1 hour ago, SirEuain said:

To show how I think this could be fixed, let's go back to the Shadowed Tower. Originally, it was spawned by Atsuki wanting to make a power grab by reviving the Gozoku he'd led during his previous life, but Yojiro and Nimuro had already agreed to place clansmen among each of the Winds' inner circles, the better to manipulate the would-be Emperors. Essentially, the Scorpion and Lion were on their way to making the Gozoku anyway, just without consciously using that term to do it.

What if, instead of Atsuki wanting power, he realized how bad an idea this was? Everything else remains the same, right down to the desperation in using maho, but he's genuinely trying to protect the clan and the throne from the mistakes he made in life? Yojiro would still somewhat correct in that none of the Winds are people that can be trusted to do the job without guidance, but Atsuki is now trying to protect the Scorpion from overstepping their bounds and upsetting the natural order.

I think for a civil war storyline to work, whether it is inter clan or intraclan, there has to be an angle where it makes some sort of sense to get behind that side. Not necessarily that both are equally justified, but that each has their own take on things and there is something interesting and cool about them. That was certainly a problem with Atsuki and the Gozoku: Naseru was about the least plausible imaginable character where it made sense to try and turn him into a puppet for the good of the empire. Atsuki's appeal, as far as one could make out, was 'obey me instead of Naseru, because I am... uh... not afraid to toy with maho?' He did talk a bit about the Toturi dynasty being a disaster, which was fair enough, but he didnt make much of an overall case as I remember.

I think the Gozoku thematically could represent a very compelling and powerful 'big bad' in an intra-clan civil war context: they are the embodiment of the everpresent faction within Rokugani society that puts family ahead of empire. Who obey their father before their lord, their daimyo before their champion, their champion before the emperor. If anything, this was the normal set of allegiances in historical feudal societies prior to the emergence of a class of professional bureacrats. This tendency of allegiance resists centralization and tries to replace central authority with figurehead monarchs whose power is limited to the capital. And half of Rokugan could probably get behind that.

So I think Atsuki probably would have worked better, less if he had been trying to support a strong emperor, but more if his M.O. had been less villainous and more traditonalist. The best leader of the Gozoku would have been a Daimyo from a respected family like the Ikoma or the Asahina, someone who wasnt triply disqualified from being trusted by being a scorpion who lied about his identity while building up a secret conspiracy of maho users.

On 4/29/2017 at 9:44 AM, Kinzen said:

With my professional writer hat on (and the anthropologist feather in its band), I have to say that the points raised in the OP are spot-on. Clan-vs-clan war of the sort the card game fosters just doesn't make sense in the context of a strong centralized government; you need the Empire to look more like a loose federation of states for that to happen.

Rokugan has a lot of "federal influences" in it. Just look at the system of, say, Federal...Emerald Magistrates :P. After one of our games we had this conversation, and with some beer we managed to find more "this really sounds like it was written by someone who kinda defaults to federal mechanisms, not necessarily on purpose" examples, but I don't have them anywhere near me.

As for no villains, well. If you manage to get a clear stable of heroes, you can put them against a clear cast of villains. As long as people are know that they should root for characters from Set A and that they are protagonists of their stories, you can do a story of Akodo X feuding against Doji Z*. The key is to make sure that Lion players root for Akodo X, while Crane players don't perceive Doji X as "their" protagonist, because otherwise you get into a situation where whatever you do, someone ends up unhappy, because Their Protagonist Got Dunked On.

* Example: Hero Zuko and Villain Azula from Avatar...

@Kinzen in general

We managed to "fix" a lot of thing you mention by diving deep into Chinese history and using a lot of their solutions. It just works much better for a Empire so big and diverse, because Rokugan "should have" faced challenges similar to what China did.

One of our favorite changes was introducing the Imperial Exams :P.

38 minutes ago, WHW said:

We managed to "fix" a lot of thing you mention by diving deep into Chinese history and using a lot of their solutions. It just works much better for a Empire so big and diverse, because Rokugan "should have" faced challenges similar to what China did.

My knowledge of Chinese history ends at Western Zhou. :-P But yes, I think using it as a political model makes a great deal of sense if you imagine Rokugan to be that large (not everyone does, and the canonical information is wildly inconsistent).

I can send you "Chinese history in context of stuff useful for Rokugan" presentation later :-P.

1 hour ago, WHW said:

@Kinzen in general

We managed to "fix" a lot of thing you mention by diving deep into Chinese history and using a lot of their solutions. It just works much better for a Empire so big and diverse, because Rokugan "should have" faced challenges similar to what China did.

