I look forward to a reset back to Pre-Coup. I love the RPG to bits but have utterly no affinity for the CCG so a lot of the story changes seemed out of left field to me. The Mantis/Spider stuff turned me off any later setting but then again, I am Sparrow for life so AEG saying "oh, your characters are all dead. They died off screen because, you know, this new Spider clan is kewl" left me most cold. My second favourite clan is Falcon and their merge with Crab made zero sense to me as well so yeah, Pre-Coup is the familiar setting I like the most.

2 hours ago, DarkHorse said:

I am Sparrow for life so AEG saying "oh, your characters are all dead.

Actually... the Sparrow survived that infiltration. With the help of the Mantis.

Not expecting it to change your opinion on the overall, plot, but, y'know.

Just FYI.

Ideally the RPG would support any era, and include information about era-appropriate rules in the official storyline for people who care. Things like the Agasha family changing from Dragon to Phoenix, or that Spider Clan doesn't exist so those rules shouldn't be used in a Clan War-era campaign, etc. It might be a ton of work to get those game era caveats into the book in an accurate and easily referenced fashion, though.

In the end, though, what rules and story you use is going to be up to each group that plays. Some people want to play in the official canon, so that's fine. Some people are okay with re-telling stories such that hey steer away from the official version, and some people are just going to ignore canon altogether and do whatever they feel like. An ideal RPG would have enough rules and story information to support all of these groups. It would be up to the play group to decide what rules their story does or does not allow.

But to get back to the OP, if I could only have one era to play in I would probably want Clan War, with rules for Scorpion characters even without their Great Clan status, of course, and plenty of support for minor clans such as the Mantis and Wasp. I think splat books for stuff like KYD and Dawn of the Empire eras would be really cool too, though.

16 hours ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

Actually... the Sparrow survived that infiltration. With the help of the Mantis.

Not expecting it to change your opinion on the overall, plot, but, y'know.

Just FYI.

As a Clan, the Sparrow survived sure but the short stories are very clear that the actual born and bred Sparrow samurai were killed off screen nearly to a man with only a handful remaining "before it was too late". Sparrow that wore the colours after that were Spider infiltrators that swore loyalty to the banner and the way of life. It would have really sucked to be a long time Akodo or even Scorpion player when the metaplot ejected those families but at least their characters weren't killed off.

I don't have an issue really with the Spider infiltration and all that jazz, I actually kind of like the end result of that storyline (bolstering of Sparrow numbers with new blood and a slightly different perspective), it was the AEG insistence in the history fluff that only these specific true Sparrow were the ones left alive so my PC characters must have all been unceremoniously killed in the "official" fluff without me being able to do a thing about it.

Funny enough, I see how involved and taking it personally people get on message boards about L5R and it makes me want to quietly close the metaphorical door and tip toe away. Wow, those nerds are really, really emotionally invested in this game, geez....then I think about the Sparrow and Falcon clan, my blood starts to boil about how they are treated in the fluff and I remember that I am one of those nerds too. (I am a person that uses the word "fluff" to refer to story and metaplot after all - that is as opposed to "crunch" which is rules and game mechanics)

6 hours ago, Suzume Tomonori said:

with rules for Scorpion characters even without their Great Clan status

I see people saying things like this from time to time (not always about the Scorpion, but the "rules for X" mentality in general), and I have to ask -- what rules? The Scorpion weren't declanned for long enough to substantively change. The ones who were trained before their GC status got the axe still have their techniques, and in many cases can probably go on learning from their sensei, because the clan wasn't massacred. Those who weren't trained, or who lost access to their sensei, are now the mechanical equivalent of ronin, for which we already have rules. If a hundred years went by and the Scorpion were surviving as "ronin" but secretly training themselves to stage some kind of revenge takeover, then I could see the need for new schools or at least paths to represent their new mission. But their de-clanning lasted only, what, five years? What rules are needed, beyond saying "Status = 0"?

6 hours ago, DarkHorse said:

As a Clan, the Sparrow survived sure but the short stories are very clear that the actual born and bred Sparrow samurai were killed off screen nearly to a man with only a handful remaining "before it was too late".

...

That's not clear at all.
Their way of life appealed to some of the infiltrators so much that they switched sides. Hardly sounds like they got massacred "nearly to a man." It sounds like they were terrified and uncertain of who, if anyone, they could trust, so they knuckled under, kept their heads down, and endured. Certainly, the "marigold Sparrow" in the last fiction dealing with the story weren't a majority of the Sparrow present.

We can certainly wish that they put up more of a fight, just as we can wish that the Phoenix ever displayed their supposedly pretty decent courtly acumen instead of just arrogantly spouting off, or the Lion ever got to completely smack another Great Clan around militarily, or that the Moto takeover hadn't Mongol-ized the Unicorn almost beyond recognition...

