8 hours ago, Huitzil37 said:

But the Shadowlands themselves can't be in their usual story role. Because the Shadowlands don't have honor and don't participate in courtliness, which are both now fundamental to how the game works.

You're conflating the story and the game. You could absolutely have a Spider game faction that is "redeeming the irredeemable" and a Shadowlands story faction that is "we are villains, the end."

I honestly don't get the common opinion that the Shadowlands needs to be a playable faction in the card game. In fact, I think making them playable is detrimental to the story: to work as a game faction, they have to be treated as protagonists, on an equal footing with any other protagonist faction. But that doesn't work from two directions. Because they don't follow the same rules as all the other factions, they need special rules of their own, which creates a host of design problems and makes them not very good protagonists. And because they have to be on par with the other protagonist factions, they lose a great deal of their mystique, leaving you wondering why the Empire hasn't just gotten its act together and curb-stomped them once and for all -- which makes them not very good villains, either.

And that's why I can only really get behind a playable ex-Shadowlands faction. The actual pro-Shadowlands "yay maho/oni/Taint/Jigoku" forces should stay in the hands of the Story Team, the same way that RPG villains are in the hands of the GM. The game is already well-supplied with protagonists who have competing agendas; straight-up antagonists are a different matter, and benefit from being handled differently.

9 hours ago, Huitzil37 said:

or you have the Destroyer War problem where "the antagonist can't really be modeled in the rules of the game we have" was 'solved' by not having the antagonist be playable.

It might be worth noting that Katrina Ostrander (the FFG fiction lead) indicated during the FFG live stream that the initial story for the game is going to be focused on inter-clan conflict, and not on a Big Bad. If the Shadowlands exists, but is (for example) basically something that only the Crab ever deal with, then there's no problem at all not having them be playable in any way.

IMO, the problem isn't making Spider palatable to the other players, it's making Spider palatable to the other players while still recognizably Spider and something the Spider players would bother with. A bunch of penitents working to redeem themselves and their fallen god makes for a compelling faction, but it's not what the Spider players signed on for.

Want to do something with the Shadowlands that mixes in with the basic game (what we've seen thus far), you spilt the faction into two halves: the first is the classic shadowlands hordes of publicly corrupted individuals, oni, and the usual suspects that focuses on the military side. Maybe the theme is both bruisers with oni, swarm with goblins/undead, and corrupted dudes filling out niche roles.

The other side is the "corrupting" court, which uses the honor system to get what it needs. It could be based on the Imperial capital and individual courtiers. Yes, I know that they are not "honorable" to those who only consider that you have to follow an incredibly very strict guide line that cannot be deviated in any way. Of course, that is a fallacy, because of a faction like the Scorpion or Spider who can be "dishonorable" but still fit perfectly into the structure. This side would be the open element.

The point is that idea of using the existing system of Honor to push the ideals or agenda of the faction. You know, exactly like how the Susumu clan was operating. What's more is that if the story line remains somewhat similar with the Emperor being killed off and his son slowly becoming possessed, you can add in other corrupted or tempted courtiers who can work in the Emperor's name. We all know the Emperor's word is very powerful to the clans and that can work perfectly in the LCG as a form of disruption. Think of it as the closed element of the faction.

You can also just think of a Shadowlands player losing to dishonor as the opposing player was able to successfully gather the other clans and uncover the Shadowlands plot. Winning by Honor just meant the Shadowlands player was successful in its ideal of the Imperial structure or the disruption of the opposing player's clan. If the Shadowlands player wins by conquest, then you have what you always had since the days of olde.

54 minutes ago, SirEuain said:

IMO, the problem isn't making Spider palatable to the other players, it's making Spider palatable to the other players while still recognizably Spider and something the Spider players would bother with. A bunch of penitents working to redeem themselves and their fallen god makes for a compelling faction, but it's not what the Spider players signed on for.

I 100% want that.

Edit: I am also 5000 people. FFG, do what Kinzen said for some sweet $$$.

3 hours ago, Kinzen said:

I honestly don't get the common opinion that the Shadowlands needs to be a playable faction in the card game.

Because the Destroyer War did what you suggest, and was terrible for doing so.

