6 minutes ago, Mirumoto Saito said:

...and I like guns in my samurai-fantasy.

I support this sentiment.

Just now, RandomJC said:

I support this sentiment.

I like samurai in my samurai fantasy

1 minute ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

I like samurai in my samurai fantasy

Can have both.

Just now, RandomJC said:

Can have both.

I suppose

but I would prefer more samurai and less Doji Quick-draw or Mirumoto Two-Gun

Just now, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

I suppose

but I would prefer more samurai and less Doji Quick-draw or Mirumoto Two-Gun

...*sounds wonderful*

Just now, RandomJC said:

...*sounds wonderful*

Yes, but your southern and probably enjoy squirrel hunting ??jk

1 minute ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

Yes, but your southern and probably enjoy squirrel hunting ??jk

A-yup.

8 minutes ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

I like samurai in my samurai fantasy

I like fantasy in my samurai fantasy. This encompasses things like guns being largely useless because samurai can literally cut bullets out of the air - and don't even try to shoot monks or shugenja.

Just now, AtoMaki said:

I like fantasy in my samurai fantasy. This encompasses things like guns being largely useless because samurai can literally cut bullets out of the air - and don't even try to shoot monks or shugenja.

THIS!!

Yes we like this idea!

I was to see an Ise Zumi make some mooks' matchlock explode with his dragon tattoo!??

12 hours ago, Kinzen said:

Except it has never once felt to me like a quicker path to power -- just another path to power that happens to corrupt you and make you an imperial criminal. I would like to believe in a story where maho is really a temptation, but for the most part it seems like a bad deal all around. In part because it keeps being attached to characters who, with a tiny bit more effort, could accomplish basically all the same ends without corrupting their minds and bodies and putting themselves at risk for execution. I would at least believe it more if the people selling their souls for those abilities were people who don't have access to them by safer means.

This is admittedly an RPG-influenced opinion: by the mechanics there, if you strip away the exterior trappings of maho, then fundamentally speaking almost everything it does is identical to stuff you can do with elemental magic, just with a different paint job. Cause damage, impose penalties, defend yourself, etc. I would pay good money to see rules that take several things away from elemental magic -- like mind-reading and messing with people's memories -- and make those what maho can do, because then I would actually buy the idea that someone would listen to the promises of the kansen in exchange for such power.

That's mostly because while we were told that Maho is a corrupting temptation, what we have been shown is a power set that could make some short sighted DND adventurer interested - lots of damage, lots of debuffs, lots of general harm and typical necromancy...

...but almost nothing that could give you fuel for things like "Hey, crying friend! I saw you crying and cursing that samurai who took the girl you love! Listen, we can make it work, you just need to give me a little tiny bit of your blood!" or other actual temptations to actual problems that aren't resolved by both parties going into combat mode.

Basically, representations of Maho did wery poor job of actually showing why - outside of curbstomping enemies in combat - is it exactly so tempting. There isn't much to help the ambitious get the job he thinks he deserves, there isn't much ammo for jealous spurred lover, and there isn't much for "i want to get rich and abandon my station" person.

The rule books specifically say that Dragon clan invented the firework powder!

55 minutes ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

......Not the gun thing again...??

Just now, Devin-the-Poet said:

The rule books specifically say that Dragon clan invented the firework powder!

True but hanabi is different because......umm the emperor said so...I think ?

That's becaue O5R authors didn't know/care that gunpowder could potentially have almost 2000 years of history IRL. Gunpowder doesn't have to equal guns. Fireworks are just earlier on the spectrum than flintlocks are.

2 minutes ago, WHW said:

That's becaue O5R authors didn't know/care that gunpowder could potentially have almost 2000 years of history IRL. Gunpowder doesn't have to equal guns. Fireworks are just earlier on the spectrum than flintlocks are.

I'll go with 'didn't care '

3 hours ago, WHW said:

That's mostly because while we were told that Maho is a corrupting temptation, what we have been shown is a power set that could make some short sighted DND adventurer interested - lots of damage, lots of debuffs, lots of general harm and typical necromancy...

...but almost nothing that could give you fuel for things like "Hey, crying friend! I saw you crying and cursing that samurai who took the girl you love! Listen, we can make it work, you just need to give me a little tiny bit of your blood!" or other actual temptations to actual problems that aren't resolved by both parties going into combat mode.

