19 minutes ago, WHW said:

This is not a sacred cow I would like to be slain, but actually a sacred cow to be introduced - I love all things Yakuza, Triads and Mafia, and I think that Rokugan could use some of those that aren't Kolat.

I think I'd rather like seeing more aspects like Yakuza or bandit groups controlling small regions and whatnot. Yes, every bit of land in Rokugan is probably claimed by one clan or another, but if we were to map out how much is actually controlled, you'd see splotches of color around cities, villages, and major roadways, with huge swathes of land that have no real governance. Even very minor villages probably just have a tax collector come by every so often with no real governance from the Great Clan most of the time. There's a lot of room for bandits or Yakuza to try to carve out their own little empires. If you try to have shrewd criminal leaders who actually try to maintain some sense of satisfaction among the people they're oppressing, or who see themselves as actual champions of the peoples' cause, you could probably get some pretty good stories.

1 minute ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

Yeah, if you keep that in the setting. It's a reboot, remember -- I , at least, am talking about what I would like to see/think would be realistic, not about what the old fluff said. If you want to include minor clans, you can do that via saying they are established and mantained by imperial decree, like in the old setting. But I was mostly interested in Kinzen's idea that it was more realistic to have some smaller powers as well, which I was questioning. It does, of course, depend a lot on how much warfare is tolerated in general.

I think one of the reasons I am a little suspicious of including minor clans too much is that I would really like to see the heterogeneity and disunity of the Great clans themselves played up. The more we have tons of clans, the more temptation there is to make all conflict inter-clan conflict, which would be a shame.

I't's a 'story' reboot. I have not seen anything not directly related to that altered.

I have no issue with seeing clan disunity, or in keeping the minor clan from being..well...minor. I simply don't believe in restricting the setting as a whole.

Just now, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

Because the emperor said so. GC's cannot make war on MC without permission

Speaking of sacred cows I'd like to put to pasture...

"The Emperor said so" is a political move that should have had much less impact on several clans than it did. Yes, the Imperial Favor can screw up the efforts of a clan in the immediate sense, but "the Emperor said so" was also used by some Spider players to explain away why several clans didn't come together and curbstomp the Spider. The problem there, though, was that historically several clans had previously told the Emperor where to put his decrees in no uncertain terms, and with far less justification than the Emperor openly cutting bad deals with the biggest villain in Rokugan history that allowed his besties to be another Great Clan. The clans created the Gozoku, marched on Hantei XVI, and the Crab, Lion, Mantis, Scorpion, and Unicorn all attempted to overthrow the throne for far less than the formation of the Spider Clan -- and the Spider Clan themselves gave lip service at best. If the immediate aftermath of Iweko I brokering a deal with Daigotsu had been this kind of civil war, the players might have gotten the Spider hate out of their system.

Now, I'm just using the Spider Clan's ascension as an example here. For most of Rokugan's history, the clans praised the Emperor plenty while doing their own things without care or concern. At the behest of a rare strong Emperor, yes, the clans fall in line... but those periods make for few clan fights anyway. Even when the original L5R did have a strong, popular Emperor like Toturi, he inevitably ended up compromised or dead, or worse, poorly written like Toturi III losing influence to the Gozoku without logical explanation. Iweko I was an attempt to consciously remove the Emperor from direct contact with the clans, rarely speaking or appearing without a screen or her Voice doing the talking.

In theory, the Emperor's capable of making decree after decree, but in practice he's relying on the clans to not only follow that, but to keep accurate records of what he says along with similar histories of his predecessors and successors. Situations like this are why we saw three Yasuki Wars. The Clans remember what they like.

The Emperor said so reminds me of
NINJAS DON'T EXIST

Which I think started as a joke? But then it got turned into an actual law (probably as the extension of the joke?) and suddenly was treated with utmost seriousness making Rokugani people look like ignorant fools?

Overall, portraying rokugani as ignorant fools.

