Hello, everyone! I just had a brainsurge and wrote something up that I think ought to be shared to see whether people feel it could be useful in their own games. I think that this may be mostly implied in canon depictions of Rokugan, but I think that having it stated is worthwhile, so people who miss implications (like myself) can add some more depth to their own Rokugans. As such, without further ado, let's get on with it, shall we?

Being a Minor Clan samurai sucks. You cannot really get around that - such a samurai is less prized by the rest of the Empire, their achievements ignored in favor of those of a Great Clan samurai, and they are often disrespected by many more people than would ever dare to disrespect someone from one of the Great Clans. Furthermore, sometimes when a Minor Clan samurai arrives at an important court, they realize that only one or two samurai there have even heard of their Clan!

The sad fact is that throughout most of the Empire's history (right up until the establishment of the Alliance of the Minor Clans), the overwhelming majority of the samurai of the Empire are only aware of a few Minor Clans at any one time. Most samurai will likely have heard of the Mantis, the Fox (both Clans which are noted for having hosted the Imperial Winter Court as Minor Clans, albeit only rarely), and maybe one or two other Clans.

For instance, the average Dragon or Phoenix samurai is likely aware of the Mantis, the Fox, and the Dragonfly, while the average Crane has heard cautionary tales of Doji Suzume and the Clan he founded. The Crab have some interaction with the Falcon, and may even remember the Badger, but the Badger exist in isolation for so long that that is often not the case. The Scorpion remember the Hare well, likely have clashed with Sparrow as well (due to their abutting borders), and (once they start existing) have a long-standing grudge with the Wasp. The average Lion knows of the Dragonfly, most likely, due to the humiliation that that Clan's existence is to the Clan of Akodo, but may not have heard of many others.

There are exceptions, of course. An Asako who focuses on chronicling the creation and destruction of Minor Clans would probably be able to name all such existing Clans with a reasonable amount of accuracy, and an Ikoma might have a precise memory about reading that X Clan was created in the Y year of the reign of the Z Emperor. Any samurai who has the misfortune of being sent to treat with the Dragon after the eighth century probably knows more about the Dragonfly than they ever wished to know, and someone who has had the luck to meet a Sparrow Storyteller can probably tell anyone about the Sparrow Clan in such detail that no one would ever be able to forget the experience... but for the most part, the Great Clan samurai simply don't care about the Minor Clans.

This, in turn, means that in many cases, unscrupulous (and incredibly unwise) ronin otokodate can call themselves a Minor Clan, claiming a given part of neutral territory as their “Imperially-granted” land. Such ronin are able, due to this general (willful) ignorance of Great Clan samurai, to leverage some level of respect from Clan samurai - at least, until they are discovered, at which point most Clan samurai are quite willing to step in and execute Imperial justice upon the lying wave-men. Nevertheless, this tactic is something that comes up repeatedly, because really, though living as a Minor Clan samurai sucks, living as a ronin sucks more. Besides, some even hold to the hope that the reigning Emperor or Empress will look upon them and legitimize their claim - something not canonically done outside of the Mantis during the reign of the Gozoku.

So there we go. This post's rather shorter than my last ramble about the stories that could be told with a given Clan, but there you go. Maybe it will help enhance your gaming experience to include these "False" Minor Clans, but it ought to be established beforehand that although your players may know which Minor Clans exist at a given time, their PCs do not. Otherwise it comes off feeling a bit forced, and you cannot really use the interesting and fun Hawk Clan Purist ronin path, which would be a shame.

During the heresy of the five rings, ronins pretended to be part of the Hawk clan. So here is for a canonical example.

I've always wished the setting had more Minor Clans, period. For my own campaign I've just treated all of the canonical ones as existing at once -- mostly; the Boar have vanished (because I wanted to do a plot in the Twilight Mountains, though I didn't get a chance) and the Snake were obliterated (so I could run a plot about the descendant of one of the few survivors getting revenge on the Phoenix), while I left out the Ox because the whole Kolat thing didn't interest me and the Tiger school got repurposed. But I even put in most of the non-canonical ones from Imperial Archives (the Bee, the Salamander, the Firefly, and the Raccoon), plus I hived off the Yoritomo shugenja school into its own clan, since we're pre-Clan War, and made the Yasuki into the Carp. Result: we have twenty extant Minor Clans in our setting, and seven Great Clans.

