All in all, clean reset would occur due to Norikazu's ravings, and Kaede showing up with an elite task force to snuff out the lying darkness plot to kidnap Toturi. Go from there.

I think a clean reset should occur due to Bayushi Shoju realizing that he must ensue that the Hantei line will live forever (thus no "last Hantei" to ever occur) rather than literally turn the current emperor into the last Hantei and thus hilariously missing the whole point of his very own plan.

And if you are interested in a ''what if'' scenario concerning that very story reset, you can always check the Tomorrow's Prophets project.

My problem with TP is that it kinda misses the point: Shoju must act intelligently on his own, and not because some guys from the future drop in and tell him to stop. Him not being stupid should be in his character and not coming from outside sources. His story should be like Toturi's, the hero Rokugan needed but did not deserve.

Considering how prophecy works in Rokugan (as in, it can be averted if the proper course of action is taken), Shoju's actions weren't stupid considering the information he had at the time. When we look at it from a future perspective, of course we realize this is not how he should have acted, but he lacked that foresight.

You could argue, however, that his plead for help to the Crab was a stupid decision. His most trusted follower (Junzo) advised him otherwise and yet he did it anyway.

EDIT: Although the actual merit of his decision can be subject to discussion, we shouldn't dismiss his reaction as stupid using the knowledge of how history unfolds. Doing so would be an example of the Historian Fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historian%27s_fallacy

Considering how prophecy works in Rokugan (as in, it can be averted if the proper course of action is taken), Shoju's actions weren't stupid considering the information he had at the time.

No, it was stupid because of the information he had at the time. He knew that the last Hantei would usher the return of Fu Leng/the doom of the Empire... so he went out to personally create a 'last Hantei'? How does that make any sense ?

Didn't Shoju think that the Emperor's son had died or otherwise removed after he killed the Emperor? It has been awhile since I've read the Scorpion Coup book.

Didn't Shoju think that the Emperor's son had died or otherwise removed after he killed the Emperor? It has been awhile since I've read the Scorpion Coup book.

It doesn't work either way. If the son was dead, then he could be the "last Hantei"; if he was intended to be just removed but otherwise left alive, then there was no point to kill the Emperor.

I totally disagree once again. To really understand the motivations and decision of Shoju, you have to take into account only what he knew at the time. Let's break it down.

-Thanks to the Yogo and their extended knowledge of curses and prophecies, Shoju knows they can be averted. It has been confirmed in more than one instance in the RPG that the Yogo are able to prevent the curse from happening, as well as other prophecies when they act swiftly and decisively enough.

-Shoju receives a prophecy that the last Hantei will bring doom to Rokugan. Of course, like you said, he could simply try to make sure the Hantei line never ends, but this logic in itself is flawed. First of all, nothing is eternal and the philosophy of Shinseism itself is pretty clear about the inevitability of death and rebirth. Even if he managed to preserve the dynasty for another thousand years, it would ultimatly fall like everything else. In addition, it didn't prevent to possibility of an Hantei going mad and bringing doom to Rokugan by his actions, forcing others to kill him, thus ending the line. Sounds familiar?

-Third, when he made his coup, he made sure both the Emperor and his heir would be killed, sending his own brother whom he trusted with his life to execute the Emperor's son. The latter only escaped by Kaede's intervention and the sacrifice of another child magically altered to ressembled the heir. Even Toturi believed he was dead, With both Hantei dead and Shoju on the throne, it was logical to think the crisis was averted. Even in the event his dynasty felt, another non-hantei emperor would take his place and prevent the disaster to occur.

As such, everything is really Kaede's fault.

If that alone is not enough to convince you, I still have one last trump card. The bloodsword Ambition. No matter what you think of Shoju's plan, let's not forget he was partially under the control of Yajinden's creation and potentially one of the most powerful nemuranai in existence. His desires and motivations were all twisted by greed and aspirations, and as such, he was driven not only by his desire to save Rokugan, but also with the ambition to sit on the throne.

EDIT: My point is he didn't create a last Hantei. He knew that somewhere in the future, a last Hantei would exist. He wanted to kill them before they had the chance to fulfill the prophecy, however. In fact, if Kaede hadn't saved the heir, he would have succeeded.

