1 minute ago, cielago said:

yeah, for sure the spider as the home of the second sons idea is not particularly compatible with onyx. i don't see much chance for the susumu being much more than an after thought, in the story or the game, in onyx.

I could see them joining the Otomo and Seppun families as support to the Iweko.

Throughout the reign of the Hantei Dynasty the Emperor's non-inheriting children would join the Otomo family, relinquishing their claim. Not sure why we need a whole clan for this.

45 minutes ago, Jedi samurai said:

I could see them joining the Otomo and Seppun families as support to the Iweko.

That's if there are any Otomo and Seppun survivors... We know that Iweko II wasn't too fond of Imperial Bureaucracy, so he might disbanded the Otomo and we don't know how many Seppun may have survived Kanpeki's assault...

Now, as a side note, a while ago I started toying with the idea of a Campaign settled 25 years in the Colonies during the Empire in Exile timeline. At first I thought a lot of how to use the Iweko Loyalists. In the end, I replaced the Otomo (disbanded) with the Susumu, with the Susumu taking charge of Imperial Courts and as a repository for the second in line heirs...

24 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

Throughout the reign of the Hantei Dynasty the Emperor's non-inheriting children would join the Otomo family, relinquishing their claim. Not sure why we need a whole clan for this.

i think its more a case of there being a spider clan, a lack of purpose for said clan, and the precedent of shibatsu being sent into said clan. it worked for the otomo, as you say, why not expand it into the spider and kill two birds with one stone.

Just now, cielago said:

i think its more a case of there being a spider clan, a lack of purpose for said clan, and the precedent of shibatsu being sent into said clan. it worked for the otomo, as you say, why not expand it into the spider and kill two birds with one stone.

Because the nature of Rokugan would be to ask "Why expand it to the Spider? If it was good enough for our ancestors, it is good enough for us."

1 minute ago, Kakita Shiro said:

Because the nature of Rokugan would be to ask "Why expand it to the Spider? If it was good enough for our ancestors, it is good enough for us."

the whole "rokugan hates change, loves tradition" fallback is kind of a copout answer. i mean, i get it, thats the party line, but look at the reality on the ground. rokugan has experienced TREMENDOUS change since the clan war, and has had to cope with that change. so i mean, sure, i guess thats a reason, but i find it a pretty unsatisfying one, especially when people complain so vociferously and consistently about the problem of the spider's role in rokugan. you can't have it both ways. you can't want the spider to integrate while not copying the scorpion, but then not want any part of rokugani society to change while they do so.

I'm not sure anything from the "It worked for the Hantei Dynasty!" applies in the Post-Iweko world.

There's even an argument to be made that it stopped applying during the Toturi Dynasty, when each of the non-inheriting siblings instead joined a Great Clan.

6 minutes ago, cielago said:

the whole "rokugan hates change, loves tradition" fallback is kind of a copout answer. i mean, i get it, thats the party line, but look at the reality on the ground. rokugan has experienced TREMENDOUS change since the clan war, and has had to cope with that change. so i mean, sure, i guess thats a reason, but i find it a pretty unsatisfying one, especially when people complain so vociferously and consistently about the problem of the spider's role in rokugan. you can't have it both ways. you can't want the spider to integrate while not copying the scorpion, but then not want any part of rokugani society to change while they do so.

Almost all change in Rokugan is the result of external stresses not internal pressure. I guess the Spider Clan counts as an external pressure, though. I'm just not satisfied with anyone's proposed solutions for the Spider in a post-Seals Rokugan. The only thing I saw that was alright was "point them at the Yodotai".

5 minutes ago, sndwurks said:

There's even an argument to be made that it stopped applying during the Toturi Dynasty, when each of the non-inheriting siblings instead joined a Great Clan.

Right, but Toturi III didn't invent a new clan just to house his two brothers. They went to existing families, which is what I'm suggesting.

One way I handled the Spider in a post-Seals Rokugan (during the reign of Iweko IV, the Restored Emperor of the Reconquest) was that the Susumu family was, effectively, a Minor Clan and Imperial family without the protections or status of either. While their leadership was descended from Shibatsu (and the daughter of Kurako after she became of age), they were a group of about two dozen samurai who, by Imperial decree, could not hold any land in their own name within Rokugan. They helped the Otomo and the Miya rebuild the Imperial bureaucracy, and held the status of a Great Clan. They were given a voice in court, and were allies of the Imperial families.

