Alt-L5R Clans

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Alt-L5R Clans

Post by Chamomile »

I didn't want to derail the general purpose intrigue thread on its first page, so I'm linking to the relevant post here in order to pose the question: If you wanted to make After Sundown but for L5R, what kind of clans would you want to have?

Looking at the seven in the actual L5R, two pairs jump out at me as redundant: the Crab Clan and the Lion Clan are both military clans, and the Dragon and Phoenix Clans are both wizard-y clans. They're not wholly without distinction: The Dragon Clan are reclusive while the Phoenix Clan are diplomatic, and the Crab Clan defend a wall against shadow monsters while the Lion Clan just has a bigass army and no specific purpose for it. I'm not familiar enough with L5R to be really confident in this, but it seems from reading the Wiki pages that these two clan pairs could be combined without much loss.

The other end of this is that you might want to add some clans, or split some existing ones. Five and seven are both great numbers for the amount of factions on an intrigue council, since odd numbers prevent two entrenched and intractable coalitions from forming, five is enough that council interactions can be fairly complex, and seven isn't so many that it starts to be hard to keep track of who all these people are without having to consult a diagram. If Crab/Lion and Dragon/Phoenix do get collapsed together, that leaves room to add two new clans. Conversely, if one of those pairs can be collapsed together but the other two really are distinct enough to be worth preserving, that means the set will strongly benefit from having a new clan added (there are ways to make six factions work in an intrigue game, but they're not as elegant as having five or seven).

And, y'know, maybe there's good reasons for both Lion/Crab and Dragon/Phoenix to be distinct, at which point you just want to scrub the serial numbers off and use them pretty much as-is.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Are we modifying the L5R setting/map or making up a new one? You could have a "great at magic" clan, a "duelist" clan and so on, but it feels more like D&D races than territorial holdings on a defined map.

A Sengoku Jidai sort of setting gives you varying levels of war and peace along with a powerless emperor figurehead to puppeteer if you've got enough power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sengoku_period

Or you can do the Tokugawa Shogunate thing where it's peace time all the major Daimyo's families have to spend time in the capital as politicians/hostages.
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Re: Alt-L5R Clans

Post by Longes »

Chamomile wrote:Looking at the seven in the actual L5R, two pairs jump out at me as redundant: the Crab Clan and the Lion Clan are both military clans, and the Dragon and Phoenix Clans are both wizard-y clans. They're not wholly without distinction: The Dragon Clan are reclusive while the Phoenix Clan are diplomatic, and the Crab Clan defend a wall against shadow monsters while the Lion Clan just has a bigass army and no specific purpose for it. I'm not familiar enough with L5R to be really confident in this, but it seems from reading the Wiki pages that these two clan pairs could be combined without much loss.
The clan differences go deeper. Dragon Clan are buddhist monks with superpowers. Phoenix Clan are shintoists with superpowers. Crab Clan are gruff barbarians, while Lion Clan are a civilized and organized army. Crane are also warriors like Lion, but they are even more civilized and courtly and fight in duels rather than an army.
Last edited by Longes on Wed Mar 21, 2018 11:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Username17 »

In general, I think there's reason to have two clans that care about a thing, so having two magic clans means you have built in conflict for appointments related to magic. Having two commercial clans means you have two clans competing for the chancellor post.

So the thing where both the Crane and the Crab cared about trade and both the Crab and the Lion cared about Infantry is actually a decent thing. The thing where only the Unicorn particularly cared about Cavalry is the problem. It's also a problem that the Phoenix really only care about magic. At least the Dragon also care about monks and shit. It is also a problem that one of the Crane's primary interests is 'Intrigue' because that's the whole fucking thing.

Anyway, you'd want to decide what the main appointments are and to have each clan be interested in two or three of them. Between Junta and Crusader Kings there are some obvious ideas, plus some fantasy ones. Admiral, General, Chancellor, Steward, High Priest, Internal Security, and Magician. But you could also do a lot with the ministries of Imperial China. Lots to recommend ministries of War, Justice, Rites, Revenue, Agriculture, Works, and Personnel.

Also reasonable would be to have a two layer council like the three Ducal Ministers and the six lesser ministers.

As for clans, Crane (Revenue, Chancellor), Crab (War, Chancellor), and Dragon (Rites, Magic) are all reasonable starting points. Unicorn and Phoenix as conceived don't care near enough about the government to be especially viable. And a lot of the important parts of the government like roads, dams, agriculture, and taxes that weren't really discussed.