2 minutes ago, WHW said:

You have your lands, or more probably, the person who has you written into their household owns land. I imagine that most of samurai are not actually taking care of land and are more of a glorified retainers and experts who get to sleep, eat and wear the best clothes affordable by their superior in exchange for doing their job. Typical Doji Bob probably sleeps where he is employed.

Yeah, pretty much. I don't actually remember if Rokugan is supposed to have primogeniture or not. If it does, then there are a lot of Samurai who are retainers on a stipend from someone, probably a fairly close relative -- so Doji Bob's uncle is a minor lord of backwater hillside village and environs, and Doji Bob lives in his house and eats his food in exchange for being one of his Bushi. And he only gets a horse if his uncle gives him one. But Bob's uncle is probably a 10th cousin of Doji Hotaru and has seen her like twice.

If it doesn't have primogeniture, then Doji Bob might be the lord of one-sixteenth of the local podunk village cuz his father died in a katana accident, and is entitled to one-sixteenth of its proceeds, so he has to argue with his brothers about which of them gets to use the horse. In that case a lot more Samurai are technically landowners, but the overall situation is fairly similar.

12 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

I think I'd rather like seeing more aspects like Yakuza or bandit groups controlling small regions and whatnot. Yes, every bit of land in Rokugan is probably claimed by one clan or another, but if we were to map out how much is actually controlled, you'd see splotches of color around cities, villages, and major roadways, with huge swathes of land that have no real governance. Even very minor villages probably just have a tax collector come by every so often with no real governance from the Great Clan most of the time. There's a lot of room for bandits or Yakuza to try to carve out their own little empires. If you try to have shrewd criminal leaders who actually try to maintain some sense of satisfaction among the people they're oppressing, or who see themselves as actual champions of the peoples' cause, you could probably get some pretty good stories.

Well, maybe, but the counterpoint is that when the ruling class is built on land-ownership, usually everyone knows exactly who owns what and the problem is that too many people claim the land, not too few. 'Tax-collection' is mostly carried out by local lords who use it as their livelihood, and then the big rulers extract taxes from them. So there is always someone nearby to squeeze the peasants. The big question is whether there is enough central authority to protect local lords from usurpers/random bandits taking over, and to meaningfully extract taxes from said local lords to fund their lieges.

I honestly don't remember how it's in the books, but that's how we play it at home. Stipends, stipends and stipends, and they are mostly in "nature" - so you can have best horse, best clothes, best sword, best hairdresser, but you get very little money to spend on your own. So whatever you do or take that's worth money, you sign it with your chop, and then it gets paid by your lord later.

Add yakuza loansharks into the mix and red light districts where you need to pay with cash, and add things that you don't want your lord to know about, and you have fun setup for plots and money dynamics.

22 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

I don't think being 'connected' to the Doji really means what you think it does. Remember: there are tens of thousands of Samurai who call themselves 'Doji'. Having the name gets you nothing from the clan leaders. They are not really your family and they probably don't know you from Bob. You have your lands: that's what you have thanks to their generosity, and if that makes you poor then that's that and you should still be grateful. You don't ask them for favors: they give you orders.

You're telling me the concerns of the Suzume family and the concerns of the Daidoji family are potentially the same in the Crane Clan champion's eyes? I guess I'm not really interested in debating this endlessly, but I'll just go on record as stating I don't buy that as a plausible rule for the setting.

13 minutes ago, WHW said:

The Emperor said so reminds me of
NINJAS DON'T EXIST

Which I think started as a joke? But then it got turned into an actual law (probably as the extension of the joke?) and suddenly was treated with utmost seriousness making Rokugani people look like ignorant fools?

Overall, portraying rokugani as ignorant fools.

It wasn't a joke in-universe so much as it was an official Scorpion statement that the Emperor fell for and repeated.

Way long ago, the Scorpion *gasp* used ninja, and the Otomo thought that was too close to their own gig. Hantei X decreed the Scorpion were ever so naughty for using ninja to fulfill Bayushi's promise, and the Scorpion daimyo (not that Bayushi Aramoro, another one) agreed and very publicly had a purge, including his own brother. The ninja definitely didn't just duck out and hide somewhere, and most certainly never trained new ninja in secret.

