New story, new potential for how to handle the Spider.

Just saying.

41 minutes ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

New story, new potential for how to handle the Spider.

Just saying.

That's the part I look forward to most. If they end up adding Spider, there's a lot you can do with a clan working towards becoming honorable in a society that thinks you are the scum of the earth. I'd much prefer a clan that does everything they can to be honorable rather than one that says, "Well fine. Guess I'll just be the weird evil clan over here then."

I liked the Lost as a more threatening form of Shadowlands. Having their own twisted "Empire" and everything. The whole Spider thing... meh.

Shadowlands should be playable, but spider were a product of a game that evolved over a long time. In the world we've reset to the spider don't make any sense, because the many many variables that led to their creation haven't occurred. FFG would have a write a story dedicated to the creation of the spider at this point, and the way the empire sits under Hantei the 38th its simply not plausible. The emperor wouldn't cow-tow to jigoku by giving evil a clan. Unless Yogo Junzo creates an army of the damned again and has the audacity to call it a 'clan' (unrecognized by the rest) thereby naming it 'spider', but that's a serious stretch IMO.

48 minutes ago, Isawa Enns said:

Shadowlands should be playable, but spider were a product of a game that evolved over a long time. In the world we've reset to the spider don't make any sense, because the many many variables that led to their creation haven't occurred. FFG would have a write a story dedicated to the creation of the spider at this point, and the way the empire sits under Hantei the 38th its simply not plausible. The emperor wouldn't cow-tow to jigoku by giving evil a clan. Unless Yogo Junzo creates an army of the damned again and has the audacity to call it a 'clan' (unrecognized by the rest) thereby naming it 'spider', but that's a serious stretch IMO.

Spider were a product of a game that absolutely needed to solve certain problems created in the game by having the Shadowlands be playable.

And in this game, the rules don't function with playable Shadowlands as they were in the AEG game, because honor and courtliness are baked into basic mechanics. How are you going to start Political conflicts against the Shadowlands as presented by AEG's game, who do not participate in courtliness? How are you going to bid more honor than them in a duel or conflict hand and pay them honor, when their honor is locked at minimum?

You're going to see, if not the Spider, something like the Spider -- the game won't be able to function if they do the Shadowlands in the same way as before.

20 minutes ago, Huitzil37 said:

Spider were a product of a game that absolutely needed to solve certain problems created in the game by having the Shadowlands be playable.

And in this game, the rules don't function with playable Shadowlands as they were in the AEG game, because honor and courtliness are baked into basic mechanics. How are you going to start Political conflicts against the Shadowlands as presented by AEG's game, who do not participate in courtliness? How are you going to bid more honor than them in a duel or conflict hand and pay them honor, when their honor is locked at minimum?

You're going to see, if not the Spider, something like the Spider -- the game won't be able to function if they do the Shadowlands in the same way as before.

Did you forget the Susumu clan? They functioned specifically for that court setting. Guess I have to bring her up again.

Seems the flavor text is more accurate than ever.

Anyways, the general idea was that Spider monks operated in the empire also and could pretty much function in the current setting as well with no real need for change. Just give them a theme about the monk trait, attachments, and ashigaru.

Just now, Kubernes said:

Did you forget the Susumu clan? They functioned specifically for that court setting. Guess I have to bring her up again.

Seems the flavor text is more accurate than ever.

Anyways, the general idea was that Spider monks operated in the empire also and could pretty much function in the current setting as well with no real need for change. Just give them a theme about the monk trait, attachments, and ashigaru.

Yes, the Susumu were part of how AEG tried to make the Spider work and solve the problem presented by playable Shadowlands, why are you acting like this is a counterpoint?

The Susumu were not in Yogo Junzo's Army. The Susumu can't be in Yogo Junzo's Army. If you have the Susumu, what you are doing is "something like the Spider", and not "the original Shadowlands".

Remember they killed the AEG storyline in the facebook video? Do we even know if there's going to be a Yogo Junzo in the new game yet or that the Shadowlands will develop in the same, exact way as it did in the ccg? Maybe we get a slow decay of the empire with part of the shadowlands trying to corrupt from within (essentially the Susumu)?

Maybe we get an Emperor Shoju this time?

27 minutes ago, Kubernes said:

Remember they killed the AEG storyline in the facebook video? Do we even know if there's going to be a Yogo Junzo in the new game yet or that the Shadowlands will develop in the same, exact way as it did in the ccg? Maybe we get a slow decay of the empire with part of the shadowlands trying to corrupt from within (essentially the Susumu)?

