Hi all,

For my next local con in April I want to run 3 one shot L5R 4ed games that I wrote myself. Two of them are fine, not alot of information in there, but in one of them I went a bit overboard with the cannon. Can someone that knows more about the world than me, maybe go thruogh them and check that my events and cannon makes sense?

It might help if you put them on Google Drive and then share links here.

That being said-- you should know that a lot of canon about Rokugan and its culture is well... vague.. inconsistent... Just due to having so many writers over 20 years and for most of those writers totally disagree with one another on how things should be and retconning/adjusting things on the fly... and the fact that the writers were under really unreasonable time constraints when most things were written...

So there are some events where the details are really clear, but the dates not so much... others where the date is really clear, but the details are really vague or confusing.

As such, and because a good amount of adjustment has to be done to the world just to make it fit an RPG, every single RPG table is expected to be its own distinct canon-- its own split-off part of the multi-verse where details can be just a bit different and no one needs to sweat them. In fact, because any given samurai is only supposed to vaguely know about the details of events 3rd hand, often weeks or months after only getting rumor (seriously, news either gets around through the grapevine of drunk people gossiping... or some cleaned up 'official' version gets reported by the Miya heralds), it is probably best that the exact details of events in your world differ slightly from official canon. That way it limits how much players can rely on out-of-character knowledge.

(Hmm... my post double-posted, so I guess I will add a closing thought)

Anyway, we can give reviews, I suppose-- but you kind of need to provide the documents so that people can give it a once-over at their own leisure.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WPTuUtXuGTX1ViOlCRCclQm_jsf6CvPREFHEJz801Po/edit?usp=sharing
here's the link.
Note that the advanture is hardly done but I intend to write most of the characters by the end of the week and finish hammering out the plot by the weekend.

Trust me, I ran RPGs for 15 years now and for most of that time I wrote my own advantures and worlds rather than take from somewhere else. However with this thing I put waaay too much thought into the background. I like it that way but also it's a bit problematic, that's why I'm asking for help.

Okay, 98% of this is perfectly fine, other than using far too modern names that would not be post-gempukku samurai names, BUT... seriously, the actual designers of the canon game screwed that up more often than not that there is only one instance in which it is just... utterly insane....

The name of Daidoji Hinata. Hinata is a very, very, VERY, VERY girly name. It means "sunflower". It is like saying the name of your old grizzled veteran knight character is "Violet" or "Lily" or "Daisy". Just like in the west, Japanese boys virtually never have flower names. I guess occasionally in modern times boys MIGHT get flower names, but it is exceptionally rare and isn't fitting for a samurai. But I can find an example a male anime game character being named "Hinata". Even as a female name it likely isn't passable as a post-gempukku name (though, as I said, most all names you chose have that issue). Given you have to keep in mind that samurai all choose their name when they turn 15-16. He literally would have had to have made the conscious choice that out of all the names in the world to call himself, to choose to name himself after a big, bright, sunny flower. Moreover, even if by some weird accident or malicious trickery that he did end up choosing that name, he could have changed his name at literally any time afterwards once he had accomplished something demonstrating himself worthy of a far less humiliating name. Especially given he is kind of the single most important character in this whole thing.

The other point that massively conflicts-- when samurai marry those from another clan, they lose ties with their old clan. So if a Daidoji marries and Akodo, she becomes an Akodo (or, on very odd occasions... like if a family had only daughters, they would marry one of them to the second or third son of another family and then adopt that boy.) This means that upon marriage "Miko" would have stopped being "Daidoji Miko" and simply became "Akodo Miko". Moreover, it is extraordinarily unlikely that someone with significant status or power would have been married out of the clan at all. If there could imaginably have been any benefit to having killed her, they would not have married her into another clan whereby she would have loyalty to that clan.

More importantly, once she was married out of the clan, the Daidoji wouldn't remotely have had the ability to just order or carry out a death sentence. Just like they can't up and decide to just randomly kill any Akodo or Bayushi or Shiba. In fact, we are talking about murdering not just some random Akodo, but the wife of the Akodo daimyo? Yeah, that is excuse for outright war right there and he could declare it on just suspicions alone-- no need for a shred of evidence beyond his intuition. She would 100% be considered an Akodo after the marriage. No amount of "internal Daidoji politics" could have resulted in her death-- not by legal means, maybe if they sent a ninja to do it or something. But, again, she really shouldn't have been enough of an issue to bother doing that-- she would have had little more sway in the Daidoji than any random Akodo who happened to have lots of long-time Daidoji friends.