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Post by Chamomile »

OgreBattle wrote:Are we modifying the L5R setting/map or making up a new one?
At this stage in the project (i.e. before anyone is seriously considering actually making it) the map doesn't really matter one way or the other. The question is: What set of clans would be best for an intrigue game set in a vaguely Japanese, Rokugan-esque setting? I'm open to the possibility that the answer could be "exactly the seven clans from the actual L5R," "the L5R clans with minor tweaks," or "L5R clans so heavily modified that less than half of them are even recognizable" (though I find it hard to imagine that the optimal psuedo-Japanese intrigue setup would involve none of the factions resembling any of the L5R clans). So, how much alteration is required to optimize for the goal is part of the question.

The aim is a mix of both Sengoku Jidai and Tokugawa eras. It needs to be Sengoku Jidai enough that one daimyo can march his army into another daimyo's province and take his stuff, but also Tokugawa enough that the emperor or shogun or whoever will sometimes tell the attacking daimyo not to do that and you can be confident the attacking daimyo will listen. It is not generally accepted that rulership of the entire land is up for grabs if you can get a big enough army together, but it is generally accepted that "ancient blood feud" and "personal vendetta" are valid casus belli for one daimyo against another and the emperor won't intervene if Daimyo Akira declares war on Daimyo Itsuki because Daimyo Itsuki killed Daimyo Akira's brother in a duel. Thus, naturally, daimyos are constantly seeking valid casus belli for honorable conquest against one another and having the emperor on your side means that flimsier casus belli will pass without his intervention (but no matter how much the emperor likes you, his position is based on his willingness to defend the rights of the daimyos, so if you get too brazen he will be forced to intervene or else face revolt).

Also important to note that clans are not political units led by daimyos, but instead are loose cultural coalitions containing multiple daimyos with no specific leader of the whole clan, so while the Unicorn Clan and the Lion Clan can have a rumble (forcing Lion Clan officers of Unicorn Clan daimyos to choose sides, and vice-versa), it's also possible for an individual Unicorn Clan daimyo to fight with an individual Lion Clan daimyo and for this to not necessarily spiral into a clan-scale war, and likewise two different Unicorn Clan daimyos might fight one another and there isn't a head of the Unicorn Clan to make them stop.

So clans need to have two attributes: They need a cultural identity so that characters raised in the tradition of one clan over another can be reasonably expected to be better or worse at certain things, so that the Unicorn Clan generally produces a better minister of trade than the Dragon Clan, and they need a political agenda so that players have something to go on when picking which clan they want to back other than "red is the best color, so Scorpion Clan it is." Actual, real world intrigue (in Japan and other places) is often a clash of rank ambition with no significant policy differences besides who gets the big chair, but the needs of fiction demand that it make a difference to the setting whether the Lion Clan or the Phoenix Clan gets their way.
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Post by shinimasu »

Would it be easier to break down currently existing clan hats to help pinpoint where things could be expanded on or consolidated?

Crab:
- Warriors, Merchants, Low honor (bad at etiquette)

Lion:
- Warriors (Generals), High honor, Occasionally duels

Mantis:
- Merchants (pirates), Middle honor, Sailors

Phoenix:
- Mages, High honor, Pacifism

Dragon:
- Mages, Monks, N/A Honor

Unicorn:
- Horses, Gaijin, Low honor (same as crab)

Scorpion:
- Art (performers), Intrigue (Spys), Assassins, Low Honor (designated villains)

Crane:
- Art (Everything else), Intrigue (Diplomacy), Duelists, High Honor
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Post by Username17 »

I agree about clans needing cultural identity and political agendas. They also need associated guilds and exclusive economic and military contributions. Fundamentally you want clans to be memetically recognizable and also fulfill roles in fiction.

As for how closely you could base clans on the actual L5R clans, I would say not very. The Crab, Crane, and Dragon are reasonably sufficient in terms of having enough interests to have positions and ambitions in court, but Phoenix, Unicorn, and Lion are not. And Mantis and Scorpion are somehow even worse. Crab, Crane, and Dragon are not without problems - having a court based game where the Lannisters are 'good at court' and the Starks are 'bad at court' has obvious problems from the start.

Similarly, in terms of cultural, economic, and military identity there's a lot of hits and misses. Again the Crab and Crane do better than the rest. But the silversmithing of the Phoenix and gold mining of the Lion is pretty forgettable stuff.

My suggestion really would be to draft up ministerial positions and then pick out enough clans that are interested in more than one that there's conflict for each one. Then assign animal names, colors, and east Asian cultural shticks pretty much at random.