5 hours ago, Kinzen said:

I see people saying things like this from time to time (not always about the Scorpion, but the "rules for X" mentality in general), and I have to ask -- what rules? The Scorpion weren't declanned for long enough to substantively change. The ones who were trained before their GC status got the axe still have their techniques, and in many cases can probably go on learning from their sensei, because the clan wasn't massacred. Those who weren't trained, or who lost access to their sensei, are now the mechanical equivalent of ronin, for which we already have rules. If a hundred years went by and the Scorpion were surviving as "ronin" but secretly training themselves to stage some kind of revenge takeover, then I could see the need for new schools or at least paths to represent their new mission. But their de-clanning lasted only, what, five years? What rules are needed, beyond saying "Status = 0"?

I'm fairly certain what is being meant is that they hope there would be (in that scenario) full rules for playing PC Scorpion in the actual ruleset, even though technically the Clan "doesn't exist" at the time. So, that a Clan Wars book would still include the means to build a Scorpion PC even though the start-point assumes "no Scorpion, officially, in the Empire".

You're debating from an in-universe perspective; I think Suzume Tomonori is looking at it from a game production perspective, and uses the hypothetical of "if there were only one setting I could have/if a new L5R rpg was set in one specific setting, I would like the Clan War, but I would still like to have Scorpion PC support even though in-universe the Scorpion are defunct".

Basically everything Doji Satevis said.

The infiltration of the Sparrow always leaves me conflicted. On one hand, as an emotionally invested fan of the story I did not like what happened to them at all, absorption of the Spider infiltrators included. On the other hand, the Sparrow Clan actually appeared in fiction.

(This post is partly tongue-in-cheek, btw.)

Day of Thunder.

There, answered for everyone.

8 hours ago, khadorstrong said:

Day of Thunder.

There, answered for everyone.

Which one?

First??

Second?

Third??!?

Five Races???!!???

9 hours ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

Five Races???!!???

YES.

I want books for every Era of the empire and I would like them fully fleshed out . Like when the scorpion clan return from The Burning Sands with a large army of Senpet and folded them in to their clan and they didn't even get a new school ?

On 4/10/2017 at 2:11 AM, Kinzen said:

I see people saying things like this from time to time (not always about the Scorpion, but the "rules for X" mentality in general), and I have to ask -- what rules? The Scorpion weren't declanned for long enough to substantively change. The ones who were trained before their GC status got the axe still have their techniques, and in many cases can probably go on learning from their sensei, because the clan wasn't massacred. Those who weren't trained, or who lost access to their sensei, are now the mechanical equivalent of ronin, for which we already have rules. If a hundred years went by and the Scorpion were surviving as "ronin" but secretly training themselves to stage some kind of revenge takeover, then I could see the need for new schools or at least paths to represent their new mission. But their de-clanning lasted only, what, five years? What rules are needed, beyond saying "Status = 0"?

I wouldn't really say they were ronin -- Hisa was the only Scorpion of note that was out of contact with the clan for any significant length of time, and even he got in pretty quickly. Hell, three Scorpion operated openly in court -- Kachiko, Goshiu (presumably cashing in on blackmail like mad), and Yojiro (whose loyalty had been "proven" during the coup). Hidden Emperor Scorpion laid low. The Scorpion of the Clan Wars were active and their lines of communication largely intact; it's just that most of the Empire was hostile (Dragon sometimes being an exception).

That said, this IS a pretty unique time. Three major clans (Crab, Phoenix, and Scorpion) openly operated in defiance of imperial law on a level not previously seen. Moreover, Crane's military was crippled, leading to them funding Yoritomo's Alliance for protection (and, indirectly, the promotion of the Mantis to Great Clan). Similarly, factions of Crab, Dragon, Lion, and Mantis formally joined Toturi's Army, with less formal support from the Naga and the Unicorn.

Essentially, this was a time when the usual rules about glory were tossed out the window. An open villain sat on the Emerald Throne, a Great Clan all but bent knee to Fu Leng, and the most hated man in Rokugan amassed an alliance that even the Crane would envy. The political strife here's probably the greatest the Empire's ever seen, and it's barely been referenced.

9 hours ago, SirEuain said:

a Great Clan all but bent knee to Fu Leng

Just a side note, but there were two Great Clans that almost fell to Fu Leng: the Crab (via Kisada) and the Lion (via Matsu "Textbook Case of the Forest and the Tree" Tsuko).

Onyx!

Yeah, I wanna see the best era of all time played out with the spider rulers... as it should have always been!