I cannot for the life of me understand why someone would think it would be a good thing to remove the shadowlands and the taint from l5r.

Because this whole Jigoku business is both edgy and superfluous nine items out of ten. It is a threat that always returns, always stronger than before, and it always wants to top its previous super-duper EVUL masterplan. Also, the cost to defeat it is always high, and nobody can beat it permanently because it will always return and the cycle repeats itself... over and over and over again. Jigoku and all its associated elements are simply overused because they always do the exact same thing, and the heroes will answer to their threat the exact same way, so you will have the exact same story each time (just mildly rehashed for the new characters). It is just boring, and its influence reeks from the setting and make it rather 'bleh' if you are not a buyer for all that "Coldsteel the Hedgeheg"-tier edgy sh*t.

I cannot for the life of me understand why someone would think it would be a good thing to remove the shadowlands and the taint from l5r. It has been the source of some of the best fiction the story has had. It is no coincidence that the absolute worst time of l5r storyline was when they watered down the taint to choice based and made it so shadowlands were not a threat anymore. The crab clan in particular really lost a lot of their identity due to that. I know people, myself included, who have given 15-20 years to this game, and the time they became most disinterested with the story, and felt like it was just of no consequence was the whole taint pact. It was a really big mistake, and one that seems like it was about to be reversed.

Why you would want to take the single most monumental failure of the l5r story arch, and extend it even further is totally beyond me! The Diet-Taint project failed pretty emphatically, I sure hope that FFG's L5R team have recognised that.

"I cannot for the life of me understand why someone would think it would be a good thing to get off heroin. Heroin's been the source of the some of the best experiences of my life, and it is no coincidence that the absolute worst times of my life were when I could not get any heroin for a long time."

Obviously the analogy isn't perfect -- good stories with the Shadowlands are legitimately good, and not just tricking you into thinking they are good the way a drug tricks you into a positive experience -- but I hope you get my point. Something creating good outcomes in one area doesn't mean it isn't causing damage in other areas, and your disinterest in the story when the Taint became less of a threat doesn't necessarily mean that the Taint is central to good storytelling. I argue, and others argue, that it means the setting was built wrong, and that the Taint is harmful to it, but because it was built wrong the Taint is also a load-bearing pillar. The solution is not to keep the Taint, the solution is to build a new structure that does not require all the bad things about Taint to be a load-bearing pillar.

I keep seeing people talk about how the "worldbuilding" was wrong or L5r was "built wrong" , as if it is some kind of universal fact, which it isn't.

Explain to me how it was built wrong?

You are also proposing a "solution" for something that hasn't caused a problem.

I agree in my example, which is one of correlation, is not necessarily causation but it wasn't Just that the taint was different, but we were shown what happens without it, we lose a lot of tragedy from the game. Without taint you have stereotypical bad guys, guys who were destined to be bad from the get go, that is just lazy. With the taint, you had tragedy in that it could happen to anybody, through no fault of their own and how they deal with it is where the interesting story comes from.

Seriously though, if you are going to throw around absolutes about how the setting was "wrong" from the get go, at least try to attempt to back it up with some kind of substance, otherwise it is just an opinion piece that you are trying to peddle as a fact. Opinions are good, and differing opinions are good in all situations, but they are exactly that.

What is the undeniable proof that convinced you, and could convince me that the setting was built wrong? What is the problem it has caused for the game? And I am talking about an ACTUAL problem, because all I see so far around these parts are "I would prefer if.." scenarios.

ATOMaki, with regards to your comment about the taint being the same and coming back every time etc. Yes it is, however that is not the interesting part about the shadowlands and taint. Rokugan, this very ordered and structured society has something within their Universe, that despite their best efforts, they cannot control. It is a constant threat, and cause the most honorable samurai, through no willful fault of their own, fall from grace.

The taint doesn't change, that is true. But every single individuals reaction, view of and way of handling the taint and shadowlands are very very different. The argument you are proposing would be along the same line as me proposing that "Soccer is imperiacly boring because 22 players and a referee go on the pitch every weekend and play the same game". The interest is not in the mechanics of the game, or the parameters of the game, it is the individuals in the game and THEIR joruney throughout it. We have so many different and varying stories and approaches on tales of shadowlands and taint.

Now lets say for arguments sake, taint gets removed along with shadowlands? What replaces that storytime? More battles? which we already have? More Courtier shenannigans? we already have? Are we JUST removing something because some people have inexplicably (please explain to me what your ACTUAL gripe with it is because a lot of people are saying very vague statements about it without presenting any real issues it has caused ("boring" and "bleh" dont exactly amount to interesting expressions of disagreement)) taken a turn against it, and btw, it is a very small contingent that feels this way.

I sometimes wonder are people just being contrary for the sake of it.

TLDR : The universe is pretty static, as it is in many settings. It is the individuals living in the universe that provide the variance, not the setting itself.

I cannot for the life of me understand why someone would think it would be a good thing to remove the shadowlands and the taint from l5r.