Why did I arrange it this way? Because I like the diversity. I like the notion that, while a given Minor Clan is probably not known across the Empire, they're relevant to local politics, because they're pieces the Great Clans can move on the board. I feel like the Great Clans look more like great powers when there are minor powers scattered around to contrast with.

Ronin-made "clans" would certainly be another way to expand the total. Especially if you run with a version of Rokugan where there's more in the way of a no-man's-land between Great Clan territories -- then there's room for them to stake out a claim, without immediately being noticed and squished by their powerful neighbors.

Huh. My party is currently trying to get imperial sanctioning for a Minor Clan that would be a "False Minor Clan" here. Long story short, it is the 'Swan Clan' founded by an alternate-setting Sachina , who, after the Kaneka Shogunate bit the dust (complicated story), felt that nothing says "glorious retirement" better than making a Minor Clan at the doorstep of the freshly ascended Empress Tsudao. The catch? Sachina was the lover of Kaneka, Kaneka's reputation is highly questionable at best because his ruthless tyranny ruled the Empire for 39 years, and Tsudao, who is the divine daughter of Amaterasu and Toturi, hates his half-brother's guts (she killed him, by the way) and his former associates also have her disdain.

So here we are, a disenchanted Mirumoto Bushi (me), a renegade Shosuro Actor, a not!Daigotsu Courtier (same techniques, different family), and a... uhm... Unique Phoenix Bushi (his homebrew school is about turning into a half-human/half-spirit killing machine), trying our best against pretty much the whole Empire. That is, an Emerald Empire that spans the whole continent and its ten Great Clans reign supreme under the divine guidance of their ten Founding Kamis. For that, we have all the resources of a single geisha house (Sachina's own) and a few blocks worth of urban area in Otosan Uchi, an enormous metropolis of five million souls. When we asked Sachina about how we should even start, she just gave us an old-lady smile and told us that we should first ease the suspicion of the Imperial Bureaucracy because the Zeroth Division of Affairs is already sniffing treason around her clan. Overall, it is, like: everyone dislikes us, the God-Empress hates us even more, we have no political or economical standing (I don't even mention our pitiful military), an oriental/proto-industrial NSA is breathing down on our neck, and our only allies are seemingly Daigotsu and his Spider Clan (they are roughly the same guys as in canon). Oh, and the Imperial Consort - Bayushi Paneki - might or might not be with us too (this is our current lead).

All things considered, I would say that this "Fake Clan" scenario is funny until you play it with your own character. Once you are in, you must have the management skills of a god and a crack team of PCs to back you up, because this campaign is going to be the mother of all uphill battles .

You could also fold in one of these "false" Minor Clans by playing on the history of the Boar (or at some points, the Badger): many minor clans come and go due to the winds of fortune. But . . . if you were an enterprising ronin, you might find a reference to one of those "defunct" minor clans in some obscure document and claim descent from them. With the "right" paperwork (make sure you are an enterprising forger or have one in your service), you might could make the claim stick for a while.

After all, it's harder to prove you are a "false" clan, if there's proof there was actually that clan at one point.

During the Clan Wars, hechi Chokei joined the Crab's invasion of Otosan Uchi in exchange of Kisada's support to rebuild the boar clan, so it's not that far fetched. Later, Heichi Tochiko would garner support to rebuild it under the Iweko. But their proofs were quite small, and there is the Tanuki clan also.

During the Clan Wars, hechi Chokei joined the Crab's invasion of Otosan Uchi in exchange of Kisada's support to rebuild the boar clan, so it's not that far fetched. Later, Heichi Tochiko would garner support to rebuild it under the Iweko. But their proofs were quite small, and there is the Tanuki clan also.

