Orientalist Fantasy Settings

[Blade]

Chinese fiction will often use the term "Secret Society" for such "clans". But if the societies aren't supposed to be secret, it'd be quite dumb and using just "Society" doesn't have the same ring.

[Username17]

The dictionary definition doesn't map to the word's usage in the context of Eastern fantasy RPGs. In the RPG context, Clan has been used to mean a particular sort of heredity-based political unit, as seen in Vampire and L5R.

Could you please stop own goaling yourself so hard? The Clans in Vampire don't have leaders. There is no "clan head" of the Malkavians or the Gangrel. Clans have all kinds of baggage in Vampire, much of which is legitimately terrible for the game. But the specific problem that DeadDMWalking is supposedly having with the word "Clan" is very specifically also not a thing in Vampire: the Masquerade. It's an example of how I'm right and you are wrong and it's dumb to bring it up.


The fact that L5R and Vampire both exist and use the word "Clan" to mean different things is really important. Because it is definitive proof that "Clans" in a game don't have to have all the properties that they have in either of those games alone. Indeed, the existence of "Clans" in Counterstrike, MechWarrior, Magic: the Gathering, Clash of Clans, Pirate Clan, and so on and so forth is equally important and instructive. Every property that "Clans" don't fucking have in any gaming properties are obviously properties that "Clans" don't have to have. Because we have actual examples of them not having those properties and people not losing their fucking shit over it.

In Vampire, your Clan determines your role in the party, but has no particular effect on what party you are in. In Counterstrike your Clan is your party, but has no effect at all on your character's role. In Clash of Clans, a Clan is a voluntary association of village chiefs. In MechWarrior a character's Clan is fixed when they are born out of the cloning vat. And so on and so on.

It is in fact extremely trivial to find a real game that people aren't losing their shit over that uses the word "Clan" in a way that doesn't have any particular trait you'd care to name (other than I think it's universal that Clans represent more than one person unless something has gone terribly wrong). Which means that literally any "Clans in Game X have this trait!" argument can be flippantly dismissed with the iron-clad counter argument "Clans in Game Y do not."

The word "Clan" is being used to mean the actual thing that the word "Clan" actually means. It's in the dictionary. Look it the fuck up before continuing to have this conversation.

Now the traits Clans have are constrained. Not by how you thought Clans in a particular comic book were awesome or whatever the fuck, but by the fact that you're trying to make a role playing game out of this. This means that many things that you might have in one fantasy setting or another for Clans to have or do just aren't workable. You can't have Clans that are explicitly better or worse to belong to, even though that's obviously a genre staple. Because that's incompatible with game balance. You cant have the clans be isolationist or refuse to work with each other because the players are going to make characters of different Clans by preference. And so on and so on. I'm perfectly willing to have conversations about what Clans have to do or not do or traits they have to have or not have by dint of cooperative storytelling games needing to be playable with casts of ensemble protagonists from different clans. But "It worked one way in one book I read, therefore it has to work that way in a hypothetical RPG with a different setting" is a fucking retarded argument you should be ashamed of.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

This means that many things that you might have in one fantasy setting or another for Clans to have or do just aren't workable. You can't have Clans that are explicitly better or worse to belong to, even though that's obviously a genre staple. Because that's incompatible with game balance. You cant have the clans be isolationist or refuse to work with each other because the players are going to make characters of different Clans by preference. And so on and so on. I'm perfectly willing to have conversations about what Clans have to do or not do or traits they have to have or not have by dint of cooperative storytelling games needing to be playable with casts of ensemble protagonists from different clans. But "It worked one way in one book I read, therefore it has to work that way in a hypothetical RPG with a different setting" is a fucking retarded argument you should be ashamed of.

-Username17

So I roll up to the gaming table and I say 'I'm a carp clan samurai' and my gaming buddy rolls up and says 'I'm a fox clan samurai'. What does the clan association tell anyone at the table? What if we were both Ninjas instead?

