1 minute ago, Daigotsu Steve said:

I very deeply hope that they go for a special edition kind of boxset and introduce a "playable" shadowlands in the form of a campaign deck or a 1v many boss mode/archenemy kind of thing. Something different. I can't imagine how the Shadowlands could interact with this game the way that everything else does(which is fine), but I would love for there to be something special for them for those of us that just want to wally about with Onis.

Lots of love, former Spider.

If enough people want it I'm sure it will happen.

10 minutes ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

The problem with the coup is putting a faction into a no win scenario. I could be mistaken, but I thought the Scorps weren't orginally a player faction for just this reason.

The original story started with Clan Wars, not the coup, and the Scorpion were already dissolved, though waiting to come back. So I doubt that was the reason they weren't playable originally. That said, point taken about the no-win scenario. You are quite correct that in any X Clan Coup (I think Scorpion are the best choice for this, but leave it open to do someone else just for a big switcheroo), clan X can be assumed to lose, especially if they intend to move on to Clan Wars.

Could it still be done well? In my opinion, yes - though it will take some doing. They could, conceivably, allow clan X to hold the throne through player victories, in which case things break down into revolt with 'loyalists' trying to get the surviving last Hantei back on the throne. Or, in the case of things following the original history, a disbanded clan doesn't need to have their card support cut out as AEG did in the early days. If the Scorpion had won the Race for the Throne, that's what would have happened to Dragon, and I think it might have been interesting.

Provided the no-win option doesn't cut into the card support, though, I suspect players will accept it provided the story remain engaging, which is always the struggle, of course.

2 minutes ago, agarrett said:

The original story started with Clan Wars, not the coup, and the Scorpion were already dissolved, though waiting to come back. So I doubt that was the reason they weren't playable originally. That said, point taken about the no-win scenario. You are quite correct that in any X Clan Coup (I think Scorpion are the best choice for this, but leave it open to do someone else just for a big switcheroo), clan X can be assumed to lose, especially if they intend to move on to Clan Wars.

Could it still be done well? In my opinion, yes - though it will take some doing. They could, conceivably, allow clan X to hold the throne through player victories, in which case things break down into revolt with 'loyalists' trying to get the surviving last Hantei back on the throne. Or, in the case of things following the original history, a disbanded clan doesn't need to have their card support cut out as AEG did in the early days. If the Scorpion had won the Race for the Throne, that's what would have happened to Dragon, and I think it might have been interesting.

Provided the no-win option doesn't cut into the card support, though, I suspect players will accept it provided the story remain engaging, which is always the struggle, of course.

This could be workable. Which is strange because just saying 'scorpion coup' gives me hives.

If there is a Hantei to put back on the throne, I might even enjoy that story.

I just don't know if FFG is going in this kind of direction. we'll see

Yeah, it looks like my preferred dead sacred cow is back: Clan Champions being the best at everything. To me it is pointless and doesn't make sense. You can have the protagonist/central character for a clan be someone other than the clan champion.

1 minute ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

Yeah, it looks like my preferred dead sacred cow is back: Clan Champions being the best at everything. To me it is pointless and doesn't make sense. You can have the protagonist/central character for a clan be someone other than the clan champion.

I think it has alot to do with 'setting access'. Champs can talk to the emperor today and a gate gaurd tommorrow. Others cant get this.

Another few:

1. The metaphysical landscape, for the lack of better phrasing. Retconned and changed multiple times, realms and their interaction with the world IMHO ended up doing more bad than good and emulated more of a "dnd planar sink" than the asian folklore or fantasy. Re-invention of Jigoku is a good example of what I disliked a lot about it. Spirit Realms are a mess, and the state of their architecture in yjr Old5R was imho bringing more bad than more good.

2. The lack of yokai. In general, 99% of supernatural beings were somehow Tainted and murderkilly or murderkilly even without being tainted, with 1% being random plot devices or something related to heavens.. Or something that will get tainted. Ugh. Give me some supernatural creatures, occurences and happenings that aren't related to Big Bad and aren't there just so someone has to hit them with the sword.

3. Focusing on large scale conflicts and warfare. Zoom the camera in; I wouldn't mind having a storyline or two that doesn't bother with clan champions and armies and wars, and instead focusing on individual characters.

And a controversial one, but

3 minutes ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

I think it has alot to do with 'setting access'. Champs can talk to the emperor today and a gate gaurd tommorrow. Others cant get this.