Maybe we get an Emperor Shoju this time?

It is entirely possible that they do something like that!

And if they do something like that, what they are doing is "something like the Spider" and not "the original Shadowlands", which was summarized as Yogo Junzo's Army!

29 minutes ago, Kubernes said:

Remember they killed the AEG storyline in the facebook video?

Killed is a bit strong. They did say there would be things brought back in.

It felt more like it's best to not come into this story with your preconceptions of what has happened and wait for the fiction to tell you.

5 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

Killed is a bit strong. They did say there would be things brought back in.

It felt more like it's best to not come into this story with your preconceptions of what has happened and wait for the fiction to tell you.

I guess we'll start finding out what's in and out next week, with the first story article and Hotaru's Crane. Hmmm, The False Hotaru.

11 minutes ago, Kubernes said:

I guess we'll start finding out what's in and out next week, with the first story article and Hotaru's Crane. Hmmm, The False Hotaru.

every Hotaru but Tomoe is a False Hotaru

4 hours ago, Huitzil37 said:

Spider were a product of a game that absolutely needed to solve certain problems created in the game by having the Shadowlands be playable.

And in this game, the rules don't function with playable Shadowlands as they were in the AEG game, because honor and courtliness are baked into basic mechanics. How are you going to start Political conflicts against the Shadowlands as presented by AEG's game, who do not participate in courtliness? How are you going to bid more honor than them in a duel or conflict hand and pay them honor, when their honor is locked at minimum?

You're going to see, if not the Spider, something like the Spider -- the game won't be able to function if they do the Shadowlands in the same way as before.

Yes something like the spider works for me as they'll want any potential Shadowlands faction to be able to work with political conflicts and lose by dishonor, I just don't think they should be called spider, as that grew out of a specific storyline which no-longer exists. I would rather a brand new tainted faction name that reflects the new story, rather than forcing it to be spider. But I suppose we're now dealing with semantics.

On 5/11/2017 at 8:00 PM, Mandalore525 said:

L5R noob here, so sorry if they've already done something like this, but I think it'd be interesting if they added a Shadowlands-aligned faction, and many people KNEW they were Shadowlands-aligned, but no one could prove it.

This is very, very difficult to make work. If "many people" know they're corrupted, then presumably those people have some basis for their belief, i.e. evidence. If they can't parlay that evidence into proof -- under Rokugani justice, which pretty much just requires someone of high enough status and/or honor to say it's so -- they wind up looking like chumps. This isn't like a modern cop drama, where the bad guy walks because the heroes don't have the kind of evidence required by a court or it's been ruled inadmissible because they gathered it the wrong way or failed to jump through the right administrative hoops; all you have to do is win the right duel to prove your point. When many people try to do this over an extended period of time and fail, it reeks of Plot Armor.

12 hours ago, ricefrisbeetreats said:

That's the part I look forward to most. If they end up adding Spider, there's a lot you can do with a clan working towards becoming honorable in a society that thinks you are the scum of the earth. I'd much prefer a clan that does everything they can to be honorable rather than one that says, "Well fine. Guess I'll just be the weird evil clan over here then."

Clan of second chances. I've wanted to see that story for some time.

12 hours ago, Wintersong said:

I liked the Lost as a more threatening form of Shadowlands. Having their own twisted "Empire" and everything. The whole Spider thing... meh.

Yeah, I'm fine with the Lost, i.e. Tainted samurai creating their own parody of the Empire. It's the whole Great Clan business that never worked for me -- and, under the starting premises we were given, never could.

Beyond the initial 7 clans, I could see the following introduced...