And the rest of the empire certainly didn't do a collective facepalm when the Emperor publicly said there weren't any ninja anymore, thus making it treason to imply there were. This most assuredly wasn't the Scorpion's plan all along, either.

In the aftermath, it became politically difficult to outright accuse the Scorpion or others of using ninja. In practice, suspected ninja were accused of using illegal methods like the ninja of old, and the Kitsuki in particular went out of their way to make strong records and analyses of these methods. For their part, the Scorpion primarily used their ninja for spying, theft, and blackmail, only comparatively rarely assassinating people (and tending to frame others when they did). It didn't help that Scorpion turned this all into a joke, using as decoys novices dressed up in conspicuous black gi and using ridiculous equipment.

That said, this came to a head under the events of Hidden Emperor, where actual magical ninja became a problem. Afterward, these ninja were patronized by the Shadow Dragon, an entity too nefarious to ignore and who conveniently was a traitor to the Celestial Order itself. Ninja were real again due to being essentially Shadowlands monsters and invaders, and the Scorpion thereafter took umbrage that they'd ever use ninja -- they had shinobi, thank you.

2 minutes ago, phillos said:

You're telling me the concerns of the Suzume family and the concerns of the Daidoji family are potentially the same in the Crane Clan champion's eyes? I guess I'm not really interested in debating this endlessly, but I'll just go on record as stating I don't buy that as a plausible rule for the setting.

I don't think that's what I was saying. I mean, obviously there is a connection between Doji Bob and Doji Hotaru because she is at the top of his chain of allegiances, and in theory if some bandit comes along and takes his land it is ultimately Doji Hotaru's responsibility to protect him from that kind of thing. So if your point is just that it is different being outside the Great clan fealty structure: sure. The minor clans are more localized. I was just making the point that the idea that Great clan samurai necessarily have these advantages such as wealth or status and therefore the minor clans introduce something different into the setting doesn't seem right.

Not in-universe joke. Out of universe joke, joke between the authors. Things like Bitter Lies were born from stuff like that.

The worst thing that ever happened to bitter lies was people making it into a real school that actually had effective techniques.

2 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

I don't think that's what I was saying. I mean, obviously there is a connection between Doji Bob and Doji Hotaru because she is at the top of his chain of allegiances, and in theory if some bandit comes along and takes his land it is ultimately Doji Hotaru's responsibility to protect him from that kind of thing. So if your point is just that it is different being outside the Great clan fealty structure: sure. The minor clans are more localized. I was just making the point that the idea that Great clan samurai necessarily have these advantages such as wealth or status and therefore the minor clans introduce something different into the setting doesn't seem right.

I don't like certain mc because they are small or poor. They have distinct flavor the GC's don't replicate. So I would argue they DO add something.

5 minutes ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

I don't like certain mc because they are small or poor. They have distinct flavor the GC's don't replicate. So I would argue they DO add something.

The counterargument to that would be that what MCs bring to the table don't matter. Nobody cares about the goings-on of the green-apple Fossoways and the red-apple Fossoways, we care about what House Tyrell is plotting.

2 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

The counterargument to that would be that what MCs bring to the table don't matter. Nobody cares about the ongoing feud between the green-apple Fossoways and the red-apple Fossoways, we care about what House Tyrell is plotting.

Until House Tyrell does something that hinges on getting the red-apple Fossoways to help them out in exchange for crushing those jerkface green-apples.

This is why I favor more MCs (and vassal families and so forth), not fewer: because then those petty little side feuds become pebbles that can tip the scales in unexpected directions.

My point was the minor clan's perspective is interesting because as a family they are potentially less politically connected and less wealthy. Also they definitely have less military might. So naturally they have a different voice in the setting. Is there a difference between a low ranking Kakita bushi and an Usagi bushi when put in the same situation away from their lands like working for a magistrate assigned to a territory in the Phoenix lands? Maybe they are on much more equal footing, but I was talking about things at a larger scale.

