Speaking of species, what about the Kitsu? The sharpshifter race that was hunted by Akodo and ended up a Family inside the Lion Clan? Yes, at the era we usually plays, Kitsu lost most of their abilities but they were another species, in the same type as Kenku, Zokujin, Trolls and Ningyo, which are the first five races of Rokugan.

Also, I like what Zoomfarg said about the: Use materials that you like it. I tend to prefer using some species as more than simple enemies, it creates another kind of atmosphere. Does it have to be "humanized"? Of course not, but they can have their very own complexity and their kind of morality. Which is why it's great to have guidelines on these species to have more than stats for skirmishes.

Do I want a L5R with human only? Of course not! Why? Because that brings another interesting aspect to the game. And that aspect is xenophobia VS collaboration. I have ideas of small RPG quest where a group of non-Crab have to collaborate with Nezumi to be able to archieve their goal. I say non-Crab, because Crab and Nezumi have a "good relationship" while the other clans sees them as enemies. Yet, in a common goal, collaborating with your enemies is a struggle between your values and the achievement to that goal. Where the Nezumi, as a temporary ally, may not understand very well some things and bring tensions between the alliance.

It's a very interesting aspect that is in L5R. Why remove it? Because Xenophobia? Because a few people are using them as standard characters and make them feel too standard? Yes, it may be poorly used, but why should this be removed simply for the few exception?

Already you are proposing that such people are going to be simply by buddy-buddy with scaly venom-fanged snake people and filthy flea-bitten human sized rats when they aren't even okay with the merchant over there picking up a sword and defending himself from being eaten by zombies. Where if they are about to be eaten by an Ogre and some group of people who spoke a different language whose skin happened to be a little lighter or darker than theirs saved them, they would show their gratitude by charging at them with swords drawn and slaughter every last one of them as "honor demands it".

Where did I propose that? I mean, you are pulling a pretty harsh strawman here .

Already you are proposing that such people are going to be simply by buddy-buddy with scaly venom-fanged snake people and filthy flea-bitten human sized rats when they aren't even okay with the merchant over there picking up a sword and defending himself from being eaten by zombies. Where if they are about to be eaten by an Ogre and some group of people who spoke a different language whose skin happened to be a little lighter or darker than theirs saved them, they would show their gratitude by charging at them with swords drawn and slaughter every last one of them as "honor demands it".

Where did I propose that? I mean, you are pulling a pretty harsh strawman here .

Well, I propose that because that is how I feel they will mishandled when L5R was left in the hands of the people it was left in the hands of. How I feel the handling of nonhumans generally went from the time they were introduced.

It isn't so much that I don't understand why things went horribly, horribly wrong-- but rather that I recognize that things did go horribly horribly wrong and feel like that is something that shouldn't be implemented if there is a real chance at a "do over".

The fundamental problem is that the writers who handled nonhumans fundamentally forgot the actual situation of the game when they were writing about them. They forgot that any samurai were discriminatory elitists who reacted violently towards anything that didn't meet their impossible standards and instead acted as if the clans were the average people of the province and if one was acting in the province, it was inevitable that one was interacting with that particular clan and that members of that clan would react to them as an average, tolerant, open-minded individual would react to them.

As such, within the context of keeping the "invisible" people invisible, some of the interaction between the samurai class of Rokugan and the nonhumans could possibly make a bit of sense.

Once you zoom out though, once you take a look at the larger picture where one begins to understand that the samurai class as a whole is this group of intolerant psychopaths who slaughter anyone who even slightly deviates from their way of life without a thought and is completely intolerant, if not outright oppressive, to the majority of humanity and that humanity being kept "in their place" by the samurai culture are those the non-humans would first and foremost be interacting with.... literally none of the garbage written about non-humans in Rokugan makes the least bit of sense and is clearly an aspect of the setting that wa not remotely thought out and approached with the kind of fanfic Mary Sueness that would just not pass if anyone handling L5R dealt with an editor or at least a second opinion to point out how inconsistent one's ideas were.

