27 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

I personally dislike Kamoko being portrayed as "brash" (this character trait must die in fire in general IMHO).

But Kamoko is brash. That has always been her trait, especially at this time. She was technically the first Thunder "defeated" at the day of Thunder, because as soon as they got into the Palace Room, she charged Fu Leng and he tossed her aside.

Just now, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

On something as fundamentally important as marriage? In 200 years? Absolutely yes.

That's absurd. If we take the stance that marriage is an important fundamental, that it would be one of the very last things the Unicorn would adapt to, since the last things about your culture you want to change are the fundamentals.

4 minutes ago, C2K said:

But Kamoko is brash. That has always been her trait, especially at this time. She was technically the first Thunder "defeated" at the day of Thunder, because as soon as they got into the Palace Room, she charged Fu Leng and he tossed her aside.

Yeah, I mean, I did not like Kamoko being portrayed as brash in Old5R either.

I think it is funny, how some people try hard to find reasons to bash this story. And the reasoning behind it is always, that people act not perfectly. When I look on history, it is full of stupid and ignorant decisions and mistakes that could have been prevented with a little bit more empathy or knowledge. So as far as I am concerned, the story is pretty realistic.

1 hour ago, Ignithas said:

I think it is funny, how some people try hard to find reasons to bash this story. And the reasoning behind it is always, that people act not perfectly. When I look on history, it is full of stupid and ignorant decisions and mistakes that could have been prevented with a little bit more empathy or knowledge. So as far as I am concerned, the story is pretty realistic.

I think the issue is that these are the introductory fictions to introduce the clans to the world and the new playerbase that FFG wants to build for New5R.
In that regard, showcasing the Unicorn as being unaware on diplomatic subtleties is akin to showcasing the Lion being bad strategists (which, unfortunately, we did in the Lion fiction).

Show the clans at their best at their shtick(s) here. There is plenty of time in the upcoming years of future fiction to tell interesting stories that are born of human error and imperfection.

Just now, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

In that regard, showcasing the Unicorn as being unaware on diplomatic subtleties is akin to showcasing the Lion being bad strategists (which, unfortunately, we did in the Lion fiction).

How so? the Unicorn was always a plaything diplomatically and one of their big theme is being gullible and naive to the point where they are quite oblivious to courtly machinations. The Ide aren't even real courtiers but emissaries whose stick is to forge friendships by being nice and chill rather than play 4D political chess. It is, like, you don't know the tale of the Scorpion and the Ki-Rin or something .

2 hours ago, C2K said:

Other than that, Unicorn do use marriage as a bargaining chip in negotiation, because this is how the Unicorn survived and adapted when in the Burning Sands. A lot of the clan values they developed they learned through marriages. A clan champion or daimyo would never find themselves in such a position though... unless something was arranged before they took the mantle. I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think Naleesh nor the clan was aware of her divine presence when the idea of marrying her off to Shikei was brought to the negotiation table.

That is correct. When the marriage of Naleesh and Shikei was arranged, it was expected that he would be Clan Champion of the Dragon and she would be at best a family daimyo. So the contract was written for her to join the Dragon. Then they found out she was the soul of Shinjo, which meant that the Unicorn for obvious reasons did not want her to leave the clan as required by the contract.

5 hours ago, Ignithas said:

I think it is funny, how some people try hard to find reasons to bash this story. And the reasoning behind it is always, that people act not perfectly. When I look on history, it is full of stupid and ignorant decisions and mistakes that could have been prevented with a little bit more empathy or knowledge. So as far as I am concerned, the story is pretty realistic.

Exactly my point. The situation is realistic, even if unlikely. The problem isn't the situation, its the inability for the story to sell us on it. Any story, whether a book, movie, song, rpg, game ect is going to need to sell you on certain aspects of it. Its called suspended disbelief. When this happens you can become immersed in a fantasy world. When the story misses the mark on suspended disbelief then regardless of how realistic it is to die on a battlefield, or become entrenched in a bad political marriage, it just comes off as fake. Like when you super crit that ogre the DM thought would be a tough battle, killing it in 1 hit instead, and then the DM says it rises from the dead and attacks back anyway...

This fiction, like the Lion fiction, needed to be told better - it needed to show, not tell how this situation came about. Less dry exposition and more revelations and machinations.

1 minute ago, shosuko said:

This fiction, like the Lion fiction, needed to be told better - it needed to show, not tell how this situation came about. Less dry exposition and more revelations and machinations.

Well said. I suppose I got a little turned off by the beginning of the story (the heavy exposition), and that jaded me towards the rest.

5 minutes ago, shosuko said:

This fiction, like the Lion fiction, needed to be told better - it needed to show, not tell how this situation came about. Less dry exposition and more revelations and machinations.

I'm actually glad that it didn't even try. In this way, it is more like the Dragon story rather than the Lion. It is definitely better-off with this than, say, the Crane story.

6 hours ago, Ignithas said:

I think it is funny, how some people try hard to find reasons to bash this story. And the reasoning behind it is always, that people act not perfectly. When I look on history, it is full of stupid and ignorant decisions and mistakes that could have been prevented with a little bit more empathy or knowledge. So as far as I am concerned, the story is pretty realistic.

Oh, come on, now! Name one incident, in all of human history, where someone made a mistake when they should have known better!

1 minute ago, JJ48 said:

Oh, come on, now! Name one incident, in all of human history, where someone made a mistake when they should have known better!

The guy who invented the square wheel.

