5 hours ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

Since yojimbo and champions aren't the same thing, and since the Phoenix/Crane alliance is tight enough that an Isawa in need of a champion can likely expect to be represented by a Kakita-trained duelist

1. Often, a yojimbo and a champion are the same thing.

2. Running to the Crane every time a serious duel threatens is a good way to use up your political capital.

3. That alliance is not always tight- often, it doesn't exist in any meaningful way (see: Everything from at least the start of Celestial Edition). In fact, come to think of it, I don't know that it has ever paid off for either of them in the active history of L5R...

In point of fact, speaking of sacred cows....

Let's stop pretending that inter-clan politics ever remain static for too long. Two clans that remain perpetual allies will either merge, or be seen as a threat and get knocked down to size, or will eventually turn on each other after eliminating all other threats. I liked the bit in the recent Dragon fiction where the Mirumoto daimyo is weighing the options for alliance- it's not "never the Unicorn" or "never the Phoenix," it's, "which one can do more good for us right now?"

19 hours ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

Ok, so let me clarify -- I don't want to be confusing.

The main idea I am arguing against is the idea that school identity determines who wins or loses, and that Kakita and Mirumoto duellists have a special and nearly insurmountable advantage over other duellists due to some kind of unique aspect of their training. This could be seen as corresponding to some mechanical aspects of the RPG, where some schools really did have such advantages, especially Kakita, Mirumoto duelist, and (somewhat oddly for lore) Shiba.

By contrast, what I am saying is that amount of practice and (to a lesser extent) individual natural gifts are what matter in the real world, and I see Rokugan that way as well. On this view, any Bushi that has natural gifts and practices Iaijutsu a lot can become a master at it, and the Kakita school gives no advantage relative to someone with similar amounts of practice and talent.

This is, as I explicitly said, quite compatible with the idea that the Kakita school encourages its students to practice Iaijutsu more, as a consequence they do actually practice more, and as a consequence they are as a whole a better than an average group of bushi at duelling.

Ths is a causal hypothesis, which is true or not by fiat since this is a fictional setting. And there is no point investigating this via statistical techniques -- although such techniques are part of how scientists concluded that quantity of practice is the key explanatory variable in skilled performance.

This discussion never was about "school identity determines who wins or loses". Nobody has posited this.

Nobody has put forth that the Kakita and Mirumoto duelists have an "insurmountable advantage" over other duelists. This was also not a point put forward.

The Kakita and Mirumoto have a unique advantage, yes, because their specialized schools attempt to create that advantage. This is the purpose of training at these schools. However, it is not a _conclusive_ advantage. It's not a determinant. It manifests at the margins, where it can make a difference where opponents are relatively close in dueling ability. For example, if Dairya faces Kakita Hideo in a duel, it's likely that Hideo is pushing up daisies at the end. Or, if Aikune squares off against Kakita Amakuni, the latter is getting cut in half. The school's training is not meant to close that great a gap in overall dueling ability. However, if Hachi and Aikune are set to have 10 kendo matches, and both are considered to have relatively the same experience and innate ability, the differences in the focus of their respective schools _probably_ allows Hachi to win 6~ of those 10 matches. An edge at the margins. That's what is being posited.

The real world has application for specialized training. The quality of training. I think you're making a hasty generalization by saying that school quality is insignificant. Do you believe that to be true in real world terms?

Pulling from the above: "the Kakita school gives no advantage relative to someone with similar amounts of practice and talent" and " quite compatible with the idea that the Kakita school encourages its students to practice Iaijutsu more, as a consequence they do actually practice more, and as a consequence they are as a whole a better than an average group of bushi at duelling." ----> If the Kakita School as a whole produces bushi that are "better than average [at dueling]" doesn't that highlight the advantage the school provides? In this discussion, even if I follow your rationale, we still end up with the same conclusion about the effect of the school.

Overall, it doesn't matter if we disagree about the existence and impact of specialized/secret training. The net effect of the school, and the positive correlation of duelists and duel wins therein, are points we are both making/agreeing to.

15 hours ago, Mirumoto Saito said:

OR... Or, heard me out, lets just have samurai with rifles! Just like in real life!

Bah, guns are WAY cooler than magic. Better yet, lets have magic guns!

While that is a fine setting idea, it is not Rokugan.

Guns do not belong in a "Swords and Sorcery" setting, for what I hope are obvious reasons.

