L5R General: Yuruginai Edition

>>44691371

Just one, to let you time travel and tell Naseru to shut the fuck up and sit his ass down on his throne.

>>44691403
Good point.

>>44691371
Is that a sword whose sheath is a tetsubo?

>>44692141
It's meant to look like it, yes.
Yuruginai is the Celestial Sword of the Crab Clan.

>>44692141
Crab are nothing if not practical.

>>44692141
More like an ararebo (Which is to say, yes, except it's shorter than a tetsubo).

>>44692201
Actually it was made by Xing Guo, for Tsi family smith and Fortune of Steel.
But he's literally the God of smithing, so I'm guessing that he knows what they'd want best.

link to the home-brew: https://1d4chan.org/wiki//tg/_Custom_L5R_Minor_Clans#Ageha_Bushi

>>44691371
>How many nemarunai does it does take to fix the story team's bullshit?
Trick question. The fewer you use, the further you'll go.

>>44692228
Ararebo is one of those things that show Rokugan's mastrubatory adherence to a single design for all weapons to be somewhat absurd.
Like, everyone in here could tell me what a katana is, but how many know what a kodachi or a saiken is, despite being treated with equal reverence by swordsmiths and bring just as difficult to make?

Daily reminder that the Spider Clan won L5R.

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>>44691371
So I'm working on my own version of the setting based on something I noticed concerning the Yobanjin (who are clearly Chinese based on name and language scheme) and the Kami (who are the only reason the Katana is important); making Rokugan a bit more like mainland China.

The Great Clans are regional powers, alliances of clans under a banner that rules over the tributary states, all of which belonging to the Emperor.

The Great Clans and the Imperial Houses are still founded by the kami; but it is a bit more of a cultural conquest type situation. The Kami brought about their own language, weapons, fashion and ideas which are "better" than those of the yobanjin who were the original Rokugani.

The yobanjin would in turn then be everyone who didn't swear immediate allegiance to the Kami. Some left in the north (being the Ainu of this setting), but most just didn't seize the moment and became the peasant class of the land.

The yobanjin mainland cultural groups would still influence the cultural dress and diet of their region, and they in turn would be more greatly influenced by the Great Clans and the more metropolitan aspects of Rokugani culture.

But the crude language of the yobanjin would be the dialect of most peasants, with proper Rokugani being for the courts and the samurai.

I kind of just want more Asiatic influences beyond Japan, and I think as a launching point this isn't the worst. I kind of want the combat and character choices to feel more wuxia in tone, and given the disappointingly tiny size of Rokugan according to the Atlas; I sort of thought bigger might be better.

>>44692335
Speaking of that, I think the best way to fix the Tako rank 5 is to make it so it only works with commissioned art, not gifts or normal sales. When someone comes to you looking for something very specific and you make it just for them, that gives you the ability to influence them.

>>44692367
They actually do have a lot of weapon variants, but 4e dropped most of them for some reason. There's still art of Hiruma scouts running around dual-wielding ararebo.

>>44692403

True, but what if you want to bribe people? Or do you think Rank 4 covers that enough?

>>44692391
That's already mostly the case. The Yobanjin literally call themselves the unbowed people. They're the tribes that ran away from the Kami instead of bowing to them. They avoided all of the benefits and all of the problems that came with the Kami.

>>44692391
There's no reason you can't simply increase the size of rokugan for your campaign. It's already easily geographically diverse enough to be a much larger region.

>>44692391
According to Imperial Archives this is almost all already true, and even the map is probably closer then you might think; the Rokugani think the Yobanjin are all crazy mountain people, but as it turns out beyond the mountains there's plains and valleys.
They don't have many cities (just five) but apparently they're VERY well-developed, larger then most cities Rokugan has.

They also have an honor system called "rujia" which anyone can uphold and isn't for just a single warrior class, obviously inspired by Wuxia.

>>44692462
Rank 4 is fine for that. You could also try to manipulate someone into commissioning something from you.

>>44692391
Also, L5R is shit for Wuxia combat.
It's too lethal, not flashy enough, and if you try to do some insane stunt it PENALIZES you, not rewards you.
There's Legend of the Wulin (my personal favorite for the genre) or Qin: Warring States (again, a bit too lethal for my tastes for the Wuxia genre) for it.

>>44692430
Kodachi were apparently pretty popular weapons in Japan too, especially later on. Saiken somewhat less so because they were much harder to make.

>Come back to /tg/ L5R thread
>Tako Clan is actually a thing
>Oh god you maniacs you made a clan of hentai artists
>Read
>Actually good fluff

Haha, shit, I want to play one of these now.

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>>44692820
I suggested most of the mechanics!

I am still looking for opinions and suggestions.

Master of the Calm Heart
The famous Dueling Grounds of Dark Edge Village are not without swordmasters. Though there is yet no formal school of advanced teaching, like the Crane’s Kenshinzen, enough duelists have survived Court and Tourney to develop their own techniques, improving upon the Calm Heart’s teachings: to resolve disputes without needlessly taking life. Though the stances and strikes of the Masters of the Calm Heart may differ, they each have mastered the Serene Blade.
Technique Rank: 5
Replaces: Any Unicorn Bushi 5
Requirements: Reflexes 5, Iaijutsu 5, Kenjutsu 5, Must be trained as a Calm Heart Duelist.
Technique: The Sword of Serenity
A master of the Calm Heart strikes without killing intent. When you are wielding a katana or a wakizashi, you gain two free raises on all Kenjutsu and Iaijutsu Skill Rolls. These free raises must be used for declaring maneuvers and may not be used for the Feint or Increased Damage maneuvers. Whenever you deal damage with a melee attack, you may discard the highest showing die to add its total to your ATN until your next attack.

>>44692944

Looks fine, I guess. Can't see people really wanting to go after this instead of their Rank 5 stuff since its got a narrow application.

Honestly sounds more like the start of a Unicorn magistrate school than anything.

>>44693021
I did put two more ranks together, actually, and was debating making it an advanced school.

Rank 2: The Willow Bends, The Branch Whips
A master of the Calm Heart can surprise her opponents with darting speed, leaving them fumbling. A number of times per skirmish equal to your School Rank, when an opponent declares a melee attack against you, if you have not taken your Turn this Round, you may spend a Void Point to take a Simple Action to make an attack against that opponent. This attack resolves before your opponent’s attack. If your attack hits, it deals no damage and the target must roll his Earth Ring against a TN of 20 + half the amount by which your attack exceeded his ATN or be Dazed. If you use this Technique, you may only perform one Simple Action during your Turn this Round. (You may take Free Actions as normal.) You may use this Technique while in the Defense Stance. You may not use this Technique while in the Center or Full Attack Stances.
Rank 3: Heart of No Conflict
The greatest blademasters of the Calm Heart style act without inner conflict, knowing their strikes are sure. A maximum number of times each skirmish equal to your School Rank, whenever you discard a damage die, you gain a temporary Void Point. These temporary Void Points expire at the end of the skirmish. In addition, whenever you kill an opponent, you may spend a Void Point to restore him to life with 1 wound remaining.

>>44693132
I'm not sure the whole bringing back people from the dead would fly to well. How about whenever a damage roll would kill the opponent you may spend x amount of void points to remove xk0 dice from a damage reroll?

>>44693225
It's literally 'you reduce them to 1 wound instead of killing them'.

>>44693132

Advanced school would probably work better. It would let people keep their rank 5 stuff. Or, hey, just get a few more ranks and make it a whole new school - not killing people is a pretty big departure from normal samurai thought processes, even for the Unicorn.

