Alt-L5R Clans

[angelfromanotherpin]

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.

I think you get a great deal of setting mileage out of having clans whose schtick used to be something other than it is currently, so that kind of conflict is just an opportunity.

[DrPraetor]

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.

There are 13 clans, the 13th is Cat, who are ineligible for some stuff being not descended from one of the 12 official champions, but this actually makes them more invested in politics because they're always promoting candidates from other clans for the jobs they can't hold.

[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.

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.

-Username17

Can't comment on the card game bits because I've never played it but I do get the feeling nobody gives a shit about either. The Ide School in 4th ed. has some cool conflict disabling techniques but the Iuchi are just mages riding horses like you said. The gaijin aspect of the school is completely ignored and instead they can raise people's movement by sacrificing a spell slot.

The fluff however describes them completely differently than that and it's what I was referring to when I posted. Imo both have potential to be made into something cool and add to the Unicorn without being just horse riding courtiers and mages.

[OgreBattle]

Going with the 12 Zodiac animals is good for player familiarity.

Could use the Hindu zodiacs (which European one is based off of) for your Southeast/South Asian styled clans.

[Username17]

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.

Well, the totem animals are totally arbitrary anyway. There's nothing nautical about Mantises, and there's no particular reason that Phoenixes should have a core disadvantage of having poor access to mobile soldiers. Even the colors are pretty much darts at a board - unless you can think of some special reason the Horse Clan should be purple.

Clan	Heraldry	Target Ministries	Cultural Inspiration	Signature Viture
Rat	Red/White	Minister of the Household Minister of City Planning Minister of Personnel	Japan Meiji	Flexibility
Ox	Green/White	Minister of Ceremonies Minister of Records Minister of Migration	Tibet	Patience
Tiger	Orange/Black	Minister of Justice Minister of Surveying Marshall	Korea	Commitment
Rabbit	Green/Gold	Minister of Works Minister of Finance Minister of City Planning	Zhuang	Carefulness
Carp	Blue/Gold	Admiral Minister of the Household Minister of Commerce	Japan Edo	Elegance
Serpent	Green/Black	Admiral Minister of Magic Guard Commandant	Vietnam / Cambodia	Modesty
Horse	Blue/Black	Minister Coachman Minister of Surveying Minister of Commerce	Ming Dynasty	Initiative
Goat	White/Brown	Minister of Works Chancellor Minister of Personnel	Japan Muromachi Period	Charity
Monkey	White/Purple	Minister of Ceremonies Minister of Magic Guard Commandant	Zhou Dynasty	Diligence
Rooster	Red/Gold	Minister of Agriculture Minister of Justice Marshall	Tang Dynasty	Courage
Wolf	Gray/Red	Minister Coachman Minister of Finance Minister of Migration	Mongolia	Reliability
Boar	Purple/Brown	Minister of Agriculture Chancellor Minister of Records	Qing Dynasty	Honesty

Obviously you make some modest visual alterations to incorporate totem animal themes into various groups. Like you take the traditional Zhuang dress and make it more Green with Yellow-fringe to match the heraldric color and you alter the traditional hat to be more rabbit ear inspired.


This does not have to be a large change.

Similarly, you take the Tang Dynasty period armor and you specifically make it Red and Yellow with feathers on it to be more Rooster-ish.


If only there was some historical precadent for armor like that.

Anyway, you want to give each of the clans some industries that their people are invested in, but those can be pretty much random. Like, it would be kind of cool and funny if there are Rat Clan cheesemakers and you could go into regional or historical products from the real world to justify some of the associations - but ultimately it's not really important which clan makes ceramics, it's just good worldbuilding for ceramics to be the primary providence of one of the clans.

Then you can take the basic classes of Samurai, Ninja, Scout, Monk, Sorcerer, and Shaman and have each clan have an affinity for three of them. You can have Monkey clan have Samurai, Monks, and Sorcerers as their example characters and their opposite faction the Rat Clan have Ninjas, Scouts, and Shamans. In any case, every faction can have a different list and since there are 12 clans and 20 possible combinations you don't have to feel obligated to use all the possibilities. Like, literally none of the factions need to be Ninjas, Monks, and Scouts if you don't want.

