Just now, Casanunda said:

Hotaru's attraction to Kayuchi might be seen as her "weakness". The Crane are taught to admire culture and beauty; a woman as beautiful as Kayuchi could be seen as almost personifying those traits, making her difficult for Hotaru to resist. She may even come to know that she is being used for some other purpose, but she just can't help herself. It could be representative of a Crane flaw, that appreciating beauty and culture can blind you when it comes to discerning something's true value. That's sort of how I interpreted it.

True, but I always considered that more of a Hotari/u weakness than a Crane one.

It's no different here. We are talking about character flaws. Toturi's, Tsuko's and Arasou's individual weaknesses. I think it's a leap to say their weakness is the entire clan's weakness. They all exhibit strengths in the story as well. The Crane story is just different because it mainly only showcases Hotaru rather than put the magnifying lens up to several Crane characters.

I actually think the Lion's story was the most engaging so far because we've got such a dynamic situation going in within the clan right from the get go.

The weakness of the Lion clan, to me at least, has always been charging ahead, risks be damned. The story shows this, through Tsuko and Arasou. For the Dragon, it's been inaction, something mentioned in their story, but admittedly, this Rokugan it seems that numbers will be more of a weakness than mindset. The Crane though, the political focus is always seemed a double edged sword to me, but their story doesn't give much of a clan weakness, which to me was the constant use of politicking. Maybe I'm just not getting it with them, I fully admit that I'm not a fan of the Crane and never really gave them much mind.

16 minutes ago, Casanunda said:

Hotaru's attraction to Kayuchi might be seen as her "weakness". The Crane are taught to admire culture and beauty; a woman as beautiful as Kayuchi could be seen as almost personifying those traits, making her difficult for Hotaru to resist. She may even come to know that she is being used for some other purpose, but she just can't help herself. It could be representative of a Crane flaw, that appreciating beauty and culture can blind you when it comes to discerning something's true value. That's sort of how I interpreted it.

I felt like at the end Hotaru realized how little she really knew. So their weakness may be some innocence, youth, naivete, and bearing the troubles of cleaning up all the messes your dead dad left.

I for one would be pretty satisfied if Kachiko was in love with Hotaru this time around.

I think it could be very interesting with a Scorpion going out of their way to help the Crane.

11 minutes ago, Devin-the-Poet said:

I felt like at the end Hotaru realized how little she really knew. So their weakness may be some innocence, youth, naivete, and bearing the troubles of cleaning up all the messes your dead dad left.

I for one would be pretty satisfied if Kachiko was in love with Hotaru this time around.

I think it could be very interesting with a Scorpion going out of their way to help the Crane.

Imperial Advisor had a podcast with the writer of the crane fiction, and he described it as a story of two people in love. He may either a) have been lying or b) not know the true Kachiko motivation, but that made me instantly more interested in the story if my assumption that Kachiko is using Hotaru is wrong.

I think it's very possible that Kachiko both loves Hotaru and is using her at the same time. In fact I think it's pretty probable. I had assumed that was what was going on in Hotaru's story. Hotaru is swimming in waters where she doesn't belong. She's clearly knowledgeable about politics, protocol, warfare, but when it came time to be sneaky and underhanded she was discovered almost immediately. I liked the Crane story, but probably I liked it the least because I feel like I didn't get enough of that story. It very much felt like just an introduction to her character.

7 minutes ago, profparm said:

Imperial Advisor had a podcast with the writer of the crane fiction, and he described it as a story of two people in love. He may either a) have been lying or b) not know the true Kachiko motivation, but that made me instantly more interested in the story if my assumption that Kachiko is using Hotaru is wrong.

Hoturi and Kachiko were in love in the original story too, at least right up until Hoturi murdered their son without realizing he was their son.

Things went somewhat poorly after that point...

1 hour ago, franzvong said:

I think it's this clan's description (as per FFG marketing) that opens a big can of worms.

In (real) history, whenever this combination happened, the faction with the most powerful army and the best generals conquered huge chunks of their known world. Just to name a few occurrences, the Persians, Alexander, the Romans, the Arab empire, Genghis Khan, Tamerlan up to Napoleon and WW2 Germany. The best army+best generals combo usually has only one outcome, even if short-lived.