Because this whole Jigoku business is both edgy and superfluous nine items out of ten. It is a threat that always returns, always stronger than before, and it always wants to top its previous super-duper EVUL masterplan. Also, the cost to defeat it is always high, and nobody can beat it permanently because it will always return and the cycle repeats itself... over and over and over again. Jigoku and all its associated elements are simply overused because they always do the exact same thing, and the heroes will answer to their threat the exact same way, so you will have the exact same story each time (just mildly rehashed for the new characters). It is just boring, and its influence reeks from the setting and make it rather 'bleh' if you are not a buyer for all that "Coldsteel the Hedgeheg"-tier edgy sh*t.

A part fo this problem is also how the people influence the story and what happens when the circle is broken. Look at the Idea for the Onyx empire and the hatred the Spider Clan received. The story iis an interactive won and most of the people who do it via the Card Game want that their actions wins and not a good story.Thats why the the cycle is going to repeat itself. It is not the Taint allone but also that people don´t want to see that the heros are losing or being played out like stupid children but only want to see the next win of them.

I don't want to see the Shadowlands removed ; I want to see Jigoku brought "back down to earth" and have multiple spirit realms that matter, not defaulting to Jigoku everytime we want a supernatural threat.

In my ideal world, the Shadowlands and the taint would be the bleeding over of multiple spirit realms that each have their own "darkness" ; the Shadowlands itself would be the "place of evil", where the combination of Toshigoku, Jigoku and Gaki-Do (and possibily some of the others) create monsters. In this vision, Jigoku would be reduced from the "realm of evil" to something like the realm of corruption and decay.

The denizens of the Shadowlands would still be enemies of the Empire, and the Crab would still fight them. Just they wouldn't be enemies of the Empire because Jigoku Sez So.

The taint doesn't change, that is true. But every single individuals reaction, view of and way of handling the taint and shadowlands are very very different. The argument you are proposing would be along the same line as me proposing that "Soccer is imperiacly boring because 22 players and a referee go on the pitch every weekend and play the same game". The interest is not in the mechanics of the game, or the parameters of the game, it is the individuals in the game and THEIR joruney throughout it. We have so many different and varying stories and approaches on tales of shadowlands and taint.

As I said, every single story that includes Jigoku/the Shadowlands/the Taint goes down the same:

- Jigoku-related stuff attacks. It is unstoppable.

- Jigoku-related stuff kicks butt. Everything seems bleak and hopeless.

- Heroes rise but then the edge-o-meter turns up to eleven and something bad happens with them (infighting/torture/getting Tainted)

- The fate of the world hangs on a thread! A minor character might or might not get his butt sacrificed to get this point through.

- The Heroes stop whining and defeat the Jigoku-related stuff. Some of them get their butts sacrificed for drama.

It isn't even like soccer, where at least both teams have equal chance to get the shorter end of the stick, or at least you have some sort of excitement because you don't know what's going to happen next. With Jigoku, every single story will walk through the five points mentioned above, no exceptions. In fact, I would risk saying that if you have read one story with the Shadowlands then you have read all of them - same blocks, same cliches, same tropes.

Now lets say for arguments sake, taint gets removed along with shadowlands? What replaces that storytime?

More non-Jigoku spirit shenanigans of course! Instead of Jigoku stealing the spotlight because writing EVUL stuff is easy, we could have villains from Chikushudo, Sakkaku, Yomi (Spirit Wars 2.0, essentially), or even Tengoku. Or we can have a theological crisis like "good" Fudoism or the appearance of not!Christianity. We can explore the world outside of Rokugan alternatively, and have Rokugani fleets journey all around the globe, getting into wacky adventures. The possibilities are endless!

Remember back in the day when we only had Jigoku and Tengoku, and the mortal world? And then, along came Legacy of the Forge and the Race to Volturnum and then things started getting complicated...

Because that was 1st Edition, and the "default world" that I present to the majority of PCs in my games. Unless you actually take Lore: Spirit Realms, you know there is Heaven, there is Hell, and there is this world, and that's it. Lore: Theology might give you more knowledge about the Kharmic cycle (and thus Gaki-do, Meido, and Yomi), but if you want to know about some of the more distant / stranger Spirit Realms, you have to actually study it.

If it is supernatural and beneficial? It is heavenly, and the samurai love it. It if is supernatural and hostile? Then it is evil, and samurai fight it. Unless you are a shugenja or one of the non-shugenja who care about that sort of thing (Toritaka family, for example), why should it matter?

To those who want to see the Shadowlands removed from the game, or with less of a focus on it, I seriously disagree. The default "EVIL!" of the setting is, and should remain, the Shadowlands. Not Jigoku, mind you, but the Shadowlands. The default of games should focus more on the INFLUENCE of Jigoku on the mortal realm, made manifest through the Shadowlands and the Taint, and focus less on the wacky and wild high fantasy of the Spirit Realms.

Save the full examination of the Spirit Realms, their influence, and their stories for something which examines the Supernatural Fantasy pillar of the game. The default should be the threat present in the mortal realm.