And I really, really, really doubt that the Story Team has the self-control to keep the Shadowlands as something that only the Crab ever fight. That well is just too tempting not to draw from; there's a reason multiple Story Teams under AEG kept doing it and it's not "because bad, insulting things are true of them". So instead of saying "We don't NEED to worry about how to make this work because we're totally immune to temptation and will never change our minds", figure out how to make it work because you know that you are eventually going to go there.

34 minutes ago, Huitzil37 said:

And I really, really, really doubt that the Story Team has the self-control to keep the Shadowlands as something that only the Crab ever fight. That well is just too tempting not to draw from;

Do you know the new Story Team personally?

If not, how do you know that?

I, for instance, can easily imagine decades worth of stories in which Shadowlands factions are never playable by players.

Just now, Gaffa said:

Do you know the new Story Team personally?

If not, how do you know that?

I, for instance, can easily imagine decades worth of stories in which Shadowlands factions are never playable by players.

Did you read the rest of the sentence you just quoted?

I never got deep into Old5R. I was primarily dissuaded by problems with the game mechanics, but, honestly, nonsensical story elements - like the inclusion of the Spider Clan as a great clan - also were a deterrent. I hope the new story team possesses the wisdom to ignore loud voices in favor of doing what's best for building a rich setting.

That being said, it's certainly possible to add the Spider to the setting in a rational way. However, I don't see them as a faction in the card game as they don't follow the tenets of Bushido. If the Spider do show up, I hope that they keep their home base in the Shadowlands and do not try to integrate with the Empire - but rather serve as a military threat. Heck, they could even set up their own faux "Empire" in the Shadowlands, as a mockery of Rokugani culture. You'd then have two empires clashing... and that's fertile grounds on which to build "Legend of the Five Rings: The Board Game".

44 minutes ago, Mr Omura said:

I hope the new story team possesses the wisdom to ignore loud voices in favor of doing what's best for building a rich setting.

This is the view of the great majority of us older players. (I shouldn't include myself in the "us" because I hadn't kept up with every edition anywhere near as some have)

44 minutes ago, Mr Omura said:

.....

If the Spider do show up, I hope that they keep their home base in the Shadowlands and do not try to integrate with the Empire - but rather serve as a military threat. Heck, they could even set up their own faux "Empire" in the Shadowlands, as a mockery of Rokugani culture. You'd then have two empires clashing... and that's fertile grounds on which to build "Legend of the Five Rings: The Board Game".

Fall 2019.

6 hours ago, Kinzen said:

You're conflating the story and the game. You could absolutely have a Spider game faction that is "redeeming the irredeemable" and a Shadowlands story faction that is "we are villains, the end."

I honestly don't get the common opinion that the Shadowlands needs to be a playable faction in the card game. In fact, I think making them playable is detrimental to the story: to work as a game faction, they have to be treated as protagonists, on an equal footing with any other protagonist faction. But that doesn't work from two directions. Because they don't follow the same rules as all the other factions, they need special rules of their own, which creates a host of design problems and makes them not very good protagonists. And because they have to be on par with the other protagonist factions, they lose a great deal of their mystique, leaving you wondering why the Empire hasn't just gotten its act together and curb-stomped them once and for all -- which makes them not very good villains, either.

And that's why I can only really get behind a playable ex-Shadowlands faction. The actual pro-Shadowlands "yay maho/oni/Taint/Jigoku" forces should stay in the hands of the Story Team, the same way that RPG villains are in the hands of the GM. The game is already well-supplied with protagonists who have competing agendas; straight-up antagonists are a different matter, and benefit from being handled differently.

The issue is if you are going to have something interesting and cool exist within your world, why exactly are the people playing the game about the world forbidden from utilizing in any form?

As I wrote above-- it need not be introduced as a faction. But the ability to harness Jigoku for a short-term power boost with the flaw that it makes it really easy to expose and dishonor you or that as powerful as these things are, they have some glaring weaknesses that can be exploited. It gives the player the option of "I am going to try to win at any cost" and that cost can be real and if used in storyline tournaments, can be long-lasting and widespread. It can lead to the scenario of "you won, but was it really worth it?"

That was a major part of early L5R and a part that should be brought back. The issue was when the Shadowlands faction was introduced, it effectively gave the ability to the player to really abuse those shadowlands cards without one of the two major drawbacks (you couldn't lose through honor loss and thus the honor loss on those cards had no effect on you). At that point the faction became way too powerful unless the opponent was running a "blow up all Shadowlands cards" card which well... it was too powerful of an effect for a single card, but was necessary in order to stop the Shadowlands deck from just steamrolling everyone.