>>44693021
Though I do like the idea of making it more magistrate-y. I'm making the school for a potential high IR game, and the DM has okayed me using Emerald Magistrate as my rank 4. (I won't take school ranks that only work on horseback, fuck that noise. When do you ever actually get to ride your horse?)

>>44693411
See Calm Heart Duelist in Strongholds of the Empire. This is just building off that.

Man, the Unicorn's ancestral sword look lame as fuck.

But then, I think Martin the Warrior (Redwall) has the coolest looking magic sword of all time, and that shit looks like literally any other mundane sword, save for the gem in the pommel.

>>44693656
Man, redwall was the shit.

>>44693656
Fuck you, Enginoshi is awesome.
>>44693709
Yeah, it really was.
If you like it, I'd recommend the comic series Mouse Guard; it's basically Redwall but way more hardcore.

>>44693702
Lion Clan don't fuck around.

>>44693612
The Dragon swords look cool. It's a pity they suck in play.

>>44693815
That's not the Sacred Weapon advantage; it's Suryn, the Celestial Sword of the Dragon Clan.
You don't get to have it.

>>44693815
I think these are the new champion swords, not the generic sacred weapons.

>>44693758
That sword's scabbard is pretentious as fuck.

>>44693702
This is what a functioning sword looks like.

>>44693815
The blade above it is actually the same as the blade below; the smith forges JUST the blade of the weapon (if you look they have no tsuba or grip), and the rest is added later.

>>44693861
I wasn't talking about that one, dumbass. It reminded me how wonky the advantage is (compare and contrast a Lion honor blade, for example).

>>44693863
Yup.
>>44693861
>That sword's scabbard is pretentious as fuck.
I won't argue that, it's the blade itself that's pretty sick if you recognize the visual metaphors.

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This one always gets me.
Fucking Scorpion man.

>>44693924
It also costs half as much to obtain as the Lion blade, so...

>>44693924
I rework the advantage in my house rules because YEAH, you're spot-on.

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I like the art, even if I hate the Clan.

>>44693977

Are the wrong blades traps?

>>44691371
>>44693514
>>44693583
>>44693612
>>44693702
>>44693818
>>44693953
>>44693977
>>44694046
These are pretty sick do they have names?

>>44694051
That's the joke; the Celestial Sword of the Scorpion can be hidden in plain sight and isn't treated as anything special.

All the others around it are lies.

>>44694051
Yeah. The real one is visible to the clan champion, while the rest will kill whomever picks them up.

>>44694074
Yup.
>>44691371
Yuruginai.
>>44693514
Enginoshi
>>44693583
Megumi
>>44693612
Suryn
>>44693702
Shinrai
>>44693818
Nobori Raiu
>>44693953
Keitaku
>>44693977
Churetsu
>>44694046
Akkuai-uo (formerly Kunshu)

>>44694126
I like to imagine that the others aren't magic, but the wrong ones release an increasingly elaborate series of insane Loony Tunes traps to kill people who pick the wrong one.
Like the Bayushi make a game of "who can design the best trap for Churetsu's storage room".

>>44693932
>I won't argue that, it's the blade itself that's pretty sick if you recognize the visual metaphors.

How do any of them have metaphors?

>>44694400
They're there if you look for them.
Look at Yuruginai for example; the biggest one is the Jade inlays on it and that it's saya is a club. But actually the shape of the blade itself is different; it's clearly thicker and heavier then the other blades, a blunt chopping instrument or durability.
Enginoshi's are also there; the weapon's not even a katana, but it has a hamon (ripple pattern) on it, which are only found in Japanese blades, indicating the mixture of foreign and Rokuganu cultures. The hamon pattern also looks like a Unicorn's horn.
Shinrai, is plain, unadorned, functional-looking, and practical...even a bit boring. It's tsuba is very wide though; smaller tsuba like most people associate with the katana were mostly popular during PEACEtime, while wider ones that caught swords better were better for war. Shinrai is very much a weapon of war.

>>44694502
Why do katana even have that ripple thing anyway?

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>>44694704
Because they're made out of layered steel, and the ripple is basically the seam where the different types were fused together.

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>>44694704
There's a couple of reasons; partially it's an aesthetic thing (they coat the edge of the blade in wet clay to get that pattern during the forging), but it also probably had a practical purpose.
The cutting edge of a nihonto was of a different hardness of steel then the rest of it, and where the cutting edge's steel began and ended depended entirely on the individual creator of the sword and not some standard design they all followed. When sharpening it you'd need to know what parts to sharpen and what to avoid to not compromise the structural integrity of the sword in some cases, so it's a "sharpen only here" marking.

But I think it's mostly an aesthetics thing.
Samurai history is full of them struggling for the exact balance between "looks cool" and "is functional".

>>44694761
>>44694816
Haganemind!

Thinking about maybe getting a 3rd /tg/ custom minor clan down - with 3, I might be able to test them as a group in the future.

I was wondering, we talked about a Bear Clan before - did people like them better as Innawoods Hida, or as a buffer north of the Phoenix that lets the Isawa get their grubby wizard hands on Yobanjin lore, while being presented as "dudes to protect us from the smelly guys over this mountain that invaded us this one time"

>>44693132
Should this R2 inflict Stunned or Dazed? Should I explicitly state that one can call raises for maneuvers with the interrupt attack?

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How many other people have tried this out?

>>44695263
Haven't tried it, but iirc I was on the forums when it was being talked about. Some of it works for me, some doesn't.

>>44695367
Fair enough. I'm using it with my current game, but combat is kinda rare when I am DM, so it hasn't gotten too much playtesting from me.

>>44695263
I've changed some of the 4e weapons too, but not the skills themselves.
Too much extra work and not enough free time in my life to get around to it.

>>44695147
There was talk of an Eel clan.

>>44696507

Oh, yeah. Other people seemed to have a better grasp on that than me.

So what, they're a river based clan and they stab people with spears, or use the mancatcher spears to catch crooks?

>>44696620
It has yet to be determined

>>44697077

Oh. Well. The river part sounds good, considering that Rokugani rivers are used for smuggling, and Unagi are freshwater eels. So... anyone have any fluff ideas? I got none.

>>44694704
>>44694816
Fun fact: During WWII the Shin-gunto mass-produced mock-katanas basically had their edge ground into them, and the wavy-ripple-thing was just acid staining.

Shin-gunto are pretty low-quality blades compared to real katana, to the point where while Japanese families are allowed to register and keep a katana (cultural/familial significance and all that), shin-gunto do not have this same legal protection and are always confiscated and usually destroyed.

>>44697447

I heard the WWII katanas were pretty shit and would snap if they were used with too much force so I don't imagine destroying them was hard.

>>44697447
It's not surprising; shingunto are basically mass-production knockoffs of what is a legitimate art form (and a rare one at that these days) used to build nationalistic morale for a government that is fundamentally deeply embarrassing to modern Japan.

It's like if Nazi Germany replicated all of DaVinci's artwork and replaced various elements supporting their ideals; it's kinda inherently offensive on some level.

>>44697517
See the >>44694816 Maru-pattern sword and how it's labeled "poorest quality" on here?
It was a tier or two below that.
I heard that sometimes it wasn't even weapons quality steel, just a machines piece of metal.

>>44697364
I got something in the works.

>>44697880

Oho? Well, I made some basic notes, you can steal these if you like


Unagi BUSHI SCHOOL
Benefit: +1 Strength
Skills: Athletics, Defense, Investigation, Jiujutsu, Sailing, Spears, any one
Skill
Honor: 4.5
Outfit: Light Armor, Sturdy Clothing, Daisho, Any 1 Weapon, Traveling Pack, 6 koku


Unagi –

Eel Bites - The Eel clan specializes in the use of spears and staves, with a quick, jabbing style originally designed to thwart boarding attempts and show off pirates. The Sasumata, Sodegarami and Bo Weapons may be used with the Spear Skill instead of their normal respective skills. Note when doing so, they may not benefit from their normal rank bonuses, but can benefit from any Spear Rank bonuses – you must pick at the start of each turn how you will uses these weapons. You also suffer no penalties to movement due to being on an unstable surface, like a boat on the water. You also gain a +1k0 to Initiative rolls.