By not holding any territory, no other Great Clan could go to war with them, but it also denied them a powerbase to gather income and strength. By being Great Clan and not Imperial, they had to deal with social threats without any natural protections. By being Great Clan and not a Minor Clan, they were at the risk of violence without the ability to hide behind being too small to bother with. It socially shoehorned them into the Advisor role, and forced the Susumu to serve as those almost exclusively.

Mind you, the Susumu were the only Spider Clan left after the Reconquest.

10 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

Almost all change in Rokugan is the result of external stresses not internal pressure. I guess the Spider Clan counts as an external pressure, though. I'm just not satisfied with anyone's proposed solutions for the Spider in a post-Seals Rokugan. The only thing I saw that was alright was "point them at the Yodotai".

the nonascending heirs to the spider scenario is for a non-onyx future. tho i suppose it also works in onyx, since the susumu effectively become the otomo there as well, for different reasons. but yeah, in the scenario that was original proposed, we were discussing effectively a different way that Iweko 1 or 2 could have handled the spider, not a way the spider could have gone post-onyx. i think any and all speculation down that avenue is pretty pointless, in so much as theres two dramatically different possible roads it could have gone down for the spider (return to a true shadowlands faction, full split between monstrous shadowlands and rokugan aligned but vaguely nefarious susumu led spider), and no possible way of knowing which was more likely.

Killing Kanpeki wouldn't have any serious effect other than shaking up the ludicrous notion that Kanpeki somehow ruled for decades despite everyone working against him. The Empire would still be divided. Jigoku would still be running roughshod. It'd just mean the Spider's plot armor is gone, and there'd be a chance in hell of working a deal with the Spider Clan rather than having it forced on everyone again. The focus shifts from revenge or dominion to survival.

As for the Dragon retreating and sitting on their hands is a cop-out. The Dragon, through AEG fiat, failed in their duty. They are the clan most directly responsible for the Spider's ascension, and thus committed the greatest failure in Rokugani history. A story that says they decide that the problem was they were doing too much is a story that's not worth respecting.

Similarly, I don't think the post-sale PDF is intended to be the lead-in to Onyx on any level. At the least, it negates the Scorpion's path vote, since there's no longer a reason to divide the house.

FFG doesn't just need to show they can make good mechanics and story, they need to show they understood why the game fell into the state it had under the sale. Having clans sit out the story, having Spider get auto-wins with zero sacrifices on their part, these are story ideas to put to bed, not trot out again.

1 hour ago, SirEuain said:

having Spider get auto-wins with zero sacrifices on their part

LMFAO!!!!! You don't understand anything, huh??

Relevant to concerns about clan portrayal: Despite the fact that Shiba Tsukimi was largely innocent of the incomprehensibly shoddy decision-making the Council inflicted upon the Phoenix at the end... you would have been hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people who cared if she lived or died-despite the fact that at the time of the IP sale, she was the longest-serving Clan Champion.

When a character who is supposedly central to a Clan's portrayal has been around forever and done almost nothing* anyone can recall... there are problems.

Characters should be loved or hated by at least part of the fanbase- indifference is far worse. By this metric, Tsukimi was an abject failure as a character**- and it's a failure that extended to the portrayal of the Phoenix as a whole, because her lengthy inaction largely matched theirs. Long before the sale, shortly after Ivory Edition dropped and took the Pollos del Fuego from top tier bandwagon material into the sewer, the Phoenix boards went dead. It was basically down to the hardest of hard-core- all of whom had wildly divergent ideas about what being a Phoenix fan meant. Other Clans have had long periods of CCG impotence, but they at least had people and events in the story to pull for. It took the Clan Path polls to reignite the forums even briefly-and even then, it was in open revolt against the dreary choices AEG chose to offer. Everybody got fan-submitted options as a possibility, but only the Phoenix had two fan-submitted options beat out all of the AEG-offered ones.

I love the Phoenix... I mean, I use their mon as my FFG avatar and go by "Shiba Gunichi" after all. But they need to be both playable and relevant, otherwise... why bother?

And it's a concern I would extend to each and every faction. Can you make them fun to play AND give them a role in the story? (In that order- this is still a game, after all, and the Phoenix boards were quite lively in Emperor Edition when they had good decks, despite the faction doing almost literally nothing the entire time)

* She made some speech before one of the later battles in the War of Dark Fire, she got blinded by Nitoshi to lose the War of the Twins... and then told Moto Naleesh she could do nothing to end the Phoenix-Unicorn war. That's about it for Tsukimi as Champion, so far as I recall.A few blah blah blah sessions with the Council.