You kinda miss the point. Killing all the Hantei would immediately fulfill the requirement of the prophecy, since it would automatically create a "last Hantei". There is no way to go around this, you literally can't kill the Hantei dynasty without creating a "last" of them (a dead one, but it doesn't really matter in Rokugan). Not realizing this is, like, thinking that you won't suffocate if you don't breathe. It is completely nonsensical because it ignores a very basic (maybe even the most basic) cause-and-effect connection, and no amount of magical plot-device influence can help on this.

You are also missing my point. A prophecy is not a sure deal. In Shoju's mind (and he was ultimatly right), the doom of Rokugan would be brought by the actions of the Last Hante, not by the fact he simply exist. By kiling him, he was making sure the last Hantei's actions would never come to existence.

In fact, the actions of Togashi and Toturi and the other Thunders actually prevented the doom of Rokugan by killing the Last Hantei once and for all. Pretty much exactly what Shoju had in mind the first time. His brother simply failed in his task.

As such, his actions were exactly what Rokugan needed. His failure was.not making sure the heir was really dead.

By kiling him, he was making sure the last Hantei's actions would never come to existence.

How is that? Death is hardly a deterrent in Rokugan when it comes to high-league stuff.

It comes down to whether one reads it as "when we get to the last Hantei, bad stuff will happen", or "the last Hantei will make bad stuff happen".

It comes down to whether one reads it as "when we get to the last Hantei, bad stuff will happen", or "the last Hantei will make bad stuff happen".

Making the last Hantei a reality is highly counterproductive in both cases .

It comes down to whether one reads it as "when we get to the last Hantei, bad stuff will happen", or "the last Hantei will make bad stuff happen".

Making the last Hantei a reality is highly counterproductive in both cases .

If one believes the latter, then there is a case to be made for getting them all at once .

If one believes the former, then the only course is to make sure there are always plenty of Hantei... time to stop shoving the other possible heirs off to that other family...

If one believes the latter, then there is a case to be made for getting them all at once .

From the standpoint of the prophecy, this is not necessary true. The last Hantei has been the last all along, and Amaterasu only knows which of the six gorillion acts he has done in his life will lead to the doom of the Empire. At the very best, Shoju would look at a 33% success rate (he either succeeds and averts disaster, he succeeds but it doesn't do nothing, or fails)... a gamble I would expect from a man like Isawa "Zero Regrets" Tadaka but not from someone like Shoju (with or without counting Ambition).

It wasn't a gamble because he actually covered his bases. Before ending the Hantei line, he asked for Togashi's guidance. He knew at that time that the Dragon Champion was actually the legendary kami and asked him if his plan was sound.

I mean, Shoju knew prophecies could come and bite you if you not careful and Togashi is considered pretty much the wisest individual in all Rojugan

His answer was: if you succeed, you will save the Empire.

Shoju knew his course of action had the potential to save everyone (and it was true. Had he killwd both the emperor and his heir, Fu Leng's ascension would have been averted)

Both the emperor's son survive.and everything went down the drain because of this.

So no, I still disagree. He had a plan which was actually confirmed by a living god to have potential.At that point, inaction was the stupid move and Shoju did actually what you said. He madr the hard decision and became a monster in the eyes of the while world, but in fact, he did exactly what Toturi would do only a few years later (kill the légitimité emperor and claim the throne for himself)

And before we continue, I just want to tell you I find this discussion incredibly interesting. And even though I disagree with your conclusions, there are merits to your arguments and as a big fan of alternate settings, I would love to explore the possibilités if Shoju went with your solution.

That being said, I will totally include this very dilemna in Tommorrow's Prophets.

Now we can go back to disagreeing.

Now we can go back to disagreeing.

Haha, okay . But, well, I don't think there is much to argue about. You have a point by reciting story integrity with Togashi's super-troll answer to Shoju's plan. Shoju's fall was encoded into the story, I just dislike the way he went down. His plan should have been either better thought-out or it should have been clear from the beginning that Shoju was not the sharpest tool in the shed.

By the way, Togashi was wrong. Shoju did not end a bloodline, because the Hantei survived with Daigotsu. Also, Hantei XXIX was not the last Hantei, because that should be either Daigotsu or Kanpeki as it now stands. So yeah, with hindsight, it can be said that Uikku's related prophecies did not even talk about the Second Day of Thunder and are still up in the air, while Shoju did literally nothing to stop them.

Oh yeah, with that I agree. Togashi, even though he is sometimes depicted as the wisest of all, made a lot of crappy decisions. True, when you live for a thousand years, you are bound to make a few mistakes, but he is directly responsible for some of the most dangerous threats Rokugan ever faced.

