Moreover, I would suggest that the vast majority of people who play L5R do so in order to play magical fantasy samurai (to a given degree of 'magical' and 'fantasy', which changes from player to player), not in order to interrogate the inherent contradictions of the society with regards to the lower classes, and its consequences for ethical standards in the setting.

You can't really have one without running into the other. Unless the players avoid non-samurai like plague. And once someone runs into the problem, the djinn will be out from the bottle... I mean, I did not mind the caste system until my Utaku Battle Maiden decided to adopt an eta girl.

"No, sorry, you can't be an honourable Lion without contesting the Lion traditions of oppressing the heimin, because they fundamentally contradict modern standards of moral behaviour."

The funny thing is that it contradicts in-setting standards of moral behavior too (namely the Bushido tenets of Compassion and Courtesy, and probably Duty and Honor too).

(sorry for the double-post, and the formating; I fail at editing this forum's quote boxes)

To address your first point: you don't have to ignore them 'like the plague'. You just have to have no meaningful interactions, which is easy enough, and in my experience of the RPG, fairly normal, outside campaigns that are deliberately intending to raise these issues. Sure, heimin are responsible for making sure virtually every part of a samurai's life runs smoothly, but that doesn't mean the samurai has to pay them any attention. Since you mention an Utaku character - the Unicorn are pretty weird in Rokugan for taking a personal interest in their heimin. The idea of adopting an eta child would be literally unthinkable for any Lion or Crane, and if it never crosses your mind in the first place, you have little reason to wonder why it should be so.

To your second point: it's a truism that the Lion are bad at Compassion, but there's no reason the Lion themselves should see it that way. To quote Leadership :

"Through intense training the Samurai becomes quick and strong. He is not as other men. He develops a power that must be used for the good of all. He has compassion. He helps his fellow men at every opportunity. If an opportunity does not arise, he goes out of his way to find one."

Notably, that quote doesn't say "don't be a jerk". It says, "use your strength on behalf of others, and help people as much as possible". Even setting aside the question of whether or not heimin qualify as 'fellow men' for the purposes of Akodo's guidance (they don't really, in the opinion of the Lion), the Lion could quite plausibly see no contradiction between those instructions and their own traditions, as long as they did something nice for the people- a condition which, in the view of most Lion, is perfectly adequately served by their maintenance of security, and the traditions of the Empire.

As for Courtesy, again, heimin aren't really people. If anything, treating peasants politely would be considered an insult to everyone else, as it implies that samurai are worthy of no more respect than heimin- think of the outrage among veterans who had received the Légion d'Honneur, when the French announced that they were awarding it to a (particularly heroic and life-saving) carrier pigeon.

Finally, the Lion generally believe that heimin were born as heimin because of their actions in past lives, and that the best way to help them to achieve a better rebirth next time is to ensure that they fulfil their duties as part of the Celestial Order properly- a goal that is best served, in the opinion of the Lion, by constantly reminding them of their status, and not allowing them to get any delusions of grandeur that might cause them to act in ways inappropriate to their position. It's undeniably nasty, but it's perfectly logical within the setting's cosmology, and allows the Lion to maintain a clean conscience.

In short, Bushido is a code for the maintenance of social order- it's all about obligations to others, both horizontal and vertical. It is not about 'being a good person', as we would understand those words.

To be clear, I'm certainly not defending the in-setting caste system. It's oppressive and reprehensible, and absolutely should be repulsive to us. It is perfectly reasonable to have doubts about the ethical status of those who uphold it most strictly- it would be more worrying if there were no such doubts. If the setting were to be changed so as to be more in line with modern standards, the caste system should absolutely be at or near the top of the list of things to be drastically changed. Within the setting as it stands, however, there's no reason it should come up as an issue with any frequency, nor would it be fair to deny the Lion (and Crane) their status as shining beacons of wonderfulness within the setting because of it.

In short, Bushido is a code for the maintenance of social order- it's all about obligations to others, both horizontal and vertical. It is not about 'being a good person', as we would understand those words.