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Post by Longes »

I'd say Unicorn are pretty well set. They are culturally Mongols, which makes them one of the most culturally distinct clans, and their social schtick is importing foreign goods, which makes them socially distinct from other merhant clans. You'd go to Yasuki merchants (variably Crane or Crab clan's family) to buy rice in bulk or a fashionable kimono, and you'd go to Ide merchants (Unicorn clan family) to buy a bear fur hat or enough muskets to unify Japan Rokugan. These roles overlap, which creates conflict, but are also meaningfully distinct.
Last edited by Longes on Wed Mar 21, 2018 3:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Username17 »

I would be in favor of a Mongol themed clan. The Unicorn fill that role really badly.
  • 1. No clan should be named after a talking animal that could plausibly associate with a clan. Dragon Clan Dragons and Dragons who aren't Dragon Clan is awful nomenclature. And Unicorns and Phoenixes are nearly as bad.

    2. The L5R Unicorn Clan's gaijin connection is through the Burning Sands. And that's terrible. Because Burning Sands is terrible and everything about it is terrible.

    3. The Unicorn don't really do anything Mongolian or have any recognizable Mongolian traits other than really liking horses.

    4. The Unicorn clan doesn't have any specific interests in the Empire and don't seem to want to run anything in particular.
Yeah, you want a clan that's Mongolian in flavor. And that could be Khanate or Qing Dynasty or something in between. But other than 'has a lot of horses' I can't think what you'd want to adapt from the Unicorn clan. Maybe Battle Maidens, but that's because horse girls want to play horse girls - not because it meaningfully adds to the intrigue options. In a broader sense, every clan should have iconic female martial positions, not just the horse girls.

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Post by osu »

I'd say the Ide and the Iuchi both do a good job setting the Unicorn apart from other clans with Diplomacy/Commerce and Gaijin Magic and neither rely on the horse shtick.
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Post by OgreBattle »

The totem of Mongols is the wolf and wolf clan sounds more savage than say crab or crane clan. They could also be messengers, delivery men as they got all those good horses. ranchers too, in real life Mongolia provides the 2nd most wool in the world (PRC is 2st with Inner Mongolia)

There should be a tea clan, everyone drinks tea, tea growers also need safe trade routes. Wars have been fought over tea, spies steal guarded tea plants. In a fantasy setting it could be used in magic and so a magic clan can also be big into tea.
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Post by Username17 »

osu wrote:I'd say the Ide and the Iuchi both do a good job setting the Unicorn apart from other clans with Diplomacy/Commerce and Gaijin Magic and neither rely on the horse shtick.
I can't say what if anything was ever accomplished with the Ide or the Iuchi later on, but the early Ide were in very small numbers and just had diplomatic abilities to delay imperial edicts. They were never used in the card game and no one cared because they had no real flavor. The Iuchi were all just horse mages who had horse magic. They were as generic and uninteresting as you could possibly imagine the mages of the cavalry faction would be. You got the mage that transports troops, the mage that summons horses for troops, and the mage who has arrowfend and personally rides a horse. They don't add a drop of flavor to the clan that spends a lot of time riding horses.

The only thing you could say about any of them was that Iuchi Katasu had a cool looking outfit. But it was an explicitly and extremely Japanese outfit, in that he carries sai and wears the robes of a shinto priest. Even the cool shit just undermines whatever Mongol influence might make them interesting or unique. It would be one thing if the mages were Tengri shamans and Siberian spirit talkers, but they aren't. It's a bunch of Shinto priests who summon fucking horses.

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Post by Chamomile »

So, amending something I said earlier: We want there to be either five or seven council positions, and we want the number of council positions to be equal to or greater than the number of clans. It's actually fine if there are six clans and seven council positions, because then in the default campaign that people play their first game of alt-L5R in, one clan has two council positions and that's fine. On the other hand, if there are eight clans and seven council positions, that means one clan is not present on the council and as such receives far less attention. That's bad, because this isn't a single adventure, it's a campaign, and it could plausibly be the only campaign of alt-L5R a group ever plays. You want all major clans to be in play for it. If you want to run a campaign where the premise is that one or more clans are unrepresented, you can do that by just giving some of the better represented clans more seats on the council.

To that end, I've hammered out a draft of seven major clans, each of which are interested in two of seven council positions, thus meaning each council position could plausibly be held by one of two clans even in an ideal scenario where every position is held by a member of a clan who excels at it.

The positions are the General, the Admiral, the Chancellor, the Spymaster, the Minister of Rites, the Minister of Works, and the Minister of Revenue. Most of these are self-explanatory, but the Chancellor takes care of both diplomacy as well as being in charge of internal law enforcement and palace security - it is the position given to the most honorable councilor. The Spymaster's role is easily explained, but is generally the least honorable councilor. The Minister of Revenue is in charge of both tax and trade policy, and thus control the money. The Minister of Rites is also in charge of magic, because you get magic by being a really awesome Buddhist or Shintoist or whatever.

