I was recently involved in a discussion regarding the theoretical next version of the L5R RPG, and my friend made an interesting observation. In specific, Fantasy Flight Games likes not just releasing one RPG in an RPG line, but releasing multiple. See: Star Wars RPG, Warhammer 40k RPG.

In our discussion of this, we figured the best way to do this would be to release different L5R Eras as separate RPG lines, with linked rules (if not power levels).

If so, what eras of L5R would you think FFG would release? What would you like them to release? Why?

Here are mine:

• Legend of the Five Rings: Clan Wars - Starting just before the Scorpion Clan Coup, I feel that this would be the best default L5R setting. It is the setting of the 1st Edition, and in many ways sets the stage as the most iconic era of L5R. This would be your default power level of L5R, where the story is driven by Great Clans going to war with each other, causing powerful and compelling samurai drama.
• Legend of the Five Rings: Dawn of the Empire - Tell the story of the dawn of the Emerald Empire, where the Kami and Thunders walked the land and the Great Clans were formed. This would be your "High Fantasy" power level of play, where your PCs are larger than life. I would also include the rules for "Creating your own Clan" a la Way of the Daimyo in this version. Include lots of "What If" scenarios for the different Kami winning the initial tournament / falling to Jigoku / surviving the fall from Tengoku. What would Ryoshun's Clan have looked like? What if Hantei fell to Jigoku? What if Fu Leng had founded the Spider Clan rather than make direct war against his brothers and sisters? Make sure to add all the fantastic beasts of the land, and the remnants of the Troll / Ogre / Nezumi civilizations, and all.
• Legend of the Five Rings: One Thousand Years of Darkness - What if Fu Leng won the Second Day of Thunder? What if the Lying Darkness stopped Toturi from committing seppuku? What would life be like in Hantei Kanpeki's Onyx Empire? This book would explore the harsh life in an evil, demon-filled Emerald Empire, where the Thone is held by the forces of corruption, and the battle for the light of bushido must be done in the shadows? While the default would be Fu Leng's Reign, include some rules for alternative Tainted Rokugan. This would allow players to explore compelling stories of heroic sacrifice and survival in the fringes of society. In many ways, this would be the opposite of the Dawn of the Empire, where it is filled with the struggle against the promise of destruction, rather than the promise of building something greater.

What are yours?

I want what 4e never gave us: a version of the Colonial Era that provides a full set of writeups and rules for Spider. Its a rich and unique time for Daigotsu's clan. There's the tainted elements in the colonies, and the pure elements in the empire, unified only by worship of Daigotsu and the Dark Fortunes and the iron will of his son. We never got good rules or writeups for the pure spider, and the idea that the tainted, who twisted and mutated in their own bodies over the years, would have as a group and collection of schools stayed exactly the same as they were then they were the Lost, despite the enormously different pressures on them in the colonies, is kind of preposterous. i'd have loved to have had some in depth stuff about how 40 years in the jungle changed what it meant to be a tainted Daigotsu samurai. at the very end, right before onyx, the spider had duelists, susumu courtiers, and a pure shugenja school. i'd love to have gotten mechanics for those as well.

I agree with you that that's more likely the path FFG will follow. I never thought about dividing it like that but it's interesting. What I will like to see added to your list:

Clan Wars: What if Hoturi (or any other Thunder) claimed the Emerald Throne instead of Toturi.

Age of Exploration: More in depth info about that timeframe.

I will probably be quite grouchy if FFG actually tries to release different eras as standalone lines that make you buy a whole new core book for each, when the mechanical difference between playing in, say, Clan Wars and Toturi Dynasty settings is no more than the addition/subtraction of a couple of minor-in-importance schools here and there. But I might buy era-centered splatbooks, and I'd definitely buy a new edition of something like Imperial Histories, so I'll answer your question in that spirit instead. Anyway, in rough order of priority--

I agree that I'd obviously like to see a Clan Wars/pre-Scorpion Coup setting, preferably one that's easily generalizable to any time between the return of the Unicorn and the SCC. (I don't care intensely about the exact NPCs who were around in the early days of L5R and wouldn't want an information overload about them, though I assume you'd need a bit as some people really do like them.)