One of our favorite changes was introducing the Imperial Exams :P.

But don't those extensively drawing on the historical Chinese state essentially prevent the clans from being the independent actors that most players want them to be?

Generally speaking, I would lean towards reducing the degree of centralization in Rokugan over strengthening the Imperial government. Make it look more like the central government during the early Muromachi shogunate, for example.

Chinese Emperor wasn't always as strong as many people believe. There was plenty of room for infighting and clan-like agenda chasing. Hell, there was this one Emperor who got a present from his advisor, the finest horse in the land.

"But, my dear advisor, this is a deer, isn't it?"

"No, my dearest Emperor, this is definitely a horse. Right, my friends?"

*everyone nods because the dude in question is a Scorpion equivalent*
"Then it must mean my mind is not well. Someone who mistakes horse for a deer needs to rest. Rule the country in my name while I let my mind heal."
:P

I don`t know if it has been said but I just want to add in here the the Great clans and Emperor are also representatives of their Kami, who determined the order of things... so there is a whole "religious" and fantastic element here that is not true when comparing to real world.

To me, the clans were at their best (or sometimes worst) when they were either epitomizing the extremes of their nature or were going against their nature.

Eg: The Crab Clan steadfastly and resolutely holding the wall despite taking heavy losses, and making deep sacrifices for the good of the Empire.

or

The Crab Clan is disgusted with the weakness of the other clans and decides to make a dark pact to stomp it out.

If you look at the start of the original Clan Wars, basically every clan was going against it's nature (The Scorpion were traitors, the Lion had been stripped of honor, the Crab had forsaken their duty... etc). While it doesn't all need to happen at once, some of the most interesting arcs involved two clans who were both "right" from their point of view butting heads.

On ‎29‎/‎04‎/‎2017 at 9:20 PM, TechnoGolem said:

The story team does have a challenge ahead of them. It will be difficult to make everyone happy with so many different clans while trying to keep things interesting.

I'm curious to see what they do but I hope they keep a tight reign on player influence. Let us pick between two or three logical options when given a choice but don't leave an option completely open. Otherwise you end up with odd story moments just because they are weird.

And hope they don't pick "Shadowlands Victory"...

11 hours ago, Isawa Tasatu said:

I don`t know if it has been said but I just want to add in here the the Great clans and Emperor are also representatives of their Kami, who determined the order of things... so there is a whole "religious" and fantastic element here that is not true when comparing to real world.

A lot of real world dynasties have tied themselves to religious and fantastical figures to try and gain legitimacy. The line of emperors in Japan still obstensibly traces its lineage to Amaterasu, if I recall correctly.

Of course, Amaterasu doesn't make appearances or use her mystical powers to influence things in the real world, which I think was more to the point you were making.

About the choices...yeah. This is the politest way to say it for me, but when reading canon storyline I often felt like listening to someone's else RPG game report/anecdotes; very weird and "I find this to be very disturbing", with the caveat that "this sounds silly and maybe even low quality, but being there and taking part in it is probably the most important factor in enjoying it".

On 4/30/2017 at 5:00 AM, Kinzen said:

But that description already contains problems and unexamined assumptions. A handful of Miya Heralds and Otomo Courtiers does not a vast network make, and without extensive territory of their own, how are those families anything but small? How does the Emperor dominate politically in a society based on "prove what you can do" when he earned his place through birth (ascribed merit) rather than deeds (achieved merit)? How does the Emperor have economic power? Through taxation of the clans. How does he enforce that taxation? With an army that's . . . mostly drawn from the clans. Which means he holds "quite a lot of power" only as long as the people beneath him are willing to play along. Which means that encouraging a dog-eat-dog, might-makes-right idea of meritocracy is a quick route to losing that power. An Emperor in the position you describe should be looking outside his own borders for external enemies, not undercutting half his base of power with the other half and encouraging people to notice that there's no reason other than tradition for his butt to be on the throne.

Why exactly do you need territory for the Miya, Otomo and Seppun, which include the two original founding tribes of the entire empire and a family formed within the first generation, to be just as vast as any of the samurai of the other clans? They do get to tax all of the clans and have little of the expenses that come from actually maintaining and defending those lands. As long as they tax 1/7th of what each clan spends on feeding and housing their samurai class, then they can easily be the same size as any Great Clan without any contradiction. What they lack would be the the large number of peasants to call upon. They are also scattered across the empire spread so thinly that its not like the "Hantei Clan" could do all that much to hold the Empire together if their main claim to power were to be lost. The Miya are traveling all the roads to make sure the news of the day reaches each village, the Otomo have to have a regional bureaucratic office in every province and city and a representative in every court, the Seppun are meant to have a man posted in each temple, in each bureaucratic office, and make up the core (though not the bulk) of both the Legion and the Imperial Magistrates.