The clans are:

Dragon, specializing in Chancellor and Rites. I'm not sure which religion they should be riffing on, but they're the clan of the religion of the upper class. They're honorable, well-learned, and pacifist. Their agenda is primarily one of non-aggression and spiritualism. Frank's not wrong that they need a better name.

Crane, specializing in Chancellor and Revenue. These are pretty much just the Crane clan as-is: Culturally refined snobs with lots of money and poetry. They can even be great duelists, still, they're just too mediocre at leading armies to specialize in Marshal or Admiral. The first emperor was from the Crane clan, and they still claim the prestige of being the most noble of all the clans.

Wolf, specializing in Marshal and Revenue. These are the most outward facing clan, deeply concerned with both the opportunities and dangers that lurk beyond the borders of the empire. They control the frontier territory where the silk road leaves the empire and are generally Mongolian themed, taking OgreBattle's suggestion for the name. The Wolf Clan barely even consider themselves part of the empire, and are most willing to break away from it.

Tiger, specializing in Marshal, Admiral, and Chancellor. Honorable warriors dedicated to upholding the laws of the empire and the reign of the emperor, preserving the peace brought by the unification of the clans. The first emperor married an esteemed samurai of the Tiger Clan, and this union between Crane and Tiger would go on to unify the clans and bring an end to the chaos of their wars.

Mantis, specializing in Admiral, Revenue, and Spymaster. A pirate-themed clan, riffing somewhat on original flavor Mantis. They were not really a noble clan at all, but rather a powerful coalition of pirates, until the first emperor offered to sanction them as the Mantis Clan if they agreed to help him unite the other clans. The Mantis remain loyal to the empire, but tend to disregard noble customs and traditions when it suits them.

Tortoise, specializing in Works and Rites. Ascetics and monks of the common people. The Tortoise represent the plight of the working man.

Scorpion, specializing in Spymaster and Works. Another riff on an original flavor clan, the Scorpion Clan maintains a connection to the underworld throughout the empire, turning opium dens and brothels into an effective and far-reaching spy network. Like the Tortoise Clan, they are deeply connected to the common people. Unlike the Tortoise Clan, they aren't running a charity, but instead view the poor as an exploitable resource for being both cheap and of questionable honor. Their willingness to employ common criminals makes the Scorpion Clan nearly as dishonorable as the Mantis Clan.
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Post by Username17 »

Chamomile wrote:So, amending something I said earlier: We want there to be either five or seven council positions, and we want the number of council positions to be equal to or greater than the number of clans.
You make a good argument for the council to be larger than the number of clans, and I heartily concur. I don't think the argument for there being only 5 or 7 ministries is that strong though. A council of 9 is cool sounding and leaves a lot more room for issues where some of the ministers don't care about the outcome and can be bribed with chocolate cake.

One thing is that you would normally like most issues to be vaguely in the purview of at least two ministries. That way you can have legitimate disagreements over jurisdiction and posturing and shit. So like, you have a court priest and a court magician. That way when there's a mystical question you have two dudes in robes who have a legit reason to stick their dick in and disagree about shit.
  • Chancellor: Handles official correspondence, diplomacy, and foreign trade. Trods on the toes of the Admiral and the Minister of the Household.
  • Minister of the Household: Essentially a spymaster, their nominal job is to take care of the lord's actual house and look after the literal manor staff, but they are a Minister-level position because fuck you. Trods on the toes of the Chancellor and the Minister of Justice.
  • Minister of Justice: In charge of courts, investigations, and the guard. Supposed to fight crime and internal threats. Trods on the toes of the Minister of the Household and the Marshall.
  • Marshall: In charge of the armies. Except the military forces that are organized under the Admirality for reasons. Or the military forces that work directly for the Justice Ministry. Trods on the toes of the Admiral and the Minister of Justice.
  • Admiral: In control of both the military navy and the imperial merchant fleet. Trods on the toes of the Marshall and the Chancellor.
  • Minister of Ceremonies: Keeps the calendar and schedules all the religious stuff as well as oversees all the monks and temples. Trods on the toes of the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Sorcery.
  • Minister of Sorcery: Called upon to do various magical stuff. Trods on the toes of the Minister of Ceremonies and also the Minister of Works.
  • Minister of Agriculture: In charge of all labor levies for farming as well as keeping track of planting and harvesting times. Trods on the toes of the Minister of Ceremonies and also the Minister of Works.
  • Minister of Works: In charge of all labor levies for infrastructure. Walls, roads, irrigation, flood control projects, and so on. Trods on the toes of the Minister of Sorcery and the Minister of Agriculture.
Anyway, the clans themselves want to be doing several things. Obviously they all want to be good and obvious choices for like 3 of the offices so that there's reasoned and reasonable conflict. But you also want them to be instantly identifiable visually through color and clothing choices. And you want them to have solid racist caricatures. That doesn't sound like something you want, but in a yellow face game it actually is. If the Serpent Clan are inspired by the Vietnamese, then people can do research on medieval Vietnamese people if it turns out you need to know what Serpent Clan children wear or how to go about making a Serpent Clan pickled cabbage or whatever. If the Serpent Clan aren't recognizably Vietnamese, then any such questions are unanswerable if they haven't been specifically addressed within the game.