This doesn't mean I am saying that Ratlings couldn't or shouldn't exist. Rather what I am saying is that treating the non-human creatures of the setting as proper PC options should come alongside treating the common humans outside the elite samurai class in the game as viable player options. And if done correctly, might well cast the samurai who are the main focus of the game in such a negative or contentious light that one might find oneself struggling against the very character that might be their own PC under a samurai-focused game.

And certainly that could be an extraordinarily interesting game that might well help those involved to improve as individuals.

The problem though is if you talk about introducing non-humans into the core game without first addressing the fact that the PCs in the normal version of L5R are the elite aristocrats who are part of a discriminatory system that would be fundamentally incapable of remotely accepting anything as different as a Naga or a Ratling and if they could be swayed and changed, quite a lot about the fundamental way they live and conduct their business would also be capable of being swayed and changed... and instead, falling into the trap the writers previously fell into and instead forgetting that the 90% "invisible" people even remotely exist and treating the discriminatory elite as though they were the normal individuals who could afford to be open-minded to those who were different from themselves.

Well before you can posit the clans of Rokguan being open to treating a Ratling or Naga or Mermaid as part of their clan, you first need to change the fundamentals of the setting so that someone who was born to a family of farmers or merchants or who was born beyond the borders of Rokugan and looks a bit different from the native people can be accepted as a member of their clan. Because the schism where humans are slightly different are utterly unacceptable but something that is drastically not human and further from the ideal person than those among humanity who fail the standards of inclusion into the society.. that is just too drastic of a 'wtf' aspect to really accept.

Honestly, I kind of wish those who introduced such non-humans to L5R in the manner that they were introduced could explain what the hell they were thinking when they handled things they were. But I have a feeling that they were so over-sensitive and abusive of what power they did have that they would not only ignore any request for any sort of justification for their nonsensical writing, but would act as though even raising such a question was an abuse of the privilege of even being allowed to ask a question and should be punished severely.

So since the handling of nonhuman in L5R was royally screwed up and undermined a major part of its concept, it is quite reasonable to propose that anyone who insists that nonhumans be included in L5R as they were or even having their roles vastly expanded is proposing their inclusion in such a contradictory, thoughtless, hapless and deeply destructive manner as they previously were.... or far worse.

And that doesn't mean that you can't make a version of L5R that can be more open accepting of nonhuman species. But understand first and foremost that before one is open to non-human species, one has really got to be open to a wider slice of humanity than the samurai class of L5R is depicted as being, and the previous writers who handled the setting utterly failed at this in a spectacular fashion. You can have a setting where Kitsune can join clans-- but it doesn't make sense for that to exist in a world where a person born as a farmer or a person born beyond the borders of Rokugan cannot join a clan.

You can have a setting where Kitsune can join clans-- but it doesn't make sense for that to exist in a world where a person born as a farmer or a person born beyond the borders of Rokugan cannot join a clan.

Uhm... But a person born as a farmer can join a clan - even have his very own minor clan as we could see with the Monkey Clan, The same goes for the gaijin (there are at least two clans - the Mantis and the Unicorn - who make a sport out of recruiting gaijin).

You can have a setting where Kitsune can join clans-- but it doesn't make sense for that to exist in a world where a person born as a farmer or a person born beyond the borders of Rokugan cannot join a clan.

Uhm... But a person born as a farmer can join a clan - even have his very own minor clan as we could see with the Monkey Clan, The same goes for the gaijin (there are at least two clans - the Mantis and the Unicorn - who make a sport out of recruiting gaijin).

If I am reading his intent correctly, it is exactly that sort of inconsistency he is protesting.

Already you are proposing that such people are going to be simply by buddy-buddy with [non-humans] ... when they aren't even okay with the merchant over there picking up a sword and defending himself ...

Where did I propose that? I mean, you are pulling a pretty harsh strawman here .

Well before you can posit the clans of Rokguan being open to treating a Ratling or Naga or Mermaid as part of their clan, you first need to change the fundamentals of the setting so that someone who was born to a family of farmers or merchants or who was born beyond the borders of Rokugan and looks a bit different from the native people can be accepted as a member of their clan. Because the schism where humans are slightly different are utterly unacceptable but something that is drastically not human and further from the ideal person than those among humanity who fail the standards of inclusion into the society.. that is just too drastic of a 'wtf' aspect to really accept.

