Orientalist Fantasy Settings

[Username17]

I think Clans should in general be a statement about a persons bloodlines and culture but they should also refer to a specific organization with specific goals.

Definitely not. In the real world, it's unfortunate but necessarily true that words have complex and overlapping meanings and that people can say shit like "I'm a Christian" and have that mean everything from "I am an unexceptional white person from the western tradition" to "I am a radicalized terrorist that is taking arms against Catholics and Jews." But in a game, terminology can be unambiguous, so obviously it should be. We make merciless fun of the multiple meanings of "Black Hand" in Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand, and we are right to do so. That shit is confusing bullshit.

A roleplaying game is a technical document. Important game terms can be unambiguous and need to be. It's fine if "Wizard" and "Sorcerer" are synonyms, but in the game those terms are used to unambiguously refer to different things. There is absolutely no need for the Rat Clan criminal syndicate of ninjas to be called "The Rat Clan." It could have fucking any name at all. It could be called "The Shadow Chatter" or fucking whatever.

I could see a replacement being 'cult' or religious affiliation.

As FatR pointed out, the general English terminology for this kind of thing is "Sect." The Yellow Turbans are a "Sect." The Jōdo Shinshū are also a "Sect." All the religious and pseudo-philosophical uprisings are "sects."

-Username17

[Grek]

Seems like we want Clan as the term for the thing that decides your surname, your heraldry animal and your social connections; School as the thing that decides your martial arts style, your academic skills and your social class; and Sect as the thing that decides your allegiances, your personal code of conduct and your who your boss is. There is an explicit expectation that all players will be members of the same Sect, but that they will each come from a different Clan and different School. Every Sect wants members with a variety of skillsets and potential allies; every School wants to access to the people with the greatest potential, and every Clan wants to hedge their bets by having members in each Sect so that no matter who wins, someone in the family will be there to argue for leniency. There might be room for Clan-specific Schools, where in order to learn Tiger Kung Fu at the Tiger Peak Dojo you need to be in the Tiger Clan, but honestly that doesn't seem very valuable compared to the idea of the Tiger and the Hare clan both competing to get their children invited to train within the Bamboo Grove.

[Username17]

Seems like we want Clan as the term for the thing that decides your surname, your heraldry animal and your social connections; School as the thing that decides your martial arts style, your academic skills and your social class; and Sect as the thing that decides your allegiances, your personal code of conduct and your who your boss is. There is an explicit expectation that all players will be members of the same Sect, but that they will each come from a different Clan and different School. Every Sect wants members with a variety of skillsets and potential allies; every School wants to access to the people with the greatest potential, and every Clan wants to hedge their bets by having members in each Sect so that no matter who wins, someone in the family will be there to argue for leniency. There might be room for Clan-specific Schools, where in order to learn Tiger Kung Fu at the Tiger Peak Dojo you need to be in the Tiger Clan, but honestly that doesn't seem very valuable compared to the idea of the Tiger and the Hare clan both competing to get their children invited to train within the Bamboo Grove.

Something along those lines. I think there is value in schools that are completely composed of single clans. Especially when you consider that some schools are going to exist entirely as dungeon crawls that you fight your way through and it's OK - even desirable for them to be full of Electric Pokémon sometimes.

Schools can actually be limited to single clans or small groups of clans or even specific sects - as long as that isn't an imposition on player character concepts. It's not OK if all the Ninjas have to be Rat Clan and it's not OK if all the Ninjas have to be Evil Shadow Sect. "Ninja" is a popular enough character concept that players need to be allowed to play Ninjas even if their favorite clan is Wolf Clan or they want to be members of the good guys. But it's OK for there to be a school of evil Ninjas. You can like, fight them in their mountain stronghold and shit.

There should be some basic schools that let people in from every clan. If you want to play a basic character concept like a Samurai or an Alchemist, you definitely shouldn't be restricted in what flavor of pajamas to wear. But it's OK for there to be schools that are more specific than that - even schools that don't let in player characters at all.

-Username17

[Ancient History]

Part of the problem is that if you give the bad guys some unique stuff - like, all the bad guys are Shadow Ninjas instead of Scorpion Ninjas - then inevitably somebody is going to want to play a good guy Shadow Ninja and you have to learn how to deal with that. It's the Drizzt/Sabbat issue in a nutshell: players want shiny special snowflakeness, and if the game reserves shiny special snowflakeness for NPCs they're called out as Mary Sues.