The clans also want to not do several things. The first and most obvious is that you don't want confusing nomenclature. Dragon Clan in a world that has actual Dragons in it that you can talk to is complete unacceptable and obviously so. Similarly you don't want any of the clans to have the goal "ignore all this palace intrigue and just flip the table over or fucking leave." Everyone has to be trying to get their people into ministerial positions and advance their agendas.

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Post by Whipstitch »

Aside from the knee jerk impulse to put fish in charge of the navy I would say that Carp would be a solid Dragon replacement.

You're definitely going to want to emphasize the simple fact that under a feudal system the harvest is a big deal and dirt farmers aren't really allowed to just wander around all willy-nilly. It should be very clear to the players that no clan is ever so ascetic or isolated that they cease to give a shit about how imperial levies are managed.
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Post by Chamomile »

What I'd like is to have a total of eleven clans with council positions to match, or maybe thirteen just to have a more satisfying number. Going with eleven, there can be three Japanese-coded clans, three Chinese-coded clans, and then one each coded for Koreans, Tibetans, Mongolians, Manchus, and Vietnamese. The immediate question you may be asking yourself is why the Japanese and Chinese need so many damn clans when we could collapse that down all the way to seven if we just went one culture to one clan, and the answer is that overrepresenting some cultures allows us to have some anti-hero clans without coming off like all Koreans are thieving pirates. If the Carp, Crane, and Scorpion Clans are all coded Chinese, then the sins of the Scorpion Clan don't come off like a cultural (or worse, racial) flaw inherent to all Chinese.

Bearing in mind that the number of clans should not exceed the number of council positions, though, we then run into huge problems with the sheer size of a daimyo's court. Even nine councilors makes me nervous. Having more creative freedom to make more clans is nice (I had to cut my Works/Marshall Ox Clan of commies from the list of seven, and I'd be happy to have room to squeeze them back in) and having overlap between different councilors helps with the intrigue, but each councilor comes with at least a few courtiers who have no direct influence, but who have a strong, positive relationship with both their clan's councilor and several courtiers of other clans. It's one of the mechanisms by which players can convince a councilor who normally wants nothing to do with them to act in their favor, and it helps make the court seem like a real social group that happens to be centered around a handful of people with excruciating power, rather than a game-y Platonic council that exists solely to wield that excruciating power.

You need time to introduce all these characters, though, and the players can only start playing the intrigue for real when they grasp all the pieces on the board. If you're still in the phase where the players have no idea who the Tiger Clan's social circle even is, then they're still in the phase where they can be completely blind-sided by the Tiger Clan councilor's behavior, because they have no idea what levers their opponents have to pull on him. The bigger the council is, the longer it is before the players immediately know the relevance of Minister Akira's maid having an affair with Minister Itsuki's bodyguard. You can mitigate this problem with note-taking and diagrams, but with a big enough council this in itself becomes prohibitively time consuming.
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Post by OgreBattle »

There's a lot of real life Japanese clans of Chinese and Korean descent you could look at for inspiration. The idea of a 'clan' usually revolves around a (legendary) common ancestor so writing up the super badass that started the clan in distant mythological times is a way to guide flavor.

Like the Kawachi clan clans descent from a legendary Chinese scholar Wani (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wani_(scholar) ) that supposedly brought writing to Japan. Having a clan in your setting claim to be the originators of writing or transmitters of writing from an ancient far away land is cool flavor.

The Kikuchi clan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kikuchi_clan) have bringing Buddhism to Japan as their claim to fame. Their west coast position that gave them access to mainland Buddhism also subjected them to the 11th century Jurchen invasion where they gained a reputation as fierce defenders of the imperial family. They're also believed to be of Baekje Korean descent.

For "Pirate clan" inspirations check out....

Ming pirate turned admiral (exactly like a One Piece shichibukai) Zheng Zhilong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_Zhilong)

His half Japanese son Zheng Chenggong/Koxinga (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koxinga) fought against his father as a Ming loyalist when his father joined the Qing. This guy also defeated the Dutch East India Company and planned to invade Manila.

Yamada (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamada_Nagamasa) is another interesting seafarer. He was a Japanese red seal ship captain but also suspected of piracy by Europeans. Traded with the Kingdom of Ayutthaya (Siam), became a governor there with a Japanese army.

