I would say we generally agree on what we think they ought to be, and on how we come down after weighing all the conflicting evidence, yeah. Your post just happened to be about smoothing over the contradictions from an IC perspective, while mine was about looking from an OOC perspective at the body of fictional material created by humans--and acknowledging the ways it in fact doesn't always fit together all that well and probably could/should be tidied up in future.

Well, if I remember correctly there are some support-spells with the Battle-Keyword...and since the Kitsu support their Bushi-brothers and sisters I don't really feel that it contradicts the lore.

sndwurks, why do you think that L5R has to change it's dice-system? What does this have to do with John Wick working on 7th Sea?

sndwurks, why do you think that L5R has to change it's dice-system? What does this have to do with John Wick working on 7th Sea?

sndwurks, why do you think that L5R has to change it's dice-system? What does this have to do with John Wick working on 7th Sea?

7th Sea also uses Roll and Keep.

Doesn't matter that much. Mechanics aren't protected by various IP laws, only the specific expression. So, if there were a conflict, it would be over who got to call it Roll and Keep, but not that it uses exploding 10 sided dice, of which you roll many and keep some (for example).

Actually, I'm not even sure Roll and Keep is protected as a term of art. Is it actually the official name of the system, trademarked and all?

I don't think it's likely that FFG intends to use something we would recognize as Roll and Keep anyway, though.

Actually, I'm not even sure Roll and Keep is protected as a term of art. Is it actually the official name of the system, trademarked and all?

It isn't as far as I know.

I don't think it's likely that FFG intends to use something we would recognize as Roll and Keep anyway, though.

As someone who plays with the FFG 40k RPG line, I can tell you that FFG very likely intends no such thing. Or even if they do, they will change their mind during development. Dark Heresy 2 First Beta, I'm looking at you now .

Cross-quoting from something Rob Hobart posted in reply to essentially the same question in the L5R Facebook page:

The basic mechanical roll-and-keep concept of the RPG system is not exclusive to AEG (e.g. Green Ronin's "Song of Ice and Fire" RPG uses essentially the same system, albeit with d6's) but the L5R-specific elements of the system -- things like Rings and Schools, for instance -- are part of the overall copyright of L5R. So FFG will now own the _specific_ L5R system and has the right to use it in any future version of the game if they so chose.

AEG could certainly do another RPG with the same basic mechanical system, but would need to avoid using the L5R-specific terminology -- they could probably get away with using "Trait" for example, since that's used in lots of different RPGs, but if they used "Ring" that might well cross the line. Similarly, the mechanic of spending a point to add +1k1 to a roll could be retained, but it would need to be called something other than "Void Point". (In 7th Sea, for example, it was called a "Drama Die.")

I don't believe the name "roll and keep" has ever been officially embraced as a copyrighted term by AEG -- and it would be kind of hard to make a claim now, with other companies publishing games that use the same mechanic.

Why would FFG keep the roll and keep mechanic? I just don't see them doing it when one of their designers can make their own system.

Why would FFG keep the roll and keep mechanic? I just don't see them doing it when one of their designers can make their own system.

On the other hand, why wouldN'T they use if it was part of the purchase?

Why would FFG keep the roll and keep mechanic? I just don't see them doing it when one of their designers can make their own system.

On the other hand, why wouldN'T they use if it was part of the purchase?

Because they tend to create their own system. Sometimes it might just heavily modify an existing game like Netrunner, but that's more of an exception. If FFG goes in a different direction with the LCG then its increasing likely they would do the same with the rpg. It might just come down to who the designers are and their goals for the game.

So it's all just speculation, then.

As per usual hereabouts.

At this rate, by this time next year I fully expect we'll have formed a variety of violently competing religions, each with its own orthodoxies about when and how The FFG listens to the prayers of mortals and how Its mysterious actions may be divined through the proper consultation of omens.

Why would FFG keep the roll and keep mechanic? I just don't see them doing it when one of their designers can make their own system.

Because it works very well, and FFG doesn't really have an inclination towards changing what works (even if not very well).

Why would FFG keep the roll and keep mechanic? I just don't see them doing it when one of their designers can make their own system.

Because it works very well, and FFG doesn't really have an inclination towards changing what works (even if not very well).

You'd think they would just use the OGL then, if that's the case.

