2 hours ago, UnitOmega said:

I dunno, castles are also part of this, softening up an enemy fort or sneaking into the camp of a sieging force could be Harriers. We'll have to see when Shadowlands hits just how tight "on theme" all those extra schools are. If the book has a lot on Crane and you make ninjutsu a selling point, I don't know how you can not do harriers, themes or no.

The focus is on Courts within Castles, not infiltrating nor besieging castles. The Harriers and the shinobi that likely will be presented in Courts of Stone are two very different types of ninja. The shonobi rules in Courts of Stone are likely to be focused more around hiding in the rafters listening in on conversations, disguises and assassinations (traditionally things only the Scorpion/Spider did in AEG's time, but stated as being done by all clans in this version) than the demolitions and sabotage with explosives that the Harriers are associated with. This doesn't mean that the Crane won't get a ninja school in Courts of Stone but the Crane school is unlikely to be the Daidoji Harriers.

I'm hoping for Daidoji Trading Council, but I may have to wait until the Unicorn book for that.

Hopefully this will have a fair amount of courtier history, trends, texts and things that courtiers would argue over or cultural items which would add flavor to a campaign. I've been adding a fair more courtier intrigue and bits into my games recently and this should prove of interest for me

Since the book is about courts instead of warfare, I feel the shinobi schools will be more about covert information gathering (think Shosuro Actor) and assassinations than overt sabotage (like Daidoji Harrier). I think it will be good to have shinobi schools for other clans than Scorpion, it is naive to think honorable Crane and Lion would not have anything similar hidden among their samurai.

I hope the book will have other sorts of schools in addition to shinobi. Dedicated yojimbo-style schools would be welcome aside Shiba and Kakita, for example Akodo Kensai or Bayushi / Shosuro bushi.

I want a chapter on fashion. A whole chapter. All of it.

1 hour ago, Horvagab said:

I want a chapter on fashion. A whole chapter. All of it.

I would love that! Its far too late now though I would guess. And I am not a very fashion-minded individual, but to give a bit more variety and visual guidance to how a street scene would look like, or a court, or any other event, would be awesome.

13 hours ago, Horvagab said:

I want a chapter on fashion. A whole chapter. All of it.

I always felt that the Fashion knack was one of the best in 1E 7th Sea, and have taken it as a Passion in my L5R 5E character.

On 3/2/2019 at 8:21 AM, bloodycelt said:

I would have figured the Sparrow would feature here....

Given the pattern....

Monastic Book] Dragon, Dragonfly
[Military Book] Lion, ??? (Tiger?)
[Spirt Book] Phoenix, Centipede
[Ninja Book] Scorpion, Wasp
[Exploration Book] Unicorn, Fox (or Hare or Ox?)

We're gonna be missing out on some of them unless they make another book or include other supplements like the mantis one.

Weren't Hare ninja too? Or I am making a mistake?

4 hours ago, Victarion13 said:

Weren't Hare ninja too? Or I am making a mistake?

Hare are typically pragmatic magistrates. Get the job done, don't worry too much about the niceties. So not very honorable usually, but not ninja.

On 3/7/2019 at 2:25 AM, Mirac said:

I think it will be good to have shinobi schools for other clans than Scorpion, it is naive to think honorable Crane and Lion would not have anything similar hidden among their samurai.

Crab also have a Shinobi school in the core.

As mentioned before, Daidoji Harriers for the Crane are definitely well-established to be the not-honorable Crane saboteurs.

Then for the Lion there are Ikoma Spymasters from Honor's Sacrifice dojo. I would definitely be happy to see them, as my current Ikoma player really wanted to play that school specifically.

16 hours ago, Victarion13 said:

Weren't Hare ninja too? Or I am making a mistake?

The Ujina family of the Hare had ninja like skill, but they wouldn't exista at this point in the timeline verything else being equal.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2019/5/17/imperial-strongholds/

New preview (not worth making a new topic)

Got some maps, got some deets. Also pretty sure some kind of crane shinobi tagged school incoming based on this description.

They definitely seem to be hyping shinobi way more than courtiers for this book.

A little surprising, but kind of makes sense.

I don't know how much love courtiers really need mechanically to be valuable in a court. We have no shortage of courtier schools or Shuji for them. However a shinobi generally isn't much use on a remote farm. Talking about them in the Courts of Stone makes some sense. And they do need some love mechanically...

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2019/5/24/tread-softly/

We're back, with more Deer Clan. Looks like we're getting two Shika schools, one Shugenja one Bushi (like Mantis), and there's a new generic Shinobi school. As usual, they would like to remind you there's shuji and ninjutsu in this book.

Note to self: Make sure my samurai's marriage is arranged through in-clan matchmakers....