I would only be good with guns as optional in the rpg, not the main story. I feel it requires a certain reality v magic narrative that you can't steer away from as gunpowder is no doubt more effective as you can give thousands of conscripted ashigaru some guns and they can be more effective by sheer numbers than talented shugenja who need to appeal to, and appease the elements for similar effect.

15 hours ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

Let's stop pretending that inter-clan politics ever remain static for too long. Two clans that remain perpetual allies will either merge, or be seen as a threat and get knocked down to size, or will eventually turn on each other after eliminating all other threats. I liked the bit in the recent Dragon fiction where the Mirumoto daimyo is weighing the options for alliance- it's not "never the Unicorn" or "never the Phoenix," it's, "which one can do more good for us right now?"

Some alliances make sense for long term, such as the Scorpion and Dragon, or the Crane and Unicorn. Because their boarders don't meet and the Lion are an aggressive neighbor it's a sort of "enemy of my enemy" situation.

But I do agree I'd like to see a bit more fluctuation in alliances and territories as the story continues. It's unrealistic that the alliances and territories are largely the same through several generations and works against a real, developing narrative. Maybe the Lion get an alliance with the Unicorn and take the top half of the Scorpion's lands, forcing them into Shinomen forest and into the Crab provinces. Maybe the next arc the Scorpion trade some tricks with the Crab for some of the soldiers from the wall to march back when them.

Maybe the Crane and Lion have a political marriage that, combined with an untimely death, basically puts the leadership of both clans with 1 person.

idk, something more interesting. The map has been stagnant for all of my time in Rokugan. I was kinda hoping in the first Lion narrative they might actually take Toshi Ranbo back from the Crane... eh :\ I guess we'll see...

Guns are the great equaliser: a great hero may hit harder with a sword than a small child can, but a bullet fired by either of them hits just as hard. This is a problem in any game setting (RPG or LCG) in which we want to differentiate characters rather than equalise them. In-universe it leads to the obsolescence of the warrior caste; out-of-universe it leads to everyone having a military score of 1 and every battle being a simple headcount. Neither of these meshes well with L5R.

Trivia: We're not the first people to point this out. In Don Quixote, arguably the first modern novel in the western canon, the titular character condemns the advent of firearms, as "it is in the power of a cowardly and base hand to take the life of the bravest knight."

Further trivia: This sentence becomes funnier when you realise that Cervantes, the author, was a) a professional soldier by trade, and b) loathed the whole concept of knighthood, so was writing it to mock people who genuinely held that view.

1 hour ago, Kitsu Seinosuke said:

Trivia: We're not the first people to point this out. In Don Quixote, arguably the first modern novel in the western canon, the titular character condemns the advent of firearms, as "it is in the power of a cowardly and base hand to take the life of the bravest knight."

Further trivia: This sentence becomes funnier when you realise that Cervantes, the author, was a) a professional soldier by trade, and b) loathed the whole concept of knighthood, so was writing it to mock people who genuinely held that view.

I love Don Quixote - one of the best books ever. I feel so bad for him when the girls toy with his heart tho </3

Yeah - I don't like the idea of guns for the "real" Rokugan fiction, but it can be a fun component to an RPG campaign. Basically as guns come into power it can be interesting, but once they exist it sucks.

1 hour ago, Yogo Gohei said:

While that is a fine setting idea, it is not Rokugan.

Guns do not belong in a "Swords and Sorcery" setting, for what I hope are obvious reasons.

Please elaborate, because it's not at all obvious to me.

15 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

Please elaborate, because it's not at all obvious to me.

Because with guns it is no longer "swords and sorcery"....?

It isn't necessarily worse, just different. And Rokugan + guns is no longer Rokugan.

3 hours ago, shosuko said:

I would only be good with guns as optional in the rpg, not the main story. I feel it requires a certain reality v magic narrative that you can't steer away from as gunpowder is no doubt more effective as you can give thousands of conscripted ashigaru some guns and they can be more effective by sheer numbers than talented shugenja who need to appeal to, and appease the elements for similar effect.

What if guns literally upset the kami, to the point of making them more potent? Sorry I can't think of any way this would work in cards but it could be fun in the RPG.

1 hour ago, Yogo Gohei said:

Because with guns it is no longer "swords and sorcery"....?

It isn't necessarily worse, just different. And Rokugan + guns is no longer Rokugan.

I once had a goblin artificer who got a bunch of magic gems and he'd just plug them into everything. He made a bunch of technically guns. Played them off as unwieldy and explosive. It was great. But it fit the story. Which really matters.