Obligations work both ways. You are obliged to serve both those who are above you and those who are below you with an equal degree. You can of course smear away the second part by believing that some people are "less" than you, but it will only make you a bigot who walks on a wrong path of ignorance and self-righteousness - someone who embraces the dark virtues of Control and Strength from Shourido.

i disagree with the notion that Bushido is there to maintain the social order. The Bushido says nothing about society, and prefers no particular social structure. You can be the lowliest eta-born scum, if you truly follow the seven tenets then you are as good as a samurai than the Emperor himself. It is the caste system that makes the distinction, and not Bushido. The Bushido isn't about 'being a good person' as we could understand - it is about being the best person objectively .

You are absolutely correct that obligations work both ways, and that samurai are expected to look after those below them on the chain, just as they serve those above them. But it's doubtful how far that extends to peasants. For most traditional Rokugani, peasants aren't just people who are lower on the ladder than you, in the way that ji-samurai or even ronin are; they are literally not full people , and accordingly stand in a grey zone when it comes to moral obligation.

We may have to agree to disagree on Bushido in general, though (and likely on other things)- in my view, Bushido is something that only members of the samurai class are expected to adhere to. Peasants exist to serve the samurai, and while an analogy can be drawn between peasant < samurai and samurai < daimyo in terms of obligations to serve, the difference is that samurai are expected to uphold moral excellence (as defined by Bushido) at all times, while nobody cares what peasants do as long as they do what they're told. For a peasant to behave like a samurai, or to claim to be acting as one, even without taking up a daisho, is likely grounds for immediate execution for most Clans.

If nothing else, this conversation should act as a caution to anyone trying to remake the setting- Rokugan is many things to many people, and trying to pin it down doesn't always make everyone happy.

The various clans can't even agree on what Bushido is / means.

You are absolutely correct that obligations work both ways, and that samurai are expected to look after those below them on the chain, just as they serve those above them. But it's doubtful how far that extends to peasants. For most traditional Rokugani, peasants aren't just people who are lower on the ladder than you, in the way that ji-samurai or even ronin are; they are literally not full people , and accordingly stand in a grey zone when it comes to moral obligation.

This is true, but this also has nothing to do with Bushido. You are effectively justifying the caste system with the caste system here .

In essence: the setting is quite a mess and fixing it is equally cumbersome .

Well, it has to do with Bushido inasmuch as Bushido defines your obligations to people- if you don't see heimin as people, the obligations of Bushido don't apply. I'll agree that it's using the caste system to justify its maintenance, but if you take the caste system as a given (which, since it was the creation of the Kami, Rokugani do), that's not necessarily a fallacy.

And yes, the setting is a mess- as my previous statements should indicate, though, I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing. In its current form, lots of people can enjoy 'L5R/Rokugan', even if what they're enjoying are actually quite different things. As long as everyone sitting down at a given table agrees on the terms of reference for their game, that's fine, and they can enjoy it in whatever form they like. 'Fixing' the setting might make things clearer and smoother for everyone, but it might also clear away some of the things that people enjoy about it. I'm all in favour of improving the rules (which are actually pretty good, for the most part: the biggest issue in the current ruleset is consistency and clarity of terminology), but I am dubious, at best, about any attempt to 'fix' the setting itself.

I don't think that the existence of this conversation is evidence that "the setting is a mess." It's evidence that the setting is very detailed and heavily explored and 'realistic'. All of the sort of moral and societal and philosophical questions that are being had about this fictional universe and its fictionalized ethical code are ones that could be had about real world societies. To pick a very easy example, I live in a country founded by a bunch of forward-thinking, high-minded folks who wrote a lot of nice words about freedom and equality, and fought for some of those words ... and many of those folks also kept slaves. And treated women as little more than chattel. And would never have permitted a Catholic or a Muslim or a Jew to hold public office (despite explicitly stating that there should be no religious tests to hold public office). History is not neat. People have prejudices and biases inherited from their time and place - sometimes they rise above, more often they do not.