Generic Toturi or early Iweko-dynasty setting seems an obvious one. Pick a period of relative calm within those times as a baseline, though. (Hard especially for the Toturi period, I know.) Here you could fit Mantis (and maybe Spider depending on your timing) as a Great Clan and all the newish Minor Clans and stuff.

Age of Exploration is another obvious choice, but it doesn't interest me personally very much, so skipping onward...

Dawn of the Empire and/or the run-up to the First Day of Thunder and/ or the reign of Hantei Genji would be cool.

An earlier setting from after Hantei Genji but before the Unicorn came back would be neat as well--around when the Kaiu Wall was first built, the first battle against Iuchiban, right before the Unicorn return, or something else like that.

Very different alternate settings like 10KYD or Togashi Dynasty are lots of fun, but I imagine might be lower priority for porting to a new system.

1 hour ago, cielago said:

I want what 4e never gave us: a version of the Colonial Era that provides a full set of writeups and rules for Spider. Its a rich and unique time for Daigotsu's clan. There's the tainted elements in the colonies, and the pure elements in the empire, unified only by worship of Daigotsu and the Dark Fortunes and the iron will of his son. We never got good rules or writeups for the pure spider, and the idea that the tainted, who twisted and mutated in their own bodies over the years, would have as a group and collection of schools stayed exactly the same as they were then they were the Lost, despite the enormously different pressures on them in the colonies, is kind of preposterous. i'd have loved to have had some in depth stuff about how 40 years in the jungle changed what it meant to be a tainted Daigotsu samurai. at the very end, right before onyx, the spider had duelists, susumu courtiers, and a pure shugenja school. i'd love to have gotten mechanics for those as well.

I would actually expect to see the rules like this in the Thousand Years of Darkness setting. "How to Live With the Taint and Not Be a Supervillain" could practically be a cornerstone of that setting.

Honestly, I think any point before the players got involved in the storyline would be a bit dull to play.

After all--- it was 1000 years of peace. Literally nothing particularly terrible happened-- the opportunities for heroes was slim to none, everything that did pop up got resolved quickly and fairly cleanly.

And if all the previous history is going to be more or less wiped out, then I don't see a whole lot of point in considering most of the L5R history players were actually involved in to be particularly viable.

To my mind, it seems like the RPG more or less has to take up right after Clan Wars. BUT, the most important thing is to make it more or less applicable to any point in Rokugan's former history, even if the card game takes place in AU, and encourage players to take up playing Rokugan their own way with their own historical timeline.

Also-- even if the mechanics of the new game are DRASTICALLY different than the old game... you know, about the 4th edition books? Less than 10% of them were actually devoted to mechanics. You could rip everything out of the books that has any mechanical impact on the game and out of those 200+ page books-- I am certain you would be left with less than 20 pages.

That means even if the new mechanical system bears 0 resemblance to the old, those other 180 pages are still entirely relevant for building and working within your world.

3 minutes ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

After all--- it was 1000 years of peace. Literally nothing particularly terrible happened-- the opportunities for heroes was slim to none, everything that did pop up got resolved quickly and fairly cleanly.

I dunno, but stuff like the Gozoku Conspiracy, the Great Famine, Iuchiban, or the Steel Chrysanthemum were anything but smoothly resolved events. Hell, White Stag could have ended terribly wrong for Rokugan, or the return of the Unicorn could have turned into a disaster.

By the way, I would like to see the Sapphire Throne / The Heroes of Rokugan as an official setting. Or something similar. So something like "fewhundred years into the future Toturi Loads'o'romannumbers rules and there is trouble - go and do stuff with it".

Honestly, I'm not as convinced they'll do multiple lines for L5R. 40k and do Star Wars are both extremely broad settings. There was room in 40k to play the little guys struggling against greater powers to ensure the survival of the Imperium or to play as the larger than life Space Marines mowing down orcs and 'nids with impunity. Star Wars can't really be Star Wars without Jedi, but also should have a classic rebellion and needs to touch on the fan favorite underbelly of smugglers and bounty hunters, very disparate themes that each deserved to be fleshed out on their own.

