I went through the fiction again and I'm wonder who exactly is Hotaru's husband?

1 minute ago, Kubernes said:

I went through the fiction again and I'm wonder who exactly is Hotaru's husband?

I'm wondering if they didn't name him so a story prize could decide from what clan her husband is from. Obviously it was for political reasons and not love.

9 minutes ago, HirumaShigure said:

I'm wondering if they didn't name him so a story prize could decide from what clan her husband is from. Obviously it was for political reasons and not love.

Wouldn't that be the vast majority of samurai marriages in the Empire? Yeah, some of those become marriages based on love, but duty comes first.

True, but duty often times turns into respect and loyalty, then love.

True, but duty often times turns into respect and loyalty, then love. In the old fiction there were some very touching relationships that started out as simply political marriages. One I can think of off the top of my head was Doji Domotai and her Lion Husband. Another mentioned in another post was Hida O-Ushi and Hida (Shinjo) Yasamura. Anybody else out there think of any?

2 hours ago, RandomJC said:

Tuna, ****.

And Unicorn! At least we're honest about it.

Oops, I forgot about Unicorn.

I remember Dragon mountain tuna because I have started a new RPG game a few weeks ago and the peasant owners of the tea house in Dragon lands that is the site of the murder mystery still haven't worked out whether they should offer the Crane and Scorpion any meanwhile the Mirumoto bushi will happily eat any amount they give her.

27 minutes ago, HirumaShigure said:

True, but duty often times turns into respect and loyalty, then love. In the old fiction there were some very touching relationships that started out as simply political marriages. One I can think of off the top of my head was Doji Domotai and her Lion Husband. Another mentioned in another post was Hida O-Ushi and Hida (Shinjo) Yasamura. Anybody else out there think of any?

Toturi and Kaede were, if I remember the older stories and novels. Shoju and Kachiko were in the novel. The novels and some of the fiction were the usual suspect when it came to love in fiction. The older Clan books don't really talk too much about love other than maybe Aramoro's or the Yogo curse. Respect came up more than often.

On 5/17/2017 at 1:01 PM, Isawa Syd said:

This sounds dangerously like the Kolat conspiracy, sir. Are we to assume you an enemy of the empire?

...I actually had to go look up who the Kolat were (L5R noob here).

Of course, it's impossible for me to be a Kolat. You see, I am of the Dragon Clan, and our great Kami Togashi suffers no such subversion within his Clan. And of course I would never even THINK of subverting the Celestial Order. Not even a little >:)...

...But seriously, out of character, those Kolat seem pretty sketchy. I like that they want equality, but I also get the sense they're not exactly great guys. But maybe I just have the wrong impression.

EDIT: Edited it.

2 hours ago, Kubernes said:

I went through the fiction again and I'm wonder who exactly is Hotaru's husband?

Hoturi had been married to a kitsune (as in hengeyokai, not of the minor clan), I wonder if they would do something similar with Hotaru and also never realise what her spouse truly is.

On 5/17/2017 at 9:06 PM, Samurai Fox said:

...please tell me you're joking when you say they were volunteers.

It varied. A lot of the writing was done by Soesbee, wulf and wick early on then later Shawn Carman became the head writer all who worked for AEG.

But there where many other writers and from what I hear a lot of them where volunteers. And I have never be able to find out if it was true but, I did here some of the paid writers never got paid.

21 minutes ago, Mandalore525 said:

...But seriously, out of character, those Kolat seem pretty sketchy. I like that they want equality, but I also get the sense they're not exactly great guys. But maybe I just have the wrong impression.

Nope, you are correct. The Kolat don't want to free people from the oppressive Celestial Order, they just want to be the ones doing the oppressing.

2 hours ago, tenchi2a said:

It varied. A lot of the writing was done by Soesbee, wulf and wick early on then later Shawn Carman became the head writer all who worked for AEG.

But there where many other writers and from what I hear a lot of them where volunteers. And I have never be able to find out if it was true but, I did here some of the paid writers never got paid.

I always got paid for my RPG work, for what that's worth; obviously I can't swear that was true for everybody.

But the Story Team . . . yeah. As of near the end of AEG's tenure, at least, they got "paid" in cards.

4 hours ago, Mandalore525 said:

...I actually had to go look up who the Kolat were (L5R noob here).

Of course, it's impossible for me to be a Kolat. You see, I am of the Dragon Clan, and our great Kami Togashi suffers no such subversion within his Clan. And of course I would never even THINK of subverting the Celestial Order. Not even a little >:)...

...But seriously, out of character, those Kolat seem pretty sketchy. I like that they want equality, but I also get the sense they're not exactly great guys. But maybe I just have the wrong impression.

EDIT: Edited it.

In The Merchant's Guide to Rokugan (the Kolat book) there are sample PCs for each of the Clans who were Kolat members. All of them had the 5-point Dark Secret (Member of Kolat) flaw. The Dragon one also had an additional 5-point Dark Secret flaw - Togashi knows. the character art had a very nervous-looking monk

4 hours ago, Mandalore525 said:

..But seriously, out of character, those Kolat seem pretty sketchy. I like that they want equality, but I also get the sense they're not exactly great guys. But maybe I just have the wrong impression.

Kolat don't want equality. They just want to be the ones in charge instead.