And people often have ideals that they sincerely hold, but do not live up to. Or they believe in the generalities of a moral code, but maybe not this specific aspect. Plus there are differences in the negative commands of a religion and the positive push to do good things - it's a lot easier to be "not bad" than it is to be the most wonderful human being ever (pretty much all of us obey that "thou shalt not kill" maxim, but how many people at all times really treat every other human being the way they would want to be treated). And you can have a wide swathe of people who all identify themselves as ascribing to a particular moral/religious code, and yet can never seem to agree on what that means. We all disagree, and we all fail at living up to the moral rules we ourselves proclaim. Yet most people think of themselves as good people, and as good members of a religious community. On a random note, something north of 75% of people think they're above average drivers.

In short, people are complicated.

So, yes, samurai in Rokugan live in a society that privileges them and it buttressed by a philosophy of social order that preserves that privilege. They (in general) espouse a belief in Bushido, and for the most part actually do believe in Bushido. Yet they do not typically live as paragons of that ethical system, and many of them fail at it all the time. And they probably still consider themselves good samurai. Also, none of these different groups of samurai can agree about what bushido really means, especially not when you get down to the nitty-gritty. But all of these are things that people and nations do in the real world as well.

So, sure, they could re-write Rokugan to get rid of all of that. There could be a precise and clear definition of exactly how bushido applies in all situations, and every single samurai could live up to that code, or at least know that they were not living up to it. This system could (through some serious effort on the part of the authors) probably be stripped of any major cognitive dissonance.

But does that really make for a better system? Isn't the sort of complexity on ethical and moral view points the sort of thing that we should laud in an RPG setting? Is it really a better alternative for us to sit here and try to come up with a "correct" version of Bushido to implement for everyone in Rokugan, like it was some sort of old-school D&D country that basically tries to encapsulate the notable aspects of a fictionalized version of a real-world culture into two paragraphs? Especially when you have the option of not doing that deep dive into the hyper-nuances of Rokugan's implementation of Bushido if you want?

As for the caste system, I've noted that, although I'm not in favor of doing it, I can see how someone might want to just write it out of the setting because it's morally odious. But, yeah, if you keep it the immorality of it pretty much has to be set aside. You can have your characters live up to being "true" embodiments of Compassion by not being horrible to peasants, but if you're having characters truly confront the system, that will take over the entire campaign, and that's generally not what people want. The characters, as creatures of their (imaginary) time and place are captives of their system as are many folks in the real world, and the story you're telling is probably not one of a small group of people rising up against their society. But this is only a contradiction in the way that people, in real life, can be contradictory.

And dumb things like Lion running over peasants you just don't print again and they effectively cease to exist.

It's worth noting that the caste system as described by some participants in these discussions also appears to be somewhat simplified when compared with the way things really worked out in the culture that inspired that detail of the setting.

The caste system as presented in L5R is heavily based on that of Edo / Tokugawa era Japan. A key point of divergence between Japan and Rokugan is that the codified and strict caste system of Japan came about not at the "dawn of civilization", but as a way for the Shogunate to maintain stability and order, based on a mishmash of neo-Confucianism with cherry-picked Buddhist and Shinto concepts.

Despite their nominal place in the bottom tiers of the caste system, merchants and artisans increasingly evaded the strictures of their castes through the accumulation of wealth (due to the long era of relative peace, conspicuous consumption and "leisurely" lives of samurai without wars to fight, and increasing urbanization) leading to the rise of the Chōnin social class in the urban centers of Japan. When it comes to Rokugan, even the official published material seems less than decided on just how far this phenomenon has occured.

I don't think that the existence of this conversation is evidence that "the setting is a mess." It's evidence that the setting is very detailed and heavily explored and 'realistic'.

The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I would say that the latter is greatly responsible for the former.

Isn't the sort of complexity on ethical and moral view points the sort of thing that we should laud in an RPG setting?

The problem is that the L5R social and moral system is not complex, just confusing. It combines romanticized morality with a "harsher than reality" society, and makes no attempt whatsoever to justify their co-existence other than a poorly handwaved divine mandate.

