Modern Samurai movies do this more often and I for my part like my rokugan with some Wuxia and Anime flavor in it. So if the supernatural stuff would completly go away I would be not very happy.

Agree. Rokugan is pretty explicitly a fantasy setting, with all that entails. It just has (some) different cultural foundations. I do think the core should be Samurai, though.

Look at some of the epic samurai drama in movies and literature. A lot of it doesn't involve angry gods, spirit armies, the Emperor, empire-wide warfare, blood falling from the sky, etc. Tell some stories that are a bit more grounded, eventually culminating in more pivotal events.

Modern Samurai movies do this more often and I for my part like my rokugan with some Wuxia and Anime flavor in it. So if the supernatural stuff would completly go away I would be not very happy.

Not all fantasy has to be epic fantasy, and there's a lot of supernatural setting material in Rokugan that doesn't rely on or immediately invoke world-shattering threats to setting.

Look at some of the epic samurai drama in movies and literature. A lot of it doesn't involve angry gods, spirit armies, the Emperor, empire-wide warfare, blood falling from the sky, etc. Tell some stories that are a bit more grounded, eventually culminating in more pivotal events.

Modern Samurai movies do this more often and I for my part like my rokugan with some Wuxia and Anime flavor in it. So if the supernatural stuff would completly go away I would be not very happy.

Agreed. The supernatural element needs to be there. It's an essential part of the setting. That said, when it's thrown at us constantly, and to a ridiculous degree, it loses a lot of its mystique. Frequent interaction with Oracles, Fortunes, etc. Going from returned Hantei XVI, to Daigotsu, Kokujin, Iuchiban, Kali-Ma, etc. Eventually, it stops feeling special.

The stories/characters can have their supernatural elements- shugenja, spirits, monsters, etc. without things needing to involve constant, over-the-top high magic.

And again, that's not to say there shouldn't be moments of high magic. But when the scale of the magic/supernatural is constantly turned up to 11, it isn't good for the story.

I think I still want my villian to be mighty. So having Daigotsu as a constant thread was nice and Iuchiban was cool too. But I also think I don´t want more than 1 of these super villians per story Arc cause also I don´t want them so overly opressing present. Yes they should resolved at the end but I would think they should act more like the villians in the Frank Schaezing novels whcih actually are very neutral and not so present sometimes even helping the characters and manipulating them with it until the end when all goes down and people are get shoked that the nice person which acutally advocated the change was the same person who tried to saboutage the new technology and muder all people involved with it.

Or maybe they could act like the avatar of mine he was a very cool villian char.

I think I still want my villian to be mighty. So having Daigotsu as a constant thread was nice and Iuchiban was cool too. But I also think I don´t want more than 1 of these super villians per story Arc cause also I don´t want them so overly opressing present. Yes they should resolved at the end but I would think they should act more like the villians in the Frank Schaezing novels whcih actually are very neutral and not so present sometimes even helping the characters and manipulating them with it until the end when all goes down and people are get shoked that the nice person which acutally advocated the change was the same person who tried to saboutage the new technology and muder all people involved with it.

Or maybe they could act like the avatar of mine he was a very cool villian char.

On the other hand, not every story (especially for a mutli-factional setting/game like L5R), needs an outright, objective big-bad-villain.

And despite what so much "genre" fiction does, recycling the same villain too many times, no matter how much the fanbase wants "Doctor vs the Daleks" stories, just wears soooooo thin after a while.

Look at some of the epic samurai drama in movies and literature. A lot of it doesn't involve angry gods, spirit armies, the Emperor, empire-wide warfare, blood falling from the sky, etc. Tell some stories that are a bit more grounded, eventually culminating in more pivotal events.

Modern Samurai movies do this more often and I for my part like my rokugan with some Wuxia and Anime flavor in it. So if the supernatural stuff would completly go away I would be not very happy.

Agreed. The supernatural element needs to be there. It's an essential part of the setting. That said, when it's thrown at us constantly, and to a ridiculous degree, it loses a lot of its mystique. Frequent interaction with Oracles, Fortunes, etc. Going from returned Hantei XVI, to Daigotsu, Kokujin, Iuchiban, Kali-Ma, etc. Eventually, it stops feeling special.