East Asian History is real big and finding content to allude to in order to fill out twelve Clans just isn't that hard.

-Username17

[Dean]

One problem with basing the clans off the 12 zodiac signs is you're going to have a lot of players gravitate to the "cool" ones. Mantis's and Dragons and Lions and even Cranes have much more je ne sais quoi than Goat and Carp and Rooster. I think you're going to see lots of Tiger/Serpent/Wolf and even Rat clan players but very few Goat.

It would totally be possible to have this be an assumed part of the world and build it in though. If Goat and Rabbit are sort of a common folk clan with more farmers and less ninjas and duelists. A more proletariat leaning clan could have a natural in setting explanation why you see less Rabbit Samurai than Tiger Samurai

[Whipstitch]

It would totally be possible to have this be an assumed part of the world and build it in though.

Yeah, I'm a huge believer in designing the npcs first and worrying about the players second. I've said it before and I'll say it again: In many ways the players actually don't matter as much as people think they do when it comes to defining the setting. Players are fundamentally the bull you unleash in the china shop, not the china shop itself. It can still be useful to have the Rabbit Clan around even if those guys are seriously just the Deep State and couldn't fight their way out of wet bag.

[Chamomile]

Going with the Chinese Zodiac means that you're going to see some number of Rabbit Clan characters just on the grounds that some of your players were born in 1987 or 1999. Plus, the fact that only a few of the clan totems have immediate resonance helps narrow down the choices for first time players, which is good because we'd have to find some way of chunking up twelve different clans, and the fact that we have one built in because Tiger, Monkey, Serpent, and Wolf are ten times cooler than Rooster, Goat, Rabbit, and Ox just from their names alone mostly just saves us the trouble of figuring out some way to chunk it up ourselves. Plus, associating some weaker totems with some stronger cultures helps balance out the pre-eminence of one or the other, which the current setup already does for two of the strongest cultures, given our target demographic of not-actually-Asian people. When you tell someone you're making alt-L5R, if they're interested at all, odds are excellent they're interested in making a guy based on either the Tokugawa period (Edo Japan) or the Sengoku period (Muromachi Japan), which are the Carp and Goat, respectively. The Muromachi period was more than just the Sengoku and the Goat Clan Frank's written looks like it's taking more inspiration from the pre-Sengoku era, what with its lack of emphasis on incessant war and all, but the fact stands that if you want to play a dude who looks like this, you want a Goat Clan samurai.

I question the inclusion of Meiji Japan, though. When I think of Meiji Japan, I think of Japanese guys wearing European military/imperial uniforms, aping the general German/Austrian Empire look, or else just wearing plain old late 19th century business suits. The peasants haven't adopted the look, but as an intrigue game we're mainly focused on government councils/imperial courts, which look like this. There's nothing pragmatically implausible about uniforms like that existing when we're still at pike and shot tech levels, but it's still jarring.

[deaddmwalking]

There are 5-animal styles and 12-animal styles, but rather than directly importing them (or the zodiac) I'd focus on picking the ones that work and then maybe adding a few more that are cool.

5 Animal Style (Including Variations)
Tiger, Leopard, Crane, Monkey, Snake, Dragon, Mantis,

12 Animal Style
Dragon, Bear, Tiger, Horse, Monkey, Turtle, Snake, Eagle, Dove, Falcon, Swallow, Rooster

So after looking through those, I'd go with: Tiger, Leopard, Bear, Monkey, Horse, Snake, Tortoise (because I like them better than Turtles), Crane, Eagle, Mantis, and adding Peacock, Rabbit, Scorpion and Ox. Individually, they imply particular traits - nobody is going to be surprised that Tortoise is known as being defensively minded, slow to act, and careful to consider their options. Now, those are good qualities, but they can also be frustrating.

