Orientalist Fantasy Settings

[Username17]

Sect-based intrigue.

A Sect is an empire-wide society of powerful individuals which explicitly recruits without regard to heredity, formal training or social class. Each Sect has an ideology and a grand vision for the future which requires some combination of political, military, social or cultural influence to accomplish. As a result, anyone who rises above a certain level of notability is expected to declare themselves for one Sect or another, based on their political and moral views. The PCs are assumed to be a group of individuals who have a diverse range of backgrounds and capabilities, but who have all pledged their loyalty to a shared set of ideals.

(To put things in more familiar terms, being part of a Clan is like being Flemish instead of Sudanese, but being part of a Sect is like being a Bonapartist instead of a Republican.)

Each Sect wants to see their members assume positions of power within the government, as to better implement their vision for the future of the world. Military conflicts, assassinations and diplomatic maneuvering are all common and accepted ways to seek power and influence for your Sect.

I'll be honest, I'm not fully sold on sects as described.

We're operating under the baseline assumption that all the PCs are in the same sect. I think that's a requirement, because otherwise the team members aren't meaningfully members of the same team. But once we've made that assumption, why are we presenting the other sects as being a co-equal character concept when none of the others are compatible with being a player character?

It seems like it makes more sense to have whatever the faction the player characters are assumed to be members of to just be the assumption. You don't even necessarily need to have a name for it. Meanwhile, the various antagonist factions don't all have to be co-equal with each other, let alone with whatever faction is so mainstream that all of the PCs are members. You can have a faction of corrupt eunuchs and ministers who are very highly placed, and a "faction" of largely independent demonologists who individually feed people to their respective pet tentacle demons.

I think it's poignant at this point to discuss the various antagonist factions that L5R trotted out at various times. Now a caveat of course is that of course the way canon accumulated in L5R, everything eventually went to shit. Ninja Emperors and crap. But there were periods when antagonist factions like the Blood Speakers and the Kolat worked pretty OK. But it's also important to talk about antagonist factions that never worked particularly well.

Obviously, the Crab Clan and the Scorpion Clan spent some time being the bad guys. This is obviously non-functional because those are also normal character generation options for the player characters. Similarly, any character generation option like the choice of "Camarilla or Sabbat" that can make you an antagonist faction is just a way for the entire campaign to die during character generation.

Some of the later antagonist factions like the Lying Darkness were dumb just because they were dumb, rather than for any specific structural issues. But you got factions like Yogo Junzo's Army that were bad for the game because they were too greedy. Yogo Junzo's Army was so over the top in villainy and power that it was obviously top priority all the time, which in turn meant that all the other villains and threats were essentially meaningless. You were supposed to care about your oath to your liege versus your word as a samurai, about your loyalty to friends versus loyalty to family. And none of that mattered because you actually just followed the advice of whoever was telling you to stop the giant army of Deadites from murdering everyone and feeding their children into agony engines.

The Empire is surrounded by hinterlands because obviously.

Therefore there are areas where clan affiliation means less.

There is no logical connection between those two claims. The first one is obviously true, the second one does not in any way follow from that. If you're in a border area with undeveloped markets, getting things sent in through your family connections might be more important.

If we're in a big city where I can just buy poison, then the fact that as a member of the Serpent Clan I can get some sent in every month doesn't mean very much. If we're in a hinterland with nothing but a local blacksmith and Deckard Cain to buy things from, those packages of poison could be a super big deal.

The rest of your argument is basically gibberish because your very first syllogism is total nonsense.

-Username17

[Trill]

I think that's a requirement, because otherwise the team members aren't meaningfully members of the same team.

Not really. The PCs don't have to be identical in their political affiliations.
In Shadowrun you can totally have one character work for the Mafia and another for the Vory.
In Fantasy games you can totally have characters support different churches and religions.
And even in real life you can totally work with people that have different political views.

The question isn't "Can the PCs be in different Sects?" (Answer is yes)
It's "Are there Sects that are so in conflict that even on an individual level members of different sects won't work with members of other sects?"

The Mafia and the Vory are enemies, and usually will try to destroy the others or at least push them off the territory. Doesn't mean that if a Mafia PC and a Vor PC find out about each others' affiliations they will immediately fight to the death.
And I'd honestly say that while it should be rare, Sects hating each other is something that should be possible, if only for the plots where they want to kill each other but know that they have to work together.