Why should I care about someone talking to the Emperor, though? You could do a perfectly fine storyline without Emperor ever appearing on screen. But again, I would rather see stories of individual samurai doing their stuff than movers and shakers moving and shaking, mostly their butts.

1 hour ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

....Togashi got his butt kicked.

Yeah, but he knew he was going to die, and that if Hitomi followed orders and took the 12th Black Scroll from his heart, there would be a chance to actually kill his dark brother.

Togashi spent a thousand years preparing to sacrifice himself so humanity would have a chance at true victory against Fu Leng.

The retcon version of Togashi...yeah, never mind. Whatever changes FFG makes to him, it has to be better than that (I hope).

My sacred cows to kill would be:

• Supernatural Big Bad Guys - I think the occasional story about this alright, and even really interesting. It just felt like it had become a norm near the end. An external force uniting the clans together can make for good stories, I just want it to be more rare so it feels special.
  
• Weakness/Power of the Emperor - To be honest, I felt like I could never get a bead on the Emperor's power. Sometimes they would be able to do whatever they want with a nod, or had otherworldly spiritual connections to Tengoku, other times it seemed like they would be swept aside rather easily. It just felt like this varied wildly based on story designs to me. Same with the Imperial Families to an extent.
  
• Dueling - I think dueling is a really important part of the setting, but I hope it plays out differently now (and it looks like it will). I just hated the old mechanics where if you came up against a duelist you had no chance whatsoever. It always felt really anticlimactic to me in game.
  
• Lack of real high level consequences - This might be unpopular, and I understand the reasons why a game would steer away from it (alienating players and all that), but I was actually really excited for the Mantis storyline at end of AEG days. Being almost completely destroyed as a clan and no longer a playable faction, with the opportunity to rebuild the clan in coming arcs and tournaments seemed like the most exciting storyline I could imagine and I was looking forward to following it in the worst way. I even wanted to help recreate the Mantis and restore the clan. It made me invested in the game in a way that 'Person X becomes Position Y' never did. Those rewards were always cool too, but I was ready to dive in and fight with/for those dirty pirates!

10 hours ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

I'd love to see the Scorpion lose their "we are a primarily political clan" stereotype. It's really not what the clan is about;

I disagree. Strongly. My favorite scorpion decks in Old5R were political in nature.

The extremely political scorpion decks of The Ruined Fortress era.
The Deception's Veil Dojo decks of Samurai Edition.
Or the Kyuden Bayushi "I am the Imperial Favor" decks of Diamond Edition.

Scorpion is also fun when it is a bunch of Ninjas running around in their pajamas, don't get me wrong, but the political decks capture the feel of the clan better than anything, imho.

4 minutes ago, Togashi Gao Shan said:

Yeah, but he knew he was going to die, and that if Hitomi followed orders and took the 12th Black Scroll from his heart, there would be a chance to actually kill his dark brother.

Togashi spent a thousand years preparing to sacrifice himself so humanity would have a chance at true victory against Fu Leng.

The retcon version of Togashi...yeah, never mind. Whatever changes FFG makes to him, it has to be better than that (I hope).

I would like that, for a change, the Clan that speaks about the most about free will, achieving personal enlightenment, finding your own way and forging your own destiny, wasn't the one that is the one that lacks it the most, being puppeteered by a 1000 year old guy and being, in the end, simply an engineered tool for a specific task. A great cosmic irony, but one never acknowledged.

9 hours ago, WHW said:

11. Shourido being presented as some kind of inherently devilish and satanic blasphemy and anti-thesis of bushido to create artificial conflict between non-conflicting philosophies just so "dark mirror" has it's "DARK VIRTUES".

I think you are going to get your wish on this one. "Perfection" is shown very favorably in the Crane fiction as being something attainable without having to crap all overly bushido to attain it.

Just now, Yogo Gohei said:

I think you are going to get your wish on this one. "Perfection" is shown very favorably in the Crane fiction as being something attainable without having to crap all overly bushido to attain it.

That was the case before too, though. Perfection was (at least as far as I remember) always THE Crane thing, as much as Knowledge was THE thing of Phoenix and insight into enlightenment was THE thing of the Dragon. That's why I felt Shourido "IS EVILZ" as a very artificial construct - it basically took what each Clan felt is best tool for fulfilling your duty, named it, and then said "and these things are bad, but they are only bad when you say you are following them, they are totally ok when you are just following your clan, even if you are doing the same thing, just under different name.