For the Lion, that seems to have also quite an aggressive stance, it means mainly two things:

- either they should be in firm control of Rokugan, having won a series of wars in the past

- or they have been badly defeated by an alliance of other clans, that disbanded their armies and curbed their army, seriously limiting their military might

From my (maybe wrong) understanding, nothing like that happened, leaving therefore only a third, unrealistic option: the best army with the best generals keeps trying, but loses unexplicably every time due to errors, blunders, misfortune...

1 hour ago, Kinzen said:

This gets back to a discussion a few months ago -- I can't remember which thread, or I'd dig it out -- about the contradictions inherent in having a reasonably strong central power (the imperial families) and an isolationist country and frequent internal warfare. The Crab make sense as a military powerhouse because they're fighting the Shadowlands, i.e. an unquestionable enemy, and one with the strength and resources to be a constant threat. But the Lion are a military powerhouse who fight . . . ? Other loyal subjects of the Emperor? Who aren't military powerhouses, and yet don't get squished by the Lion? And for some reason the Emperor has the power to stop wars that cut into his tax revenue and kill off his faithful subjects, but he doesn't because Reasons? The Lion would make perfect sense if Rokugan were expansionist, or fighting frequent wars against gaijin, or (if you want to assign gaijin-fighting duties to the Unicorn, the other inexplicable military powerhouse) if there were lots of internal rebellions and the Lion were how the Emperor put those down. But the setup means the Lion somehow need to be militarily awesome, without ever being able to truly conquer their enemies -- they can only ever inflict temporary, small-scale defeats.

Amen! In all honesty, if I was in charge of rewriting the setting for FFG, what I would do is put the Lion in charge of a big chunk of the empire through a Shogun, with the emperor and the imperial families as figureheads with religious significance and prestige but no actual secular power, while only maybe an alliance of Crane and Phoenix still resisting them. Let the Crab be too busy fighting the Shadowlands and the Unicorn too busy fighting gaijin and conquering foreign lands, both after losing a big part of their territories before having to compromise. The Scorpion could be using everyone against everyone to see who os going to win and side with the victors (pulling a Kobayakawa), while the Crane and Phoenix can be shown as badasses in their respective fields for resisting the immense might of the Lion.

...then the Unicorn arrives with matchlocks and cannons.

6 minutes ago, Yogo Gohei said:

Hoturi and Kachiko were in love in the original story too, at least right up until Hoturi murdered their son without realizing he was their son.

Things went somewhat poorly after that point...

And you win the 'Understatement of the Day' award!!

well done

40 minutes ago, Mirumoto Saito said:

Amen! In all honesty, if I was in charge of rewriting the setting for FFG, what I would do is put the Lion in charge of a big chunk of the empire through a Shogun, with the emperor and the imperial families as figureheads with religious significance and prestige but no actual secular power, while only maybe an alliance of Crane and Phoenix still resisting them. Let the Crab be too busy fighting the Shadowlands and the Unicorn too busy fighting gaijin and conquering foreign lands, both after losing a big part of their territories before having to compromise. The Scorpion could be using everyone against everyone to see who os going to win and side with the victors (pulling a Kobayakawa), while the Crane and Phoenix can be shown as badasses in their respective fields for resisting the immense might of the Lion.

...then the Unicorn arrives with matchlocks and cannons.

They don't really need to be in control of a large amount of the world. During the clan wars in Japan what typically kept people in check was the inability to muster their entire clan for any offensive. Basically the ability to go to war, and the desire to do so, was great - but because of this you had to keep a decent garrison at all points in your lands. If you ever marched your forces 1 way, you would become vulnerable on the other.

There is a certain friction at the boarders of the Crane, Lion, and Scorpion where "the enemy of my enemy" doesn't work well enough. If the Lion ever marched in full force against the Crane, the Unicorn could easily come across the plains. If they moved against the Scorpion then the Dragon could come down. The Lion can easily have the best military simply by succeeding between so many allied forces. Since the Crane and the Scorpion are also against each other, neither can focus enough strength on the Lion to push them back either.

The default alliances are drawn up in such a way to emulate the balance of power the warring clans had in Japan. It's effective enough. Granted - I agree the Emperor shouldn't have any practical power. He should be more of a figure head, collecting tributes from the others and providing everyone a diplomatic center in Otosan Uchi.