Eel Coils – Your Armour TN is counted as Your School x 2 times higher for the purpose of enemies targeting you with a Grapple or an attack with the Entangling rule. You also gain +1k1 to the Contested Strength roll to resist Knockdown and Light Armour does not penalize your Athletics Rolls.

Eel Strikes Again – May make Attacks for a Simple Action with Spear weapons and weapons with the Samurai keyword

>>44698508
I like it so far, though I think there was talk of naming it a Magistrate school, since they're supposed to be policing a river system.

>>44699201

Oh, true. I mean, I figure their work is a little more "rough and tumble" than a real magistrate, and I can't imagine them going about in proper kimonos and stuff on river boats. Really, its a matter of flavour in the end I guess.

>>44698508

They should also count punting poles and oars as Bo staffs instead of improvised weapons.

>>44699292
>Oars
Aww yes, time to get Musashi on some bandits.

Mechanically, I think some kind of ability to push/pull enemies around would be interesting, since knocking a pirate into the water is better than just knocking him to the deck. Maybe something like if you successfully use the Knock Down manoeuvre on an opponent with a lower Water ring than you, you also move them a number of feet equal to the difference between your Water ring and theirs?

>>44693932
Look even closer. The silk that decorates the rooms also represents the clans. The mantis one for example represents an agitated sea. And yes, the art guys did that intentionally.

>>44699481
I thought the Mantis one looked like a fishing net, myself.

I love that the Crab scabbard has a brick pattern to represent the Wall.

>>44699424

Maybe, yeah. Their style already seems to involve striking first, and with accurate jabs. A decent Rank 5 technique might involve them spending a Void Point or making raises in order to have attacks Daze people, jabbing the end of a spear or staff into where it'll hurt the most.

>>44699424

But wouldn't that usually just mean 1 or 2 feet? That's not much. Maybe give them a bonus to Knockdown too if they chose to make an attack as a Complex one as opposed to Simple?

>>44699975
Eh, maybe just make the movement bigger?

I just realised the octopus in the Tako mon has nine tentacles. Seems mighty suspicious. Shadowlands Taint, anyone?

>>44700011

Sure. It should also have a base bonus to it even if the Rings are identical. But all in all its not that impressive of a trait and maybe needs a little more spice. Maybe when they do Knockdowns they add the movement penalty that the enemy is taking right then to the roll? So an enemy not used to standing on boats is more vulnerable?

>>44700054

It's there to show that it's a fake octopus.

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No good eel mons I can find, but this would be a nice boat flag.

>>44700058
I don't know, presumably pirates are also pretty used to boats.

What about add your School Rank to the contested strength roll, and if the knockdown succeeds, you also move the target 3 feet plus a number of feet equal to your water ring. That's 5 feet minimum for a starting character with Water 2, and the Unagi school already gives +1 strength, so it would be easy for an unagi bushi to start with Water 3.

>>44700299

If we wanted to be really lulzy, we could even give them Perception as their family bonus. I was contemplating Stamina, but that basically makes them the Yoritomo.

Adding School Rank to knock downs is good - a little bit of a bonus, but not too much.

>>44700655
It does occur to me that since we already have stuff for the first three techniques, this would be Technique 4 unless something got moved around, and the bonus wouldn't actually change all that much, since it would start at 4 and then cap at 5. Maybe make it Insight Rank instead? Or make this an earlier Technique? I don't know.

>>44698508
Hmm... I was going more for a grappeling/stealth clan, but this works.

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>>44700202
What about something like pic related? An artist I am not, but even so.

>>44701224
I can whip something up from this

>>44700768

I think you meant a seagoing clan, while Unagi are river eels.

>>44701311

Hey, that'd be great thanks!

>>44700768

They're not really stealth, but they are sort of good at grappling - they're slippery as an eel. It wouldn't be hard to make one a master grappler.

>>44700733

Hmm. Only way I could see making it an earlier technique is giving the poor Eel clan a Rank 4 double attack. Rank 1 and Rank 2 are the basic building blocks of how the school rolls.

Maybe you add your Water Ring to contested Knockdown rolls, or your Spears (or half your Spear), or even Athletics?

>>44701383
I actually had brainstormed some fluff about how they were known for boarding pirate river boats in the middle of the night covered in river mud and subduing the pirates non-lethally. So less emphasis on spears and more on stealth and grappling.

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>>44700202
Eh?

>>44700299
Hows this for a rank?
The river provides

The Unagi samurai is never unarmed. A number of times per day equal to your water ring you may spend one void point to increase an attack with an improvised weapon by 1K0, and attacks with an Oar by 2K0.

>>44701427
I just realised I completely miss-interpreted how the Rank 1 technique works; I thought you could use use the Staves skill with spears as well as use the Spear skill with staves.

I think adding Spears to the roll sounds like the best bet.

>>44701487

That's already part of Rank 1 isn't it? I mean, its nice and fluffy, but pretty wimpy for a rank on its own.

>>44701537

Yup, Rank 1 is all "turn any long object or weapon into a poking stick"

>>44701432

Sounds like a fun alternate rank, actually. "Eel Infiltrators"

>>44701537

Unagi Family: +1 Reflexes

Unagi BUSHI SCHOOL
Benefit: +1 Strength
Skills: Athletics, Defense, Investigation, Jiujutsu, Sailing, Spears, any one
Skill
Honor: 4.5
Outfit: Light Armor, Sturdy Clothing, Daisho, Any 1 Weapon, Traveling Pack, 6 koku

--


Eel Style - The Sasumata, Sodegarami and Bo Weapons may be used with the Spear Skill instead of their normal respective skills. Note when doing so, they may not benefit from their normal rank bonuses, but can benefit from any Spear Rank bonuses – you must pick at the start of each turn how you will uses these weapons. You also suffer no penalties to movement due to being on an unstable surface, like a boat on the water. As well, you gain a +1k0 to Initiative rolls and when using a punting pole or oar to fight, count it as a Bo staff instead of an Improvised Weapon.

The Eel Recoils – Your Amour TN is counted as Your School x 2 times higher for the purpose of enemies targeting you with a Grapple or an attack with the Entangling rule. You also gain +1k1 to the Contested Strength roll to resist Knockdown and Light Amour does not penalize your Athletics Rolls.

Two Fangs in the Mouth – May make Attacks for a Simple Action with Spear weapons and weapons with the Samurai keyword

The River Calls – Whenever you use a Knockdown on an enemy, you may add your Spear skill to your contested Strength Roll. When you do Knockdown an opponent, you may move 3 feet plus a number of feet equal to your water ring in a direction of your choice.

Sink the Fangs – Whenever you make an attack with a Polearm, Spear or Stave weapon, you may choose to make 2 Raises to make a strike that will be as painful and crippling as possible – you may make a Water Ring Roll contested by the enemy’s Earth Ring. If you succeed, the target is Dazed. This ability does nothing if used on an already Dazed Target.

>>44701726

Oh, Rank 5 should specify that the attack actually, you know, does damage

>>44701726
What is that rank 2 supposed to do? The first half of it makes no sense to me.

>>44701726
The rank four technique was meant to move the target, the idea was to use your spear to push them around as well as to knock them down.