[violence in the media]

So I roll up to the gaming table and I say 'I'm a carp clan samurai' and my gaming buddy rolls up and says 'I'm a fox clan samurai'. What does the clan association tell anyone at the table? What if we were both Ninjas instead?

I'm already imagining two different characters, and I have no idea what Fox or Carp clans are supposed to mean in this hypothetical game.

In my mind, your Carp Samurai has armor with a koi coloration pattern, comes from a lake or river region, is a fisherman or river pilot, and maybe has one of those long mustache styles. Probably has a martial style centered around a spear.

Your Fox Samurai maybe has reddish or brownish armor, a fox face mask, and maybe an ornamental tail. They are probably related to one of the folklore fox-spirits (if not one themselves) and, in a twist of irony, probably raise a lot of chickens.

Is the differentiation between the clans supposed to be mechanical, or mostly window dressing?

[SeekritLurker]

This means that many things that you might have in one fantasy setting or another for Clans to have or do just aren't workable. You can't have Clans that are explicitly better or worse to belong to, even though that's obviously a genre staple. Because that's incompatible with game balance. You cant have the clans be isolationist or refuse to work with each other because the players are going to make characters of different Clans by preference. And so on and so on. I'm perfectly willing to have conversations about what Clans have to do or not do or traits they have to have or not have by dint of cooperative storytelling games needing to be playable with casts of ensemble protagonists from different clans. But "It worked one way in one book I read, therefore it has to work that way in a hypothetical RPG with a different setting" is a fucking retarded argument you should be ashamed of.

-Username17

So I roll up to the gaming table and I say 'I'm a carp clan samurai' and my gaming buddy rolls up and says 'I'm a fox clan samurai'. What does the clan association tell anyone at the table? What if we were both Ninjas instead?

It means you know different people, obviously.

Also, in a pinch and with the expenditure of some resources, you can propitiate your ancestor spirits and get some minor, middle-term lasting buffs. Fox clan samurai can get night vision and minor stealth capabilities, while the carp clan samurai can get amphibious and anti-grapple oil.

I'm thinking you probably have to build up ancestor prestige points by doing quests and making appropriate sacrifices to the spirits before you can ask for their favor, and even then you'l need to find a shrine and do an hour of meditation and incense. But it lasts long enough to then go infiltrate a warlord's hidden fortress.

These same buffs would be available to ninja and wizards of the same clans.

I'd probably throw in some minor flavor things - Carp clan members tend to wear shiny ornamental jewelry when they're not out fighting, and foxes consider 9 to be their lucky number.

[Username17]

So I roll up to the gaming table and I say 'I'm a carp clan samurai' and my gaming buddy rolls up and says 'I'm a fox clan samurai'. What does the clan association tell anyone at the table? What if we were both Ninjas instead?

Counter question: So I roll up to the gaming table and I say 'I'm a Dwarf Fighter' and my gaming buddy rolls up and says 'I'm an Elf Fighter'. What does the race association tell anyone at the table? What if we were both Rogues instead?

Does the fundamental ridiculousness of your question come into focus yet?

In any case, it says the following:

• Your Samurai's personal armor is Blue & Gold while your buddy's Samurai has personal armor that is Red & White.
• Your character has contacts in whatever agencies and industries have large Carp clan presence, while your buddy's character has contacts in those that have large Fox clan presence. That will depend on the province you happen to be in, but for example the Minister of Rituals might be a member of the Carp Clan, which would give your character contacts in that ministry, while the Minister of Works might be a member of the Fox Clan and your buddy's character would have contacts there.
• Your characters would have different images in the book to draw inspiration from. A lot of Fox Clan characters would be drawn in snow wearing fur stoles while a lot of Carp Clan characters would be drawn with wader boots in ponds and bogs.
• Your characters would have access to different "ancestral boons" where for example as a member of the Carp Clan you could eventually get enough eminence that you could have a Gyrados show up as an ally/mount, while your buddy's Fox Clan Samurai could spend eminence on getting a Nine Tails instead.