Now if alliances changed it could be very different. Imagine if the Unicorn and Dragon allied with the Lion instead of the Crane and Scorpion - with nothing behind Lion and extra troops at their command they could easily squash the Crane and Scorpion both. Hence why the Crane and Scorpion are both political and always make themselves great allies...

5 hours ago, BordOne said:

I agree with you, I don't want Lion to win every battle. And I don't want them to have the only bright tacticians in Rokugan. But why not just let them win the first battle they participate in to actually show their prowess? At least just show what that clan is about.

To be honest, getting chumped by inferior forces is kind of a running theme for the Lion. They're the guys to beat when another clan needs to look awesome. It's unfortunate that a single clan always gets saddled with that role, but given the initial setup it's pretty much inevitable, for reasons franzvong explained well.

In a way, the Lion are like meta-Scorpion: they take the narrative roles that no one else will do.

Lion can make sense in the setting without expanding their borders as long as they use their armies smart for other purposes. One of reasons why certain nations stop border expansion is because it's often extremely hard to control land with super-rooted culture. It's often not worth the time, and I assume Crane is an expert in this - I can imagine that places that Lion conquer through arms, can switch back to Crane peacefully via cultural assimilation. You leave a Matsu governor, two generations later his children spontaneously turn Doji and Kakita :P.
In general, if you have large military presence, you need to make it "pay for itself". There are other ways for it than just conquering new territory - providing support to those who need it (you can call it "mercenaries"...or you can call it "holy orders") is one such example. Indeed, I think that Lion in their current position would be wiser to not try to expand it's territory - mostly because of old Chinese truth about war, which basically said that when living next to a dangerous neighbour, your best defence is to die as slowly as possible, because sooner or later your neighbors neighbor will use the situation and attack the person who attacked you. Lion could seriously gain a lot by outsourcing their military power in exchange for better trade deals and other soft presence in the courts.

Basically, look at how USA is using their army - they invest tons of money and resources into it, and in order to make it worthwile, they are constantly using it all over the globe, even though they never are waging war for territory. I think that Lion fighting for similar reasons would work a lot better than Lion constantly being heroically repelled so that borders status quo can be maintained. There is a lot more of narrative freedom for "Lion is rallying against a dishonorable Dragon, answering Phoenix plea for all men and women who value Bushido, will they smite the Dragon?!" rather than "Lion decided they like Shiro Mirumoto, they want it now and are marching as we speak". First conflict has realistic resolutions that don't "snowball' the game (Dragon can repel the Lion forces, Dragon can explain to them that what they do is just, Lion can browbeat Dragon into compliance, Lion can personally wipe out the Pure Land Sect which will be criticized by Crane and Unicorn but supported by Phoenix and Scorpion", and so on. It's kind of like when you see a goal "Destroy Shadowlands", you know it will never really happen :P. Going away from territory expansions would IMHO finally allow Lion to have meaningful military victories which don't utterly destroy other clans.

17 hours ago, WHW said:

Basically, look at how USA is using their army - they invest tons of money and resources into it, and in order to make it worthwile, they are constantly using it all over the globe, even though they never are waging war for territory.

True -- but there's a key difference here, which is that modern economies are based much more heavily on commerce and investment than they are upon the productivity of land. So it doesn't matter as much whether you acquire territory (which you're then responsible for governing), when instead you can use your army to install governments who will sign trade deals that favor you, etc.

~pause to note that I would *very* much not prefer to derail this into a discussion of the specifics of my country's foreign policies~

In an economy like Rokugan's, though, land ownership is a much bigger deal, and commerce a much smaller one. (Still a thing, but a much smaller percentage of the economy overall.) So fighting lots of wars that don't result in you getting more land is a much less lucrative proposition. Consider also the difficulty of getting your army to the places where you want them to fight: absent planes, large open seas, or teleportation, you've got to march your forces through somebody's territory, and if it isn't your own, you run into problems pretty fast.