**I may find Yoritomo, Daigotsu, and Togashi toxic leg-irons on their respective factions, but they at least elicit an emotional response.

But (post-sale) Izuna Sensei rocketed Phoenix into Tops of Tier1 decks.

13 hours ago, SirEuain said:

FFG doesn't just need to show they can make good mechanics and story, they need to show they understood why the game fell into the state it had under the sale. Having clans sit out the story, having Spider get auto-wins with zero sacrifices on their part, these are story ideas to put to bed, not trot out again.

FFG didn't make the ccg, and has no responsibility to justify AEG's action, nor will they attempt to do so. trying to pin on them the requirement that they make up for what you perceive as sins against your chosen side of the clans v shadowlands conflict is ABSURD.

i'm not saying, one way or another, if onyx should happen. i like the idea of putting the clans on the other side of the conflict. i think thats an interesting story. but i hate kanpeki's whole story, and i think he's a stupid heir of Daigotsu's legacy. all that said, in neither scenario is a sudden and contextless roflstomp of the spider sensible, just because you feel slighted by the direction AEG's story went.

lets be SUPER CLEAR here. FFG is gonna tell its own story with the game. the degree to which it connects to the onyx storyline will have NOTHING to do with what fans feel entitled to, NOTHING to do with compensation for AEG's mistakes, and likely little to do with placating the existing fan base. they're gonna make a decision based on what they think is best for the line's long term success, and while that will certainly factor in the existing fans, we're only a part of that calculation. "understanding why the game fell into the state it had under the sale" will factor ZERO into the story decisions they make. engrave that in stone. i 100% guarantee that.

11 hours ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

Relevant to concerns about clan portrayal: Despite the fact that Shiba Tsukimi was largely innocent of the incomprehensibly shoddy decision-making the Council inflicted upon the Phoenix at the end... you would have been hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people who cared if she lived or died-despite the fact that at the time of the IP sale, she was the longest-serving Clan Champion.

When a character who is supposedly central to a Clan's portrayal has been around forever and done almost nothing* anyone can recall... there are problems.

Characters should be loved or hated by at least part of the fanbase- indifference is far worse. By this metric, Tsukimi was an abject failure as a character**- and it's a failure that extended to the portrayal of the Phoenix as a whole, because her lengthy inaction largely matched theirs. Long before the sale, shortly after Ivory Edition dropped and took the Pollos del Fuego from top tier bandwagon material into the sewer, the Phoenix boards went dead. It was basically down to the hardest of hard-core- all of whom had wildly divergent ideas about what being a Phoenix fan meant. Other Clans have had long periods of CCG impotence, but they at least had people and events in the story to pull for. It took the Clan Path polls to reignite the forums even briefly-and even then, it was in open revolt against the dreary choices AEG chose to offer. Everybody got fan-submitted options as a possibility, but only the Phoenix had two fan-submitted options beat out all of the AEG-offered ones.

I love the Phoenix... I mean, I use their mon as my FFG avatar and go by "Shiba Gunichi" after all. But they need to be both playable and relevant, otherwise... why bother?

And it's a concern I would extend to each and every faction. Can you make them fun to play AND give them a role in the story? (In that order- this is still a game, after all, and the Phoenix boards were quite lively in Emperor Edition when they had good decks, despite the faction doing almost literally nothing the entire time)

* She made some speech before one of the later battles in the War of Dark Fire, she got blinded by Nitoshi to lose the War of the Twins... and then told Moto Naleesh she could do nothing to end the Phoenix-Unicorn war. That's about it for Tsukimi as Champion, so far as I recall.A few blah blah blah sessions with the Council.

**I may find Yoritomo, Daigotsu, and Togashi toxic leg-irons on their respective factions, but they at least elicit an emotional response.

poor Tsukimi. i really like her in abstract, but everything you say here is 100% spot on, about here in specific and about emotional reactions to characters in general. I adore Daigotsu, and often point out that love him or hate him, i think it can't be argued that he's successful as a character. he's got narrative weight, in a way that a lot of people failed to attain in the story. granted, some will argue that came at the cost of others. i think that applies to your other examples, Yoritomo and Togashi, as well.