I agree that none of those clans should 'burn the structure down', but they could be known as more or less reliable than others.

It would be totally in keeping with tradition if you assigned some of those as 'greater' and 'lesser' clans. The 'greater clans' can be elevated to Emperor, the 'lesser clans' shouldn't have that option, but should be able to be Counselors. If by tradition or rule the Emperor's clan can't have any of the counselor positions you have a really good way of creating some scheming. Greater clans might try to get the lesser clans to support their candidate for Emperor in exchange for their getting the counselor positions. If you're a greater clan, you do you put your efforts toward the big prize (knowing that only 1 person is going to get it) or focus instead of keeping the counselor's positions.

Even if people don't have a seat at the main table, there can be lesser positions - and if you maintain the general rule that someone from one Clan has to have direct reports from a DIFFERENT clan, you can maintain chains of intrigue. Even if a Tortoise has the Admiralty, you could have the Southern Fleet, Northern Fleet, and Home Fleet, all commanded by other clans.

The main reason I included the clan names I did was to try to anticipate what type of clan different types of people would want. There are going to be people that like the imagery of a scorpion or a snake, and there are going to be people that want something cute and sweet like a bunny.

[Dean]

I do really like the idea of Lesser Clans. I think that's a great automatic hook for the high level intrigue game. "The Goat clan has long since earned its right to be raised to your equal" is just cool shit. It also gives a cool multi-generational struggle where the Goat want to make one of their own Emperor but first they have to scheme to leverage themselves into being eligible at all.

[Chamomile]

There can only be one Imperial Court, and it shouldn't be the default setting of the game. We can barely write any setting material at all without defining the current reigning emperor, and probably also several of his councilors. While we do want to offer GMs a default court, we do not want that default court to be inherently more powerful and more important than anything they could create in the blank spaces left in the setting. Players should not be inherently resistant to GMs running a homebrew daimyo and his homebrew court, and a number of them will be if the default is playing for control of the court of the emperor.

[DrPraetor]

Clan	Heraldry	Target Ministries	Cultural Inspiration	Signature Viture
Rat	Red/White	Minister of the Household Minister of City Planning Minister of Personnel	Japan Meiji	Flexibility
Ox	Green/White	Minister of Ceremonies Minister of Records Minister of Migration	Tibet	Patience
Tiger	Orange/Black	Minister of Justice Minister of Surveying Marshall	Korea	Commitment
Rabbit	Green/Gold	Minister of Works Minister of Finance Minister of City Planning	Zhuang	Carefulness
Carp	Blue/Gold	Admiral Minister of the Household Minister of Commerce	Japan Edo	Elegance
Serpent	Green/Black	Admiral Minister of Magic Guard Commandant	Vietnam / Cambodia	Modesty
Horse	Blue/Black	Minister Coachman Minister of Surveying Minister of Commerce	Ming Dynasty	Initiative
Goat	White/Brown	Minister of Works Chancellor Minister of Personnel	Japan Muromachi Period	Charity
Monkey	White/Purple	Minister of Ceremonies Minister of Magic Guard Commandant	Zhou Dynasty	Diligence
Rooster	Red/Gold	Minister of Agriculture Minister of Justice Marshall	Tang Dynasty	Courage
Wolf	Gray/Red	Minister Coachman Minister of Finance Minister of Migration	Mongolia	Reliability
Boar	Purple/Brown	Minister of Agriculture Chancellor Minister of Records	Qing Dynasty	Honesty

You need to manufacture some consent.

That is, players are going to want, indeed insist, on playing ronin, rebels, outlaws and outcaste - so you need some licensed criminals in order to channel those impulses in an acceptable way.

The principle is, you are allowed to be a marginalized clan, but these clans are still participants in the game of houses so that such characters don't disrupt the normal structure of play. This is a needed outlet because otherwise players will start insisting on playing the members of whatever antagonist societies show up to not play nice with the social order.