I cannot for the life of me understand why someone would think it would be a good thing to remove the shadowlands and the taint from l5r. It has been the source of some of the best fiction the story has had. It is no coincidence that the absolute worst time of l5r storyline was when they watered down the taint to choice based and made it so shadowlands were not a threat anymore. The crab clan in particular really lost a lot of their identity due to that. I know people, myself included, who have given 15-20 years to this game, and the time they became most disinterested with the story, and felt like it was just of no consequence was the whole taint pact. It was a really big mistake, and one that seems like it was about to be reversed.

Why you would want to take the single most monumental failure of the l5r story arch, and extend it even further is totally beyond me! The Diet-Taint project failed pretty emphatically, I sure hope that FFG's L5R team have recognised that.

I cannot for the life of me understand why people think the Taint has to be "radioactive" and conflate physical contagion with spiritual decay, in order to be dangerous or make for interesting stories.

I cannot for the life of me understand why someone would think it would be a good thing to remove the shadowlands and the taint from l5r. It has been the source of some of the best fiction the story has had. It is no coincidence that the absolute worst time of l5r storyline was when they watered down the taint to choice based and made it so shadowlands were not a threat anymore. The crab clan in particular really lost a lot of their identity due to that. I know people, myself included, who have given 15-20 years to this game, and the time they became most disinterested with the story, and felt like it was just of no consequence was the whole taint pact. It was a really big mistake, and one that seems like it was about to be reversed.

Why you would want to take the single most monumental failure of the l5r story arch, and extend it even further is totally beyond me! The Diet-Taint project failed pretty emphatically, I sure hope that FFG's L5R team have recognised that.

I cannot for the life of me understand why people think the Taint has to be "radioactive" and conflate physical contagion with spiritual decay, in order to be dangerous or make for interesting stories.

You mean Interesting stories like we have had from the snoozefest of the colonies?

We have just come from a period of non-contagious taint, and the story has been utterly terrible throughout that period.

The usual suspects for proposing less punitive taint are ones who think spider clan characters should be able to have their cake and eat it.

The taint comes from Fu-Leng. Fu-Leng is in opposition to the emerald empire. How can it exist in harmony with the day to day life of Rokugan? It makes no sense from any angle apart from, "I want special tainty powers but also remain a samurai".

Now lets say for arguments sake, taint gets removed along with shadowlands? What replaces that storytime?

More non-Jigoku spirit shenanigans of course! Instead of Jigoku stealing the spotlight because writing EVUL stuff is easy, we could have villains from Chikushudo, Sakkaku, Yomi (Spirit Wars 2.0, essentially), or even Tengoku. Or we can have a theological crisis like "good" Fudoism or the appearance of not!Christianity. We can explore the world outside of Rokugan alternatively, and have Rokugani fleets journey all around the globe, getting into wacky adventures. The possibilities are endless!

We already have all this stuff while as well as the taint and have done for quite some time. Why are you assuming, that they are mutually exclusive? Just because shadowlands and taint remains in the lore, doesn't mean other spirit worldy stuff cant! There are literally HUNDREDS of examples of what you say above, and there will undoubtedly be many more. So I ask you. What do we GAIN from removing shadowlands?

It is that you can't bear reading shadowlands centred fiction? I think most people, in particular veteran l5r fans, would hold a much stronger fondness for shadowlands stories than most other parts of the l5r lore.

Do you honestly believe that the shadowlands fiction has been the weak point of L5R story arc?!? Would you really pick Shinjo Tselu over Moto Tsume stories?!

Remember back in the day when we only had Jigoku and Tengoku, and the mortal world? And then, along came Legacy of the Forge and the Race to Volturnum and then things started getting complicated...

Because that was 1st Edition, and the "default world" that I present to the majority of PCs in my games. Unless you actually take Lore: Spirit Realms, you know there is Heaven, there is Hell, and there is this world, and that's it. Lore: Theology might give you more knowledge about the Kharmic cycle (and thus Gaki-do, Meido, and Yomi), but if you want to know about some of the more distant / stranger Spirit Realms, you have to actually study it.

If it is supernatural and beneficial? It is heavenly, and the samurai love it. It if is supernatural and hostile? Then it is evil, and samurai fight it. Unless you are a shugenja or one of the non-shugenja who care about that sort of thing (Toritaka family, for example), why should it matter?

To those who want to see the Shadowlands removed from the game, or with less of a focus on it, I seriously disagree. The default "EVIL!" of the setting is, and should remain, the Shadowlands. Not Jigoku, mind you, but the Shadowlands. The default of games should focus more on the INFLUENCE of Jigoku on the mortal realm, made manifest through the Shadowlands and the Taint, and focus less on the wacky and wild high fantasy of the Spirit Realms.

Save the full examination of the Spirit Realms, their influence, and their stories for something which examines the Supernatural Fantasy pillar of the game. The default should be the threat present in the mortal realm.