1) Shadowlands/"Spider Clan" - The best way to handle this is to first introduce cards that belong to other clan factions, but also have the "Shadowlands" trait. For example, Yogo Junzo would be a Scorpion Clan member with the Shadowlands trait, Kuni Yori would be a Crab Clan card with the Shadowlands trait. Also maho spells, summonable oni and undead in the conflict deck, etc. These cards should be slightly above the curve in terms of raw power, but with cards in the meta that punish one for having the Shadowlands trait. There would also be cards to let one take advantage of the trait for powerful beneficial effects. The explicit understanding should be that if these cards are used to win story prizes, the prize will come tainted. Once you have a few of these kicking around for each clan as well as some shadowlands tainted province cards and so forth, a Stronghold where your clan alliance is "Shadowlands" giving you access to all those Shadowlands personalities from all the clans as well as a few extra cards to support the faction can be released as a set.
This faction that draws all the tainted members from all the various clans by all means can be known as the "The Spider Clan" to give a nod to the old continuity. It should just be understood that they aren't a proper clan so much as an twisted underground alliance of the corrupt members across various clans that must act in secret lest they be discovered and have their plots destroyed. Though, as fundamentally still part of the empire (in at least they benefit from it and wish only to corrupt it to their own twisted ends), they might still side with it without the empire's knowledge against other threats that might seek to destroy it. Also, in this vein, I think the Shadow Ninja ought to be altered so that they are in fact drawing upon Shadowlands taint for their abilities rather than making them something unrelated.

2) Imperial/Ronin/Monk - Whether this is called "The Imperial Legion" or "The Owl Clan" or "_______'s Army" (presumably not Toturi this time), the way to do this faction would be to print a Stronghold where your Clan Allegiance is "neutral human". Of course, since all the neutral cards are printed with worse stats than in-clan cards, something would need to be done to fix that-- probably a simple "All your neutral human cards gain +1 Military and +1 Political" in addition to a stronger ability or stats on the stronghold than you would find on most to make up for the generally weak abilities on these cards, particularly the weaker neutral conflict cards. There would probably need to be a few cards printed beyond the stronghold to support the faction, but in general the vast majority of this faction's cards will just be the neutral cards that will likely be found in every set.
As for what this faction represents-- if the Hantei falls again in this timeline, this could be a faction of the Imperial Familiy members supported by the Brotherhood and using Ronin forces to square off against the clans attempting to usurp their power and position... Or if the Hantei remain, it could simply represent the forces directly answering to the Emperor himself.

3) Mantis - People like Mantis, there are enough people clamoring for the Mantis and they have been a part of the game for about as long as all the other 7 Great Clans were. So... yeah, they should be introduced eventually... once the other factions have a decently wide base of cards to draw from. The problem with the Mantis as a faction as opposed to the above two is that they would need to be printed AS a faction, which means they would need as many cards as every other faction gets in the base set as well as every expansion and these cards will not be usable by other clans for the most part. So while other clans can use the Shadowlands cards with their faction or that are neutral and they will be able to use the inherently neutral ronin, monk & imperial cards, the Mantis Cards will be nearly useless to players of any other faction. That makes them the most difficult of these three options to implement even if they are the most demanded.

I really don't see any good coming from having a bunch of non-human factions. I think, as much as I enjoyed playing them, we could do without the goblins, ogres, trolls and so on in the Shadowlands faction-- rather keep the Shadowlands faction focused on Bloodspeakers, Ninja, Berserkers and corrupted monks.

6 hours ago, Kinzen said:

Clan of second chances. I've wanted to see that story for some time.

My problem with "Clan of second chances" is that it kind of locks them out of doing the thing that the story needs them to be doing. They do still need to perform the story role of the Shadowlands / the Shadowlands' duly appointed representative.

My ideal Spider Clan is where "there are secrets Man was not meant to know that shatter the minds of the weak-willed" intersects with "everything that can be destroyed by the truth deserves to be." You know how the Scorpion think that Loyalty is the only part of Bushido that matters? For the Spider, it's Honesty. They are the foes of the Empire but are still a Clan as recognition that this conflict is one that will follow rules, and they still do things that serve the Empire in the meantime because, to them, it's the right thing to do. They have a deeply held sense of right and wrong that rarely ever intersects with the rest of Rokugan's, but sometimes intersects with OURS in places that Rokugan's doesn't. Let's give the whole "Kitsuki method" thing to them, and where everyone else is happy to let testimony decide cases in a way that minimizes disruption, here come the Spider magistrates dragging out ugly and unpleasant truths and coming up with results that aren't designed to make everything proceed smoothly. Yes, they do all that while summoning oni and bloodspeaking. They see no contradiction in these things.