>>44701862
Oh, okay. It should read: "You gain a bonus of twice your School Rank to your ATN against Grapple and Entanglement."

Or something like that.

>>44701726
I would suggest for rank 1 making the initiative bonus conditional on environment.

>>44701901

Oh, herp, that's just a typo. Assume it refers to moving them.

what colors do we want the eel mon?

>>44702032
Rainbow.

>>44702032
Blue-brown?

>>44702032
to clarify, give me two main colors and a highlight

>>44702075
A dark blue and a medium brown for main colours, and a speckle medium grey for highlight, then.

>>44702032

Blue, Dark Green, Brown

>>44702075
See >>44701434

So uh... looking at this new Eel clan, pretty cool, but does anyone have ideas for their History? I did the history for the other two and I don't really have much here.

>>44702472
A Tsuruchi bounty hunter pursuing a known bandit stumbles across the guy captaining a small pirate fleet and sitting in an old, abandoned river fort levying an illegal toll on the peasants who use the river system to transport goods. Outmanned and unable to take on a whole gang and storm the fort by himself, he rallies some of his brothers and a bunch of local ronin to simultaneously hit the fort and the fleet. They successfully take the place and assault the boats, only to discover that on top of raiding and illegal tolls, these bandits have ships full of gaijin pepper bound for an unkown destination. Tsuruchi Unagi turns the stuff over to imperial authorities and for his actions is rewarded with lordship of the fort and the right to found the Unagi family and a new minor clan.

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>>44702472
we'll come up with something.

anyways, here's the Mon. I usually do more work with maps, but this wasn't too hard.

>>44702784
Pretty sweet, anon. Is the rod thing an oar?

>>44702740
I'm not thinking Tsurichi, they're bowmen. There was mention in the old thread off a river system that borders the lion, scorpion, and crane (or was it dragon?). I'm thinking that a Matsu or Daidoji fits better.

>>44702823
it is indeed.

>>44702830

The two main rivers (Drowned Merchant + Three Sides_ of the Empire border pretty much everyone aside from the Scorpion and Crab, who had their own River, and the Mantis, obviously.

>>44702740
>>44702830
>>44702921

Well, the founder could be Tsuruchi but he could recruit from basically the whole damn eastern Empire.

>>44702830
Tsuruchi have a swordsman school too, and I figured the big influx of local Ronin would be what gave the clan its spear focus when it formed, with the Tsueuchi having the boating know-how from their time in the Mantis I imagined the ronin as mostly being former Daidoji anyway.

>>44694178
I just love how it shows what the blade would look like, if it were unsheathed, above the actual sheathed sword.

I don't understand why they also show the tang as well. Maybe I'm just not swords enough, but why would a normal person care what the part that the grip is built and bound in place around? Are they spares, in case something happens to the original?

>>44703005
That's how you store a sword long term. The grip is something that can be replaced, and is usually made of materials that will eventually start to rot away (Silks, leathers, sharkskin, whatever). Better to break it all down so you can maintain every bit of it.

>>44703043
That actually makes perfect sense. Thank you.

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>>44703043
>>44703065
>That's how you store a sword long term.
Actually no, that's just how you display a sword, like in a museum.

For storing long term leaving the blade exposed like that is full retard. For long term storage what you would do is put the blade in plain wood fittings like pic related.

Why is Utaku Battle Maiden rank 5 so shit?

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>>44703284
Pic related, a museum display.

>>44703002

Yeah, it's probably mostly made up of ex-Matsu and ex-Daidoji, with some ex-Unicorn in there too.

>>44701726
I feel like the rank 2 is underpowered. Other schools get the School Rank x 2 bonus to their ATN in general at Rank 1. I'd change it to apply to the Unagi Bushi's ATN in general while also making the 1k1 bonus apply to both resisting and performing Knockdowns.

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Do you feel in control?

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>>44702784
Seems a bit complicated to go alongside the various other Rokugani mons.

>>44703767
I don't know, I feel like it makes an acceptable middle ground between the simplicity of most clan mons and the complexity of most family mons.

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>>44703767
Not really if you look at family mon.

>>44703767
Maybe ditch the oar, make the eel fatter, "squish" it more into the circle, and just make the grey parts black?

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>>44703837
>>44703869
Admittedly, that was why I didn't post this image.

It would make a decent mon for a family of the Eel.

>>44702979
I think I got something. The details of Rokugan geography are still a bit cloudy to me so bear with me.
I'm also shit at writing.
For all of existence, rokugan's rivers have bound it together, and have acted as vital arteries of trade and transportation. However, where there is wealth there exists those who see it as theirs for the taking. One such group was a band of pirates that thrived on the waterways of the Three sides river during a time where it was considered no man's land between the Lion, Scorpion, and Crane. The band eventually became powerful enough for an Emerald Magistrate to be dispatched to investigate. However, the local magistrate had long since been in the pocket of the pirates, and had set a trap for the Emerald Magistrate on the Magistrates vast floating villa. However, a passing Tsuriuchi Bounty Hunter pursuing an unrelated bounty caught wind of this and quickly gathered those that he could to rescue the Emerald magistrate. The posse, mostly matsu and Daidoji samurai left at home while their spouses campaigned, but also a good deal of ronin, disguised themselves as rowers for the floating villa to infiltrate it. However, before they could cast off their disguises and subdue the pirates, their hidden cache of weapons was discovered. Knowing that the weapons would be traced back the posses, the Tsuruchi was at lost for solution until he realized that one was in his hands already. Grabbing his oar, and instructing his fellows to do the same, the Tsuruchi led the charge of the posse agaisnt the samurai, and after a pitched battled that consumed the leisure vessle nad several more around it,the Tsuruchi was able to free the Emerald Magistrate and vanquish much of the pirate gang. News of this feat eventually reached the ears of the emperor himself, and the rest is history.
The current eel clan is the descendants of that Tsuruchi and his followers, and to this day they keep the peace on the many water ways of Rokugan.

>>44703945
I love that chart is in german and that the Centipede mon is labld what I can only guess is 1000-legger or something to that effect.

The chart is pretty out of date, though, it's still got Agasha as part of the Dragon instead od the Phoenix, no Tamori, Falcon as a minor clan instead of a Crab family...

>>44704147
>I love that chart is in german and that the Centipede mon is labld what I can only guess is 1000-legger or something to that effect.

What the fuck do you think centipede means?

>>44701726
I would rename Rank 1 to Way of the Eel, to align with all of the other Way of the Animal Techniques.Otherwise, I like it.

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1000 seconds in GIMP.

>>44704175
One hundred legs. What cracks me up is that no one can agree on how many legs this thing has, and also that in german they apparently write the name with numerals instead of letters.

Anyways, I'm out for the night, you guys know where the wiki is, get to fluffing the history. Good luck!

>Let's fill a wiki with our shitty slapped together in a day homebrew crap!

What is this, RPGnet?

>>44705233
I find it funny that a significant amount of the material there is mine and I haven't edited anything on 1d4chan for over 5 years now.

>>44705233

Where ELSE are we going to put our shitty slapped together in a day homebrew crap so that its available for testing and making less crap? Considering some of the shit on 1d4chan we're improving the place.

>>44705386
>Where ELSE are we going to put our shitty slapped together in a day homebrew crap
Into the trash.

>Considering some of the shit on 1d4chan we're improving the place.
That's actually a valid point. Carry on.

>>44703760
>"You believe this guy?"

>>44699525
That, and apparently how it's folded and was put around. They put ALOT of details in those cards. Sad that only a few of them were of any use competitively. I think the only ones that saw some play were the Mantis, the Unicorn, and, if you wanted to punish yourself, the crane one.