[Thaluikhain]

On the Temple side, you have four different religions and one or more of them will have temples in any particular province. They pretty much do whatever they want, and while they don't specifically deny the validity of Imperial laws, they don't specifically respect them either. The different temples have distinct theologies, and while there is an available "one truth, four ways" concept for getting along, these are competing religious hierarchies.

Why exactly 4?

Also, is temple hierarchy an NPC only thing? Otherwise having some temples more active in some places rather than others would benefit some PCs more than other in exactly the way you seem to want to avoid with clans.

Also, do all clans work the same in a social way? Is, say, a member of Clan Carp going to relate to other members of Clan Carp the way Clan Fox members relate to each other? And they'd both view outsiders the same way?

[Username17]

Why exactly 4?

You have the religion that isn't Buddhism, the religion that isn't Confucianism, the religion that isn't Shinto, and the religion that isn't Taoism.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

Frank,

I think you're being deliberately obtuse.

Whether you're talking about historical China or talking about historical Japan (and probably numerous other kingdoms in Asia) a huge amount of the appeal/story centers around the 'highly civilized core' and the surrounding barbarian hordes.

The core clans that comprise the empire cannot be the same clans that comprise outsiders to the empire.

At some point, you can reach a geographical point where clan affiliation can't matter because the clan doesn't have any economic or political reach because they don't have any members. No matter how big the area the clans control, there is necessarily an area they don't control.

In a show like Duck Tales you have pigs, dogs, ducks and more living in a fully integrated society that seems oblivious to the physical appearance; this society is global and effectively timeless - when traveling into the past this cultural integration is largely maintained. But that's not what people are generally looking for with their clans.

There's room for some highly integrated clans within the core of the empire (Imperial Clans) and it absolutely makes sense that the Emperor is specifically playing a game where he attempts to prevent any one clan from amassing too much power by moving them all over the Empire and ensuring that a Lion Marquis has every other clan represented in his administration. But outside of the Emperor's direct political control (and these areas must exist) it'll be more historical.

There will be players that want to be of semi-nomadic descent and they're going to be okay with the idea that their clan doesn't provide much benefit within Imperial lands - lots of people like to play badass outsiders. As long as the world is prepared to accommodate that, it doesn't have to be a problem.

Having the Turtle Clan represent NOT KOREA and having resisted conquest by Imperial forces for a thousand years due to their penchant for fortified defenses is cool; more so than having all clans represented equally in all areas. Every clan should have an ancestral homeland where they form at least a demographic plurality.

In addition to costume, you want to differentiate art and architecture that the clans favor. Even if the Lord Governor is Swan clan, you should be able to tell that the mud-brick no-nonsense town is primarily Boar-Clan, and the unusually glittery Geisha-House is Peacock-Clan, etc. The exceptions help make the area more relatable to the PCs. But it definitely needs to feel different than the town where the Lord Governor is Bear-Clan, and most of the people are Ox-clan farmers who build wood houses on stilts for the seasonal floods (as opposed to the Carp clan who live in actual houseboats that float directly on the water) etc.

[Username17]

You need to make better syllogisms.

Whether you're talking about historical China or talking about historical Japan (and probably numerous other kingdoms in Asia) a huge amount of the appeal/story centers around the 'highly civilized core' and the surrounding barbarian hordes.

Granted.

The core clans that comprise the empire cannot be the same clans that comprise outsiders to the empire.

Not granted. See: Ming Dynasty.

I would say there's good reason to set the game in a border march or in a capitol city, or in a core province. But there's no reason for a character's Goat Clan contacts to not exist when the campaign is set in any of them. It's an important part of their character and nothing is gained by stripping one of the characters of their contacts.

And yes, you can go out to sea on a boat, or delve into a dungeon, or leave the empire to fight monsters in Yomi, and in any of those situations none of the characters would be able to invoke their social contacts until they returned to civilization. But in that situation the Wolf Clan character also wouldn't have access to their contacts. There's no place or time where it's a good idea to say "In this province, Eagle Clan characters have social connections and Rooster Clan characters can go pound sand." That's fundamentally unbalanced, and designing the map to be like that is simply a choice. You could equally choose to make the map not be like that and provide more game balanced character generation.

