The Winter Gardens of the Kakita
Fan Fiction for the Legend of the Five Rings
In my previous blog post, I talked about how anti-LGBTQ discrimination was not a story axis built into Legend of the Five Rings, while Classism was a a story axis. And I defined a story axis for an RPG as ' a line along which story conflicts are intended by a game system to take place. ' I think it is important for players to know what story axes a game they are getting into is going to cover, so I thought I'd list out common story axes for L5R, and common optional ones, with maybe a few notes. Built-In These story axes are baked into L5R and its mechanics. A GM can choose to avoid them, but they have significant system support.
Supported These story axes have mechanics in L5R should they be used, but they are easily avoided if this is not a story axis chosen by the party. Usually these mechanics come in the form of advantages or disadvantages that are chosen by a character at character creation. If one of these advantages or disadvantages is chosen, the GM and the players should definitely discuss if they truly want this story axis to be used and how they want to tackle it. A GM should not assume that if a certain advantage or disadvantages was selected, that requires a supported story axis to be part of the game. A player may select a certain advantage or disadvantage for other reasons.
Not Supported
There are other story axes or conflicts around which story can be generated. They do not need to have game backing. However, none of these are required just because a game is set in a Japan-like world. NONE of the conflicts of historic or modern Japan need to be included in your game just because they were sources of injustice or social tension historically. The phrase "Rokugan is not Japan" is often used as an excuse by players who want to make Rokugan more extreme, more dark, more "other" than historical Japan. This is misuse, because it's not respectful to the society that inspired it or people from those cultures. Depictions that exaggerate or emphasize the negative features of a group, a society, or an individual become caricature. Even if that caricature has some basis in the complexity of real life. But a depiction can portray a fair representation without highlighting every wrinkle, and a depiction of a game society does not need to drill in and make negative aspects of a fictional society a story axis, or even a story trace, in order to make a fantasy world. A D&D campaign does not require witch burnings. A D&D campaign focused on witch burnings starts to shift over into caricature. And it is caricature that must be avoided. At least that is my thoughts.
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Author
Kakita Kaori, also known as Jeanne Kalvar, has played the Legend of the Five Rings Role-playing game since 1st Edition. If you want to read her thoughts on things other than gaming, you can find them here:
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