Well, no, my ideal Spider would have been a Clan from the beginning, in a version of Clans that were shaped by their history and the kinds of people who first followed their founding kami instead of a command to perform a given task, and instead of Taint it would be Impurity and it would be an inescapable part of existing as a mortal and the Spider would be made of the outcast and reviled people who were too close to Impurity and shunned for it, and in embracing and gaining power from it they actually don't lose anything of their identity. Also Shinjo leaves but doesn't take her entire Clan with her, the Empire shatters to pieces after the fall of Hantei and is reconquered into a whole by a Nobunaga figure in the Lion, the Phoenix and Dragon are folded into a single Clan, the Scorpion are more blatantly the yakuza, and the Mantis are more blatantly the Okinawans and Osakans and were their own functional independent group that negotiated entry into the Empire as equals by leveraging their economic power. But every time I try to type that whole thing up, it takes me multiple days of off-and-on writing and eventually my computer reboots to install an update and I lose everything. Would anyone care if I made a thread about that?

@TheHobgoblyn

That was a well written post. Very constructive.

And please, add an avatar when you can. It would make it easier to follow one's postings.

11 hours ago, Huitzil37 said:

My problem with "Clan of second chances" is that it kind of locks them out of doing the thing that the story needs them to be doing. They do still need to perform the story role of the Shadowlands / the Shadowlands' duly appointed representative.

I don't think they need to be filling that role -- the Shadowlands themselves can still be in their usual story role. It's just that if we're going to have a clan with Shadowlands ties worked into the fabric of the Empire, the only way I can really get behind it is if they represent the possibility of redemption for even the most irredeemable. That provides a legitimate reason for them to be given at least grudging acceptance by the other clans. But just because one small group of people has clawed their way back from beyond the brink doesn't mean the brink isn't still there, with a whole host of monsters on the wrong side of it. You just have two solutions to Shadowlands problems now: 1) kill them and 2) try to redeem them, at insane risk.

11 hours ago, Huitzil37 said:

Let's give the whole "Kitsuki method" thing to them, and where everyone else is happy to let testimony decide cases in a way that minimizes disruption, here come the Spider magistrates dragging out ugly and unpleasant truths and coming up with results that aren't designed to make everything proceed smoothly. Yes, they do all that while summoning oni and bloodspeaking. They see no contradiction in these things.

Yyyyyeah . . . it doesn't really matter if they think their position makes sense. The rest of the Empire is gonna disagree, hard.

11 hours ago, Huitzil37 said:

Well, no, my ideal Spider would have been a Clan from the beginning, in a version of Clans that were shaped by their history and the kinds of people who first followed their founding kami instead of a command to perform a given task, and instead of Taint it would be Impurity and it would be an inescapable part of existing as a mortal and the Spider would be made of the outcast and reviled people who were too close to Impurity and shunned for it, and in embracing and gaining power from it they actually don't lose anything of their identity. Also Shinjo leaves but doesn't take her entire Clan with her, the Empire shatters to pieces after the fall of Hantei and is reconquered into a whole by a Nobunaga figure in the Lion, the Phoenix and Dragon are folded into a single Clan, the Scorpion are more blatantly the yakuza, and the Mantis are more blatantly the Okinawans and Osakans and were their own functional independent group that negotiated entry into the Empire as equals by leveraging their economic power.

Eheheheh. If we're redesigning the entire concept of the Empire from the ground up, then all kinds of possibilities come into play . . . .

21 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

Eheheheh. If we're redesigning the entire concept of the Empire from the ground up, then all kinds of possibilities come into play . . . .

Not to mention that if we want to include the Spider Clan from the beginning, then we will get a very different Spider Clan after going through all the necessary steps. For example, Daigotsu is basically out of the picture, and replaced with Mutsuhito (Fu Leng's first human follower) who is a spear-chucking marauder rather than a sorcerer mastermind.

On 5/12/2017 at 8:33 PM, Huitzil37 said:

every Hotaru but Tomoe is a False Hotaru

You saw the opportunity, and you seized it!

2 hours ago, Kinzen said:

Eheheheh. If we're redesigning the entire concept of the Empire from the ground up, then all kinds of possibilities come into play . . . .

Maybe Ryoshun gets his own Clan this time. Even if it is not a Great one to start with. Maybe a monk order.

43 minutes ago, Builder2 said:

You saw the opportunity, and you seized it!

It would be neat if the creation fable weren't lifted from Greek (i.e. Western) mythology this time around. That's always bothered me somewhat.

5 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

Not to mention that if we want to include the Spider Clan from the beginning, then we will get a very different Spider Clan after going through all the necessary steps. For example, Daigotsu is basically out of the picture, and replaced with Mutsuhito (Fu Leng's first human follower) who is a spear-chucking marauder rather than a sorcerer mastermind.

Mutsuhito might not even be the first follower of Fu Leng.