The stories/characters can have their supernatural elements- shugenja, spirits, monsters, etc. without things needing to involve constant, over-the-top high magic.

And again, that's not to say there shouldn't be moments of high magic. But when the scale of the magic/supernatural is constantly turned up to 11, it isn't good for the story.

Agree with this pretty much. Add to that the fact that having dragons, oracles, dieties, and other earth shaking powers romping around presents a lot of temptation to just deus ex machina everything in the story. In the lore, meeting an oracle or dragon would be a pretty big deal. I don't really want to see them directly represented.

It always bothered me that the dragons were described as almost omnipotent in the story and rpg material, but I could pluck one off with a ranged attack or a duel if I planned it right.

The challenge of Kali-Ma / Daigotsu / Iuchiban / The Lying Darkness / Fu Leng is that the storyline, really, is suffering from Big Bad Guy Fatigue.

By focusing the story on smaller, more intimate stories, you have the ability to create just as compelling and seemingly relatively mighty villains who are not existential threats to the Empire.The story itself really could benefit from the Chapter / Cycle format of LCG and focusing on stories that don't threaten the Empire's existence, but whose results can echo throughout it.

I like mysticism in my L5R. But mysticism on "I'm achieving such harmony with my sword that I can make my sword pass leaves without actually cutting them" leve, and other samurai-mysticism, and less "fireballs and Oracles and Gods Walking On Earth" stuff.

Hey, on the subject of Big Bads, I just wanna point out that some of my favorite villains/antagonists weren't infused with the Realm of Evil/Nothing/Nasty Mojo, but were just, you know, PEOPLE.

Chagatai, despite being used to mop up the remains of the Toturi Dynasty, has always been a heck of a lot more compelling to me than Daigotsu or Iuchiban.

Shosuro Jimen and Kakita Noritoshi were both murder-happy freaks in their own ways, and both of them had more narrative meat on their bones than Kali-Ma, whose plot basically swept theirs aside.

Susumu was my favorite Spider of his day because he didn't use blood magic or tainty superpowers to do his thing- he was just a crafty, clever guy balanced on a knife's edge of divided loyalties.

And when I have enjoyed stories about big bad supernatural curbstompings, I've enjoyed the human side, rather than the 'OMG HOW EPIC" angle. Isawa Mizuhiko hunting Dark Oracles with his cursed sword was great not because the Oracles were particularly interesting in and of themselves, but because Mizuhiko was- and because we all knew it wasn't going to end well for him.

EDIT: With that said, Shiba Ningen turning an army of Yobanjin into flowers is something I would hate to see disappear completely- although once again, it's less about his power and more about how he chose to use it.

Hey, on the subject of Big Bads, I just wanna point out that some of my favorite villains/antagonists weren't infused with the Realm of Evil/Nothing/Nasty Mojo, but were just, you know, PEOPLE.

Chagatai, despite being used to mop up the remains of the Toturi Dynasty, has always been a heck of a lot more compelling to me than Daigotsu or Iuchiban.

Shosuro Jimen and Kakita Noritoshi were both murder-happy freaks in their own ways, and both of them had more narrative meat on their bones than Kali-Ma, whose plot basically swept theirs aside.

Susumu was my favorite Spider of his day because he didn't use blood magic or tainty superpowers to do his thing- he was just a crafty, clever guy balanced on a knife's edge of divided loyalties.

And when I have enjoyed stories about big bad supernatural curbstompings, I've enjoyed the human side, rather than the 'OMG HOW EPIC" angle. Isawa Mizuhiko hunting Dark Oracles with his cursed sword was great not because the Oracles were particularly interesting in and of themselves, but because Mizuhiko was- and because we all knew it wasn't going to end well for him.

EDIT: With that said, Shiba Ningen turning an army of Yobanjin into flowers is something I would hate to see disappear completely- although once again, it's less about his power and how he chose to use it.

Yes, yes, and YES! A lot of these specific examples are the things that I had in my head but couldn't articulate as examples of great person vs person and person vs themselves conflict.

Maybe the difference is between:

1) super natural stories with the emphasis on "super", where humans have to somehow be "super" just to gain the notice of the forces involved, even if that's "superhonorable" or "supermoral" or "superspiritual" or "superdetermined".

or

2) human stories with a supernatural edge

I would like to see more human stories with a supernatural edge. But, then again, my favorite stories were all focused on the core of being a samurai in a fantasy world. Or, as my Asian Theater Masters girlfriend describes L5R, "It's kabuki samurai! All kabuki! All the time!"