Of course, that is pretty easily fixed... They weren't married, they were long-time lovers and maybe even had a child together and for whatever reason, despite being the Daimyo and it kind of being his most important duty, he has yet to have a child with the person he is actually married to (then again, in his mid-thirties... he still has time. some real life samurai didn't produce an heir until their 50s. Even one for known for being very lecherous and collecting concubines like mad.) He might have even been intending to claim the child and make him his heir, but both mother and child were killed as part of Daidoji.... please call him anything but "Sunflower"'s plans.

In fact, since the Akodo daimyo claiming the child would bring incredible shame to the Daidoji family, particularly if Miko was married to a Daidoji (as one would imagine she would be) then that gives all the reason in the world to have found some other flimsy excuse for having her and the child executed before Kaito at all had any sort of opportunity to do that.

Thank's for the feedback.

All the names are random from the list of male/female names on the wiki. What sorts of names would be more fitting for post gempuku samurai than? I thought pre-gempuku would be Ichirou, Nirou... (1st son, 2nd son...).

Actually Hinata works for him as a "last day of the job" kind of samurai. He probably had another name while he was in the army but once the fighting subsided he took this new name to prepare for his retiremant.

As far aas the wife thing, actually your suggestion is great. They were lovers but never married, each one was betrothed to another. Maybe Daidoji Miko was even betrothed to our villain, Michi. Once she gave birth to Akodo's child, Michi saw that as a leverage Akodo had on the Daidoji, and with his xenophobia he ordered to kill both Miko and the child. Does that sound more reasnoble?

And I was not sure that all of them are actual Family Daimyo's. Most of the characters are probably lords of minor branches of the families. Is there a title to a minor lord? From what I found in L5R it's still Daimyo all the way down, if I'm looking at historic Japanese there are names for all the different lords.

55 minutes ago, Haxxx5 said:

Thank's for the feedback.

All the names are random from the list of male/female names on the wiki. What sorts of names would be more fitting for post gempuku samurai than? I thought pre-gempuku would be Ichirou, Nirou... (1st son, 2nd son...).

Actually Hinata works for him as a "last day of the job" kind of samurai. He probably had another name while he was in the army but once the fighting subsided he took this new name to prepare for his retiremant.

As far aas the wife thing, actually your suggestion is great. They were lovers but never married, each one was betrothed to another. Maybe Daidoji Miko was even betrothed to our villain, Michi. Once she gave birth to Akodo's child, Michi saw that as a leverage Akodo had on the Daidoji, and with his xenophobia he ordered to kill both Miko and the child. Does that sound more reasnoble?

And I was not sure that all of them are actual Family Daimyo's. Most of the characters are probably lords of minor branches of the families. Is there a title to a minor lord? From what I found in L5R it's still Daimyo all the way down, if I'm looking at historic Japanese there are names for all the different lords.

Well, generally names used in modern day would generally be names one uses as children or would be peasant names.

Good names for samurai usually have 3-4 syllables (can be 2) based on having 2 kanji, one of which is usually the same as the father's (or sometimes uncle's) name and the other being unique among the siblings.

For instance, Sanada Yukimura (child name Nobushige) was the son of Sanda Masayuki and the brother of Sanada Nobuyuki. He has two sons Sanada Yukimasa (Daisuke) and Sanda Morinobu (Daihachi).

In the Hojo family, we have Hojo Ujitsuna whose son was Hojo Ujiyasu whose sons were Hojo Ujimasa, Hojo Ujitera, Hojo Ujikuni, Hojo Ujinori, Hojo Ujitada, Hojo Ujitada, Hojo Ujimitsu and Uesugi Kagetora (who was adopted into the Uesugi family by marriage and changed his name... but his castle got taken by his jealous brother in law, Uesugi Kagekatsu and then killed himself about a year later). Ujiyasu had a son named Ujimasa and then Ujimasa had a son named Ujinao who was the end of the Hojo clan as their lands were seiged and while he was allowed to live, he got exile and died under undisclosed circumstances only about a year later at only 29 years old.

Anyway, if you go through old Samurai Clans, particularly those during the Warring States period and then you keep in mind the pattern I have highlighted here, you can see how you can take half of one name and half of another name and generally combine it sensibly enough and you can see how part of the name can get passed down through the family combined with a different half.