It is not unusual for a Federal Government to be just as large as the Provincial Government in terms of employees or armed forces. And that is really what we are talking about here. Remember that 90+% of those living in any given clan's territory are not members of that clan-- they are just peasants under that clan's rule. Just given the sheer amount that has to be covered by the Imperial Families, all previous estimations of their size and scope seem impossibly underwhelming-- honestly, all claims to their small size was to brush off the constant nagging issue of "surely SOME Hantei heir could be found if one just bothered looking" when the entire point of the initial story arc was specifically to award the throne to one of the Clans. Beyond this, all other issues that would say that the Imperials ought to be any smaller than any of the Great Clans was just more justification to support the original premise rather than being born out of any sort of sensible policies they would have in place.

Certainly though, rule can only be maintained so long as the majority of the 7 clans do not rebel all at once. But if any given clan cannot trust that if they do rebel, the other clans will not turn on them quickly and decisively for the favor they would earn in return for having put down the rebels... and the fact that the whole culture of the society makes rebelling entirely unthinkable, then no one will launch into open armed rebellion anyway. That is why it is so important for the Otomo to keep the clans divided against one another-- in this case, a house divided stands, but a house united would soon fall.

The fact that there are 6 other clans ready to jump on any clan that refuses to pay their taxes or contribute troops to the legion, that alone keeps them in line. Moreover, the same is true for each of the clans in turn-- what keeps a family from rebelling and taking over control of the clan? Surely no Clan should be ruled by the family that carries the name of the original Kami at this point if power-grabbing in such a way were so easily done. What stops the peasants from rebelling and overthrowing the samurai? However strong the samurai may be, the peasants more than outnumber them enough to be successful in rebellion if all rose up at once.

As for turning the attention of the Samurai to foreign forces... the Yobanjin are treated as an existential threat despite all indication being that the samurai could easily over-run them... and there is the constant presence/threat of the Shadowlands and all clans are expected to commit troops to that cause. But, in order to stop the clans from getting too cozy and forming alliances, it is best to allow (or even cause) a dust-up between two of them to occur that will leave far too much resentment on either side for them to consider joining together and over-throwing the empire.

As for whether it is just "tradition" keeping him there... I think you highly underestimate the value a federal government brings to provincial governments under its umbrella. By both enforcing assistance from the others when any given clan has a great crisis and being a neutral arbitrator in disputes, its value more than makes up for any cost. In fact, the general services they provide would almost certainly be far more costly if each individual clan had to set up their own bureaucratic offices, law enforcement agencies, herald networks, cartographers, etc. If any given clan were to be successful in over-throwing the Hantei and ousting the Otomo, Miya, and Seppun (and Kasuga) from their positions of influence and try to replace them with their own agents, the Empire would surely melt-down as a result... particularly if they also refused to let go of control and defense of their previous lands and tried to spread their attention so thinly.

Toturi managed to transition smoothly because he left the entire Imperial apparatus in place and had basically severed ties to his previous clan. Iweko failed entirely because her and her son were dead-set on removing the old Imperial system and replacing it with a Dragon Clan one... and the only reason her empire didn't collapse a lot faster was the fact that she did it slowly and continued to rely on the very people she was disenfranchising as she did it.

Hobgoblyn, your entire wall o' text sidesteps the original question: in the presence of a strong centralized government, why would constant civil war be tolerated? It destroys resources that flow to that central government and encourages principles that threaten stability. All the details concerning the size of the imperial families etc are secondary to, or even arise from, that core contradiction. I'll ask again: does anybody have a real, historical example of a society that had a strong central power and saw internecine warfare as a desirable state of affairs? I don't know of any, but I can name a hell of a lot of examples of strong central governments turning their vassals' energy toward outside enemies, or weak central governments that were unable to quell internal trouble. Rokugan can be isolated, internally fractured, and weakly centralized (medieval Christian Europe taken as a whole looks a bit like this); it can be isolated, internally unified, and strongly centralized (Tokugawa-era Japan); it can be open, internally unified, and strongly centralized (lots of examples). But isolated, internally fractured, and strongly centralized makes no sense. The government in that scenario has the power to either clamp down on destructive internal conflicts or turn their vassals' aggression toward outside targets, but for ~some reason~ they choose not to, even though that decision comes at their own detriment.