>>44707239
They're easily some of the most beautiful L5R cards I've ever seen.
I gotta admit, when the CCG art was good it was REALLY good.

Do you suppose the Monkey Clan has fairly traditional eating habits?
Or are they a bit more unorthodox (like they are about some other things) seeing as they descend from a hemin who picked up a sword?

>>44707459
Whatever it is they eat it's probably the most perfect form of it that even the Crane admires and all other clans respect for being above reproach.

Like everything else the fucking pet Monkey do.

>>44707498
I've seen almost none of that in 4e. Like, it's noted that the Monkey are idealistic but unorthodox fairly repeatedly; a nice guy Clan but not MOST IMPORTANT CLAN EVAR. In fact it's been a long time since the Toku were really more in mentioned in passing.
I think it helps that by the time 3e was three books in the Monkey were no longer the pet Clan for the CCG and storyteam; the Spider had taken their place.

>>44707459
I imagine that they, much like the sparrow clan, eat a diet similar to that of a heimin.

As ofr actual eating habits, I'm reminded of a Chinese tradition I can't remember the name of that revolves around giving gifts, about how it's polite to have a gift you're giving accepted, but rude to accept a gift, so everyone's trying to shove gifts on everyone else while refusing everything they're offered. Monkey meal times are probably like that, everyone's trying to be generous and making sure everyone else eats enough while simultaneously attempting to downplay their own hunger, resulting in a whole lot of talking and not much eating

>>44707952
I don't think the Monkey are actually low on food at all as their lands are supposed to be pretty good farmland and right near a river.
But it might just be tradition that makes them do that; they might appreciate what they get more or something since they tend to work very closely with the peasants on their lands compared to some Clans.

>>44707952

The Sparrow/Mantis story a while back was probably one of my favorite bits of fiction in quite a while. In part because it showed the Moshi family as themselves, not just as 'Part of the Mantis' and it also showed both of the clans in a really good light with their respective strengths.

That and the two main characters were kinda adorable together.

>>44708046
where can i find that?

>>44708091

It was on the site. I'll be damned if I know what it's name was though.

It was Mantis/Sparrow/Spider. Mostly dealing with Faith, Duty and Corruption

After years and years living as simple Sparrow members, a lot of the Spider infiltrators simply didn't want to go back to that sort of backstabbing life and thus worked to prevent the other Spider members from fucking everything up. They'd been corrupted by the sparrows simple, friendly life

>>44708113
That's actually an awesome samurai story; the struggle between Duty and reality is a recurring theme.

>>44708258

Yeah, that was gist of a lot of it.

The Moshi/Sparrow side was a lot about Shrines and 'We barely have enough food for ourselves with all our work, we don't have time or people to maintain our shrines. We've taken you in for winter as you could not make it to the next safe place and it's our Duty as Samurai but we might not have food enough for everyone.'

That and the Moshi priestess and the young head of the Sparrow being fucking adorably interested in each other.

>>44708277
I notice most samurai-themed love stories tend to be kinda sad (likely due to the culture's obsession with death), so it's nice to hear there's a sweet one.

>>44708292

It ends with more ore less 'Well, you need someone to look after the shrines and we Mantis have a lot of priests and materials to support shrines...maybe I could stay for a bit and help out in repayment for all you've done?'

Because god forbid someone every be direct about such things.

>>44708324
That would be impolite.
Unless you're a Crab.

>>44708258
> Spider infiltrator
> Duty

I smell irony here.

>>44708559
Yes, the irony is pretty obvious.
The Spider Clan understands duty; not as a Bushido virtue of course, but to the Spider Clan itself and how discipline is important in maintaining control.
You might compare an Schutzstaffel officer's duty to the Party and see Furher, for instance; it's a reprehensible form of loyalty to an even more reprehensible group, but it's loyalty nonetheless.

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>>44708638
Well, if your base job is breaking Duty then you might as well not make a deal out of it when you break it again, now for your own good.

Unless, of course, you want lots of pointless samurai drama. In that case, welcome in Rokugan, hope you will enjoy your stay!

>>44708793
You'd think that since the Scorpion only care about the one tenant of Bushido (and according to Bayushi himself he only cares about it because it's useful and needed for a functioning society) they'd have an easier time dealing with it then other Clans, but nope.

I'd argue in some ways the Scorpion sacrifice more of themselves then other Clans because so little is left over after their Duty takes everything from them.

>>44708849
The whole point is that the Spider infiltrator didn't respect Duty in the first place, so if he suddenly becomes interested in it then he is a hypocrite at best and a whiny little bitch at worst (and there isn't much difference between the two to be honest).

>>44703332
So is there no blade inside the scabbard? Or are those spare blades?

>>44704147
1000-footler. I think it's sillier than just saying 1000-foot or 1000-feet, because it treats having feet as a verb. That little guy is really good at footling.

>>44708907
I think not.
Most serious hypocrites I know (as in one or more acts of hypocrisy defines much of their life) don't whine at all actually, though that doesn't mean they're any less annoying then really whiny people.

How much exp should one-shot PCs have?

>>44709098
I guess it depends on how powerful you want them to be, doesn't it?

>>44709196
I think I want them to have rank 2 insight

>>44709098
What are you sending at them? Rank 1 samurai can shred bandits and techniqueless ronin, but if you're gonna have an oni show up maybe some xp's in order.

Also does anyone know if anyone saved some of the homebrew and fan stuff from the AEG board?

>>44709230
I'm going to be throwing other samurai at them, other clan samurai.

Maybe Kolat too, or trickster spirits, not an oni though, no shadowlands shit in this one-shot

>>44709215
Rank 2 should be sufficient deal with >>44709281 sorta stuff, as long as they don't try to engage crazy numbers.

>>44709336
How much experience would that require?

>>44709345
Depends what they spend it on. If you boost your traits, that pushes your Insight faster than if you buy skills, but it also costs as a lot more. I think you raise Insight most efficiently by buying lots of skills at one rank each, in terms of Insight-per-xp, but I don't actually know how the math works out.

>>44703837
The real problem with it is that it has three colors. All the other mons have only two colors, a foreground and a background, and so they can be represented in a variety of materials.

>>44709979
Easily fixed.

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>>44703760

Bane?!

>>44708432

And that's why the Crab get laid most of all.

>>44711233
Crab get laid the most because if you aren't pumping out more soldiers for the wall with your wife/husband then you're a shit Crab samurai and you're failing your clan

>>44711277

Also Crab regular celebrate leaves from the wall by fucking as many hookers as they can.

Ashura are downright absurd.

I've been writing haiku in a quest on anonkun all afternoon, and one of them struck me as very Kakita after the fact.

Critics of my art,
if brave, may next criticize
my skill with a blade

>>44710123
Make it so

>>44713602
What the fuck did you
Just fucking say about me
You weak little bitch?

>>44715229

I will have you know
That I graduated as
my own dojo's best

>>44715595
Rain on the mountain
pounds fiercely but harms nothing.
So your words to me.

>>44709230
>Also does anyone know if anyone saved some of the homebrew and fan stuff from the AEG board?
The board just vanished the day of the announcement, no one even had a chance to make a proper backup of anything.

>>44719741

Yeah, despite my best efforts I never got the stuff I made a few PCs ago.

Such is life. I'll remake it if it's ever needed/wanted by players in a game.

>>44719794
>>44719741
AEG are working on how they can bring the content back, but it's apparently not as simple as it appears.

>>44719883
As with most things AEG says they'll do, take it with a grain of salt, and don't believe it until you see it.

Getting into a game soon, looking at the Togashi monks. It's a fairly vanilla Emerald Magistrates game, but the book gives contradicting evidence on how monks do in Rokugan, since they're not samurai and not peasants. Can someone straighten it out for me?