If you're going to make a design choice that puts strain on the Game portion of the Role Playing Game, you'd better justify that choice. The justification "I want to write the words 'Eagle Clan Lands' on part of the map." is an exceptionally weak justification. As I've already mentioned, both Exalted and L5R did that to essentially zero gain and significant cost. Why repeat mistakes that you know are mistakes?

-Username17

[jadagul]

It probably makes sense to include, or at least thing about, where the Eagle Clan's ancestral lands are. The Fox Clan comes from a taiga sort of region, the Carp clan comes from a coastal region, and the Eagle Clan comes from, apparently, wetland forests or something. And it's reasonable to say, on the big map, that the Eagle Clan came from this particular wetland forest. And maybe if you visit there most of the random peasants outside of the cities are dressed like Eagle Clan members and living in Eagle Clan style houses.

But that's not a reason to say that the Goat Clan doesn't have any contacts there. The provincial governor might be Goat Clan and the Minister of Trade might be Raven Clan, even though the Eagle Clan originated there.

I think deaddmwalking is imagining a situation where there are areas totally outside of Imperial control, but which are still inhabited by (human) people. And you could imagine writing in the Jackal Tribe or something as the owners of these non-Imperial lands. (Basically, it's like being in Yomi but the people living there are humans). But that's not the same thing as a Clan. And for hte purposes of the game you probably wouldn't want to let characters be Jackal Tribe, because then they're not actually part of the whole Imperial system.

[I do have more to say on the WoT game settings topic but the thread has moved _well_ beyond that and I don't want to derail. But I can name like four different not-during-the-books time periods that would generate good campaigns, and it's easy enough to rattle off like five different really great campaign seeds for ten years after the books. And a lot of these would tie tightly in to a lot of the questions fans have coming out of the books.]

[deaddmwalking]

There's no place or time where it's a good idea to say "In this province, Eagle Clan characters have social connections and Rooster Clan characters can go pound sand."

That's not what I'm saying.

First, thank you for agreeing that there are places outside of the Empire that nobody has access to their ancestral clan contacts.

Inside the Empire, and even on the near fringes, there is no place where you won't have access to your contacts even if they're a minority. If you travel in 'eagle-dominated areas' that doesn't mean there are NO CARP and NO BEAR, etc, etc. It just means that they're a relatively small group compared to the relatively large group of Eagle-clan members in that area.

Now, we haven't discussed how you determine who are the power-brokers and what clan they belong to, but if there are 30+ clans, even if EVERY CLAN is represented, you might have number 30 in terms of power in the region. In presidential succession terms, you're talking about 15 more steps below Secretary of Homeland Security - like maybe Acting Assistant Deputy Treasurer. While you're always going to be able to find a cousin to provide you a safe-house, you're not always going to be able to count on clan affiliation to give you an 'in' with the local magistrate.

[Thaluikhain]

Now, we haven't discussed how you determine who are the power-brokers and what clan they belong to, but if there are 30+ clans, even if EVERY CLAN is represented, you might have number 30 in terms of power in the region. In presidential succession terms, you're talking about 15 more steps below Secretary of Homeland Security - like maybe Acting Assistant Deputy Treasurer. While you're always going to be able to find a cousin to provide you a safe-house, you're not always going to be able to count on clan affiliation to give you an 'in' with the local magistrate.

While that makes perfect sense, how do you stop that from favouring some clans and thus some PCs over others, though?

[deaddmwalking]

Now, we haven't discussed how you determine who are the power-brokers and what clan they belong to, but if there are 30+ clans, even if EVERY CLAN is represented, you might have number 30 in terms of power in the region. In presidential succession terms, you're talking about 15 more steps below Secretary of Homeland Security - like maybe Acting Assistant Deputy Treasurer. While you're always going to be able to find a cousin to provide you a safe-house, you're not always going to be able to count on clan affiliation to give you an 'in' with the local magistrate.

While that makes perfect sense, how do you stop that from favouring some clans and thus some PCs over others, though?