L5R, conversely, has always been focused on Samurai, and while the clans do cover a wide range of territory, I don't feel it's necessary to split the game up. That said, if FFG does see a need, I'm sure they'll do it justice.

I also don't think we'll see any more "timeline neutrality" since FFG does like static timelines. Hopefully, it shouldn't be too difficult to extrapolate and do alternate timelines as fans, but I wouldn't expect official support.

I expect the game to be set pre-coup, as the classic RPG setting. I feel like there's a lot you can do with the setting at this point. It's putty you can mould to end up however you want. This era does have a few cons though. Namely, the lack of Spider

I'd love to see Age of Exploration covered, though, and if you're right about splitting the line along eras, I would hope they'd cover this era. It's the only canonical era I feel is different enough from the core experience to qualify for a separate line.

12 minutes ago, deraforia said:

I expect the game to be set pre-coup, as the classic RPG setting. I feel like there's a lot you can do with the setting at this point. It's putty you can mould to end up however you want. This era does have a few cons though. Namely, the lack of Spider

Anything worth salvaging from that concept already existed...

Dark Moto, Yogo Junzo, Kuni Yori... and technically the Chuda and Goju should have been kicking around at that point, but they were simply not mentioned until they became relevant. Beyond that, a bunch of tainted samurai who'd sworn allegiance to Fu Leng.

So... bunch of organized, demonic samurai garbed in black with evil powers while holding onto some sort of twisted understanding of "honor" that they believed made them superior to the common rabble existed.

31 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

By the way, I would like to see the Sapphire Throne / The Heroes of Rokugan as an official setting. Or something similar. So something like "fewhundred years into the future Toturi Loads'o'romannumbers rules and there is trouble - go and do stuff with it".

I wish this could come true...

L5R is my favorite setting/system and as much as I love it, I am fully aware that it does not hold a candle to 40k, D&D, Shadowrun, Star Wars, etc, as far as popularity goes. I feel it would be a big business risk on FFG part to make separate lines for the RPG. If they take that risk, I really hope that their is a reword there. Anywho, the Era I would choose? Not sure if it will be my up of tea or not but...

Empire of the Emerald Stars (i. e. Samurai in Space!!!!!). This will take care of your Space Fantasy level of play that has themes in exploration of the new frontier, mysteries new races and planets, to boldly go where no samurai has gone before... lol This alternative setting was from the Imperial Histories 2 book for 4th Edition for those that do not know.

Me personalty, what I would love to see in the next RPG is more emphases on locations then eras. I enjoyed the Strongholds of the Empire supplement book and it would be insightful to have more books like that. I can imagine every year a new Strongholds of the Empire book is release with 10 new location that go into all manner of details. Great for location base games!

P.S. Naishou Province was very nice.

2 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

Honestly, I think any point before the players got involved in the storyline would be a bit dull to play.

Huh -- I'm the exact opposite. Pre-game history has lots of cool moments (as AtoMaki pointed out) that you could use as plot fodder. The player-driven story, on the other hand, is a seventeen-car pileup of one disaster landing so hard on the heels of the previous that they lose all impact for me. Many of the plot developments ring false, because they were driven by marketing concerns rather than narrative logic, or else were shoehorned in because somebody won a tournament so that meant X needed to happen, and the consequences to things frequently got under-explored; to avoid the third rail here, I'll name the Agasha defecting to the Phoenix as my example. Basically, I look at everything from after the Second Day of Thunder and see a world so crammed with Important People and Giant Threats that there's no room in there for me to tell my own story, no room for the PCs to really shine. I'd rather play in a quieter era, where I can get as loud as I want.

