Thanks @DGLaderoute for the long and thoughtful reply. I am indeed happy to bend a good deal, right up until the point where my NPCs stop feeling to me like relatable people and become face tentacles of some kind of abstract ideal- your insights are appreciated.
17 hours ago, DGLaderoute said:Okay, I get where this is coming from now, I think. That said, I think the OP needs to bend a little bit and accept that there some values in Rokugan that simply have no analog in the real world. There IS an objectively real divinity, that everyone knows about and accepts;
We've already covered this point of difference in our perspectives- I would still say that in feudal Japan there was also an objectively real divinity that everyone knew about and accepted, and didn't stop people from pulling all kinds of shenanigans through rationalizing their actions around it. But I don't think it's really a make-or-break point of contention, so I think we can agree to disagree there.
17 hours ago, DGLaderoute said:
Bushido IS the social code that governs all aspects of samurai society (with conformance to, or departure from its tenets defining one's worth in terms of honor); the clans HAVE been given their particular, respective duties, and they take them very, very seriously (really, it makes little RL sense for one clan to be about "art and poetry and such", another about "scholarly pursuit of spiritualism", another about "being the army of the Empire", and so on. In reality, the clans would be more like the clans of Sengoku-period Japan, just tribalistic groups under various warlords, with no particular assigned duties and a focus mainly on advancing their own interests; however, this setting did originate as a card game that needed to give each faction its particular flavor in the game).
That's all fine- I tend to read these clan specialties as more or less stereotypes or "exemplary cases"- just like the Irish are well known for being drunks and poets doesn't mean that every or even most Irishmen are drunks or poets, just that they've shown a cultural knack for producing superlative drunks and poets.
17 hours ago, DGLaderoute said:-if simply being given stewardship of lands is an issue, then that's easily solved for the Crab families--the Hiruma lands are still the Hiruma lands, and Daylight Castle is still their ancestral seat of power. They haven't ceded their lands to the Shadowlands by any means. Likewise, the Kuni still have stewardship over their lands, and are trying very hard to find ways to return them to some semblance of life.
Right, this isn't really where my issue lies- I'm totally comfortable with the idea that the Hiruma are a sort of "government in exile"
17 hours ago, DGLaderoute said:-if it's having PRODUCTIVE lands that's the issue, then we've got to define what "productive" means. As noted, the Moto may have peasants farming some of their lands (I haven't really written anything about the Unicorn, so I'm not sure), but even if they don't, there are other resources the empire needs--minerals, stone and lumber come to mind. But "productive", as a concept, is unequal across the Empire. Again, the Yogo have lands that are mostly fallow, as do the Soshi. The Hiruma obviously don't produce much (although they do have lands generally south of the Shinomen Mori), while the Kuni are probably still producing things like stone and various ores. The western portion of the Unicorn lands are mostly undeveloped. The Dragon have VERY little arable land and, again, produce stone, timber and ore. So, really, if this is an issue for the Hiruma and the Kuni, then it's an issue for several other families, and one entire clan.
By "productive" all I mean is "capable of generating income that can be used to pay the stipends of samurai retainers"- if that income does not come in the form of food then there are political implications to that, but it's not problematic in itself.
17 hours ago, DGLaderoute said:-inside the setting, the standard has been set that, this notwithstanding, the Empire's political makeup has remained largely unchanged for over a thousand years. Really, if you want to have issues with suspension of disbelief, this is where you should probably have it. It's tough to imagine a civilization with the technological achievement of Rokugan in, say, the fifth century, by the time of the thirteenth century having remained utterly unchanged. Much of the population is educated to at least some degree, there are scholars who are curious about the world around them, and yet there has been no innovation to speak of, no development of new technologies to make life easier and more productive? And yet, if we can accept this, then I think we need to be able to accept that these political constructs, like a daimyo being what a daimyo is, irrespective of having lost all their lands or not producing enough food to feed their own people.
You're not wrong about this being a stretch of the imagination, but for me it's unproblematic because it has virtually no impact on actual gameplay. I can easily say, "Oh, actually in my Rokugan the horse collar was invented 200 years ago and increased crop yields by 20%" and there's no need to adjust any of the contemporary setting. My concerns are solely about being able to run the stories I want to with a minimal overhaul of the setting, not to rationalize the whole thing down to the last almanac entry.
17 hours ago, DGLaderoute said:Now, if there's a way of harmonizing this frankly somewhat "forced" version of the Empire (which, again, exists primarily to be a game setting!) with more something more "realistic", then I'd be really interested to see it. ****, I'm one of the writers for the fiction and the RPG, I've been playing games set in this world since 1996, and I still have trouble with some aspects of the setting!
I've always done what I think a lot of people who prefer a grittier feel have done, which is treat the printed material not as an objective out-of-game description of reality, but simply a presentation of the "official" history- ie, propaganda. So the 1000 years of peace are actually 1000 years of less-than-devastating-warfare, the "unbroken descent of divine rule through the Hantei line" includes some breaks in the paternal line and some second cousins taking the throne, and yes, some branches of various families breaking with the main line and defecting to another. This makes a lot more room for the kind of thing I want to do, without needing to radically rewrite anything, as it's all been swept under the rug one way or another.
So if you will, as a thought experiment, accept these premises:
- Bushido and honor are powerful motivators, but so are wealth, comfort, security, and prestige, and individual samurai are going to respond to both of these competing motivations differently.
- There's no system in place to prevent samurai from packing up shop, no "military police" to hunt down defectors, etc. Samurai can swear fealty to any lord that's willing to take them on as retainers. They will typically do so as a family unit- not necessarily a Family in the sense of a whole lineage, but as a group of people who can also state their exact blood relation to one another pretty easily. So there are power players on the micro scale who can say "hey kids, pack your bags, we're going out west for a better life".
- Competition between lords at every level of the power structure is vigorous, constant, and regularly if not often violent. Clans feud with Clans, Families with Families, and most of all, family branches with other family branches. For every diplomatic scuffle in the Imperial court, there's a thousand within the clan power structures.
- Daimyo maintain power by keeping retainers. Divine right or no, a daimyo is subject to the laws of power, and if they are unable to offer their retainers good incentives, they will lose those retainers. That might happen on a generational time scale, or much faster, but sooner or later they find that they are weak and unable to protect their lands, and will be conquered by a neighbor. This has actually happened many times already- the daimyo of any given family may or may not be the direct descendant of the family founder, but is simply the one who has managed to take/keep control of the family seat.
With those premises as givens, what else would you need to adjust to imagine a family like the Hiruma, who lack any direct control of income-producing holdings of their own, still be able to remain autonomous rather than simply becoming an appendage of the Hida- that means some form of power or authority that their counterparts in other families do not possess.
Hope that maybe clarifies what I'm interested in a bit further.