On the setting side of things, rather than business-related... I've entertained an idea, just musing, not making a hard "must change this" or "must keep this" assertion, so hopefully no one feels that something they really love about the game is under threat.

How attached are people to the Nothing / Lying Darkness?

What if instead of a malevolent entity that erases its servants' identities (and faces), there was just the Void, and whatever someone brings to the Void is what they get back from it? "Void magic" would be dangerous because of things like the potential for the caster to lose themselves in it (see the fiction in the Book of the Void supplement about the young caster losing himself in the "everything is one" of the Void and having to be pulled back by a master Ishiken, and leaving the boy who was attacking him a vegetable in the process)... and because it responds to the caster's own personality, making it potent tool for those willing to abuse it for their own selfish ends.

Even the "faceless families" wouldn't be eliminated by this change, as they would be twisted by the human evil of their leaders, rather than by supernatural malevolence. They'd be these sort of secret darkness cults.

Any thoughts, ideas?

^We have a similar idea going on in our custom setting. There the Void is dangerous and can "consume" others like the Lying Darkness, but the actual effect of the "Void Corruption" is he exact opposite of the Shadow Corruption: instead of losing identity, being consumed by the Void will make you merge into the world, first forming a hive mind consciousness with other Void-corrupted people then you start sharing essence (like your body assumes the qualities of any materials you touch, or your consciousness suddenly spreads into inanimate objects) and finally turn into an integral part of the Void. So where you would be less-and-less with the Lying Darkness, you become more-and-more with the Void until you are indistinguishable from it.

One of the playing groups had a Kakita Ishiken with an obsession for gardening. Over time, he started to acquire quite a lot of Void Integrity (as we call it). At first, he kinda' enjoyed this hive mind thing because it was useful and cool to merge consciousness with a Togashi monk and have super-deep philosophical arguments with him and stuff like that. Then, after going especially trigger-happy with his Void magic in one of the adventures, he started to become one with his garden. Like, one of the other PCs tore down a leaf and it had the same effect on him as if the PC had pulled out a hair from his body. Things started to spiral out of control as he "assimilated" the castle, its staff (both samurai and servants), then spread to the nearby forest, village, and finally the whole province (or at least most of it). IIRC he actually merged with two other provinces, got his original body destroyed (for no effect as the body was just a tiny part of him at this point) by the other PCs, and did things that would make the Borg proud until he finally lost hold on his self-awareness as it extended too much and "become One and Everything." At this point everything returned to normal, but the Ishiken's lingering presence made every garden pretty for several years to come.

The Lying Darkness always bored me.

The Shadow Dragon was slightly better.

Slightly.

I find the Lying Darkness as a concept kind of neat, personally, even though it's not always been as strong in execution (and what has, after all?). It is a real problem when you have too many Ultimate Evil irons in the fire, though, as L5R has done at times. If you've got Jigoku and the Shadowlands, the Nothing, and, say, the Kolat or the Tsuno all doing their thing at once, or at least within a really short span of time... yeah, it just gets silly. If one were going to pare back hard, Jigoku should stay as being more central to the setting and Nothing should go, probably. Otherwise they're certainly best used very separately.

The Nothing is scary in an interestingly different way, though. I've never come across another RPG in which one of the Big Bads so effectively resembled the antagonists of Madeleine L'Engle's wonderful Time books (Wikipedia reminds me they are called Echthroi , which I'd forgotten), and those books made a really profound impression on me at a young age, so that may be part of why I find myself so resistant to your suggestion about removing it as an active entity, MaxKilljoy. The Goju and Ninube as formal "families" were always by far the least interesting and relevant part of the whole concept to me, so if I were choosing to redo the Nothing and preserve only some bits of its current form, those would actually be last on the priority list. I'd just go back to making its servants people going about with Shadow Brands (which might do other stuff beyond boosting Stealth pools), thinking they were serving their own good or bad agendas until they lost too much of themselves to remember what those agendas were.

Mucking around recklessly with Void magic should be dangerous too, regardless. But it's quintessence, not non-essence, so it feels weird to me to assign shadow brands and such to it. It messes with you in additive ways (the homebrew Void stuff AtoMaki describes seems fitting to me, even if I might not use it); the mechanics for Shadow stuff mess with you in subtractive ways.