Exactly, but it wouldn't have to be Boar or Badger, just use them as a model. Those clans at various times were considered "defunct," but "survivors" were found.

In the case of the "false" clan, it would just be a matter of it not actually being a "found" member.

During the Clan Wars, hechi Chokei joined the Crab's invasion of Otosan Uchi in exchange of Kisada's support to rebuild the boar clan, so it's not that far fetched. Later, Heichi Tochiko would garner support to rebuild it under the Iweko. But their proofs were quite small, and there is the Tanuki clan also.

Exactly, but it wouldn't have to be Boar or Badger, just use them as a model. Those clans at various times were considered "defunct," but "survivors" were found.

In the case of the "false" clan, it would just be a matter of it not actually being a "found" member.

That's pretty much what I did with the Snake in my own campaign. There were a handful of Chuda samurai who weren't at home when the Shuten Doji took over; they survived the Five Nights of Shame; their descendants continued to call themselves Chuda, and while some of them ran off to the Shadowlands to become maho-tsukai, others remained pure. Finally one came along who was a good enough duelist that the Scorpion secretly trained him in iaijutsu, then trotted him out when they needed leverage over the Phoenix and let him carve a very public swath through the Shiba. That guy happened to legitimately be a Snake descendant, but there's plenty of leeway for pretenders to crop up, too.

I've always wished the setting had more Minor Clans, period. For my own campaign I've just treated all of the canonical ones as existing at once -- mostly; the Boar have vanished (because I wanted to do a plot in the Twilight Mountains, though I didn't get a chance) and the Snake were obliterated (so I could run a plot about the descendant of one of the few survivors getting revenge on the Phoenix), while I left out the Ox because the whole Kolat thing didn't interest me and the Tiger school got repurposed. But I even put in most of the non-canonical ones from Imperial Archives (the Bee, the Salamander, the Firefly, and the Raccoon), plus I hived off the Yoritomo shugenja school into its own clan, since we're pre-Clan War, and made the Yasuki into the Carp. Result: we have twenty extant Minor Clans in our setting, and seven Great Clans.

Why did I arrange it this way? Because I like the diversity. I like the notion that, while a given Minor Clan is probably not known across the Empire, they're relevant to local politics, because they're pieces the Great Clans can move on the board. I feel like the Great Clans look more like great powers when there are minor powers scattered around to contrast with.

Ronin-made "clans" would certainly be another way to expand the total. Especially if you run with a version of Rokugan where there's more in the way of a no-man's-land between Great Clan territories -- then there's room for them to stake out a claim, without immediately being noticed and squished by their powerful neighbors.

I like your attitude Kinzen.

I feel that diversity and variety are keys for a fun Rokugan. My own version of Rokugan has all the known MC and Ronin groups, and even many more.

However, one problem is the new "small" size of Rokugan in the Atlas.

In such a small Rokugan it is rational to think that GC monopolize everything. Furthermore, in a country so small and so over-crowded, how can some MC get unnoticed? How can False MC exist?

This is why my own Rokugan is much bigger in dimensions than what the Atlas seems to suggest.

I am glad that the published map has not scale, so my scale is different!

The scale in the Atlas really makes me cringe. I actually wish they'd never attempted to put numbers to population or distance; not only do those numbers not match one another over the years, but most of them seem to have been chosen by people who have no idea of how those things work in the real world.

In such a small Rokugan it is rational to think that GC monopolize everything. Furthermore, in a country so small and so over-crowded, how can some MC get unnoticed? How can False MC exist?

I guess the answer is that they don't. You can't go unnoticed, even if you settled a relatively remote place. You will be either discovered or forced to make contact. Consequently, if you don't have Imperial Sanctioning, it is only a matter of time until you get your butt kicked - and if it happens, pray that it will be a Great Clan and not something much worse . Imperial Sanctioning will protect you from the GCs (most of the time), but you are free prey for everything else. Considering that even the Great Clans get their teeth kicked in all the time by this "everything else", you can imagine how well a Minor Clan in the middle of nowhere can fare against, say, a Bloodspeaker uprising.

