Hobby is just having issues separating the traditional fantasy tropes that go into the setting from the traditional historical aspects that he seems to be obsessed with inserting into his own head canon.

I think it's more about roleplaying than LCG/CCG these considerations.

For cards, it's easy, just play the game, don't bother too much trying to make much sense of the world. Enjoy the epic setting.

But for roleplaying, I understand the world is so rich and the rules and settings are so open you sometimes need to try to make sense of it, and you can if you wish reach a great level of granularity.

This is more about how you homebrew Rokugan. You can either reach granularity in how you portray and justify Ronin or just say there are Ronin, and let them be just antagonist or katanafodder.

Justifying Ronin could be for exemple portraying clan internal strife as more frequent than interclan strife.

Due to the game of weddings, adoption and alliance, at the local scale, it may be sucession conflicts in families have happened, lower and higher "family" branches founded. Family is important in Rokugan, but paramount is lineage.

Each clan is a small country in itself, and a feudal one, often separated from each other by unaligned lands . Vassals oppose and conquer each other's land or the surroundings unaligned lands, trough war and political leadership. By making his domain stronger, he honors his family lord.

Lords are defeated, men are made Ronin when for example three sons of a powerful Daidoji lord fight over his domain, when one win and one lose.

maybe an aging Dragon lord reigning over a couple of mountains who doesn't handle well is domain his overthrown by an upstart young vassal, maybe from a lower branch. Boom, Ronin are made.

A Shosuro lord has twins and divide his domain made of forests and mountain between them and boom you get two branch of a family of Shinobi, one from the mountains, and one from the forest. Even without being a shosuro official vassal family, local customs may end up having one famille taking an extra name related to the forest and the other an extra name related to the mountain.

People are supposed to have personal mon to be identified and are probably free to take wathever name or surname or nickname they want, yet in official way they are expected to use their great clan family names if any.

There are many way to resolve names, family or ronin, they all tend to homebrewing in the end. 4e's rokugan your way.

That's why rpg mechanics aren't too detailed about that, and for the card game, resolving granular consistency isn't really the scope of the game.

We know of at least 10 Minor clans from previous L5R that were destroyed or disbanded at one time or another: Bee, Boar, Crow, Dragonfly, Firefly, Hare, Salamander, Shark, Snake, Tanuki. The Minor Clans we know are just the ones that haven't fallen apart over the years. Maybe the rate of Minor Clan creation is normally just as fruitful as the 12th Century, it's just that most of them fail after a generation or two, and all of their retainers become Ronin.

That's not to mention a Great Clan and a Great Clan family for a while.

There's also reference to a tower in unclaimed lands that has been run by a disowned branch of the Daidoji for years (probably something to do with gaijin pepper)

Would the children of Ronin also count as Ronin?

32 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

There's also reference to a tower in unclaimed lands that has been run by a disowned branch of the Daidoji for years (probably something to do with gaijin pepper)

The Palace of the Breaking Dawn ?

12 hours ago, Mangod said:

Would the children of Ronin also count as Ronin?

The Palace of the Breaking Dawn ?

In my opinion the answer to the first of these questions is yes.

As for the other, I don't think it's that. I'll need to look through a couple of old books. It may be on the 2nd ed. map.

16 hours ago, Mangod said:

Would the children of Ronin also count as Ronin?

They do, yes.

11 hours ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

In my opinion the answer to the first of these questions is yes.

6 hours ago, DGLaderoute said:

They do, yes.

So there could hypothetically be small families of Ronin living in the margins of the Empire? That'd make for an interesting anecdotal story.

23 minutes ago, Mangod said:

So there could hypothetically be small families of Ronin living in the margins of the Empire? That'd make for an interesting anecdotal story.

There are undoubtedly are, in fact. Perhaps even several generations of ronin (although ronin tend to not live anywhere near as long as Clan samurai, because they don't eat as well, don't have access to the same sort of "health care", live much rougher and tend to have to do things like become mercenaries or bandits simply to survive. It's not a lifestyle that promotes long, healthy living...)

On 9/18/2018 at 5:30 PM, TheHobgoblyn said:

Actually, that is the core of the problem right there.

"I want to steal this thing from Japanese samurai culture"

"But the very social climate things that even allowed that to be a thing don't exist in your world."

