/L5RG/ - Legend Of The Five Rings General

Nope, we're specifically taking the katana.

Then it is and . To imply servitude, then you must offer your wakizashi that represents your Honor and thus your loyalty. You can't give away your Soul unless some Maho shenanigans are in play, and we don't want to go there, do we?

One thing that can save this gesture is if you give your katana for safekeeping and/or to be returned to your family because you are about to do some granted-suicide-tier crazy stuff.

It entirely depends on what you say when you offer it, and you will have three opportunities to express your intent, but without context literally giving someone your katana leaves you without the ability to defend yourself in a duel. If you don't actually leave your katana with them, then you have symbolically offered your capabilities as a bushi.

>"Your Lord cannot provide for you your basic weapons and armour, as well as an understanding of bushido, so allow me to provide for you."
That wouldn't be done with the katana from your waist. That's like giving someone the shirt off your back, if the shirt off your back had been handed down from your grandfather and shirts were both a symbol of status and effectively priceless.
It's not hard to be insulting, but it's not something you do by accident or while giving a different impression.

You guys are just being silly.
>It is an insult worthy for a duel to death
If you're that unbending, I'd expect your characters to start cutting their stomachs at the first sign of anything but perfect honour.
>You can't give away your Soul unless some Maho shenanigans are in play
That's impressively unrelated.

>You can't give away your Soul unless some Maho shenanigans are in play
That's impressively unrelated.

It isn't because it means that giving away your katana isn't like giving away your Soul but like either giving away a weapon or a symbol of your station. A very valuable weapon and symbol, but it only makes the whole act so harder to ignore or downplay.

>giving away your katana isn't like giving away your Soul but like [giving away] a symbol
... A symbol of your soul. Situation, context, and authorial word depending.
>The katana represents the soul of the samurai, and the wakizashi represents his honor.
It's still silly to talk about a symbollic representation literally.

Giving away the katana on your belt is, depending on context, either an extreme show of loyalty to someone you aren't normally supposed to be loyal to, or an extremely foolish act that insults literally everyone involved, from yourself (Dumping the symbol of your station and soul), to your ancestors (It was theirs first, at least symbolically if not literally), to your lord (For giving away an extremely valuable thing they entrusted to you), to the receiver (Implying they need a katana for no reason other than it's a katana), and even mildly to the witnesses (For being forced to witness such an uncomfortable exchange).
Basically, unless you're giving your all to an Imperial heir who is looking to run a coup, you shouldn't give your own katana to anyone. Giving any katana except a historically relevant one is dangerous.

The point is that giving away your soul (or the symbol of it) is meaningless because, well, people can't do anything with it normally. Unless you want to imply that your honor (the attribute associated with servitude and loyalty) is worthless. So at the very best we are looking at a confusing but ultimately empty gesture (read: an insult).

Has anyone here ever run in a campaign that had one of the four ancient races? How were they integrated? Were they integrated well?

>The point is that giving away your soul (or the symbol of it) is meaningless because, well, people can't do anything with it normally
... Which is fine to try to make as a point, but ultimately wrong. There's even a disadvantage that relates to this, for when your sense of obligation is great enough that it could interfere with your duty to your daimyo.

Ah yes, there was a campaign with all five Ancient Races in it. The objective was to gain their help against some Nothing fuckery. Overall, it went down like this:
>The Kitsu were all arrogant and told the party to STFU and listen to their all-wise counsel, because they are thousands of years old and created the world and sheet. Then the party Shugenja out-wised them and they begrudgingly offered their help out of sheer embarrassment.
>The (uncorrupted) Trolls were cool and offered their help after challenging the party in Go and Kemari (the ballgame). Fire is bro tier.
>The Ningyo were mostly indifferent and just wanted to be left alone in their underwater cities. The party had to blaze through some pretty bizarre Ningyo politics (read: sell half of the Mantis fleet to mermaids) to gain their help.
>The Zokujin were totally oblivious to the threat, but after a lengthy persuasion they offered their help without much further debate. The party wasted something like half their time limit with these guys.
>The Kenku was by far the most annoying to deal with, as they combined the arrogance of the Kitsu with the ignorance of the Ningyo while generally being nosy assholes who couldn't keep their beaks out of other's private matters for a living. They annihilated the love life of the party leader, and only stopped to focus on the real problem when the party started to fuck back. Fookin bird people.

You realize that the L5R free introductory adventure Legacy of Disaster revolves around a katana being gifted to someone and how it is a huge honor, right?