And basically all of that is simply exactly the same for Ninjas instead, save that you might have acess to meaningfully different Ancestral Boons because you're Ninjas and presumably you care more about whatever Industry and Underworld contacts you get rather than Ministerial contacts because you're Ninjas. And of course, on actual missions you might wear dark grey outfits instead of or over your traditional brightly colored outfits. But it's Asian Fantasy, so maybe you wouldn't.

-Username17

[Grek]

Could you please stop own goaling yourself so hard? The Clans in Vampire don't have leaders. There is no "clan head" of the Malkavians or the Gangrel. Clans have all kinds of baggage in Vampire, much of which is legitimately terrible for the game. But the specific problem that DeadDMWalking is supposedly having with the word "Clan" is very specifically also not a thing in Vampire: the Masquerade. It's an example of how I'm right and you are wrong and it's dumb to bring it up.

The Methuselahs, you jackass. Or, more directly relevant to your nightly business, whichever DM penis extension represents your clan on the local Primogen Council. Which almost invariably has one representative per clan, since that is the most obvious setup. The point is, the game tells you that your Vampire Clan comes with superiors who you're supposed to kowtow to and with ties of loyalty which are ostensibly supposed to take priority over helping out the other PCs. Which is the exact same set of problems that Clans in Naruto, L5R, Battletech and all sorts of other settings have.

But "It worked one way in one book I read, therefore it has to work that way in a hypothetical RPG with a different setting" is a fucking retarded argument you should be ashamed of.

The point is not that I insist on Clans working like they do in other games which use the word Clan. They obviously should not. The problem is that some significant fraction of readers are going to disregard your sidebar on how Clans Do Not Work Like That and play them like the Clans in your biggest Asian Fantasy competitor, L5R. It's the Gnome Problem all over again. If your choice of wording causes even 10% of players to come in with badwrong assumptions about how the game works, then 40% of tables are going to be forced to deal with the fallout. You can avoid that by changing the word used to literally anything else. Or you can be a stubborn, defensive asshole and double down on this forever. Your choice, because I'm not arguing about this further.

[deaddmwalking]

Does the fundamental ridiculousness of your question come into focus yet?

No. When someone says they're a dwarf, I know they walk slowly and they have darkvision. I also know they're likely to wear heavy armor because they don't have any penalties for doing so. The elf has bonuses to Dex and can use some martial weapons, so that tells me a thing or two as well. It's not as good as saying 'I'm a trip fighter' or 'I'm a blink rogue' but it's more than 'I'm a fighter'.

In any case, it says the following:

• Your Samurai's personal armor is Blue & Gold while your buddy's Samurai has personal armor that is Red & White.
• Your character has contacts in whatever agencies and industries have large Carp clan presence, while your buddy's character has contacts in those that have large Fox clan presence. That will depend on the province you happen to be in, but for example the Minister of Rituals might be a member of the Carp Clan, which would give your character contacts in that ministry, while the Minister of Works might be a member of the Fox Clan and your buddy's character would have contacts there.
• Your characters would have different images in the book to draw inspiration from. A lot of Fox Clan characters would be drawn in snow wearing fur stoles while a lot of Carp Clan characters would be drawn with wader boots in ponds and bogs.
• Your characters would have access to different "ancestral boons" where for example as a member of the Carp Clan you could eventually get enough eminence that you could have a Gyrados show up as an ally/mount, while your buddy's Fox Clan Samurai could spend eminence on getting a Nine Tails instead.

And basically all of that is simply exactly the same for Ninjas instead, save that you might have acess to meaningfully different Ancestral Boons because you're Ninjas and presumably you care more about whatever Industry and Underworld contacts you get rather than Ministerial contacts because you're Ninjas. And of course, on actual missions you might wear dark grey outfits instead of or over your traditional brightly colored outfits. But it's Asian Fantasy, so maybe you wouldn't.

-Username17

That's...not much.

Like, if I didn't have a clan I could choose blue and silver armor or red and green armor because I personally think those are cool. If there are more than 30 clans, and there are 4 players, most of the time the Minister of Rituals isn't related to any of the players by clan. That means I need to find ways to influence these characters without regard to clan. If one can expect a reasonable chance of success in that endeavor, what's clan doing for you?