If there are historical examples of that scenario lasting for more than a century, let alone the thousand years of Rokugani history, I would very much like to see it. (I mean that in all sincerity. I would love to know what dynamics were at work to make "let's have our own people chew on each other; it'll be great!" a workable course of action.)

1 hour ago, Kinzen said:

I'll ask again: does anybody have a real, historical example of a society that had a strong central power and saw internecine warfare as a desirable state of affairs?

To be honest here, I couldn't give you a real, historical example of a society that had wizards talking to the spirits of the world (for real), or a society led by the (for real) divine descendant of the Sun Goddess. If you know what I mean.

Of course, this isn't an aspect that was thoroughly explored in-setting, but one should still consider its existence and possible influence on the world.

4 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

... I think you highly underestimate the value a federal government brings to provincial governments under its umbrella. By both enforcing assistance from the others when any given clan has a great crisis and being a neutral arbitrator in disputes, its value more than makes up for any cost. In fact, the general services they provide would almost certainly be far more costly if each individual clan had to set up their own bureaucratic offices, law enforcement agencies, herald networks, cartographers, etc.

I think you're looking at this from too modern a perspective. We're not talking about a federal government, we're talking about a feudal one. And inefficient as it sounds, leaving each vassal to manage their own bureaucracies, law enforcement, etc was exactly what feudal governments did.

2 hours ago, Kinzen said:

Hobgoblyn, your entire wall o' text sidesteps the original question: in the presence of a strong centralized government, why would constant civil war be tolerated? It destroys resources that flow to that central government and encourages principles that threaten stability. All the details concerning the size of the imperial families etc are secondary to, or even arise from, that core contradiction. I'll ask again: does anybody have a real, historical example of a society that had a strong central power and saw internecine warfare as a desirable state of affairs? I don't know of any, but I can name a hell of a lot of examples of strong central governments turning their vassals' energy toward outside enemies, or weak central governments that were unable to quell internal trouble. Rokugan can be isolated, internally fractured, and weakly centralized (medieval Christian Europe taken as a whole looks a bit like this); it can be isolated, internally unified, and strongly centralized (Tokugawa-era Japan); it can be open, internally unified, and strongly centralized (lots of examples). But isolated, internally fractured, and strongly centralized makes no sense. The government in that scenario has the power to either clamp down on destructive internal conflicts or turn their vassals' aggression toward outside targets, but for ~some reason~ they choose not to, even though that decision comes at their own detriment.

If there are historical examples of that scenario lasting for more than a century, let alone the thousand years of Rokugani history, I would very much like to see it. (I mean that in all sincerity. I would love to know what dynamics were at work to make "let's have our own people chew on each other; it'll be great!" a workable course of action.)

Why are you assuming that Empire was in the state we have been shown in the years 1xxx the whole time? First thousand years of empire are very peaceful - first 400 or 500 years see very little warfare, and the warfare it sees are smaller scale disputes. First real full scale war is the Yasuki War, which...lead to Emperor banning full scale warfare between Clans.

Basically, whenever Emperor is strong in Rokugan, conflicts are "governed" by the system of blood feuds and imperial approval/disapproval, mostly leading to short and focused bursts of duking it out between offended parties which exist to stop decades longs grudge wars, trying to avoid what happened in Yasuki Wars - a stalemate that left everyone unhappy. So "Imperial Approved" conflicts have strong focus, and imperial mediators are involved in order to make sure that the conflict is stopped after both parties get to release their steam, and to make sure that the end results lead to no Clan-scale grudges - sure, there are *personal* grudges and revenges, but due to Imperial mediation, most of wars that happen when Emperor of Rokugan is in strong position end up with both Clans happy (and, I suspect, a lot of unhappy people on personal level, which don't really mean anything in the long run, unless you get something like Matsu Tsuko or Utaku Kamoko, who later climb into a position where their selfish desire override clan agendas)

Anyway, in Rokugan there are legit no outside targets to target. Rokugani expanded, conquering and culturally assimilating everyone they met until they hit impassable geographical barriers - Shadowlands to the south, Burning Sands to the west and north, mountains to the north and east, and ocean to the east. They seriously have no one else to aim their swords at - there are only Shadowlands (which Crab are battling) and Yobanjin (who would be probably wiped out if they weren't bordering with a pacifistic clan of priests who shun warfare)

Note that large clan warfare in Rokugan can be mapped to periods where Imperial Authority is weak - Gozoku conspiracy weakened it a ton, and thus created an environment where war thrived.

Steel Chrysanthemum is interesting, because it's basically Mandate of Heaven in action. Terrible Emperor got to the throne and tried to enjoy a reign of terror, but everyone involved decided "yeah, this is not happening" and literally killed him and then passed the throne to next person in the line.

