No, the argument is that that anti-spider people see any change that involves the Spider, no matter how beneficial it is to the Empire as a whole or to the setting in being able to do what the setting needs to do, as "just for the sake of the Spider".

while I appreciate you telling me what I think, I'll speak for myself thank you. Our disagreement is that I(and am clearly not alone) don't see the changes that involved the spider as being beneficial to the empire or the setting.

None of these changes are "just for the sake of the Spider". Ever. At any point. If this is how you think of it, you are wrong. I cannot possibly make it clearer than I have. Any change that benefits the Spider is for the explicit purpose of making them better able to serve as the antagonists the setting needs. Having antagonists that are able to do what the setting needs them to be able to do is beneficial to the entire setting .

AEG's story team needed the Spider to be able to do certain things in service of the setting and theme. Due to the existing setting baggage, and problems in their own implementation, when they tried to give the Spider the ability to do the things they needed to be able to do, they messed it up and made a situation nobody liked.

Yes and now that we don't NEED the spider to be able to do all those things, why keep something around in the same form when you yourself admit nobody liked it?

The proper remedy for that is "Let's remove the setting baggage that prevented this from working and do it right this time," not "We cannot remove setting baggage or do it right this time because that would mean changing things."

Like, if it's a fresh start, nothing is 'changing'. Nothing is changing. Everything is new. If you want to bring something over, it needs to be because that element works and accomplishes what it needs to do, not because it was already there -- there is no "already there".

You're right it is a chance for a fresh start. Which is exactly why these threads have been coming up. Trying to come up with a way for the Spider to not be pariahs. The crux of the issue is that (some)pro spider players want to change the way everything else works to stay the same, while the anti spider side of the argument doesn't feel that changing that much of the setting just for the sake of spider being able to keep the taint/be bad guys is healthy for the game.

No, the argument is that that anti-spider people see any change that involves the Spider, no matter how beneficial it is to the Empire as a whole or to the setting in being able to do what the setting needs to do, as "just for the sake of the Spider".

None of these changes are "just for the sake of the Spider". Ever. At any point. If this is how you think of it, you are wrong. I cannot possibly make it clearer than I have. Any change that benefits the Spider is for the explicit purpose of making them better able to serve as the antagonists the setting needs. Having antagonists that are able to do what the setting needs them to be able to do is beneficial to the entire setting .

AEG's story team needed the Spider to be able to do certain things in service of the setting and theme. Due to the existing setting baggage, and problems in their own implementation, when they tried to give the Spider the ability to do the things they needed to be able to do, they messed it up and made a situation nobody liked.

The proper remedy for that is "Let's remove the setting baggage that prevented this from working and do it right this time," not "We cannot remove setting baggage or do it right this time because that would mean changing things."

Like, if it's a fresh start, nothing is 'changing'. Nothing is changing. Everything is new. If you want to bring something over, it needs to be because that element works and accomplishes what it needs to do, not because it was already there -- there is no "already there".

There's a term for what you want here, and it's not "fresh start". It's retcon . The setting exists, all the history of the setting exists, and everyone is going to remember (or be able to read about) what used to be.

I'm still trying to figure out what actual narrative need the Spider Clan would serve, as the "Clan that's openly serving the Enemy of all Rokugani society holds dear, and also gets to be part of the society."

The setting has no opening for a faction of "antagonists within". First, the "samurai drama" that everyone professes to love means that protagonist and antagonist is often a matter of point of view, and you can have two people, each perceiving himself as right and his opponent as wrong. Second, the role of "antagonist within" is already served in various ways by the Scorpion and the Otomo and others.

If the Spider Clan are outright hostile antagonists, that's fine, nothing wrong with them being such. But if they are, then don't expect the rest of Rokugan to treat them as anything other than outright hostile antagonists, and they're back to being the Shadowlands Clan.

And, as noted by other(s), I'd appreciate it if you'd stop pretending to know more about what's going on inside my head than I do.

Alright, let me try to be constructive here.

Folks arguing for the Spider, specifically Teveshszat, Huitzil37 and Drudenfusz. Please present your reasons for why the Spider's existence is beneficial for the setting, in a way that can't be achieved by:

a) The Scorpion Clan;

b) The Otomo and other existing Imperial Families;

c) AND the Shadowlands Horde.

Even better question: If I am a new player, what is my draw to play Spider?"

And now this thread has gone from "How can we integrate the Spider?" to "Excellent display why the Spider can't be integrated."

*groan*

I agree that the conversation is continually getting derailed, and that there have been significant challenges to integration, which is part of the reason why I believe that while the Spider do need some significant revisions, they can easily be a part of the LCG experience as they have been in the past. As for the story, since we don't know where the time frame will begin for the LCG, it is difficult to argue for or against the Spider Clan being a part of the Empire, part of the enemy, or part of something else entirely. My suggestion of time jumping ahead gives the writers ample opportunity to find a place for the Spider in the setting.

