you've always wanted to make but never got the chance to?
Lion is my favorite major, Badger is my favorite minor.
>>44491667
>Favorite clan
Crab. Because reasons.
>What see in reboot
Less stupid, more non-stupid
>Get rid of
Spider as a legitimate clan (As a fake, subversive clan, it's okay)
>Advice
It's not Japan, don't assume that any part of it is identical to any part of historical Japan. A lot of the details are actually inverted from historical reality, some of it more closely resembles Imperial China, and a lot of it is straight fantasy.
>Character never played
A famous, wandering ronin chef. Travelling from court to court, earning his meals by making meals for others.
>>44491667
>What's your favorite clan?
Dragon and/or Unicorn. Monkey if we're talking Minor Clans.
>Why?
All three for probably the same reasons; they just don't give a fuck.
Dragon are more traditional, but Mirumoto are pretty straightforward and without some of the hangups other Bushi families have
Unicorn because Shinjo is probably the second-nicest family in the Empire.
The Monkey because Fortune Favors the Mortal Man, and because the Toku family is the only one with a noted sense of humor.
>What do you want to see in the reboot?
A timeskip jumping ahead a century or two to explain changes from the CCG.
The broad strokes of the setting kept, but a lot of the stupider elements that largely exist to give CCG tournaments a goal to play for and work as an excuse to let big faction war happen every time a cat farts in one Clan's direction to just be GONE, period.
Rokugan better set-up for adventures (or shugeyosha, or whatever) to go out doing samurai stuff, rather then struggling to find reasons to bring multi-Clan parties together because everyone's always at war at some point for inane reasons.
Less emphasis in the fluff on how each member of every family fits into identical cookie-cutter stereotypes and more emphasis on how within these stereotypes a lot of different individuality can exist despite them.
Someone who actually speaks Japanese a bit to work on the game so we don't see things like entire families unironically named "Otaku" in the fluff.
>What should be taken out forever?
The fucking Spider Clan.
I don't mind Lost or evil magic conspiracies, but that shit only existed to sell an entirely new "Clan" as a faction that nobody liked and no matter how badly they lost in fluff, they won anyway because almost absurd writer favoritism.
Shourido isn't bad in and of itself, but at least have then get the term right; it's "Shurado".
>>44492163
>What's the best bit of advice for GMs new to the game?
Your players can die easy. Watch out for it, and encourage use of tactics to limit engagements to smaller numbers (alleyways so they can only fight one at a time, ambushes, other tricks), since samurai actually taught that shit constantly and it's actually brought up in every legitimate budo manual ever written.
Remember that "Honor" is not the same as "virtue" and that "Bushido" is not the same as "being a good person".
Try to avoid using Clan or family stereotypes too much otherwise all of your players will know exactly where every character fits in the plot as soon as you say their names.
>What's that samurai you've always wanted to make but never got the chance to?
Always wanted to play a Toku Bushi, but since my group played L5R almost exclusively in high school at times I've already played pretty much everything else I've wanted to play.
Weird experience; our current group has a long-time player and friend of ours who's a fem with us, and about a year ago we introduced her to L5R.
Now it's her favorite game because according to her;
>"If the art is anything to go by can legitimately play a hot chick with a sword who's a complete badass and not only is it not out of place, it's pretty much encouraged in-setting."
I laughed my ass off because before then I never realized just HOW much hot samurai-ko art there was for L5R.
>>44492374
Well, she's not wrong. For samurai in rokugan, your caste, role, and the realities of your marriage situation are more important than what sex you are. If you marry someone who is more important than you, then you end up as the homekeeper. Doesn't matter if you're male or female. One member of the marriage deals with the day to day of surviving and the other actually does stuff out in the world. The only exception is when you get knocked up, because that's how biology works.
>>44492453
I gotta admit, in the two games we'd played with her so far she manages to make interesting characters who were also probably the most legitimate badasses in the group; not just in terms of the watered-down term "badass" where it just means "a guy who's really good a fighting" but badass in pure attitude that genuinely impressed me.