The idea of the "Spider clan" as a "we can break all the rules without regard" or worse the "we do all the evil things but are all also the greatest, bestest heroes and therefore every single storyline should entirely revolve around us and proving how perfect and invincible we are, how utterly **** all other clans are in comparison as the all fall on their face to stry to stop us or bow down and serve us and how none of our actions should ever have consequences" was beyond crap. The idea of a "Shadowlands faction that totally isn't shadowlands but is actually good guys despite their abuse of shadowlands taint" or, worse, that there should be two distinct shadowlands factions is a load of garbage. It also entirely destroyed the entire POINT of the shadowlands taint which I noted above-- it is no longer tempting for other clans to put Shadowlands cards into their deck when the Shadowlands cards are no better than their own clan cards and cost more.

So it is best to first and foremost to first establish Shadowlands taint as a temptation for other clans. Something they can use to bludgeon their opponent into oblivion, but can entirely blow up in their face, particularly if abused. A few Shadowland tainted personalities in each faction, some Shadowlands regions, some Shadowlands attachments and other conflict cards. All of which ought to come with honor losses (maybe the personalities come in dishonored) but help you win military & political conflicts as well as subvert fate, particularly when it seems you have lost.

Only once the mechanic of this is established into the game, THEN you can introduce a faction of an alliance between the tainted personalities of all the various clans forming an underground, dastardly, villainous alliance to subvert and corrupt the empire in the name of Fu Leng. But they would still be subject to the same honor loss and dishonor mechanic as any other faction, so they don't get to just ignore the drawbacks of the Shadowlands cards and they can be "uncovered" and thus lose by dishonor by other factions. It would just be that they would get to be able to field all the various Shadowlands personalities and no doubt use powerful combinations of their abilities to achieve powerful effects. Fundamentally, a player of this faction is going to have to rely on low card draw or build in some sort of honor gainining mechanics to their deck to try to counteract the fact that they will be losing a lot of honor if they do not act carefully. They would have a particular poor match-up against Dishonor decks, but maybe that is fine... the Scorpion would actually be living up to their stated purpose if they are particularly good at uncovering evil organizations as opposed to those evil organizations being immune to them. Then again, maybe some of the Shadowlands tactics will be particularly potent against the Scorpion in return.

Still, if there are villains in the game and the story is determined by tournament results, those villains ought to be playable by the players. Otherwise the villains become uninteresting, nondynamic punching bags and the only question ever at stake is "which clan gets to claim the kill on the helpless, strawman villain".

3 hours ago, Huitzil37 said:

Did you read the rest of the sentence you just quoted?

Yes, I did. It didn't answer my question, which is why I asked it.

Do you know the writing team personally? If not, how do you know what story beats will tempt them or not?

3 hours ago, Mr Omura said:

However, I don't see them as a faction in the card game as they don't follow the tenets of Bushido.

Well, you gotta admit, a very few Great Clans actually do this for real. And Shourido is just a lopsided Bushido, it doesn't actually have much other than a great deal of special snowflake value.

Go Turtle!

14 hours ago, Huitzil37 said:

Because the Destroyer War did what you suggest, and was terrible for doing so.

??? I'll admit all my knowledge of the Destroyer War is post-facto, but I have never heard a whisper of a suggestion that anywhere in there, the Spider Clan became an ex-Shadowlands faction. In fact, a vast percentage of the problem with them narratively was the way they sat directly on top of the fence between "yay Shadowlands" and "part of the Empire." That's very different from being admitted to the Empire after they renounce Jigoku and all its workings and dedicate themselves to redemption. And since my understanding is also that the Shadowlands in some form were a playable faction long before the Destroyer War, either I misunderstood something along the way (in which case please do clear things up), or at no point did the story and game structure do what I'm actually suggesting.

11 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

The issue is if you are going to have something interesting and cool exist within your world, why exactly are the people playing the game about the world forbidden from utilizing in any form?

Huh? There are a bazillion things within any RPG game world that are interesting and cool and not for my players to use -- like, for example, a huge chunk of the antagonist sphere. This is not a radical concept. And while I know that card games are not the same as RPGs, I don't see why this point is inherently different. I've seen people mentioning AGOT for comparison; I don't think the White Walkers are meant for player use there, are they?

