Over at Shinden Fu Leng (the spider clan forum for those of you who may not be familiar) we reached a general consensus that "hey here's the throne" was a pretty awful way to get an Onyx Empire, so one of our number started a threat discussing how he would have done it, and this in turn has spun into a number of different alternate timelines. Now i'm sure a dozen different versions of how the spider/shadowlands rise to prominence is of limited interest to most people, but Imperial Histories II was pretty popular and it had a number of fan submitted supplements so i thought, as a fun exercise, that a thread in which people submitted their ideas for alternate timelines for L5R would be a good idea.
here are my suggested Guidelines. obviously, i can't enforce any of this but i'd love for just one thread i start to stay positive and supportive.
For Alternate Timelines
1. give it a clear name
2. start your post with a clearly stated point of departure from the existing canon
3. outline as much or as little repercussions of that change as you desire
To comment on an Alternate Timeline
1. if you just don't like the idea of it, don't bother
2. reference it by the name, rather than quoting the entire thing, so we can keep it clear, unless there is a specific passage you want to respond to.
3. lets keep it constructive, please?