...

Straw man seems an apt description... @TheHobgobblyn, could you cite some source material?

I was going to cite the Monkey, and of course the Unicorn and Mantis makes sense (doh! How did I miss em?):

You can have a setting where Kitsune can join clans-- but it doesn't make sense for that to exist in a world where a person born as a farmer or a person born beyond the borders of Rokugan cannot join a clan.

Uhm... But a person born as a farmer can join a clan - even have his very own minor clan as we could see with the Monkey Clan, The same goes for the gaijin (there are at least two clans - the Mantis and the Unicorn - who make a sport out of recruiting gaijin).

Thanks AtoMaki!

As for buddy-buddy-ness, could you provide your source material? Not finding book or wiki support for wide or sustained buddy-buddy-news between Rokugan and the Nezumi or Naga.

The 4e core book says very little about Naga. The wiki describes the occasional and strained allyship between Naga and Rokugani, but it also describes plenty of conflict.

According to the 4e core book, the Nezumi were generally treated as vermin or shadowlands creatures; the crab saw them as allies against the shadowlands, and they garnered only rare and brief respect from the empire (p. 329). The wiki page also doesn't describe much in the way of acceptance or alliance.

But even if there's source material that describes buddy-buddy relationships, that's still fine; rethinking the entire social system isn't necessary. Don't cultures have logical inconsistencies? In my experience, such inconsistencies lead to great stories at the game table, especially in Rokugan. (I love playing through the conflicting tenets of Rokugani Bushido)

@TheHobbgoblyn, do you feel a setting culture has to be completely logical? For myself, I like all the plot hooks and depth that come from inconsistencies.

Humm... this topic goes a little side-tracked. From what I can understand of the one that started the topic, it was from the card game perspective. Then, it felt into the RPG perspective...

I really wish there was a L5R RPG sub-forum to prevent this.

As for buddy-buddy-ness, could you provide your source material? Not finding book or wiki support for wide or sustained buddy-buddy-news between Rokugan and the Nezumi or Naga.

Nezumi is a Crab Clan thing. I think Enemies of the Empire has a thing or two for it. The Naga is totally into the Unicorn (the current clan Champion is the daughter of a Naga) and the Dragon (same as the Unicorn) - I guess there must be a lot of official fiction about this (I'm not really into official fictions ).

As for buddy-buddy-ness, could you provide your source material? Not finding book or wiki support for wide or sustained buddy-buddy-news between Rokugan and the Nezumi or Naga.

Nezumi is a Crab Clan thing. I think Enemies of the Empire has a thing or two for it. The Naga is totally into the Unicorn (the current clan Champion is the daughter of a Naga) and the Dragon (same as the Unicorn) - I guess there must be a lot of official fiction about this (I'm not really into official fictions ).

I wouldn't say it's a "buddy-buddy" relationship though. Yes, it's more a Crab Clan thing, but a Nezumi that betrays the alliance, may causes his whole tribe to be eliminated by the Crabs as an example of why the alliance shouldn't be broken. It's not what I call a buddy-buddy relation. The Nezumi just cannot fight back, so they are kinda stuck with a "survival relationship" with the Crab against the Shadowland.

There's this Nezumi and Lion thing: http://l5r.wikia.com/wiki/Deathless

You can have a setting where Kitsune can join clans-- but it doesn't make sense for that to exist in a world where a person born as a farmer or a person born beyond the borders of Rokugan cannot join a clan.

Uhm... But a person born as a farmer can join a clan - even have his very own minor clan as we could see with the Monkey Clan, The same goes for the gaijin (there are at least two clans - the Mantis and the Unicorn - who make a sport out of recruiting gaijin).

The Monkey Clan is an exceptional exception. It was made very, very clear that if anyone had sniffed out Toku's outright lies and deceptions, he would have been killed by any honorable samurai on the spot. Ultimately he was only spared by imperial decree granting him a high enough status and protection to save him if the truth were to ever come out.