>>44721716
Togashi monks are samurai. They are also considered monks, but are not part of the Brotherhood of Shinsei, so as far as the Emerald bureaucracy cares, they're samurai who are eligible for recruitment. It's more likely to happen the other way around though, with Togashi deciding to have a monk in the Magistrates and pulling strings to make it happen.

>>44721885
Oh, and most of the time if a monk wants to tag along with a group of samurai, nobody can really order them to fuck off without a really good reason, making it easy to have a monk in an Emerald Magistrate game.

>>44721885
There's that, then there's the social aspect of it too, apparently? In that monks aren't 'samurai' and don't really have to follow the same rules, or something. They're also classed as monks in the book, although that might just be for keyword reasons.

>>44722054
It's keyword reasons. They also do kind of follow different rules because they are a monk order. Monks are outside of the normal social order, but because they are both monks and samurai (And are pretty much the only group that is both monks and samurai) they can get away with using whatever combination of social rules they feel like using at the time. It's kind of bullshit, but also works against them when they're held to both sets of standards.

>>44722128
Do you have any references for that? Not because I don't believe you, but because the GM isn't likely to believe me.

How do togashi monks work in regards to the separation of school and family?

Can a child raised by the Togashi order become a Mirumoto bushi?

>>44721716
>>44721885
Togashi Tattooed Men are monks. They live in monasteries, they accept people from all castes (untouchables (hinin), peasants (heimin), samurai (buke), and nobles (kuge)), shave their heads and take a new personal name on becoming a Togashi, and (about as often as Brotherhood monks do) give up their daisho along with their other possessions.

If you want to see monks that are samurai, then the Asako henshin are it. If you want to see the monk school tag used for mechanical purposes, look at the Kuni Witch Hunters.

>>44722564
The Togashi run orphanages. You can be raised by the Togashi without being a Togashi, and there is no shame in finding your own path.

>>44722597
What about in reverse?

Could a Tamori join the order and get the tattoos?

>>44722577
The sources that get into it say that they are samurai because everyone outside of the Dragon considers them to be "Togashi's family" (Despite not being organized like a samurai family at all).

"The Togashi are not a family so much as a spiritual brotherhood,
founded by the fi rst followers of the Kami Togashi
at the dawn of the Empire. Togashi only ever had one
child, his son Hoshi, and Hoshi did not have a child of his
own until the mid-twelfth century. The Togashi “family”
was instead created through adoption, as those men and
women who swore fealty to the tattooed order and accepted
Togashi’s mystical tattoos were permitted to take
his name for their own.
The Togashi are monks, but as the scions of a Kami they
also hold status as samurai,
an odd social position which
sometimes leads to friction with other clans."

You're right about the Asako being in a similar position and the KWH being tagged as monks for mechanical purposes.

>>44722673
Anyone can join the order and be tattooed. Not everyone wants to, and fewer still are accepted.

>>44722673
Potentially. Every member of the order was "adopted" into it. The only thing you're not likely to do is get the tattoos without being a full member. That's only happened a handful of times, usually because Togashi himself decided that one of the daimyo of another Dragon family really, really needed one for some reason or another.

>>44722706
>The Togashi are not a family so much as a spiritual brotherhood, founded by the first followers of the Kami Togashi at the dawn of the Empire.

>Only a few felt the call to serve Togashi personally, and they took his name as their own—but they formed a monastic order of tattooed mystics called ise zumi, rather than a conventional samurai family. Their order had no lineage, no written history, and they seldom married.

>A monastic order rather than a true family, the Togashi accept all who wish to join their ranks, provided they are able to embrace the order’s teachings and endure its trials, which many are not.

>The monks of the Togashi order, known as ise zumi, are the most recognizable and well known members of the Dragon Clan, due in large part to their highly unorthodox appearance.

>the notion that the Togashi would convene a court (unless by personal order of the Clan Champion) is plainly absurd—the monk-samurai of the tattooed order tend to dismiss all courtly activity as frivolous and non-productive.

>Togashi Kaze died without ever teaching his fi ghting techniques to a single samurai. Only within the ranks of the peasantry and the tattooed ise zumi of the Dragon Clan did his methods survive.

The sources say many things about the Togashi, and not all of them sit well beside each other.

>>44722973
Basically, they're monks when it's convenient and samurai when it's convenient and monk-samurai when it's extra super convenient. What they count as seems to depend on who's judging. A surly magistrate probably treats them as samurai so he can slap them with a fine, while a peasant probably treats them as a monk because they act like it and don't carry swords.

>>44723035
Can togashi marry samurai?

Can they marry peasants?

Can they marry other Togashi monks?

>>44723088
They can and do marry other samurai and monks, though this is fairly rare. Don't know about peasants, though I wouldn't be surprised if they did.

>>44723088
They don't marry at all, because celibacy is part of their monk vows and they don't keep genealogical records anyway, both of which make marriage completely worthless.

>>44723127
No, they do. Togashi Satsu married a Togashi nun for example.

It's just that they need special permission from their daimyo/Clan Champion.

>>44723161
So they barely ever marry, then. The Dragon clan is the most likely to allow marriages for love, but the togashi are monks, and that means that distractions (Such as love and sex) are something they don't want. If they're marrying, it's probably because of politics or because Togashi decided to play eugenics roulette or something.

>>44723127
Not all Togashi take vows of celibacy.
>>44723035
Some Togashi do carry swords, and in previous editions it was possible to take an advantage that gave you samurai heritage. Togashi whose parents were garbage collectors or farmers wouldn't exactly have that choice.

It's a topic with few generic answers.

>>44723212
The generic answer is "Ask the GM, because we can't help you, because Wick is an idiot and/or 'Rokugan your way, motherfucker'."

>Though not all the ise zumi take vows forbidding marriage, most do, believing that such worldly and bodily pursuits distract them from the pursuit of enlightenment.

>When a Togashi does take a spouse, he or she usually expects to leave the order, though there are exceptions. If the prospective spouse intends to join the Dragon Clan and pass the order’s initiation ceremony, or if the Dragon Champion deems that a tattooed monk can continue serving the clan’s interests even when married and far from home, the Togashi is allowed to retain a monastic affiliation.

Keep in mind that we're talking about a few hundred people here;- nothing like the populations of other families. Exceptions to the rule make up a much larger percentage.

>>44723296
Rokugan goes entire generations without seeing a single Ize Zume step outside of their little mountain province.

>>44723316
And then it goes several generations in a row where you can't go three towns down the road without tripping over one.

So of all the minor clans, which has the best school? If your GM limited you to only minor clans, which would you play as?

>>44723782
Toku is absolutely the best minor clan school

But I'd still play a badger because I love going for MAXIMUM STRENGTH

>>44723782
>Of all the paraplegics, which has the most feeling in their lower legs?
I'd play as the Falcon because I like the Falcon. If you're playing a minor clan, play it because you want to play a character from that minor clan, not because it's mechanically good.
But if you really must go for mechanical goodness, avoid the Sparrow. In the land of the paraplegics, they're the guy who is also mostly missing one arm and has palsy in the other one.

>>44723782
Boar, because they actually have a pretty decent Bushi school and I love spear fighters.

>>44723876
I'd like the badger school if it weren't for the fact that they don't get Simple Attacks with Heavy Weapons.

>>44723924
The Naishou Province book has a Lion Elite Spearman basic Bushi School that's pretty good too.

>>44723941
You get simple unarmed attacks and a bunch of grapple bonuses, why do you need heavy weapons?

>>44691371
12?

>>44723941
If you're sticking to the setting, Badger should have SAA with heavy weapons, not samurai weapons. They take the heaviest weapon they can wield over their katana.