On the contrary, the Lion, who are otherwise the epitome of all things Rokugani aspire to be, are notorious for their general callousness in dealing with heimin and eta (eg, they believe that it's bad luck to have a peasant cross their path, and so will quite happily trample any peasants in their way instead)

I honestly have to roll my eyes at that. Seriously? How do the Lion ever travel through cities? Work with doshin or ashigaru? Wander the halls of any estate large enough to have servants? It's one thing to say "the Lion are jerks to heimin" -- that's entirely plausible -- but what you just described resoundingly fails the anthropological sniff test.

Credit to your instincts! I looked up the original source for that point (Secrets of the Lion, p. 5) - to be sure, and it clarifies that the superstition is, specifically, that a peasant crossing your path while you're riding can make your horse break your legs, which means it's only an issue while mounted. Granted, there are still issues - when riding through city streets, for instance - but it's at least not an issue indoors.

Also, there is no shortage of things within the setting that make little to no sense, and/or are mutually contradictory. Whether or not this custom is plausible, it does at least serve its intended purpose, of illustrating the ways in which the Lion are unpleasant to the peasantry.

My first reaction to this... even in a culture that favors received wisdom over empirical observation, how many times does it take for peasants to cross the path of riding Lion samurai, with no broken legs resulting, before even the Lion start to realize that this might not be true.

Then I start to think about all the seeminly-insane things that people in real, modern cultures still believe in the face of all evidence to the contrary...

My first reaction to this... even in a culture that favors received wisdom over empirical observation, how many times does it take for peasants to cross the path of riding Lion samurai, with no broken legs resulting, before even the Lion start to realize that this might not be true.

Then I start to think about all the seeminly-insane things that people in real, modern cultures still believe in the face of all evidence to the contrary...

Dingdingdingdingding!

If the empirical observation of daily life was enough to kill a superstition, we'd have a lot fewer of them.

Regarding rich merchants, btw, I kept pushing for a bit more of that in the setting, because I thought it would make for a nice layer of added complexity, and some good non-combat challenges for low-IR/low-Status PCs, as well as flavor for the Yasuki/Yoritomo/etc.

Ok...how did a discussion about an RPG become a discussion about ethics?

Regarding the stuff about the canon: I started playing L5R with the 4th Edition and I change the canon, because I like the part about Iweko being the Empress, but the 4 wars or so after her ascencion and before her son following her on the throne is too much for me. As well the Spider being a Great Clan doesn't really make sense to me. So I just skipp those parts.

I know people who love the 4th Edition as well as I know people who still play 2nd Edition and don't want to change the system because some of their favorite schools changed too much. (can't say what exactly they mean, 'cause I don't know the older Editions).

If I were to decide what I would change, I would reboot the history at the beginning of the Clan-Wars-Era or after the Second Day of Thunder. To me it seems to be a part in history many players like and also would get new players interested. It would give FFG the opportunity to clean up the existing history of Rokugan.

I would leave the Lying Darkness as it is, but I also should mention that until now I didn't use the villians of Rokugan except for the Spider Clan. And the creation-myth of Rokugan is one of the things I like about the world.

Also I don't see any issues with the socialsystem of Rokugan. It is an imaginary world and they even weakened the system a little bit.

Regarding L5R is not a game for beginning to roleplay: I brought about 5 people to love playing pen and paper with L5R 4th Edition.

My first reaction to this... even in a culture that favors received wisdom over empirical observation, how many times does it take for peasants to cross the path of riding Lion samurai, with no broken legs resulting, before even the Lion start to realize that this might not be true.

Then I start to think about all the seeminly-insane things that people in real, modern cultures still believe in the face of all evidence to the contrary...

Dingdingdingdingding!

If the empirical observation of daily life was enough to kill a superstition, we'd have a lot fewer of them.

Regarding rich merchants, btw, I kept pushing for a bit more of that in the setting, because I thought it would make for a nice layer of added complexity, and some good non-combat challenges for low-IR/low-Status PCs, as well as flavor for the Yasuki/Yoritomo/etc.