*Edited for clarity.

I would be down with this, but it seems the Spider aren't. The Spider (or at the very least, a loud group within them) see Jigoku as a core part of the Spider's identity, and are unwilling to give it up. As long as that's the case, they can never be reformed.

After all, Jigoku's explicit purpose is to overrun all of Ningen-do, and from there, Tengoku. It's a difficult position to find common ground with, to put it mildly.

Exactly what I've been trying to say -- if the Spider want to be accepted within Rokugan, then they need to ditch their connection to Jigoku.

Trying to change what Jigoku is just so that the Spider can have it both ways, have their cake and eat it to, is a non-starter.

Hmm this seems not really a good deal cause the Spider would part with one of the defining points of them while no other clan had to do this. The Mantis for example never needed to give up their rading, traiding or their gaijin contact when they where acepted into rokugan.

I see no problem with the change because in the end it is just a fiction and a fiction can change if it would be bette and this clearly is the case here. Chaning the setting at a reastart is a good idea cause this way we can solve the problems which exist in the curtrent setting like for example the Spider clan.

But this even is refused by people so maybe you don´t really want a solution but just that the spider creases to be what the spider players like at them so that you finaly have your way and the spider fades into a npc faction again cause nobody want to play what they became.

Which other Clan has a "defining point" that requires a rewrite of the basic cosmology or for the rest of Rokugan to hold the idiot ball? The way the culture is written, there's just no way that 99.99% of the rest of Rukugan should ever have anything to do with them on a civil basis as long as they embrace Jigoku.

If you want the Spider to be part of Rokugani society, fine -- but they have to ditch Jigoku if they want to be invited to tea and kabuki and Winter Court.

If you want the Spider to serve, draw on, and risk losing themselves to the cosmological power that exists to consume all reality and drown it in fire and blood and filth, then fine -- but don't expect invitations to the garden party.

What's always going to make no sense at all, is both at the same time.

I would be down with this, but it seems the Spider aren't. The Spider (or at the very least, a loud group within them) see Jigoku as a core part of the Spider's identity, and are unwilling to give it up. As long as that's the case, they can never be reformed.

After all, Jigoku's explicit purpose is to overrun all of Ningen-do, and from there, Tengoku. It's a difficult position to find common ground with, to put it mildly.

Exactly what I've been trying to say -- if the Spider want to be accepted within Rokugan, then they need to ditch their connection to Jigoku.

Trying to change what Jigoku is just so that the Spider can have it both ways, have their cake and eat it to, is a non-starter.

Yeah, I've actually been silently agreeing with your posts. I should have liked them, my bad.

Those are different scales of villains. The Harriers and Scorpions were well-meaning, but generally misguided. The Spider want to bring literal hell to earth. Turning a blind eye to that is the opposite of pragmatic.

Actually, No I think most Spiders do not want that. Nobody want to live in hell, the Spider who want to bring hell on Earth are the ones who feel like Earth is already hell and just want to ruin the fun for everyone else too. But if you look at the stories told with pretty much every tainted person, it is always about getting power or revenge or something other have but the character self was envious towards others for. So, sure Jigoku as a realm might want to destroy Ningendo, but the Spider are not mindless puppets of that realm, so don't look at them like they would be. It is for a reason that they are not the Shadowlands Horde!

Acutally I even doubt Daigotsu ever wanted to make Nigendo hell on earth but he just wanted to be the guy on the throne nothing more and nothing less. That is what Kanpeki inherited and Iam not even sure if he finaly sits on the throne the realtion betwen the realm and daigotsua nd Kanpeki would not change entirely so that Diagotsu gets trouble and his sons gets pressed by the Oni he used to conquer the empire cause he refuses to do the realms bidding after he got his revenge.

Instilling an enemy at my gate that I am familar with and from which I know the tactics and how to counter act against him makes totaly sense if I can prevent a total unkown enemy to overun me with his completly new tactics. Actually having the Spider indoubt get slaughtered by new enemies give the empire the time to adjust towards their tactics and techniques which other wise would reuslt in a major defeat of their own forces caus elakc of time to adjust.

And yes not all Rokugani are pragmatic but the leaders most of the time are. Thats why you can have blood feuds but thinsg liek the harries can get ignored without disbanding a clan over it.

Changing things is obviously necessary. But we can either change the Spider, which will affect 1/9 of the player base, or we change the rest of the Empire, with will affect 8/9 of the player base. Expecting everyone else to change so your faction doesn't have to is unfair.

Also, please stop misrepresenting your opponent's point of view. No one wants the Spider to be an NPC faction. They just want it changed to fit with the rest of the setting.