Clan	Heraldry	Target Ministries	Cultural Inspiration	Signature Virture
Scorpion	Red/Blue	Privateer	Philippines	Opportunism
Crane	Pink/Silver	Spymaster	Southern Song	Discretion
Tortoise	Green/Red	Privateer	Hmong	Endurance
Deer	Purple/Gold	Spymaster	Ainu	Temperance

The scorpion clan has villainous Kung Fu - which is a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silat
They're pirates. The tortoise clan are smugglers. Neither of these clans wants to overthrow the local lord - they just want the authorities to turn a blind eye.

The crane clan is known for their courtesans. The deer clan have secret princes, and are also known to be good-looking (and to be cursed by boar-kami which gives them super-strength.) Again, it's all about jockeying for position as head assassin and not about sacrificing the peasantry to Bel-Shamharoth.

[Username17]

I do really like the idea of Lesser Clans. I think that's a great automatic hook for the high level intrigue game. "The Goat clan has long since earned its right to be raised to your equal" is just cool shit. It also gives a cool multi-generational struggle where the Goat want to make one of their own Emperor but first they have to scheme to leverage themselves into being eligible at all.

Minor clans are probably a bad idea. Basically by adding a Cricket Clan or something, you've just created a player character option that has a lower ceiling because they have a harder time excusing getting high tier appointments and your clan affiliation's free contacts top out with lower ranked officials. It's basically like voluntarily taking on Level Limits from AD&D.

Clans have different families in them. You can be a Tiger Clan character from an important family or from a minor family. But either way, your style ain't nothin to fuck to fuck wit, and the fact that you're still Tiger Clan either way, you can get clan affiliation bonuses dealing with the Minister of Justice once you've gotten enough personal fame that you can talk to the Minister pf Justice at all.

One thing that the initial presentation of L5R did right (although it never really went anywhere interesting) was that there are multiple houses and some of them have cadet branches and shit. There's the Iuchi, but there's also a few people who are Horiuchis instead. Some rando cadet branch that's probably descended from some Iuchi duke making a bunch of bastards with prostitutes or something. Similarly, the Doji have the Daidoji and so on and such like. And you obviously want to do something like that. So like the most powerful house in Tiger is Yi. And there are some families that are offshoots and relations that are called like Taiyuan-Yi or Jang-Yi, and they have some reflected glory and shit, but members of the cadet branches aren't going to be appointed Marshall without doing something personally awesome because they aren't actual members of the Yi house.

-Username17

[Grek]

As something of a more reductionist approach, how about the following five clan model?

The Bird Clan holdings are the hidden monasteries and luxurious palaces erected in the snowy mountains of the Empire. The Bird clan prefers the life of the mind and the cultivation of the spirit to the worldly methods of the other clans. Bird Clan samurai favour the bow over the sword and prefer the fortress to the open battlefield. Monks are highly respected as learned scholars in Bird lands and even their peasants are considered to be scandalously literate compared to the rest of the Empire. Economically, the Bird is the chief producer of mineral wealth and takes pride in their masterful craftsmanship. Even everyday goods such as tableware and floor mats are crafted with care and expertise in Bird lands. The Bird Clan aspires to control the offices of Master of Ceremonies, Imperial Cartographer, Artist in Residence and Keeper of Records. Individual families within the Bird Clan include the Rooster, the Hawk and the Peacock.

The Snake Clan was originally a confederation of nomadic tribes within the Empire and only settled into city-dwelling life at the behest of a prior Emperor. Even today, the armed caravansaries of the Snake Clan are famous throughout the Empire for their wealth and security. Winding through the highways and riverways of the Imperial heartland, the Snake Clan provides the economic backbone that connects the far flung reaches of the Empire to one another. While the Snake Clan is fiercely loyal to the Emperor, they are not always the most dutiful servants. The Snake is widely (but not unfairly) suspected of sponsoring smugglers and gambling dens, but never of hiring bandits or assassins - the Snake conception of honour permits vice, not murder. Likewise, while the Snake Clan's theology may not always be precisely imperially sanctioned, the skill of their shamans and the devotion of their people is rarely in question. The Snake Clan aspires to control the offices of Supreme Justice, Finance Minister, Grand Architect and Keeper of Records. Individual families within the Snake Clan include the Python, the Krait and the Cobra.