[deaddmwalking]

Batman learned Shadow Ninja school and was a good guy.

Ancient History is right - there really isn't a way to make 'NPC ONLY' stuff stick - and it is never really worth it to try.

[Thaluikhain]

Ancient History is right - there really isn't a way to make 'NPC ONLY' stuff stick - and it is never really worth it to try.

Can't you make NPCs underpowered compared to PCs? Strong enough to be a challenge under certain circumstances, but failing outside their narrows niches?

[DeadlyReed]

Except the GM can always say no. "I want to play a dragon." "No." It works for everything too.

[angelfromanotherpin]

NPC-only schools should teach PC-unfriendly techniques.

Player: Why are these schools forbidden?
MC: You want to cultivate internal alchemy to become a human bomb good for exactly one shot?
Player: ...no.
MC: You want to learn how to sacrifice your own limbs to tie up enemy weapons so other people can finish them off?
Player: ...no.
MC: You want to sever all your Earthly attachments and become a hermit on a remote mountain who occasionally sees the future?
Player: Sure.
MC: You succeed. Will your next character be going on any adventures?

[Username17]

There are indeed lots of "NPC only" concepts that worked and also lots that did not work. People did in fact want to play Drow in D&D, Sabbat in Vampire, and Elf Paths in Shadowrun. If your NPC group is "just like a PC group, but with extra +1s here and there." people are going to be all over that shit. Making a contrived backstory is a small price to pay for getting several objective bonuses.

But there's no real reason for things to be set up that way. NPCs aren't built like player characters. Villains are whatever level you say they are. The fourth circle of some NPC warrior dojo can just be objectively worse than the fourth circle of the player character samurai school. It doesn't even have to be remotely close, because the villains you face in Act II could just be 5th circle or 6th circle instead.

The costs and benefits of NPC-schools can be as bad as you want them to be - and might as well be because the players aren't supposed to want them. You don't have players banging down your door to play an Adept or an Aristocrat in 3e D&D.

-Username17

[Longes]

IMHO, the best way to go is to have schools as very flexible build-your-own-bruce-lee affairs. It's good if schools have a theme and a signature maneuver, but it's even better if a player can build a wide variety of characters within this theme. I'd say each school should have a apprentice/journeyman/master capstones everyone gets, and the rest of player character's training regimen should come from a generic PC martial artist generator.

So that you have Five Immortals Sect who all use poison, but some of them coat claymores, some throw powder in your face and some punch your ki points. While any member of the Beggars Sect can choose to be a master rock thrower, or whoop ass with the dog beating staff or in fact punch people in the ki points.

As opposed to L5R style schools where every Kakita is an iajutsu duelist and every Mirumoto is a dual-wielding defensive fighter.

There's a reason every wuxia video-game under the sky finds a narrative justification for the PC to run around stealing moves from all martial arts schools.

[JigokuBosatsu]

MC: You want to sever all your Earthly attachments and become a hermit on a remote mountain who occasionally sees the future?
Player: Sure.
MC: You succeed. Will your next character be going on any adventures?

I spit my coffee, this was gold.

[SeekritLurker]

It occurs to me that using some sort of variant on the Manchurian Eight Banners would help - being martial groups that explicitly cut across ethnic and clan boundaries that can be hereditary. That would be in addition to other sects, not a replacement. It would be an affiliation.

So you could have a Scorpion Clan Ninja of the Red Banner, with a different set of skills than a Scorpion Clan Ninja who's a member of The Poison Sting, which is the Scorpion Clan Mafia. The bannerman specializes in wilderness stuff and survivalism because the Red Banner specializes in force reconnaissance and long term deployments, while the mafioso does disguises and bluffing to infiltrate and whatnot. Both have access to Scorpion poison magic because of their clan/religion, stealth and climbing powers because they're ninja.

One of these ninja is a ranger, the other is the classic peasant who stabs you when you're not looking.

[Username17]

IMHO, the best way to go is to have schools as very flexible build-your-own-bruce-lee affairs. It's good if schools have a theme and a signature maneuver, but it's even better if a player can build a wide variety of characters within this theme.