To be honest, the social climate you are thinking about did not really exist in the real world either. Yes, Edo had some very strange social shenanigans, but it was more of the "you lick or you suck" kind with some Sengoku counter-culture sprinkled in for good measure.

It is actually very hard to steal from "Japanese samurai culture" and not end up with something inconsistent and/or silly because the people who made up said culture in the Interwar period were writing propaganda for the impending Pacific War and not a coherent fictional study.

On 9/22/2018 at 11:52 AM, Tonbo Karasu said:

In my opinion the answer to the first of these questions is yes.

As for the other, I don't think it's that. I'll need to look through a couple of old books. It may be on the 2nd ed. map.

Valiant Daidoji Tower , probably.

On 9/22/2018 at 5:37 PM, DGLaderoute said:

There are undoubtedly are, in fact. Perhaps even several generations of ronin (although ronin tend to not live anywhere near as long as Clan samurai, because they don't eat as well, don't have access to the same sort of "health care", live much rougher and tend to have to do things like become mercenaries or bandits simply to survive. It's not a lifestyle that promotes long, healthy living...)

Being Samurai doesn't promote long, healthy living either. ?

2 hours ago, Suzume Chikahisa said:

Valiant Daidoji Tower , probably.

Yes, that's it.

1 hour ago, Magus Black said:

Being Samurai doesn't promote long, healthy living either. ?

I think that varies. Courtiers and Shugenja probably have a notably better life expectancy than Bushi, but even the likes of Toshimoko and Satsume are a bit elderly.

On 9/23/2018 at 5:53 PM, AtoMaki said:

To be honest, the social climate you are thinking about did not really exist in the real world either. Yes, Edo had some very strange social shenanigans, but it was more of the "you lick or you suck" kind with some Sengoku counter-culture sprinkled in for good measure.

It is actually very hard to steal from "Japanese samurai culture" and not end up with something inconsistent and/or silly because the people who made up said culture in the Interwar period were writing propaganda for the impending Pacific War and not a coherent fictional study.

The fact that the social climate never really existed in the real world is my whole point.

In the real world, the concept of "samurai" was really invented after-the-fact and most of what was stated about it was written by some guy who ran around challenging people to sword fights, cheated in those fights then ran away after killing the person. A guy who lost every actual battle he was ever in, but because so generally infamous that he got to live a fairly comfortable life of luxury after the wars just to stop running around killing random people.

But, for what is generally understood to be samurai? Well, that more or less first started when the military surrounding the royal family decided to take over in a coup. Only instead of simply killing the emperor and declaring themselves emperor, what they did was to basically hold the emperor hostage and use him as sort of a prize as they issued their own commands. And if the Emperor resisted them any, they would just kill him and replace him with a relative (or, if someone else took over the position, they would do that to install their own puppet of the royal family.) And then either warlords in various regions would take over an area and swear fealty to the Shogun (the guy actually in charge) or the Shogun would send an army of loyalists to go take over a region.

And at that point maybe some semblance of a distinction between "peasant" and "samurai" began to form, but it was more simply "farmer families" and "soldier families", but there were no legal barriers for one to go from one to the other. The only limit was that to hold the highest stations, one should be related to the Shogun's family.

And then the central power fell to in-fighting and all the regional lords went to war with one another in order to try to capture the position. A massive civil war with dozens of regional governors fighting to the death to try to become the next Shogun-- or just protect what territory they had against those with such ambition. And at that point, still-- anyone who could get their hand on a weapon and armor would be what is now classically thought of as a "samurai" of that era. And there were so many various regional lords that they could run off and try to get recruited by. People switched allegiances all the time, people would go to war with their own siblings (people in the highest echelons were married to each others siblings all over the place). And once one lord got taken out, the people who had worked for him would either join the victorious army or run off to find some other lord to work for. And since these sovereign lords were being taken out frequently, obviously there were quite a lot of "ronin" at any given time. But that really wasn't even a term at the time.