Clearly, you can't. Sometimes the Daimyo is Raven Clan and the party has Raven Clan and sometimes the Daimyo is Raven Clan and the party doesn't have Raven Clan. It's okay that sometimes one party member will have a chance to shine relative to another because of their specific clan connections at the moment; it's even desirable. It doesn't make sense from a game world perspective if every alliance is equally valuable at all times - it also doesn't make it fun.

If the PCs decide to involve clan connections, it's totally reasonable for Player A to have 'dangerous' connections that might be able to help to a large degree with a certain amount of risk involved while PC B has 'safe' connections that are more limited in the help they can offer but it is essentially risk free. As long as these change over time from one scenario to the next, no one player will always be shorted.

You definitely don't want a situation where each player opts to individually engage their clan contacts because four attempts is more likely to yield success than a single attempt. It's important that if Player A is Boar Clan and Player A has useful contacts that Player B who is Raven Clan can still contribute. Consequently and necessarily, if no player has particularly useful contacts (because the power-block they're interacting with doesn't align with any of their clan affiliations) they still have to have the option of the same type of courtly intrigue they'd have if they were of the same clan - maybe with a disadvantage, but not an insurmountable one.

The Raven Daimyo has to grant audiences to people from other clans and offer them boons or concessions, too.

[Blade]

While that makes perfect sense, how do you stop that from favouring some clans and thus some PCs over others, though?

You don't want to stop that. That's just a perk of that clan. Some clans will have combat buffs, other will have political buffs.

[angelfromanotherpin]

A typical province has several power bases:

• Governing Lords
• The Bureaucracy
• Temples
• Guilds

I remember in an earlier iteration of this discussion there was talk of different provinces having differing government set-ups. So if the strongest faction is the titled aristocracy, the governor is a Daimyo and the power structure is feudal; but if the strongest faction is the bureaucracy, the governor is an Executive Magistrate and the power structure is collegiate. And so on. I liked that quite a bit.

[Thaluikhain]

While that makes perfect sense, how do you stop that from favouring some clans and thus some PCs over others, though?

You don't want to stop that. That's just a perk of that clan. Some clans will have combat buffs, other will have political buffs.

Won't you have problems as combat buffs apply everywhere, and political buffs only apply based on how many other members of your clan are around, though?

Though, the idea doesn't, IMHO, seem bad, just difficult to implement and keep balanced.

[Username17]

A typical province has several power bases:

• Governing Lords
• The Bureaucracy
• Temples
• Guilds

I remember in an earlier iteration of this discussion there was talk of different provinces having differing government set-ups. So if the strongest faction is the titled aristocracy, the governor is a Daimyo and the power structure is feudal; but if the strongest faction is the bureaucracy, the governor is an Executive Magistrate and the power structure is collegiate. And so on. I liked that quite a bit.

I think that's pretty important, yeah. The fact that a Monastery Abbot or a Bureaucracy Minister or a Guild Master or a Military General or a Highborn Noble could ascend to controlling a county or even a province with the full support of the Empire means that there's an endless selection of potential intrigue. But it also means that player characters have routes to play in higher level campaigns regardless of whether they are a Samurai, a Monk, or a Ninja.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

Not really. The PCs don't have to be identical in their political affiliations.
In Shadowrun you can totally have one character work for the Mafia and another for the Vory.

Shadowrun actually takes great pains to make its violence dry and impersonal rather than ideological, so it's not really a great example. The default Shadowrun mission structure involves PC mercenaries getting paid by shady people to do bad things for money and then never speak of it again. It isn't really standard that runners get "made" and are actually considered members of the Mafia or the Yaks (aka "orgs," in runner parlance) because the whole benefit of hiring outsiders often comes down to plausible deniability. It's certainly a workable concept but if anything it's an example of how much easier things get if you keep politics out of party creation.

[Zaranthan]

Won't you have problems as combat buffs apply everywhere, and political buffs only apply based on how many other members of your clan are around, though?

Though, the idea doesn't, IMHO, seem bad, just difficult to implement and keep balanced.

Combat buffs most certainly do not apply everywhere. If political intrigue is meant to be a significant portion of the game, then it stands to reason that walking into someone's house under a banner of peace and then stabbing him in the face is a bad idea. You need to draw steel outside the gates if you want to keep your honor, and your combat buffs might not be sufficient to slaughter everybody between you and the guy you're after.