I'd rather see more nuance in the presentation of the supernatural.

If the players come to a remote village and find it mysteriously troubled, is it because there's a forgotten shrine that's going neglected, or because something happened that offended the local spirits? Are the local spirits suddenly EEE-VUL, or servants of "hell", or something to be driven out or destroyed?

All too often, the games would seem to be telling us "Yes, it's a supernatural threat, there's EEE-VUL afoot, the taint and maho and the decay of all things proper are sure to follow!"

The answer should be "No, of course not -- things are out of order and must be set right again, then the spirits and the people will be in harmony and all will prosper again."

Remember back in the day when we only had Jigoku and Tengoku, and the mortal world? And then, along came Legacy of the Forge and the Race to Volturnum and then things started getting complicated...

Because that was 1st Edition, and the "default world" that I present to the majority of PCs in my games. Unless you actually take Lore: Spirit Realms, you know there is Heaven, there is Hell, and there is this world, and that's it. Lore: Theology might give you more knowledge about the Kharmic cycle (and thus Gaki-do, Meido, and Yomi), but if you want to know about some of the more distant / stranger Spirit Realms, you have to actually study it.

If it is supernatural and beneficial? It is heavenly, and the samurai love it. It if is supernatural and hostile? Then it is evil, and samurai fight it. Unless you are a shugenja or one of the non-shugenja who care about that sort of thing (Toritaka family, for example), why should it matter?

To those who want to see the Shadowlands removed from the game, or with less of a focus on it, I seriously disagree. The default "EVIL!" of the setting is, and should remain, the Shadowlands. Not Jigoku, mind you, but the Shadowlands. The default of games should focus more on the INFLUENCE of Jigoku on the mortal realm, made manifest through the Shadowlands and the Taint, and focus less on the wacky and wild high fantasy of the Spirit Realms.

Save the full examination of the Spirit Realms, their influence, and their stories for something which examines the Supernatural Fantasy pillar of the game. The default should be the threat present in the mortal realm.

I'd rather see more nuance in the presentation of the supernatural.

If the players come to a remote village and find it mysteriously troubled, is it because there's a forgotten shrine that's going neglected, or because something happened that offended the local spirits? Are the local spirits suddenly EEE-VUL, or servants of "hell", or something to be driven out or destroyed?

All too often, the games would seem to be telling us "Yes, it's a supernatural threat, there's EEE-VUL afoot, the taint and maho and the decay of all things proper are sure to follow!"

The answer should be "No, of course not -- things are out of order and must be set right again, then the spirits and the people will be in harmony and all will prosper again."

You do realise, this is entirely down to the GM? there is nothing stopping the scenario you propose.

We already have all this stuff while as well as the taint and have done for quite some time. Why are you assuming, that they are mutually exclusive? Just because shadowlands and taint remains in the lore, doesn't mean other spirit worldy stuff cant! There are literally HUNDREDS of examples of what you say above, and there will undoubtedly be many more. So I ask you. What do we GAIN from removing shadowlands?

Even more of those stories of course! And stories that actually have impact/are important for that matter.

Do you honestly believe that the shadowlands fiction has been the weak point of L5R story arc?!? Would you really pick Shinjo Tselu over Moto Tsume stories?!

I honestly believe that - other than a few rare exceptions - the shadowlands fictions are one of the biggest weak point of the L5R story arc. Your example gives a good reason why: I already know what will happen in the Moto Tsume story, while Shinjo Tselu's story can at least offer some excitement as he can get into all sorts of stuff rather than repeat the same five plot points.

@MaxKilljoy

Honestly? Seeing a re-alignment of the Supernatural Fantasy pillar into a more wholistic and less dualistic world-sense would make me extremely happy as well.

However, I do not see such a thing as the "default" Legend of the Five Rings setting. The default L5R setting presents a very strong dualism in its conflict between Tengoku and Jigoku, with the mortal realm being the battleground between these two extremes. While L5R is capable, and even more fun as a setting with nuanced supernatural depiction, doing so would basically require a re-examination of the setting on a whole.

Keep in mind, the most common forms of the supernatural in L5R is the Shadowlands in the south and the powers of the shugenja in communicating with the kami. A more nuanced supernatural setting should be possible but I am doubtful if it should be the "default" approach. The "default" approach to the Supernatural Fantasy being Demon-Fighting Wizard-Priest, just as the "default" approach to the Action-Adventure pillar should be a Highly Trained Bushi with a Katana and the "default" approach to the Courtly Intrigue pillar should be the Cunning and Graceful Diplomat-Courtier. No one should be straight-jacketed into that archetype, but everyone should be seen in relation to that archetype.

We already have all this stuff while as well as the taint and have done for quite some time. Why are you assuming, that they are mutually exclusive? Just because shadowlands and taint remains in the lore, doesn't mean other spirit worldy stuff cant! There are literally HUNDREDS of examples of what you say above, and there will undoubtedly be many more. So I ask you. What do we GAIN from removing shadowlands?