I saw the 3rd edition book Merchants Guide to Rokugan in the used section of the local gaming store a week or two ago. I started skimming through it, thinking it might have that sort of setting material.

Nope.

It's entirely about the Kolat.

~~~~

Regarding the Yasuki/Yoritomo/etc... more details about commerce and the like would have made for a nice framework on which to hang some of their schools' Techniques. See also the identified pattern with a lack of framework for artisan techiques and to some degree courtiers, as discussed elsewhere.

When no one can agree on what the problems are, it's a sign of a well-put-together setting.

It is more like a sign of very diverse problems people can cherry-pick at whim. That's as far from a well-put-together setting as it can be IMHO .

If that were the case, we'd at least be able to agree on some of the problems.

I don't think that the existence of this conversation is evidence that "the setting is a mess." It's evidence that the setting is very detailed and heavily explored and 'realistic'.

The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I would say that the latter is greatly responsible for the former.

Isn't the sort of complexity on ethical and moral view points the sort of thing that we should laud in an RPG setting?

The problem is that the L5R social and moral system is not complex, just confusing. It combines romanticized morality with a "harsher than reality" society, and makes no attempt whatsoever to justify their co-existence other than a poorly handwaved divine mandate.

Hm, I think I've been misunderstanding your position. I guess your problem is not that the setting is unrealistic, it's that it's too hard to understand. And I disagree with you when you say the moral and social system isn't complex. Its complexity one of the reasons it's hard to understand. (The other reason being that it's so different from our own ethical systems.)

Maybe I'm unusual in this, but I like the way the ethical/social system is complex and alien, it's more interesting that way. To me, the setting's complexity is one of its biggest charms. If I wanted a simple setting I'd just make my own.

Hm, I think I've been misunderstanding your position. I guess your problem is not that the setting is unrealistic, it's that it's too hard to understand.

No, my problem is that the setting doesn't follow any reasonable rule with its build-up and doesn't fit together into a complete whole. It is "complex" because there are conflicting elements in it, but these conflicts make absolutely zero sense in relation of what the setting wants to be. The whole thing is in fact very easy to comprehend (because it is really shallow if you think about it), but it is a very unrewarding experience .

Hm, I think I've been misunderstanding your position. I guess your problem is not that the setting is unrealistic, it's that it's too hard to understand.

No, my problem is that the setting doesn't follow any reasonable rule with its build-up and doesn't fit together into a complete whole. It is "complex" because there are conflicting elements in it, but these conflicts make absolutely zero sense in relation of what the setting wants to be. The whole thing is in fact very easy to comprehend (because it is really shallow if you think about it), but it is a very unrewarding experience .

Indeed -- "internally inconsistent" is not the same thing as "complex".

A good parallel for the other issue I have with some parts of Rokugani culture, history, etc as presented, would be the issues I have when watching "hacker movies". 90% of what's said in those sorts of movies is hashed-up technobably nonsense. Or the movie 300 , which has almost no relationship to the real events other than the names of characters and places.

E: (was interrupted when typing and forgot to add the second half of what I was going to say)

I find it impossible to just take the details of a story or setting as "given" and not analyze them. Knowing the real history of Thermopylae and the way Spartans actually fought, 300 just aggravates the hell out of me, and I'd rather they'd filed the **** names off and used made-up places and people. Knowing what an IP address or a router actually does makes the "computer talk" in most crime shows or "hacker movies" like nails on a chalkboard.

All right, I'll take up the caste system issue.

AtoMaki, your opening assertion here was that "Lady Doji of all people inventing the crude and unhealthy caste system" made no sense. Let's dig into that. <puts on Anthropologist Hat>