Of course, it is a question left up to debate whether girls, those intended to be married off, even go through gempukku at all. If they did, any "ko" names should have completely disappeared from adults. But since one of the most popular characters in the history of the game was "Bayushi Kachiko".. hmm.. not sure what to say.

Like I said, L5R themselves have done a pretty terrible job of choosing appropriate names for their characters. It is clear that the person who at all understood how samurai names should work ended up leaving the company around the time it was told to Wizards of the Coast and even before then wasn't always consulted-- by the time it was bought back by AEG, those in charge seemed to have little idea what was and was not an appropriate name.

Still, seeing "Hinata", a very popular girls name that is only rarely used for boys does pop out. Plus, I think your players would likely know of the immensely popular anime series "Naruto" and Hinata is the name of the main character's ninja girlfriend.

Throught the L5R books (3rd and 4th ed) they repeated "Rokugan is not Japan". I'm studing East Asia studies (1st simester but still... I reserch) and Rokugan is more China than Japan, despite the names. The Unicorn are cleaarly Mongols, the Lion are more chinese than Japanese, the Crab are more Korean to me. Rokugan is a mishmash of east asia. So naming conventions go out of the window most of the time. Getting historical accuracy here doesn't really contribute much aside from nitpicking.
Your last comment, that anime fans might recognise the name from an Anime, is good so I did change his name to Toshiie (after Maeda Toshiie). All of the others I'm leaving as they are for ease of pronounciation for players and for clarety (seriously with the list of names you gave I couldn't distinguish which charaacter was which aspecially when taalking fast and aspecially in a 4 hour con slot).

Any other comments aside from the names?

The "Rokugan is not Japan" line is really just there to cover their asses when various aspects of the world are culturally insensitive or just plain wrong. Such as the whole dueling thing. That is just... so entirely invented on massive misunderstandings of Japan.

I don't see where you could make any real comparison to China except in the general size and shape of the landmass, certain species of wild life that make sense for China but not Japan (but there are a few Japanese exclusive species) and the fact that the people of different regions look far more different than they should. Otherwise the clothing is mostly Japanese, the art styles are Japanese, the way the cities are set up is Japanese, the caste system is straight out of Japanese Tokugawa era, the two religions and how they intermingle is Japanese, the technology is Japanese (again, mostly Tokugawa era after they banned firearms), the isolationist and xenophobic attitudes of its people are Japanese.

I mean... I guess because they have a great wall? That is something one could say is Chinese. But, again, that is kind of more of a physical feature of the region even though it is man-made.

But otherwise its basically putting the Japanese Tokugawa Shogunate era culture on the Chinese landmass.

I would be interested to know if there is anything about the culture at all that could be attributed as coming from China... beyond the simple fact that Japanese culture itself was heavily, heavily influenced by China. Particularly samurai culture as they were basically all inspired and shaped by the tales of the Romance of Three Kingdoms.

But, as I said initially, your problems just relied on your main antagonist having a girly name and the way marriage works conflicting heavily with the Akodo/Daidoji story. Otherwise I read everything else and everything else looks right.

Actually, "Rokugan is not Japan" is right. It has influences from every eastern asian culture.

The division in Clans with the tension between these while the Emperor is struggling to keep the peace between them is Chinese. It's based on the war of the Three Kingdoms, which, by the way, is a real Chinese war.

Then, there's the influence of India, with the Destroyer's war. All the Hinduism influences in the Medieval era in China created a lot of tensions because it was another religion, but this time, very different from the Taoism and the Buddhism.

Let's also look at the cult of Dragons, the origin of this cult is from China, Korea and India. Japan imported this cult with the Buddhism which came in the 7th century in Japan.

I could bring more, but there's enough to say that, indeed, Rokugan isn't Japan. Rokugan is Rokugan, which is based on several cultural parts of the East Asia.

1 hour ago, Crawd said:

The division in Clans with the tension between these while the Emperor is struggling to keep the peace between them is Chinese. It's based on the war of the Three Kingdoms, which, by the way, is a real Chinese war.

The clans are not distinct countries. In the 3 Kingdoms period, the three were basically 3 entirely distinct nations. There was no singular emperor they all acknowledged.

Its just as similar to the Warring States or "Sengoku" period in Japan, if not considerably more so. After all, at least during the sengoku period there was an "emperor" that everyone paid lip service to and they still considered themselves a single nation.