Fuck Veeky Forums has some batshit crazy ideas about how Rokugan works sometimes.

And what's the context for that gift? I bet it's not just a random katana out of the blue. In every case I've seen that wasn't an insult, the "gift" is the personal, historical relevance of the item, not the katana itself. Getting one commissioned in recognition of a great deed, or returning an artifact used by an honored ancestor is not the same as just handing off a sword.

Yeah, it belonged to an ancestral hero. Not at all the same as just giving someone your sword.

Theoretically there's no such thing as a "random katana."

Theoretically, but realistically, there's a lot of nameless, history-less katanas handed out to second, third, fourth, fifth, ect kids who need a katana but don't have an authentic ancestral one available. There's a lot of blades made by weaponsmiths for practice or art that are perfectly serviceable. There are backup weapons in armories for when things are lost or destroyed beyond repair. There are blades commissioned by responsible, if indiscreet parents who accidentally a ronin bastard.
If you go looking for them, you can find a lot of random katanas.

Assuming that the handle, tsuba, pins, wrappings ect. were all available, along with simple tools, how long would it take to actually remount a naked display blade (Meaning the tang is entirely bare) into something usable? Minutes? Hours?

You can watch people do it on YouTube.

Just look at the video timer.

Even the least fancy / historically important katana will bear the glory of the gift giver, simply by association.

>In every case I've seen that wasn't an insult,
Stop right there.
Are any of these "cases" canon or you/your GM's interpretation of things?
Because almost every canon gifting of a katana has been a great honor.

Name even one canon case that wasn't historically relevant to those involved or as a commemorative reward.

Keep reading, jackass.
Great honors don't come in the form of an irrelevant katana given for shits and giggles. They come in the form of "thing my/your ancestor used", "thing a great hero with similarities to you used" or "A thing I had commissioned because of what you have done for me/the empire".
The katana is nearly incidental, and in most cases, could be literally any object with similar relevance.

Considering that "Less useful = better gift" is the standard, an actual functional sword is a pretty shitty gift.
Great as a prize for a major tournament, or as a symbol of authority/office, or to symbolize a promotion.
Terrible as a thing you give to someone else because you had to get them a gift.

Name even one canon case where it was an insult.

Context of the gift could be said about literally anything. But that should be the whole point of this argument, it's not the item, it's the context.

>But that should be the whole point of this argument, it's not the item, it's the context.
That's exactly my point. If the "katana" part of the gift is relevant, it's an insult, plain and simple. There needs to be enough historical or personal context that everyone involved can easily blow off the potential insult.

>If the "katana" part of the gift is relevant, it's an insult, plain and simple

Not nessecarily true, a good wordsmith in the right situation could turn gifting someone their plain ass armory issued sword into a personal honor, but you're still half right in that case the sword itself isn't what's meaningful and it becomes symbolic of the moment.

>There needs to be enough historical or personal context that everyone involved can easily blow off the potential insult
Other way around. There needs to be an insult or faux pas for the gift to not be received well.

"Here's a sword I had lying around. Thought you could use one." is an insult.

"I offer you the katana of my daisho, symbolic of my willingness to come to your aid [etc etc]" is the first of three offerings in polite gift giving.

Aside from the ramifications of actually giving someone a katana, giving them the one you are currently using has its own slew of problems.
First off, the vast majority of katanas you would be using as your normal carry weapon have personal significance. Giving away your grandfather's katana (Or your "grandfather's katana" if it's one in name only) means giving away the original symbol that you are a true adult member of your clan, along with the symbolic representation of your ancestor's blessings. That's not something you can just give away without people looking at you funny. Giving away a symbol of office is even worse, since those are, well, a symbol that you have been trusted with specific responsibilities. Giving away a reward from a tournament (Especially something major like the Topaz tournament, or an Imperial Winter Court thing) is also pretty bad, since now you're discarding that honor and probably snubbing whoever issued that reward in the first place.
Also, you have now given away the indicator that you are a bushi capable of defending yourself, which can be easily spun by any half-witted courtier as cowardice.

And if you don't have a spare, you have to go ask your lord for a new one. Not a great thing to be doing.
Well, you're not going to be going to anyone's aid now that you've symbolically neutered yourself from bushi to courtier.

Seriously Veeky Forums, you've got some weird interpretations of the setting sometimes.