4 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

Oh, come on, now! Name one incident, in all of human history, where someone made a mistake when they should have known better!

tumblr;

1 hour ago, shosuko said:

tumblr;

And here, at last, you and I find an area of perfect agreement. ?

2 hours ago, Zesu Shadaban said:

The guy who invented the square wheel.

2 hours ago, shosuko said:

tumblr;

Two incidents when I clearly specified one . The answers are therefore disqualified and I win the discussion!

#MessageBoardClanCourtier

11 hours ago, Wintersong said:

The Unicorn now may is not totally like the Unicorn in old (i.e. maybe they don't care about hiding the meishodo nature). I was hoping for stepping far away from Moto Horde but we will see...

Anyway, so Daiyu is father to Shono, Haruko and Yasamura. Still had time to father Shahai? No more Shahai? Shahai is now someone else's daughter?

Shahai could be Daiyu's child from a different mother. Might be fun to see her as an evil half-sister to the heirs, if she's even around at all.

9 hours ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

I think the issue is that these are the introductory fictions to introduce the clans to the world and the new playerbase that FFG wants to build for New5R.
In that regard, showcasing the Unicorn as being unaware on diplomatic subtleties is akin to showcasing the Lion being bad strategists (which, unfortunately, we did in the Lion fiction).

Show the clans at their best at their shtick(s) here. There is plenty of time in the upcoming years of future fiction to tell interesting stories that are born of human error and imperfection.

...but Toturi was a good strategist. He kept giving them a sound course of action, and some of the characters recognized that and tried to temper Matsu Tsuko. Unfortunately he was fighting against the other big themes in the Lion. The problem I think a lot of people are having with that story is it's told from Matsu Tsuko's perspective and she clearly is the polar opposite of Toturi.

Also I disagree. Get into the meaty stories now. I think the overviews in the Learn to Play book and the product page is just fine to communicate what each clan is all about. That seems like a waste of good fiction to just have a "hey this is why this clan is awesome" story. That's not going to get me hooked into the serialized narrative.

But there's nothing inherently "meaty" about showing the Unicorn as diplomatically naive- in fact, the "whoops, didn't know you'd be marrying into the Ikoma" bit is totally unnecessary- Asako girl wanting to shank herself could have happened just as easily the other way around, and there are far less obvious holes for the negotiators to have fallen into to leave the Unicorn looking for a way out ("we're giving you a daimyo, so we want your eastern provinces and your diplomatic support for ten years, regardless of what that entails," or something similar).

Honestly, when I read this fiction, this is how I understood the situation:

1. Unicorn wanted really really hard to be at peace with Lion.

2. Lion don't want to be at peace, they want to punch faces, so they decided "hey, if we are going to make a concession, we are going to make it worth it; let's milk the Unicorn."

3. Unicorn starts courting the Lion, a painful 3 year long process.

4. Lion checks how much they can push Unicorn around. Each time Unicorn makes an attempt to get the peace deal done, they push it little harder, finding tradition, honor and other political context that will make them look good, while make Unicorn look bad if they don't agree.

5. Unicorn, trying really hard, bitterly accepts more and more demands of the Lion, mostly because they want peace, and already invested a lot.

6. Lion, in the end, deals the final blow - they set up a situation where Unicorn clearly loses AND is ridiculed and diminished if they agree, basically estabilishing Unicorn as Lion's *****, or they finally find their pride...and get painted as terrible, dishonorable and shameful. And then Lion go and make them their ***** militarily.

7. Asako incident is the final straw for the Unicorn, and they decide that they had enough, and are going to war.

I don't understand why people have problems imagining Lion basically adding new caveats and renegotiating the deal each time they felt like doing so. They were the ones who were begged for peace, and they really didn't want that peace; it was just a matter of finding enough obscure long dead traditions, quotes from ancestors put in a context that makes it look like they clearly support this solution as the only honorable one, and so on.

Again, imagine that you are sucking up to a neighbor who is a bully and who thinks that he definitely can beat you up and make everyone cheer for them, and you are asking them what do they want for not beating you up. There is nothing stopping them from renegotiating the deal whenever they feel, as long as they can make it look good.

2 hours ago, phillos said:

I think the overviews in the Learn to Play book and the product page is just fine to communicate what each clan is all about. That seems like a waste of good fiction to just have a "hey this is why this clan is awesome" story.

Indeed, I think (especially the first half of) this fiction ends up sounding like stilted exposition facilitated by Doji Strawman because they were trying to convey general information about the clan that may have been better given to us through a description fluff blurb like they have to for each clan in the rulebook. Trying to give all that expository information in a fiction is likely to make the fiction sound a bit unnatural and dull unless done really well. I think the Dragon fiction actually got away with this, and the Crab and the Phoenix too to a certain extent, so hats off to those authors.

Dragon, Crab and Phoenix are my favorite trio, that's for sure.

8 minutes ago, WHW said:

Dragon, Crab and Phoenix are my favorite trio, that's for sure.

I support this 100%! I mean, is there even another trio?

Well, there is Lion, Crane and Unicorn...with Lion being the only one I find unenjoyable, but they all have their issues.

6 minutes ago, WHW said:

Well, there is Lion, Crane and Unicorn...with Lion being the only one I find unenjoyable, but they all have their issues.

Like I said...

All the stories so far have been terrible in their own way. It appears so far that the clans don't even know how to take care of themselves and they are all inept(save scorpion perhaps, we will see)