Her first was Shura Oyuki no Kakita (her name was just Yuki, but regularly the O-prefix was applied to her name), a Kikita Duelist with Heart of Vengeance against the Lion who was pretty much dead-set on cold-blooded vengeance against the unknown Lion samurai who murdered her brothers and slew her mother. Given the usage of the name and her origin I'm pretty sure she based the character off Lady Snowblood, but that just gives her extra points since it's one of the most badass Jidaigeki stories ever made as far as I'm concerned.
Her current one is shaping up to be interesting too but is in a completely different direction so far.
>>44492592
>Lady Snowblood
I don't know that reference, but it sure SOUNDS cool.
>>44492773
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Snowblood_(manga)
It's a very old manga about a samurai woman who's family is murdered and she goes around hunting down and assassinating their killers one by one using treachery, her looks, and swordplay.
Kill Bill is heavily inspired by the movie version of it.
Been waiting for someone to start and L5R General just so I can ask;
What Clan fits Ogami Itto best?
>>44491667
>What's your favorite clan? Why?
Phoenix. Pacifism + Traditionalism + Mystical Mojo + Isawa/Shiba relationship.
>What do you want to see in the reboot?
A greater emphasis on tools for playing within the setting, rather than metaplot to chase around after.
>What should be taken out forever?
Spider. Fuck Spider.
>What's the best bit of advice for GMs new to the game?
It's not Japan.
>What's that samurai you've always wanted to make but never got the chance to?
Every fucking Samurai, I've only ever played once and a ton of games have died before they even started, so I'm blue balling hard.
Though I really want to try a Usagi Bushi, after a few games of playing a normal Major Clan character.
>>44492374
That only really started in the last print or also. They never much in the way of cheesecake art work previously. So either they hoped to boost sales with fanservice or artists changed and want to things to be sexy.
Which honestly is fine.
>>44493032
It IS Japan though, it's just also a bunch of other stuff
>>44493194
It's more Japan then anything else.
There's a few things that people THINK are from other Asian cultures in Rokugan (usually the Imperials and their stuff is what I hear given as an example) but in nearly every single case they're pretty far off.
The four most prominent non-Japanese things are; the Unicorn, the Pennagalan, the fact that it's not on an island, and the way the Shadowlands and monsters in general are portrayed.
The island thing is almost hardly relevant honestly since without being on an island apparently Rokugan still suffers from and uses all the things Japan used BECAUSE it was an island culture. Rokugan is really just Japan upscale to China's size and put on the mainland with many part of it's culture miraculously unchanged.
>>44493032
>It's not Japan.
It's funny how the guys who say this always know the least about what the hell they're talking about.
>>44493307
Heian Period government+Edo Period samurai culture+Mongolian Steppe Nomads+Mainland+Mordor=Rokugan?
>>44493307
>and the way the Shadowlands and monsters in general are portrayed.
Okay, wait; are monsters not monsters in Japan?Have monster girls been around longer then I realize?
>>44493401
It's less to do with the monsters themselves (quite a few of which are taken directly from Japanese mythology, albeit with the wrong names attached) and more to do with Jigoku and the Taint.
Both Shinto beliefs and Buddhist beliefs (the major spiritual Faith's that influence and determine Japanese folklore) don't really believe in "objective evil" in the sense that there's a Hell and a Satan who want to destroy the mortal world; evil is something that exists because of man in most cases.
Which isn't to say there aren't some really creepy and weird monsters in Japanese folklore, but yokai (the general term of supernatural beings) are kinda more like the Fair Folk in Europe; sometimes helpful, sometimes weird, sometimes scary, sometimes hostile, sometimes want to eat you, sometimes want to play weird tricks on you and reward you if you ask well, etc.
Even oni (which is just what an ogre is in Japan) are actually sometimes more like guardian spirits (according to folklore there's two oni that guard the portal to hell to stop the evil souls from escaping and warn brave heroes away so they don't go into the netherworld) rather then actual demons from hell which is what Rokugan has oni as rather then big muscular clubbed guys who are highly dangerous but not always hostile.