11 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

As I wrote above-- it need not be introduced as a faction.

I am not at all against the idea of Shadowlands keywords etc, because yes: the idea that Jigoku's influence can corrupt from within is exactly in line with the setting. But I was addressing the repeated calls for a faction, a themed set of cards equivalent to a Great Clan. That's the approach I feel weakens the story and the game both.

11 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

Still, if there are villains in the game and the story is determined by tournament results, those villains ought to be playable by the players. Otherwise the villains become uninteresting, nondynamic punching bags and the only question ever at stake is "which clan gets to claim the kill on the helpless, strawman villain".

Which is why no RPG ever had interesting, dynamic villains!

. . . wait, no. Turns out you can in fact have an excellent, player-influenced story, while still keeping some elements of it wholly out of player control. I frankly trust the Story Team's ability to make the villains interesting more than I trust AEG's "let the players take the wheel" approach. Tournament results can have meaningful effects without ceding that much control over the story.

13 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

??? I'll admit all my knowledge of the Destroyer War is post-facto, but I have never heard a whisper of a suggestion that anywhere in there, the Spider Clan became an ex-Shadowlands faction. In fact, a vast percentage of the problem with them narratively was the way they sat directly on top of the fence between "yay Shadowlands" and "part of the Empire." That's very different from being admitted to the Empire after they renounce Jigoku and all its workings and dedicate themselves to redemption. And since my understanding is also that the Shadowlands in some form were a playable faction long before the Destroyer War, either I misunderstood something along the way (in which case please do clear things up), or at no point did the story and game structure do what I'm actually suggesting.

The antagonists in the Destroyer War weren't the Spider, it was Kali-Ma (the eponymous destroyer) and her hordes.

One of the perceived shortcomings of the presentation of the war in the CCG is that they never made cards out of any of the destroyers, even though most of the plot of the game for 2.5 years was fighting Kali-Ma's hordes.

1 minute ago, Kinzen said:

Which is why no RPG ever had interesting, dynamic villains!

. . . wait, no. Turns out you can in fact have an excellent, player-influenced story, while still keeping some elements of it wholly out of player control. I frankly trust the Story Team's ability to make the villains interesting more than I trust AEG's "let the players take the wheel" approach. Tournament results can have meaningful effects without ceding that much control over the story.

Umm.. hmm...

You.. don't... grasp the concept of the difference between an RPG and a card game?...

Okay, let's walk through this slowly.

In an RPG you generally have either a group of people playing individual characters or a single player controlling a party.

These PCs are in constant interaction with another party named the DM. Constant interaction. As in the players do something, the DM responds.

Now, the DM controls many characters, chiefly among these for this example is the villain. Which means when the PCs engage with the villain and use the mechanics of the RPG system to engage with the villain, that is what the game is about. The player does something, the villain responds, the villain does something, the PC directly responds. The conflict at hand is about whether the player or the villain will win.

Now, let's examine how things work in a card game.

You have two players. No DM. There is no DM in a card game. Please say that out loud to yourself because I take it from your post that you don't quite grasp that concept.

There. Is. No. DM. In. A. Card. Game.

Got it? Are you sure? Let's be clear. One more time. There. Is. No. DM. In. A. Card. Game.

The interaction in the card game is between two players. Player A and Player B. If Player A is the hero and Player B is the villain, you get an epic clash between a hero and a villain, good vs. evil. If Player A represents an civilization and Player B represents a different civilization with competing interests, you have an epic clash between two civilizations for survival.

Now, let us say there is a villain.

Player A does not represent this villain. Neither does Player B. Nor Player C. Nor Player D. Nor Player E.

No player controls this villain. At no point is there ever actual direct interaction between the player and this villain. Nothing about how the mechanics of the game work out involve the struggle between the hero and this villain. The villain is entirely off the board-- the PCs effectively never interact with this villain, never struggle with this villain, never is anything about their relationship with the villain defined by the actual play of the game.

So how would this work? Well, it looks like the players are fighting over who gets to stop the villain.