This is mostly how Mandate of Heavens worked in China. You get an Emperor who is a symbol of country's unified identity and connection to something bigger, and if something goes wrong enough to piss off the peasants, everyone agree that it's the sign that Heavens favor ran out and the dude gets ganked and replaced. Everything bad that happens is then instantly pardoned in the eyes of public, and everything goes back to norm until someone **** up somewhere again. This cycle usually looked like this:

- Strong leader overcomes Bad Emperor and gets to be a strong Emperor for XYZ years

- After his death, his heirs tend to be OK but their authority usually starts to decay

- And then, either the heir is really bad, or we hit the quite popular situation of "heir is too young/too dumb to rule, and his mother/eunuch advisor rules in his place" where puppet Emperor loses control. If Puppetters start abusing their authority, a Strong Leader will emerge and put a stop to this, and we go back to Step 1. If there is no immediate need for Reset of Heavens, strong leaders start to throw their weight around and duke it out between themselves trying to further agenda of their "dynasty/family" while also trying to maintain influence over imperial court. You had situations where Emperor existed and was the ruler in the eyes of the common folk, but real politics and decision were results of interactions between strong warlords.

Looking back at the history of Rokugan, after we got the tyrant disposed, what happens next is...another long period of peace, interrupted only by external threats of Shadowlands and......

...Unicorn .

But even arrival of Unicorn was pretty carefully dismantled due to Crane-Imperial excellency of conflict management.

Then you get another period of peace, where no large clan warfare happens and only conflicts are daimyo-level skirmishes where you probably have stuff like 10 samurai + 100 ashigaru per side fight about petty issues and then nobody except peasants really dies. Large battles and conflicts are an outlier in Rokugani history, not the norm. Add the fact that Empire got really strong sense of cultural unity and identity due to wonderful work of Akodo with the Bushido and Shinsei with the Shinseism that, like Confucianism in China, are basically glue that keeps 7 different "warlord led states" feeling like they are one nation, even if they punch each other on the nose when they can get away with it.

It only became a norm in the 1xxx century, where tension was buiit up, ancienc prophecies were put in motion, emperors got assasinated, Dark Gods claimed the Throne, and Imperial Authority ended up weakest in the entire history. In history of China, something like this would usually end up with a period of token Emperor ruling from Token Province while rest of the country ends up falling under influence of major warlords who maintain the preexisting imperial system because it actually had good beurecratic infrastructure, so it was more profitable to tap into the system than to burn it down and replace it.

And then the cycle would reset.

And no, seriously. Imperial beurecracy and the way the Emperor unified people was so effective that when people conquered China - multiple times - they ended up trying to tap into the system to keep everyone under control, but after a few decades, got sinizied. Which basically means China is probably the only empire in the world that pushed it's borders by being conquered and then turning conquerors Chinese within no more than a century.

The thing about original setup of L5R was that it had all the trappings and mechanisms of "story about end of the millenium that will shake the world in mythic, legendary events that will leave it changed forever". A grand prophecy that basically spelled out "XYZ gonna happen, which means that either world ends, or it almost ends"? Check. Idealized, idyllic society that lived 1000 Years of Peace? Check. Everything going the worst way possible, putting the whole system on it's head and opening flood gates of tragedy where nation falls and people die? Check.

Add the context of the fact that it was all written in the zeitgeist of the YEAR 2000 IS COMING END OF MILLENIUM WORLD IS ENDING, and you probably can see why it was a story born from a very specific timeframe about a very specific topics that captured very specific imagination.

The problem is, this kind of setup works brilliantly for the thing it was set up. And "continuing past the Most Horrific, Most Terrible Apocalyptic Event In The Humankind history" isn't what this kind of setup was set up for.

Basically, from the storytelling point of view, L5R Story was fighting with itself every story beat past The Second Day of Thunder, because the *the whole world was constructed with Second Day of Thunder in mind*. That's why best outcomes for the L5R as a story would be either:

a) ending everything at Second Day of Thunder

b) doing a generational, maybe even hundreds of years time jump, and using it to set up a new story

This is also why, IMHO, FFG is doing a very smart thing by doing a timeline reset and, more importantly, Reimagining the Story. This allows them to prepare a setup for *the story they want to tell*, instead of being trapped in a straight jacket of trying to write your story in a machine prepared for a very specific, not-yours story.