Also, for the matter of size, I must note a lot of stuff changes with size. Travel, communication, and response times increase, power becomes fragmented and mobilization becomes a real chore. Economy slows down, so does warfare - while both becomes more prevalent on local level, meaning that inter-Clan relationships lose importance and intra-Clan conflicts rise in significance. Diplomacy loses its fangs, and reputation becomes mostly meaningless. So the Crane would be totally screwed, the Crab and the Lion would feel the heat too, the Miya would be a major player because of their couriers, while the Unicorn would become the single most powerful clan ever because of their horses.

Also, for the matter of size, I must note a lot of stuff changes with size. Travel, communication, and response times increase, power becomes fragmented and mobilization becomes a real chore. Economy slows down, so does warfare - while both becomes more prevalent on local level, meaning that inter-Clan relationships lose importance and intra-Clan conflicts rise in significance. Diplomacy loses its fangs, and reputation becomes mostly meaningless. So the Crane would be totally screwed, the Crab and the Lion would feel the heat too, the Miya would be a major player because of their couriers, while the Unicorn would become the single most powerful clan ever because of their horses.

Not really.

These things change or not according to what is the official QUANTITIVE indications of GC recources.....and we do not have them!!!!

The problem is that those issues are usually, as far as I know, not dealt or considered by official L5R authors!

We really do not have numbers on the wealth and resources of Great Clans, whether they can easily manage or not a large or a small group of lands.

Fiction sometimes seems to suggest that a GC is as big as a major Sengoku-time clan in old japan (and so relatively small), and other times seem to suggest that GC are kind of larger sub-nations or sub-states under the same Empire, kinds of the sub-states in certain ages of ancient China.

The reality is that stats are never given but, certainly, the "small scale" empire of the Atlas could have never mastered the thousands and thousands of Samurai which seem to be mentioned in some battle.

How much does it take to travel from the northernmost Phoenix settlement to the southernmost Crab fortification?

We really do not know.

It takes as much as the GM likes it to take.

Scales are not present even in the old maps in the "Secrets of.." series.

So, what's the answer?

"Rokugan you way", as usual...

I like my Rokugan to be big. So GC are big stuff, so they do not care with the issues you are raising.

Mayb your Rokugan is smaller and GC have less resources, who knows?

A ronin kingdom lasted a generation before being noticed, for what matters in canon. I wasn't happy with the scale for the altas map either, and I've always been supportive of more minor clans (including a lot more dead ones) in the universe, but we will see what FFG does about it.

These things change or not according to what is the official QUANTITIVE indications of GC recources.....and we do not have them!!!!

I was thinking about narrative changes and not numerical ones. Like, how Empire- or even Clan-wide politic maneuvering would be mostly irrelevant because of the long communication distances.

How much does it take to travel from the northernmost Phoenix settlement to the southernmost Crab fortification?

We really do not know.

We actually do if we know the distance. You can calculate with a constant travel speed (3 mph on foot, 8 mph on horseback) from there. Say, if my map is correct, the distance between the northernmost Phoenix settlement and the southernmost Crab fortification is ~600 miles. On foot, it would take 200 hours, or 20 days/3 weeks (traveling 10 hours/day). On horse, it would take 75 hours or roughly a week.

We actually do if we know the distance. You can calculate with a constant travel speed (3 mph on foot, 8 mph on horseback) from there. Say, if my map is correct, the distance between the northernmost Phoenix settlement and the southernmost Crab fortification is ~600 miles. On foot, it would take 200 hours, or 20 days/3 weeks (traveling 10 hours/day). On horse, it would take 75 hours or roughly a week.

Which map are you using?

Most L5R maps (especially recent ones) do not display scales.

Furthermore in some maps Rokugan is elongated along the North-South axis (thinner but longer Rokugan), in other maps it is elongated the other way around, along the Weast-East axis (wider but shorter Rokugan).

Distances are relative, according to what you want to believe is the actual real map.