>>44724683
I just did Heavy and Samurai weapons with my homebrew.
Don't know why they didn't already have that.

>>44724683
I'd be willing to houserule that shift

Although I think I'd do it as simple attacks with large weapons, rather than heavy weapons specifically

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Which is the least lewd Clan?

>>44724929

Hmm, lets see. Can't be Crane because of all the Romance. Can't be Scorpion because they Weaponize Lewd. Can't be Crab because they fuck a lot and don't wear much. Can't be Mantis because they like free love. Can't be Unicorn because "Muh thighs, muh arms, so lewd". Can't be Dragon because naked monk chicks. So... either the Phoenix or the Lion. Leaning towards Lion but Maybe the Matsu are crazy.

Also I assume most Minor Clans are pretty lewd because no one cares that they are.

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So I need some help.
My PCs are going to be arriving Kyuden Kitsune next play, and I've decided i wanna have them arrive at the cusp of a wedding between the Fox Clans heirs and someone else.

But I have no idea how to go about making a wedding interesting and last a decent amount of time. So I'd figure i should ask /tg/ who probably have more experience with the setting and ideas on how to run this.

Please help.

>>44725004
Have the other side of the Fox Clan turn up to the party. Imagine how fun the party would be if a lot of the guests were actual-Kitsune kitsune.

>>44725004
The actual wedding ceremony is usually private, but the reception afterwards might just invite whoever happens to be in town and the entire extended bloodline of both sides of the marriage.
And "The entire extended bloodline" means fun things for people who are related to trickster spirits. >>44725043

>>44725004

The Fox are a minor Clan, or part of the Mantis, so you can have the Crab, Scorpion and Mantis send delegates, all with differing goals.

A Scorpion Courtier anywhere should get the players on their toes. As should a super alpha, bullying Yoritomo Courtier

>>44725099
Don't forget the Crane, who try to put at least one courtier in every single court that exists, and the Miya, who often hang around minor clan courts out of pity.

>>44725099
>Yoritomo Blingee gets friendly with some of the ''family''
>Super pissed the next day as roughly all of his bling has been stolen and replaced with artfully carved, monetarily worthless wooden replicas

>>44725043
Other side of the Ktisune family, What?
>>44725099
Well one of our characters is a Yoritomo Courtier. I'll def have a Scorpion and Crane there.
>>44725120
Miya family looks like a great addition. Add a lot to the setting I'm setting up.

>>44725482

You do know the Kitsune are partly descended from... kitsune, don't you?

>>44725517
Nope, I'm pretty new to the setting. Just working off the Corebook here. Sorry.

>>44725550
The Fox come from the Ki-rin clan, which the Unicorn also come from. When the Unicorn fucked off, the Fox stayed behind as record-keepers, then got bullied by essentially every Great Clan into having pretty much no arable land and a chunk of near uninhabitable forest. They dealt with it, then the actual-Kitsune kitsune were like 'I like your style' and there were marriages. And then the Kitsune clan became a thing.

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>>44708913
There's no blade inside the scabbard, it's just the fittings put together for display. IIRC there might just be a piece of wood the fittings are attached to to help keep the display together.

>>44724978
>crab don't wear much
Motherfucker they have heavy armour, what are you talking about?

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>>44726967
They're talking about an ancient tradition, grasshopper.

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>>44727356
Today you learn the legend of Hida Noshirt.

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>>44727361
... and Hiruma Nopants.

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>>44727368
Many brave bushi have taken up these venerable titles, including the great cow Hida O-ushi, may her nipples never rub raw.

>>44727387
It's weird that Ushi is apparently the single woman in ALL of Rokugan to use the appropriate "O-" honorific in front of her name that it was generally considered somewhat rude to leave out, while is arguably one of the least ladylike characters on the setting.

>>44728237
The 0- was there not because she was female but because she was freaking huge in size.

>>44728808
And got mounted by a tenacious crane iirc.

>>44729333
Nope. She and the Crane beat the crap out of each other and Shinjo Yasamura, a son of the Unicorn Daimyo, ended up winning the tournament for her hand by the virtue of being the only one left standing.

Ended up as a happy marriage though because she did all the mounting. Resulted in Kuon, one of the best and most badass Crab champions until the story team caught up with him and punked him out in the Destroyer War cause lolcrabs.

>>44729333

Nope. Crane tried to mount her but his lust got him knocked out and a Shinjo stepped in and got to bang O-Ushi for the rest of his days. Said Shinjo despite being an outsider, went on to become a Crab hero and die taking an arrow to the throat while ordering a breaking charge during the War of the Spirits.

>>44729756
Truly Shinjo is best family.

>>44730054
That's an interesting way to write, 'shit on for years.'

>>44730236
By no less than their very own founding Kami!

>>44730236
The awesomeness of the family has nothing to do with how the story team shits on it, and you on that otherwise nobody would like the Crab at all.
I don't even like the Shinjo Bushi school much (too many of it's abilities are too conditional or rely on basically going full defense and doing nothing for my taste), but the family itself is good.

Apparently even the Unicorn peasants like the Shinjo, as in the Atlas of Rokugan it mentions that the Moto Provinces there were formerly the Shinjo Provinces look back and think of the days when the Shinjo were in charge as the "golden years".

>>44730272
Yeah, I'll give them that. Shinjo fans must have some of the stiffest of upper lips.

Fuck the kolat, fuck the horse-fuckers, and fuck the story team.

How is Atlas, by the way?

>>44730383
Pretty damn good all things considered.
Aside from the reveal that Rokugan is much smaller then I imagined (which is to be expected; fantasy geographic maps rarely make any sense anyway), it's a very cool thing with a very good map and is extremely useful for pretty much any existing official period of play.

There's some funny meta bits on the Scorpion section of the map, much as most Scorpion-themed stuff is kinda meta; a few of the Scorpion locations that "don't exist" (surprisingly few actually) have "ink blots" partially covering them, as if the mapmaker "accidentally" dripped ink on those spots.

>>44730447
That's pretty cute. Was hoping to see a PDF-release by now. AEG site doesn't even say how many pages it is.

>>44730619
I kinda doubt there WILL be a PDF the way AEG treats the license.
My advice is go order it off Amazon for cheaper then AEG will sell it just to fuck them out of shipping.

>>44730447
Smaller? How?

>>44730811
Rokugan's exact dimensions are given, and it's roughly twice the size of Great Britain (in terms of total size) and marginally smaller then Japan.
It's 900miles north to south and about 500-600 miles east to west.

This of course makes it's incredibly diverse geography insanely unrealistic and the somewhat top-heavy population of it's samurai caste even MORE unrealistic, but fantasy writers are always awful at that.

>>44730859
I wouldn't call it that bad. The south is sub tropical, the north is comparable to say British Columbia. With all the mountains they throw in it isn't that unrealisitc. The mountains on the other hand...

>>44730859
Basically it's the usual old "fantasy writers cannot into scale" thing again.
Nothing special, easy to ignore.

>>44730936
The population is also a problem.
Example; in real life the Battle of Sekigahara is one of the largest battles samurai ever fought in in the history of Japan, with the two sides around 120k soldiers apiece (including samurai and ashigaru) with only around 80k apiece actually ending up fighting.

The Matsu can field around 100k samurai by themselves; they have the largest family in the Empire, but the Hida aren't that far behind, and they could fight Sekigahara BY THEMSELVES, not counting ashigaru.
Now take into account the samurai armies of every other nation and you see the problem; even if the Matsu are that much larger they should never at any point have lost any battles based on numbers alone and could have taken over the Empire at any time and ended the Clan Wars within months, so the other martial families must ALSO have in the 10's of thousands to at least stand that kind of strength, still not including ashigaru.