Koreans are famous for their iron mines, mountain fortresses, and excellent medicinal roots like ginsing. Exaggerate their characteristics and you get Warhammer dwarves.

*tangent: a 1600's Pacific rim setting (East Asia, SEA, maybe the Americas) with natives and outlanders clashing over trade routes is something I've been mulling over, will write about it in another thread.
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Post by Bigode »

Chamomile wrote:Going with eleven, there can be three Japanese-coded clans, three Chinese-coded clans, and then one each coded for Koreans, Tibetans, Mongolians, Manchus, and Vietnamese.
If you were to include everyone adjacent to China proper, you'd also have the Tai peoples and the Tarim Basin people. The first does include the Thais, but the largest representative in China is the Zhuang. The second would be, likely too far back for this, the Agni-Kuchi (misnamed "Tocharian") speakers; in times you'd actually might find useful, the Sogdians and Sakas, then the Uyghurs.

The stereotypes for Thais I'd name would be matrilinearity, diplomacy, trade, and ease to adopt foreign curstoms (and foreigners) whenever useful. The other Tais tend to be stateless mountain minorities for whom The Art of Not Being Governed might be an interesting source (admittedly, not the people to fight for government positions, but the ones who did needed to keep them in mind).

The peoples of the Tarim Basin have been each, in turn (the latter ones arrived as more warlike people and conquered the earlier), Central Asian oases merchants descended from steppe nomads on the Chinese route to heavenly blood-sweating horses. If different religions would be useful as different power sources, the religions there included Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and Nestorian Christianity (by non-native, but close, Sogdians), Buddhism, and Islam (including a lot of Sufism). You can see Sogdian reenactors here and the start of a comic book about them here.

Bonus:

We came down on them like a flood!
We went out among their cities!
We tore down the idol-temples,
We shat on the Buddha's head!
- Mahmud Kashgari.
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Post by Username17 »

I would be OK with having multiple recognizably Chinese clans and multiple recognizably Japanese clans. Because we get more media from China and Japan than we do from Korea and Vietnam. All of these countries are big enough and have enough history that you could give out iconic outfits to several different clans, but you don't have the depth of movies and cartoons and stuff to draw upon. But if you had something like "The Tortoise Clan dress like Zhou period people and eat recognizably Sichuan food, while the Boar Clan dresses like Chin period people and eat recognizably Beijing-style food" that's really clear and actually means things to Westerners and is easy to look up online. I mean you could have the Serpent Clan dress like Thục dynasty period Vietnamese people and the Hare Clan dress like Ngô dynasty period Vietnamese people, I can't think of any movies you could watch in America that would make that difference clear or act as reasonable roleplaying prompts for the differences.

You definitely can't have a clan representing all the distinct cultures in and around China, there are just too many of them. Here's a list of 55 recognized peoples who live in China and all have their own recognizable clothing and food. But while it's certainly tempting to base the Cat Clan on the Miao people, you do have to draw a line somewhere. Probably several lines, and one of the easiest lines is tocut out all the stuff that is more associated with South Asia or Central Asia than East Asia. Yes, India is on the Chinese border, but India definitely feels like a different genre and should be simplified out of your fantasy empire. Same goes for Greater Turkestan.
OgreBattle wrote:Having a clan in your setting claim to be the originators of writing or transmitters of writing from an ancient far away land is cool flavor.
I'm definitely of two minds about this. On the one hand, ancestor veneration is very flavorful and historical heroes that did cool shit that wasn't just "fought a high CR monster" makes the setting more fun to read about, actual L5R really went up its own asshole with its ancestral hero fuckers and seven thunders and all that crap.
Chamomile wrote:allows us to have some anti-hero clans
None of the clans should be "bad guys." Also none of the clans should be invested in bringing down the system. Shit like the Scorpion from L5R was really bad for an RPG, and the implementation wasn't all that great in the card game either. The player characters could plausibly be from any of the clans, so having clans whose official position is "Fuck All This Shit" is not really acceptable. Even the L5R Crab position of "Honor isn't really important, trust in steel!" is deeply corrosive to getting people to actually color in the lines at playing in the setting rather than just burning the setting down.
Chamomile wrote:What I'd like is to have a total of eleven clans with council positions to match, or maybe thirteen just to have a more satisfying number.
You can split the councils. So you could have a War Council that has the Admiral, multiple Generals, the Chancellor, the Minister of Sorcery, and the Minister of the Household on it, and a separate State Affairs Council that has the Chancellor, the Minister of Agriculture, the Minister of Works, the Minister of the Household, the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Personnel, and the Minister of Ceremonies on it. And so on. And you can add tension by having some dudes sit on multiple councils and having other dudes have explicit interests in the proceedings of councils that they don't actually sit on. So you have the Chancellor sitting on the War Council because of his diplomacy hat and the the State Affairs Council because of his trade hat, but then the guards commanded by the Minister of Justice might be called upon to act in wartime, but the Justice Minister isn't actually on the War Council and is pissed about it.