9 hours ago, Kitsu Seinosuke said:

Guns are the great equaliser: a great hero may hit harder with a sword than a small child can, but a bullet fired by either of them hits just as hard.

This shouldn't be the case in Rokugan, or at least not to the length that concerns our fantasy samurai. A bullet fired by a samurai sharpshooter obviously hits harder due to the accuracy, for example. Or even better, a bullet hits differently an average man and a fantasy samurai: the former most likely gets incapacitated instantly, while the latter dodges/tanks the bullet and only gets angrier. Things only get more complicated when you consider the traditional archery training every samurai has (well, supposedly), and guns start to quickly lose out, becoming ashigaru-tier or specialist weapons.

The only thing that would matter at this point was not handguns, but cannons and other artillery grade firearms. Now, those would shake up the setting for good.

I think that guns would actually work fine in the setting. They aren't part of t, but it would be easy to put them in. It can actually add to the drama. Watch 7 Samurai if you don't believe me. It would just mean that certain themes are emphasized that are missing from L5R. And these themes might actually be good to have.

Main one: the passing away of an old order and the threat to traditional values of new ways. This is a classic, central theme of fantasy literature -- think how absolutely essential it is to Tolkien.

Rokugan has in the past been a society in perpetual stasis. I don't think a lot of thought went into this: it was a side effect of building in a thousand year gap between apocalypses. In a vision of Rokugan less like that, it adds a lot of pathos and interest if the status quo is changing or under threat.

19 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

Rokugan has in the past been a society in perpetual stasis.

You know, I would really like to do away with this, but this might be too big of a wish.

1 hour ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

I think that guns would actually work fine in the setting. They aren't part of t, but it would be easy to put them in. It can actually add to the drama. Watch 7 Samurai if you don't believe me. It would just mean that certain themes are emphasized that are missing from L5R. And these themes might actually be good to have.

Main one: the passing away of an old order and the threat to traditional values of new ways. This is a classic, central theme of fantasy literature -- think how absolutely essential it is to Tolkien.

Rokugan has in the past been a society in perpetual stasis. I don't think a lot of thought went into this: it was a side effect of building in a thousand year gap between apocalypses. In a vision of Rokugan less like that, it adds a lot of pathos and interest if the status quo is changing or under threat.

Being a conformist, traditionalist, and xenophobic society, stabilty (or stasis if you prefer) is a feature not a bug.

36 minutes ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

Being a conformist, traditionalist, and xenophobic society, stabilty (or stasis if you prefer) is a feature not a bug.

Of course, from an IC perspective. I am talking about from an OOC perspective. It could work for the story, regardless what opinion Rokugani Samurai would have about it,

2 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

Of course, from an IC perspective. I am talking about from an OOC perspective. It could work for the story, regardless what opinion Rokugani Samurai would have about it,

I agree on that point.

I"m admittedly biased on this,

What drew me to L5r was the culture it emulates, so I have less interest in seeing that culture changed than I have in seeing another Super-Apocalypse scenario.

Gunpowder doesn't have to equal reliable, mass producible and easy to use guns. It was invented in China 9th century, which is actually probably "earlier" than the Rokugan as far as advancement goes. There is a really large gap between "Gunpowder is invented" and "firearms dominate warfare", and IMHO Rokugan can comfortably exist in that gap. Just add some spiritual mumbo jumbo about kami balance being really blown up by using it for warfare, and you can turn it into a sacred substance used for religious purposes (fireworks, yo, they are amazing) and weaponized by Crab to explode some Onis.

(To make ninja going BOOM more interesting, we made explosives-wielding ninja sort of cultish and religious about handling The Black Powder - Crab use it pragmatically ["Kami in shadowlands are already ****** up"], Bayushi get zealous about it)

EDIT

If anything, make it invented by Agasha, not brought by gaijins, mimicking the taoist alchemy.

2 minutes ago, WHW said:

Gunpowder doesn't have to equal reliable, mass producible and easy to use guns. It was invented in China 9th century, which is actually probably "earlier" than the Rokugan as far as advancement goes. There is a really large gap between "Gunpowder is invented" and "firearms dominate warfare", and IMHO Rokugan can comfortably exist in that gap. Just add some spiritual mumbo jumbo about kami balance being really blown up by using it for warfare, and you can turn it into a sacred substance used for religious purposes (fireworks, yo, they are amazing) and weaponized by Crab to explode some Onis.