Much depends on what kind of system you have. If you intend to differentiate between an Axle Spin Knuckle and a Spinning Bird Kick, then by all means you're going to want to have rules for special maneuver accumulation. But that is by no means a guaranteed thing. If your system just does not have a difference between Jade Claw Swipe and Triple Rising Slash. Those could just be "attacks" and your narrative description of whatever maneuvers you're using are entirely just your narrative description.

Combat maneuvers can be important without necessarily having any specific mechanical effect or having specific ones written on your character sheet. I could imagine something like Exalted's "stunting" where a player was judged on the coolness of their description of their character's martial arts bad assery to fish for bonuses, for example. You might say your character is performing the "Wilting Plum Blossoms Stance" and have that be the first and last time that stance is ever mentioned.

Personally, I think I would like it to matter mechanically whether a character is Carp Clan or Ox Clan. And I think I would like it to matter mechanically whether a character is a Samurai or a Ninja. I am completely ambivalent as to whether it should matter mechanically whether you were trained in the Bamboo Grove or the Temple of Five Falls or whatever.

Certainly the thing that L5R 3rd edition did where the schools gave very specific fiddly bonuses and you definitely had to have the right name to be any good at specific tasks was hot garbage and you would not under any circumstances want to do that.

-Username17

[Username17]

How many clans is not enough? How many clans is too many?

In the past I've been an advocate of less clans on the grounds that players can't possibly be expected to know what the various clans do if there are a lot of them. But now I think I favor a metric shit tonne of clans on the grounds that players can't possibly be expected to know what the various clans do if there are a lot of them.

Much of course depends on what we mean by "Clan." And what we are constrained for Clan to mean is "An identifiable facet of a character's identity that in no way makes it difficult for the character to work closely with other characters who are a different Clan."

During the Sengoku period, there are over two hundred clans. And the Chinese equivalents of those kinds of "clans" are the warring states "Duchies." And it's literally inconceivable that an RPG setting would detail all of them. The player characters would by default be in the employ of a Duke (or Duke Equivalent Minister), and there would be enough of those fuckers that the setting information would not define all or even most of them.

Now the Clans need to be more fleshed out than that. They can't just be "there are over two hundred of these and we aren't going to even try listing them all." Because they are a player character option. There does in fact have to be a list somewhere. But that doesn't mean that all of the Clans need to have a lot of ranting about them. In fact, having some of the clans be largely a blank slate where people can write in whatever kinds of fashions, foods, and social foibles that they personally want in an Orientalist Fantasy Setting is a feature.

I had been thinking about it from the standpoint of what the minimum number of clans to get in all the Asian Fantasy Tropes you want so that everyone could remember what all the clans did. But then I realized that people are going to want to add stuff to the setting and bring in additional Asian Fantasy Tropes and you need that white space for that to happen. You can still have a few clans that you keep going back to in fiction pieces and examples to reinforce the brand, but you're actually looking for the longest list of clans that you can still fit into the clan chapter without having people give up during character creation. As such, I'm not looking for "How can we cut down to six?" I'm looking at "How can we pad the list out to twenty-four?"

The Zodiac is a good place to start. Every Zodiac animal has a huge amount of Asian art dedicated to it and you can see parades in the animal's honor once every twelve years. So that's pretty cool. The biggest drawback of course is the existence of the Dragon. Dragons are a bullshit Clan totem in a fantasy world where Dragons exist and talk and probably aren't literally members of your Clan. It's super confusing. The second issue is Tiger. Tiger is actually a pretty cool Clan Totem, and it's a good excuse to say Tiger Style like the RZA. But there are also several other "cats" that people want to totemize - namely Lion and Cat. The argument for having two or three feline clans is pretty strong and is basically "Cat Girls!" and then dropping the damn mic.

The main things missing from the Zodiac are Fish and Bugs. There are no Fish or Bugs in the Zodiac. Birds get only one thing (Chicken) and Reptiles only one example (Serpent). But it's important to remember that the Five Kung Fu Animals have Crane and Mantis. But there are a lot of animal forms. Ones that could make a decent clan include:

• Bear
• Boar (equivalent to Zodiac Pig)
• Bull (equivalent to Zodiac Ox)
• Centipede
• Chicken (equivalent to Zodiac Chicken)
• Cobra (equivalent to Zodiac Serpent)
• Crab
• Crane
• Crow
• Deer
• Dog (equivalent to Zodiac Dog)
• Duck
• Eagle
• Elephant
• Fox (semi-equivalent to Zodiac Dog)
• Hawk
• Horse (equivalent to the Zodiac Horse)
• Leopard (semi-equivalent to Zodiac Tiger)
• Lion (semi-equivalent to Zodiac Tiger)
• Lizard
• Mantis
• Monkey (equivalent to Zodiac Monkey)
• Python (equivalent to Zodiac Serpent)
• Scorpion
• Swallow
• Tiger (equivalent to Zodiac Tiger)
• Toad
• Turtle
• Wolf (semi-equivalent to Zodiac Dog)

Now to that, I would say there definitely also needs to be Carp and Eel despite there not being any martial arts styles called that to my knowledge. And the following Zodiac animals don't have martial arts styles but are still obviously pretty major:

• Rat
• Rabbit
• Goat

So that's a total of 34 completely reasonable clan names. And I think you'd want to cut no more than like ten of them. Some of them seem pretty redundant. Fox, Dog, and Wolf all seem pretty interchangeable. I don't think you need Leopard, Lion, and Tiger. Some of them seem pretty forgettable like Duck and Swallow. But it's a good starting point.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

I don't think you want to cut them. I was thinking along these same lines in regard to Warhammer Space Marines. A huge amount of appeal is for people to paint their marines however they hell want to and just call it a new chapter with it's own way of doing things.

Like Warhammer, it's possible to establish a relationship between some of them - cadet branches or successor chapters. So if you have the Crow, it's cool to have the Raven clan, too. They're very similar, but they're even more HARDCORE SHADOW or whatever floats that particular writer's boat. I'd recommend Swan over duck, but might as well have both. And pretty sure Po's adopted father was a goose. Python is a pretty evocative serpent and while it may have a lot of overlap with Cobra, comparing and contrasting them is useful.

[DrPraetor]

Declare that there are 61 clans, name ~50 of them, allow sources to contradict on the other ~10; this can be a thing that people disagree on in game. You never have to give a definitive answer.

You need Bat and Shark, those are non-negotiable. From the 100 acre wood, it is a problem you are missing Owl.

I think Raven sounds better than Crow. You should have Cat as well as Jaguar, Lion and Tiger. Butterfly and Wasp have substantive narrative resonance.

How about seahorse? They can want to grow up to be dragons, even if dragons are not much over-represented in their clan. Dolphins are lame, you want one anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_of_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category: ... a_of_China

[Dean]

I think Clans should in general be a statement about a persons bloodlines and culture but they should also refer to a specific organization with specific goals.

Definitely not.

Here's the thing then. I don't really understand what clans even are if that's not true. What I was trying to do was square the circle of, for instance, Scorpion Clan having all it's traction caught up in them being kabuki assassins and also allowing for someone to say they're from the Scorpion clan without you assuming their fishmongering business is a front for them being a murderous spy.

I understand the desire for clear terminology but if clans are just lists of the ways people prepare their fish and perform their funerary rites absolutely no one will care about it. The only reason anyone cares about the Scorpion Clan at all is because "Scorpions" are this

And yes if every Lion is a golden armored general and every Scorpion is a deceitful ninja there will probably be a lot of clan tension but on the other hand if the clans aren't identifiable as having those elements then they aren't anything anyone will feel any attachment to. The middle ground of saying that the inner circle of the Scorpion clan is a bunch of kabuki assassins, yes, but that Li the merchant (of clan scorpion) is just a guy and no one thinks any worse of him for that tenuous connection seems functional.

[Grek]

Your clan decides what you dress like, what you like to eat, what your accent sounds like, what sort of businesses your family involves itself in and which people you can request assistance from through family back channels.

The stuff where Scorpion Clan members all wear masks, tend to dress in black, often enjoy kabuki shows, tend to have numerous secret passages in their houses, keep little scorpions as good luck charms, like to help out fellow Scorpions in need, praise the virtues of cunning and ruthlessness and think it's funny to give outsiders unexpectedly spicy food can all stay in. All of that is both really cool and does not cause problems at the table.

What does cause problems and what cannot stay in is the thing where each Clan has ~10% of the entire Empire under their feudal control and is expected to fight with the other Clans to to make their share of the pie bigger and implement policies which fit with their Clan ethos. Yes, there should be organizations that work like that, but no, they should not be bloodline based or come a specific list of character traits that you're encouraged to play to type.