In that way, you could have 13 clans and like 18 positions to fight over, but still only have councils that have seven voting members.
Chamomile wrote:ou need time to introduce all these characters, though, and the players can only start playing the intrigue for real when they grasp all the pieces on the board.
This is another advantage of having multiple councils. By having a separate War Council and State Affairs Council and possibly a few other divisions as well, you can have the players mess about in a smaller pool and then progress to a larger pool once there's been more time to introduce more characters. So you start with the players running around trying to get things done in the State Affairs Council or the Secretariat or something, and as they go up in level you eventually start the war with the Ogre Kingdoms, and as that gears up they can start paying attention to the goings on in the other councils.

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Post by Koumei »

FrankTrollman wrote:I'm definitely of two minds about this. On the one hand, ancestor veneration is very flavorful and historical heroes that did cool shit that wasn't just "fought a high CR monster" makes the setting more fun to read about, actual L5R really went up its own asshole with its ancestral hero fuckers and seven thunders and all that crap.
You can fairly easily have ancestor worship and "X clan claims and writes in all of their own history books that their ancient hero Y invented Z" without that being a problem. You even include some things that hint to that being quite possibly true without stating "They totally did and everyone acknowledges this".

That way you can have a Toad Clan PC who venerates the original four Toads who founded the clan, and will fight you if you insult their memory, and also gets annoyed when people don't build their roof properly because we invented tiling and what you are doing is an insult to that! (despite personally having never so much as fucking lifted a tile). But the clan itself doesn't have any kind of monopoly on "having tiled roofs" in the here-and-now, and the ancestors aren't still walking around doing whatever it is really old people do (clog up the NHS? Read tabloids and complain about immigrants? Lock everyone else out of the job and housing markets?) They're just names in the background that certain characters feel are super-important.
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

Chamomile wrote:What I'd like is to have a total of eleven clans with council positions to match, or maybe thirteen just to have a more satisfying number.
Do twelve, and just use the eastern Zodiac for the clan names (sub in Carp or Eagle for Dragon). I did that in my own alt-L5R setting and it was wildly popular in my extended circle because most people knew their sign and it was an instant hook for them. (If their year-sign didn't do it for them, they could go with their month-sign or hour-sign.)
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Post by Koumei »

Dragon could be carp because they grow into dragons when they reach the top of a waterfall, but just as good is the seahorse. I can't remember what the link is, but Japan insists there is a link. Tell the players they have to watch Fruits Basket.
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Post by mlangsdorf »

FrankTrollman wrote:
  • Chancellor: Trods on the toes of the Admiral and the Minister of the Household.
  • Minister of the Household: Essentially a spymaster, their nominal job is to take care of the lord's actual house and look after the literal manor staff, but they are a Minister-level position because fuck you. Trods on the toes of the Chancellor and the Minister of Justice.
They're a Minister level position because the chief of the household is the guy who is almost guaranteed to be around the Emperor at any given time, and therefore gets handed a lot of jobs because he's there when something gets done. This is a very common historical pattern (see Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal for a similar pattern).
[*] Minister of Justice: Trods on the toes of the Minister of the Household and the Marshall.

[*] Marshall: Trods on the toes of the Admiral and the Minister of Justice.

[*] Admiral: Trods on the toes of the Marshall and the Chancellor.

[*] Minister of Ceremonies: Trods on the toes of the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Sorcery.

[*] Minister of Sorcery: Trods on the toes of the Minister of Ceremonies and also the Minister of Works.

[*] Minister of Agriculture: Trods on the toes of the Minister of Ceremonies and also the Minister of Works.

[*] Minister of Works: Trods on the toes of the Minister of Sorcery and the Minister of Agriculture.[/list]
Ceremonies, Sorcery, Agriculture, and Works are a closed set of concerns, as are Chancellor, Household, Admiral, Justice, and Marshal. So you actually have 2 councils of 4 and 5 members. I don't think that's ideal because there's less space for extended horse-trading: Sorcery can't make a deal with Justice so that Justice will do something that Works wants so that Works will do what Sorcery wants.