That's why Lion's unique placement "center of everything" is actually a boon :D. You border with everyone who might need to be smacked! Again, remember that I'm looking for solutions that can work for a game, specifically, even if they are somewhat anachronous - Lion identity is "awesome at wars" and people wanting to play Lion want to be awesome at wars. Awesome at wars usually includes winning wars. Constantly winning wars for territory in a long-term game that is supposed to last beyond a single storyline is not good, because you are snowballing the Lion and erasing the presence of other clans, probably turning it into World War Lion. Or you go the route of "they won territory, but it was lather reclaimed", which is rarely satisfactory - reward that is taken away next week doesn't feel like a reward at all, and it's probably to never give it out in the first place.

So Lion, IMHO, needs a way to aim at objectives that can be won through military means and offer real consequences that will be meaningful but won't damage another clan permanently, at least not beyond repair - and if repair is possible, it should not diminish the Lion victory. "We took your farmlands" makes Lion happy but person attacked unhappy; "We sent out 100 best to support your feud with Lord Whatshisname, and now you make us your only trading partners out of...unsuggested gratitude, of course" is a meaningful victory that doesn't destabilize the setting.

Basically, Lion needs to use it's military for political ends, just like Crane uses politics for military ends :P.

But then again, If I were to redesign Lion, I would probably still give them their super military and super leaders, but also plagued them with problems like "we are surrounded by multiple powerful foes, and while we can fight them easily, getting deep enough to get a devastating blow to one of them means being vulnerable to all the others" and "we have great armies, but our lands are bad and poor, we need to estabilish outside sources of food and tools and materials". Make them fight for their lives, yo!

I think there are three other good solutions for this problem, that I like better than using Lion as proxies for other peoples' wars (although that could be part of it).

1. Wars for honor. When you insult an important Lion, which is absurdly easy because they take offense at everything, they do not challenge you to a duel. They go to war with you. And they only accept your apology after they have defeated you in the field or burned down your castle. At which point, they have gained great honor and glory, which is what they were after, and you have been suitably chastened. Also, the best way of minimizing the damage they do to your lands is to raise the best army you can find and fight them head on in a field battle, because being besieged by them is way worse for your lands. Then, after you lose the field battle (which doesn't even necessarily involve very heavy casualties, unless they choose to pursue you after your army routs), everyone is satisfied, and no land changes hands.

2. Input matches output: Although Lion does on average win territory via military conflict, they on average lose it through politics. Legal disputes between landowners and marriages both can switch large amounts of territory from hand to hand, and the other clans make up via lawsuits and weddings what they lose in the field.

3. Great power politics: as Machiavelli said, when you ally with the stronger power to overcome the weaker, you put yourself at his mercy. Wise Daimyo know that the Lion cannot be resisted alone, therefore the Lion usually find themselves facing alliances that can match their power when full scale war arises.

9 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

1. Wars for honor. When you insult an important Lion, which is absurdly easy because they take offense at everything, they do not challenge you to a duel. They go to war with you. And they only accept your apology after they have defeated you in the field or burned down your castle.

That's one expensive way to avenge an insult. Much more economical to fight a small skirmish, or just a duel. Fielding huge armies isn't something you do on a regular basis unless you're getting enough out of it to justify burning through thousands upon thousands of koku -- and even in an honor-crazed setting, an apology/your opponent's shame isn't enough. Not for the clan to keep doing this for centuries.

11 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

2. Input matches output: Although Lion does on average win territory via military conflict, they on average lose it through politics. Legal disputes between landowners and marriages both can switch large amounts of territory from hand to hand, and the other clans make up via lawsuits and weddings what they lose in the field.

I think this is at least in part supposed to be the idea . . . but it winds up feeling unsatisfying in the long run, because the reader/player knows that any field victory is temporary at best. And it also contributes to the feeling that the Lion are bullying jerks, which is already an issue for many players.

15 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

3. Great power politics: as Machiavelli said, when you ally with the stronger power to overcome the weaker, you put yourself at his mercy. Wise Daimyo know that the Lion cannot be resisted alone, therefore the Lion usually find themselves facing alliances that can match their power when full scale war arises.

For me the issue is less "full scale war" than what the heck is going on with all the smaller-scale wars that must be happening for the Lion to have this great military reputation and such a large, well-honed army.

5 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

That's one expensive way to avenge an insult. Much more economical to fight a small skirmish, or just a duel. Fielding huge armies isn't something you do on a regular basis unless you're getting enough out of it to justify burning through thousands upon thousands of koku -- and even in an honor-crazed setting, an apology/your opponent's shame isn't enough. Not for the clan to keep doing this for centuries.