Even more of those stories of course! And stories that actually have impact/are important for that matter.

Do you honestly believe that the shadowlands fiction has been the weak point of L5R story arc?!? Would you really pick Shinjo Tselu over Moto Tsume stories?!

I honestly believe that - other than a few rare exceptions - the shadowlands fictions are one of the biggest weak point of the L5R story arc. Your example gives a good reason why: I already know what will happen in the Moto Tsume story, while Shinjo Tselu's story can at least offer some excitement as he can get into all sorts of stuff rather than repeat the same five plot points.

Eh - at the beginning of a story about Tsume, or even lets go for Paneki because it is more recent, you don't know how it will turn out. History doesn't become any less interesting because you know the conclusion

If you believe this, I am not going to try to convince you otherwise. I have never heard anyone else say that they thought the ivory arc was more interesting than imperial in terms of story. But to each to their own.

People already voted on this matter with their feet, so there isn't much more to say.

If you believe this, I am not going to try to convince you otherwise. I have never heard anyone else say that they thought the ivory arc was more interesting than imperial in terms of story. But to each to their own.

The Ivory Arc was more interesting, but it also ended up as a steaming pile of crap . Though this has more to do with the other big weak point of the L5R story arc (namely that the writers aren't on the top of things most of the time).

If you believe this, I am not going to try to convince you otherwise. I have never heard anyone else say that they thought the ivory arc was more interesting than imperial in terms of story. But to each to their own.

The Ivory Arc was more interesting, but it also ended up as a steaming pile of crap

Well I'm glad we can both agree it wasn't as good

I cannot for the life of me understand why someone would think it would be a good thing to remove the shadowlands and the taint from l5r. It has been the source of some of the best fiction the story has had. It is no coincidence that the absolute worst time of l5r storyline was when they watered down the taint to choice based and made it so shadowlands were not a threat anymore. The crab clan in particular really lost a lot of their identity due to that. I know people, myself included, who have given 15-20 years to this game, and the time they became most disinterested with the story, and felt like it was just of no consequence was the whole taint pact. It was a really big mistake, and one that seems like it was about to be reversed.

Why you would want to take the single most monumental failure of the l5r story arch, and extend it even further is totally beyond me! The Diet-Taint project failed pretty emphatically, I sure hope that FFG's L5R team have recognised that.

"I cannot for the life of me understand why someone would think it would be a good thing to get off heroin. Heroin's been the source of the some of the best experiences of my life, and it is no coincidence that the absolute worst times of my life were when I could not get any heroin for a long time."

Obviously the analogy isn't perfect -- good stories with the Shadowlands are legitimately good, and not just tricking you into thinking they are good the way a drug tricks you into a positive experience -- but I hope you get my point. Something creating good outcomes in one area doesn't mean it isn't causing damage in other areas, and your disinterest in the story when the Taint became less of a threat doesn't necessarily mean that the Taint is central to good storytelling. I argue, and others argue, that it means the setting was built wrong, and that the Taint is harmful to it, but because it was built wrong the Taint is also a load-bearing pillar. The solution is not to keep the Taint, the solution is to build a new structure that does not require all the bad things about Taint to be a load-bearing pillar.

I keep seeing people talk about how the "worldbuilding" was wrong or L5r was "built wrong" , as if it is some kind of universal fact, which it isn't.

Explain to me how it was built wrong?

You are also proposing a "solution" for something that hasn't caused a problem.

I agree in my example, which is one of correlation, is not necessarily causation but it wasn't Just that the taint was different, but we were shown what happens without it, we lose a lot of tragedy from the game. Without taint you have stereotypical bad guys, guys who were destined to be bad from the get go, that is just lazy. With the taint, you had tragedy in that it could happen to anybody, through no fault of their own and how they deal with it is where the interesting story comes from.

Here's how it was built wrong: The setting is built such that, when they removed radioactive Taint, you concluded they lost the element of tragedy, because so much had been built onto Taint as a load-bearing pillar. This is a game about samurai! It should be overflowing with tragedy! There should be a constant conflict between what society says is right and what actually is right, and people should be relentlessly punished for doing the right thing, because that's samurai tragedy, no supernatural element needed! But the Taint broke the setting, it gobbled up all of that conceptual space, it took away the ability to do what fiction about samurai should be able to do without the supernatural, and tied it to the supernatural, to this one specific, distorted, damaging supernatural concept. If taking Jigoku away from L5R removes most of the tragedy, that is a huge strike against Jigoku, because it shouldn't need anything remotely like Jigoku to be tragic.

The setting's conception of good and evil is so fundamentally deficient it has convinced you the only alternative to radioactive Taint is "stereotypical bad guys" -- Tainted villains are the stereotypical bad guys, but because so much had been loaded up onto Taint, so much importance had been assigned to it, that non-Tainted villains come off even worse. People should be villains because they do harmful things, not because they were "born bad", or were mind-controlled by a supernatural force, and they should do harmful things for reasons that make sense to them! Villains in L5R should be people who are selfish and place their own desires above that of society's, and you shouldn't need any supernatural evil radiation to explain why people do that!