Then, when things settled down because one guy had basically taken over the whole country (and got betrayed and killed and then his peasant born general killed his assassin then took his place) and ascended to effectively become the Shogun. At that point legal barriers were put into place-- if one was a samurai, a soldier, at that particular time then they and all their descendants should be soldiers and were forbidden from farming or opening shops or the like. If one was currently a farmer, then one and all one's descendants were supposed to be farmers from that point on and weren't allowed to have armor or weapons of war. There were also distinctions for merchants and entertainers and those who did the dirtiest jobs that were most likely to get diseases.

And at that point, all of the "samurai" were sent overseas to Korea to try to take it over and lost pretty badly. When they came back, they had a big civil war between the east and west of the country in which the family that was the effective Shogun was replaced by a new Shogun family. After that, the remaining soldiers had to go find a regional governor to hire them. And if they couldn't? Then they would be ronin in the truest sense as they were legally forbidden from doing any other work, but no one was paying their salary/feeding them. And if the regional lords got tired or angry at a samurai? Ronin. And if the regional lords fell into debt and couldn't afford to keep them on staff (happened to nearly all of them)? Ronin.

So during the Edo period, there were tons of ronin being made. And there was no particular family loyalty here-- just as before, the same samurai families were often serving various different lords across the land because that's where they just happened to end up.

That was the real life social climate and why there were quite a lot of ronin, especially as the edo period went on. It is decently documented. And it is pretty consistent.

The problem with Rokugan, and none of the proposed solutions actually fit, is that there are no daimyo either dying nor going bankrupt and all of the families are perfectly and neatly divided into only 7 clans and have apparently been that way for a thousand years.

The Kami came down, granted family names to the first few loyal followers they found and allowed those people to adopt as many people into their family as they liked, then took over the rest of the kingdom. At which point everyone who had been granted a family name was a "samurai" in their "clan" and all the rest of the people, with whom there was no previous distinction, were from that point forced to be peasants and supposedly denied any possibility of social advancement for them and all their descendants forever more. And at that point who was and was not a samurai was firmly locked in place and everyone was already neatly divided into maybe 2 dozen families and 7 clans and had a very clear place in the world.

There were no floating loyalties with families split across the different clans. The clans weren't even opposed to one another, much less at war. They were all united in their purpose of taking over the land. And no major shifts have ever happened since.

Even in the case of a minor landholder of your Clan being defeated on some borderland and their lands being seized, the Clans aren't going to exile all of the samurai who were fighting to try to protect that land but couldn't do so. Already there are far too many instances of someone in the L5R story having lost a battle but not killed or ejected from their clan-- so that just doesn't happen. They would just be assigned elsewhere in their Clan/family.

Minor clans are reasonable source of ronin because, most importantly-- there is no good explanation as to where exactly these hundreds of members any given minor clan seems to have instantly upon someone being called a minor clan daimyo even come from. A lot of the minor clans have really, really stupid origin stories. Especially when one takes account of the utter nonsense of the last few that people invented and were randomly stuffed into RPG books.

You would get something along the lines of Baba"! You are good at making things out of bamboo! Yes, it isn't a particularly important skill, nor is it even a skill particularly befitting a samurai, and while this could maybe remotely be of some benefit to your current clan, I am not making you the Panda Clan Daimyo! From now, you will be known as Panda Baba!"

And then out of absolutely no where, like the scene from Spartacus, apparently Great Clan samurai would stand up and for absolutely no reason say "I'm Panda!" "I'm Panda!" "I'm Panda!" "I'm Panda!", all totally agreeing to tank their social status and to outright betray their oaths to go from being a member of a Great Clan with actual political sway to being a member of a crappy, newly formed minor clan.

Within a week, supposedly this Minor Clan would have nearly as many members as a Great Clan family and would have their own completely unique school with techniques superior to that of a Great Clan.

The "Bat Clan" which someone came up with as a bad joke PROVED this to be the case. Within a single generation one guy who got named "Bat Clan daimyo" simply because his name was "Komori" already and "Bat Clan" sounds like "Batman"-- a guy who, by all accounts, was unmarried and had no children... well, he had his own unique shugenja school, a standing army of hundreds (if not thousands) and a whole second family to his clan within only a few short years.

And these can't all be ronin. You cannot say "ronin exist because Minor Clans" and "Minor Clans have members because of ronin"-- it is circular reasoning and obviously one has to come before the other.