Aristocratic warrior societies don't have much need to be economical about things. Those samurai are just sitting around eating your food anyway. It was pretty common for feudal lords to campaign every single year. It's different if you actually need to spend hard cash on mercenaries or siege equipment or something like that, but I don't think that's what we're talking about in Rokugan. If you have a social class whose identity is bound up with fighting wars, they find a way to fight wars. Solving things with a duel or a lawsuit would of course be more sensible, but then the Lion would just have to find some OTHER excuse to fight a war that year. The only really weird thing about this scenario, really, is the Lion not taking territory at the end of it -- but if glory and honor are what they really value, then I think even that is plausible.

Also, I would think that these 'wars of honor' would in general be local: that is, it would not be the Lion clan against the crane clan: it would be some Lion lord against some other Crane (or Lion) lord. They fight a battle, honor is satisfied, their warriors earn a chance to practice their skills and earn glory, everybody wins (except probably some peasants).

28 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

Aristocratic warrior societies don't have much need to be economical about things. Those samurai are just sitting around eating your food anyway. It was pretty common for feudal lords to campaign every single year.

War costs a lot of money beyond sitting around eating food: equipment, transport, medical treatment, etc -- not to mention the damage it inflicts to rice paddies and village houses and so forth -- not to mention that any peasant you recruit as an ashigaru isn't out in the fields raising crops or working at his craft or whatever he normally does to earn you tax money. Aristocrats may not show a lot of concern for economics, but any lord who just pours gold into a pit for years on end is going to find himself in trouble eventually. And feudal lords campaigned regularly, yes . . . but the successful ones got something out of it, too, beyond just "glory."

. . . actually, that makes me think of something that often gets glossed over in L5R, but really ought to be played up more: ransoming hostages. You can profit quite nicely off your little border skirmish if you capture the lord of the local castle or some other important person, and charge a hefty fee for giving them back. That happened all the time in history, and is exactly the kind of "samurai don't care about money except they really do because you can't live like an aristocrat without it" dynamic that makes for an interesting story.

EDIT: of course the hurdle in the way of using ransoms as a thing is, the setting insists that SAMURAI NEVER SURRENDER and anybody who gets captured should pray to be allowed to commit seppuku to expunge their shame. So this post probably belongs in the "sacred cows" thread, because that's an idea I really wish would be treated like the "more honored in the breach than the observance" ideal that it would realistically be.

They don't take land, but that doesn't mean they don't instill some tribute, or damage that profits them. In a battle in which they do not take over land permanently, they can still:

- Take over farm areas long enough to collect taxes but not long enough to have to manage the people.

- Damage fields before harvest so that no revenue is garnered from them for the owners.

- Control check points where people must pay a toll and show papers to cross. They can swarm the area, and then pull back once they have "established order" by having their own magistrates manage the check point. (and collect revenue)

- Demand tribute. Rather than taking land from the Unicorn they can demand horses. They can demand gold from the Dragon, ect.

Basically - without taking land they can still profit.

I think part of the world must include that there is a decent amount of "no mans land" between the clans. Where there is a castle and garrison - there is a clan in control. Once you are outside those walls it is a different matter. There may be peasant villages that aren't members of any clan but exist in the space between them, and whoever enforces the Emperor's will gets to claim them, but that may be different every year.

As long as the Emperor doesn't try to have direct control over the world, and allows the clans to deal with these affairs in this way, they may never become a target. They aren't a large family, and may not tax nearly as much compared to the great clans.

3 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

War costs a lot of money beyond sitting around eating food: equipment, transport, medical treatment, etc -- not to mention the damage it inflicts to rice paddies and village houses and so forth -- not to mention that any peasant you recruit as an ashigaru isn't out in the fields raising crops or working at his craft or whatever he normally does to earn you tax money. Aristocrats may not show a lot of concern for economics, but any lord who just pours gold into a pit for years on end is going to find himself in trouble eventually. And feudal lords campaigned regularly, yes . . . but the successful ones got something out of it, too, beyond just "glory."