3 hours ago, Kinzen said:

Hobgoblyn, your entire wall o' text sidesteps the original question: in the presence of a strong centralized government, why would constant civil war be tolerated? It destroys resources that flow to that central government and encourages principles that threaten stability. All the details concerning the size of the imperial families etc are secondary to, or even arise from, that core contradiction. I'll ask again: does anybody have a real, historical example of a society that had a strong central power and saw internecine warfare as a desirable state of affairs? I don't know of any, but I can name a hell of a lot of examples of strong central governments turning their vassals' energy toward outside enemies, or weak central governments that were unable to quell internal trouble. Rokugan can be isolated, internally fractured, and weakly centralized (medieval Christian Europe taken as a whole looks a bit like this); it can be isolated, internally unified, and strongly centralized (Tokugawa-era Japan); it can be open, internally unified, and strongly centralized (lots of examples). But isolated, internally fractured, and strongly centralized makes no sense. The government in that scenario has the power to either clamp down on destructive internal conflicts or turn their vassals' aggression toward outside targets, but for ~some reason~ they choose not to, even though that decision comes at their own detriment.

If there are historical examples of that scenario lasting for more than a century, let alone the thousand years of Rokugani history, I would very much like to see it. (I mean that in all sincerity. I would love to know what dynamics were at work to make "let's have our own people chew on each other; it'll be great!" a workable course of action.)

The Hantei ran the Empire for 1000 years and no civil war that contested anything larger than a city ever happened. It was considered 1000 years of peace for a reason. Nothing was allowed to spiral more out of control than that because the central government is too strong. As for to why allow even that extent of warfare? Well, you have these legions of jacked-up, battle ready samurai ruling the land just itching to have a go at something to prove their honor and courage. The Shadowlands gives you something for them to test their mettle and improve their skills against, but otherwise... they really just have one another.

So you let some minor dispute flare up-- then, if it seems it'll become more than minor, to squash it. The Emperor always had the power to just squash it, they could be confident in that respect.

The example of Medieval Christian Europe is a perfect example. Think of the Imperials as the Catholic church and the clans as the nations. It is well-known that warfare between nations was quite common in Europe and even encouraged by the Catholic Church in some ways! But the Pope still held authority above that of kings and could put an end to the battles with an order. Sending the nations out on a crusade was a possibility, but that could be more destructive to the overall stability of the land than those small inter-national wars.

Anyway, I cannot think of a single nation in the world that actually, TRULY had a stable government for 1000 years. Japan will make the claim in that their imperial line was not broken, but so long as the Shogunate was around, the Emperor was more a trophy than the law of the land. That suggests they were doing a pretty **** good job-- particularly since neither did the samurai become weak, lazy and complacent during that time.

A Rokugan that knows the sort of constant turmoil warfare that defines the mechanics of the CCG... yes, that is truly not possible unless the Imperials have lost control of the situation. Ironically, if the new story keeps the aspect of the old story where all Hantei who are not sitting on the throne forsake their family name... Well, the only mistake AEG made in that regard was creating a story for the backstory where the Hantei were previously entirely wiped out and someone who had forsaken the Hantei name then reclaimed it. In fact-- if the Hantei name can so easily be reclaimed by a Seppun or Otomo who can trace their family line back to a Hantei a few generations ago, it actually entirely defeats the whole purpose of having them forsake the name in the first place... and Seppun or Otomo who was more popular and influential than a badly ruling Hantei could easily overthrow the Emperor and claim the throne-- the Steel Chrysanthemum situation would have been resolved so much more quickly and cleanly. Thus, civil war initiated by power struggle in the upper echelons of the Imperial Family would remain a common threat to the stability of the land.

On the other hand, if one simply defines it within the world that once one forsakes a name, they have no more right to claim it regardless of their bloodline than any person who wasn't born with that name... Well, at that point one avoids the whole issue of having to imply that the Otomo, Seppun and Miya are all of 10 members each who all live in the imperial palace and someone not a single one of them has any drop of blood of the Hantei family because they were all cleanly and systematically wiped out by the Kolat (who somehow don't target other Kami-born families the same way) without anyone noticing and in finally one night by the Scorpion... while contradictorially have duties and responsibilities that span the entirety of the empire necessitating that they be equal in size to the Mantis Great Clan to accomplish all they need to accomplish and be as familiar and commonly encountered as they are.

If one just says it is a hard rule that one can NEVER just up and reclaim a name they have forsaken no matter the circumstances... and have Hantei the 38th/39th be the first time in 38 generations that any Hantei has ever died without managing to have some concubine push out a kid for them or having a younger brother or sister who hadn't reached gempukku to abandon the name Hantei just yet.... Then you can have the fall of the Hantei work very cleanly. At that point, the rest of the Imperial still exist and would be the smallest Great Clan if they were to be conferred that status, but are still not *ahem* "tiny compared to the size of a minor clan" when minor clans are often as few as 20-40 people and rarely (Mantis, Fox and Badger only) more than 100.