I actually care about the Fossoways. I am one of those ASOIAF readers that actually cares more about the small stuff and gets a bit annoyed when people complain that George is spending too much time talking about the small stuff. I think that is exactly what makes that setting feel like a real place. It let's you know there is stuff happening off the page and not all of it will be directly relevant to the larger narrative, but it is part of the DNA of the setting that explains why certain things happen when they do. I guess it's similar to what I'm arguing here for the MCs.

Just now, Kakita Shiro said:

The counterargument to that would be that what MCs bring to the table don't matter. Nobody cares about the ongoing feud between the green-apple Fossoways and the red-apple Fossoways, we care about what House Tyrell is plotting.

As I don't expect MC's to ever get more than a passing mention in any fiction whether they 'matter' is essentialy irrelevant.

I am speaking strictly on a 'macro' setting level.

17 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

The counterargument to that would be that what MCs bring to the table don't matter. Nobody cares about the goings-on of the green-apple Fossoways and the red-apple Fossoways, we care about what House Tyrell is plotting.

If this were a movie, or even a single book, with limited space for story, I might agree with you. However, this is a living, ongoing world with new story constantly being added in fictions, flavor text, (hopefully) RPG material, and more. There is plenty of space for minor clans to contribute to the setting.

Also, what you mean is that you don't care what happens to the minor clans. I don't actually get your reference, but putting it in L5R terms, even though we haven't yet seen any minor clans, I still care more about what they're doing than I do about what's up with the Crane Clan at this point, to be honest.

EDIT: That's not meant as a slight against any Crane Clan supporters, personally. Just, of the fictions that have been released, the Crane Clan's was the least interesting to me (Nerishma excepted), and I would much rather hear more about the minor clans than more about the Crane.

33 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

I also would have no problem at all with having minor clans that are integrated into the chains of allegiance. But at that point how are they different from clan families like the Soshi or Mirumoto?

I hope someone hasn't said this yet.

I have a deep fondness fire the dragonfly clan. I want the minor clans to have split allegences. Let some of them get absorbed into the major clans. Let some serve more masters. I want neutral minor clans to represent several of the neutral cards, and conflict cards.

19 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

Yeah, pretty much. I don't actually remember if Rokugan is supposed to have primogeniture or not. If it does, then there are a lot of Samurai who are retainers on a stipend from someone, probably a fairly close relative -- so Doji Bob's uncle is a minor lord of backwater hillside village and environs, and Doji Bob lives in his house and eats his food in exchange for being one of his Bushi. And he only gets a horse if his uncle gives him one. But Bob's uncle is probably a 10th cousin of Doji Hotaru and has seen her like twice.

If it doesn't have primogeniture, then Doji Bob might be the lord of one-sixteenth of the local podunk village cuz his father died in a katana accident, and is entitled to one-sixteenth of its proceeds, so he has to argue with his brothers about which of them gets to use the horse. In that case a lot more Samurai are technically landowners, but the overall situation is fairly similar.

32 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

I also would have no problem at all with having minor clans that are integrated into the chains of allegiance. But at that point how are they different from clan families like the Soshi or Mirumoto?

Most clans had primogeniture until a line ended or got shamed, such as with the Matsu and Moto taking over for their clans. The Scorpion tended to it, but could also formally name heirs who weren't related to the family line, Bayushi Kachiko and Bayushi Sunetra being the most obvious examples (pretty much everyone else after Shoju has no direct line until Paneki reestablished one). The Soul of Shiba does what it likes, and the Togashi line literally only had three people in it, full-stop. The Crab didn't do primogeniture technically, but the champion picked his heir out of his immediate family, often defaulting to siblings when traditional primogeniture would've otherwise applied (i.e. technically Hida Tsuru should have succeeded after Hida Yakamo's first death, since O-Ushi was actively engaged on a military front and couldn't return home for a formal ceremony).