I'm really hopeful that the return of the game can revitalize the clan communities. i look back on the days when all the clan forums were active with a lot of fondness. im a mod on the l5r subreddit, and i had to make a section for dead clan forums, because so many were not just inactive, but actually dead. it was a sad day.

18 minutes ago, cielago said:

I'm really hopeful that the return of the game can revitalize the clan communities.

Just like on other faction/clan sites of other LCGs, lol.

18 minutes ago, cielago said:

FFG didn't make the ccg, and has no responsibility to justify AEG's action, nor will they attempt to do so. trying to pin on them the requirement that they make up for what you perceive as sins against your chosen side of the clans v shadowlands conflict is ABSURD.

i'm not saying, one way or another, if onyx should happen. i like the idea of putting the clans on the other side of the conflict. i think thats an interesting story. but i hate kanpeki's whole story, and i think he's a stupid heir of Daigotsu's legacy. all that said, in neither scenario is a sudden and contextless roflstomp of the spider sensible, just because you feel slighted by the direction AEG's story went.

Wow. Between you and Sparks, it's clear that some people here would rather make this about me than what I'm saying.

I'm not asking for FFG to rewrite the game to my personal tastes. I'm not saying that my ego eclipses all. THAT is absurd.

I am saying that it's a good idea to offer fans what they weren't getting before. FFG needs to entice people back to the game and to get new blood. That you think it's a good idea to have Dragon react to the biggest failure in the setting's history by running away and sitting on their hands is something I find baffling. I think it'd be a better idea for the Dragon to be directly involved -- it'd make for better story presence, it'd be more consistent with a Dragon Clan that feels responsibility for their actions and, yes, it'd also be a show of good will from FFG.

Similarly, a "sudden and contextless roflstomp of Spider" is pointedly not what I discussed. I said I thought it'd be more interesting to have Kanpeki get assassinated, not the least because it'd give people reason to work with Spider due to matters of survival. Kanpeki is not the Spider, and for the love of all things Spider, that needs to be underscored. The Spider Clan's identity crisis is do in no small part to everything revolving around Kanpeki's daddy. Removing Kanpeki is, in my opinion, the easiest route to it. It'd take a personality transplant to make Kanpeki worth story time at this point, and I don't know that he's worth the effort.

Yes, I'm fully aware FFG will do what it wants. Yes, I'm aware that FFG has other factors beside player opinion. Player frustration was a major factor, however, and I think they'd best consider it before continuing unquestioningly in AEG's plans.

6 minutes ago, SirEuain said:

I am saying that it's a good idea to offer fans what they weren't getting before. FFG needs to entice people back to the game and to get new blood. That you think it's a good idea to have Dragon react to the biggest failure in the setting's history by running away and sitting on their hands is something I find baffling. I think it'd be a better idea for the Dragon to be directly involved -- it'd make for better story presence, it'd be more consistent with a Dragon Clan that feels responsibility for their actions and, yes, it'd also be a show of good will from FFG.

i have no feelings at all about the dragon. i wasn't responding to that. i think their onyx plotline is kind of goofy, but i think that goes for most of onyx. if onyx is continued, then i don't have an objection to them coming back, but if you want them to come back and the first thing they do is magically beat the spider... see below.

8 minutes ago, SirEuain said:

I said I thought it'd be more interesting to have Kanpeki get assassinated, not the least because it'd give people reason to work with Spider due to matters of survival. Kanpeki is not the Spider, and for the love of all things Spider, that needs to be underscored. The Spider Clan's identity crisis is do in no small part to everything revolving around Kanpeki's daddy. Removing Kanpeki is, in my opinion, the easiest route to it. It'd take a personality transplant to make Kanpeki worth story time at this point, and I don't know that he's worth the effort.

this is where our opinions diverge. while i do agree that the spider's identity since samurai edition has revolved around Daigotsu, i don't actually think thats a bad thing. i'm not fan of kanpeki's. as i've said i think he's a crummy heir to his father, but theres no storyline logic to him suddenly dying at the start of the next edition that isn't placating old fans. for the third time now, thats a victory that has to be EARNED not simply given. the clans haven't earned that win. make it the apex of the first storyline arc, but you can't just hand it to them day one, especially not on such specious grounds as "to make the existing fans happy". FFG isn't going to make bad storyline decisions to placate a subset of the existing fanbase. again, this all assuming they keep onyx.