We want the different PCs to have very different social circles, personalities and aesthetics. But we also want the different PCs to cooperate on the same political and military objectives. And that means that the thing that decides what you look like can't be the thing that decides what your politics are.

[Username17]

Declare that there are 61 clans, name ~50 of them, allow sources to contradict on the other ~10; this can be a thing that people disagree on in game. You never have to give a definitive answer.

That's actually pretty genius. And you're right. People can straight up disagree as to whether the Cobra are just a cadet branch of the Serpent who put on airs or a full Clan.

Your clan decides what you dress like, what you like to eat, what your accent sounds like, what sort of businesses your family involves itself in and which people you can request assistance from through family back channels.

All of these things, yes.

I understand the desire for clear terminology but if clans are just lists of the ways people prepare their fish and perform their funerary rites absolutely no one will care about it.

This is completely wrong. In a world where ancestor worship actually works and does concrete things, funerary rites are terribly important and players will definitely care. If you please your ancestors as a member of the Fox Clan, you can get rewarded with a Kitsune (Japanese Nine-Tail Fox) compatriot. If you please your ancestors as a member of the Rooster Clan, you can get rewarded with a Gye-Long (Korean Cockatrice) instead.

Choice of Epic Mount would of course be completely sufficient to justify a player choosing to be from the Raven Clan or the Butterfly Clan. But beyond that, being a member of the Raven Clan gives you contacts in the Silversmiths Guild, while being a member of the Butterfly Clan gives you contacts in the Tailors Guild.

There's no reason or advantage for there to be a ducal rank 'Head of the Ox Clan.' That doesn't add anything to the game except reasons that it would be hard for player characters to work together. You already have some number of dukes who happen to be Ox Clan, and any one of them can pull the 'I know your aunt' card on Ox Clan PCs without having an official Ox Clan organization chart.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, if the status quo is that nobody takes clan affiliation too seriously it makes it stand out that much more when some outgroup clan (read: one not containing PCs) invents ultranationalism and becomes the villains.

[Username17]

I think Raven sounds better than Crow. You should have Cat as well as Jaguar, Lion and Tiger. Butterfly and Wasp have substantive narrative resonance.

I'm with you on Raven sounding cooler than Crow. Indeed, I could see "Crow" being used as an insult against members of the Raven clan. More broadly, a lot of these animals have versions that are "less cool" or "more domestic" and I could see that being a thing that people call them in order to annoy. Like calling the Boar Clan "Pigs" or the Ox Clan "Cows." In any case, you certainly would not have a Jaguar Clan, because Jaguars are a New World Animal and their presence implies Aztecs and Incas rather than Great Walls and Shogunates.

Anyway, one of the key things that your Clan does at any level is give you contacts. The special ancestral gifts and special troops you can summon as a high level champion of heaven aren't super relevant as a starting character, and your starting equipment means nothing at all when you're riding around on a giant bird. But the "web of cousins" is going to matter at all levels. When you're investigating missing rice, your cousins will give you information and when you're playing the game of thrones your cousins will give your armies safe passage. So it's important to understand what possible contacts you could have, such that you could think about what your clan choice could do.

Your characters start in a province. The provincial governor is a duk-equivalent (and their title is probably Gong or Daimyo or whatever). The governor will be from a Clan, and their immediate family will have important roles in the palace. But let's look at the rest of the government: there are Nine Ministries for the empire, all of which have bureaucratic presence in the province. Not only do they have a local provincial minister, but they also have bureaucrats who might reasonably be from two or three different clans. But wait! There's more! In addition to governmental authority you also have commercial and religious authority. That is, you have trade guilds and benevolent associations on the commercial side and you have a couple of different religious organizations that run their own monasteries and stuff. There will be clan-related contacts in those as well.

So there are more than twenty power and interest groups in the province, and your Clan will give inroads in like five of them. Plus, if you advance to high enough level you get to like awaken Naga Soldiers as a member of the Serpent Clan or ride around on Gyrados as a member of the Carp Clan.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

So if clans don't dominate physical territory, how is your clan affiliation determined?

If it is that you have a historical connection to an area that a thousand years ago became integrated, does it mean anything today? If your mother is Boar Clan and your father is Bear Clan, what does that make you?