And of course, there are few types of games where every problem can be solved by stabbing someone in the face. Whatever we're making here definitely isn't one of them.

[maglag]

Won't you have problems as combat buffs apply everywhere, and political buffs only apply based on how many other members of your clan are around, though?

Though, the idea doesn't, IMHO, seem bad, just difficult to implement and keep balanced.

Combat buffs most certainly do not apply everywhere. If political intrigue is meant to be a significant portion of the game, then it stands to reason that walking into someone's house under a banner of peace and then stabbing him in the face is a bad idea. You need to draw steel outside the gates if you want to keep your honor, and your combat buffs might not be sufficient to slaughter everybody between you and the guy you're after.

And of course, there are few types of games where every problem can be solved by stabbing someone in the face. Whatever we're making here definitely isn't one of them.

Lone Wolf and Cub is multiple volumes of the protagonist stabbing people, around half of those in broad day light in the middle of cities and in front of multiple witnesses, and Lone Wolf does it so elegantly and stylish that most people still see him as super honorable and let him go his way and treat him with respect wherever he goes.

(although granted said protagonist has been known to solo small armies with guns so several guards just decide it's not worth it to take their chances with him).

Heck, in the last or so volume Lone Wolf just waltzs in the imperial palace through the main gate while announcing his name and title and the emperor's personal guards are so awed they just let him walk all the way to the emperor himself!

[Thaluikhain]

Combat buffs most certainly do not apply everywhere. If political intrigue is meant to be a significant portion of the game, then it stands to reason that walking into someone's house under a banner of peace and then stabbing him in the face is a bad idea. You need to draw steel outside the gates if you want to keep your honor, and your combat buffs might not be sufficient to slaughter everybody between you and the guy you're after.

Certainly, I expressed myself poorly there. When I said "everywhere", I didn't mean that they'd apply in all situations, just that they'd be the same in every locality. That is, your combat buffs would (presumably) apply as well in whatever province you walked to, whereas your Clan based political buffs would vary depending on how important your clan was wherever you walked to. Which might make balancing those two things difficult.

[OgreBattle]

“Society” as a monster to have a relationship with would be nifty, like Lone wolf being an ally of the downtrodden and Persona 5 Phantom Thieves making proclamations to spread game

[ETortoise]

Overall, I like the clans and agree that clan is a better word choice than any of the alternatives. I feel however, that there are two conflicts in the way clans have been described in this thread.

The first is the number of clans and their use as a source of connections for the player characters. In one post it was suggested that there would be dozens of clans; which would make it implausible for PC’s to all have connections to different areas of a province’s government or economy through their clan. Is it simply not necessary for every character to have a connection? I could see that working if the PCs travel from province to province. Broad clans with specific families as were mentioned earlier could work, a Swallow clan pc could use his family connections on a Raven clan minister or a Hawk clan general.

The second conflict I see is the ubiquity of clans and their uniqueness. If clans have distinct clothing and cuisine, it’s weird that they also don’t have distinct lands. Material conditions contribute to material culture. Does a Fox samurai wear furs when he’s in a tropical province? Does a Fox samurai even own any furs if his ancestors were moved to a tropical province five generations ago?
Do clans have ancestral lands, and I just missed that post? Since clans don’t have clan leaders, it’s not a big deal for them to have areas where they’re the majority. There could even be a policy forbidding members of a clan from being daimyo in their clan’s ancestral home. (How old is the empire anyway?)

On the topic of clan warfare, I see that as a potential plot for a campaign. Clan war would be so destabilizing to the setting that it’s the perfect evil plan for a major villain.

[Username17]

The first is the number of clans and their use as a source of connections for the player characters. In one post it was suggested that there would be dozens of clans; which would make it implausible for PC’s to all have connections to different areas of a province’s government or economy through their clan. Is it simply not necessary for every character to have a connection?

How so?

Let's imagine that there are sixty clans. I think you should probably have like half that many, but let's say there are sixty. Now let us consider the four parallel power structures: Nobility, Guilds, Temples, and Bureaucracy.