But any non-samurai caste person who engaged in warfare or hold a sword is supposed to be summarily executed on the spot without question. They absolutely cannot join any clan-- ever. This is a concrete rule within the setting that has been reiterated many times.

The Mantis are not meant to have any gaijin among their ranks. If they do, they live by deception and subterfuge disguising their real heritage. The Moto alone stand as the sole exception to this rule and were accepted only under significant protest in order to bring the Kirin back to the empire. Otherwise, had they been encountered by the people of Rokugan under any other circumstance than the Kirin at their most vulnerable and desperate, they would have been entirely wiped out with prejudice immediately. And even after being in the empire for hundreds of years, it was understood they were only marginally accepted and not remotely respected. It was only through writers who utterly forgot the basics of the setting years later that ended up writing themselves into a corner and declaring that the Shinjo would be demoted in exchange for raising the Moto up to be the Unicorn main clan... I am guessing they seemed like the most "Unicorn" Unicorns at that point and made it easier to subsequently turn the Unicorns into villains.

So other than these entanglements that happen twice in a thousand years at a clan level, the rule stands hard-- the people the story focuses on in Rokugan are not the common people, not the average citizen, not the person one is likely to run across if one runs across a random individual from Rokugan. Rather they are the elite of the elite who don't extend respect or basic human dignity to the overwhelming majority of humanity, the idea that they would be extending it so easily to a monster that is even less than human in so many of the aspects so important to the people does not stand up to scrutiny.

It really comes across as one of those mistakes that was made because the people writing the thing forgot that the characters they were writing about were an insulated, isolated, xenophobic group of aristocrats lording over 90% of the denizens of the land and instead forgot entirely that the "invisible people" even existed, treating them as some sort of minority that hardly needs acknowledgement, and instead treating the clans as though they were the common, average citizen of their respective lands and utterly disregarding the very aspects that make their caste what it is.

The Monkey Clan is an exceptional exception.

How do you know? The big lesson of Toku's story was that literally everyone could be a samurai and get away with it scott free. Revealing Toku's secret would have been almost impossible, there are no big neon-sign above a samurai that tells who he is, and there are no detector-o-samurai devices in Rokugan. What is even worse, nobody even bothered to question Toku's story even when he was a top dog in the Wolf's Legion. There could be thousands of Toku-s running around Rokugan, and no one would be any wiser.

What you seem to miss is that 90% of stuff concerning Rokugani culture and society is actually fake. A perception, and not the actual truth. The rules only set a standard but everyone deviates from this standard so that they can tell that they are special snowflakes - but these standards are also safe refuges in case someone tries to challenge their specialty. Rokugan is not filled with xenophobic and cruel samurai - it is filled with narcissistic ones... a major difference.

You can see the pattern here when you consider how the Naga are cool guys only when they make samurai (like Yakamo) special and how they are totally uncool when they talk sh*t about the samurai (like Hitomi). Similarly, if a gaijin adores the samurai then he is all OK (like the Senpet general who joined the Scorpion Clan) - if he doesn't, then he is a stinky gaijin scum (like the Yodotai).

Yes but the facade is maintained acting like it's real, so in practical terms, they are xenophobic and cruel.

How do you pretend that I think you are a executioner if you don't behead heads?

How do you pretend that I think you are a executioner if you don't behead heads?

By calling you a dishonorable dog if you disagree. Also, if you try to force the truth too much in Rokugan, then you might literally make the sun disappear... and that is some serious business .

The right answer would be: "beheading you".

You are liar!

The Monkey Clan is an exceptional exception.

How do you know? The big lesson of Toku's story was that literally everyone could be a samurai and get away with it scott free. Revealing Toku's secret would have been almost impossible, there are no big neon-sign above a samurai that tells who he is, and there are no detector-o-samurai devices in Rokugan. What is even worse, nobody even bothered to question Toku's story even when he was a top dog in the Wolf's Legion. There could be thousands of Toku-s running around Rokugan, and no one would be any wiser.