So rather than being a functional source of Ronin, Minor Clans instead create a whole other inconsistency for the setting-- something there that cannot possibly exist given the rules of the setting as stated. And whenever a Minor Clan is stated to be wiped out, they are basically stated to have all been slaughtered. As in there would be no ronin coming out of the clan because everyone is dead.

So even if there were this same group of ronin running around, popping up as a "new" Minor Clan every few years, the story still ends with them all being exterminated. Which means they wouldn't be around the next time someone gets granted the right to make their own clan.

The simple fact is that we know where ronin came from in real life and Rokugan simply does not have any of the same social situations, nor anything even remotely comparable to them. Both Ronin and Minor Clans do not make any sense in the setting unless there is considerably more social mobility than the setting initially states there to be and a lot of these "ronin" and "minor clan" samurai and "vassal families" are actually peasants being raised up to the station of samurai.

On ‎9‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 11:12 PM, Tonbo Karasu said:

We know of at least 10 Minor clans from previous L5R that were destroyed or disbanded at one time or another: Bee, Boar, Crow, Dragonfly, Firefly, Hare, Salamander, Shark, Snake, Tanuki. The Minor Clans we know are just the ones that haven't fallen apart over the years. Maybe the rate of Minor Clan creation is normally just as fruitful as the 12th Century, it's just that most of them fail after a generation or two, and all of their retainers become Ronin.

That's not to mention a Great Clan and a Great Clan family for a while.

There's also reference to a tower in unclaimed lands that has been run by a disowned branch of the Daidoji for years (probably something to do with gaijin pepper)

Indeed. I think that a more active 'ecology' of minor clans and minor clan vassal families is probably a sensible addition to the setting. I agree that major clans families rarely get meaningfully threatened - not least because they are essentially people's nailed-to-the-colours factions and inherit a degree of customer-driven plot armour, but seeing some minor clans that were recently created, or seeing them collapse and be disbanded, would help explain where ronin come from. However, the numbers need to do that would I think lead to a much less stable and violent (militarily or economically) than is implied in the setting.

You can claim to be a ronin when really a bandit or peasant mercenary, provided your claimed lineage isn't easily disprovable; which means once ronin aren't that rare to begin with, it becomes more credible to add more. But that argument doesn't hold water if there are relatively few places a ronin could credibly have come from.

Also noted that the L5r setting does include Musha Shugyo Ronin - who aren't exactly Ronin in the 'masterless men' sense so much as 'currently masterless men' - they are essentially released temporarily from their obligations to go out and study....war? bushido? the real world? sort of a Gempukku equivalent of a Gap Year, I guess. Which helps provide Ronin warm bodies to fill out an army, but doesn't give you people who'd be prepared to sign on into a clan not their own.

I agree you can't have 'ronin families ruling cities'. Any lord holding territory within the Empire is either (a) beholden to a family Daimyo, or a clan daimyo above them, or the Emperor above them, or is a rebel. If you're not a clan member, you're a direct imperial vassal. That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but I agree it's definitely not the same as being a ronin.

Elevation for service is definitely a thing. We've seen in FFG's L5R a new vassal family be born in Outsiders:

"But it was some time before she could complete the letter. She kept rereading the first line. It addressed her as “Kaito Kosori of Cliffside Shrine.”

Not “Isawa Kosori no Kaito.” Kaito Kosori. This was not the convention by which one addressed a mere vassal of the family. There was only one reason they would do this."

It's an Isawa vassal group being 'spun off' as a vassal family. Critically, we're not talking pureblood Isawa here; I agree someone accepting a social demotion for independence is theoretically possible but unlikely and can't be expected as a 'default' answer.

1 hour ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Elevation for service is definitely a thing. We've seen in FFG's L5R a new vassal family be born in Outsiders:

"But it was some time before she could complete the letter. She kept rereading the first line. It addressed her as “Kaito Kosori of Cliffside Shrine.”

Not “Isawa Kosori no Kaito.” Kaito Kosori. This was not the convention by which one addressed a mere vassal of the family. There was only one reason they would do this."

It's an Isawa vassal group being 'spun off' as a vassal family. Critically, we're not talking pureblood Isawa here; I agree someone accepting a social demotion for independence is theoretically possible but unlikely and can't be expected as a 'default' answer.