The culture of Rokugan is so top-heavy and has no many samurai that it should have economically collapsed well before the Clan Wars from the sheer weight of that many upper-class soldiers receiving stipends based on the physical size of it's lands.

File: Rokugan.jpg (698KB, 1380x2166px) Image search: [Google]

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>>44730859
Uhm, but the scales have been like this since... forever. See pic related that is a pretty old (2nd edition maybe?) map of Rokugan.

>>44731049
Do you know ANYONE who genuinely bought and played the d20 version?
Like; anyone at all?

>>44731049
That's the d20 map.
Which actually messes up the location of several landmarks here and there.

>>44730859
That's not "Marginally smaller than Japan". That's about 4 times as large as Japan. It's marginally shorter and much, much wider.

File: Almost!Rokugan.png (593KB, 1015x612px) Image search: [Google]

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>>44731135
The scale should be still OK. Then, according to that map, Rokugan has a circumference of ~4000 miles, that in turn can be applied to a real-world territory as pic related so that everything fits just nicely.

>>44723266
Or to put it more positively, "The Togashi are that most disturbing of things in Rokugani society, a group that blurs class lines."

Like yes its a pain in the ass mechanically but I kind of dig that the Togashi force samurai to ask "what the fuck ARE you.", it fits the whole Dragon "gently questioning society." deal.

>>44724059
Naishou's a great investment just for "what a basic Rokugani province looks like", too.

>>44731818
Yeah. I also like that it hints at the old tribal system and gives some examples of what kind of heritage peasants can be proud of.

>>44725482
I could see the Scorpion and Crane turning the whole thing into a little competition to see who can raise more hell.

Or maybe they just want free food, to throw people for a loop. "Look I know I have an oni mask but I just want some of these salmon roe rice cakes okay."

>>44731905
Yeah! That was really cool.

>>44730236

That's why I personally like them. Anyone the story team seems to hate are usually pretty cool dudes.

>>44731793
The Dragon are an interesting Clan, because it's pretty obvious (even as the Mirumoto be relatively traditional) that they are fully aware of the obvious flaws and hypocrisies in Rokugani society; you HAVE to be to make all of their wry comments.
>>44731818
Naishou is fantastic.
I've used it as a basis for dozens of stories in other provinces that always turn out really well; fleshing out a small region that a current story takes place in is an excellent way to make the plot matter much more to the players.
>>44732345
Exactly that.

>>44731933

Yes, you have to make the Scorpion delegate as unnerving as possible, and he's just there to chill out and check on things, with no sinister plot at all.

Though he might get mad if there's finger pointing after the spirit kitsune start messing with things.

>>44732487
Speaking of the Mirumoto, apparently Mirumoto Hojatsu (the original Mirumoto's son) said this;
>"I have spent many years on the road, and I have fought fourty-seven duels, and I have never lost."

So apparently the family is pretty much literally Miyamoto Musashi, right now to the quotes they make.

>>44732606
I don't think Hojatsu ever beat someone to death with a sword carved from an oar, but essentially yes.

>>44732858
No, his father did. Mirumoto is the actual Musashi expy.

>>44733017
Did he actually? I thought Mirumoto's whole schtick was Niten, I didn't think he'd fought anybody without both swords. When did this oar beatdown happen?

>>44733125
He retired to become a monk and swore never to use a sword again. He was later ambushed by a couple of bandits who he killed with an oar and then left his retirement to become one of the Seven Thunders.

Wrote a haiku for the Eel. Probably going to do some work on their history tonight.

Reeds bow in the wind
like courtiers before their lord
when Eel boats glide past.

Which Bushi school is the most underrated?

>>44734124
Mirumoto in 4th edition. They were nerfed hard from 3rd edition, which makes people think that they suck now, but they're alright in a generic sort of way. Not the best school, but not as bad as they're usually perceived.

>>44733125
>>44733277
I guess that makes the Kakita the familiar equivalent Sasaki Kojirou, doesn't it?
Kakita was Mirumoto's greatest rival in dueling, Matsu's rage-fueled ladyboner for killing him nonwithstanding of course.

I always felt fairly sure that "One Strike, Two Cuts" was basically Rokugan's version of Kojirou's Tsubamae Gaeshi.

>>44734166
3e Mirumoto Bushi were revoltingly broken, so I don't mind at all.

File: image.jpg (93KB, 483x700px) Image search: [Google]

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>>44734193
Kojiro is usually FABULOUS enough to be a Crane, so why not?

>>44734124

Probably the quiet "get shit done" schools. Mirumoto, Daidoji, Hiruma. That sort of stuff. Most people want to play Lion or Kakita it seems.

>>44734380
>>44734380
Honestly a Hiruma equipped with a Kaiu Blade is easily as dangerous as any Hida with a tetsubo and has the added benefit of not freaking everyone out in polite company too.

>>44734380
I feel like Akodo probably gets underrated among Lion players compared to the flashier Matsu, since it doesn't have any dedicated niche and instead focuses on being damn good with sword.

>>44734483
But I don't want to use a sword. I want to smash people's faces in with a club that's bigger than they are and smile while I'm doing it.

>>44734600
But I don't want to use a sword. I want to smash people's faces in with a club that's bigger than they are and smile while I'm doing it.

Now I can't help but imagine whiny Rokugani otherkin embracing the Taint deliberately because they wish they were big and strong like the Maw.

>On all levels but physical, I am an oni.

>[clubs a hida]

>>44734782

God, it must be awful in Rokugan, not knowing if someone's an otherkin or a totally legit animal spirit masquerading as human.

>>44734856
>>44734856
Especially since monemono all LIVE to troll human beings, yeah.

>>44731086
>Do you know ANYONE who genuinely bought and played the d20 version?

Why, do you know anyone who played Blood and Honor and genuinely liked it?

>>44735642

Po-tay-toe, Po-tah-toe. Just different flavours of suck.

>>44733689
I posted a REALLY rough draft of something earlier if you want to pull anything from that.

Also, I know the Ageha was finalized sometime ago, but it struck me as odd that a clan founded mostly on ignoring being baited into anger doesn't have any techniques in ignoring feints or other maneuvers.

>>44736020

That's an interesting concept. We never really thought of it. We could possibly rework the awkward 4th level for that. Ageha, out of all this, will require the most testing. The idea is to make a Taoist Swordsman school that doesn't suck, but isn't OP for automatic Void Point.

>>44736179

Er, I mean 3rd Rank.

>>44736238
I was thinking, what better describes a butterfly swordsmen. Someone who hits a lot or someone who doesn't get hit a lot. And I thought the latter better describe the school.

>>44736286

True. The basic theme of the school is the Void Ring and Center Stance, in any case. I mean, something like that could rework Rank 3 instead of the combat assessment - its kind of the same thing, the samurai reading his enemies.

>>44736422
I'm thinking maybe forcing enemies to make an extra raise when declaring certain maneuvers, or making it harder for enemies to hide. With conditions or course. I think either one would work well with the Ageha's s of shtick of being able to see "beyond" the surface of battle.

>>44736422
>>44736581
If neither idea is worth scrapping, one of them could be made an Alternate Rank.

>>44736644
I'm thinking we replace Rank 3 with the following.

While in the center stance make Iaijutsu (Assessment)/Awareness roll as if in a duel, rolling against the Target's Void Ring x 5. If you succeed the target must take an additional raise when declaring a maneuver against you. This effect lasts the duration of the skirmish. Additionally gain + 2k0 to all Iaijutsu (Assessment)/Awareness rolls.

>>44736901

Sure you can change it to that. Honestly, the current Rank 3 sounds more like the alternate school than this idea.