What you seem to miss is that 90% of stuff concerning Rokugani culture and society is actually fake. A perception, and not the actual truth. The rules only set a standard but everyone deviates from this standard so that they can tell that they are special snowflakes - but these standards are also safe refuges in case someone tries to challenge their specialty. Rokugan is not filled with xenophobic and cruel samurai - it is filled with narcissistic ones... a major difference.

You can see the pattern here when you consider how the Naga are cool guys only when they make samurai (like Yakamo) special and how they are totally uncool when they talk sh*t about the samurai (like Hitomi). Similarly, if a gaijin adores the samurai then he is all OK (like the Senpet general who joined the Scorpion Clan) - if he doesn't, then he is a stinky gaijin scum (like the Yodotai).

Ahh... never seen seven samurai, have you? There was a man within it who pretended to be a samurai, generations after they were fighting any wars, who pretended to be a samurai by taken the name of a person who was born into the samurai caste and died when he was a child. Everyone was pretty certain he was lying, but since any remaining samurai were scattered, one could hardly prove it.

Within Rokugani society however things are still pretty extraordinarily organized. Far more than they ever were in real Japan. In actual Japan it took very little to start a new family line, people changed allegiances to daimyo all the time and so the idea of a clan as proposed in Rokugan where you could have 7 permanently standing factions that never fell... it just isn't the way things worked in the real world. No "Clan" ended up lasting more than half a dozen generations and you often had brothers fighting on opposite sides of a war. Look up the story of Sanada Yukimura and Sanada Nobuyuki, if you have never played through Sengoku Musou or Sengoku Basara series to find out about samurai as portrayed by the people whose ancestors. It is quite enlightening and will probably make you despise so much about L5R's portrayal... though your insistence that L5R is meant ot be played in such a way that all the hard rules are actually never followed and more stand up as ideals that even the most honorable person doesn't really adhere to rather than actual realities makes me wonder if you are already there.

Toturi and Toku seem to have been based extraordinarily loosely on Oda Nobunaga and Hashiba Hideyoshi. During the sengoku era, it was entirely possible for a peasant to take up arms and there was no distinct samurai caste. Hideyoshi was started as a simple peasant sandal bearer for Nobunaga, but Nobunaga put his faith in Hideyoshi's cleverness and as a result won many battles. Hideyoshi rose up to be one of Nobunaga's greatest generals a they conquered more provinces and won more allies. After Nobunaga was killed by one of his generals, Hideyoshi arrested and killed that general before picking up Nobunaga's quest and effectively uniting most of the rest of Japan under his rule.

Hideyoshi was ironically enough the one who put into place the whole caste system so that warriors were warriors (i.e. samurai), craftsmen were craftsmen, peasants were peasants, merchants were merchants, etc. Rokugan apparently started with this system from day 1 and managed to last over 1,000 years... in real life, this system lasted a bit over 200 years and while it was technically broken by a technologically advanced outside force coming in-- by the time America arrived with its "black ships" the samurai were defunct and penniless, the cleverest of merchants were really controlling everything holding massive debts over everyone's heads and the daimyo were all but totally finished. Even if America hadn't broken in, there would have been some sort of revolution within the country in a few decades anyway. The outsiders, for whatever threat they could levy, were just an excuse for the inevitable to happen.

Anyway, I went off on a tangent there.

The thing is that within Rokugan, anyone claiming to be a samurai would have to be able to present certification of lineage that would need to be verified at some point. I believe the Kitsu are in charge of that and have special mystical powers to ensure no fakers last long.

The whole concept of "any peasant who picks up a sword is to be killed on the spot" is something that has actually been utilized within the fiction regarding Rokugan, so I don't know that we can dismiss this as something that is said but never actually holds any weight. Mind you, I would actually prefer a Rokugan where we could say that a lot of those extreme absolutes that just don't make any sense are just... simply not true. It is a major change I would like to see if one were to reset the setting-- base the setting more on the Sengoku era rather than trying to portray the edo era except at war with demons.