Basically, representations of Maho did wery poor job of actually showing why - outside of curbstomping enemies in combat - is it exactly so tempting. There isn't much to help the ambitious get the job he thinks he deserves, there isn't much ammo for jealous spurred lover, and there isn't much for "i want to get rich and abandon my station" person.

Yep. Mind control, curses, instant wealth and power -- those are the kinds of things people would compromise themselves for. Maho that delivers on such wishes is a temptation I could believe in. Or you could make kami-based magic not about brutally smashing/burning/otherwise obliterating your enemies into tiny pieces, and then maybe having that could also be a selling point for maho. But right now, the few things it offers that elemental magic can't do (like making zombies) really just aren't worth it.

4 hours ago, WHW said:

That's becaue O5R authors didn't know/care that black powder could potentially have almost 2000 years of history IRL. Black powder doesn't have to equal guns. Fireworks are just earlier on the spectrum than flintlocks are.

Fixed that for you

18 hours ago, Suzume Tomonori said:

I don't know what it is, but I feel like all of these fiction threads somehow eventually all go into Phoenix discussions at some point.

That's mostly my fault, based upon a cursory review of my posts...

17 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

I still don't consider Tadaka's adventure with the Kuni as a "dark path". He just became a Super-Kuni. Welp, that happens. He didn't stray, though, and it wasn't knowledge that poisoned him, but his drive (that rooted in his hubris to avenge his ancestor, who in turn deserved no such thing and only got Tadaka because the boy was such an awesome guy in his mind).

Two options, depending on how you want your Tadaka:

- Tadaka and the Council don't open the scrolls at all, others do. They know that as long as the scrolls are closed, there can't be such a big calamity, so there is literally no reason to open them on some forlorn hope. Because, y'know, they are wise and knowledgeable, like the Phoenix should be, and know when to stop. It doesn't prevent others to eventually steal the scrolls and open them, but hey, what gives? At one point, the story swaps to Tadaka and the Council trying to re-seal the already opened scrolls, with most likely tragic results (not only they fail, but they get corrupted for their effort).

- Tadaka and the Council do open the scrolls, but they get their butts denounced, excommunicated, and either killed or cast out by the Phoenix Clan. Most likely by the hands of Kaede and Tsukune. Tadaka makes a sloppy escape, and spends the story hunted by a pissed-off Tsukune, various Asako Inquisitors, and the occasional Kuni Witch Hunter. He eventually only becomes the Phoenix Thunder because the Hooded Ronin insists, and even then, he is hated and reviled by the other Thunders, and only gets a sort of quasi-redemption when he sacrifices himself to defeat Fu Leng.

You don't consider Tadaka "uncovering foul rituals and gleaning their secrets" dark? Or, Tadaka being so tainted so as to show physical signs that required disguise, dark? Then your definition of dark is definitely atypical, IMO.

"Hubris" to avenge his ancestor... What? How can you approve of his "Super Kuni" path, while proposing that it was arrogance that lead him to it? Are all Kuni arrogant by default?

On your alternate scenarios:

1. When other Shugenja open the scrolls, the story does not resonate, IMO. It reduces the Masters to a police force instead of having the Masters explore a 'price to power' themselves. The message is different.

2. Does this version have you like Tadaka in the end? I can see this being Toturi-redux. Did you consider Toturi to be a good Lion Clan Thunder? (I did not consider him to be Lion Clan, but perhaps that's not the case for other Lion Clan players?).

19 hours ago, Kinzen said:

Except it has never once felt to me like a quicker path to power -- just another path to power that happens to corrupt you and make you an imperial criminal. I would like to believe in a story where maho is really a temptation, but for the most part it seems like a bad deal all around. In part because it keeps being attached to characters who, with a tiny bit more effort, could accomplish basically all the same ends without corrupting their minds and bodies and putting themselves at risk for execution. I would at least believe it more if the people selling their souls for those abilities were people who don't have access to them by safer means.

