I'm over the moon right now. DGL is giving us a novella about not just the Crab clan, but about Hida Sukune. Fantastic.

Crab Novella

Sukune and the Ancestral Armour of the Crab Clan? That's a much better fit than the Terrible Standard. I really want him to get a good outcome this time round.

I spent a lot of time with Sukune, writing this. I think he's become my favorite L5R character (at least, for the time being, anyway!)

I can't be more excited about this novella. If I had to rank Crab characters to be featured in their clan novella then Sukune would be toward the top of the list, and we really haven't seen much of him yet in the new continuity.

I currently read all the new l5r fiction, so I can't wait to read this novella. It will also answer one question I have, will the color pages repeat information what the RPG books already have given. For example the nezumi, the shadowland book had a lot of info on that, so will the color pages extend this info or repeat?

Woot! Congrats, DGL!

That Sukune art really reminds me of a certain someone.

It's refreshing to see some art of a Hida that isn't a mountain of muscle. Sometimes I get the feeling that Kyuden Hida is just a bunch of stone walls with a Gold's Gym inside. Sukune needing to find a different way to live up to that Hida ideal is appealing to me.

That was a huge part of what made Sukune so interesting, and so much fun to write. He's slight, weak, has a heart arrhythmia, is asthmatic--not exactly the sorts of things that scream HIDA, or even CRAB, are they? It immediately makes him a complex and conflicted character, which is a great starting point for the main character of a story.

1 hour ago, phillos said:

It's refreshing to see some art of a Hida that isn't a mountain of muscle.

I'm surprised that the looks so rugged. He looks like an odd Hida who believes in the power of cardio instead of bulking like crazy like the others.

40 minutes ago, DGLaderoute said:

He's slight, weak, has a heart arrhythmia, is asthmatic--not exactly the sorts of things that scream HIDA, or even CRAB, are they?

To be honest, in my book, the defining quality for a Crab is the amount of f*cks they give - the closer it is to zero the more CRAB they are. The Kaiu and the Yasuki likely have their own share of weak and sickly samurai who are still pulling weight like everyone else, and really, anyone who is bothered by it gives too much f*cks and thus doesn't embrace the Crab Lyfe properly.

Me reading Sukune fiction...

Yadda yadda, wall, tetsubo, skip ahead.....

WTF! Why Fu Leng no haz terrible standard!? This make Oni sad.

Seriously though I'll probably love this novella. But not as much as I'm going to love the Shadowlands one. Remind me when that one drops?

Also I'm excited to see the Tattered Ear Tribe. The story descriptions sounds like lots of fun. I'm sure there's lots of dangerous stuff to discover in the Shinomen Forest We haven't been back there I think since "To The South".

Yeah, the Shinomen Mori was largely a blank page, except for some bits and pieces of lore here and there. It let me dig deep into writing about what really is a vast, primal, spirit-haunted wilderness, complete with Tainted bits and everything.

The Shinomen Mori was my favorite plot device in my Togashi Dynasty campaign. Need to find a lost, cursed nemuranai? Find it in the Shinomen Mori. Need the PCs to wander into a vanishing cannibal inn? Village on the edge of the Shinomen Mori. Need to force a one-year time-skip into the story? PCs go into the Shinomen Mori, come out a year later to find everybody thinks they're dead.

3 hours ago, Kinzen said:

The Shinomen Mori was my favorite plot device in my Togashi Dynasty campaign. Need to find a lost, cursed nemuranai? Find it in the Shinomen Mori. Need the PCs to wander into a vanishing cannibal inn? Village on the edge of the Shinomen Mori. Need to force a one-year time-skip into the story? PCs go into the Shinomen Mori, come out a year later to find everybody thinks they're dead.

So the Shinomen Mori is the "a wizard did it" of L5R?

That actually makes sense, yeah.

On ‎2‎/‎26‎/‎2020 at 11:39 PM, Mangod said:

So the Shinomen Mori is the "a wizard did it" of L5R?

That actually makes sense, yeah.

This is cursed....that is cursed.....

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 10:02 PM, phillos said:

We haven't been back there I think since "To The South".

I think the Falcon clan Halloween fiction was in the edge of the Shinomen. That's chronologically set before To the South , though, even if it was published afterwards (I think it was?)