I don't see advantages to procedural content generation... Like, if someone says 'scorpion clan members are usually thieves' I can see how making the Minister or Rituals one implies that he's going to embezzle funds - something like that might make content generation easier. But saying 'he likes to wear heavy furs' might help me if I had an art budget for my game, but it doesn't seem to provide any MOTIVATION for the characters.

If clan tells me what you like to wear and gives me permission to create allies that are also in the same clan, how is that different than if I just did that without reference to clans? Why not marriage alliances (ie, the Minister of Rituals is a grandniece of the Emperor and therefore my Daimyo wants the party to woo her on his behalf?) How does having carp clan contacts work in a meaningfully more successful way than 'has contacts'?

If an adventure calls for 'talking to the fishermen of the village', I don't know that you're making anything better by having the PCs say 'let's specifically look for the Ox clan member because I can give him the secret handshake and skip all that earning their trust stuff'.

[Username17]

The Methuselahs, you jackass.

Troll harder.

In V:tM, the Methuselahs are semi-legendary clan founders who are mostly still alive because the game is about nominally immortal people. But the really salient point is that those guys are your fucking enemy in that game.

There is zero expectation that a Malkavian character has any special loyalty to a Malkavian Methuselah that would preclude or even meaningfully interfere with loyalty to the Coterie. None. Nada. Zilch. That is not a problem or an issue or even a point of discussion.

V:tM has a lot of problems. And amongst its larger problems are means to generate Coterie cohesion and curate group goals. Also on the big problems list is that if I make a Sabbat City Gangrel and you make a Camarilla Forest Gangrel we are both supposed to kill each other if we meet and also mostly never even travel to points within fifty miles of the other character. But there genuinely isn't a difficulty with characters of different Clans being on the same team.

The point is, the game tells you that your Vampire Clan comes with superiors who you're supposed to kowtow to and with ties of loyalty which are ostensibly supposed to take priority over helping out the other PCs.

That's arguably true for the Tremere and Giovanni, but most clans don't come with Clan-related superiors. As a Nosferatu, you are not supposed to be loyal to the inner circle of the Nosferatu. The Niktuku are the end bosses. The adversaries. Not remotely an impediment to working with the other player characters.

The Tremere Clan is a big problem. For a lot of reasons. And one of the reasons is that obviously the "rigid clan hierarchy" is incompatible with actually playing the tabletop game. But the other clans are not like that.

If your choice of wording causes even 10% of players to come in with badwrong assumptions about how the game works, then 40% of tables are going to be forced to deal with the fallout. You can avoid that by changing the word used to literally anything else.

This is wrong. All words have meaning to people. People will make assumptions about what words mean based on what those words mean in general, and what resonance those words have with them. Changing the words used won't stop people from having preconceptions. They will simply change what preconceptions people have.

If you call the Clans "Families," I would expect people to think they were much tighter knit. If you call them "Dynasties," I would expect people to think they are much more hierarchical. Both those words carry implications of closeness and direct loyalty that are stronger than the implications for Clan. If you worry that players will think they are supposed to be too loyal to their fellow Clan members and that this is going to corrode party unity, how is changing the term to Family or Dynasty going to help? Those words carry a larger implication of loyalty to the fellow members!

Spazzing out because a word is being used in a way contrary to its dictionary meaning is understandable. Sometimes we do that anyway because terms of art aren't necessarily the same as generic natural English, but it's regrettable. Spazzing out because a word is being used for its actual literal dictionary meaning as generally understood by the population at large is... that's completely fucking insane. I genuinely hope you are serious about retreating from this argument because I am spectacularly uninterested in having anymore crazytalk from you on this particular point.

-Username17

[Username17]

I don't see advantages to procedural content generation... Like, if someone says 'scorpion clan members are usually thieves' I can see how making the Minister or Rituals one implies that he's going to embezzle funds - something like that might make content generation easier. But saying 'he likes to wear heavy furs' might help me if I had an art budget for my game, but it doesn't seem to provide any MOTIVATION for the characters.

