Just now getting to The Specters of War and the Dragon write-up on the intro page is... uncomfortably familiar from an Old5R player's perspective:

Quote

•The Dragon are mysterious as ever, but their descent from the mountaintops indicates an unspoken interest. With the tensions between the Great Clans on the rise, the Dragon might want to eliminate any chance of a rival clan claiming a stronghold so close to their territory.

Here's what I mean: In the prior lore, the Dragon existed to fill one very specific role in the beginning of the L5R story. Once that roll was fulfilled, they never really fit into the story again. Their identity was essentially, "we're mysterious and enigmatic and stay up in our mountains away from the silly politics of the empire," which in real-time basically boiled down to "we don't get to participate in the story so much."
Which leads to this particular pre-fiction writeup above. They've come down from the mountain (yay! great!) but... we still don't know why for sure, and the logic behind wanting Toshi Ranbo feels more like a half-hearted suggestion. Like, "Why not take the city? Could be good for you, yeah?" Hardly a real motivation.

(If I'm forgetting a fiction, please point it out to me, but haven't we been left with a dangling plot thread from the Dragon intro fiction at the beginning of the game?)

Thoughts? Am I barking up the wrong tree here or am I potentially on to something? lol

The Dragon brought a petition before the Emperor on the same day he banned all legislation pending the outcome of the Emerald Tournament ... but we don't know what the Dragon courtiers had to say, unfortunately. Besides that, we know Dragon faces three problems:

• samurai infertility
• Perfect Land Sect infestation
• Yokuni's premonition of doom

These issues could easily entangle the Dragon in Rokugani politics - it is simply not currently clear how any of them relate to Toshi Ranbo.

Also, the Dragon is very easy to fit in any storyline with just the old “Our Champion told us to do this because he saw it in a vision” gimmick. Sure, it’s not elegant and can get old if you abuse it too much, but I think is good for the writers to make the Dragon do something without having to give a perfectly logical explanation.

Very few writers understand all the clans at the same level, let alone are enthusiastic about all the clans at the same level. Sounds like this writer just isn't that interested in the Dragon. I'm not happy about it but it happens. It's an unfortunate problem with a lot of story prizes where it can be difficult to justify why every clan is involved (of course that makes it a lot easier to trade story prizes, i.e. we'll support your clan for X if you support our clan for Y).

27 minutes ago, suburbaknght said:

Very few writers understand all the clans at the same level, let alone are enthusiastic about all the clans at the same level. Sounds like this writer just isn't that interested in the Dragon. I'm not happy about it but it happens. It's an unfortunate problem with a lot of story prizes where it can be difficult to justify why every clan is involved (of course that makes it a lot easier to trade story prizes, i.e. we'll support your clan for X if you support our clan for Y).

They have multiple writers, so you probably mean story-director?

9 minutes ago, Swordbreaker said:

They have multiple writers, so you probably mean story-director?

Yeah, I don't know about anybody else, but I can vouch for the fact that every time the call goes out for us freelancers to call dibs on fics, Dragon is the top of my list. I didn't have one in the previous cycle due to other work commitments, but I've definitely written or am about to write more Dragon-focused stuff.

The math of how the packs get released means that a couple of clans will get the short end of the stick each round; there were six packs and six web previews, for a total of twelve fictions to cover seven clans. I think the two that got only one fic apiece this time were Dragon and Phoenix, though there's also other stuff going on that can make up for that -- I'm not precisely sure which fictions got counted in which sets, I think there were some extras, and fics can sort of double-count when they bring clans into contact with each other, especially as the story builds up steam. But it'll cycle around.

1 hour ago, Swordbreaker said:

They have multiple writers, so you probably mean story-director?

No, I actually meant writers. I can't speak for how FFG is handling things now - maybe @Kinzen can - but my experience has been that the story director would assign something like this to a writer and they would come up with the reasons. They're often researched and done in communication and consultation with the story director and other writers, but there's still a clear lack of enthusiasm with some clans when someone gets an assignment to cover all clans.