The Shadowlands is closer to stuff you see in Michael Moorcock or Warhammer when it's ripping off Michael Moorcock mixed with the shit in much more modern Japanese horror stories heavily influenced by Christian mythology like Demon City Shinjuku.
Not that that's a bad thing; Demon City Shinjuku is badass.
>>44493545
It's not quite "objective evil" (Although it does overlap more often than not), but "objective wrongness". It takes the "balance in all things" idea to its supernatural conclusion. If there's a heavenly bureaucracy that objectifies righteousness (In that it is capital R Right), then there must also be something opposite to that. And that something wants to do the opposite of Correct as much as possible. That means intruding on other spiritual planes where it shouldn't be, taking over things that it shouldn't take over, making its agents act in ways that are repulsive and spiritually unclean, and generally being a complete dick for its own sake.
>>44491667
>What's your favorite clan?
Crane all the way.
>Why?
Criminally under rated clan who just want the best for the empire and its culture.
>What do you want to see in the reboot?
More GM Tools and more ways for players to know EXACTLY what's expected of them.
>What should be taken out forever?
Spider Clan and card game storyline fuckery.
What's the best bit of advice for GMs new to the game?
Players should break etiquette on purpose, not because they simply didn't know (unless their character sheet is some ignorant ronin)
>What's that samurai you've always wanted to make but never got the chance to?
Kakita duelist yojimbo.
>>44493649
>objective wrongness
Largely ads up to the exact same thing, and also mostly absent from actual fluff outside of RPG backround material for L5R; the Shadowlands and Jigoku are Evil and the things that mostly ruin the balance of shit (as in whenever it's brought up as a major plot point) are human in nature and it needs to be fixed because...I dunno, usually it seemed because the Story Team needed a new goal to have people play in tournaments over.
I actually like the differences between Japanese mythology and the Shadowlands, (even if when I see D&D goblins in a supposedly Asian-influenced setting I laugh a little, though Mountain Goblins are actually something that you might see in Japanese folklore) because I like the disturbing, visceral form of horror Japan loves to employ these days.
Also I'm a huge Hideyuki Kikuchi fan.
>>44493795
The goblins were basically Fu Leng saying "Hey, if my parent's blood and tears mixing could make living beings accidentally, then shouldn't I be able to do the same thing on purpose and do it better? After all, I'm a god, and also the best thing to ever exist, right?"
Turns out that the answer is no, he couldn't do it better, but he did manage to make goblins. They're auto-tainted because they were made by a tainted god in a tainted place for a tainted purpose.
>>44493769
>Criminally under rated clan who just want the best for the empire and its culture.
That's convenient considering the Crane are the Clan that decides what the culture of the Empire is, isn't it?
Sarcasm aside, the Daidoji are probably my favorite family because while the rest of their Clan is being all hearty-farty and "kukuku"-ing at pillow books they wrote and painting and shit the Daidoji are busy actually doing the real work that a samurai is supposed to do and arranging the commerce the Richest Clan needs arranged to stay the Richest Clan and doing ALL of it without a word of complaint or expectation that their bosses will stop being any less a family of idiots.
That my friend, is some good Bushido.
>>44493844
I know why they exist in-setting.
It's just sort of amusing how they ended up looking and acting almost exactly like traditional fantasy goblins, which have pretty much no place in any mythology that Tolkien didn't have an influence on; most mythologies don't have "disposable minion monsters" of course. I suspect that AEG took some hints from Game Workshop here and there with the Shadowlands, but it's just a suspicion based on how Chaos and the Shadowlands work and the timing of Warhammer's beginning of real popularity in the States and AEG's creation of the setting.
Though at I like the major change where unlike many other Shadowlands races goblins aren't truly intelligent; they're supposed to be barely smarter then a smart dog and use weapons and armor because monkey see monkey do rather then actual reasoning like "armor will stop me from dying".
It's kinda funny how Free Ogres are actually a lot more like traditional Japanese oni then Shadowlands ogres are, being smart, strong, intelligent weapon-users that strongly dislike humans but aren't necessarily automatically hostile to them at all times.