Basically -- supernaturally corrupting evil is not an element of Eastern fantasy, and conflicts with Eastern fantasy. Order vs chaos is not the same thing as good vs evil. All of the things you say that L5R needs to have Jigoku in order to do, are all things the story needs to be able to do solely based on human behavior. L5R needing Jigoku in order to do these things is a strike against Jigoku, because it just shows L5R can't do those things the "right" way, the way that is actually relevant to human beings. None of us will ever meet someone who became a jerk because they were exposed to a spiritual contagion. All of us will meet people who are jerks because they put their own desires above everyone else's.

I cannot for the life of me understand why someone would think it would be a good thing to remove the shadowlands and the taint from l5r. It has been the source of some of the best fiction the story has had. It is no coincidence that the absolute worst time of l5r storyline was when they watered down the taint to choice based and made it so shadowlands were not a threat anymore. The crab clan in particular really lost a lot of their identity due to that. I know people, myself included, who have given 15-20 years to this game, and the time they became most disinterested with the story, and felt like it was just of no consequence was the whole taint pact. It was a really big mistake, and one that seems like it was about to be reversed.

Why you would want to take the single most monumental failure of the l5r story arch, and extend it even further is totally beyond me! The Diet-Taint project failed pretty emphatically, I sure hope that FFG's L5R team have recognised that.

I cannot for the life of me understand why people think the Taint has to be "radioactive" and conflate physical contagion with spiritual decay, in order to be dangerous or make for interesting stories.

You mean Interesting stories like we have had from the snoozefest of the colonies?

We have just come from a period of non-contagious taint, and the story has been utterly terrible throughout that period.

The usual suspects for proposing less punitive taint are ones who think spider clan characters should be able to have their cake and eat it.

The taint comes from Fu-Leng. Fu-Leng is in opposition to the emerald empire. How can it exist in harmony with the day to day life of Rokugan? It makes no sense from any angle apart from, "I want special tainty powers but also remain a samurai".

Well, we're WAY off the track on the actual subject of Shugenja, I think.

First, you're assuming causality because of correlation (between "non-contagious taint" and "utterly terrible story"). As far as I can see, there's no actual causation there, the two simply coincided.

Second, I'm no fan of the Spider Clan as it exists. On the old forums I was one of the more vociferous posters against the calls some where making to change the very nature of Jigoku and its place in Rokugani cosmology and society, in their attempt to let the Spider have Super Freaky Powers and also "have tea and Kabuki with the Crane".

Third, there seems to be an assumption that non-contagious Taint becomes "kewl powerz" with no cost and no drawbacks, that it's only a terrible thing if it can infect the innocent and the honorable against their will -- which is utter nonsense. Even if the Taint has to accepted willingingly, it's still a sign that someone has sacrified the sanctity of their soul for power, and constanly risks becoming a pawn of Jigoku*, turning on their family, friends, lord, etc, and rejecting their duty to fulfil their destiny and their place in society. (* Jigoku being, as presented, the quasi-sentient embodiment of everything the Rokogani find foul and wrong, an entire realm eternally dedicated to nothing less than consuming Rokugan, burning down everything that the Rokugani hold sacred and proper, and pissing on the ashes.) How exactly then is the Taint "harmless" if it's not contagious?

Fourth, to go back to a past comment that no one responded to -- what's this about the Taint coming from Fu Leng? The 4th Ed RPG material would seem to indicate that the Taint comes from Jigoku, and that Jigoku existed long before Fu Leng plunged through the world into its depths.

Actually there are a number of scenarios that could be presented from Rokugan's Spirit Realms that could involve battles, court intrigue, and a spiritual, or supernatural threat without getting the Shadowlands involved. However these other spirit realms are often only hinted upon. I have to admit I pull on a lot if reference outside of Legend of the Five Rings to bring into the game a spiritual threat that is not associated with Jigoku in anyway, nor does it have a connection with Tengoku.

In one campaign some mischievious little flora spirits kept playing pranks on the peasants, samurai, and the pcs until the pcs found a way to appease them.

Another campaign a nation of spirit folk became upset at the imbalance the Lion - Scorpion conflict was inflicting upon their forest. They were upset with the amount of blood being shed, and were causing troops to wander around lost, loose orders, or simply kidnapped, and imprisoned some in their forest dwellings. All the spirit folk wanted was for the mortals to stop killing each other inside of their forest realm. This gave the pcs a fit for awhile trying to broker peace between Lion and Scorpion.

Yet neither of those campaigns was Jigoku, or the taint even a minor theme.

@MaxKilljoy

Honestly? Seeing a re-alignment of the Supernatural Fantasy pillar into a more wholistic and less dualistic world-sense would make me extremely happy as well.

However, I do not see such a thing as the "default" Legend of the Five Rings setting. The default L5R setting presents a very strong dualism in its conflict between Tengoku and Jigoku, with the mortal realm being the battleground between these two extremes. While L5R is capable, and even more fun as a setting with nuanced supernatural depiction, doing so would basically require a re-examination of the setting on a whole.

