Hey there

I live in Mito city in Ibaraki prefecture. I regularly play L5R with three other friends of mine. If anyone is around the area I would love to have more people to play with. My line name is Mikko if you want to contact me.

Anyhow...

So, players in Japan, can we try to meet all together somewhere?

It would be nice if we could set up some sort of event in Japan. Even if it couldn't be official something-something because we wouldn't be associated with any sort of store.

If we could try to organize some just 1-off event. We would first need to figure out where everyone relatively is, see if we could determine some central location. After that, finding a place to do it wouldn't be difficult-- there are various 24/7 "rent a space" places all over the place. I live in a relatively small town and there are 3 within just a couple kilometers of me.

As long as it was on a Sunday, it wouldn't be such a big problem for me.

You don't need a store to do l5r events. In Greece there have been like 5 tournaments with prize support by players who bought the kits and rented event space at a local hotel. Don't let anything stop you!

3 hours ago, Matsu Kenshin said:

You don't need a store to do l5r events. In Greece there have been like 5 tournaments with prize support by players who bought the kits and rented event space at a local hotel. Don't let anything stop you!

IIRC, the seasonal kits are $80. So if you can solidly get four people, that comes out to $5/tournament each for four tournaments or $15 for a league plus another $5 for a tournament.

$80 isn't all that much regardless.

The cost of travel for each person just to travel across Japan to meet in a single location would be 2-4x that amount for each person.

And then there is the cost of renting any accommodations.

I also know a couple of board game cafe that could help for a place.

Anyway, probably Tokyo's or Osaka's area will be good for most of us... I suppose? I am enthusiastic about the idea! I just hope the first meeting will be in the next year, because on December I have to go back in my home country (Italy)

I hope that some basis for a community can be made, I am going to live in Japan, probably in Kyoto in about a year, and I want to be able to keep playing l5r

4 hours ago, Matsu Kenshin said:

I hope that some basis for a community can be made, I am going to live in Japan, probably in Kyoto in about a year, and I want to be able to keep playing l5r

I am living in Matsuyama, not so far away. But in a couple of years, maybe I have to move to Osaka (because of my job). We will be not so far away

Also, I am open for some RPG with the L5R new edition (that I like very much). And because we are all in the same time zone... why not try?

On 11/23/2018 at 8:09 AM, Magnus Grendel said:

That's an interesting point. I'm sure someone with more of a metalogical background might be able to explain why.

I'm sure there's some sort of underlying reason for the mass appeal of fantastical settings (Game of Thrones) versus period settings with non-real characters (Jane Austen) versus historical settings heavily populated with real characters (Rome/Last Kingdom/Vikings)

Are said real characters doing (roughly) what they did in real life - as a fictionalised version of history with maybe the odd character (admittedly often the 'lead role') dropped in to pad out the plot or get expositioned at ( Last Kingdom/Rome fashion) - or are they real people but doing stuff that's not even vaguely what actually happened?

On 11/24/2018 at 3:54 PM, TheHobgoblyn said:

In general, Japanese people seem quite thrilled whenever someone from abroad does anything with an idea they can say originated in their country.

But translating the thing... that would be a major hurdle. And things like the minor clans having animals as family names or some of the families having clearly personal names as family names would be... odd. It would make the setting seem more comical than intended, in the very least. Now, no matter how much drama one tries to inject into it, you may as well consider the setting to have all the gravitas it would have if you were doing it in the Zootopia setting with furries.

It's why I argued that those things shouldn't carry over to the new setting-- but, obviously no one making the decisions cares even a little bit how ridiculous aspects of the setting sound to someone used to speaking Japanese. Just carbon copy exactly what was there before, every last nonsensical bad idea just in case there is 1 person who liked it.

At this point, just about the only way to translate the names in the setting, both clan and personal, would be to do it via katakana.

Even so, I imagine that fans of Japanese stuff likely to end up in Japan one way or another eventually.

On 11/22/2018 at 3:54 PM, Magnus Grendel said:

That said, Game of Thrones has picked up a big European audience, despite some serious issues when compared to anything resembling actual historical politics and warfare and medieval-ised names that are mostly manglings of actual names (Geoffry/Joffrey and Edward/Eddard, for example).

Just an idea that seems pretty obvious to me about why L5R doesn't get to be a big thing in Japan VS GoT being a big one in Europe. GoT has been created by an Occidental mind. George R R Martin is embedded in the Occidental culture, shares the language and has the right feeling for how everything should sound, look like and react. There is not such big disconnection from American and British culture ( and I say British specifically and not European in general because the way usually Americans depict French, Germans, or Italians for example is ridiculous). So for an European audience, there is nothing odd and getting into the universe is natural, no matter how fictional or how much it's inspired from reality.

Another example of a successful setting despite cultural disconnection that I can give is the 7th Sea RPG, which was sometimes really off the rails when it came to portray the nations of Thea, all largely inspired by diverse European nations. What kept the whole thing together and allowed the game to be successful is that each European country is very different and to the eyes of a french for example, the way the Eisen ( fictional Germany) was depicted was not strikingly odd. Each player group only made fixes in the game lore for his own country and went on full with the rest. This is however not possible with Rokugan as all is mixed up and the great clans are not each specifically inspired by a distinct nation.

L5R has been also created from an occidental point of view and I can only imagine how weird it will look to a Japanese audience. I mentally facepalm each time I see what is supposed to be an European / American character representation in a manga / anime/ Japanese video game. ("Asuka Soryu Langley" supposed to be German in Evangelion... Yeah sure 😝 ) I can only imagine it will be the same once you try to explain the lore of L5R to a Japanese native speaker. So the whole name issue TheHobgoblyn mentions right here, yeah I totally get it. It would get some interest as an exotic oddity at best.

And when it comes with the mix between Chinese and Japanese culture, I'm honestly not even sure how it would be perceived given the history between those 2 countries (actually if anyone knows, I would be interested to know!) .

Hello. Anyone still looking for l5r player in Japan? I live in Korea, near Japan. Korea group has 7~10 active members. so I think we can make local contest together. Please mail to me! ( I see rarely this community ) [email protected]