The Dog Clan was the first to join the Empire and does not let anyone forget their history. Each member of the Dog Clan is assigned a ancestral guardian at birth according to complex astrological calendars relating the hour of that ancestor's death to the hour of the new child's birth. This ancestor is intended to serve as a role model, a moral guide and an intercessor before of the Divine on behalf of the young Dog. To the Dog Clan, all things have their appointed hour: sowing and reaping, sleeping and waking, times for work and times for play. To have a disordered life is to go against the natural order, and to go against the natural order is to invite disaster. Dog lands are primarily rural and focused in agricultural pursuits such as the cultivation of orchards and the tending of livestock. Most cloth in the Empire is produced by the Dog Clan, as is much of the meat. The Dog Clan aspires to control the offices of Imperial Castellan, Grand Architect, Master of Ceremonies and Minister of Agriculture. Individual families within the Dog Clan include the Wolf, the Fox and the Hound.

The Fish Clan controls the majority of the Empire's coastlines and is the leading producer of both tea and rice in the Empire. Nearly two thirds of the food produced in the Empire passes through the hands of the Fish Clan at one point or another - a fact which they leverage whenever possible to gain trade concessions from those further inland. Militarily, the Fish Clan provides the majority of the Empire's naval strength and has the fewest land forces out of all of the Clans, preferring economic warfare and the use of ninja operatives to open military conflicts on the mainland. The exception to this rule is the Dragon Elite Guard, a Fish Clan military society specifically trained as bodyguards for the protection of diplomats and Fish dignitaries. The Fish Clan aspires to control the offices of Finance Minister, Imperial Cartographer, Guard Commandant and Minister of Agriculture. Individual families within the Fish Clan include the Carp, the Shark and the Oyster.

The Cat Clan holds the territories along the jungle borders of the Empire and has the most contact with the outside world as a direct result. Most foreign trade passes through Cat Clan territories and the bulk of construction-grade wood is felled in Cat Clan forests. Despite their official charge being to defend the Empire against barbarian invasion, the samurai of the Cat have a long and storied history of raiding barbarian lands and even holding territories outside the Empire as personal fiefs. Intermarriage with foreign nobility is common and accepted in Cat lands, particularly within the lands of the Ocelot family, which was originally founded by the adoption of newly civilized natives into the Cat Clan. In addition to its military traditions, the Cat Clan prides itself on the talent of its performers - actors, singers, musicians and dancers. The Cat Clan aspires to control the offices of Imperial Castellan, Supreme Justice, Artist in Residence, and Guard Commandant. Individual families within the Cat Clan include the Lion, the Tiger and the Ocelot.

[Username17]

As something of a more reductionist approach

Well as you see with the reductionist approach, you end up with one of two things:

• A kitchen sink Asia setting that isn't very kitchen sinkish. People want to play Yakuza and swordsmen from Ruroni Kenshin and if you don't have a Meiji era clan, they can't do that.
  
  or
• A kitchen sink Asia setting that is very kitchen sinkish, but none of the clans are particularly meaningful or coherent. I mean, if your Meiji-era Yakuza dens are also your Mongolian horse archers, you don't have much of a look and feel going for your clan. And people can't effectively read up about regions, peoples, or eras in order to fill in the blanks when it comes to cultural concepts not explicitly mentioned in the game materials.

You could play a narrower setting that actually was reductionist. You could say "This isn't Asia kitchen sink, this is Tokugawa era Japan with some fantasy elements." And that would be fine, if that's what you wanted to do. Such a thing could easily be chopped down into five squabbling clans or even two squabbling clans. But I don't honestly think that is what Westerners usually want to do with East Asian fantasy. They generally want to add elements from a lot of different periods and cultures because they don't have access to enough of the primary sources to make the setting "feel full" taking only from a specific people in a specific time and place. I know I can't read Vietnamese, or Korean, or Chinese. It's quite difficult for me to get much depth from Vietnamese fantasy stories, and even harder for me to establish their regional or period bona fides.