So you have the writer come in here, write a bunch of stuff about the villain.. none of any of it has actual input or interaction with the player. At that point the prize is offered up "who gets to kill the villain". You see, before turn 1 of any game is played, it is determined that the villain will die. It is determined that the players will succeed regardless of how well or how poorly they play. It is already determined exactly how successful the villain will be before being stopped and just how much harm the hero will prevent. There will be no interaction between the hero and villain, certainly not within the mechanics of the game, and the villain will not be represented anywhere on the board.

So player A and player B just end up playing the game to determine which character's name gets slipped into that hero slot with absolutely nothing else about the struggle being determined by the outcome of the games at all.

Moreover, since no matter how well or how poorly the player plays, if the villain escapes or the villain succeeds to a certain degree or the hero actually just flat out fails... naturally it will feel like cheating the winner of the tournament rather than a fair surprise or twist. In fact, if one story tournament to defeat the villain results in a far less favorable situation than another tournament to defeat the villain, it will just come across as the story team blatantly favoring one faction over another... even if both results were already entirely predetermined regardless of who won those tournaments.

You see-- the term "dynamic" that cannot be applied to a villain who is not interactive in any way. Who is not in any way, shape or form represented or incorporated into the game, but rather instead acts as something outside it entirely. It is precisely like having a villain who appears only in cut scenes throughout the game and when it comes to the big epic end of the game... you do a PvP match and then at the end, if you won, you just see your character fight the villain in the cut-scene and at no time do you, through the mechanics of the game system you are playing, at all interact with this villain. It is just a cut scene that you have nothing to do with. Maybe you "won" the scene by playing through that far, but ask any gamer who had a game end like that and they will tell you they felt cheated and that the actual battle against the villain should have been in the player's hands using the mechanics of the game.

You can try to make it interesting-- but dynamic? If it is not and will never be represented on the table as a part of the game, the term "dynamic" cannot remotely be applied. And, frankly, you are basically guaranteed that the character will fail at being interesting as everyone will be turned off the simple fact that this character is not dynamic.

Now, look... maybe there would be a complicated, expensive and well... risky.. way around this. Which would be... if there were a special deck for the head judge of the tournament to play the final, final round against the winner of the tournament and that deck contained powerful cards (broken even) made exclusively for that special judge's deck. That way there would be a final interactive battle between the winner of the tournament and the head judge representing the grand villain.

But that is the only way to dodge around allowing the player to represent the forces of the villain without making the villain into an empty uninteresting, undyanmic punching bag whose defeat is already certain from the moment the tournament is announced and all that is left is to determine which hero clobbers the defenseless dummy.

I'm not convinced that the fact the Destroyers were not playable was a major factor in the weakness of the Destroyer War story arc.

The fact that a lot of the stories focused on that awful awful (repetition intended) gempukku gang or that there were almost no character on the Destroyers' side that had any charisma or personality in the stories were far worse to me.

Chosai and Iuchi Yue really? They didn't have anything lamer as villains? The Rakshasa general didn't even have a name... They used a lot of cool material from other countries that a lot of people have been really eager to see (Yodotai, Ashalan, Rakshasa, etc...) and they wasted them with subpar use and storytelling.

Moreover, it came just after a mega-event that was mostly very well-received, so it seemed very flat in comparison.

Seriously, I'm not sure it would have made any differences had they been playable. They were so lame nobody would have played them anyway.

40 minutes ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

Now, let's examine how things work in a card game.

You have two players. No DM. There is no DM in a card game. Please say that out loud to yourself because I take it from your post that you don't quite grasp that concept.

There. Is. No. DM. In. A. Card. Game.

Got it? Are you sure? Let's be clear. One more time. There. Is. No. DM. In. A. Card. Game.

The interaction in the card game is between two players. Player A and Player B. If Player A is the hero and Player B is the villain, you get an epic clash between a hero and a villain, good vs. evil. If Player A represents an civilization and Player B represents a different civilization with competing interests, you have an epic clash between two civilizations for survival.

Now, let us say there is a villain.

Player A does not represent this villain. Neither does Player B. Nor Player C. Nor Player D. Nor Player E.

No player controls this villain. At no point is there ever actual direct interaction between the player and this villain. Nothing about how the mechanics of the game work out involve the struggle between the hero and this villain. The villain is entirely off the board-- the PCs effectively never interact with this villain, never struggle with this villain, never is anything about their relationship with the villain defined by the actual play of the game.

I think Kinzen's point was the story team acts as the GM. Which they always have all along, in regards to the ongoing plot.