... was Daigotsu even a glimmer in the Story Team's eye when Togashi made that decree?

... was Daigotsu even a glimmer in the Story Team's eye when Togashi made that decree?

Of course not, but the of the contortions the story has undergone since then, it's hardly the worst.

I'm not denying the fact that the setting is dictated by the CCG, however, in my opinion, it's not a huge problem. Why do I feel like it's not a huge problem? Simply because the strongest point of a RPG Campaign is the story made by the Storyteller. There's parts that I don't like in the setting, what do I do in my game? I simply remove or modify that part in a way so it would make more sense. It's not really hard to do, in fact, its a 15 minutes pre-campaign preparation, then it only needs a small update to the players before their character creation.

Not calling you out. I can understand this, as I often do it myself. The fact of the matter is, this only works with seasoned l5r players. Those that aren't seasoned, yet are seasoned tabletop rpg players, look at the core and splat books, and go "wtf?" So many potential people lost to the story.

Erm...I began to play L5R with the 4th Edition and since the Corebook only provides a brief overview for the story of the Empire I hadn't had any problems with that. And the additonal books didn't change that either, except for the Imperial Histories 1 and 2, but those are mostly alternate timelines.

What me made go "WTF?" was the additional information I got from the wikia. Sometimes I felt like there was something missing, so I researched for more information and then found it on the wikia...and then I went "WTF?". But it didn't bother me, at least not enough to stop playing L5R.

I GMed one group in the alternate Setting "Thousand Years of Darkness" and all my other groups play with Iweko 1st as Empress, but ignore her excepting the Spider Clan as Great Clan and the collonies and stuff. So we just pick up the timeline of the Corebook, which ends with Iwekos ascension to the throne and ignore everything else which comes afterwards with the additional books. And it works just fine.

The only problem I had so far was that the GM of the group I play with failed to tell me that we don't have a Jade Champion, and that was only a problem because in this group we have a "GM-wheel" so A created the mainframe of our setting (which is built on a previous campaign where A and the two other players played) and sometimes we palyers get to GM a short "sidecampaign". And the sidecampaign I wanted to GM would have included the Jade Magistrates, but without the office of Jade Champion, there is also no Jade Magistrate.

This accident happened, because at some point at the beginning of Rokugans History the Elemental Master of the Phoenix Clan tried to surpress the position of the Jade Champion, because they felt offended as they thought of themselves as the masters of everything regarding magic. But that only worked for a few years...and GM A did overlook that.

But this incident has nothing to do with the official story.

But, yes, I think a reset of the storyline would benefit the game. I would either start at the beginning or make a survey "which is your favorite era" and restart from there.

Resetting the storyline is problematic for L5R because it invalidates everything that the players did to create the game through the CCG. Moving forward is the least disruptive option in my opinion, but what does that even mean? How much of the Kanpeki takes over storyline has to be ported into the continuing setting? That wasn't done by player choice and it seems debatable how many people were even excited/bought in to that idea. Same goes for the destruction of the Mantis. Is that something that has to be ported over? If these things are not is that a timeline reset?

I would be surprised though if the first set of CCG LCG expansions and story wasn't about elevating someone to the throne (whether that be Seiken or someone new). Really if the first worlds prize isn't designing a card for the new ruler I'd be surprised. Just seems like a great way to get the game kicked off on a strong footing. But FFG may well surprise me and create something even more awesome.

From an RPG perspective I think a core book that explains the fall of the Kami, a few highlights of the intervening years and then picks up with the events of the CCG in it is the way to go. Then second book out should then be like the imperial histories filling in the gaps in the timeline and giving players options to explore.

Timeline neutrality is interesting and feasible in L5R, because despite 1,000+ years of interesting events, things really don't seem to have changed much in the empire that invalidates or necessitates mechanical changes to the system.

I would highly suspect that the base set for the LCG will just be about establishing the setting and the clans. After that, each monthly set and the individual cycles will have some key conflict or story element for the players. For example, a story cycle that involves some mysterious appearance of Sensei or a conflict over an important trade city.

With the basic rpg book, I'd expect something like what they did for other rpgs: just set up the world as openly as possible. Adventure books or kits can target individual areas or crucial stories.

I'm on the sideline for time neutrality. It makes sense for creating stories, but having the rpg focus on the part of the timeline that FFG wants the LCG to primarily focus on feels like the better option. If they go with the latter, they can also do some pretty interesting stuff like giving players or GMs a completely different perspective over any story arc that wasn't featured in the LCG sets.