What the actual fuck?

Do you feel that Japanese and German people don't add anything to Shadowrun? Do you remove all blacks and women from Vampire: the Masquerade because those demographic choices do not influence character class choices?

Being a Halfling instead of a Gnome provides very little game mechanical meat in D&D. The world is nonetheless larger and richer for there being different kinds of little people. How and why are you having problems with this concept?

-Username17

[Trill]

What the actual fuck?
Do you feel that Japanese and German people don't add anything to Shadowrun? Do you remove all blacks and women from Vampire: the Masquerade because those demographic choices do not influence character class choices?
-Username17

Frank, how important should clans be in the Setting?
Because whether you're german or japanese or yakutian is not that big of a deal. It influences a bit what your backstory may be, it may lead to different language skills, but in the grand scheme it's pretty unimportant.
And if you are playing V:tM it's pretty unimportant whether you are black, asian, white, female, male, or trans. What's far more important is your Clan and your powers.
That's not to say that none of those things matter. Whether you are Westphalian or Hong Kongese does make a difference. And obviously men and women aren't perfectly interchangeable. But in the grand scheme of things it's definitely not in the front.

So if you want the clans to be side elements, which are still there but not that important, then sure. It's the difference between saying "I'm a Austrian Dodge Adept" and "I'm a Chinese Dodge Adept".
But others seem to want it to be a noticeable difference. Like "I'm a high-class seduction-focussed face" and "I'm a unperson, pen-tester face"

[deaddmwalking]

On Page 1, I got the sense that 'Mongolian Eagle Riders' would be a 'clan'. I think that the world is richer if you can point to the map, point to hills surrounded by a sea of grass and say 'this is where the Eagle Riders live'. I think being able to call on them because you're from there is good.

I'm not convinced that saying that the entire fantasy non-China has all the clans equally distributed and none of them control territory or have leaders is compatible with that, so it feels like a step in the wrong direction.

I could see some clans being well distributed, but that might not be the default. I could also see clans having a strong association with a profession.

If Carp clan are fishermen and their warriors are primarily naval forces and they fight with spears and nets, that's cool.

If Phoenix clan are smiths and they are forbidden from training with weapons on pain of death by Imperial decree and they have special unarmed martial combat moves that's cool.

But if Carp and Fox are just 'some guys' you can find in any town that like to wear the same clothes you do, that seems weaksauce to me.

[Username17]

Frank, how important should clans be in the Setting?

Roughly as important as Guilds or Clans in Magic: the Gathering. Which is to say that the clans are the medium through which the setting is imparted to the readers.

So we have our Fox Clan Samurai, and he looks like this:



And some people will think that's awesome, and that's the springboard for introducing more elements about the Fox Clan. The industries that Fox Clan members have interests in also explain things about the empire as a whole. When we go into the chicken farms of the Fox clan we inherently talk about food and trade in the empire. When we talk about how underworld Fox sponsored geisha houses are called "Hen Houses" that gives a way to introduce both nightlife in general and also to discuss the status of performers and so on and so on.

No one is going to read a dry recounting of all the different vegetables grown in the empire, but you'd get a sense of that kind of thing by learning about how the Fox Clan traditionally eat pickled daikon and boiled egg for breakfast. You'd get a sense about how the economy works by reading about the various Guilds that the Clans you care about participate in.

The Clans are essential to world building. And it's why you have to be extremely disciplined about how you develop them. If you offhandedly mention that members of the Fox Clan wont ever work with members of the Rooster Clan due to an ancient rivalry, you've fucked the chicken and need to start over.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

Regarding clan warfare, I think it should be so common that it's not an issue. This week the crab and carp are allies against the turtle clan. Next month the crab and turtle clan are allies against the carp. Today turtle and carp are simultaneously allied to prevent crab from receiving the fishing rights to a newly opened area and are rivals to win it for themselves.