Fake Edit: Holy crap is this thread hard to keep up with. There have been 7 posts since I've started cobbling together this multi-quote monstrosity.

Acutally I even doubt Daigotsu ever wanted to make Nigendo hell on earth but he just wanted to be the guy on the throne nothing more and nothing less. That is what Kanpeki inherited and Iam not even sure if he finaly sits on the throne the realtion betwen the realm and daigotsua nd Kanpeki would not change entirely so that Diagotsu gets trouble and his sons gets pressed by the Oni he used to conquer the empire cause he refuses to do the realms bidding after he got his revenge.

Instilling an enemy at my gate that I am familar with and from which I know the tactics and how to counter act against him makes totaly sense if I can prevent a total unkown enemy to overun me with his completly new tactics. Actually having the Spider indoubt get slaughtered by new enemies give the empire the time to adjust towards their tactics and techniques which other wise would reuslt in a major defeat of their own forces caus elakc of time to adjust.

And yes not all Rokugani are pragmatic but the leaders most of the time are. Thats why you can have blood feuds but thinsg liek the harries can get ignored without disbanding a clan over it.

It's been a while since I read the fiction, so maybe you're right about Daigotsu's motivation. But even so, would the rest of the Empire plausibly believe that? After all, literally everyone else who's trucked with Jigoku gets puppeted eventually. Why would the rest of Rokugan take the risk that Daigotsu is any different? And as I understand it, the Spider's free will is entirely due to Daigotsu. If he succumbs, the rest of the Spider do, too. Rokugan has no reason to believe the Spider will be able to stay free from Jigoku's will.

http://l5r.wikia.com/wiki/Daigotsu#Spider_Clan

Daigotsu vowed that his son would, upon the day of his gempukku, inherit the Empire of Rokugan, and from that Empire conquer the world, as prophecied. It was the Spider Clan's duty to fulfill this prophecy. [85]

Changing things is obviously necessary. But we can either change the Spider, which will affect 1/9 of the player base, or we change the rest of the Empire, with will affect 8/9 of the player base. Expecting everyone else to change so your faction doesn't have to is unfair.

Also, please stop misrepresenting your opponent's point of view. No one wants the Spider to be an NPC faction. They just want it changed to fit with the rest of the setting.

So much this...

Alright, let me try to be constructive here.

Folks arguing for the Spider, specifically Teveshszat, Huitzil37 and Drudenfusz. Please present your reasons for why the Spider's existence is beneficial for the setting, in a way that can't be achieved by:

a) The Scorpion Clan;

b) The Otomo and other existing Imperial Families;

c) AND the Shadowlands Horde.

The question is if you want to have a a force as part Rokugan which represents Fu Leng.

If not, then there is nor reason to keep the Spider around having the Horde is very acceptable.

Another question is why the Spider were created in the first place and this was to mainly focus on Samurai and not giant Monster.

It also followed pure mechanical purpose of introducing a Shadowlands faction which was not immune to the Dishonor victory that they wanted to focus on.

What does it bring now? Well, first a sense of continuity. A progression of the Story that is.

Even if the Spider leave Rokugan for good and become the Horde again.

I would say that most people would call the Lost the Spider Clan.

In this sense the Spider would stick around. Instead of being the Clan of the Lost, being the Lost Clan.

I think the main problem with the Spider and I would say the reason why this treat exist is that the Spider in its current form do not work.

So there are a few possibility how to deal with that problem either you integrate them or you throw them out.

I think out is the easier route since that already worked once,

but I would say it is less interesting because we already had that.

As I mentioned before they would need a Celestial Mandate however.

A purpose to see themselves as part of the empire. And I think there are interesting possibilities to find this place.

Do I think it is the only possibility? No, but it is the one I find currently most interesting.

To avoid continuing this on 2 threads at once...

There simply isn't any narrative purpose served by rearranging the entire cosmology just to make an inherently villainous faction into something they're not.

There is a narrative purpose which is telling a good story. At the moment the story could be better with a change.

There is also a very pragmatic point in making the spider players happy and let them keep their tainted powers

On the first part, how does letting the Spider openly be the servants of Rokugan's greatest, longest-standing, most implacable, most antithetical enemy, and at the same time be fully part of Rokugani society, serve to "tell a good story"? That's pretty much a textbook example of how to NOT tell a good story.

On the second part, I might just quote that every time someone says "This isn't about giving the Spider Taint and Tea at the same time." Anyway, there's no problem with the Spider keeping their Tainted powers... the problem is keeping their Tainted powers AND expecting to be part of Rokugani society.

Alright, let me try to be constructive here.