Keep in mind, the most common forms of the supernatural in L5R is the Shadowlands in the south and the powers of the shugenja in communicating with the kami. A more nuanced supernatural setting should be possible but I am doubtful if it should be the "default" approach. The "default" approach to the Supernatural Fantasy being Demon-Fighting Wizard-Priest, just as the "default" approach to the Action-Adventure pillar should be a Highly Trained Bushi with a Katana and the "default" approach to the Courtly Intrigue pillar should be the Cunning and Graceful Diplomat-Courtier. No one should be straight-jacketed into that archetype, but everyone should be seen in relation to that archetype.

Well, as Kinzen said, yes, yes, we absolutely understand what the default setting is, that doesn't need to be explained and reiterated yet again. I don't mean that to be rude, and your post was quite factual and polite, but these discussions keep coming back to some of us talking about what could be, and getting responses as if we're misrepresenting what is.

What some of us are talking about is how the default setting gets it wrong, and where it shows faulty worldbuilding, thus limiting the stories that can be told and the overall atmosphere. We're talking about how the setting could have been and still could be more nuanced, and a more fertile ground for the kinds of stories that "samurai drama in a supernatural world" should be allowing us to run as games or tell in fiction.

I'd rather see more nuance in the presentation of the supernatural.

If the players come to a remote village and find it mysteriously troubled, is it because there's a forgotten shrine that's going neglected, or because something happened that offended the local spirits? Are the local spirits suddenly EEE-VUL, or servants of "hell", or something to be driven out or destroyed?

All too often, the games would seem to be telling us "Yes, it's a supernatural threat, there's EEE-VUL afoot, the taint and maho and the decay of all things proper are sure to follow!"

The answer should be "No, of course not -- things are out of order and must be set right again, then the spirits and the people will be in harmony and all will prosper again."

Not at all, the game tells the Storyteller to DECIDE what the threat is. Let's see what the Corebook suggest as the Type of Campaign:

1. Magistrates
2. Imperial Legionnaires
3. Shadowlands Campaign
4. Arbiters/Regents (Shikken)
5. Imperial Cartographers/Scouts
6. Otokodate (Band of Brothers)
7. The Restricted Campaign
8. The Rank 0 Campaign

This is simply the title in the corebook of the 8 types of campaign, just one of them is about Shadowlands. Now the same chapter, in "Writing your own adventure", there's a lot of information for the Storyteller to pick in order to create his adventure. Let's resume in this chapter, in "Building Stories", 36 Writer Plots are given to help variety and there's Adultry, Crimes of Love, Familial Heatred and Remorse as theme to create plots. Still very generic. Then comes the "Making Villains" section where it says the easy fall for Shadowlands only and the section gives several directions in order to not only include this. Let's go further with the "Sample Adventure Seeds: Challenge, Focus, Strike" section, where there's 18 ideas of scenario and only 1 of them has a clear mention of any relation with the Shadowlands.

I'm starting to wonder of people even took the time to read the corebook at all. I've read it cover to cover and there's nothing like: "The answer of your threat is a supernatural threat!" Nothing at all says that. That's how the Storyteller/GM utilize the setting.

Here's how it was built wrong: The setting is built such that, when they removed radioactive Taint, you concluded they lost the element of tragedy, because so much had been built onto Taint as a load-bearing pillar. This is a game about samurai! It should be overflowing with tragedy! There should be a constant conflict between what society says is right and what actually is right, and people should be relentlessly punished for doing the right thing, because that's samurai tragedy, no supernatural element needed! But the Taint broke the setting, it gobbled up all of that conceptual space, it took away the ability to do what fiction about samurai should be able to do without the supernatural, and tied it to the supernatural, to this one specific, distorted, damaging supernatural concept. If taking Jigoku away from L5R removes most of the tragedy, that is a huge strike against Jigoku, because it shouldn't need anything remotely like Jigoku to be tragic.

The setting's conception of good and evil is so fundamentally deficient it has convinced you the only alternative to radioactive Taint is "stereotypical bad guys" -- Tainted villains are the stereotypical bad guys, but because so much had been loaded up onto Taint, so much importance had been assigned to it, that non-Tainted villains come off even worse. People should be villains because they do harmful things, not because they were "born bad", or were mind-controlled by a supernatural force, and they should do harmful things for reasons that make sense to them! Villains in L5R should be people who are selfish and place their own desires above that of society's, and you shouldn't need any supernatural evil radiation to explain why people do that!

Basically -- supernaturally corrupting evil is not an element of Eastern fantasy, and conflicts with Eastern fantasy. Order vs chaos is not the same thing as good vs evil. All of the things you say that L5R needs to have Jigoku in order to do, are all things the story needs to be able to do solely based on human behavior. L5R needing Jigoku in order to do these things is a strike against Jigoku, because it just shows L5R can't do those things the "right" way, the way that is actually relevant to human beings. None of us will ever meet someone who became a jerk because they were exposed to a spiritual contagion. All of us will meet people who are jerks because they put their own desires above everyone else's.