These guys seem really neat. Not a big minor clans person, but it's a new and interesting design space. They feel like sidereals from exalted to me.

With the pre-order image I'm reminded of the Fate Witches from 7th Sea , which is another gameline that started with John Wick.

Would have liked to see them named something other than Shika...

17 hours ago, Suzume Chikahisa said:

Would have liked to see them named something other than Shika...

LOL. I also had an initial "hunh?" when I saw the name. I (of course) thought of the hero Shikanoko from the novels by Lean Herne .... but as that author says many times "Shika's" name means Deer-child. I assume that Shika literally means ... deer.

48 minutes ago, Void Crane said:

I assume that Shika literally means ... deer. 

Hai.

On 5/25/2019 at 9:32 AM, Suzume Chikahisa said:

Would have liked to see them named something other than Shika...

I mean, "Suzume" is "Sparrow," "Kitsune" is "Fox"... So they're not really doing anything out of the ordinary there.

My thing with this Deer clan is they sound way too powerful as a Minor Clan. Manipulators of Fate? They sound like they out-Scorpion the Scorpion, out-Otomo the Otomo, and out-Diviner the Seppun. I like the idea of a Matchmaker clan, don't get me wrong. In the game I've been running since we were just in Beta, I created a diviner/matchmaker vassal family in the Seppun.

But just without the "we control and plan the fate of the Empire" angle. More just "hey these two samurai would make a great couple and raise good kids" type of divining.

3 hours ago, Hida Jitenno said:

I mean, "Suzume" is "Sparrow," "Kitsune" is "Fox"... So they're not really doing anything out of the ordinary there.

My thing with this Deer clan is they sound way too powerful as a Minor Clan. Manipulators of Fate? They sound like they out-Scorpion the Scorpion, out-Otomo the Otomo, and out-Diviner the Seppun. I like the idea of a Matchmaker clan, don't get me wrong. In the game I've been running since we were just in Beta, I created a diviner/matchmaker vassal family in the Seppun.

But just without the "we control and plan the fate of the Empire" angle. More just "hey these two samurai would make a great couple and raise good kids" type of divining.

Could be overstating their importance, or just that they have to "do so much, with so little". Scorpion can field a ton of people towards accomplishing a political goal, Otomo can drop a lot of imperial clout to get their goals pushed through...Deer doesn't really have any of that...and they're doing a lot of it through "visions", which implies they have to trust whoever is providing them, and when it comes to visions in stories, they're very VERY very VERY rarely ever clearer than mud. That and we're never really told how successful they are at making what they want to come about actually come about, only that they make moves based on visions for the "Good of the realm". You have to question how much is "all according to keikaku", and how much is revisionist history (We meant to do that...honest).

Very DUNE-ish with the child making too...These two need to get married, so three generations down during a time of strife they'll end up producing Rokugan's Batman...and then the land's completely at peace 3 generations in and they've gotta decide if they push things over the edge to try and make Rokugan Batman, or if they just chock the last vision up to a "Whoops, our bad".

I wouldn't say they're any more powerful than you or your GM wants to make them...just depends on how you play with the presented identity.

Also, this is an FFG preview. The sidebar on matchmakers is just like social engineering 101 with magic, that's not too intense, but most of the description of how cool they are is from the previews - and whoever in marketing is writing the articles is trying to upsell them and make them look real cool, so you buy the book. I remember there was an XWM kerfuffle months back, when an article described new purple actions, where you must spend a token to perform an action (when there are many ships who can perform actions without spending any resource) and people insisted there must be an error because how could the article phrase something which was objectively worse by many standards as a "cool new thing", a positive. No, no error, they just probably don't want to make new material sound bad before it comes out, they want you do buy it.

We'll have to see Courts actually release before we understand the actual origin and scope of the Deer Clan. They will still almost assuredly start with lowered Status so they'll have to play a bit more subtle than some. An Otomo PC is gonna have a lot of influence just existing they can sling around, a Shika Matchmaker will probably have to coast on things people think are their wheelhouse and whatever spiritual abilities they have because there isn't much call for big important samurai to listen to them on just any little thing.

10 hours ago, Hida Jitenno said:

...snip... this Deer clan, they sound way too powerful as a Minor Clan. Manipulators of Fate? They sound like they out-Scorpion the Scorpion, out-Otomo the Otomo, and out-Diviner the Seppun. I like the idea of a Matchmaker clan, don't get me wrong....snip...

I had a similar response. My first thought was why do the Scorpion tolerate them? Second time they cross a major Scorpion plan it should be time for retaliation, maybe even "visitors in the night." My second thought was, isn't this the job of the Otomo? Then I thought, maybe the Scorpion and/or the Otomo are their secret patrons and backers...

Guess I'll have to wait and see. I do like the idea of a clan that specializes in spiritual matchmaking