Longes wrote:Question. I'm about to play a Togashi monk in a game where GM, by his own words "I'm the reason Shadowlands have monks" (he means that he played in a CCG tournament, not that he wrote them). What basic facts and social conventions of Rokugan do I need to know so I don't look like an idiot?
Rokugan is Japan for middle-class white fanboys: this was true before the term "weeaboo" existed, so, to reflect that, I don't employ that term (which may be slightly inaccurate here). Culturally, it's Japan, even when that doesn't make sense (given the size of the empire, for example). Rokugani monks are Shinto, with an inchoate side of Buddhism, so if you google shinto monks, you now have more rp material on your splat
than the rpg itself provides.
Don't sweat being monk. Just act like a caricature and you're fine.
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N.B.: Fairly recently, the L5R CCG introduced Buddhism, and turned it into a monster-worshipping cult of Madness(tm). I am not even shitting you.
This is due to another problem with the setting, one that is an explicit retcon of the original game world: there is one good guy faction, and everything else is a bad guy. . . and the bad guys are always bad.
The bad guys are uglier than good guys.
Their tits are smaller.
Their speeches are less clever.
Their plans are never as awesome.
Their stats are inferior.
And on and on. You're dealing with six-year-olds here.
So if there are two religions, one of them has to be Eeeeevil. If there are two philosophies, one has to be fallen/unholy/leper/outcast/unclean.
This gets really fucked up with interclan conflicts, since every clan is a good guy. This means that every time clans engage in mass murder, it's okay: both clan heads in a conflict are seriously well-meaning and honorable people.
L5R is a world where the celestially-ordained caste system is literally true. The gods and cosmic forces literally say murder is right, not-murder is evil.
Unless you're Phoenix, in which case you can totally do a pacifism thing.
It's fanfiction where the rules change depending on which Mary Sue takes the stage today. So if the Lion murder their way through Crane lands for shits and giggles, that's okay, because the gods are bloodthirsty monsters -- the Lion are now on stage. Earlier, a Phoenix army martyrs itself for the sake of Peace between two other factions, that's totally not a sinful failure of samurai duty to protect the homeland -- the Phoenix are now on stage.
Again, this didn't really become a trope until after Clan War, the first storyline. It isn't that the Clan War specifically wrote that L5R was orange and blue morality, it was that the setting implied that you were in for some gritty grimdark. That's what civil wars are, after all. Clan War was underwritten, and the lack of material led players to fill in the gaps. After the first rpg and during the close of the first arc, the authors explicitly and enthusiastically rejected this, deliberately filling in gaps with bullshit.
Example: Hida Kisada is a piece of shit, and we loved him for it. He's the daimyo of the Crab Clan, which, back inna day, was Might Makes Right. Their original strong deck, their first real deck, was a Shadowlands deck. "Once we're done using the Shadowlands, we will totally turn around and defeat the Shadowlands, pinky-swear!" Mmmmmm, gimme some of that sweet, sweet self-delusion. Crab was cool, even if you didn't play it. (N.B.: The ability of the Shadowlands to use mystical airborne AIDS for soul-raping was decidedly weaker in story back then, so using the Shadowlands was NOT inherently corrupting: it was a
choice.) Kisada has a pasty weakling son. He sacrifices said son to Eeevil in order to get Real Ultimate Power. What a fucker, right?
No, wait. Sacrifice is misleading. He doesn't just sacrifice him.
He crucifies him.
And parades his crucified son before his army. I. Shit. You. Not.
Except
not. Post-Clan War, Kisada totally gets forgivness/manly regret and is so awesome he later comes back to life (with a bunch of other "heroes") and becomes a living God, literally the God of Persistence (because what says "Persistance" like taking illegal and immoral shortcuts to reach a completely unjust goal where others besides yourself pay the price for your inquity?), and he's awesome and perfect and respected and badass and he murdered his fucking son but that's okay because it turns out that he felt really bad about it and it wasn't really his fault it was this other guy who was using dark magic and he seduced him and it wasn't really his orders and the circumstances demanded that he fuck you fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou forever and ever amen.
The shugenja who performed the crucifiction is Badguy damned ugly leper outcast unclean.
The guy who benefitted from the crucifiction is now a God.