18 minutes ago, suburbaknght said:

No, I actually meant writers. I can't speak for how FFG is handling things now - maybe @Kinzen can - but my experience has been that the story director would assign something like this to a writer and they would come up with the reasons. They're often researched and done in communication and consultation with the story director and other writers, but there's still a clear lack of enthusiasm with some clans when someone gets an assignment to cover all clans.

Nobody "gets an assignment to cover all clans." We get to say what things we're interested in writing every time a new round begins. Me, I don't volunteer for the things that are Lion or Crane or Crab-centric because I know I'm less enthusiastic for those unless the right idea comes along, and the framework of the overall narrative means each fiction has one or more specific things it needs to accomplish, i.e. not free rein to make up whatever we like. My usual rundown is that I'm most interested in Dragon, followed by Phoenix, followed by Scorpion depending on what the story is; I'm not deeply embedded in the Shoju/Kachiko end of things, so when I write Scorpion (e.g. "In the Garden of Lies") it's the other stuff the clan is doing. I don't know the decision-making process for other writers and I can't vouch for how enthusiastic they are about anything, but there's a big enough pool of people that the odds of someone getting stuck with a thing they don't really care about are low -- it would only happen if nobody else wanted to write that one, which isn't likely.

Ah and let's not forget In The Garden Of Lies has an awesome Dragon bushi with lots of interesting dialog.

3 hours ago, Kinzen said:

Nobody "gets an assignment to cover all clans." We get to say what things we're interested in writing every time a new round begins. Me, I don't volunteer for the things that are Lion or Crane or Crab-centric because I know I'm less enthusiastic for those unless the right idea comes along, and the framework of the overall narrative means each fiction has one or more specific things it needs to accomplish, i.e. not free rein to make up whatever we like. My usual rundown is that I'm most interested in Dragon, followed by Phoenix, followed by Scorpion depending on what the story is; I'm not deeply embedded in the Shoju/Kachiko end of things, so when I write Scorpion (e.g. "In the Garden of Lies") it's the other stuff the clan is doing. I don't know the decision-making process for other writers and I can't vouch for how enthusiastic they are about anything, but there's a big enough pool of people that the odds of someone getting stuck with a thing they don't really care about are low -- it would only happen if nobody else wanted to write that one, which isn't likely.

Neat! Thanks for sharing the behind the scenes.

22 hours ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

Here's what I mean: In the prior lore, the Dragon existed to fill one very specific role in the beginning of the L5R story. Once that roll was fulfilled, they never really fit into the story again. Their identity was essentially, "we're mysterious and enigmatic and stay up in our mountains away from the silly politics of the empire," which in real-time basically boiled down to "we don't get to participate in the story so much."

I'm inclined to argue that the Dragon were pretty active in the old. They had their war against the Naga, their war against the Phoenix and Lion, the Kokujin stuff, their part of the War of the Rich Frog, their war against the Crane, Iweko becoming Empress, and their part of the tragic Unicorn romance stuff.

On 2/12/2018 at 10:48 PM, shineyorkboy said:

I'm inclined to argue that the Dragon were pretty active in the old. They had their war against the Naga, their war against the Phoenix and Lion, the Kokujin stuff, their part of the War of the Rich Frog, their war against the Crane, Iweko becoming Empress, and their part of the tragic Unicorn romance stuff.

1. All of that came as a result of flailing around looking for a new thing to do and be once their role as Togashi's secret weapon had been fulfilled.
2. From the War of Dark Fire (2009 or so) until basically the sale of the IP, all the Dragon as a Clan really got up to was babysitting the Spider- and being so totally blindsided by Kanpeki's betrayal that it couldn't be called anything but a humiliation. Shikei and Naleesh had their plot, yes, but that was, particularly from the Dragon side of things, one man's story, rather than clan activity. That's a lot of Not Doing Much.

With that said, we've got signs that, like the Phoenix (the other mystical mountain clan that was traditionally underserved in the story) the Dragon are being tweaked to be able to get up to more this time without having their core identity up in the air.