For starters, I'm sure a lot of verbs have been used across the various books and editions to describe Doji's actions, so it's entirely possible we have inconsistency there. I always read it as Doji instituting the caste system, rather than inventing it as such. Because what is that system? It is, at least in theory, an expression of cosomology. You said elsewhere that "I'm pretty sure that Tengoku doesn't have peasants or anything equivalent," ergo the notion that the caste system mirrors the Celestial Order must be bogus -- but this is, from the start, a misreading of what people usually mean when they say things like that in the real world (cf the Great Chain of Being in Europe). It doesn't mean there are peasants in Heaven. It means there is a divinely mandated hierarchy to existence, with some beings innately superior to others by reason of their power and virtue. And what we should compare Ningen-do to is not Tengoku alone, but the Spirit Realms en masse . . . in which there are higher and lower orders of being. Inari rules over foxes; they don't rule over him. Emma-O decides who's going to become a gaki. Etc. (And I'll note that even in Tengoku alone, there are entities who are in charge over lesser entities, like shiryo.)

I phrase it as Doji instituting the caste system rather than "inventing" it as such, because nowhere have I seen it asserted that Doji invented the rules of reincarnation. Fulfill your duty well in life? Come back as somebody with more power and virtue and advantages. Behave badly? Get reincarnated in some lowly station, or worse, wind up as a gaki or an animal. What Doji did, then, is help humanity out by putting into place guidelines that would assist them in performing the roles Tengoku intended them to play. Some were put on this earth to fight and lead; others were put on this earth to work and follow. NOBODY is helped by the latter trying to lead: they're only screwing themselves up for their next life, and interfering with the fulfillment of duty for the first group. In essence, humans were playing a game whose rules they didn't really understand until Doji came along and clarified it. Heck, she even said it to her brother: " As the Sun and Moon gave shape to the formless, so must we create order from chaos. These mortals are not without worth, merely without direction. We must offer them that direction, Hantei. We must lead them."

And "crude"? Dear kami, no! The caste system helps reduce crudeness. There are certain filthy necessities of life, like dealing with bodily waste and corpses. Those are unavoidable. Far better for all involved if those matters are the responsibility of specific individuals, and they are segregated away from everybody else so they don't contaminate the rest of society. And it isn't cruel to the ones being segregated: after all, they did something in a previous life that cursed them to be reincarnated as eta. But if they are very good little eta, accepting their current suffering, they might get to be peasants in their next life. Much better for all involved if they focus on being good eta, and don't go astray by trying to be something else. Of course the elegant Lady Doji would want to keep society tidy.

Now, there are two obvious objections to what I just outlined.

The first is that it's entirely possible the books haven't always been clear about what they mean when they talk about Doji and the caste system. I am, of course, doing a certain amount of interpretation here, using Anthropologist Brain (it was my field of study in undergrad and grad school) and what I know of Japan/Buddhism/etc to think about the setting as depicted. But I don't think a bit of muddied water amounts to inconsistency as such. The inconsistency, as you framed it, is that "Lady Doji of all people" should be responsible for this -- implying that it's wildly out of character for someone like her to impose order on society. But order is beauty; order is guidance. I don't see how that's out of character at all . . .

. . . unless you measure the caste society by our yardstick. The second objection to what I've said is OMGWTFBBQ NO. This sort of caste/reincarnation system says that if your life sucks now, it's your fault for screwing up last time around, and your only hope is to embrace the suckitude of your life for the sake of drawing a better hand next time. That's kind of awful, if you think about it. (But not, I should note for fairness, any less awful than Christian Europe's equivalent: there, God simply ordained you to be a dirt-poor peasant because the Great Chain of Being needs something in between kings and animals. It isn't your fault; he just apparently doesn't like you as much as he likes King Whoever. But don't worry, it'll get better . . . after you die. If you live virtuously. In your peasant role. Sounds a lot like the same net effect as the reincarnation system, doesn't it? Human societies tend to form patterns. Even as late as the nineteenth century, you had white American evangelicals arguing that it was divinely mandated for slaves to obey their masters, and they would be rewarded for this in the afterlife.)

The system is absolutely "unhealthy," as you termed it, IF you assume that it is. not. true. If an eta really is capable of being just as good of a leader as a samurai, given the opportunity, then you're oppressing him and harming society by not letting him have that chance. If he isn't spiritually contaminated by his work, then there's no reason other than cruelty to segregate him away from everyone else. If his next lifetime has nothing to do with how well he fulfills his duties in this one, then keeping him in his place is nothing more than a naked power-grab by those around him.