4 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

Huh -- I'm the exact opposite. Pre-game history has lots of cool moments (as AtoMaki pointed out) that you could use as plot fodder. The player-driven story, on the other hand, is a seventeen-car pileup of one disaster landing so hard on the heels of the previous that they lose all impact for me. Many of the plot developments ring false, because they were driven by marketing concerns rather than narrative logic, or else were shoehorned in because somebody won a tournament so that meant X needed to happen, and the consequences to things frequently got under-explored; to avoid the third rail here, I'll name the Agasha defecting to the Phoenix as my example. Basically, I look at everything from after the Second Day of Thunder and see a world so crammed with Important People and Giant Threats that there's no room in there for me to tell my own story, no room for the PCs to really shine. I'd rather play in a quieter era, where I can get as loud as I want.

Well, I probably didn't explain what I mean well enough.

The thousand years of peace. Sure, a few interesting stories were set up and put into the background. The problem is-- they had little impact, we know precisely who resolved it and then... boom, back to status quo and literally nothing more happened for another 100 years. Where is there any room in that for unnamed heroes buried under the noise to have had any meaningful impact? You would get out of it... what? A single actual adventure and then... "well, all your characters are going to die of old age before they are ever actually needed to undertake any adventure again." Well, that's a pretty terrible way RPG experience. Just... basically a single encounter, everything neatly resolved in one night and then... no more purpose for the character to exist, nothing more to do with them.

But in the 17-car pile up era-- because there was so much going on all the time, because a lot of the plot developments were poorly justified or explained...

There is quite a lot of room there to say that there was some group of samurai who accomplished something meaningful that well... no one noticed because their attention was elsewhere. They may have even saved the entire empire, but because there was some more obvious threat that the Clan Champions were dealing with, it just went unobserved. And there was rarely an extended period of peace. Which means adventure hooks, the fallout from all those big events-- even the big events themselves when they involved thousand of samurai taking minor actions that just were not covered in very much detail.... You pretty much have endless adventures, plenty for your adventurers to do and few points where you are forced to shrug and say "and... everyone dies of old age before they ever have a chance to do anything heroic, meaningful or impactful ever again."

Because those few events that allowed for much room for unnamed Samurai X to do well... much of anything during that time, because all the threats and changes were resolved in short order with very little combat or political maneuvering before everything went back to the peaceful status quo for an entire generation... I just don't see any room for meaningful adventures taking place during such eras.

You really want to build an entire RPG around one single event in a 1000 year story that got resolved very cleanly and had 0 effect on the world afterwards-- so that the empire at year 1000 was practically identical to the empire in year 100.

"We know precisely who resolved it" applies to any conflict that isn't the one currently happening in the fictions, including 99% of the post-Coup history. And "there is quite a lot of room there to say that there was some group of samurai who accomplished something meaningful that well... no one noticed because their attention was elsewhere" can apply to pre-Coup conflicts as well as the ones that came after, especially since "recorded Rokugani history is not what you'd call accurate" is well-established in canon. As for treating those earlier events as the equivalent of "a single encounter, everything neatly resolved in one night" -- have you read any of the info on the Gozoku, or White Stag, or the Return of the Unicorn? None of those conflicts are one-night events. Nor are they the kind of thing that involved only a handful of people while everybody else just sat around yawning. They didn't necessarily involve every single clan in the Empire fielding giant armies, but I see that as a feature rather than a bug.

You can prefer post-Coup history if you like; it's no skin off my nose. I'm just saying that I find it to be more trainwreck than anything else (seriously, killing off Lady Sun and Lord Moon and replacing them with ascended mortals???), and since I'm going to take the story in my own direction regardless of period, I'm just as happy working from a point where there's less that I have to throw out.

1 hour ago, Kinzen said:

especially since "recorded Rokugani history is not what you'd call accurate"

Excuse me... the Shosuro-Ikoma Alliance disagrees with you... Everything happened as written, move along and please pay no attention to the people with masks and pajamas... Sorry couldn't resist.

