While talking about Kaze no Shiro in another thread, i mentioned that the major problem for new users there is that its somewhat lacking in a coherent narrative, and a thought occurred to me. When i'm not being a muckraker about the spider or dying by slow inches at work, i'm finishing my masters in Tolkien Studies. The Silmarillion, as it was published, appears to be a more or less coherent document with a loose narrative structure. When Christopher Tolkien sat down to publish it however, it was nothing of the sort. it was a disaster of notes, drafts, and pages that took SEVERAL YEARS of work between himself, a few editors, and another author to hone into something that he could put out there.

i mention this because the obvious parallels immediately occurred to me. This game is about to go into a long, quiet period. After which its going to suddenly get a LOT of new fans, who are going to want to get into the lore of the game. And while i love Kaze no Shiro, its kind of a mess with fictions jumping around in time, characters appearing and disappearing with no reference or context, and its hard to direct people there. But i want to, because the RPG books don't give them the MEAT. just the bones. they'll know that Shoju initiated the clan war, but they won't get the richness of his slide into that terrible choice. They'll know Daigotsu had a kid with a former unicorn but they won't get the nobility of that relationship and of Daigotsu's dedication to his son. They'll get the story of Hitomi but not the epic details. This game is made by those little details and you ahve to read the fictions to get them.

So my notion, if you've still bothered to read this far, is a community project to weave the existing fictions together. Not to add anything, but to edit and annotate and combine so that they are something that a new fan could download and read in a single sitting and make sense out of. without needing the wiki or a bunch of prior knowledge. there'd have to be a way to present the clan letters and card flavor and all the rest of it. i think it would be a project that would be valuable to the new fans who will be coming into the game, and it would be a way to keep the existing fans engaged with the game in the interim.

I haven't the foggiest how to begin, i just thought i'd throw the idea at the wall and see if it stuck.

I like the idea. I'd personally love something that had characters hotlinked so that you could click their name and have every story they appear in at hand. It'd make finding some of my favorite fictions much easier since I don't often remember the titles, and the titles often don't give many clues to the content and focus.

I like the idea. I'd personally love something that had characters hotlinked so that you could click their name and have every story they appear in at hand. It'd make finding some of my favorite fictions much easier since I don't often remember the titles, and the titles often don't give many clues to the content and focus.

i like this idea. i know you can do a thing with wordpress where a phrase (in this case a character name) automatically links to a given page. if you combine that with a tagging feature, i think this could be accomplished.

I absolutely love this idea. I don't know how to help but if I can I would happily do so. It would also help e catch up on lore.

This would be a nice time killer. I also noticed that people tend to bash eras that happened outside of their sight, especially ones before they came - I think lot of this comes from not witnessing the actual era, but only reading depictions that are, as you put it, "bones". Even Clan Wars, when summarized to people, often sound quite bad.

This is especially common with RPG people, who consider anything past starting point of 1st Edition (so pre-Scorpion Coup) as dumb and "out of character" - including Coup itself, Kisada's gambit, and so on.

This would be a nice time killer. I also noticed that people tend to bash eras that happened outside of their sight, especially ones before they came - I think lot of this comes from not witnessing the actual era, but only reading depictions that are, as you put it, "bones". Even Clan Wars, when summarized to people, often sound quite bad.

This is especially common with RPG people, who consider anything past starting point of 1st Edition (so pre-Scorpion Coup) as dumb and "out of character" - including Coup itself, Kisada's gambit, and so on.

I think there are also people who never have played during those times and think it was the best time ever since tehy are always disappointed with what they got. There are just too many folks who are just determined to be unhappy no matter what. AEG never could make it so that everybody is happy, for some it was always too scriped and for others it was to chaotic what some story prizes have done with Rokugan. And I have to say, it never bothered me that various people have different interpretations on how they imagine Rokugan, so I actually like the vast amount of contardictions we got over the years, since they gave me the freedom for my own interpratations of the setting.

This would be a nice time killer. I also noticed that people tend to bash eras that happened outside of their sight, especially ones before they came - I think lot of this comes from not witnessing the actual era, but only reading depictions that are, as you put it, "bones". Even Clan Wars, when summarized to people, often sound quite bad.

This is especially common with RPG people, who consider anything past starting point of 1st Edition (so pre-Scorpion Coup) as dumb and "out of character" - including Coup itself, Kisada's gambit, and so on.

Kindly don't generalize about we rpg players and our preferences, if you please?

Well, if you're looking for volunteers, I would be willing to contribute some time to the project. It sounds like a good idea - and not just for newcomers, I'd probably like something like that myself.

Now that the IP belongs to FFG and the RPG books will probably not be reprinted in their current form, would it be possible to include the stories from the RPG books in this project? Some of the very best stories come from the RPG books, and give you a ton of context.

I imagine the copyright question has to be tackled too. Some of the stuff might still lie with Wizards of the Coast. (Three companies trading the IP back and forth makes this kind of difficult.)

Yes. AWESOME idea! Anything on Kaze no Shiro we can simply copy over, give them credit, and then tag personalities. Anything from Imperial Assembly, too. We'd need people working on other content, such as Imperial Herald fictions. I don't have that sort of thing, so count me in for helping catalogue the stuff online!