The Nobility is probably the smallest conceptually of the groups. You have rulers of various sized areas and then you have landowners and samurai. And that's basically it. The landowners can be subdivided by the kinds of farm lands that they own - perhaps the Moth Clan is known for owning silk plantations while the Rat Clan is known for owning rice paddies, but that won't be a big conceptual difference in the way you deal with those people, since you're mostly going to interact in their mansions or on the battlefield, and not in their actual fields and orchards. In any case, any particular province is going to have several main agricultural products, and you can have multiple Clans involved in all but the most weirdly niche ones. Both the Carp and the Crane can own fish ponds, for example.

Now let's talk about the priests. There are three or four main religions which all have their own temple hierarchies. There's lots of personnel posts to fill and all the religions are going to have at least village shrines in every province. Having four or five Clans with significant representation in the hierarchies of each religion strains things in no way.

Now let's talk about the Ministries. There are a dozen ministries. Seriously. Each one can easily have three or four Clans vying for power within them. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to find a place for sixty clans just in the twelve ministries.

Now let's talk about Guilds. Historical guilds are actually incredibly specific, where they like make barrels wagon wheels, candles, or some fucking thing. You could have hundreds of fucking guilds. Historically there were. Realistically, you want to cut down the guilds so that they are vertically integrated corporations. So you have a single guild that makes and distributes wine rather than having a separate guild to make the plum presses, to make the barrels, to make the wine, to make the wheels on the wagons, to make the carts, and to actually move the carts around.The point being that historically there were way more than sixty guilds, so the design decision is simply how many guilds you actually want, which means that accommodating space for sixty Clans to have relevant interests in them is trivial.

Now my actual suggestion would be to have like 30 Clans and give all of them positions in all four power bases in ways that aren't symmetrical. So the Boar Clan would be power sharing with the Carp Clan in one of the temple hierarchies, but they'd be sharing a guild hall with the Serpent Clan.

But in any case, having thirty (or sixty!) Clans that all have several meaningful family connections in the province you're in is not a particularly difficult ask.

-Username17

[ETortoise]

OK, I see how that could work for sandbox games or adventures made by a group’s MC - the PCs’ clans become the focus and the other clans just provide background extras in different colored kimonos. But what about pre-written adventures? A party whose clans match up with major NPCs’ would presumably have a much easier time completing a module than a party whose clans got one-sentence blurbs in the introduction.

I suppose I also have a little resistance to the many clans because I don’t think I'm able to give a shit about a list of 30-60 now that I’m no longer a teenager.

[Username17]

OK, I see how that could work for sandbox games or adventures made by a group’s MC - the PCs’ clans become the focus and the other clans just provide background extras in different colored kimonos. But what about pre-written adventures? A party whose clans match up with major NPCs’ would presumably have a much easier time completing a module than a party whose clans got one-sentence blurbs in the introduction.

I suppose I also have a little resistance to the many clans because I don’t think I'm able to give a shit about a list of 30-60 now that I’m no longer a teenager.

Imagine for the moment that you have Ministries and Guilds and Temples and so on and so forth. And let's also say that each one of these things has four Clans listed as having members in them. The typical four player party is all going to be members of different Clans because that's how it works even when you can count the clans without using your toes.

So let's design a pre-packaged adventure. There's a relevant Guild. Maybe there's two relevant Guilds. Maybe there's a relevant Ministry or two. If you select one organization at random, it's going to trigger Clan flags for at least one of the player characters 45% of the time. If you have two organizations and you deliberately choose ones that don't have Clan overlap, you get a hit on at least one of the PCs 73% of the time. If you choose four relevant organizations that happen to not overlap then at least one of the players is going to be able to invoke Clan contacts 96% of the time. If you have five players, it's 99% of the time.

So you don't actually have to write up the adventures with the intended player characters known in advance. You can easily just leave enough potential Clan connections lying around the adventures that some random group of a Monkey Clan Samurai, a Raven Clan Sorcerer, a Serpent Clan Nina, and a Horse Clan Monk would be able to solve some of the challenges by inviting cousins over for tea.

As to caring about all the clans, I don't think you have to do that. A number of Clans can be left with significant amounts of intentional white space. A few lines of text and some rt assets. Heck, the Rooster Clan could have almost no information written about it and just have a picture of a red and gold feather-armored Samurai over a fucking Alice in Chains quote and if someone thinks that's sufficiently metal they can run with that and if they don't they can leave it ignored.

-Username17