>Other way around.
Not really. Every source says more useful = less good, which means you need to actually work at justifying a useful gift.
Giving someone a cherry blossom, or a poem you wrote doesn't need to be justified. Giving someone a functional, useful weapon does.

Its still pretty insulting, your lord gave you that weapon, its a big deal.

Giving them another weapon of yours would express the intent better without flipping off your lord. Swords are the symbol of your station, don't give them away.

How so? The daisho as a whole is a symbolic religious icon for samurai. You get your first katana at your gempukku, and it is explicitly supposed to be (Or at least represent) the one used by one of your most recent ancestors. You can hem and haw all you want, but giving that to someone else isn't a good thing. Most samurai will only ever get katanas beyond that first one as symbols of position, and giving away a symbol of your position isn't a good thing.

>Swords are the symbol of your station, don't give them away.
But like, the entire premise of the adventure Legacy of Disaster is a gifted katana.

A katana. Not YOUR katana. The dude was talking about the sword on his belt, the katana in question was probably forged specifically as a gift, which is different.

Read it again. The katana part isn't relevant. The daisho gifted in Legacy of Disaster was one historically used by a Seppun hero to protect a Crane embassy, and it was given by a Seppun to a Crane. It could have been a bit of that hero's armor, or his shoe, or anything else he had been using at the time and it would have been exactly as relevant.
It was not the gift giver's own daisho. He did not pull it out of his own belt and hand it over.

Don't forget that the gift giver was high ranking enough to be called a daimyo, and he had the authority to make that kind of call. It wasn't some random low-ranker giving his own katana.

It's better than the old AEG forums, to them nothing was honorable, ever, no matter what. It seriously made me wonder how their campaigns even worked with honor being on a constant downward spiral.

I'm fully convinced /l5rg/ just can't pull themselves out of Wickian thought mode. Kinda ironic, given the hate he gets here.

Seriously, guys. He hasn't been a part of the game since 1e.

.
Seriously, gifting a katana is not something you can just do. There's too much symbolism hanging on it for someone to give it away without massive repercussions, even in a relaxed group.

Keep that cardboard scythe sharp, Wick.

Oh, please.
Is that what you're resorting to now? Calling people who disagree with you "Wick"?

Of course. If we're never going to see eye to eye, why shouldn't I have fun with it?

I thought gifts were supposed to be things that the recipient can quickly and easily reciprocate, at least symbolically?
Seems like it would be difficult to reciprocate a soul that costs at least 25-30 Koku in raw materials.

Context context context.

Whatever context lets you give out the katana on your belt is so out of the ordinary as to be meaningless for the purposes of this conversation.

Yeah it would be way too inconvenient for you, it's better to just put the goalposts somewhere more convenient.

And what I mean by that is that it's gone beyond "gift giving" and entered the territory of pledging loyalty and devotion to someone's cause.

I don't think you know what goalpost moving means. Because it's not that.

In setting, it makes more sense that the contextual expectations remain only that you symbolically offer your katana after the recipient has done something to put you under obligation so great as to have almost no equal. ie; they saved your life and you wish to show your willingness to repay the debt.

Actually giving your katana to someone, as originally asked, is possible but difficult to not be silly with.

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>yfw this thread

You know I've never been able to find a decent quality rip of Seven Samurai.
Yojimbo was better anyway.

Uhuh, that's different than our scenario. Gifting a katana =/= handing your own katana to a complete stranger at the first meeting. The former IS a big honor because katanas are great gifts. The latter has a vast variety of negative implications because you are giving -your- -katana- to a -stranger- at -first meeting-.

It is Rokugan user, the devil lurks in the details.

>The latter has a vast variety of negative implications because user insists on hedging the hypothetical so it is so
Fixed.

We already know from canon that handing your wakizashi to a stranger at the first meeting is the proper way of showing servitude (see Kaneka's story of gathering followers for example). If you do this with your katana, then you are already doing something improper, and thus doesn't convey the same thing (obviously, as you aren't handing over your wakizashi).

Rokugan is all about being turbo-autistic when it comes to etiquette and gestures. You can't just make shit up on the go and expect others to roll with it.

>You can't just make shit up on the go and expect others to roll with it
That's exactly how traditions start. Also trends and such.

Okay, it is time for storytime.