It's easy to say 'you're born in Alabama, you're an Alabaman' or 'you're born in Raven territory, you're a Raven'. But there are certainly complications, and they're more extreme if there is no geographic component at all.

[Username17]

So if clans don't dominate physical territory, how is your clan affiliation determined?

If it is that you have a historical connection to an area that a thousand years ago became integrated, does it mean anything today? If your mother is Boar Clan and your father is Bear Clan, what does that make you?

It's easy to say 'you're born in Alabama, you're an Alabaman' or 'you're born in Raven territory, you're a Raven'. But there are certainly complications, and they're more extreme if there is no geographic component at all.

Clan affiliation is handled like Clan Affiliation. The idea of regional birthright citizenship is completely modern. Before that, nationhood was just based on heritage. That is, you were born a Cohen or a Gunn because your parent was a Cohen or a Gunn and you'd therefore be a Jew or a Scot regardless of where you were born and stay that no matter where you moved to.

Further, while my mother kept her own name when she got married, that's also a very modern concept. In most of the world for most of history, if two people got married one of them would change their name. So if you marry into Clan Gunn, you literally "marry into the clan." You are then part of the clan. So the question of what happens if you have one parent who is Boar Clan and one parent who is Bear Clan is that this literally cannot happen. When a Boar and a Bear get married, whichever spouse has the lower social staus changes their name and joins the other clan. By the time children are being born, it is definitionally true that both legitimate parents would be the same Clan.

Regional nation states is a new concept and not a relevant one for Orientalist Fantasy Asian Empires. The nations are bloodlines of people and they are wherever they happen to be. You're Shark Clan if you're born to parents of the Shark Clan and that doesn't change if you were born on a mountain and have never seen the sea with your own eyes or were born in an island village where most of the other people around you were also Shark Clan.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

I can buy that a clan is something that you personally identify with, and your aunts, uncles, cousins, etc are all members of your clan. But if you're from Heilongjiang and you find yourself in Yunnan, I would expect regional differences to trump clan affiliation. If it doesn't, I think you need to at least explain why having a common ancestor 1000 years ago means you can expect a warmer relationship than their neighbor of 20 years who happens to be a different clan.

If it's cultural, it's not part of any real world culture. It deserves explanation.

If its cultural, one also has to consider people inside and outside the clan structure. If Marco Polo shows up, does he have 'people' status without a clan?

You could try something Astrological where you have a cycle of 7 years and 12 or 13 months per year - in which case it's more of a 'sign', but it could be culturally very important.

Whatever route you take, I think it needs some form of explanation. There are also people who might legitimately want to 'infiltrate' a clan (or assume a false identity) and understanding how you 'prove' your affiliation seems important.

[RadiantPhoenix]

So if clans don't dominate physical territory, how is your clan affiliation determined?

If it is that you have a historical connection to an area that a thousand years ago became integrated, does it mean anything today? If your mother is Boar Clan and your father is Bear Clan, what does that make you?

It's easy to say 'you're born in Alabama, you're an Alabaman' or 'you're born in Raven territory, you're a Raven'. But there are certainly complications, and they're more extreme if there is no geographic component at all.

Clan affiliation is handled like Clan Affiliation. The idea of regional birthright citizenship is completely modern. Before that, nationhood was just based on heritage. That is, you were born a Cohen or a Gunn because your parent was a Cohen or a Gunn and you'd therefore be a Jew or a Scot regardless of where you were born and stay that no matter where you moved to.

Further, while my mother kept her own name when she got married, that's also a very modern concept. In most of the world for most of history, if two people got married one of them would change their name. So if you marry into Clan Gunn, you literally "marry into the clan." You are then part of the clan. So the question of what happens if you have one parent who is Boar Clan and one parent who is Bear Clan is that this literally cannot happen. When a Boar and a Bear get married, whichever spouse has the lower social staus changes their name and joins the other clan. By the time children are being born, it is definitionally true that both legitimate parents would be the same Clan.

Regional nation states is a new concept and not a relevant one for Orientalist Fantasy Asian Empires. The nations are bloodlines of people and they are wherever they happen to be. You're Shark Clan if you're born to parents of the Shark Clan and that doesn't change if you were born on a mountain and have never seen the sea with your own eyes or were born in an island village where most of the other people around you were also Shark Clan.

-Username17

So, dynasties from Crusader Kings 2?