Correction- that is a vassal family being promoted above vassal status to rough equality with other non-vassal families in the Phoenix. Their vassal family status is far older than that story.

5 minutes ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

Correction- that is a vassal family being promoted above vassal status to rough equality with other non-vassal families in the Phoenix. Their vassal family status is far older than that story.

Sorry. Mixing up the attempted explanation.

They were Isawa vassals, now they're a Phoenix clan family - essentially moving the point to which they owe allegiance from the Council of Five up to the Phoenix Clan champion directly.

8 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

You can claim to be a ronin when really a bandit or peasant mercenary, provided your claimed lineage isn't easily disprovable; which means once ronin aren't that rare to begin with, it becomes more credible to add more. But that argument doesn't hold water if there are relatively few places a ronin could credibly have come from.

Worked for Toku!

9 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

The "Bat Clan" which someone came up with as a bad joke PROVED this to be the case. Within a single generation one guy who got named "Bat Clan daimyo" simply because his name was "Komori" already and "Bat Clan" sounds like "Batman"-- a guy who, by all accounts, was unmarried and had no children... well, he had his own unique shugenja school, a standing army of hundreds (if not thousands) and a whole second family to his clan within only a few short years.

I will mention on this point that the bat Clan were actually a story prize rather than direct story evolution and they were drawn from members of the Mantis clan who were permitted to swear fealty to Komori by Yoritomo Kumiko, whom he had raised following the death of her parents.

He was granted the right to form a minor clan by the Emperor Toturi III for services offered. The family was never a large one and his heir was the child of one of the Shugenja who followed him. Komori was also an unusual case in that his mother was a normal Mantis Shugenja, while his father was a Bat Spirit (similar to the Kitsune) who had taken human form and seduced her. He had many of the traits of his father including an ability to commune with bats and creatures of the Spirit Realm which he taught his followers to emulate to a lesser extent.

Yeah, not sure where you're getting "hundreds, if not thousands" of Bat Clan samurai... they really felt more like a Mantis vassal family for their entire existence.

Just to put this out there!

Vassal means servant in a similar way that regent means servant. It doesn't mean you lack power.

The word vassal actually implies nobility.

6 hours ago, P'an Ku said:

Just to put this out there!

Vassal means servant in a similar way that regent means servant. It doesn't mean you lack power.

The word vassal actually implies nobility.

Correct. Just trying to use the terminology FFG uses - that is, the phrase 'vassal family' is used to describe a recognised family (such as the Kakeguchi or Fundai) sworn to the service of a clan family (such as the Kaiu or Hida).

Everyone in the celestial order's 'chain' is the vassal (in the sense of 'has a feudal obligation to') of someone.

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Everyone in the celestial order's 'chain' is the vassal (in the sense of 'has a feudal obligation to') of someone.

This is off topic but I always found hilarious how feudalism is apparently a thing in Tengoku. To the point where they literally have peasants toiling on the fields in Yomi.

19 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

This is off topic but I always found hilarious how feudalism is apparently a thing in Tengoku. To the point where they literally have peasants toiling on the fields in Yomi.

Once the peasant has attained their status of perfect self within their role as a farmer, why would they want to do anything else in their afterline?

Was it really a huge deal to recount reason there might be ronin?

Of all the great clans, two have direct ways in which a peasant can obtain samurai status - the Crab trials and excelling within the Togashi monastery. I assume that those who are not killed during the Crab trial, may ultimately have a desertion rate after one season on the Carpenter Wall. I would also say some Togashi could leave the monastery to find enlightenment and just cease to count the Dragon clan as part of that path.

Then Hotaru is fairly concerned that the ronin her clan has hired are actually just bandits... not really samurai at all. Which would insinuate that ronin will count among them bandits masquerading as lordless samurai, but the Crane's need for warm bodies is so strong no one is scrutinizing this deeply. Once you've served as a mercenary in enough battles, does anyone even care about your lineage if your win record is good? Yeah, we're in a fantasy society where Heaven, and the will of gods exists and is provable, but it's also a society where only those with strict honor codes actually care about what Heaven decrees beyond lip service. Are the Doji really going to vet the pedigree of every lowly mercenary if hiring them means the difference between having enough troops to face the Lion or not?