And I want to make certain-- from my username alone, it should tell you something. If one were talking about a setting in a world where the average character was rising from the common class and there were non-humans occupying the world, I hardly think any common human-like species should not be off the table in terms of PCs. If a world have elves, dwarfs, halflings, and gnomes but also has orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, lizardfolk, and so on.... well I think it is a mistake to label the first group "races" and the second group "monsters" and insist that the later group can never be PCs and every last one of them should be wiped out... at least assuming we are saying they are all breeding sentient species occupying the same world and particularly if they can more or less all interbreed... In a situation like that, it is inevitable that all these species will end up cooperating after however many centuries of warfare and probably all end up interbreeding until they become a single species. So, really, all of them ought to be on the table as possible protagonists and heroes....

But with Rokugan, the humans we are dealing with are not the common folk, not the overall bulk of humanity... but a small subsection who is jealous and greedy, yes.... narcissistic and because of that narcissism they become racist and xenophobic, cruel and sadistic... It is because they are highly privileged individuals who justify their privilege based on how closely they live to some impossible model of humanity that anyone outside their circle is not likely to even be trying to adhere to. And within their circle, they can look outside it at everyone who fails to live up to this model far more than they do with disgust and disdain-- even within their circle, they are constantly looking to jump on and eject anyone who fails to live up to the standards because each person they eject means more privilege and power for themselves.

Now, some aspects of the ideal that the Rokugani samurai caste are striving for are moral, others... not quite so much...

But all this means that the relationship between them and the non-human outsiders to their society feels like it was never given remotely the proper consideration it should have been. Given that a big part of the game is not only competing for military might, but also for political maneuvering... it is impossible to see how the Ratlings and the Naga could remotely be considered viable factions in the card game... and within the RPG, they ought to be worse off than a Ronin.

The idea that Rokugani are accepting non-humans to the degree that they are being named champion of anything strikes me as purely bad writing. Just one of those many things about those who were handling the small details about L5R where it feels like some original core ideas were good... but then some hack came in and wrote something stupid and everyone else who followed it up had to embrace that as absolute truth and canon and so ended up compounding the problem.

I just cannot see any basis to believe that any of the interactions between the aristocracy of Rokugan and the non-humans ever stood as anything other than having the Rokugani entirely break character in order to facilitate plot convenience.

Within Rokugani society however things are still pretty extraordinarily organized.

Things are supposedly pretty extraordinary organized. Of course, this is very far from being the truth. Otherwise, we wouldn't have a major mess-up in Rokugan in each decade or so. If anything, the society is pretty extraordinary ignorant in almost every way possible, including being ignorant to its own ignorance...

The idea that Rokugani are accepting non-humans to the degree that they are being named champion of anything strikes me as purely bad writing.

Well then, I guess you aren't exactly up-to-date with the current ongoings in Rokugan, because two of the current Clan Champions are technically non-human (Moto Naleesh and Mirumoto Shikei are both half-Naga).

Within Rokugani society however things are still pretty extraordinarily organized.

Things are supposedly pretty extraordinary organized. Of course, this is very far from being the truth. Otherwise, we wouldn't have a major mess-up in Rokugan in each decade or so. If anything, the society is pretty extraordinary ignorant in almost every way possible, including being ignorant to its own ignorance...

The idea that Rokugani are accepting non-humans to the degree that they are being named champion of anything strikes me as purely bad writing.

Well then, I guess you aren't exactly up-to-date with the current ongoings in Rokugan, because two of the current Clan Champions are technically non-human (Moto Naleesh and Mirumoto Shikei are both half-Naga).

Well, you only have a messed up Rokugan every year since the actual storyline began. The storyline originally depicted that there had been a thousand years of "peace" prior to the storyline starting where the Scorpion Clan champion killed the Emperor. Granted, they went back and retconned in various stuff happening during those centuries, but never did enough really get retconned in to suggest it was that busy.

But since L5R absolutely required that something be constantly going on, there had to be things continuously happening once the actual game play as opposed to background section began. Past that point, in order to keep the game busy, they had to introduce into the world threats that, generally, had to continuously top the last threat they had introduced. Much like comic book writers, without any end game they kind of got really desperate to top themselves... and the world once they had officially started in no way could hope to resemble the world they had initially proposed. And there really could be no justification for it.