I don't have a favorite story. I love them all and they need to continue. It won't be L5R without them.

I think that a game with an interactive story requires a story team. To that end, with the skill that our current Story Team has with:

-getting heaps of story to us, with at least one stream of sorry stories per month

-taking constructive criticism, feedback, and suggestions

-generating enthusiasm

-writing good stories

(Naming Hand, Denton, and Lemaire here for emphasis)

I say they should be involved in the new stream of stories that I hope will keep flowing.

As for what to do with the setting: thinking a fresh start, combined with keeping everything in place makes the most sense. So a time skip of probably 2-10 years. With a smaller setting, bigger deals can be made of smaller things, too - as in, for the chapter packs, we could be resolving issues at a minor Court (that has all Clans in attendance), such as the local Daimyo looking to expand his commercial interests, and clans interacting on that premise. We could even have the Story Team generate further conflict by having peasants making a scene (we should involve them more anyway, since society crumbles without them), or a mysterious death.

How do we get interaction in something like this? Votes (sometimes IA, sometimes with tourney attendance), RPG-based activities (LARP, online pbps, etc.), and perhaps the LCG Kotei wins focus on influencing the course of the story's Arc, sound pretty good to me at the moment.

As for story vs. design...Yeah, the LCG should be focused on design. That said, I like the thought of story influencing it. Not "win this tourney and get a broken card", but rather "Phoenix are going nuclear in the story, so for the next release this change in style will be reflected by having more focus on military than any other theme), or something approaching that.

All these are just my opinion, of course. At any rate, thank you so much for this dialogue!

Shawn Carman and team have done a great job over the years. The most difficult part I've had as a fan of the game and player, is seeing the story team dropped wholesale. They've been the group that had defined what the L5R setting and story was.

I certainly hope FFG gives them the opportunity to continue the story.

I'm not even setting my profile up, yet. I'm not planning on becoming a 15 post a day forum addict again. I just wanted to add my 2 cents.

At the very least, I very strongly hope that FFG speaks at length to the current story team members individually. I would love to hear what the story team thinks are the biggest challenges and errors in how the story has been handled across the last 20 years. Even if they don't keep the ST, I'm sure feedback and input from the ST will help contribute and make future stories better based upon their experiences.

I also hope that FFG dials back the player interaction. I bet handling the story was a lot easier when there were half a dozen storyline tournaments each year. They have to be willing to make some of us mad, then clap the dust off of their hands and ignore the shouty outrage.

People in good story team don't need to be good at writing stories, btw. You can have a Story Team that is mostly about braining out the "how to interweave Story and LCG", and "what directions we want to take it in". Plus "what directions give to actual writers".

One of things that IMHO downgraded the L5R Story Experience was format of the stories. Expanding above it wouldn't be bad. I would take a short animated sequence over a short story in a heartbeat. Instead of volunteers, actually pay your story team, and use your resources to create cool stuff - comics, stories, animated sequences...

I would love nothing more than for FFG to keep around the current story team (or even add some new members). As Barswanian said, they have done a great job over the years--at times dealing with a small staff. We need something during this two year hiatus, and I think keeping Robert "Spooky" Denton's in progress novel is a great way at helping to bridge the long gap.

The story has been very good since the Destroyer War arc, which wasn't exactly my favorite time period of the game. However this past year, with the addition of new members, the story fictions have been getting better and better with each release. Many work for the thrill of writing, and IMO that really shines through in their art. They have also been very interactive with the player base at large through forums and social media, answering what questions they can and engaging with the player base. They deserve, at the least, serious consideration from FFG on sticking around.

I too request that the story team be brought on board to continue their wonderful job of bringing the story to life.

Especially a request to publish the L5R novel being written by SpookyElectric to ensure that the years of effort and results put into that book do not go to waste.

So, any word about this? I have heard that the main contact at FFG has been answering some people's specific questions via email, but I have not yet heard anything solid regarding this.

In bright news, Spooky has said that he will be making a Halloween fiction again. Since my favorite piece of L5R fiction in easily a decade was his Halloween fiction from last year, this should be good.