I'd focus on picking the ones that work and then maybe adding a few more that are cool.

Certainly animal totems aren't all equally cool. Bears are cooler than Goats, Ravens are cooler than Chickens, and so on. But the fact is that long lists are long. A cool animal that you can't remember adds nothing to the setting, while a blah animal that you can remember adds literally infinitely more. The fact that people are familiar with the Zodiac and see it on drink menus at Chinese restaurants and shit means that Goat actually is better than Bear and Rooster is better than Raven at being in a familiar list. And when the list is long, familiarity of the list entire is more important than the individual coolness of the elements.

Five animal style and Twelve animal style kung fu are not familiar lists because they aren't the same lists of animals in different schools of kung fu. Wikipedia lists 33 fucking animals that are used in different versions of Five Animal Style Kung Fu. And that's white people Wikipedia. I don't know what actual Chinese sources would say about the total number different animal styles used in different Kung Fu schools, but I honestly would not be surprised by a three digit number.

That is, players are going to want, indeed insist, on playing ronin, rebels, outlaws and outcaste - so you need some licensed criminals in order to channel those impulses in an acceptable way.

There are a couple of ways to do that. The most obvious way would be to have a substantial number of Clans have criminal enterprises on the side and then have an extra council that the local Lord doesn't sit on that's like the crime bosses of the region. So you have a Snake Clan smuggler and a Rat Clan gambling house operator and a Boar Clan opium den operator and so on and so forth. And they could be portrayed anywhere from the Legion of Doom to under appreciated captains of industry.

Alternately, there could be one or more clans that are outside the Imperial Patronage system that still wield political power. The obvious, as you've mentioned, is Cat. Because Cat is the 13th Zodiac sign that doesn't get a place in the order. You have the 12 clans who have members who sit on ducal rank ministerial chairs, and then you have one or more clans that don't do that but still have ninja temples and get to be informally consulted about things.

In any case, a lot of people want to be "Clanless" but that's actually not as straightforward as it is in Vampire. With different clans acting as pointers to quite a lot of cultural information, it's harder to say what a "default" character would look like. In Vampire the character who is neither a Ventrue nor a Malkavian has their culture default to "American" which is something players can easily understand. But in Not-L5R, a character who is neither Mongolian nor Japanese defaults to... what? You could establish some sort of default culture I suppose, but that's just elevating one clan above all the others. If you default to Shogunate Japan for clanless culture, you're really just saying "Clanless characters are basically Carp Clan characters who don't wear appropriately colored kimono."

At that point it's actually better to tell players who want to be clanless Ronin that they still have to pick a base clan, but for whatever simple of melodramatic reason they aren't part of the acknowledged family structures, but they still have clan-appropriate abilities, food choices, and clothing (other than heraldric coloration, obviously). So you'd still pick Wolf Clan and you'd still get horse riding benefits and you'd still eat Mongolian barbeque and so on and so forth, you just wouldn't wear a red scarf and you wouldn't have Wolf Clan cousins you could call on.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

Even in western fantasy it's not all that typical to stick to only to a small handful of closely related cultures. If your setting is loosely based off of Arthurian England, there are going to be people who want to play French cavaliers, Italian aristocrats, Norse vikings, Arab sorcerers, and Mongolian raiders. In cyberpunk games taking place in the near future of [your city], someone's gonna wanna be Japanese or European or whatever. You have to be pretty iron-fisted as a GM to get people to respect the boundaries of any non-kitchen sink setting, regardless of details. If you don't make room for this stuff, people will cram them in anyway, and with a lot less forethought than if someone who was actually good at design did so.

[Omegonthesane]

Data point: Last Arthurian-ish game I played, there was an Aztec priest in the party.