Jokes aside, this is a matter of preference. Some groups prefer to run in parallel of great Events sharing the spotlight with heroes others like my group want the spotlight for themselves. That's why I'm always looking for some obscure or overlooked minor detail during uneventful times to use to start my Campaign. If their actions were never recognized they will blame it on the Shosuro-Ikoma Alliance, like they always do... I wonder if it's why they never like Lions and Scorpions... In the end we will try to adapt the core book/s to the best fit of our Campaign...

Notch up another one for a fully implemented Empire of the Emerald Stars. I actually ran a one-off using a Battletech Scenario - Necromo Nightmare. It worked quite well.

I want to know what would have happened if either jade or obsidian dragon failed in killing yakamo or hitomi. How would them failing to get rid of both affect Rokugan.

And since the thunder dragon and the fire dragon both came down and joined clans there should have been more backlash from the remaining dragons as they were supposed to be neutral. What if it led to the other dragons taking a liking to other clans?

What if the empires of the 5 races were still around and just hidden?

6 hours ago, FelixPhoenix said:

Some groups prefer to run in parallel of great Events sharing the spotlight with heroes others like my group want the spotlight for themselves. That's why I'm always looking for some obscure or overlooked minor detail during uneventful times to use to start my Campaign.

This is me as well. I like an RPG setting to be a bit more of a blank canvas which GM and players can paint on, or at least color liberally between the lines, so post-Clan-Wars Rokugan has too many close-together Gambit Pile-ups and world-shaking crises for my taste.

Relatedly but somewhat separately... I also prefer it when players don't have to know the plural of "apocalypse" just to figure out the backstory for a PC in young adulthood, y'know?

In any case, I figure that as soon as the player characters start doing stuff, a campaign becomes our own version of the universe. If that involves bringing on the Second Day of Thunder in the 6th century with the PCs as the Thunders or whatever, so be it--just because a period is noted as being "peaceful" or its events are described as having resolved a certain way in the official timeline, doesn't mean a home campaign has to adhere to that. (For me this is another motive for steering clear of the plottier bits of the official timeline--I'd rather players not have too firm a notion of how things are "supposed" to go.)

10 hours ago, deraforia said:

I also don't think we'll see any more "timeline neutrality" since FFG does like static timelines. Hopefully, it shouldn't be too difficult to extrapolate and do alternate timelines as fans, but I wouldn't expect official support.

I'm not super familiar with FFG's other RPGs, so I don't really know how they are about timelines (I do vaguely remember EotE working okay for different points within the Star Wars canon). But either way, isn't L5R the first they've had that is wholly owned, not licensed? That probably allows them considerably more wiggle room to do what they want than they've had with the Star Wars or GW lines.

I kinda suspect they will plot out some kind of equilibrium configuration/calm point for their Rokugan at which to set the beginning of their new LCG, even if it's a calm-before-the-storm sort of calm point, and that that will be the default setting if we get a new RPG. But "timeline neutrality" was one of the better-received innovations in 4E, and all it really meant in design terms was "write the rules and stats so that they don't precisely straightjacket home RPG gamers into one exact moment in the card game plot." I'd be more surprised if FFG doesn't adopt some version of that principle, especially since at the outset they won't have years of card game storyline of their own to which they're closely committed.

11 minutes ago, locust shell said:

I'm not super familiar with FFG's other RPGs, so I don't really know how they are about timelines (I do vaguely remember EotE working okay for different points within the Star Wars canon). But either way, isn't L5R the first they've had that is wholly owned, not licensed? That probably allows them considerably more wiggle room to do what they want than they've had with the Star Wars or GW lines.

They could do things differently from how they've done them in the past, but I don't think it'll be a product of the IP being their own. Star Wars seems like it was a conscious choice to keep the start date just after the destruction of the Death Star, rather than allowing for Old Republic, Clone Wars, or Legacy games. Keep in mind FFG acquired the license before the purchase by Disney, so there wasn't an external mandate to stay within canon, nor even a strong definition of what counted as canon.