I just don't see where being ronin wouldn't be a plausible, if rare, thing in this world? Just because a Great Clan samurai has a cushy life, and a sense of duty, doesn't mean people won't throw that all away over vices, or love, or any number of mortal sins

Here is the point where it matters...

Beginning box adventure (at least as delivered by the play through I was listening to). A group of ronin (might have been Scorpion in disguise, but that hardly matters as they chose to present as ronin) go into a sake house near Kyuden Kakita where the Topaz Championship is currently taking place and begin hassling, openly insulting and harassing the contestants for the championship.

And they are allowed to do this? They are even allowed anywhere near Kyuden Kakita, much less allowed to confront the contestants within a well-known Crane-favored sake house?

How?!! Why?!! That entirely undermines any kind of attempt to sell Ronin as some sort of social outcasts or pariah, they can just barge into what should be one of the most exclusive places and begin hurling insults at the most promising youths in the empire and no one outside possibly the PCs just up and cuts them down on the spot for this?

And if they weren't Scorpion in disguise, how exactly could this band of ronin be making the kind of living that they would be able to afford to go to such places? This isn't a post-apocalyptic frontiers world like D&D where random adventurers are going to be digging up ancient lost treasures in dungeons that are worth more than the collective value of the entire town they visited. This is a very well-settled, very well-organized feudal system where the primary way for any samurai to have any place to live, be able to eat and be able to maintain their equipment is entirely provided by their boss. And Ronin by definition have no boss.

They can get mercenary work, but that heavily implies a battle and whenever there is a battle, a significant portion of the participants die-- so most Ronin are not going to survive even one instance of mercenary work, much less be able to do such a thing often enough to actually make a living from it. If they were working as bandits, they would be wanted by the law and certainly wouldn't be presenting themselves in the wide open in what surely must be one of the most guarded areas in all of Rokugan-- they would be spotted, recognized and arrested/killed.

They just get tossed into the story without any thought or reason. We need an antagonist force, but are too cowardly to make any particular clan the antagonist-- throw in ronin. We just now thought of making a clan with whatever new animal avatar, but you can't have a minor clan with like 1 guy... that's fine hundreds of ronin show up and swear allegiance. This one guy is on the outs with all of the clans, but he obviously needs an army-- that's okay, ronin flock to his side by the thousands.

It is such a lazy writing crutch that it is entirely setting breaking-- you can only do these things so many times before it starts coming across that the ronin vastly outnumber clan samurai despite apparently also having a big social stigma against them and the simple fact that there is no functional way for them to be making a living given the strict feudal system that has such a firm grip across the entirety of the land. At least no functional way unless they were immortal, universally vastly superior to Clan samurai or just spawn like fungus so that if one dies, dozens of more ronin grow in its place. Because if their only choice of occupation is one likely to get them killed and they do get killed in the first story, that means they just became a ronin and took this job since the last time they ate or they have somehow been previously successful in these actions which would have meant overcoming similar threats to the one presented in the story despite also clearly having no ability to do so.

I mean, think of it this way.. if Ronin are the ones leading the bandits and Clan samurai are the ones protecting the merchant, then either this is the first time the Ronin has attacked a merchant like this which means they haven't been a ronin very long or they have made a living of killing Clan samurai with their vastly superior combat abilities. If Ronin are the ones guarding the carvans as well, then every time a bandit attack happens on a caravan there must have been 2 samurai who previously lost their station-- and in this battle one lives, the other dies... and, either way, neither one will continue to have a living unless this is happening pretty consistently. This is especially true in the case of the bandit one who needs to overcome another opponent each and every time he needs to make some money.

And if you just consider what the lifestyle of a ronin would then have to be-- that any given ronin's chance of dying during any given month is going to be about 50%-- either they will get (or undertake) a job where they have a 50% chance of dying or they won't get a job and have about a 50% chance of simply starving to death because they have no income. If anyone has only 50% chance of making it through any given month, then consider just how low one's chances of surviving for a single year are. And consider how many thousands of ronin there must have been at the beginning of the year for there to be any at the end of the year.

But we are also supposed to apparently believe that they are just as well off as Clan samurai and no one thinks it is strange for them to burst in on and active antagonize pre-gempukku samurai in a samurai-favored establishment a stonethrows away from a Great Clan family's main castle?