[OgreBattle]

Khmer, Thai culture stands out more than Vietnamese in that lineup with a bunch of Chinese dynasty inspired clans.

So what does it mean to be in a clan and why does they clan structure exist

[Username17]

There can only be one Imperial Court, and it shouldn't be the default setting of the game.

Agreed. The biggest issue of course is that you want there to be various conflicts. And you also want conflicts that can be resolved without destroying the setting. This means that you need wars that are absolutely not like "The Empire versus The Shadow" where basically the credits roll whichever way it goes. You want wars to end and the setting to be largely recognizably after the fact. This in turn implies a Crusader Kings like situation where:

• Administrative districts are led by nobles that go to war with each other from time to time.
  
  and
• The Imperial Council is roughly speaking replicated in a fractal fashion for Imperial subunits.

So Provinces have their own Daimyos who have their own councils that have their own intrigues and their own armies led by their own Marshalls and Guard Commandants. And those provincial Daimyos go to war with each other sometimes to push borders around or avenge various grievances. And within Provinces there are also Counties, and those counties have their own noble rulers (perhaps "Bo" as in China?) and those nobles have their own councils and their own military levies and they can go to war with bandits or monsters but also with each other over various stuff.

So what does it mean to be in a clan and why does they clan structure exist?

This is a thing which L5R did better with its original presentation than it did later on. Essentially, a Clan is a group of culturally affiliated dynasties. People from those various dynasties will hold various ranks as nobles, soldiers, or bureaucrats in various courts of various counties, provinces, or the empire as a whole. If you're an Ox Clan guy, you might come across someone else from the Ox Clan being a bureaucrat or a cheese merchant or the head of the regional government. But even though you've never met before, you know for certain that if you compared enough family tree you'd find out that you were cousins somehow and also that if you rattled off all the people you met at parties you'd be able to six degrees from Kevin Bacon yourselves to each other. And because of that, you can skip that part and just start treating each other as distant relations / friends of friends right away.

It's entirely possible for there to be conflicts between members of the same clan, and it's possible for people in the same clan to work directly with or for people from different clans. But if you want to go in cold and chat up some Wolf Clan minister, it is helpful to have a Wolf Clan party member, because they start that conversation with the "same clan bonus" on social tests.

Further, from a storytelling standpoint, the clans give a bit of cultural touchstone. We know that if a Wolf Clan bushi goes and seeks mystical advice from the elders, he's going to get it from this guy:



And if an Ox Clan bushi goes and seeks mystical advice from the elders, he's going to get it from this guy:



-Username17

[OgreBattle]

If you want a Ming China style clan check out this blog on the Ming military:
http://greatmingmilitary.blogspot.com/2 ... ng-p2.html

War wagons were a big part of how they fought, makes for a unique fighting style I don't see often in fantasy RPG's

[Username17]

If you want a Ming China style clan check out this blog on the Ming military:
http://greatmingmilitary.blogspot.com/2 ... ng-p2.html

War wagons were a big part of how they fought, makes for a unique fighting style I don't see often in fantasy RPG's

Wagon forts have been used repeatedly at multiple tech levels. The Hussites used them against the Catholics, the Americans used them against the Sioux, and so on. They don't typically fit into RPGs very well, because of the scales involved. A wagon fort requires many wagons before it's a proper impediment to enemy cavalry and archers. And every wagon has its own horses and driver and shit. It's quite a large operation before a war wagon tactic makes much if any sense, and most RPGs start to strain in battles with more than twenty dudes on a side.

Now one thing is that fantasy in general lends itself to battles with thousands of dudes on a side, so the fact that most RPGs can't deliver that is a big problem. The fact that War Wagons of the Dwarves aren't a thing that has a place in D&D is largely a failure on the part of D&D to have a decent mass combat system. And as a rule, East Asian fantasy is even more dedicated to having the protagonists interact with battles that have a cast of thousands. Not-L5R would be a design failure if it couldn't produce large scale battles from time to time.