. . . actually, that makes me think of something that often gets glossed over in L5R, but really ought to be played up more: ransoming hostages. You can profit quite nicely off your little border skirmish if you capture the lord of the local castle or some other important person, and charge a hefty fee for giving them back. That happened all the time in history, and is exactly the kind of "samurai don't care about money except they really do because you can't live like an aristocrat without it" dynamic that makes for an interesting story.

I imagine the Lion regularly strip the Osari planes bare whenever they're told to pack it in by the Hantei

1 minute ago, Kinzen said:

War costs a lot of money beyond sitting around eating food: equipment, transport, medical treatment, etc -- not to mention the damage it inflicts to rice paddies and village houses and so forth -- not to mention that any peasant you recruit as an ashigaru isn't out in the fields raising crops or working at his craft or whatever he normally does to earn you tax money. Aristocrats may not show a lot of concern for economics, but any lord who just pours gold into a pit for years on end is going to find himself in trouble eventually. And feudal lords campaigned regularly, yes . . . but the successful ones got something out of it, too, beyond just "glory."

. . . actually, that makes me think of something that often gets glossed over in L5R, but really ought to be played up more: ransoming hostages. You can profit quite nicely off your little border skirmish if you capture the lord of the local castle or some other important person, and charge a hefty fee for giving them back. That happened all the time in history, and is exactly the kind of "samurai don't care about money except they really do because you can't live like an aristocrat without it" dynamic that makes for an interesting story.

I think here we're getting into questions of historical interpretation, but I think it's worth taking seriously the idea that feudal lords were often not rational economic actors: they were motivated by social status. You can see this even more clearly once wars start getting more expensive and centralized, and European kings keep bankrupting themselves fighting wars. Why? Not because they had any rational hope of the benefits of the war outweighing the costs, but it's because what they knew about, were interested in, and how they proved their superiority over their peers (other aristocrats). If you look at feudal history, the sheer endless amount of low scale warfare is mind-boggling -- and pretty clearly counterproductive in both the short and long run. My preferred explanation for it is that the people in charge of the society were warriors, and so fighting wars was how they tried to solve all their problems.

Pre-modern wars could be devastating and expensive, but they could also be surprisingly quick, cheap, and bloodless. It depended on a lot of factors. Greek city-states used to sometimes have wars that lasted less than a week -- long enough for both armies to walk to a convenient field and fight a battle that took an afternoon. There might be a few dozen dead on the winning side and a hundred or so on the losing side.

I'm not saying that wars of honor has to be a thing (unless I'm GM). I am just saying that it is pretty historically plausible.

18 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

War costs a lot of money beyond sitting around eating food: equipment, transport, medical treatment, etc -- not to mention the damage it inflicts to rice paddies and village houses and so forth -- not to mention that any peasant you recruit as an ashigaru isn't out in the fields raising crops or working at his craft or whatever he normally does to earn you tax money. Aristocrats may not show a lot of concern for economics, but any lord who just pours gold into a pit for years on end is going to find himself in trouble eventually. And feudal lords campaigned regularly, yes . . . but the successful ones got something out of it, too, beyond just "glory."

. . . actually, that makes me think of something that often gets glossed over in L5R, but really ought to be played up more: ransoming hostages. You can profit quite nicely off your little border skirmish if you capture the lord of the local castle or some other important person, and charge a hefty fee for giving them back. That happened all the time in history, and is exactly the kind of "samurai don't care about money except they really do because you can't live like an aristocrat without it" dynamic that makes for an interesting story.

EDIT: of course the hurdle in the way of using ransoms as a thing is, the setting insists that SAMURAI NEVER SURRENDER and anybody who gets captured should pray to be allowed to commit seppuku to expunge their shame. So this post probably belongs in the "sacred cows" thread, because that's an idea I really wish would be treated like the "more honored in the breach than the observance" ideal that it would realistically be.

Problem is that in source material, samurai didn't exactly develop the custom of taking hostages. They preffered to take your head. But head taking is seemingly absent from L5R, so I wouldn't mind the hostage taking...

10 minutes ago, WHW said:

Problem is that in source material, samurai didn't exactly develop the custom of taking hostages. They preffered to take your head. But head taking is seemingly absent from L5R, so I wouldn't mind the hostage taking...

Could be problematic. Any one except shugenja and children would probably be expected to commit seppuku rather than accept capture. Like the Night of Falling Stars.