The Hantei family gets wiped out without any heir for the first time in 1000 years, as well as most of the high stationed Imperials (i.e. the daimyos) causing a situation where the Imperials are spread thinly across the empire, have lost their central direction and their primarily justification for continued rule is gone (in fact, it is likely that none of them out there in the regional offices has rank to pull on clan champions) and each of the clan sees the throne merely as the ultimate power to claim over the other clans, a chance to defeat their rivals entirely and have all the wealth and power of the empire devoted solely to their own personal causes.... and, perhaps more nobly, that they are better suited to rule than the other clans.

So even if there are thousands of Imperials out there, any number of which can trace their lineage back to the Hantei in less than 4 generations, it really wouldn't matter. The whole forsaking of the name thing is a hard-line permanent forsaking... they have no more right to claim the throne than any other clan. Sure, maybe there could be an Otomo who survives the coup (presuming that the end of the Emperor even need to happen in a coup! Maybe it is a plague or ninja assassination or Oni attack that causes his death!) and uses the fact that he is the cousin of the previous emperor as his primary justification as for why he is the best candidate... but so long as it is recognized that as he had forsaken the Hantei name, that is no better justification than the Lion or Crane champion have.

At that point, civil war to an extent that never happened during those 1000 years is basically inevitable as everyone races to claim the throne.

1 hour ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

The Hantei ran the Empire for 1000 years and no civil war that contested anything larger than a city ever happened. It was considered 1000 years of peace for a reason. Nothing was allowed to spiral more out of control than that because the central government is too strong. As for to why allow even that extent of warfare? Well, you have these legions of jacked-up, battle ready samurai ruling the land just itching to have a go at something to prove their honor and courage. The Shadowlands gives you something for them to test their mettle and improve their skills against, but otherwise... they really just have one another.

So you let some minor dispute flare up-- then, if it seems it'll become more than minor, to squash it. The Emperor always had the power to just squash it, they could be confident in that respect.

1 hour ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

This also probably had interesting effect of "Imperials come in to end the dispute and mediate the peace" being really deeply entrenched in the peasants who witnessed heralds literally declaring end of war. Creates a clear link between Emperor and peace, while allowing peasants to "blame" someone else for bad things. Which again, isn't anything new - it's the concept of "Emperor far away in the capitol is great and perfect, it's only our governor/lord/whoever is close to us who is bad and corrupt and to be blamed".

The problem is fundamentally, the Hantei and their vassals should have been a clan, too. The most powerful (not necessarily the largest) clan, founded by a kami like the others. Because, historically, that'S what a feudal king or emperor is - the most powerful (in terms of authority, not in terms of any particular type of power) feudal lord in a given area, to whom the other feudal lords (nominally, at least) owe their fealty.

6 minutes ago, Himoto said:

The problem is fundamentally, the Hantei and their vassals should have been a clan, too. The most powerful (not necessarily the largest) clan, founded by a kami like the others. Because, historically, that'S what a feudal king or emperor is - the most powerful (in terms of authority, not in terms of any particular type of power) feudal lord in a given area, to whom the other feudal lords (nominally, at least) owe their fealty.

I have simply always argued that the Hantei "Clan" for lack of a better term should never have been all that particularly smaller than the other clans, if it were smaller at all. Initially they even did have their own lands in addition to living off of taxes-- but it is understandable that they could not divide their attention between micromanaging the peasants on the land and overseeing the clans in general, keeping the national level funded and rooting out threats to the empire as a whole.

There definitely should have been enough that if there were going to be another "Great Clan" beyond the Mantis, it should have come from demoting the previous Imperials as their positions of influence get taken over by favored members of the new person on the throne rather than drawing one from the Shadowlands.

But, really... the thing is that the whole concept of a "Clan" in general was derived from the other 7 Kami having divided up the empire and taken charge of micromanaging those particular sectors while the Hantei and his people oversaw things from that one level above-- overseeing the clans. All of their funding and most of their military might came from the clans themselves-- with people being rewarded with status and prestige for serving in the Imperial Legions or the Imperial Magistrates or even the Imperial Bureaucracy. Even the highest appointed positions in those areas often being rewarded to particularly loyal members of Great Clans (and since such individuals often enough didn't really know the ins-and-outs of the systems, they were basically just political appointees who had only as much power as the Imperials allowed them to exercise) while the Imperials made up the mid-ranks and did a lot of the real management of those departments.