Agriculture should probably trod on Chancellor (conflict over internal vs external trade), Works on Marshall (civilian versus military infrastructure) , Ceremonies on Justice (canon vs civil law), Sorcery on Admiral (Admiral controls 'weather' magic, broadly defined). That gives every 3 ministries to trod on, except Household. Not sure of a good fix for that.
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Post by Chamomile »

FrankTrollman wrote:I'm definitely of two minds about this. On the one hand, ancestor veneration is very flavorful and historical heroes that did cool shit that wasn't just "fought a high CR monster" makes the setting more fun to read about, actual L5R really went up its own asshole with its ancestral hero fuckers and seven thunders and all that crap.
I don't think this will be a significant issue. While theoretically possible, it's unlikely that alt-L5R, even if completed and released, will get any wider an audience than After Sundown did. Without a massive boom in popularity, its contributors are going to be almost exclusively Denners, and none of us are particularly prone to this mistake, and certainly not so enamored of it as to fight the rest of the Den for control of the project in order to preserve their twenty-page rant on why Papa Tortoise is the bestest ever.
None of the clans should be "bad guys." Also none of the clans should be invested in bringing down the system. Shit like the Scorpion from L5R was really bad for an RPG, and the implementation wasn't all that great in the card game either. The player characters could plausibly be from any of the clans, so having clans whose official position is "Fuck All This Shit" is not really acceptable. Even the L5R Crab position of "Honor isn't really important, trust in steel!" is deeply corrosive to getting people to actually color in the lines at playing in the setting rather than just burning the setting down.
I'm not familiar enough with the Crab Clan to say exactly how far their "ignore honor, obtain swords" philosophy goes, so I'm not sure if I disagree with this. Certainly I'm on board that none of the clans should have destruction of the empire as their end goal, nor as their preferred means. At worst, some of the clans might have "I'd rather topple the empire than [event]," where the event is itself something sufficiently setting-changing that a campaign that includes it is already one that's lighting the established setting on fire. The idea behind the alt-Scorpion and alt-Mantis Clans I drafted earlier isn't that they totally ignore the system of honor, because if they did, that would make them enemies of everyone who relies on it, which is the entire rest of the empire, but rather people who are gaming the system, relying on a strategy of building up just enough honor that they can lose it on doing dirty deeds without becoming so dishonorable that they become a threat to the system. The alt-Mantis Clan's goal is that they want to steal other people's stuff, but their method requires them to act with at least enough honor that they have plausible deniability that it was regular pirates and not Mantis privateers who raided a ship and stole the Thousand-Folded Tiger Katana. They also have a mercantile sense of honor that is different from regular imperial honor, but does include honoring contracts, which is why it's in their backstory that they're all beneficiaries from a deal made between the first emperor and a bunch of pirates. So long as the current emperor holds up his end of the deal to recognize the Mantis Clan's right to sovereignty within their domain (same as other daimyos), the Mantis Clan will honor their end to support the emperor.

The alt-Scorpions' entire strategy relies on everyone else being honorable so that they can gain an advantage by being willing to engage in dishonorable compacts with criminals and spies, and in order for that to work they need to avoid doing so much damage to the entire system that non-Scorpions start backing out of it. They're not villains trying to destroy the whole system that everyone else must oppose, but anti-heroes gaming the system that makes other people nervous because they could damage the system if they go too far. Nobody actually wants that, but dishonorable clans are willing to risk accidentally tripping over the line in order to reap the benefits of regularly going right up to the line.

I'm not sure if that puts them in the same territory as the Crab Clan or not. I'm guessing not, because someone who's trying to game the system of honor shows up a lot in intrigue as both the antagonist and and the protagonist. Having these kinds of shady anti-hero clans is good for the setting. They are still, however, pirates and criminal masterminds, so coding the Mantis Clan Korean sends the message that all Koreans are pirates.
You can split the councils. So you could have a War Council that has the Admiral, multiple Generals, the Chancellor, the Minister of Sorcery, and the Minister of the Household on it, and a separate State Affairs Council that has the Chancellor, the Minister of Agriculture, the Minister of Works, the Minister of the Household, the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Personnel, and the Minister of Ceremonies on it.
This is a good idea. If we have two councils of seven each and go with the twelve zodiac signs approach, that means there's a total of fourteen positions, which means in the default setup of one clan having one councilor, two of these councilors (almost assuredly including whichever clan the daimyo is from) hold seats on two councils. That gives them a lot of power, because it means that if you want to trade a favor from one council to another, you probably have to go through them.

I'm of two minds about the twelve zodiac signs, though. On the one hand, angelfromanotherpin is absolutely correct that this would give players instant buy-in to whatever clan matches their own sign. On the other hand, this is going to end with either the zodiac signs driving some of the clan themes or some clans having totem animals that are totally detached from their culture and agenda. The first few clans created and assigned animals aren't going to have this problem, but eventually we're going to have like goat or something left over and will have to figure out what to do with it.
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Post by Whipstitch »

I'm on board with giving the 12 earthly branches a go. I considered suggesting it myself but I was a bit scared off by the sheer number of shticks that involves.
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