(To make ninja going BOOM more interesting, we made explosives-wielding ninja sort of cultish and religious about handling The Black Powder - Crab use it pragmatically ["Kami in shadowlands are already ****** up"], Bayushi get zealous about it)

Interesting

I think i like this idea, espesially if you crank up the 'cult-type' stuff

I always preferred cults to Kolat

You don't even really need to make people cultish or secretive about it. Remember that there is a nearly exact historical precedent for this in China: they had a powerful centralized government and invented gunpowder in the 9th century, and it was used in warfare but never dominated it. Why? Lack of innovation. Why? Nobody really knows, and it is one of the biggest questions in the history of technology, but it is a historical fact.

FWIW, my preferred explanation is that European style innovation is a weird outlier and the Chinese experience is pretty much the normal case.

Long story short, there can be guns in Rokugan and lots of social change related to that, or guns in Rokugan and minimal or no related social change, and either no or very little development of the technology.

I was looking for a sacred substance for Fire, one of the players wanted to play a one shot about a shinobi inflitrating a castle, two things connected and boom, religious order of fire-worshipping ninjas.

1 minute ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

You don't even really need to make people cultish or secretive about it. Remember that there is a nearly exact historical precedent for this in China: they had a powerful centralized government and invented gunpowder in the 9th century, and it was used in warfare but never dominated it. Why? Lack of innovation. Why? Nobody really knows, and it is one of the biggest questions in the history of technology, but it is a historical fact.

FWIW, my preferred explanation is that European style innovation is a weird outlier and the Chinese experience is pretty much the normal case.

Long story short, there can be guns in Rokugan and lots of soccial change related to that, or guns in Rokugan and minimal or no related social change, non or very little development of the technology.

Our Fire loving Bayushi are secretive about it because it's creepy and I liked an idea of combining a ninja school with a mystery cult.

The most "agreed to" theory I heard about why Europe went so ahead of the curve is "because Europe is a small place where incompatible cultures with incompatible identities and incompatible languages had to constantly one up each other just to survive, or not only its borders, but identity eradicated to the ground". China kind of got conquered anything interesting up to natural barriers, and then decided to chill out.

7 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

You don't even really need to make people cultish or secretive about it. Remember that there is a nearly exact historical precedent for this in China: they had a powerful centralized government and invented gunpowder in the 9th century, and it was used in warfare but never dominated it. Why? Lack of innovation. Why? Nobody really knows, and it is one of the biggest questions in the history of technology, but it is a historical fact.

AFAIK, this happened because the Chinese were up against the mongols who in turn had plenty of common sense, the greatest bane of primitive firearms. It is easy to see firearms as a dead-end tech if you are up against the guys who have the wits to counter them. In Europe, the dumb knights just rode straight into the gunfire, so there was a reason to work on the tech.

3 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

You don't even really need to make people cultish or secretive about it. Remember that there is a nearly exact historical precedent for this in China: they had a powerful centralized government and invented gunpowder in the 9th century, and it was used in warfare but never dominated it. Why? Lack of innovation. Why? Nobody really knows, and it is one of the biggest questions in the history of technology, but it is a historical fact.

FWIW, my preferred explanation is that European style innovation is a weird outlier and the Chinese experience is pretty much the normal case.

Long story short, there can be guns in Rokugan and lots of soccial change related to that, or guns in Rokugan and minimal or no related social change, non or very little development of the technology.

2 minutes ago, WHW said:

Our Fire loving Bayushi are secretive about it because it's creepy and I liked an idea of combining a ninja school with a mystery cult.

The most "agreed to" theory I heard about why Europe went so ahead of the curve is "because Europe is a small place where incompatible cultures with incompatible identities and incompatible languages had to constantly one up each other just to survive, or not only its borders, but identity eradicated to the ground". China kind of got conquered anything interesting up to natural barriers, and then decided to chill out.

I see a Rogukan analogy in your China phrasing.

I'm definitely 'borrowing' your BOOM ninja idea if I ever run another RPG campaign.

1 minute ago, AtoMaki said:

AFAIK, this happened because the Chinese were up against the mongols who in turn had plenty of common sense, the greatest bane of primitive firearms. It is easy to see firearms as a dead-end tech if you are up against the guys who have the wits to counter them. In Europe, the dumb knights just rode straight into the gunfire, so there was a reason to work on the tech.

I heard really conflicting opinions about "knight vs firearms" deal, to the point where I can't even decide what I think. I both heard that "plate was actually amazing against bullets and it was [something else i dont remember what] that made full plate knights obsolete" and "firearms brought end to knight warfare" :< .