But... I feel like a lot of it was initially overlooked by the Story Team.

They had their idea.... the last Emperor of a long lasting dynasty falls, all the feudal lords under their command suddenly go to war. The idea that this Emperor probably had his own families that were serving him just like the Clan's families... that idea creeped in later. And realizing that if the Empire ever functioned at all, then there was a lot more that needed to be done from the Imperial Offices than simply having a few guys sitting inside a palace utterly ignoring and ignorant of what was happening outside their gates and simply taking the Great Clans at their word for 1000 years that they were behaving....

So, yeah.. It is quite understandable that as the setting was developed, certain aspects of how the Imperials were treated and handled made less and less sense... and that there were better solutions.

This is a chance for a do-over though! I want to see more thought going into the Imperials! In terms of the card game, they are neutral cards that all factions can use and this game seems to have been designed in such a way where neutral cards are actually going to be fundamentally worth using (as opposed to the old one where you didn't gain honor off of bringing them into play and their gold-per-force was always worse than an in-clan character you could buy for a 2 gold reduction if you didn't care about honor.)

I agree that Rokugan more closely resembles Imperial China when at peace, but I have difficulty taking the whole "1000 Years of Peace" thing seriously as anything other than as a semi-mythological golden age for the empire (largely fabricated by the Ikoma erasing inconvenient bits, perhaps). There's a couple reasons for my reticence, I think:

1. The society portrayed during that period is not, I believe, really "Rokugan" as the majority of players would picture or describe it. It's not what we've experienced over the course of the game and read about in the fictions. It was meant, originally, just to be backstory for the apocalyptic clash portrayed in the CCG, a bit of flavor: "for a millennium, the Empire was at peace...". It was only fleshed out, piecemeal, after the fact. There may be players of the RPG whose entire L5R experience has been based on that setting, but I think they're a minority. I wouldn't be surprised if many players, even if they follow the story, have no real knowledge of what happened during that 1000 years.
2. I don't think it stands up to any real kind of scrutiny. That is, I don't believe that such a period of history would ever produce the society we're presented with in Rokugan in the 12th century. We know what extended periods of peace do to a military elite class. A little over two hundred years of peace completely transformed the samurai class in Japan, purging it of most of its military character. Yet in Rokugan the clans still maintained independent, highly trained armies of hundreds of thousands of samurai after generations of them having nothing to do? We also know what happens to feudal societies when a powerful centralized government is established. They stop being feudal.

But really, to tie this back into the purpose of the thread, all of this is a little irrelevant as, even if the society presented during the 1000 Years of Peace had actually been plausible, that society is not something that could serve as a setting for the game. Players want inter-clan wars, so saying "there are no such wars because reasons..." is kind of a non-starter. If FFG wants to include those wars and have a powerful Emperor, they need a different solution.

I have found, through running the RPG a bunch, that the easiest way to excuse / create inter-Clan warfare is a genuinely weak Emperor and a strong, but small Otomo family. The job of the Otomo, after all, is to ensure no one clan or alliance of clans grows powerful enough to threaten the Imperial seat. So, they have to walk a delicate tightrope of actively causing conflicts to spark between Clans, and then allowing the Emperor to step in and make peace through civilized means. This creates the appearance of an unruly kingdom which requires a divine monarch to keep from dissolving into civil war. It falls apart, however, the moment the Emperor has enough gumption to actually want to SOLVE the problems that caused the conflict in the first place, and does so. When an Emperor does this, the Otomo need to manufacture a NEW problem for the Clans to fight over.

Regarding the problem of taxation and armed forces, I actually favor the idea of a fairly spread out bureaucracy principally charged with ensuring tax collection and investigating crimes against Imperials. No standing Imperial Legions, but the Emperor has the authority to command ANY army in his Empire, and can basically call upon the Lion to be his army when the Lion are not one of the parties involved. When they are, the Emperor can call on the Crane. And when it is the Lion and the Crane, he calls on the Crab or Unicorn or Scorpion. This combos with the containment of the conflict by the Otomo to basically put any war into a war on two fronts, which no one wants to fight in a medieval world, especially when both sides feel that they are in the right and the Emperor will side with them once peace is achieved.

This all falls apart when the Clan War starts, however, and there are no Clans with unengaged armies for the Emperor to command.

Interestingly enough, majority of RPG players I've met who didn't participate in CCG (so their exposure to Rokugan was primarly through 1st ED books) didn't want large scale Clan conflicts.