But -- and here's the important part -- we have no reason to believe the system, as described, isn't true within its own context. The occasional weird exception like eta -> Oracle notwithstanding, we have abundant evidence to say that fulfilling your duty leads to good things (even escaping reincarnation to become an ancestor in Yomi), and failing in it causes problems (all the way down to gaki-dom). The setting is internally consistent. The books describe an internally consistent, externally reprehensible cosmos . . . but as others have said, that can be interesting to explore. And it has nothing to do with whether Doji ought to have played a part in organizing society that way.

I think there are definitely places where the setting has been inconsistent from an internal perspective. But this isn't one of them.

Yeah, I was thinking about this kharma and reincarnation thing, but then I remembered Toku and how the caste system has absolutely zero ways to enforce the order you mentioned. The caste system is not order... it is just an ugly frame around chaos.

And no, it doesn't make even sense coming from Doji. She had first hand experience about how samurai are not born, so it would be a strange logical leap from her to assume that they do regardless. If the caste system had been in place before the Fall of the Kami, then most of the first generation clan samurai would have been a heimin (Kakita) or an eta (Matsu). Hell, there were plenty of examples of lowly commoners becoming samurai because of Doji (Hantei's wife). Even if she didn't ivnent it, why did she allow it to exist? Her own daughter cracked down pretty hard on the caste system, after all.

And no, it doesn't make even sense coming from Doji. She had first hand experience about how samurai are not born, so it would be a strange logical leap from her to assume that they do regardless. If the caste system had been in place before the Fall of the Kami, then most of the first generation clan samurai would have been a heimin (Kakita) or an eta (Matsu). Hell, there were plenty of examples of lowly commoners becoming samurai because of Doji (Hantei's wife). Even if she didn't ivnent it, why did she allow it to exist? Her own daughter cracked down pretty hard on the caste system, after all.

When Doji arrived in Ningen-do, there were no heimin or eta, any more than there were samurai. There were only people whose karma marked them for greatness, and those whose karma marked them to be ordinary laborers their entire lives. The caste system gave names to these things and sorted them into their ordained places.

(Again: this is the in-world view of such things. From our perspective, of course, that's pure sophistry.)

And while Konoshiko invented the tea ceremony as a social leveler, I wouldn't go so far as to say that's "cracking down pretty hard." She did nothing to erase the distinctions between the classes in daily life, not that I know of.

When Doji arrived in Ningen-do, there were no heimin or eta, any more than there were samurai. There were only people whose karma marked them for greatness, and those whose karma marked them to be ordinary laborers their entire lives. The caste system gave names to these things and sorted them into their ordained places.

Well I guess then it should end here. There are people who are great and people who aren't. There is no need for the former to oppress the later (especially since it would invalidate their "greatness"), or to even make a distinction until the greatness becomes evident. I mean, it is not like any of the first generation samurai had any birthrights, only their deeds to speak for them. If someone doesn't show the spark, then the has no place among the "great" and he can go back to toil in the fields or whatever.

Now, we are describing the basis of a very self-conscious meritocracy, rather than the Rokugani caste system.

And while Konoshiko invented the tea ceremony as a social leveler, I wouldn't go so far as to say that's "cracking down pretty hard." She did nothing to erase the distinctions between the classes in daily life, not that I know of.

Well, it didn't help that she died soon after . But yeah, creating pockets in a social system doesn't show a big appreciation for it, that's for sure.

And it's not at all confusing that both Hentei I's sister (the Kami. Lady Doji) and his wife (Doji Mioko) are both refered to as "Doji", evidently.

And all of that's assuming that Doji was some great and wonderful and supremely pure-hearted individual (by our standards). The caste system was instituted/invested/whatever by a group of people who were on the top rungs of that system, and it operated to solidify and codify the power and status of those people, their descendants, their friends, and their direct subordinates. As Kinzen notes, it's pretty standard fare for a society to develop a moral/ethical/religious system that validates, justifies, and enforces the power structures in place in that society. Even if we assume that some of the Kami were generally good folks who generally had a genuine desire to to what was best, that does not somehow mean that they are immune to this sort of thing (see my example about the American founders above).