We actually do if we know the distance. You can calculate with a constant travel speed (3 mph on foot, 8 mph on horseback) from there. Say, if my map is correct, the distance between the northernmost Phoenix settlement and the southernmost Crab fortification is ~600 miles. On foot, it would take 200 hours, or 20 days/3 weeks (traveling 10 hours/day). On horse, it would take 75 hours or roughly a week.

Which map are you using?

The one from the wiki.

I also miscalculated the distance in the example. The actual distance between the northernmost Phoenix settlement and the southernmost Crab fortification is ~1500 miles (500 hours/50 days on foot or 187 hours/19 days on horseback). Oopsie .

I guess the answer is that they don't. You can't go unnoticed, even if you settled a relatively remote place. You will be either discovered or forced to make contact. Consequently, if you don't have Imperial Sanctioning, it is only a matter of time until you get your butt kicked

At the scale we're given in the Atlas, "a matter of time" would be a couple of months, tops, unless you're on the far side of the Shinomen Mori or something.

Also, for the matter of size, I must note a lot of stuff changes with size. Travel, communication, and response times increase, power becomes fragmented and mobilization becomes a real chore. Economy slows down, so does warfare - while both becomes more prevalent on local level, meaning that inter-Clan relationships lose importance and intra-Clan conflicts rise in significance. Diplomacy loses its fangs, and reputation becomes mostly meaningless. So the Crane would be totally screwed, the Crab and the Lion would feel the heat too, the Miya would be a major player because of their couriers, while the Unicorn would become the single most powerful clan ever because of their horses.

Magic does mitigate this. But the real problem is that L5R wants to have it both ways: it wants all the huge military and social complexity of an Empire the size of China, but all the travel scale and quick change of Japan -- which is literally one-tenth the size. Since the military and social complexity are what I like, I go with the former interpretation, and I build in more intra-Clan relationships (without throwing inter-Clan politics out entirely) to match. You can do the reverse, and say the latter is true; but then if you want coherence, you need to say the Lion armies are at best 50,000 strong, instead of 500,000. Because you ain't getting half a million soldiers out of territory that's mayyyyyyybe ten thousand square miles. (That's a fifth the size of *Britain*. Which only managed to hit numbers comparable to the Lion Clan when they undertook a massive mobilization for World War II.)

The size you make your rokugan is also important for some conditional effects; certain spells are limited by distance, as are certain techniques (The Komori Shugenja technique, for example) and Tattoos (The Centipede Tattoo); depending on how large you make your empire, those tattoos either actually allow you to send messages/cross the empire in a single day, or only allow you to go a good distance.

Regarding the topic of false minor clans, I'm just wondering what lore check you'd roll to determine whether A: Such a clan exists, and B: If the person you're dealing with is actually a member of said clan. I'd imagine it'd be Lore: History, Lore: Heraldry, or Lore: [insert Great Clan that is most closely tied to said minor clan].

The size you make your rokugan is also important for some conditional effects; certain spells are limited by distance, as are certain techniques (The Komori Shugenja technique, for example) and Tattoos (The Centipede Tattoo); depending on how large you make your empire, those tattoos either actually allow you to send messages/cross the empire in a single day, or only allow you to go a good distance.

Ehhhhh, with the Centipede tattoo, I'd just go with the fluff that says you can cross the Empire in a day, rather than the specific number (Water Ring x100' as a Complex Action.). Because seriously, who's going to sit down and figure out how many Complex Actions you can make over the course of an entire day, then figure out how many feet that is, then convert that to miles, then compare it against a map of the Empire? You get where you're going; then you fall down exhausted. That's the actual meaning of that tattoo.