>>44494001
>Have Tengu in Rokugan
>Call then "Kenku" like D&D does and make them look like bird-people
Why
>>44494035
In all fairness, karasu-tengu (crow-tengu) are supposed to have beaks and be extremely birdlike in appearance (though sometimes they don't have feather and their beaks are filled with teeth, which just looks weird to me), and it's just daitengu (great tengu) who have the whole "human face with a long nose" look.
Not sure why they used "kenku" instead of tengu though, that's probably just the original creator's general lack of Japanese showing more then anything else since otherwise kenku in Rokugan are pretty damn close to how they show up in Japanese folklore, though a bit more benevolent most of the time.
>>44493844
Stupid Fu Leng, rubbing his taint all over everyone's stuff.
Our GM added firearms from the Iron Empire version of Rokugan to the game recently, and I gotta admit I actually like them so far.
They aren't widely used by the group (teppo take too long to reload in a practical fight and bows actually have superior range), but it's kinda nifty when trained soldier enemies carry musket-style weapons into battle or on patrol in our current fluff.
There's also cannons in use by armies but they're not really something our party has access to of course, and even teppo are only given to well-drilled and trained units that have the money to expend arming their troops with that kind of firepower.
It's even led to a really great adventure where we were trying to identify the source of weapons smugglers shipping the guns to a local peasant revolt in the Lion lands and we had to identify the source to prevent the Lion from going to war and basically depopulating the shit out of the area and killing tons of peasants to put down the revolt rather then resolve it peacefully.The source of the guns ended ultimately being the Lion general mobilizing the army ordered to suppress the rebellion; he was doing it to "remove dissidents from a troubled region" and because he needed another undisputed victory to really advance any further in the Clan heirarchy during a time of relative peace for the Lion.
>>44493880
>That's convenient considering the Crane are the Clan that decides what the culture of the Empire is, isn't it?
True, but honestly it's not as if the culture doesn't hold it own benefits for rokugan as a whole. I shutter to think of what a crab culture empire would be like in comparison.
That being said Daidoji are pretty cool where I stand. .
Did Japan have anything like chain mail, or was it just metal places and lamellar only?
>>44497609
Japan using "lamellar" armor is basically incorrect D&D bullshit; they used armor like that in Japan, yes, but that was before samurai were even CALLED samurai and the katana literally didn't exist as weapon.
Japan totally had chain mail armor (though in construction it was mostly these hexagonal disc things a lot of the time) called "kikko" armor, and used it extensively on the joins of lighter armor suits and woven into protective garments, which is something ninja are stereotypically supposed to have done.
Those cool decorated jackets that you see samurai generals wearing?
They aren't decorative, and they usually had kikko woven into them to better protect against arrows, and later had thick padding to break some of the impact of a matchlock shot.
>>44497605
>I shutter to think of what a crab culture empire would be like in comparison.
Uhhh...pic unrelated?
Probably a bit more like how Japan actually was come to think of it; lots of Kaiu guys advancing warfare science to the point where the importance of the samurai declined and then you have a whole culture of an increasingly irrelevant warrior class who gets insanely violent over the stupidest things because they struggle to find anything like meaning in their lives.
....actually, that's probably the basis of most really good and really famous samurai stories isn't it?
>>44497605
Speaking of kneesocks, are kunoichi like...not allowed to wear pants and thus wear them as a substitute or something?
Because it seems like every fictional kunoichi ever doesn't even bother with pant.
>>44497728
>not allowed to wear pants and thus wear them as a substitute or something?
Kek. I don't know, but I'm aware of what you mean; it's about as common as black pajamas and tabi boots among male ninja in fiction. I think it's just a modern leg-thigh fetish thing.
It's still kinda funny to see it even in relatively serious Jidaigeki-style stories like like the Tenchu games where otherwise sexuality isn't an important element and everyone is treated as an absolute equal in combat.
>>44497728
Some wear pants. Most wear skirts. Quite a few male shinobi don't wear pants either, but they're relatively less common.
Of course, most kunoichi end up getting captured and molested/raped at some point, so that might be what's accounting for the lack of pants.