Your objection, AtoMaki, really seems to come down to you (correctly) thinking that the Rokugani caste system is a horrible idea that can't really be justified on moral principles, you thinking that Doji, Shinjo, Shiba, and perhaps others were good people who would have known this, and you thinking that this means they would not have accepted or promoted such a system. But your second and third believes are flawed. There's little reason to think that Rokugani would have come to the same conclusions we do about the validity of this codification of their power structures. And there's little reason to think that the people on the top of that structure, even if they were generally good folks, would have not only disliked, but actively opposed, a codification of their power and status.

Toku can become a samurai because the principle of "the Emperor is always right" trumps almost anything else in a given situation. Within the setting, the justification would be that the Emperor is basically given absolute dominion over Ningen-do. If the Emperor says someone is a samurai, then someone is a samurai. The Emperor has the power to turn people into Fortunes, after all - he can certainly bump people around from one caste to another. This can even extend further than the Emperor. AtoMaki, you mentioned a Unicorn character you played who ran into issues when she wanted to adopt an eta child. It's pretty non-standard for a samurai to even consider doing that, but it can be done. You adopt the child. Which in Rokugan means she is your child. You are a samurai. Therefore she is a samurai. Anyone who would suggest otherwise is being horribly rude (which is often itself dishonorable), and may end up getting cut down in a duel (and speaking of duels, if you want to talk about an irrational Rokugani cultural practice, why would anyone agree to that as a system of dispute resolution?). This may seem kind of crazy to us, but that sort of cognitive dissonance, of placing appearances over substance, of taking at face value the words of others even when they're obviously nonsense (especially if accepting that lets everyone save face), is at the heart of Rokugani culture.

In terms of how caste, karma, and destiny interact, I like the concept of the Crab's Twenty Goblin Winter.

If someone is not "supposed" to be a farmer, or gravedigger, or ronin, then they can go out and prove it, or die trying.

And there's little reason to think that the people on the top of that structure, even if they were generally good folks, would have not only disliked, but actively opposed, a codification of their power and status.

There is actually a very good reason to think this: none of the Kami needed any sort of codification of their power and status. These things were beyond question from the beginning, and those who disagreed were eventually forced to flee. Their sheer existence was enough, the caste system was completely redundant in this regard.

This, in an extent, applied to all the samurai at the dawn of the empire. They were literally the only people who could protect Rokugan from Fu Leng, and that alone showed that their status and power was absolute. Again, it was all about deeds - samurai did not become the rulers because of some obscure birthright but because they were undeniably the best people available for the job. So this route isn't good either in my opinion.

Toku can become a samurai because the principle of "the Emperor is always right" trumps almost anything else in a given situation.

A small note to this: Toku had been a "samurai" for quite some time when he admitted his little "deception" to Toturi. At which point one would wonder how many "Tokus" are/were in Rokugan who lack Toku's honor.

Another thing I think you should pay attention to when examining Rokugani ethics is their cosmology. It is abominably unjust. Some people/spirits are more favored by heaven than others, it's possible to be damned through no fault of your own, etc. Viewed through this lens, Rokugani society makes a lot of sense. Their ethical system is a reasonable reaction to the awfulness of their universe.

No, my problem is that the setting doesn't follow any reasonable rule with its build-up and doesn't fit together into a complete whole. It is "complex" because there are conflicting elements in it, but these conflicts make absolutely zero sense in relation of what the setting wants to be. The whole thing is in fact very easy to comprehend (because it is really shallow if you think about it), but it is a very unrewarding experience .

Maybe you should define "what the setting wants to be", it might help get to the root of our disagreement.