Folks arguing for the Spider, specifically Teveshszat, Huitzil37 and Drudenfusz. Please present your reasons for why the Spider's existence is beneficial for the setting, in a way that can't be achieved by:

a) The Scorpion Clan;

b) The Otomo and other existing Imperial Families;

c) AND the Shadowlands Horde.

The question is if you want to have a a force as part Rokugan which represents Fu Leng.

If not, then there is nor reason to keep the Spider around having the Horde is very acceptable.

Does that faction represent Fu Leng, or do they represent Jigoku? Is there a difference?

And either way, the problem isn't having them represent Fudaigoku, that's fine. The problem is representing Jigoku, and at the same time trying to be a part of what Jigoku wants to consume, corrupt, and drown in filth.

Changing things is obviously necessary. But we can either change the Spider, which will affect 1/9 of the player base, or we change the rest of the Empire, with will affect 8/9 of the player base. Expecting everyone else to change so your faction doesn't have to is unfair.

Also, please stop misrepresenting your opponent's point of view. No one wants the Spider to be an NPC faction. They just want it changed to fit with the rest of the setting.

Fake Edit: Holy crap is this thread hard to keep up with. There have been 7 posts since I've started cobbling together this multi-quote monstrosity.

I actually want to address the two points brought up in this argument as the crux of the entire argument happening here, and why it is ultimately going to continue to spiral out of control.

Point 1 - Player Agency in Clan Decisions - This becomes a common theme in this argument, that the Spider must change their Clan in order to fit into the setting and that the Spider have a large measure of control over their revisions. Yes, they will likely be substantially revised, but the Spider players are not in charge of this revisions, nor are the other Clans in charge of their revisions (and yes, there will be revisions of other Clans, if nothing more than simple contraction for the core set). Both sides need to realize that changes will happen largely outside of their control. I actually like this point because it puts the onus on FFG to make the setting work, and they will likely do a decent job with it.

Point 2 - The Setting Will Change - I believe a lot of people base arguments around the Rokugan left at the end of AEG's ownership of the properity and that decisions about where the setting goes from there can and should include all of the backstory and context. For me, this argument and others like it are the prime example of why FFG needs to study the game setting, understand the context, but then make changes and revisions free of the constraints imposed by twenty years of historical inertia. A new perspective that is not mired by the traditional storyline arguments and divorced of the levels of passion that dominate the forum will likely make this game more accessible to incoming players and allow FFG to make a more cohesive, consistent setting that may or may not feature all of the factions as they once were.

And, as noted by other(s), I'd appreciate it if you'd stop pretending to know more about what's going on inside my head than I do.

I will stop telling you that you think things are just for the sake of the Spider when you stop saying that in those exact words and then acting like I'm making things up for noticing the thing you said. You keep saying, again and again, that things are just for the sake of the Spider. You are wrong. You are wrong to believe this. The belief indicated by these words is false. You just cannot or will not stop saying it, though, and when I point out you keep saying something that is wrong, you accuse me of "pretending to know what's going on inside [your] head".

Alright, let me try to be constructive here.

Folks arguing for the Spider, specifically Teveshszat, Huitzil37 and Drudenfusz. Please present your reasons for why the Spider's existence is beneficial for the setting, in a way that can't be achieved by:

a) The Scorpion Clan;

b) The Otomo and other existing Imperial Families;

c) AND the Shadowlands Horde.

1: It allows the card game to be made such that politics/courtliness is a thing everyone participates in as part of the game. As it stood, if you cared about military, you didn't really care about courtliness in most cases, and those victory conditions did not interact. The wonky or missing interaction between victory conditions was a bad thing about the CCG; having a faction that never participates in courtliness makes it far, far more likely that courtliness will be something decks can ignore, and then we're right back to the same problem. If you want a game where you cannot ignore courtliness, you must have built your setting and its factions in such a way that none of them can do so. Since the Scorpion Clan allegedly work for the good of the Empire, they cannot carry the weight of being the Big Huge Bad Guys, the Otomo are not antagonistic at all, and the Horde do not participate in courtliness.

2: Making a setting in which "summons oni" and "is invited to tea and kabuki" are not mutually exclusive makes the setting finally pick a side between "This is a story about good vs evil" and "This is a story about order vs chaos". The Spider are evil but may participate in the system because that is harmonious, and saying "This isn't right, these people are dangerous monsters, they don't get to follow the rules!" is disharmonious and damaging to Order. Knowing what your setting is about and pushing it is infinitely preferable to the old way of jumping from one foot to another whenever one of your inadequacies was pointed out. Samurai drama, in which people are relentlessly punished for doing the right thing, works much better when you have this giant thing to point to to say "Look, these guys are evil as all hell, but they follow the rules and that makes it fine". You could go around this, by emphasizing more evil aspects of the other Clans, but that's very harmful for different reasons. Better to have Clans who are mostly sympathetic but say "Hey man, Spider get to sit at the table because rules are rules" to establish that Rules does not map to Good, than to accomplish this by having Clans who are more evil in non-supernatural ways -- since non-supernatural evil other than murder drives players away a lot more than murder and supernatural evil. The Scorpion claim to be good guys and thus do not force the conflict between Lawful and Good on behalf of others (they go through it themselves), the Otomo are not evil or chaotic and really aren't relevant to any of these, and the Horde is necessarily outside the system and do not force the conflict between Lawful and Good.