This is admittedly an RPG-influenced opinion: by the mechanics there, if you strip away the exterior trappings of maho, then fundamentally speaking almost everything it does is identical to stuff you can do with elemental magic, just with a different paint job. Cause damage, impose penalties, defend yourself, etc. I would pay good money to see rules that take several things away from elemental magic -- like mind-reading and messing with people's memories -- and make those what maho can do, because then I would actually buy the idea that someone would listen to the promises of the kansen in exchange for such power.

Much like Shugenja communing with the Kami and not really having that come across in the fiction/RPG, the depiction of Maho suffered in the same way. It's supposed to be a quicker path to power. It's suppose to have lead to unheard of max power levels, Iuchiban being an example. Only, it rarely came across in this way until Iuchiban was freed. That's more due to the writing, than the limitations of the idea itself.

While I generally disagree with Gunichi about why Maho persisted within the Phoenix, he did outline how Maho has been poorly executed in the fiction. This is something we both understand and acknowledge. The difference is that I see the potential in using Maho to be what it was meant to be, not how it was executed.

Maho as a vehicle to describe the lure and abuse of power should work. That edge in power, especially when compared to Elemental magic, has to be defined well from the outset though. Only then will it lead to a clear motivation by the PCs to pursue it.

3 minutes ago, Anemura said:

You don't consider Tadaka "uncovering foul rituals and gleaning their secrets" dark? Or, Tadaka being so tainted so as to show physical signs that required disguise, dark? Then your definition of dark is definitely atypical, IMO.

Indeed- Tadaka went digging in some nasty, nasty places. Moreso than the bulk of the Kuni family, that's for damned sure.

3 minutes ago, Anemura said:

Much like Shugenja communing with the Kami and not really having that come across in the fiction/RPG, the depiction of Maho suffered in the same way. It's supposed to be a quicker path to power. It's suppose to have lead to unheard of max power levels, Iuchiban being an example. Only, it rarely came across in this way until Iuchiban was freed. That's more due to the writing, than the limitations of the idea itself.

A natural outgrowth of its status as lazy narrative crutch is that if maho were as powerful as it's cracked up to be, we would have seen more Empire-shaking Tsukai than just Iuchiban or Daigotsu... but we never did. To be sure, the Dark Daughter of Fu Leng, the Ebon Daughter, Iuchi Shahai, and Asahina Yajinden were all presented as credible threats, but never as appreciably moreso than a "normal" shugenja would have been.

And considering how tired we all got of existential threats to the Empire, I'm not sure that's an inherent problem.

3 minutes ago, Anemura said:

Maho as a vehicle to describe the lure and abuse of power should work. That edge in power, especially when compared to Elemental magic, has to be defined well from the outset though. Only then will it lead to a clear motivation by the PCs to pursue it.

Magic that is intended to be "evil" is always going to labor under a burden- and is always going to be a readily available crutch for sloppy writing. "A wizard did it" is a tired trope, and "evil magic makes you evil" even moreso.

3 hours ago, Anemura said:

You don't consider Tadaka "uncovering foul rituals and gleaning their secrets" dark? Or, Tadaka being so tainted so as to show physical signs that required disguise, dark?

I don't consider it a "dark path". It was a dark adventure (kinda?), but it was an investigative story that led to nice (and silly) things with Tadaka mostly staying on the right side of things and laughing in the face of darkness. Also, he never had any physicals signs of the Taint - as far as his RPG stats are concerned, his highest Taint Rank was 2.8 (you might have pale skin at this point) after the Black Scrolls with no powers/mutations whatsoever.

Quote

"Hubris" to avenge his ancestor... What? How can you approve of his "Super Kuni" path, while proposing that it was arrogance that lead him to it? Are all Kuni arrogant by default?

Obviously. That's one of their leading family trait.

Quote

1. When other Shugenja open the scrolls, the story does not resonate, IMO. It reduces the Masters to a police force instead of having the Masters explore a 'price to power' themselves. The message is different.

I think it is better to leave the 'price to power' theme to someone else. The Phoenix are supposedly to smart, wise, and humble for this stuff.

Quote

Does this version have you like Tadaka in the end? I can see this being Toturi-redux. Did you consider Toturi to be a good Lion Clan Thunder? (I did not consider him to be Lion Clan, but perhaps that's not the case for other Lion Clan players?).

I do consider Toturi a good Lion Thunder. And in this version, I would leave Tadaka in a "twilight zone" and leave it to the fans whether he was cool or not.