19 minutes ago, locust shell said:

I kinda suspect they will plot out some kind of equilibrium configuration/calm point for their Rokugan at which to set the beginning of their new LCG, even if it's a calm-before-the-storm sort of calm point, and that that will be the default setting if we get a new RPG. But "timeline neutrality" was one of the better-received innovations in 4E, and all it really meant in design terms was "write the rules and stats so that they don't precisely straightjacket home RPG gamers into one exact moment in the card game plot." I'd be more surprised if FFG doesn't adopt some version of that principle, especially since at the outset they won't have years of card game storyline of their own to which they're closely committed.

I was also a fan of 4E's neutrality, for the most part. Luckily, 99% of mechanics cam stay the same for 95% of the timeline, so even with a pre-Coup default era it wouldn't be difficult to adjust. Mostly the trouble comes in with Iweko, it seems.

What I really want is Age of Exploration, because I can always choose to excise stuff like Spider if I want an earlier game, but that would be harder to add into a game which assumes they don't exist. I just don't think I'll be that lucky. (I'm otherwise very optimistic about the potential RPG, but I can't expect to have 100% of my wants and desires appeased, now can I?)

12 hours ago, Kinzen said:

Basically, I look at everything from after the Second Day of Thunder and see a world so crammed with Important People and Giant Threats that there's no room in there for me to tell my own story, no room for the PCs to really shine. I'd rather play in a quieter era, where I can get as loud as I want.

An alternative solution to this problem might be sizing up Rokugan considerably. And I mean considerably . So all those Important People can deal with their Giant Threats, and the PCs can still ignore all that and do their own stuff because they are 4000 miles in the other direction.

10 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

An alternative solution to this problem might be sizing up Rokugan considerably. And I mean considerably . So all those Important People can deal with their Giant Threats, and the PCs can still ignore all that and do their own stuff because they are 4000 miles in the other direction.

At that point I'd wonder, why am I setting this in the time of the Giant Threat, if that's four thousand miles away? But I admittedly tend to run the sorts of plots where by the end the PCs are the Most Important People in the Empire (or other suitably large scale for non-L5R games), so I'm either thinking up my own Giant Threat -- for which I will happily strip-mine canon to provide recontextualized fodder -- or I'm chucking canon NPCs out the window so my players have the chance to save the day.

29 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

At that point I'd wonder, why am I setting this in the time of the Giant Threat, if that's four thousand miles away?

Well, the PCs can cover that 4000 miles if they (and/or you) so desire and get stuck in. It also makes the world feel more alive if there are big things happening independently to the PC's actions.

8 hours ago, muzouka said:

I want to know what would have happened if either jade or obsidian dragon failed in killing yakamo or hitomi. How would them failing to get rid of both affect Rokugan.

And since the thunder dragon and the fire dragon both came down and joined clans there should have been more backlash from the remaining dragons as they were supposed to be neutral. What if it led to the other dragons taking a liking to other clans?

Cool what if scenarios, especially the dragons one.

8 hours ago, muzouka said:

What if the empires of the 5 races were still around and just hidden?

See Naishou Province...

45 minutes ago, FelixPhoenix said:

See Naishou Province...

The Top Three- in reverse order:

3. Pre-Scorpion Clan Coup through Clan Wars: "Classic" L5R. I honestly don't have the fetish for this many seem to do (there was PLENTY of stupid crap in the story in this period, and the thoroughness of established canon means that replacing major historic roles with the actions of PCs can be jarring to those versed in it) but it does have all of the established Clans actively doing something.

2. The first Rise of Iuchiban. Even if canon is slavishly adhered to, there's plenty to throw the PCs at, and as in-story Iuchiban basically failed to deliver in his modern revival, it'd be pretty cool to have him really be the Big Bad.

Let's hear it for MOOOOOOOST LIKELLLLLLLY (and most interesting to me, since I have a system and setting for prior eras including the other two):

1. Wherever FFG takes the Story in Future: Whether they pick up with Onyx, reboot to some earlier period, time skip past to the aftermath of Onyx, or set the entire storyline in a laboratory where the Great Clans are super-intelligent cockroaches being manipulated by cruel and inscrutable human scientists, it'd be silly not to expect their RPG to take place in their stomping grounds.