What happened last time:
>Party was investigating a Spider Clan conspiracy in Homebrew Rokugan (pic related), defeating rebellious lords to inch closer to the Spider culprits
>They eventually tracked down the Spiders, but the party leader (a Soshi Magistrate/Emerald Magistrate) died, while the supporting bushi (an Utaku Mounted Infantryman) got plot'd
>The Emerald Champion personally visited the two survivors (a Miya Akodo Bushi and a Fudoist Nun) to debrief them
>The Miya Bushi got a free hand and a blank check to hunt down the Spider, as well as a promotion to be a legit Emerald Magistrate

What's now:
>The Miya Bushi called some favors, and hired an Ikoma Scout to bolster the party (the new PC of the Soshi's player)
>The older sister of the Utaku, a battle maiden with an ise zumi tattoo and the most BS katas ever also joined the party (a new player)
>Finally, an Asahina Shugenja/Aerie Falconer arrived to provide mystical support (the Infantryman player's new PC)
>The Fudoist Nun also took some Kiho that made her immortal (Embrace the Stone?)
>So, the new party went on to follow some hot leads, as the Utaku Battle Maiden had kharmic tie to her brother and could tell us that he was being held by the Spider somewhere in the countryside
>We arrive at a smaller town in the NE Dragon lands, where the trail grows cold
>The Battle Maiden and the Nun investigates in the town while the rest of the party goes hunting in the wild
>The chicks encounter some ronin who are also after the Spider. A fight ensues, and end with the Battle Maiden runing down the leader of the ronin with her steed.
>The Ikoma Scout rolls poorly, and the three jolly adventurers almost get lost in a forest. Asahina Shugenja saves the situation with his falcon, only to find the ronin camp. Using his authority, the Miya recruits the ronin, unaware of the happenings in the tow.

>The chicks meet some shady Dragon samurai in the town while mopping up. The Nun dodges their question, but the Battle Maiden tells them everything because 'muh Honor'.
>Party reassembles in the town. The ronin are obviously not pleased with the loss of their leader and many of their comrades. The Battle Maiden duels one of them to death, so the issue is put to the side for the time being.
>The Dragons show up again and offer their help. They tell us that we should ask around the local lord, so there we go.
>Our Social Skills are... mediocre. We can't get much out of the lord, and most likely miss a few important details, but he looks helpful overall.
>So helpful we get Spider assassins on our asses at night, and when we scramble the Shugenja to get help, he almost get his butt cut up by the Dragons.
>Party gets out only because the Nun tanks everything with her shiny new kiho, but the Ikoma Scout and the Shugenja both suffer severe injuries.
>Battle Maiden tramples down the treacherous lord's champion with her BS kata (The Lance Seeks the Heart?), almost giving our GM a heart attack in the process.
>Outside we link up with the ronin and run to the neighboring lord to raise an army.
>There isn't much, only some high-level ashigaru and a few low-level samurai (plus the ronin ofc). The enemy army should be no different, but they have advanced fireams (courtesy to the Spider).
>Party brainstorming produces a totally foolproof plan: we use the Ikoma Scout's special ability to get the 'Attack the Enemy Commander' Battle Event, and have the mass battle+dueling oriented Miya to hit home and kill the evil lord before the firearms get into the way.
>The dices think otherwise. Miya shits the bed with his Battle rolls, our army is losing. Shugenja offers to fish for Supernatural Encounters and we tell him to do it.

>First Supernatural Encounter banishes the Ikoma Scout from the battlefield.
>Second Supernatural Encounter summons some minor spirits that attack both sides.
>Third Supernatural Encounter makes some OP Spider Lost show up and almost kill the Nun.
>We tell the Shugenja to stop, go back to the camp, and tend the wounded.
>As soon as the Shugenja leaves (the player too, because lunch time), my dices come back to life.
>I turn the tides from losing slightly to winning overwhelmingly in a single turn. The GM gets a headache when he tries to figure out what's happening on the battlefield.
>The Battle Maiden rolls 'Attack the Enemy Commander' for her battle event, and unceremoniously runs down the enemy lord and his whole retinue (it took her 7 turns to kill the lord, his 2 bodyguards, his second-in-command, a Spider adviser, and 3 signalmen). The player receives a loud applause from the whole gaming club.
>With their lord dead, the enemy army collapses and is scattered to the wind in short order.
>We ride to the castle of the evil lord to investigate.
>The gates are open!
>Inside, we are greeted by a cliffhanger at the courtyard: the Utaku Mounted Infantryman - but he is now EVIL (Lost to be exact)!

Interesting trivia: this was the very first RPG session of the Battle Maiden's player, and she managed to steal the show even though the GM went full-on Nintendo Hard on her in the end. It was pretty darn awesome.

