Hello,

I'm a fan of L5R but never actually played a game. Love the setting. The era around the Battle of the White Stag intrigues me. It's the period I'd choose to run a campaign when I get the chance. It's all about fighting off an invasion from a technologically superior force. With some collaborators inside the empire to rout out/ be betrayed by.

I have a question about the battle and where it came from? I've read the wiki and the history of it in my 3rd edition core book, so I understand what happened in the lore of L5R. What are the origins of the battle in our world? Was it featured in a novel or campaign setting? Where did this story come from and by who?

I don't think that there is a lot of IRL allegory here because medieval Japan embraced foreign influences quite readily up until the Edo period when doing business with foreigners became officially uncool.

The Perry Expedition is the closest, but it is still a far shot from the White Stag incident.

The long and short of it is the Battle of the White Stag exists wholly, and pretty much exclusively, to explain why Rokugan doesn't use guns and doesn't like foreigners. Though later down the line AEG admitted they painted themselves into a bit of a corner when people wanted to know more about these Not!European powers that once invaded Rokugan, whose only purpose was to be the bad guy at White Stag, and why they weren't in the space age considering they had renaissance level tech nearly 1000 550 years prior to the Clan Wars. Which is pretty much the whole reason that eventually that side of the world just up and vanished in a "plague."

1 hour ago, narukagami said:

The long and short of it is the Battle of the White Stag exists wholly, and pretty much exclusively, to explain why Rokugan doesn't use guns and doesn't like foreigners. Though later down the line AEG admitted they painted themselves into a bit of a corner when people wanted to know more about these Not!European powers that once invaded Rokugan, whose only purpose was to be the bad guy at White Stag, and why they weren't in the space age considering they had renaissance level tech nearly 1000 years prior to the Clan Wars. Which is pretty much the whole reason that eventually that side of the world just up and vanished in a "plague."

In fairness it was only something like 550 years of post stag development to deal with.

28 minutes ago, Schmoozies said:

In fairness it was only something like 550 years of post stag development to deal with.

Either way without Medieval (or in their case, Renaissance) Stasis... actually I think they were even beyond renaissance by White Stag, they were more like Age of Discovery tech IIRC, yeah? Which makes the problem so much worse.

Anyway, AEG nipped that problem in the bud by virtually ignoring they existed for the longest time before making them go poof.

So basically what I'm getting at, DangerBob, is other than what extra info you'll find in the 4e Imperial Histories book, AEG didn't put as much thought into White Stag as you're assuming they did.

17 hours ago, DangerBob said:

Hello,

I'm a fan of L5R but never actually played a game. Love the setting. The era around the Battle of the White Stag intrigues me. It's the period I'd choose to run a campaign when I get the chance. It's all about fighting off an invasion from a technologically superior force. With some collaborators inside the empire to rout out/ be betrayed by.

I have a question about the battle and where it came from? I've read the wiki and the history of it in my 3rd edition core book, so I understand what happened in the lore of L5R. What are the origins of the battle in our world? Was it featured in a novel or campaign setting? Where did this story come from and by who?

There's no historical basis for it.

If you squint a bit you may consider the two Mongol invasions or the more similar Nossa Senhora da Graça Incident as inspiration, but I doubt Wick had ever heard of it.

You could also mine the Heroes of Rokugan 2 setting/timeline and modules on Kaze no Shiro, that version of the timeline has much heavier Gaijin influence from the Thrane (as opposed to the Merenae).