So, any word about this? I have heard that the main contact at FFG has been answering some people's specific questions via email, but I have not yet heard anything solid regarding this.

In bright news, Spooky has said that he will be making a Halloween fiction again. Since my favorite piece of L5R fiction in easily a decade was his Halloween fiction from last year, this should be good.

Cynthia responded to my welcome email, and she isn't actually the main person attached to the brand, or even part of that team. She is a PR and marketing person who handles press for FFG, and she was only listed on the press release because she is the person coordinating the announcement. She was also clearly overwhelmed with the sheer amount of L5R related email.

Cynthia Hornbeck is FFGs Marketing Content Coordinator and as Kiseki she is not the decision maker, but an avenue to voice concerns till someone else is appointed. My email got a reply to it in which she pointed out (expectedly) that they are still in the earliest stages of integrating this property, but that they are very open to the possibility of working with Shawn Carmen, but that is all she can say at this time. I would suggest emailing her in a polite fashion with your concerns so that at least you can be certain the message is getting to someone.

they are very open to the possibility of working with Shawn Carmen, but that is all she can say at this time.

As one of those dissenting opinions, I will say this- I like a lot of Shawn's writing. On top of that, the times I haven't liked it were those where (and this was rare) even he admitted he had some issues writing said stories. Furthermore, as a writer myself, I tend to be quite critical with writing. My standards are pretty high and I'm willing to be vocal/blunt with my criticisms. I don't expect everyone to meet said standards. I offer my thoughts, be they positive or negative, in hopes that they'll give people something to consider.

My issue with Shawn is, primarily, the way he, on occasion, acted toward players. While it was by no means a constant thing, there were times when he either lashed out at criticism, constructive or otherwise, or took a hardline stance that criticism shouldn't be offered toward work that people put a lot of effort into (a stance that I find ridiculous). This was particularly apparent when dealing with criticism levied toward anyone involved in running their official Winter Court forum games.

I think, in an active community, criticism should be encouraged. People shouldn't be lashed out at for their attempts to make the game, events, stories, or whatever else better. Sure, people may have differing opinions. That doesn't change the fact that most of us want the same thing- okay things becoming good, good things becoming great, and further improvement from there. There's always room for growth and while some people's standards can be too high, those people can be shrugged off quietly/politely rather than lashed out at. There are lots of good ideas/good people to be found amongst the L5R Community. Being dismissive of their attempts to better the game, events, etc. doesn't help anyone.

And to be clear, I'd expect the same sort of criticism (preferably the constructive type) leveled toward my work or anyone else's. The times that I've written fiction, adventures, etc. or worked on forum games I've sought out said criticism. I've sat down, online or even in person, with vocal critics to find out what they'd want to see in what, to them, would be a better story/game/module. I encouraged other forum GMs, writers, etc. to do the same even if they weren't as open to criticism as I am. It's tough to get better at things if you don't listen to those people who are telling you where you could improve.

So, as far as Shawn goes, if he were purely involved in the writing process and not dismissing anyone on the forums, I'd be all for that. When it comes to dealing with the community though, where AEG screwed up was there was tons of disrespect shown toward members of the playerbase. People working at/with FFG should not repeat that error.

Furthermore, one other thing I wish to emphasize is this is by no means an attempt to single out Shawn. He has done a TON of good for L5R over the years. That good should NOT be forgotten. There've been other people at AEG who've responded to criticism/comments in ways far worse than he ever has. I'm not naming their names purely because we're not discussing bringing those individuals in to work on the product again. If we were, I'd bring them up specifically too. I love this game/this community and want to see players, staff members, storytellers, etc. getting the best possible experience out of L5R.

TBH there have been multiple occasions in the time ive been a player of L5R that the playerbase has more than earned any lashing out at that they receive. One of the best aspects of FFG's policy of not responding on the forums will be a gradual deflating of the entitled attitude the L5R playerbase developed regarding the game. They aren't going to respond on the forums, their company is large enough and successful enough that they can fairly easily ignore the kinds of demands the forumgoers regularly put on staff back at AEG. Threats to leave aren't going to mean much as they have a large and dedicated fanbase as a company and I expect more of their sales are going to come from new players than old players.