So, I was studying my Census workbook and my Spoilers workbook today and it turns out that there's one family in particular which is horribly neglected. The Kitsu. The only mention of this entire family is the Kitsu Spiritcaller. This covers Unique and non-unique cards, main characters and purely mentioned characters in fictions and even those people who exist purely in the realm of card flavour text.

Where are they, and what are they doing? Maybe the kitsu are still alive and living amongst them?

17 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

So, I was studying my Census workbook and my Spoilers workbook today and it turns out that there's one family in particular which is horribly neglected. The Kitsu. The only mention of this entire family is the Kitsu Spiritcaller. This covers Unique and non-unique cards, main characters and purely mentioned characters in fictions and even those people who exist purely in the realm of card flavour text.

Where are they, and what are they doing? Maybe the kitsu are still alive and living amongst them?

Kitsu Motso has shown up in fiction if memory serves (should have been in the opening Lion fiction). He was the odd Kitsu being a son of the Daimyo and having no aptitude for communing with the Spirits, but was a superb tactician and ended up one of the two generals commanding the Lion forces after the death of Matsu Tsuko when the Lion split down the loyal to the Throne versus upholding their honor schism that Toturi helped end.

It's not like the Kitsu get out much.

The Lion don't believe shugenja should be on the frontlines in war, the Ikoma carry the ball in Court...

And as far as Ancestors go... well, we've got no beloved dead Lion characters for them to channel yet!

1 hour ago, Schmoozies said:

Kitsu Motso has shown up in fiction if memory serves (should have been in the opening Lion fiction). He was the odd Kitsu being a son of the Daimyo and having no aptitude for communing with the Spirits, but was a superb tactician and ended up one of the two generals commanding the Lion forces after the death of Matsu Tsuko when the Lion split down the loyal to the Throne versus upholding their honor schism that Toturi helped end.

Yep, I see what happened. I had a formula to look for "Y"s and "N"s, but Kitsu Motso had an "FT", an account of being in Flavour text. Silly boy. ?

Still, they are otherwise notable by their absence.

Yeah I agree, where is Kitsu Okura?

Oops double dipped

In old L5r, for a long time, you had nearly no Kitsu.

There's a sodan senzo and guidance of the ancestors. That new water spell too. My ancestor's strength. All of those have a kitsu in them.

7 hours ago, llamaman88 said:

There's a sodan senzo and guidance of the ancestors. That new water spell too. My ancestor's strength. All of those have a kitsu in them.

That's likely, but still just supposition.

18 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

That's likely, but still just supposition.

Soden Senzo is the Kitsu school of magic and deals specifically with contacting and communing and drawing power from honored ancestors so the inclusion of art depicting a Shugenja in Lion colors is pretty much all the confirmation that you need that the figure is either a Kitsu or a student of the Kitsu school.

I don't think you should read too much into the lack of Kitsu representation in the story so far. There are a number of families we haven't seen doing much; I don't think we've seen much mention of the Asahina or Soshi, for instance. This doesn't mean these families aren't "important" or that there's some conscious decision to downplay or exclude them--it's more the fact that there's only so many writers and only so much word-count available at any given time. It's inevitable that some factions/groups/characters are going to get less "air time". Moreover, we actually need good stories to TELL about these families, and the characters in them...we don't want to just feature them for the sake of featuring them! That means waiting until there's a good story to tell, that also serves to move the broader plot forward. Now, having said all of this, there may be a kick-*** Kitsu story being written even as I type this (though not by me!) but one of my writing colleagues out there might be working on one (I know the "big picture", and the stories I'm writing within it, but I don't really know the details of what all the other writers are working on...that's Katrina's thing!)

That's why I'm watching the thread in the parent forum about "old L5R characters you'd like to see brought back" with both amusement and horror. There are some great characters in there (including a bunch who, in 1123 are either small children or haven't even been born yet), but the thought of trying to do justice to all of them, along with the characters already introduced in the story, is the horrifying part. That was, in fact, what I think was the biggest issue with the story in the old game--there was too much of it. There were too many characters, and a good-faith and earnest effort by the writers of the time to accommodate as many of them as possible in the story. The result was a story that was too "diluted". I'm even on record posting stuff to this effect (albeit on the now-departed AEG forums); I frankly wished the story would focus on many fewer characters, who we could get to know and love (or hate, or both). I like the current approach of telling the story the eyes of relatively few characters. It's definitely better from the perspective of a writer and, I think, probably from the perspective of a reader, too.

58 minutes ago, DGLaderoute said:

That's why I'm watching the thread in the parent forum about "old L5R characters you'd like to see brought back" with both amusement and horror. There are some great characters in there (including a bunch who, in 1123 are either small children or haven't even been born yet), but the thought of trying to do justice to all of them, along with the characters already introduced in the story, is the horrifying part. That was, in fact, what I think was the biggest issue with the story in the old game--there was too much of it. There were too many characters, and a good-faith and earnest effort by the writers of the time to accommodate as many of them as possible in the story. The result was a story that was too "diluted". I'm even on record posting stuff to this effect (albeit on the now-departed AEG forums); I frankly wished the story would focus on many fewer characters, who we could get to know and love (or hate, or both). I like the current approach of telling the story the eyes of relatively few characters. It's definitely better from the perspective of a writer and, I think, probably from the perspective of a reader, too.