So War Wagons and other battlefield fortifications and war engines absolutely need a place in Not-L5R. Also boats.

-Username17

[Hicks]

So as a legit concern of war wagons and boats, how does one even make them relevant in the context of personal badasses? The entire point of a boat or war wagon or siege engine is that machines allow us in the real world to combine our efforts into something more badasses than our individual efforts alone, while in basically every leveled role playing game machines are pointless because battles are won or lost not leveraging a people's industrial might into a more effective weapon of war but by being higher level and therefore more individually capable than the efforts of a population funneled through industry to build war wagons, boats, and siege weapons.

And let me be perfectly clear: I love me some boats and war wagons and siege weapons. They are awesome a priori.... but unless there is some cap to magical/personal badassesery they just fade to irrelevance.

[Chamomile]

So as a legit concern of war wagons and boats, how does one even make them relevant in the context of personal badasses? The entire point of a boat or war wagon or siege engine is that machines allow us in the real world to combine our efforts into something more badasses than our individual efforts alone, while in basically every leveled role playing game machines are pointless because battles are won or lost not leveraging a people's industrial might into a more effective weapon of war but by being higher level and therefore more individually capable than the efforts of a population funneled through industry to build war wagons, boats, and siege weapons.

The premise of an intrigue game is that all the guys in fancy hats who must be persuaded to vote this way or that way command power that the party cannot hope to overcome directly. This means either the council is comprised entirely of big penis NPCs who need the party solely as lackeys or else that the 3.X default scenario of governments being run by super-beings who make armies obsolete must be abandoned. Even before we get to the issue of war wagons, the latter is obviously superior. In a game where intrigue is meant to be even an option, let along the selling point, it must be true that a party of 3-6 people cannot defeat the daimyo's army by themselves.

[Username17]

So as a legit concern of war wagons and boats, how does one even make them relevant in the context of personal badasses? The entire point of a boat or war wagon or siege engine is that machines allow us in the real world to combine our efforts into something more badasses than our individual efforts alone, while in basically every leveled role playing game machines are pointless because battles are won or lost not leveraging a people's industrial might into a more effective weapon of war but by being higher level and therefore more individually capable than the efforts of a population funneled through industry to build war wagons, boats, and siege weapons.

And let me be perfectly clear: I love me some boats and war wagons and siege weapons. They are awesome a priori.... but unless there is some cap to magical/personal badassesery they just fade to irrelevance.

I regard support for the "Great Bureaucrat" and "Great General" archetype to be non-negotiable for yellow-face fantasy. I regard support for those archetypes to be highly desirable in other forms of fantasy, but if we're going to talk Oriental Adventures, such characters are mandatory.

This means that your mass battles subsystem needs to have space for logistics and command contributions and while it's doing that it might as well have fortification and war machine contributions as well. Now don't get me wrong, such a thing would be really nice to have for a game about Arthurian heroes or Greek heroes or Aztec heroes or Sumerian heroes or whatever. But specifically with Chinese/Japanese heroes it's fucking mandatory, because the great heroes people are being inspired to play as include people like Bao Zheng the magistrate famous for his honesty or Ban Chao the general famous for his negotiations. It's simply fundamentally unacceptable to write up an Oriental Adventures game where a character can't contribute to the big battles by filling out imperial requisition forms beautifully.

And yeah, battles inspired by Chinese and Japanese stories will have tens or hundreds of thousands of soldiers on a side. Characters can't contribute meaningfully in those by being super tough. The only things they can do by running out and stabbing fools are inspiring troops with acts of bravery and assassinating enemy commanders in kung fu duels Dynasty Warriors style.

-Username17

[Longes]

And yeah, battles inspired by Chinese and Japanese stories will have tens or hundreds of thousands of soldiers on a side. Characters can't contribute meaningfully in those by being super tough. The only things they can do by running out and stabbing fools are inspiring troops with acts of bravery and assassinating enemy commanders in kung fu duels Dynasty Warriors style.

Unless it's Dynasty Warriors?