Clans are in conflict over so many things but none of them are permanently at war with each other. If a Crab clan Samurai and a Carp clan Ninja are working together on a mission and their clans start squabbling over fishing rights, they don't fight each other and they never become kill on sight. The clans aren't out to eliminate each other; it's more like inter-family squabbling.

But you still want to have clans that are 'fully incorporated' into the primary empire and clans that are more 'barbarian neighbors'.

[Thaluikhain]

Do all clans have to be valid PC options, or would there be any advantage to having some that are NPC only, presumably by being underpowered?

[OgreBattle]

So in the Frank Trollman not-L5R setting, how did the clans come about with their distinctions, and how do they currently exist?

--
For example in Naruto you can have a party of ninjas all from different clans working together... because of loyalty to the same village, nation, lord. You wouldn't see clan members work against each other's interests in the open though, so there's still a hierarchy that determine's the individual's alliances. Some clans got annihilated in the past and their survivors integrated into general populations or married into another strong clan.

A few generations back in Naruto, the clans were only loyal to the clan and actively exiled/killed clan members that disobeyed.

So cooperation of clans in Naruto is based on "there's a higher authority that we are loyal to", and throughout the series once the nations begin to ally then clans across national borders work together against outlaws and super monsters.
--

Say with generic D&D/Pathfinder setting elves and dwarves, it's a lineage that doesn't come with a baked in social obligation, or player characters are summed to be willing hobos/rejected outcasts of their society. But there still are dorf loyalty clans with ancestral grudges, exclusive elf societies with ancestral grudges, great drow warring houses actively forming new grudges, and so on... but they're mostly an NPC thing or a PC power upgrade if you are strong enough to become their leader. Some DnD settings still have racial/social birth alliance so greenskins are kill on site and black elf PC's are the outcasts seeking approval from the surface good folk.

[Username17]

On Page 1, I got the sense that 'Mongolian Eagle Riders' would be a 'clan'. I think that the world is richer if you can point to the map, point to hills surrounded by a sea of grass and say 'this is where the Eagle Riders live'. I think being able to call on them because you're from there is good.

I'm not convinced that saying that the entire fantasy non-China has all the clans equally distributed and none of them control territory or have leaders is compatible with that, so it feels like a step in the wrong direction.

I could see some clans being well distributed, but that might not be the default. I could also see clans having a strong association with a profession.

If Carp clan are fishermen and their warriors are primarily naval forces and they fight with spears and nets, that's cool.

If Phoenix clan are smiths and they are forbidden from training with weapons on pain of death by Imperial decree and they have special unarmed martial combat moves that's cool.

But if Carp and Fox are just 'some guys' you can find in any town that like to wear the same clothes you do, that seems weaksauce to me.

That's a perfectly reasonable way to set up a novel. Or a TV show. But you're not thinking about the constraints of an RPG, and that's why your idea is bad.

In a Role Playing Game, the characters get social contacts for being in whatever Clan they are in. If some of the Clans are "far away," then characters from those Clans are effectively stripped of the social benefits of being in their Clan.

Now you could go the full D&D and just say "social interactions don't really matter, it's dungeon crawls 24/7 and if your character has no nearby kin, that's whatever." But that is completely sacrificing the advantages of putting your game in a setting with an empire that has intrigue and an economy and shit. In Shadowrun, "Hung Out to Dry" is a drawback where you don't have any contacts, and it's considered relatively severe. The sacrifices to the setting and the potential stories you could tell for having that disadvantage be trivial enough to wave off are quite severe.

Yes, there are stories you could tell if the Eagle Clan was "far away." But what you lose is the ability for a player to have their PC be Eagle Clan and have that be a remotely balanced choice in stories that have investigations and intrigues. And that's too high a price.

The Eagle Clan has to have members in this Province who are part of the Textiles Guild and the Ministry of Justice. Because if that's not true, then one of two things must be true:

• We can't tell stories where characters might want to do legwork and gather information.
• Players who choose the Eagle Clan are at a significant disadvantage due to the lack of relevant contacts.