Resetting the storyline is problematic for L5R because it invalidates everything that the players did to create the game through the CCG. Moving forward is the least disruptive option in my opinion, but what does that even mean? How much of the Kanpeki takes over storyline has to be ported into the continuing setting? That wasn't done by player choice and it seems debatable how many people were even excited/bought in to that idea. Same goes for the destruction of the Mantis. Is that something that has to be ported over? If these things are not is that a timeline reset?

I would be surprised though if the first set of CCG LCG expansions and story wasn't about elevating someone to the throne (whether that be Seiken or someone new). Really if the first worlds prize isn't designing a card for the new ruler I'd be surprised. Just seems like a great way to get the game kicked off on a strong footing. But FFG may well surprise me and create something even more awesome.

From an RPG perspective I think a core book that explains the fall of the Kami, a few highlights of the intervening years and then picks up with the events of the CCG in it is the way to go. Then second book out should then be like the imperial histories filling in the gaps in the timeline and giving players options to explore.

Timeline neutrality is interesting and feasible in L5R, because despite 1,000+ years of interesting events, things really don't seem to have changed much in the empire that invalidates or necessitates mechanical changes to the system.

Again, you are overlooking the fact that "interesting" is in the eye of the beholder. Most of those "interesting events" were manufactured plot drivers that at times made no sense, merely to sell the next iteration of cards. While you can't expect a company to not make money, you can look at their decisions objectively to tie together multiple products that really have very little to do with each other than the fact that they share the same universe. Ironically, if they did with each arc of the card game what they did with Time of the Void splatbook for first edition, it would have been far better in my opinion. You would then have all of your zany ccg inspired decisions cleanly contained to their respective splatbooks without infecting the core game.

Were I a designer of the RPG, I would give each family a single iconic school based upon their most prominent role (rather than some families having multiple core book schools), and then allow for modification to said schools via a 1 rank path in some non core splatbook. That way, all of the special snowflakes could be left happy to play their beastmasters and spirit hunters and the like. Essentially, the design philosophy would be "Core things belong in Core Books, Splat books for everything else".

"Special snowflakes?"

Were I a designer of the RPG, I would give each family a single iconic school based upon their most prominent role (rather than some families having multiple core book schools), and then allow for modification to said schools via a 1 rank path in some non core splatbook. That way, all of the special snowflakes could be left happy to play their beastmasters and spirit hunters and the like. Essentially, the design philosophy would be "Core things belong in Core Books, Splat books for everything else".

I really don't understand your point here, because most of what you're saying are already in the 4th edition corebook. Only the Mantis and the Scorpion a family with multiple corebook schools. They decided to have 4 schools in the corebook, 1 bushi, 1 courtier, 1 shugenja and 1 iconic other school. Which is something I entirely agree with. and here's why:

Scorpion: The Yogo has their school left out for a second Bayushi school. The Clan needs both a courtier and a bushi school, and both are very iconic for the Scorpion Clan. Then, I really doubt someone would want to see 2 shugenja schools in another Clan than Pheonix in that 4 corebook schools format in order to fit the setting.

Mantis: The Kitsune are left out for a second Yoritomo school. Which is basically the same reason as the scorpion, both Yoritomo Bushi and Courtier are very iconic and needs to be in the core for the family to be functional, and I wouldn't want another Clan with 2 Shugenja schools other than the Pheonix.

Also I can't see how just a "modification via a rank 1 path" may be possible for those cases, it's about both a courtier and a bushi. None of these very iconic will be able to work properly in their respective aspect with a simple rank 1 path. There's some tough choice to do and these are compromises to do allow these iconic, if not essential, schools to have a complete corebook.

I don't want to be mean with my next question but... Did you look up the 4th edition corebook? It's one of the best corebook, as a single book, that I've seen so far for a huge universe that is L5R. I'm not saying it's perfect, because there's some flaws, but some RPG has the same amout of quality but with at least a second corebook when the universe is as big as L5R.

When I look at D&D, with 3 corebooks and there's basically just stats and mechanics everywhere, there's no setting. Sure it's a design decision to be setting-free which allows the GM to play in a universe they want or use a realm, but in my opinion, it makes the core of D&D bland and boring with tools to build a world. Where in L5R, the setting is strong and provides a lot of hooks and a lot of information on the universe to be able to create a game with ease. And that, with a single corebook.