>>44497820
Betcha Scorpion don't have that problem.
They probably all have poison vaginas or something that kills everybody they bang like pic related.
>>44497866
Did that anime completely rip off Ninja Scroll or something? The character had literally the same unfortunate superpower thing and the same name and both were ninjas, it seems an unlikely coincidence.....
>>44497897
Other way around, actually.
Ninja Scroll is inspired by the novels of the author Futaro Yamada, who basically invented next to everything modern anime and Japanese pop culture uses involving ninjas the way Ian Fleming did the same with spies. Yamada even wrote the novels in the 60's like Fleming did.
The novels are a bunch of unrelated stories with vaguely interconnecting side characters called "Ninpocho" ("Ninja Scroll" literally, but basically meaning "Ninja Story/Tale"), and a lot of them starred Yagyu Jubei, who obviously inspired Jubei in Ninja Scroll.
His stories tend to involve ninjas who are basically freaks of nature (this is repeatedly brought up in his stories, that they have superpowers because they're inbred mutant weirdos), and while this isn't QUITE the earliest "ninjas are magical" story in Japanese fiction, they probably had the longest-lasting effect on pop culture due to them being written when modern day Japan was first taking shape.
Bump for fundoshis.
What company would you have preferred to have bought L5R?
Personally I'm of the opinion that Fantasy Flight is mega aids, only really trumped by wizards.
>>44499971
Honestly, I don't even care.
Gaming companies rarely have anything resembling a "character" simply because most are so fucking tiny that if five people leave the entire company changes immediately overnight.
WotC is perhaps the only real exception to this rule because it's backed by a major toy company, while others pretty much struggle to make even basic profits and do have no "corporate strategy" beyond "get through next quarter without going under financially".
>>44492239
>Remember that "Honor" is not the same as "virtue" and that "Bushido" is not the same as "being a good person".
Well, this is a strange way to put it. Honor is more than simple virtue - it is righteousness beyond question; the Bushido is not merely about being a "good person" but it is about being the objectively BEST person.
>>44491667
>What's your favorite clan? Why?
Lion. Because playing SHOUTING MATSU at a table never gets old.
Also because playing a proud warrior woman who becomes broken (in various ways) over gameplay is a fetish that I can actually indulge in when I play L5R, since I play with GMs who hate Honor and so forth (I've had 4 different L5R GMs. EVERY ONE was a Scorpion-main player who IRL thought anyone who believes in honor is a fool at best).
>What do you want to see in the reboot?
Actual reboot. Go all the way back to pre-Coup. Still HAVE the Coup, but from then on everything changes with both a) competent writers, and b) no CCG storyline fuckery.
>What should be taken out forever?
Spider. They never should have been a "Clan" in the first place. They can "call" themselves a Clan, and an organized group of folks deliberately trying to fuck over Rokugan more than the actual Great Clans already fuck themselves over is pretty cool...but it needs to be a subversive, underground thing.
>What's the best bit of advice for GMs new to the game?
Rokugan is not Japan. Rokugan is, however, heavily BASED on Japan, and so if there's something the existing fluff doesn't cover, you REALLY SHOULD look at how feudal Japan answered your question as your first stop.
>What's that samurai you've always wanted to make but never got the chance to?
Aside from ERP? An Usagi bushi. I fell in love with their old "jump-kicking" fighting style, but I've never played in a game where they both actually exist, and where a GM would let me build one without arbitrarily killing me off because I'm from a Minor Clan (my GMs tend to be Acolytes of Wick, and therefore if you're not from a Great Clan you don't matter and will be killed by "real" samurai).
>>44501173
No, it's really not.
Note the Honor gains and losses; showing compassion for the lower classes gains you something, but MISTREATING them penalizes you nothing and in many cases samurai have pretty much full legal authority to just randomly kill people of less important casts for minor offenses. I don't think there's ever been penalties for mistreating peasants listed before, even
Bushido is more about loyalty and combat equitette, as well as self-sacrifice then it is about virtuous behavior, especially since many Clan Champions start to pretty loosely interpret Bushido at upper levels because they have exactly one boss (the Emperor) and political realities take precedence over everything else.