Also, just because there isn't a villain faction it doesn't mean you can't play villains. For example, if you have X number of shadowlands cards in your deck, you count as a villain. In other storylines Kolat cards could fill that role, etc.

This also solves the 7 vs 1 problem that otherwise comes up with a villain faction, because you can turn any faction into a villain "faction", and identifying the good guys isn't as easy as looking at their mon. Plus, it helps represent the temptation of corruption, as long as there are villain cards that are good.

P.S. you might want to turn the smug condescension down a notch. You're really not doing yourself any favors with it.

1 hour ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

Umm.. hmm...

You.. don't... grasp the concept of the difference between an RPG and a card game?...

Nothing in your overly long and smug response actually answered the questions posed to you, in particular why you insist " if there are villains in the game and the story is determined by tournament results, those villains ought to be playable by the players. "

Why? What's gained by that? Why must the FFG story and development teams follow your requirements for interactive storytelling, and not their own?

Not everything needs to be about a villain. We can get some slice-of-life clan vs clan because politics/honor for the first season, ending it with some shocking tainted* reveal as cliffhanger, hyping us for the second season. FFG can meanwhile take input from the playerbase to influence some stuff, probably from season 2 onwards, while keeping control over the whole thing.

Certain individuals of certain clans becoming villiains of other factions is a good collateral though.

*maybe

14 minutes ago, Gaffa said:

Nothing in your overly long and smug response actually answered the questions posed to you, in particular why you insist " if there are villains in the game and the story is determined by tournament results, those villains ought to be playable by the players. "

Why? What's gained by that? Why must the FFG story and development teams follow your requirements for interactive storytelling, and not their own?

Another question, What if the tournament to determine the story the villain faction doesn't have any players make it far? Do you force one of the two finalists to play a "villain" deck? Is that fair or dynamic to the players or even the villain of your story?

This doesn't seem that far fetched to me. Let's even say one of the seven clans is the villain. That's still low odds on that villain being represented in the final conflict of the tournament, or even the final rounds.

Or what happens when the reverse occurs, two villain decks reach the final confrontation?

I don't think a villain deck is bad, but it isn't needed either.

(Apologies for piggy-backing off your post, It just brought these thoughts to mind.)

9 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

(Apologies for piggy-backing off your post, It just brought these thoughts to mind.)

No problems, they seem to be fair questions.

24 minutes ago, Wintersong said:

Not everything needs to be about a villain. We can get some slice-of-life clan vs clan because politics/honor for the first season, ending it with some shocking tainted* reveal as cliffhanger, hyping us for the second season. FFG can meanwhile take input from the playerbase to influence some stuff, probably from season 2 onwards, while keeping control over the whole thing.

I could get behind some more gray vs. gray storylines, too. The Spirit Wars, for instance, would have been a lot more interesting to me if the Hantei that came back was morally complex, rather than obviously evil. It would have given the CCG players a legitimate choice on who to support, and would have made for a more nuanced RPG setting as well.

31 minutes ago, Wintersong said:

Certain individuals of certain clans becoming villiains of other factions is a good collateral though.

Well, it did happen occasionally. Matsu Gohei was always a better Crane villain than he was a Lion hero. But I agree that that sort of thing could have been done a lot more.

13 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

The idea of the "Spider clan" as a "we can break all the rules without regard" or worse the "we do all the evil things but are all also the greatest, bestest heroes and therefore every single storyline should entirely revolve around us and proving how perfect and invincible we are, how utterly **** all other clans are in comparison as the all fall on their face to stry to stop us or bow down and serve us and how none of our actions should ever have consequences" was beyond crap.

You are misconstruing a fair amount of stuff. The Spider focused story during Celestial Edition/the Destroyer War was the result of getting the loser's reward during Samurai/Race for the Throne which was a Redemption or Destruction arc. If things had been slightly different it would have been Dragon (if Scorpion won) or Mantis (if the final Spirit totals were slightly different) "pandering" during Celestial. From what I can tell Onyx was the result of an attempt to return L5R back to Shadowlands vs the Empire for the 30th anniversary.

Something that needs to be considered also was that there were 2+ factions in the Spider player base: old school Oni/Goblin Horde players and new school "Dark Samurai" Spider players. The Path votes even showed this split with 41% Embrace the Darkness, 34% Shourido Above All and 25% Walk in the Light.