Other clans made it more formal. The Doji family kept immaculate records due in no small part to their ties to the Hantei. The Unicorn practiced it scrupulously, probably as a way to maintain ties to Rokugan while far off.

With regards to minor clans associated with Great Clans, the big difference in my proposal was that anyone could still use the minor clans without problem, they'd just be designed with a Great Clan in mind. For instance, the Suzume could cause penalties for being killed on defense, and be a gold or so cheaper for Crane. Scorpion would still use them, but not as well as Crane.

I think the big thing to take away from this thread is people like this setting for different reasons. Something you hate might be someone else's favorite part. It's an obvious statement, but at the same time I think it's something very easy to forget.

21 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

The worst thing that ever happened to bitter lies was people making it into a real school that actually had effective techniques.

This. It was a fun RP aside, and one or two people per arc having it was a nice little shout-out to the fans. When they started getting strongholds, though, it got too far. It was like the Harriers all over again.

And I say this as a rabid Bitter Lies fan who loved the idea at the time.

Note, though, that the green apple and red apple fossoways are Tyrell bannermen and if Westeros used Rokugani names they'd be called 'Tyrell' too. I think adding more character and personality inside the clans is way more important than adding more clans to the mix. I mean, to continue the GOT comparison, I can't even think of a GOT equivalent of a minor clan, because everyone's allegiance ultimately goes up to one of the great lords (which makes sense).

I would love love love it if we got to see some use of 'local' family names inside the clans, because you know they have to do it. Yeah, I'm a Bayushi, but I'm from the Arunsa family inside the Bayushi (named after my great grandfather) so they call me Bayushi Yuuji of the Arunsa. Or something like that.

9 minutes ago, phillos said:

I think the big thing to take away from this thread is people like this setting for different reasons. Something you hate might be someone else's favorite part. It's an obvious statement, but at the same time I think it's something very easy to forget.

All tru

9 minutes ago, phillos said:

We have roleplayers,cardplayers, and storyreaders all cross-talking here, we are boud to get things tangled from time to time.

I really like minor clans. They give the world a sense of largeness: when even a tiny clan has hundreds of infantry and rules thousands of peasants, it shows you how huge the Matsu and Doji really are.

I think it would be kinda cool to have "minor clans" exist in the LCG. Here are four ideas for how they might be done.

1) A minor clan is a set of neutral cards, both conflict and dynasty, which have synergy with one another. For example, you might have a neutral personality called Kitsune Susan, who has the Fox keyword, and a conflict card that says "target a defending personality, they get a bonus, and a bigger bonus if they're Fox." If you're including Kitsune Susan then you'll want to put the conflict card in too. As a result, your deck is now less "Pure Crane" and more of a "Crane Fox Alliance" deck.

2) A minor clan is a set of conflict cards which belong to a clan that will never have a stronghold, so can only be included for their Influence cost. This has the advantage that they can be printed in proper livery colours, and the disadvantage that it means there can be no minor clan dynasty cards. It also means that it takes up your Alliance slot, so you can only have one minor clan in your deck at a time. You may see this as a good thing or a bad thing.

3) A minor clan is a clan which has its own stronghold but doesn't have enough cards to build an effective deck. However, their stronghold has an enormous Influence, so you can stuff their conflict deck with allied cards from a great clan. This is a nice game-mechanical way to represent the idea that the minor clan is really just a puppet of a certain great clan.

4) A minor clan is the setting for the story of a block of cards. For example, the story might be based on a conflict between the *rolls dice* Fox and Hare. The Hare are being backed by the *rolls dice* Lion and Phoenix; the Fox are being backed by the Crane. The Fox start winning, but then their leader dies and they fall into a three-way succession crisis, with the candidates backed by the Unicorn, Crab and Dragon. Meanwhile, the Scorpion are trying to broker a peace... or are they?

Bingo, instant drama. No need for arching metaplot, lots of sides for players to take, and the possibility of heroes or villains emerging for later stories. Who could ask for anything more?