Just because Bushido exists and is crowned as the most important philosophical system for the samuari to understand and follow, doesn't mean that there can't be supplementary philosophies that can be explored by characters in setting. But again, this is the feature of 90ties-ishly extreme characterization of things as either GOOD AND HONORABLE!, or EXTREMELY SHAMEFUL, INSTANT SEPPUKU, without touching the things in between.

1. The taint can't be cured/drives you crazy.

2. The Shadowlands terrain shifting.

8 minutes ago, WHW said:

I would like that, for a change, the Clan that speaks about the most about free will, achieving personal enlightenment, finding your own way and forging your own destiny, wasn't the one that is the one that lacks it the most, being puppeteered by a 1000 year old guy and being, in the end, simply an engineered tool for a specific task. A great cosmic irony, but one never acknowledged.

It was acknowledged in the Dragon Clan novel. Hitomi speaks bluntly about the dichotomy of it, and Togashi doesn't deny it. It makes for pretty compelling philosophical - and even metaphysical - ruminations.

That said, I would be fully on board with FFG immediately showcasing the opposing nature of what the Dragon supposedly stand for, versus Togahi's milennia of manipulations.

I like Taint as a disease. I like Taint driving you crazy.

I dislike the "you hit a small rock with your big toe in shadowlands, you took 1 damage, now you are Tainted and everything will suck forever". Again, too extreme.

10 minutes ago, WHW said:

That was the case before too, though. Perfection was (at least as far as I remember) always THE Crane thing, as much as Knowledge was THE thing of Phoenix and insight into enlightenment was THE thing of the Dragon. That's why I felt Shourido "IS EVILZ" as a very artificial construct - it basically took what each Clan felt is best tool for fulfilling your duty, named it, and then said "and these things are bad, but they are only bad when you say you are following them, they are totally ok when you are just following your clan, even if you are doing the same thing, just under different name.

Just because Bushido exists and is crowned as the most important philosophical system for the samuari to understand and follow, doesn't mean that there can't be supplementary philosophies that can be explored by characters in setting. But again, this is the feature of 90ties-ishly extreme characterization of things as either GOOD AND HONORABLE!, or EXTREMELY SHAMEFUL, INSTANT SEPPUKU, without touching the things in between.

http://www.kazenoshiro.com/2007/03/07/tested-virtues/

I thought that fiction did a very good job of explaining why the "dark virtues" were more selfish, and inherently more "bad" than the bushido virtues. Whether or not you buy it is another matter, but I remember finding it rather compelling back when that fiction first appeared.

That said, I am perfectly happy with Shurido going away.

Just now, Togashi Gao Shan said:

It was acknowledged in the Dragon Clan novel. Hitomi speaks bluntly about the dichotomy of it, and Togashi doesn't deny it. It makes for pretty compelling philosophical - and even metaphysical - ruminations.

That said, I would be fully on board with FFG immediately showcasing the opposing nature of what the Dragon supposedly stand for, versus Togahi's milennia of manipulations.

I didn't read the novels, so I'm glad it was touched at least once somewhere.

As for Togashi. Unpopular wish, but I would love for this storyline to reverse the usual dynamic between Togashi and his clan. How?

Imagine that Togashi is still preparing for his 1000 old vision, and really doing his best, but something goes wrong, and he can't solve it all by himself. His manipulations start to fall apart, and he desperately tries to fix it, fix it more, fix it, fixfixfixsfix, plunging into despair. I wish Dragon Clan would then show him that there is still hope and basically save him from himself and his vision, forging a new path and new destiny together. Not "Togashi engineers everything to save the Empire turning them into unwilling puppets", and also not "reclaiming their freedom from a overprotective puppeteer", but more of a "let's finally work together, you can rest and don't have to put all the burden on yourself, Togashi".

3 minutes ago, Isawa Omi said:

1. The taint can't be cured/drives you crazy.

2. The Shadowlands terrain shifting.

Nah. These were both great, especially when not the 1st edition of the rpg.

I could live with 2 being gone, but the Taint *needs* to be incurable in at least 99.9 percent of cases. When the L5R story got away from that, first by having multiple characters be cured, and then (boo!) making it only possible to gain voluntarily, it lost all of it's narrative power.

Again, I like it being like a disease that can be "somewhat taken care of", but never cured. But that would, IMHO, need to acknowledge that there might be people who are Tainted and still are not 100% exiled from the daily life. Again, strife and plague, not ALL IN or ALL OUT.