And both of those are unacceptable.

And not to put too fine a point on it: but writing "Eagle Clan Lands" on some part of the fucking map is a really trivial benefit. And paying significant design costs for the Role Playing Game design in order to do that is basically insane. Exalted and L5R put clan and tribe names on various parts of the map, and they basically get nothing for it except an additional hurdle to jump through to explain how the party meets in the first place. I have no idea why you'd keep agitating for a design decision that has been demonstrated to be terrible with several prominent examples.

-Username17

[Username17]

So in the Frank Trollman not-L5R setting, how did the clans come about with their distinctions, and how do they currently exist?

The basic driving force behind the creation of Clans is that when a marriage happens the lower prestige partner joins the family of the higher prestige partner and then all their children are members of the family of the higher prestige partner. So if a family hits it big for any reason at all, they will blob up with all their minimally-inheriting third sons and second daughters going off to live with whatever merchants, minor nobles, or bureaucrats they marry - but still putting their family crest on the home and all the homes of all their children.

The second driving force behind the creation of Clans is that if you don't have a Clan and you go into lifelong service of someone who is, you can get adopted into a Clan that way. So if the boss of the Alchemists is Rat Clan, her apprentices will become Rat Clan as well.

So different Clans can have different sources of great prestige in the past. The Carp Clan might have a progenitor who was a great engineer who dammed a major river and created a network of irrigation canals. The Eagle Clan might have a progenitor who was a barbarian warlord who conquered a bunch of territory with an army of bird riders. The Fox Clan might have a progenitor who was a fabulously wealthy merchant who went in big for philanthropic projects to buy herself some respectability. And so on. Once a Clan gets big and prestigious, it becomes self perpetuating.

-Username17

[maglag]

The Eagle Clan might have a progenitor who was a barbarian warlord who conquered a bunch of territory with an army of bird riders.

So pause, how do clans-that-are-not-clans-as-commononly-known-but-actually-common-families that lack flying options compete with clans that do? Why are't members of the wasp/eagle clans-that-are-not-clans-as-commononly-known-but-actually-common-families at top of the social structure with their superior transport, communications and the ability to curbstomp any land-locked army?

If the party is fighting a flying strafing dragon, what the fuck do the rat/horse/lion players from the clans-that-are-not-clans-as-commononly-known-but-actually-common-families do while players from the eagle/wasp clans-that-are-not-clans-as-commononly-known-but-actually-common-families engage in aerial battle?

Or do members of the rat/horse/lion clans-that-are-not-clans-as-commononly-known-but-actually-common-families just get flying rat/horse/lion mounts that run on air or something?

[DrPraetor]

A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship[1] and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. Clans, in indigenous societies, tend to be exogamous, meaning that their members cannot marry one another. ... When this "ancestor" is non-human, it is referred to as a totem, which is frequently an animal

What the fuck are you people smoking? Frank isn't just using the dictionary definition of clan - he's also using the sense from anthropology and the other social sciences.

Level appropriate mobility challenges are solved by giving the characters level-appropriate mobility powers or ranged strikes. So at whatever level the eagle clan gets a flying mount, if that's lower-level than when the fox-clan guy gets personal flight (and you'd like it to be, but it isn't mandatory if you can't balance it), the fox-clan guy gets, I dunno:
(note I cannot find a version of this image that I can embed!)
https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5792/220 ... fb50_b.jpg
the strafing dragon is dead because she fucking shot it

Now, it's advisable to draw from the source material when productive for the game, and avoid it when it is not, but the general gist of this is very much on theme for China:

A lineage is a corporation, in the sense that members feel to belong to the same body, are highly conscious of their group identity, and derive benefits from jointly owned property and shared resources.

And in Japan, part of the imperial family's consolidation of power in the 7th century was to enact policies to reduce inter-clan strife.