6 hours ago, Kinzen said:

I don't think they need to be filling that role -- the Shadowlands themselves can still be in their usual story role. It's just that if we're going to have a clan with Shadowlands ties worked into the fabric of the Empire, the only way I can really get behind it is if they represent the possibility of redemption for even the most irredeemable. That provides a legitimate reason for them to be given at least grudging acceptance by the other clans. But just because one small group of people has clawed their way back from beyond the brink doesn't mean the brink isn't still there, with a whole host of monsters on the wrong side of it. You just have two solutions to Shadowlands problems now: 1) kill them and 2) try to redeem them, at insane risk.

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. So either you come up with a way to have "Shadowlands, but still has honor and participates in courtliness" -- which is going to be some take on the Spider clan -- or you have a faction that makes major parts of the game stop functioning when you play as or against them, 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.

The first option is WAY better than the other two.

6 hours ago, Kinzen said:

Yyyyyeah . . . it doesn't really matter if they think their position makes sense. The rest of the Empire is gonna disagree, hard.

Unless you put in the work to make it work. Which you have to do anyway. It's a reboot now, and the slate is (relatively speaking) clear. It's much easier to make a believable story where the Spider are accepted as a Clan without all the baggage and cruft accumulated over years and years of "everyone all teams up to fight the Shadowlands every single time" making that central to everyone's identity.

"Emperor says we gotta treat the Spider as a clan" is already a point in favor, when that doesn't represent a huge reversal of the Empire's stance. Especially when that treatment is "Clan that we are at war with instead of a non-Clan entity that we are at war with", as that allows you to hit the "Spider being a Clan is a recognition of the fact that both sides of this conflict are going to play by agreed-upon rules." Given the option between "someone controls Jigoku and is trying to kill us with it in a way bound by rules, in exchange for us agreeing to follow rules with them as well" or "nobody is in control of Jigoku, it doesn't follow rules, and it never stops puking out oni" then of course the first option is superior. Making the Spider painfully, brutally honest then allows them to have non-hostile interactions with others because dealing with them does not require the other party to be a dupe and appear stupid. When it is known they lay out everything about the deal in advance, it is then plausible for characters to say "I made this deal with the enemy because I was able to look over all the conditions, all of them are bounded and finite, and I'm confident I can use what I get to create more benefit to us than they can take away." And we can believe that character's assessment, and it can turn out to be accurate some of the time.

Also, having Fu Leng-worshippers and oni-summoners permitted to sit down and sip tea with the Crane is hugely beneficial to the mood and theme of "samurai drama". Because on top of allowing the evil monsters to exist within the samurai drama context instead of separate from and undermining it, "these guys worship evil and summon monsters but we play nice with them because they Follow The Rules" hammers on that note of "doing the right thing and doing what society tells you to do are in direct opposition" which is core to the concept of "samurai drama".

6 hours ago, Kinzen said:

Eheheheh. If we're redesigning the entire concept of the Empire from the ground up, then all kinds of possibilities come into play . . . .

Which is why I really wish FFG had done that, instead of going with "very recognizably like the state of things at the start of the Clan War, but going in a different direction". There were some serious storytelling problems baked into the fundamental construction of the Empire, and more things that weren't per se "problems" but were sub-optimal. This was their one and only chance to build the entire setting in order to make it good at doing what it's going to be doing, and they don't appear to have taken it very far. I guess there can be more things that they can say "oh yeah, this event in the past / this way the Empire is structured is totally different than the AEG version, it just wasn't relevant to bring up until now", but we'll see how far they can take that.

Should I, or someone, make a thread about how you would rebuild the Empire from the ground up?

1 hour ago, Huitzil37 said:

Which is why I really wish FFG had done that, instead of going with "very recognizably like the state of things at the start of the Clan War, but going in a different direction". There were some serious storytelling problems baked into the fundamental construction of the Empire, and more things that weren't per se "problems" but were sub-optimal. This was their one and only chance to build the entire setting in order to make it good at doing what it's going to be doing, and they don't appear to have taken it very far. I guess there can be more things that they can say "oh yeah, this event in the past / this way the Empire is structured is totally different than the AEG version, it just wasn't relevant to bring up until now", but we'll see how far they can take that.

You don't know anything about how this version of Rokugan's history, so you're jumping the gun on saying FFG hasn't tried to change things. Perhaps wait till we see any lore before excusing FFG not trying to change things.