Just liking that post isn't enough, I absolutely have to quote it for emphasis.

I would add that I don't think that means that Jigoku or Fu Leng or the Shadowlands would have to be expunged from the setting -- rather, one should start from the sorts of things that Huitzil37 is saying, and with the Eastern Fantasy that's the inspiration for this setting, and work from there in crafting Jigoku et al into the setting in a way that fits seemlessly and supports the desired atmosphere.

I'd rather see more nuance in the presentation of the supernatural.

If the players come to a remote village and find it mysteriously troubled, is it because there's a forgotten shrine that's going neglected, or because something happened that offended the local spirits? Are the local spirits suddenly EEE-VUL, or servants of "hell", or something to be driven out or destroyed?

All too often, the games would seem to be telling us "Yes, it's a supernatural threat, there's EEE-VUL afoot, the taint and maho and the decay of all things proper are sure to follow!"

The answer should be "No, of course not -- things are out of order and must be set right again, then the spirits and the people will be in harmony and all will prosper again."

Not at all, the game tells the Storyteller to DECIDE what the threat is. Let's see what the Corebook suggest as the Type of Campaign:

1. Magistrates
2. Imperial Legionnaires
3. Shadowlands Campaign
4. Arbiters/Regents (Shikken)
5. Imperial Cartographers/Scouts
6. Otokodate (Band of Brothers)
7. The Restricted Campaign
8. The Rank 0 Campaign

This is simply the title in the corebook of the 8 types of campaign, just one of them is about Shadowlands. Now the same chapter, in "Writing your own adventure", there's a lot of information for the Storyteller to pick in order to create his adventure. Let's resume in this chapter, in "Building Stories", 36 Writer Plots are given to help variety and there's Adultry, Crimes of Love, Familial Heatred and Remorse as theme to create plots. Still very generic. Then comes the "Making Villains" section where it says the easy fall for Shadowlands only and the section gives several directions in order to not only include this. Let's go further with the "Sample Adventure Seeds: Challenge, Focus, Strike" section, where there's 18 ideas of scenario and only 1 of them has a clear mention of any relation with the Shadowlands.

I'm starting to wonder of people even took the time to read the corebook at all. I've read it cover to cover and there's nothing like: "The answer of your threat is a supernatural threat!" Nothing at all says that. That's how the Storyteller/GM utilize the setting.

I'm at a loss as to how any of that relates to the issue of the supernatural in this "oh-so-unwestern" setting being twisted up with unspoken near-eastern (ex Abrahamic or Zoroastrian) assumptions about good-evil cosmic duality in such a way that the supernatural in Rokugan is too often presented in a very un-"Eastern" binary split between good and evil / holy and unholy.

I'm at a loss as to how any of that relates to the issue of the supernatural in this "oh-so-unwestern" setting being twisted up with unspoken near-eastern (ex Abrahamic or Zoroastrian) assumptions about good-evil cosmic duality in such a way that the supernatural in Rokugan is too often presented in a very un-"Eastern" binary split between good and evil / holy and unholy.

Go read the section I've pointed out and you'll understand that the "binary split" doesn't exist, it's your misconception. Besides, may I ask you to bring more arguments instead of simply whining? And by arguments, I mean proofs and places in the books about what you're talking about? Because most of what you're saying doesn't seem to be fixed by any means with a new edition, it's more about how to handle the setting. I've said it in another message, there's a tons of information about wars between Clans, yet it's not something about a split between "Good and Evil". Just in what I was pointing, mainly the Challenge, Focus, Strike section, there's a lot of stuffs that has nothing to do with binary split between good and evil and there's stuffs about supernatural threat.

Speaking of this "Western/Eastern" thingy. Photography was seen as a threat because there was rumors about stealing the soul of the targets. From today's point of view, this has nothing to do with Good VS Evil or Holy VS Unholy. However at that time, it wasn't well received, it was considered a threat. It's all about the point of view. In a L5R campaign, the point of view is given by the Storyteller/GM and the players. This, no game system/mechanics/setting will do anything about them.

Wait, when did this turn into yet another thread about the Taint? There was a thread about the Taint and the Shadowlands. It's still there, perfectly good (though I stopped reading it because it bored me, Taint not being one of the things that has ever struck me personally as needing revision). Can you guys maybe take this over there?

Though I will say, there is an important difference between "internally inconsistent because the fluff says one thing, the living fictions another, and the mechanics a third thing" and "feels thematically inconsistent to me because Asian-derived fantasy tropes are mixed up with original elements and tropes from other mythoses." The first one of those bothers me when I encounter it. The second doesn't and in fact I personally find the distinction somewhat irrelevant for the purpose, so I do feel a bit annoyed at having support of the former complaint implicitly extrapolated to support for the latter one. Hence why this tangent really needs to go off back to its own thread!