3: Making a setting in which the Big Bad Guy is a participant in the systems of politics and culture draws attention and focus away from the big bad guy, not toward it. When it is 8 Clans and The Malicious Power Outside Who Will Destroy Them, we always feel as though they need to be doing more to address The Threat, and stories that do not have anything to do with The Threat seem cheapened. If we know The Threat is within the system and operating by rules, we can believe in-character assessments from people in the setting saying "We know these guys are a threat, but stopping them is just one of many interests we have to balance our resources between." Characters focusing on other conflicts are not doing so out of ignorance. The Spider and Jigoku may want to destroy everything, but it is clearly a longer-term goal that does not require everyone else's immediate attention. This goal can obviously not be accomplished with Otomo or Horde, but could in theory by leaving out Spider and Horde altogether; but then you're also destroying the Crab and removing horror stories altogether, which probably isn't good.

And, as noted by other(s), I'd appreciate it if you'd stop pretending to know more about what's going on inside my head than I do.

I will stop telling you that you think things are just for the sake of the Spider when you stop saying that in those exact words and then acting like I'm making things up for noticing the thing you said. You keep saying, again and again, that things are just for the sake of the Spider. You are wrong. You are wrong to believe this. The belief indicated by these words is false. You just cannot or will not stop saying it, though, and when I point out you keep saying something that is wrong, you accuse me of "pretending to know what's going on inside [your] head".

You're confusing your own inferences for things that have actually been said, and being belligerent about it to boot. You're one more instance of this behavior away from being the first on the ignore list for my account here.

Changing things is obviously necessary. But we can either change the Spider, which will affect 1/9 of the player base, or we change the rest of the Empire, with will affect 8/9 of the player base. Expecting everyone else to change so your faction doesn't have to is unfair.

Also, please stop misrepresenting your opponent's point of view. No one wants the Spider to be an NPC faction. They just want it changed to fit with the rest of the setting.

Fake Edit: Holy crap is this thread hard to keep up with. There have been 7 posts since I've started cobbling together this multi-quote monstrosity.

I actually want to address the two points brought up in this argument as the crux of the entire argument happening here, and why it is ultimately going to continue to spiral out of control.

Point 1 - Player Agency in Clan Decisions - This becomes a common theme in this argument, that the Spider must change their Clan in order to fit into the setting and that the Spider have a large measure of control over their revisions. Yes, they will likely be substantially revised, but the Spider players are not in charge of this revisions, nor are the other Clans in charge of their revisions (and yes, there will be revisions of other Clans, if nothing more than simple contraction for the core set). Both sides need to realize that changes will happen largely outside of their control. I actually like this point because it puts the onus on FFG to make the setting work, and they will likely do a decent job with it.

Point 2 - The Setting Will Change - I believe a lot of people base arguments around the Rokugan left at the end of AEG's ownership of the properity and that decisions about where the setting goes from there can and should include all of the backstory and context. For me, this argument and others like it are the prime example of why FFG needs to study the game setting, understand the context, but then make changes and revisions free of the constraints imposed by twenty years of historical inertia. A new perspective that is not mired by the traditional storyline arguments and divorced of the levels of passion that dominate the forum will likely make this game more accessible to incoming players and allow FFG to make a more cohesive, consistent setting that may or may not feature all of the factions as they once were.

Listen to this man! The setting will be different! Don't argue based on the history of Rokugan, because that history won't have existed! Nothing about Daigotsu's past actions matters because only the ones we wanted to have happened happened! The option is not to change 1/9 clans or 8/9 clans, because 9/9 clans are going to be different, and we should be saying "How do we build these 9/9 clans to do what we need them to do?" There's no existing way of things to privilege!

And only slightly less important than the Spider integration question, I feel, is the Phoenix/Dragon one. They have languished over most of the game's existence without strong identities and without much to do. How do we fix that? Do they NEED to be two separate clans at all? Because I could readily buy them being folded into one Clan together. Unicorn and Mantis need some analysis too, but it's not quite as pressing, and every Clan with a distinct identity could still use some refitting to make it better at the thing it is supposed to be doing.

Alright, let me try to be constructive here.