Not to say all samurai randomly kill people that is; even if most samurai don't believe bonge or lower classes are equal to them, they likely aren't sociopaths who can't tell that they're still individuals with feelings and desires.
They just think they have their place in things and that samurai's positions are higher in that order of things.
>>44501550
>Lion. Because playing SHOUTING MATSU at a table never gets old.
Matsu have got to be my favorite individual family because they're that traditional Japanese HOT-BLOODED SHOUTING ENTHUSIASM WARRIOR you see in modern Japanese entertainment and looked at in a realistic standpoint.
Yes they're amazing warriors, but short tempers makes for poor politics and the occasional massacre of huge numbers of people as you convince yourself HONOR and GREAT JUSTICE are okay reasons to kill tons of enemy civilians here and there. I recall that one border castle with the Crane lands which is notable for the Matsu having retaliated for something the Crane did and went full on warcrime on the castle when they took it.
Then again they make amazingly loyal and steadfast allies who will literally fight and die for you once they're your bros and will never, EVER betray you even as they burst your eardrums from all the shouting.
>>44501550
>(I've had 4 different L5R GMs. EVERY ONE was a Scorpion-main player who IRL thought anyone who believes in honor is a fool at best).
That sounds incredibly annoying.
I try to be faction-agnostic when I GM because taking sides with imaginary people is pretty fucking moronic.
I like to do Bushidi both ways; some Honorable samurai aren't very nice, some dishonorable samurai are highly moral (like the Tsuruchi) but are just shit at Bushido, sometimes Bushido is practical and sometimes in impractical.
And then occasionally you get guys like Toku who are paragons of heroism and both Bushido and conventional virtues and you see when a samurai lives up to it they can REALLY live up to it, and I love showing how sometimes you can follow a somewhat unrealistic code and still be an incredibly inspiring hero.
>>44502012
No, what you are talking about is social convention and not honor. The two are actually pretty darn far away from each other in Rokugan, with the former only giving a token recognition of what the latter should be all about.
By RPG terms, you can call a character honorable if he/she has 10.0 Honor. That's where Bushido starts. Everything below that is a bunch of variably dishonorable people. Variably dishonorable people with cheap excuses (mostly social conventions and "MUH FEELINGS" tier shit) for not embracing Bushido properly (as: without a singe hint of compromise).
Still no Almanac pdf, huh?
can u name all of the kami babies ??
>>44492943
...none, he's a ronin?
I mean Scorpion maybe I guess kinda but not really at all.
>>44497674
Iron Empire is, arguably, the coolest AU for Rokugan ever printed.
>>44506164
From left to right:
- Bayushi w/ the Lying Darkness
- Hantei and Akodo arguing
- Togashi and Shiba meditating
- Doji serving tea to Amaterasu
- Shinjo and Fu Leng playing
- Hida and Ryoshun fighting
What did I win?
>>44502631
Poe's Law in action, ladies and gentlemen.
>>44501550
> (I've had 4 different L5R GMs. EVERY ONE was a Scorpion-main player who IRL thought anyone who believes in honor is a fool at best).
You poor, poor player.
>>44501550
Honestly, I'm fine keeping moooooost of the story up until the clusterfuck that was Lotus, but a really, really good fix would be to space it out a lot, lot more. The only reason a bunch of the stuff that happened was dumb was because it ALL happened rapid-fire. Coup, Kisada goes all tainty, Day of Thunder, the Goju, everything from Coup to Gold all happened in the space of like... five years. Less, I think. Then they did one little timeskip and did it all over again. Solving the Spider Problem is easy, even. When Daigotsu Soetsu shows up in the IMPERIAL COURT literally OOZING TAINT, the Emperor goes "Holy shit, Sekawa, what the FUCK are you DOING", executes them both on the spot, and no one ever talks about it ever again. Spider Problem: Solved.
>>44506395
Well, >>44502012 touched a legitimate problem and maybe the biggest fuck-up in the setting, so the bait was set.