EDIT: of course then I got curious and did the math. :-P If we assume a round is 5 seconds (the book says it's highly variable, so that seems like a good average), then there are twelve rounds per minute, sixty minutes per hour, let's give twenty hours in the day (since it isn't clear whether "an entire day" means a normal day or a day by the clock), times one hundred feet, divided by 5280 feet . . . rounding up, an ise zumi with that tattoo can run three hundred miles in a day, or only about half the length of the Empire. So yeah, I'd go with the fluff, not the numbers. :-P

The Komori, I'll grant you. If Rokugan is 600 miles long, a master Komori can send a message most but not quite all of the way from one end of the Empire to the other; if it's bigger, they can't reach nearly as far. But their technique is a really bizarre one to give to a tiny little clan in the back end of nowhere who have been around for only a couple of generations.

Regarding the topic of false minor clans, I'm just wondering what lore check you'd roll to determine whether A: Such a clan exists, and B: If the person you're dealing with is actually a member of said clan. I'd imagine it'd be Lore: History, Lore: Heraldry, or Lore: [insert Great Clan that is most closely tied to said minor clan].

I'd use Lore: Heraldry or Lore: History, myself.

The Komori, I'll grant you. If Rokugan is 600 miles long, a master Komori can send a message most but not quite all of the way from one end of the Empire to the other; if it's bigger, they can't reach nearly as far. But their technique is a really bizarre one to give to a tiny little clan in the back end of nowhere who have been around for only a couple of generations.

I think it's strangely fitting that the potentially most useful technique for a society with very long message transit times is provided to a clan that almost no one knows exists.

The Komori, I'll grant you. If Rokugan is 600 miles long, a master Komori can send a message most but not quite all of the way from one end of the Empire to the other; if it's bigger, they can't reach nearly as far. But their technique is a really bizarre one to give to a tiny little clan in the back end of nowhere who have been around for only a couple of generations.

I think it's strangely fitting that the potentially most useful technique for a society with very long message transit times is provided to a clan that almost no one knows exists.

But why would that clan even develop such a technique in the first place? Being able to call long-distance isn't very useful if nobody out there even knows who you are. :-P

Well, they are under the protection of the Yoritomo, and the Mantis families are scattered around Rokugan instead of a single block of land like the other clans. Long-distance call is actually a pretty good way to make themselves indispensable to the Mantis and continue to live under their protection.

EDIT: of course then I got curious and did the math. :-P If we assume a round is 5 seconds (the book says it's highly variable, so that seems like a good average), then there are twelve rounds per minute, sixty minutes per hour, let's give twenty hours in the day (since it isn't clear whether "an entire day" means a normal day or a day by the clock), times one hundred feet, divided by 5280 feet . . . rounding up, an ise zumi with that tattoo can run three hundred miles in a day, or only about half the length of the Empire. So yeah, I'd go with the fluff, not the numbers. :-P

That math looks wrong. Calculating with 5 seconds long rounds, it would be 12(per minute)x60(per hour)x20(per day) rounds = 14 400 x 200 (Water Ring 2) = 2 880 000 / 5 280 = 545,45 miles. Or 818,18 miles with Water Ring 3.

For the Lion Army and similar numerical phenomenon, my theory is that they literally eat away the future of Rokugan: the Empire is stagnant and seemingly unable to develop in any meaningful way because every little bit of resource that should fuel its progression is poured into unreasonably numerous armies and disappears in the belly of a Lion or Crab samurai.

But why would that clan even develop such a technique in the first place? Being able to call long-distance isn't very useful if nobody out there even knows who you are. :-P

Well, this sort of strays into your magic redesign, but it's the least OP way to make them spirit summoners. I'd personally allow the summoning of more powerful spirits the higher your insight rank, but require greater and greater respect for said spirits, but that's because of the current 4th e system. Also, the bat clan apparently got lots of political favors by using their instant magical communication to set up a magical communication network between courts. Really, they suffer from currently not having long enough to really develop a full school, and we don't really know the purpose of the clan the emperor had in mind.

Regarding the problem "million of soldiers/ small lands" my guess is that we are just making guesses and nothing was done on purpose by the canon authors!!

Multiple authors through times wrote different things in this setting, and maybe most of them did not care about being realistic, or maybe some of them did not even care about contraditicting "demographic/geographical" stuff shown elsewhere.

Maybe they just wrote what was fun for them.