12 minutes ago, SirEuain said:

Player frustration was a major factor, however, and I think they'd best consider it before continuing unquestioningly in AEG's plans.

i think this may be where we're getting into crossed signals. i'm not advocating they just run with onyx. i have two specific points:

1) if they do continue with the existing storyline, into onyx, you can't just kill off kanpeki or have the clans suddenly have a triumphant series of wins. its bad storytelling. we're doing empire strikes back here, the good guys have to lose for a while to make the eventual victories mean something.

2) ffg has a decent track record of not catering to the fanbase. i don't expect them make decisions based on our frustrations in general, and i'll eat an entire kimono if they do so based on the frustrations we had with AEG's decisions. those were not their decisions. they're gonna make the best game they can, and let that be their statement. they aren't going to apologize for something that they didn't make, most particularly not with design or story concessions.

1 hour ago, cielago said:

this is where our opinions diverge. while i do agree that the spider's identity since samurai edition has revolved around Daigotsu, i don't actually think thats a bad thing. i'm not fan of kanpeki's. as i've said i think he's a crummy heir to his father, but theres no storyline logic to him suddenly dying at the start of the next edition that isn't placating old fans. for the third time now, thats a victory that has to be EARNED not simply given. the clans haven't earned that win. make it the apex of the first storyline arc, but you can't just hand it to them day one, especially not on such specious grounds as "to make the existing fans happy". FFG isn't going to make bad storyline decisions to placate a subset of the existing fanbase. again, this all assuming they keep onyx.

“Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.” - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Storytelling revolves around conflict. If FFG were to decide to simply deus ex machina Kanpeki away, they'd still need to come up with some other conflict to drive the story. Maybe they have a better conflict in mind, in which case it would make sense to use it. If not, however, why not use the conflict handed to them? Cleverly untangling Rokugan from the mess AEG left it in could make a much better story than simply saying, "Aw, we can't figure it out. Start over!"

7 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

“Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.” - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Storytelling revolves around conflict. If FFG were to decide to simply deus ex machina Kanpeki away, they'd still need to come up with some other conflict to drive the story. Maybe they have a better conflict in mind, in which case it would make sense to use it. If not, however, why not use the conflict handed to them? Cleverly untangling Rokugan from the mess AEG left it in could make a much better story than simply saying, "Aw, we can't figure it out. Start over!"

You are absolutely right and it would be awesome. But they are probably more concerned with attracting new players to an easier-to-engage-with setting. With out a whole lot of bloat and old-game-baggage. They can achieve that with a reboot or time skip or something.

I hope they don't. But ultimately, from just the sense of attracting players, it would be appealing. Personally I'm good either way.

That's the thing, though -- I don't think Kanpeki is a Vader. I think that Kanpeki, on his best day, isn't even a Maul. He's a Grievous, and he's played his part. The world's literally gone to Jigoku, and killing him early in the story isn't going to change that.

I don't think this story works particularly well as a Star Wars flick, when a disaster film's so natural and so novel.

2 hours ago, SirEuain said:

That's the thing, though -- I don't think Kanpeki is a Vader. I think that Kanpeki, on his best day, isn't even a Maul. He's a Grievous, and he's played his part. The world's literally gone to Jigoku, and killing him early in the story isn't going to change that.

I don't think this story works particularly well as a Star Wars flick, when a disaster film's so natural and so novel.

kanpeki's star wars equivalent is another thread, as is his worthiness in general as a villain and Daigotsu's son. its not the point. you're so focused on killing him you continually ignore the point i'm making. its not about kanpeki, its about the fact that you cannot give the clans a win at that stage in that particular story. he's the champion of the spider, and no matter how crummy a villain you think he is, he's the architect of their destruction. killing him would be a PROFOUND blow, a magnificent victory. onyx is about the clans being beaten, and then finding their way back. you can't START that story with them killing the person who destroyed rokugan. i mean, c'mon dude. SURELY you can see why that makes no sense. this is storycraft 101. if you wanna tell AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT STORY then fine, start a thread about the onyx AU you wish FFG would do. but you can't agitate for them to do Onyx, except for this one thing that doesn't make any dang hell sense.

Hey y'all. What if we agree to disagree? Doesn't our belief in magical samurai supersede partisan politics?

22 minutes ago, FunTimeTeddy said:

Hey y'all. What if we agree to disagree? Doesn't our belief in magical samurai supersede partisan politics?

This is why I loved you on the doomtown forums Teddy lol