On your other point.... I quit in diamond edition and picked up in samurai edition before abandoning it because of the difficulties of getting to a place to play and the ability to create a deck that had the theme I wanted at that point-- and then the following years when I got a better and better education about actual samurai, I became a bit hostile. Though, at the end of the day-- what you revealed there? Doesn't that ultimately prove what I am saying about non-humans screwing up the setting? Not only are monsters utterly accepted to an extent that other humans are not, but being not pure human makes you so 'elite' that you literally cannot qualify to be daimyo unless you are half-snake or something. How royally screwed up is that for a game that was supposedly supposed to be about samurai?

You start with an elite, aristocratic class of humans who don't accept any deviation from their impossible ideals and use that to undermine one another... and end up at a point where unless someone is half-monster they don't remotely qualify to be in charge of a faction? That is not simply introducing into this world elements that undermine what had already been established, but actually qualifies as letting the rogue elements take over and completely dominate the setting.

It is crap like that which ultimately demonstrates that if the card game is going to have any kind of future, it really needs a serious hard reset back to the beginning, or if not the very beginning, at least a place at which point the people in charge of writing the game utterly lost control of all their senses and ran the whole **** thing off the rails.

After all, the game wasn't supposed to be about Rat-people against Snake-people against Ogres against Mermaids against Goblins... it was supposed to be about Samurai vs. Samurai on both the battlefields and within the courts. The elements of supernatural creatures not only invaded, but seem to have completely taken over the game and ruined any semblance to the original concept that managed to hook anyone at all.

If anyone wanted to play the game in the crap shape it ultimately ended up, AEG would have been making too much money in order to ever sell the franchise-- particularly given how they regretted selling it the first time. The game was clearly either losing money or barely breaking even because of piled-up garbage like this.

After all, the game wasn't supposed to be about Rat-people against Snake-people against Ogres against Mermaids against Goblins... it was supposed to be about Samurai vs. Samurai on both the battlefields and within the courts. The elements of supernatural creatures not only invaded, but seem to have completely taken over the game and ruined any semblance to the original concept that managed to hook anyone at all.

Since when L5R was supposed to be exclusively Samurai VS Samurai? I haven't played L5R CCG before Ivory, but I've been following the RPG since the 2nd. However, by looking at the first official edition of L5R (Imperial Edition) Goblins was there, Naga was there, Ogre was there, Ratling was there, etc. It's there since the begining... You don't like it, fine, but others do. What's the problem then? I personally like both aspect and, in my RPG games, I'm using both aspect.

So, I'm ask my question again, since when L5R was supposed to be exclusively Samurai VS Samural? I would like facts about that, because as I've said, facts are, that the very first official edition, they are in there.

How royally screwed up is that for a game that was supposedly supposed to be about samurai?

The game is about fantasy samurai. Having non-humans around is supposed to be just as natural as having people who can take a katana in the face and walk away without a scratch just because they have some glowing tattoos. In fact, my biggest gripe with the current setting is that there is not enough fantasy in there. Everything is mundane, even the supernatural stuff, and it overall makes things feel... petty and boring.

[...] Rather they are the elite of the elite who don't extend respect or basic human dignity to the overwhelming majority of humanity, the idea that they would be extending it so easily to a monster that is even less than human in so many of the aspects so important to the people does not stand up to scrutiny.

[...]

Real world societies can--and do--have logical inconsistencies that don't hold up under scrutiny.

Also, is it fair to say that the aristocracy of Rokugan considers the *human* dignity of anyone? Aren't they more concerned with caste dignity?

To me, it's seems that your arguments rely on this premise: different species should be considered more "other" than different castes within the same species. That's often a premise in other fantasy/science fiction. Is it in L5R, for *fantasy* samurai? (No? Because two non-human clan champions?) What suggests that the setting *should* rely on that premise?

My opinion is that it may be best to tie most non-humans in with the Celestial Order.

The appearance of non-humans is should cause players to scrutinize various things within Rokugani society.

For example, Tengu (I hate the use of the word Kenku) could be to humans what samurai are to peasants and a visit by the Naga to the Tengu would be the equivalent of members of one Great Clan visiting another.