I don't know if it's just random or if the clans were placed on which rings they best represent, but if you swap Lion and Unicorn they're pretty close.

The Clans are placed on the Rings
>Crab + Lotus (uncorrupted Fu Leng's Clan) -> Earth
>Unicorn + Tiger (no Matsu) -> Water
>Crane + Scorpion -> Air
>Wolf (Ryoshun's Great Clan) + Owl (Hantei's Great Clan) -> Void
>Phoenix (Isawa replaced by pyromaniac Yogo) + Dragon -> Fire
>Imperials -> Air (Otomo), Earth (Moto), Fire (Kaiu), Water (Miya), Void (Isawa)

It is like pottery.

>Wolf Clan

They are a similar bunch than pic-related. Lovin' nature, hatin' civilization, and having cool-ass werewolf samurai and lots of wolf-themed stuff.

I used that gif too soon.

Oh, another thing I forgot was that the Utaku Battle Maiden had the Crescent Moon(?) tattoo, the one that turns you into a big, sneaky patch of ink. She used it to reach her horse when we were attacked in the traitor lord's castle.

Who was the swolest of the era, Yokuni or Kisada?

Gonna try one last hail mary; Our gm whose name rhymes with paul, we still playing? Haven't heard from you on skype in a while.
I know you read these, this is how the group met.
~
Boulder

Kisada. Yokuni was just compensating for his tiny balls. Kisada on the other hand was a big guy from head to toe.

Oh man. The stories from that game were pretty good. Rip. :(

-Other GM

Since we've finished 1 arc I'm meaning to do a story time. Maybe narrated by THE BOULDER.

Bumpu

CRANE WAS HERE

SPARROW IS SHIT AND DESERVES TO BE SHIT

PS: ORIOLE CAN HANG OUT IF YOURE FREE

Sparrow here, one of our field hands fucked your wife last night, local kami have confirmed. Hand over the ancestral blade and the pillowbook doesn't go public.

as a Sparrow fan I'm still laughing at that other sparrow who was all m-muh clan access

Scorpion here, we've already censored the pillowbook. Don't worry, we still have the unedited copy.

It was a pretty hot story - does the field hand want to work for one of our host clubs for lonely samurai-ko? We're hiring!

Yokuni had no mortal limitations on his attributes.

But did he actually use that potential?
Kisada went to the mortal limit (And possibly beyond) in endurance, strength, and willpower.

Having no ceiling doesn't matter if all you've bothered to get is a stepstool.

>But did he actually use that potential?
Yes. He fought Fu Leng mano e mano. Kisada got stabbed in the gut by Fu Leng with the ancestral blade of the Hantei and crawled away to die.

>be me, GM for l5r
>the players have jut beaten their second major adventure, and one of the pc's died
>the dead player wants his new character to be a kotal member.
>the campaign will feature the kolat heavily as the masterminds behind each vilain
>the only person who's even aware that the kolat may be a problem is another PC in the group
>mfw I think of the possibilities

Am I being retarded, /l5rg/? Should I disallow this character? is the kolat-loyalist drama gonna be a complete clusterfuck?

Yokuni was a living God, Kisada was a mortal man with godly gains.

Kisada = swollest.

The Hantei ancestral sword has a special ability that makes it a guaranteed killing blow, all the time every time.
Kisada lasted for years after getting hit with the divinely ordained one-hit-kill sword. That's pretty damn impressive.

Let him take the Sleeper Agent disad, if they're willing.

Otherwise, "disallow" it, then have the Kolat fuck with the PC from behind the scenes and pull their superiors' strings.

I'm just not sure how to broach the subject.
How do I ask a player if he's willing to work against the party without informing him about the kolat?

Yeah, nah. You're just being stubborn.

True. OTOH, while Kisada could survive a hit for a while, albeit no longer at full strength (appropriate for someone that would become fortune of persistence), Togashi's attributes and Rings are "does Togashi want/allow X?"

Don't ask. You already have consent to being a kolat puppet.

Yokuni is a fraud, might as well be using steroids.

point
I'm so fucking excited. when this is all said and done, this is gonna be greentext worthy

The Kami do have limits. Very, very high limits, and even their "bad" stats are still above 5, but still limits. There are actually official stats for Shiba floating around, for example, and while he could wipe the floor with just about any high-IR bushi or courtier (Or shugenja, using godpowers to just tell the small kami to fuck off) overall, there are people who are better than him in different individual aspects.