This I wholly support, point of view characters are the way to go. You can freely have cameo's for fan favorite characters that show up and do their thing to move the narrative forward and then fade into the background until they are needed again but giving too many "central" characters leads to Game of Thrones story bloat where it is hard to remember where one character is from story to story. Ideally I would suspect you want about 3-5 main characters per clan to focus on that you can scatter around the empire as needed to represent their clans story interests.

And no I don't envy any of the story team the task they've been given as odds are no matter what choices you end up making there will be some fans who are upset that their personal favorite (every story needs more Yoritomo Kamoto I'm just saying ? ) hasn't shown up.

12 hours ago, DGLaderoute said:

That was, in fact, what I think was the biggest issue with the story in the old game--there was too much of it. There were too many characters, and a good-faith and earnest effort by the writers of the time to accommodate as many of them as possible in the story. The result was a story that was too "diluted". I'm even on record posting stuff to this effect (albeit on the now-departed AEG forums); I frankly wished the story would focus on many fewer characters, who we could get to know and love (or hate, or both). I like the current approach of telling the story the eyes of relatively few characters. It's definitely better from the perspective of a writer and, I think, probably from the perspective of a reader, too.

Amen to this. The last thing I want to write is a story that mostly consists of a checklist of people I need to include, so they all blitz by in two lines and there's no time to develop anyone in depth. At heart I'm a novelist; I write short fiction, too, so I'm used to working under length limitations, but trying to cram meaningful amounts of character exploration and worldbuilding and plot development into every 3000-word chunk of story (which also needs to be a satisfying and relatively self-contained piece) keeps making me wish I had more space to work with!

I am totally fine if they want to let you write l5r novels. Like a lot of them. Like really, these short stories are great but that novella got me hooked.

16 hours ago, Kinzen said:

Amen to this. The last thing I want to write is a story that mostly consists of a checklist of people I need to include, so they all blitz by in two lines and there's no time to develop anyone in depth. At heart I'm a novelist; I write short fiction, too, so I'm used to working under length limitations, but trying to cram meaningful amounts of character exploration and worldbuilding and plot development into every 3000-word chunk of story (which also needs to be a satisfying and relatively self-contained piece) keeps making me wish I had more space to work with!

This was a persistent criticism I had by the end of AEG's run- and one, in fairness, which the ST was moving to address before the sale went through- almost nobody had a character their fanbase was behind. After the death of Isawa Mizuhiko, the Phoenix were basically absent except for an increasingly-disliked Elemental Council standing around bickering- and when a Phoenix character did turn up in Emperor or Ivory Edition, you could be reasonably sure their tale was going nowhere- the Agasha daimyo went to the Colonies, had two conversations, and was never seen again. A yojimbo sent his charge to safety and died fighting Naga- a good end for a Shiba, but since it was the only time we ever saw the guy, his impact wasn't exactly earth-shaking. And it wasn't just the Phoenix- the Mantis were basically absent apart from their war with the Crane, despite being the guys who "founded" the Colonies, the Spider were absent any time the story involved a kotei winner's choice... you know things are bad when my favorite character for a story "season" spanning a couple of real-world years is the Lion Clan Champion (I loved Dairuko because she got to do a couple of things after a stellar "how I ended up as Champion" story), and I can barely name the active Phoenix from the same period.

Whereas right now, in the FFG stories, everybody (except arguably the mostly-absent Dragon) has a character or two to pull for. With the novella under their/our belt, the Phoenix are presently the best off in this respect, but Dragon aside, I don't think anyone's hurting for a character or characters to be personally invested in.

1 hour ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

Whereas right now, in the FFG stories, everybody (except arguably the mostly-absent Dragon) has a character or two to pull for. With the novella under their/our belt, the Phoenix are presently the best off in this respect, but Dragon aside, I don't think anyone's hurting for a character or characters to be personally invested in.

That's good to hear! Its much easier for the writers, too. Being able to concentrate on a few characters per clan allows them to have good stories that follow an arc for that character...and every important character has an arc, motivations, internal conflict, etc. The FFG folks creating the story are REALLY good at building the basic characters, then cajoling us writers along a path of stories to keep their various stories moving forward--AND keeping the big story, and all of its subplots, moving along at the same time. But the relatively few characters, through whom all of this is delivered to the readers, makes this WAY easier.

4 hours ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

Whereas right now, in the FFG stories, everybody (except arguably the mostly-absent Dragon)

I would say "I'm doing what I can!," but 1) FFG decides which stories focus on which clans, and 2) honestly, I can't keep track of what I've written is coming out when. ?

I've liked the mix of getting to know a few main characters, then the occasional one off like this peasant story and the Halloween crab story. I hope it keeps that mix as time goes on. Good job writing team!