10 hours ago, shosuko said:

I totally agree about the Scorpion - imo it isn't that they are political, but more that they are satirical. They are the dark satire against all clans. The Crane are honorable, the Lion are loyal, the Dragon are introspective, the Crab are pragmatic... all to a fault. The Scorpion are that fault. Honor is selfish, it lets you stay clean while a job goes undone. We do that job. Loyalty only looks good until 2 of the people you are loyal to have a quarrel. Do you obey Matsu Tsuko or Akodo Toturi? You can't obey them both when they vie against each other. We choose our loyalty. It's great to look at the inevitable balance of the universe... but some of us have bills to pay. Farms that would go barren without skilled work. Taxes that wouldn't add up without shrewd accounting. We go to work. Pragmatism is great, but there must be some limit to how far down you can dig before you're just playing in the mud like a pig...

That was never actually a problem. The Lion followed Toturi, until he was stripped of his status and made a ronin, along with the rest of the Akodo who choose to follow Toturi as ronin. The rest of the Lion followed Matsu Tsuko, until her sempukku released them to follow Toturi, even though they new the Emperor was, evil/Fu Leng before she did that.

10 minutes ago, Yogo Gohei said:

http://www.kazenoshiro.com/2007/03/07/tested-virtues/

I thought that fiction did a very good job of explaining why the "dark virtues" were more selfish, and inherently more "bad" than the bushido virtues. Whether or not you buy it is another matter, but I remember finding it rather compelling back when that fiction first appeared.

That said, I am perfectly happy with Shurido going away.

Ah, Garen Hawthorne, the expert of Gaijin-splaining honor to samurai.

Yeah, one of things that made me go "wat" with Shourido was the whole Garen thing. This fiction isn't bad, but it's also very...narratively framed and engineered to reach a particular conclusion and show a very specific angle of the problem. Kind of like these articles and narratives claiming that DND and RPG and Card Games make you want to become a satanist, and then spinning a convincing (well, more or less) argument about it.

11 minutes ago, WHW said:

I like Taint as a disease. I like Taint driving you crazy.

I dislike the "you hit a small rock with your big toe in shadowlands, you took 1 damage, now you are Tainted and everything will suck forever". Again, too extreme.

Agreed, I like the Taint as something you choose, or massive oni crushes you shoving tainted fist into your chest, or you have some taint now...assuming oyu live. I can see it for wandering in the shadowlands for too long without jade for protection though, as a slow seep into you through the air and gorund. I guess because i see spending weeks in the shadowlands as a choice as well.

4 minutes ago, WHW said:

I didn't read the novels, so I'm glad it was touched at least once somewhere.

As for Togashi. Unpopular wish, but I would love for this storyline to reverse the usual dynamic between Togashi and his clan. How?

Imagine that Togashi is still preparing for his 1000 old vision, and really doing his best, but something goes wrong, and he can't solve it all by himself. His manipulations start to fall apart, and he desperately tries to fix it, fix it more, fix it, fixfixfixsfix, plunging into despair. I wish Dragon Clan would then show him that there is still hope and basically save him from himself and his vision, forging a new path and new destiny together. Not "Togashi engineers everything to save the Empire turning them into unwilling puppets", and also not "reclaiming their freedom from a overprotective puppeteer", but more of a "let's finally work together, you can rest and don't have to put all the burden on yourself, Togashi".

That's an interesting idea, and could make for some engaging stories.

I'm not sure having the normal clan members dealing on that level with their founding Kami feels right for Rokugan, though. It might work if written very carefully. If Hoshi exists this time., Nat e get can be the one to directly tell his father "yo dad, we need to talk".

1 minute ago, Togashi Gao Shan said:

Nah. These were both great, especially when not the 1st edition of the rpg.

I could live with 2 being gone, but the Taint *needs* to be incurable in at least 99.9 percent of cases. When the L5R story got away from that, first by having multiple characters be cured, and then (boo!) making it only possible to gain voluntarily, it lost all of it's narrative power.

I stick firmly by not having the Shadowlands terrain shift. I always hated it.

As for the taint I like WHW suggestion of making it a bit harder to get than stubbing your toe on a rock that once was held over the Shadowlands for five seconds from the Carpenters wall. I would like its progression to be a bit voluntary. As in after you've left the Shadowlands or are no longer in fighting tainted being it won't spread of it's own accord but it will always be tempting to you to use the power of Jigoku to take the easy path to victory.