4 hours ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

status as lazy narrative crutch is that if maho were as powerful as it's cracked up to be, we would have seen more Empire-shaking Tsukai than just Iuchiban or Daigotsu... but we never did. To be sure, the Dark Daughter of Fu Leng, the Ebon Daughter, Iuchi Shahai, and Asahina Yajinden were all presented as credible threats, but never as appreciably moreso than a "normal" shugenja would have been.

Part of it is that dealing with maho-tsukai never seems to be much of a problem. Witch -Hunters and Inquisitors go around on their own, or maybe in pairs, and a single jade strike deals with the bad cultists. One shugenja waltzing into a cult meeting should be asking to have their heart exploded in five seconds, not strolling back out in need of more head-sacks.

The Five Nights of Shame should be more of the blueprint for how putting down maho goes; it's always exceedingly costly and nothing to be taken lightly.

14 hours ago, Mirumoto Saito said:

...and I like guns in my samurai-fantasy.

Rokugan. A land where honor is stronger than steel. But weaker than gunpowder.

1 minute ago, Ide Yoshiya said:

Rokugan. A land where honor is stronger than steel. But weaker than gunpowder.

Guns are made of steel as much as swords as.

32 minutes ago, Laurence J Sinclair said:

Part of it is that dealing with maho-tsukai never seems to be much of a problem.

This is quite a common thing in RPG settings which are deep enough to have different, varied threats: each threat tends to be represented simultaneously as both very dangerous and not very dangerous at all. This is because each threat must be simultaneously very dangerous (so that PCs feel good about defeating them if that's what the focus of the campaign is on) and not very dangerous (so that it's possible to run a campaign which isn't about them.)

This may seem like a problem, but consider the alternative. When you run an RPG, you are implicitly promising your players that what they're involved in is the most interesting part of the game setting right now. If something fascinating happens elsewhere, they'll want to go and get involved. If they can't get involved then they'll be annoyed at you, and rightly so.

(Imagine being a player in a slice-of-life campaign of intrigue and swordsmanship amidst the ronin villages along the Shinomen Mori border. That would be enormous fun, right? Now imagine that you're playing that campaign while the events of the Scorpion Clan Coup are happening, but all you can do is hear about it second-hand. Less fun, right?)

The way that L5R handles this is to have each threat become harmless if the players aren't interested in it. If the campaign is about hunting down maho-tsukai, then those tsukai need to be incredibly dangeous. If the campaign is about (say) a succession crisis within the Akodo family, then maho-tsukai have to be something that can be handled by a few travelling shugenja while the rest of Rokugan gets on with other stuff.

My term for this is the Basilisk Herd . Basilisks are dangerous but only if you look at them; therefore out of the entire herd, the only one that threatens you is the one you're looking at.

7 minutes ago, Kitsu Seinosuke said:

This is quite a common thing in RPG settings which are deep enough to have different, varied threats: each threat tends to be represented simultaneously as both very dangerous and not very dangerous at all. This is because each threat must be simultaneously very dangerous (so that PCs feel good about defeating them if that's what the focus of the campaign is on) and not very dangerous (so that it's possible to run a campaign which isn't about them.)

This may seem like a problem, but consider the alternative. When you run an RPG, you are implicitly promising your players that what they're involved in is the most interesting part of the game setting right now. If something fascinating happens elsewhere, they'll want to go and get involved. If they can't get involved then they'll be annoyed at you, and rightly so.

(Imagine being a player in a slice-of-life campaign of intrigue and swordsmanship amidst the ronin villages along the Shinomen Mori border. That would be enormous fun, right? Now imagine that you're playing that campaign while the events of the Scorpion Clan Coup are happening, but all you can do is hear about it second-hand. Less fun, right?)

The way that L5R handles this is to have each threat become harmless if the players aren't interested in it. If the campaign is about hunting down maho-tsukai, then those tsukai need to be incredibly dangeous. If the campaign is about (say) a succession crisis within the Akodo family, then maho-tsukai have to be something that can be handled by a few travelling shugenja while the rest of Rokugan gets on with other stuff.

My term for this is the Basilisk Herd . Basilisks are dangerous but only if you look at them; therefore out of the entire herd, the only one that threatens you is the one you're looking at.

*like*

well said