2 hours ago, Kinzen said:

I always got paid for my RPG work, for what that's worth; obviously I can't swear that was true for everybody.

But the Story Team . . . yeah. As of near the end of AEG's tenure, at least, they got "paid" in cards.

This is correct, though I'm not 100% sure about Shawn. Design Team wise, the PDT members were more or less paid a small commission for each set they completed design on, and were also "paid" with product. Bryan Reese and myself were the only actual designers who were technical employees, with regular paychecks et all, on Design.

As I recall, the Story Team Lead drew some actual pay. The rest of the story team did it for the dubious honor of trying to please us...

25 minutes ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

As I recall, the Story Team Lead drew some actual pay. The rest of the story team did it for the dubious honor of trying to please us...

This really used to bother, I was very happy with the dedication shown but felt AEG was exploiting the dedication of fans and players that loved l5r to cut corners.

37 minutes ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

As I recall, the Story Team Lead drew some actual pay. The rest of the story team did it for the dubious honor of trying to please us...

Poor guys...

I guess that explains some weird decisions sometimes. One must be totally crazy to accept this mission, that's the highest level of Mission: Impossible there. Even Tom Cruise would run away terrified.

28 minutes ago, Isawa Tasatu said:

This really used to bother, I was very happy with the dedication shown but felt AEG was exploiting the dedication of fans and players that loved l5r to cut corners.

Dedication definitely played a role. The RPG pay rate was crap -- a third the per-word rate that's considered pro for SF/F short fiction, and that's laughably low to begin with -- so my willingness to accept it was based almost entirely on a desire to contribute to L5R. (Most of the remainder was a desire to get my foot in the door with RPG writing.)

1 hour ago, KerenRhys said:

Poor guys...

I guess that explains some weird decisions sometimes. One must be totally crazy to accept this mission, that's the highest level of Mission: Impossible there. Even Tom Cruise would run away terrified.

I know of at least one Story Team member that was threatened with physical violence by someone because of a story. I myself regularly received hate mail and even a couple of death threats, even when I was an unpaid volunteer, before I was formally hired as an actual employee.

It was definitely something you did because you loved L5R, even if sometimes parts of the fandom left you wondering why exactly you did so much.

I'm really looking forward to just being a fan again.

On ‎5‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 6:56 AM, Tetsuro said:

I know of at least one Story Team member that was threatened with physical violence by someone because of a story. I myself regularly received hate mail and even a couple of death threats, even when I was an unpaid volunteer, before I was formally hired as an actual employee.

It was definitely something you did because you loved L5R, even if sometimes parts of the fandom left you wondering why exactly you did so much.

I'm really looking forward to just being a fan again.

Death threats just because of a story?! O_o

Hopefully newbies are basing their views of the L5R community on their local play groups and not the stories people tell online. Because stuff like threats of violence and death because of a story, and Kempy's "many of us hated a particular clan so much that we actively cheered when bad stuff happened to them" seems to very much offset "some people gave me a few cards".

Oh no, death threats and hate mail came to me because of design, not story. I'm not aware if anyone on ST ever got something that bad, I only know about the threat to punch one of them. But, hey, it's an internet fandom, that stuff comes with the territory these days. You kinda have to just roll with it if you intend to keep being involved at that level.

I'm a big fan of this first fiction and I hope old fans give it a fair chance. I'm really interested to see if they take the opportunity to breathe new life into old, extremely underdeveloped characters like Shiba Ujimitsu or anyone in the Unicorn Clan from this era not named Kamoko.

1 hour ago, Tetsuro said:

I'm a big fan of this first fiction and I hope old fans give it a fair chance. I'm really interested to see if they take the opportunity to breathe new life into old, extremely underdeveloped characters like Shiba Ujimitsu or anyone in the Unicorn Clan from this era not named Kamoko.

I find the first fiction... interesting.

On the one hand, I'm disappointed that the Clan Champion even can disappear and pretend to be a ronin, that feels like her clan/yojimbo are simply not doing their jobs. It may be an all too common trope in fantasy (which is why it's still forgivable) but it's one I don't particularly like, and am not thrilled to see in action. I also find Hotaru to be a very poor champion; the idea that she would be able to find out something about her father by sneaking in to the Imperial City speaks very poorly of her regard for her own clan - she obviously thinks her courtiers and spies are inferior to her. Again, showing flaws in a character is good - gives room for growth and humanizes them. However, I also want to see good points, and at the moment I really don't with her.

On the other hand, I naturally compare her to the old Hoturi stories, and he was simply all over place, varying from perfection to incompetence with neither rhyme nor reason. I already feel I've got a better grip on Hotaru's character than I ever did on his (although they can easily break that by writing her inconsistently.) Where Hoturi seemed to act randomly, we have a fair grasp of several motivations for Hotaru already. So on that point, it's good.

The gripping hand is the depiction of Rokugan, which I generally liked. The attention to detail, the importance of the ikebana both for decoration and sending messages, most of the exchanges between Hotaru and Kachiko, were all well done. Save for the incompetence of the Crane Clan in letting their champion disappear for a while, I thought they did a good job setting their scenes.

All this talk about being a bad champion when she is very new to the position...

I only just noticed. Nerishma's first line in the story is "Ambush! Be ready!"

His flavour text is "It's an ambush! Be ready!"

Does this keep happening to him?