So it would be pretty on-brand to have parties of troubleshooters ... junior academy graduates... FREELANCE POLICE thrown together on a clan-pluralist basis as a matter of imperial policy, and to have been doing this for hundreds of years, so not only do six young mages and warriors show up and swear fealty to some march border lord without anyone thinking this odd, but there are retired FREELANCE POLICE running job boards and mid-level provincial ministers hoping FREELANCE POLICE are willing to moonlight as thugs and many otherwise-ham-handed adventure seeds.

If you are assigned to a Daimyo you can have both social pressure for loyalty, and a potential Mr. Johnson dynamic if that's a plot-twist you want to have; I view the ambiguity of "assigned loyalty" as value-added.

[OgreBattle]

What’s the source of conflict in this setting? What are the kill-on-sight relationships?

Are there non-clan feuding political units?
...active war?
...diplomancing banquet battlefields?

Is this ‘just’ fantasy Japan, ‘just’ fantasy Sinosphere, how far does it extend?

[Username17]

As DrPraetor mentioned, we're using the word "Clan" for its actual literal meaning and any and all future "definitions of words" arguments should be directed to the circular file next to the door.

What’s the source of conflict in this setting? What are the kill-on-sight relationships?

Are there non-clan feuding political units?

These questions go together. A typical province has several power bases:

• Governing Lords
• The Bureaucracy
• Temples
• Guilds

Not only do these different power groups have their own interests and overlapping abilities to make "legitimate" decrees, but they all have their own standing military or paramilitary forces. Further, individuals will have Clan affiliation which will run across these power structures - where a Carp Clan Monk and a Carp Clan Minister can meet for tea as cousins and conduct back-channel negotiations.

On the Lordship side, each Province has a top governor, who will be a Duke, Marquis, or Daimyo. I genuinely don't know whether it's better to call the Dukes Gong and the Marquis Hou - I can see a valid argument either way. The province is divided up into Counties that have their own Counts (possibly called Bo?). Some provinces report directly to the empire, while others are sworn to a regional power like a king or queen who in turn reports to the empire. Some counties will also have local Barons. In any case, all of these lords will have their own Samurai. Indeed, the distinction between a Baron and "some random rich dude who owns some land" is that a Baron has swordsmen sworn to them in particular.

On the Bureaucracy side, you have some variation on the nine ministries and the six ministries. Which is to say that you have separate ministers whose portfolios kind of overlap and they get very long appointments and also have soldiers that work directly for the ministries.

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.

On the Guild side, you have medieval megacorporations. They have economic interests that extend to other provinces and they have controlling interests in eclectic things. So in addition to vertical monopolies, they also randomly have control of seemingly unrelated things due to guild mergers and sidelines and such.

So that's a lot of potential political divisions. You can have corrupt ministers, wicked counts, evil priests, and greedy guildmasters as villains, but you can also have various powerful people who don't get along and need to be diplomacized to get on board with whatever the problem of the moment is.

As far as "kill on sight" you're going to be fighting bandits a lot of the time. And you have people-eating monsters. Evil sorcerers and priests would often be able to pretend to be respectable citizens unless you caught them taking their tentacle demons out for a walk or sacrificing innocents for dark power or something.

...active war?

War between provinces or between counties within a province is bad but not evil. Negotiating a peace between counties or provinces is a good thing all other things being equal. But conquering a neighboring region on the grounds that you are a better ruler is reasonable. And if the other ruler is corrupt or incompetent, overthrowing them by force of arms is laudable.

-Username17

[Grek]

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.

[Omegonthesane]

So the PCs are all sect buddies, got it

[deaddmwalking]

The Empire is surrounded by hinterlands because obviously.

Therefore there are areas where clan affiliation means less. It would follow that there are areas where a particular clan affiliation means more and areas where it means less.

It's okay if the Eagle Rider clan is relatively remote as long as you can still access the benefits it gives you. Even if the clan's home base is far away, there are agents, spies, and yes, some tradesmen.

Putting all the clans in the same pot and blending them until it is of even consistency shits on the idea of having areas that are different from each other.

If carp clan and irrigation projects go together, it's okay that in the Western Deserts you don't find a lot of Carp Clan members.