Folks arguing for the Spider, specifically Teveshszat, Huitzil37 and Drudenfusz. Please present your reasons for why the Spider's existence is beneficial for the setting, in a way that can't be achieved by:

a) The Scorpion Clan;

b) The Otomo and other existing Imperial Families;

c) AND the Shadowlands Horde.

The question is if you want to have a a force as part Rokugan which represents Fu Leng.

If not, then there is nor reason to keep the Spider around having the Horde is very acceptable.

That is indeed one of the key questions. As it stands, that is part of the 'role' the Spider have - the worship of the Dark Fortunes and Jigoku. However, that is also one of the points (right next to Taint in the tearoom) that causes the most attrition with the rest of the playerbase. As has been obvious, I include myself in the number of people that do not like the current solution, because I see it as too stressful on the established setting and its core beliefs.

I should point that even the Spider's introduction points out this stressful relation in-game:

"We are the irresistible force that Rokugan changed to accommodate, for we could not be resisted"

Another question is why the Spider were created in the first place and this was to mainly focus on Samurai and not giant Monster.

It also followed pure mechanical purpose of introducing a Shadowlands faction which was not immune to the Dishonor victory that they wanted to focus on.

That I do not know. There has been PLENTY of speculation (not all of it good or polite) as to why the Spider were created, or how they endured for so long - I'll quietly stay away from that particular can of worms.

Regarding the Dishonor/Shadowlands situation, that much is true... but I doubt it was the main reason. Seems more like a secondary/accessory reason to me.

What does it bring now? Well, first a sense of continuity. A progression of the Story that is.

Even if the Spider leave Rokugan for good and become the Horde again.

I would say that most people would call the Lost the Spider Clan.

In this sense the Spider would stick around. Instead of being the Clan of the Lost, being the Lost Clan.

Agreed at 100% - I don't defend a retcon, far from it (I made a proposal that safeguarded continuity here ). I much prefer continuity, be it towards the removal of Taint, removal of Clan status/return of Horde, or whatever solution is found to be best. But continuity is important.

I think the main problem with the Spider and I would say the reason why this treat exist is that the Spider in its current form do not work.

So there are a few possibility how to deal with that problem either you integrate them or you throw them out.

I think out is the easier route since that already worked once, but I would say it is less interesting because we already had that.

As I mentioned before they would need a Celestial Mandate however.

A purpose to see themselves as part of the empire. And I think there are interesting possibilities to find this place.

Do I think it is the only possibility? No, but it is the one I find currently most interesting.

The Spider already have a mandate: "Go forth and conquer in my name" was the mandate/charter given to them by Iweko I, as a way to accommodate them in the Empire's structure and prevent all those tainty folks from setting up shop in the Imperial Gardens - however, after all these years I think we have to come to the same conclusion you mentioned - it did not work. So again we go to my original question: What can they do -for the Empire- that isn't already accomplished by other Clan? Given the current doesn't work, then it'd have to be something different.... right?

You're confusing your own inferences for things that have actually been said, and being belligerent about it to boot. You're one more instance of this behavior away from being the first on the ignore list for my account here.

Do you want me to quote you saying that things are just for the sake of the Spider?

Alright, let me try to be constructive here.

Folks arguing for the Spider, specifically Teveshszat, Huitzil37 and Drudenfusz. Please present your reasons for why the Spider's existence is beneficial for the setting, in a way that can't be achieved by:

a) The Scorpion Clan;

b) The Otomo and other existing Imperial Families;

c) AND the Shadowlands Horde.

Because the Scropion Clan and the imperial families have totaly other focus points. The imperials are there to keep the order intact while divinding the clans so they can´t badn together whiel the scropions are the prgamtists of the setting and doing anything they need to serve the empire. Actually the scropion are the heros of rokugan cause the do what they need not what they want to save a place which is not friendly to them.

the Spiders exsistence to the setting is benefical cause you have a faction which is a dark mirror to the bushido and show the empire the flaws of their philosophy this actually is something I really like at them and I feal this makes the story more intesting if you have these dark mirrior effects.

The Shadowlands hordes is a plain mindeless evil what I want the more inteligent adn subtile evil of the Spider is nothing they could provide with their oni and chaos. I like the infiltration strategy and I also like maho and crazy people like Yaijinden Yuchiban. I don´t see the Shadowlands providing the degree of inteligent evil the Spider can do.

Also I don´t want the spider to stay a greta clan. What I want is that they get their moment of glory (Onyx Empire) and than becomesomething different from the Shadowlands Horde and Great clan. Thats why I prefer the exile into the Ivory Kindoms where they can stay a constant thread to roukugan but nothing which you woul easly take back while they can keep their cool tainty toys.

Listen to this man! The setting will be different! Don't argue based on the history of Rokugan, because that history won't have existed! Nothing about Daigotsu's past actions matters because only the ones we wanted to have happened happened! The option is not to change 1/9 clans or 8/9 clans, because 9/9 clans are going to be different, and we should be saying "How do we build these 9/9 clans to do what we need them to do?" There's no existing way of things to privilege!