I find the Lying Darkness as a concept kind of neat, personally, even though it's not always been as strong in execution (and what has, after all?). It is a real problem when you have too many Ultimate Evil irons in the fire, though, as L5R has done at times. If you've got Jigoku and the Shadowlands, the Nothing, and, say, the Kolat or the Tsuno all doing their thing at once, or at least within a really short span of time... yeah, it just gets silly. If one were going to pare back hard, Jigoku should stay as being more central to the setting and Nothing should go, probably. Otherwise they're certainly best used very separately.

The Nothing is scary in an interestingly different way, though. I've never come across another RPG in which one of the Big Bads so effectively resembled the antagonists of Madeleine L'Engle's wonderful Time books (Wikipedia reminds me they are called Echthroi , which I'd forgotten), and those books made a really profound impression on me at a young age, so that may be part of why I find myself so resistant to your suggestion about removing it as an active entity, MaxKilljoy. The Goju and Ninube as formal "families" were always by far the least interesting and relevant part of the whole concept to me, so if I were choosing to redo the Nothing and preserve only some bits of its current form, those would actually be last on the priority list. I'd just go back to making its servants people going about with Shadow Brands (which might do other stuff beyond boosting Stealth pools), thinking they were serving their own good or bad agendas until they lost too much of themselves to remember what those agendas were.

Mucking around recklessly with Void magic should be dangerous too, regardless. But it's quintessence, not non-essence, so it feels weird to me to assign shadow brands and such to it. It messes with you in additive ways (the homebrew Void stuff AtoMaki describes seems fitting to me, even if I might not use it); the mechanics for Shadow stuff mess with you in subtractive ways.

Maybe a less "cosmological", less all-encompassing entity could fill the role of that sort of enemy... something once-great that lost its own identity in its failure of wisdom and will, that now consumes identity in a desperate hunger to fill that...void.

Another thought that just came to mind.

How crucial to an L5R RPG is a "Rokugani-centric" construction? I understand that the setting text sometimes needs to reflect the very culturally-slanted view of the Rokugani, but is it necessary for system to reflect that attitude?

As long as the game is primarily intended to tell the stories of Rokugani samurai, I do want the system to reflect their worldview. Otherwise I'm constantly being told that what they believe in isn't true, which makes playing a character who believes it rather more difficult.

If the game were built to tell stories where Rokugan is merely one faction among the Yodotai, Senpet, Ivinda, etc, then I'd want something different. But L5R isn't that game.

True. I guess I'm wondering if there's a way to work in a few things both without stripping that sense of rightness from the Rokugani, and without making all non-Rokugani out to be either second-rate or outright evil.

What kind of "few things" do you have in mind?

In a way this might really start to diverge from the canon L5R and might end up just being homebrew for the heck of it.

Broader mysticism and different kinds of magic with more grey area, with the morality more about intent than the source of the power. Alchemy and talismans that are little tidbits hidden away by one school or another. "Heresies" based on things like the real-life Dao. In-Empire philosophical conflict between schools that practice deeply-religious magic, and those who view magic as a "science". Shadow magic that's not an automatic one-way ticket to blank-face-ville. That sort of thing.

Just more strangeness and "Wuxia mysteries" in general.

Most of those can fit in just fine, I think, without needing much system revision. The "intent rather than source of power" is almost entirely a matter of what kind of stories you tell; the system doesn't prevent stories about shugenja who are amoral b@stards. Heresies are easy to arrange, if you have ideas for them. Alchemy and talismans are sort of there so far -- the Tamori and the Asahina Fetishist -- so a little bit of homebrew gets you there pretty easily.

Two of those are admittedly a bigger stretch. I personally wouldn't want a "magic as science" mentality; as you and I have established over in the other thread, we both would prefer to see the deeply-religious angle played up more, and my inclination would be to make that how all the shugenja schools view it. (I have a hard time really getting on board with any "scientific"-type mentality in a world where the physical reality around you is self-evidently sentient.) And I could maybe get on board with Shadow magic being not quite a one -way ticket . . . but I feel like it should take heroic effort to wrest yourself back from that path, and I wouldn't want to make the Lying Darkness into something other than the reality-erasing weirdness that it is. But that doesn't mean you couldn't homebrew it that way for your own fun.