And only slightly less important than the Spider integration question, I feel, is the Phoenix/Dragon one. They have languished over most of the game's existence without strong identities and without much to do. How do we fix that? Do they NEED to be two separate clans at all? Because I could readily buy them being folded into one Clan together. Unicorn and Mantis need some analysis too, but it's not quite as pressing, and every Clan with a distinct identity could still use some refitting to make it better at the thing it is supposed to be doing.

Well, before you praise me too quickly, you must also understand that just because the setting will be revised and the Spider could find their way into it, you might not get exactly what you wanted. One of the draws of the Spider Clan to many people is that they are ostensibly the villain faction and given that Clans will undergo some reduction, the Spider might be framed in this manner. We simply don't know enough about what the setting is going to look like to make more than educated guesses about how any faction, including the Spider, will look at relaunch.

Everyone has to understand that the revisions might not leave anyone getting exactly what they want, so I am going to remain open-minded about what will transpire.

And, as noted by other(s), I'd appreciate it if you'd stop pretending to know more about what's going on inside my head than I do.

I will stop telling you that you think things are just for the sake of the Spider when you stop saying that in those exact words and then acting like I'm making things up for noticing the thing you said. You keep saying, again and again, that things are just for the sake of the Spider. You are wrong. You are wrong to believe this. The belief indicated by these words is false. You just cannot or will not stop saying it, though, and when I point out you keep saying something that is wrong, you accuse me of "pretending to know what's going on inside [your] head".

Alright, let me try to be constructive here.

Folks arguing for the Spider, specifically Teveshszat, Huitzil37 and Drudenfusz. Please present your reasons for why the Spider's existence is beneficial for the setting, in a way that can't be achieved by:

a) The Scorpion Clan;

b) The Otomo and other existing Imperial Families;

c) AND the Shadowlands Horde.

1: It allows the card game to be made such that politics/courtliness is a thing everyone participates in as part of the game. As it stood, if you cared about military, you didn't really care about courtliness in most cases, and those victory conditions did not interact. The wonky or missing interaction between victory conditions was a bad thing about the CCG; having a faction that never participates in courtliness makes it far, far more likely that courtliness will be something decks can ignore, and then we're right back to the same problem. If you want a game where you cannot ignore courtliness, you must have built your setting and its factions in such a way that none of them can do so. Since the Scorpion Clan allegedly work for the good of the Empire, they cannot carry the weight of being the Big Huge Bad Guys, the Otomo are not antagonistic at all, and the Horde do not participate in courtliness.

2: Making a setting in which "summons oni" and "is invited to tea and kabuki" are not mutually exclusive makes the setting finally pick a side between "This is a story about good vs evil" and "This is a story about order vs chaos". The Spider are evil but may participate in the system because that is harmonious, and saying "This isn't right, these people are dangerous monsters, they don't get to follow the rules!" is disharmonious and damaging to Order. Knowing what your setting is about and pushing it is infinitely preferable to the old way of jumping from one foot to another whenever one of your inadequacies was pointed out. Samurai drama, in which people are relentlessly punished for doing the right thing, works much better when you have this giant thing to point to to say "Look, these guys are evil as all hell, but they follow the rules and that makes it fine". You could go around this, by emphasizing more evil aspects of the other Clans, but that's very harmful for different reasons. Better to have Clans who are mostly sympathetic but say "Hey man, Spider get to sit at the table because rules are rules" to establish that Rules does not map to Good, than to accomplish this by having Clans who are more evil in non-supernatural ways -- since non-supernatural evil other than murder drives players away a lot more than murder and supernatural evil. The Scorpion claim to be good guys and thus do not force the conflict between Lawful and Good on behalf of others (they go through it themselves), the Otomo are not evil or chaotic and really aren't relevant to any of these, and the Horde is necessarily outside the system and do not force the conflict between Lawful and Good.

3: Making a setting in which the Big Bad Guy is a participant in the systems of politics and culture draws attention and focus away from the big bad guy, not toward it. When it is 8 Clans and The Malicious Power Outside Who Will Destroy Them, we always feel as though they need to be doing more to address The Threat, and stories that do not have anything to do with The Threat seem cheapened. If we know The Threat is within the system and operating by rules, we can believe in-character assessments from people in the setting saying "We know these guys are a threat, but stopping them is just one of many interests we have to balance our resources between." Characters focusing on other conflicts are not doing so out of ignorance. The Spider and Jigoku may want to destroy everything, but it is clearly a longer-term goal that does not require everyone else's immediate attention. This goal can obviously not be accomplished with Otomo or Horde, but could in theory by leaving out Spider and Horde altogether; but then you're also destroying the Crab and removing horror stories altogether, which probably isn't good.

That's all great, but...

1. If it's going to be about all the factions having access to all the CCG mechanics, and trying to make the setting work around that, then the game is better off without the Spider at all. There's more to consider here than just CCG mechanics and factions; there's the RPG, and the fiction, and the basic integrity and coherence of the setting as an exercise in worldbuilding.

2. For many players, and in big chunks of the setting material, it's not a story about "good vs evil" OR a story about "order vs chaos". And even within the setting, those dichotomies are not seen as two separate things to begin with.

3. Could just as easily be fixed by just not having a Big Bad Threat at all. Just the Clans, with their opposing priorities and different worldviews and competition over things ranging from their perceived honor, to the limited resources of the world around them.

Listen to this man! The setting will be different! Don't argue based on the history of Rokugan, because that history won't have existed! Nothing about Daigotsu's past actions matters because only the ones we wanted to have happened happened! The option is not to change 1/9 clans or 8/9 clans, because 9/9 clans are going to be different, and we should be saying "How do we build these 9/9 clans to do what we need them to do?" There's no existing way of things to privilege!

And only slightly less important than the Spider integration question, I feel, is the Phoenix/Dragon one. They have languished over most of the game's existence without strong identities and without much to do. How do we fix that? Do they NEED to be two separate clans at all? Because I could readily buy them being folded into one Clan together. Unicorn and Mantis need some analysis too, but it's not quite as pressing, and every Clan with a distinct identity could still use some refitting to make it better at the thing it is supposed to be doing.

Well, before you praise me too quickly, you must also understand that just because the setting will be revised and the Spider could find their way into it, you might not get exactly what you wanted. One of the draws of the Spider Clan to many people is that they are ostensibly the villain faction and given that Clans will undergo some reduction, the Spider might be framed in this manner. We simply don't know enough about what the setting is going to look like to make more than educated guesses about how any faction, including the Spider, will look at relaunch.

Everyone has to understand that the revisions might not leave anyone getting exactly what they want, so I am going to remain open-minded about what will transpire.

I'm not saying you are only good because you want to do to the Spider what I want to do to the Spider, you're just actually looking at it from a productive viewpoint. If you wanted the Spider gone from the setting, and you made a case for building a setting in which they did not exist, that would be a productive viewpoint, and we could talk about which of our models would make the best result. Focusing on what the Spider are getting, or how much to change them vs how much to change others, or on placing them in a context of 20 real-time years of in-game history, is not productive.

You're confusing your own inferences for things that have actually been said, and being belligerent about it to boot. You're one more instance of this behavior away from being the first on the ignore list for my account here.

Do you want me to quote you saying that things are just for the sake of the Spider?

Only if you also bother to quote the pro "Taint and Tea" people who have outright said "This is so the Spider can get what they want".

Of course, that really wouldn't fit in your attempt to make this about the person instead of about the argument, would it?

At any rate, I can see where this is headed, and I'm not going to be part of it.

Huitzil37, do you have ANY factual evidence to support the idea that all the Spider changes have been for the better of the setting? i can certainly point to where pro spider players have expressed the point I bring up.

Does that faction represent Fu Leng, or do they represent Jigoku? Is there a difference?

Well yes there is Jigoku is a realm and Fu Leng is a person.

And with the ascension of Daigotsu the two became obviously separate.

Fu Leng is one of the nine kami and has a certain right to have a great clan, the Spider Clan.

The Spider already have a mandate: "Go forth and conquer in my name" was the mandate/charter given to them by Iweko I, as a way to accommodate them in the Empire's structure and prevent all those tainty folks from setting up shop in the Imperial Gardens - however, after all these years I think we have to come to the same conclusion you mentioned - it did not work. So again we go to my original question: What can they do -for the Empire- that isn't already accomplished by other Clan? Given the current doesn't work, then it'd have to be something different.... right?

I liked the Conqueror idea, but that only works until the world is conquered.

You could leave them in control of the colonies that would be kind of the next logical thing after conquering.

The problem if you want to have story consistency:

Kanpeki is already tainted and he is making a move on Rokugan.

The question is how to work from there.

I like the idea that FFG starts the game of from after the war.

A consolidated Rokugan that might look a bit different from our Rokugan we know.

And the first expansion would be a flashback similar to the Scorpion Clan Coup.

Like who did we end up here? Who is this Daigotsu Fuchan and how dis she became Spider Clan Champion?

Things like these

The question would be how could such a consolidated state look like.

What would be a more or less stable setting?

Hypothetically... IF we accept the premise that everything that came before the moment FFG acquired the IP is in limbo and can be changed or eliminated, then... why keep anything from Onyx at all?