BTW, can anyone explain to me why they out out Oriental Adventures in rd edition with Rokugan, especially given how little information they had on it? Even looking at most of the races/classes/etc., they had clearly written things up to fir Kara-Tur,. but then ignored it and droppped information about Rokugan.
That one confuses me mightily.
At the time that Oriental Adventures was written, WotC had acquired the L5R collectable card game. L5R was one of the more successful CCGs, had just finished a big story arc, and arguably had much better name-recognition among D&D’s target market. WotC was – and still is – very interested in brand synergy.
So, they decided to exploit the ready L5R market, and to bring them into D&D. Hence, the cross-marketing of L5R into Oriental Adventures. However, being canny marketers, WotC also included a lot of the stuff that was left over from the Kara-Tur era – just not the setting itself (which, arguably, should be covered in a Forgotten Realms product nowadays).
Thus the rather multiple-personality book that was Oriental Adventures. Around that time (possibly, before OA released), AEG re-acquired the rights to L5R (except the novel rights, IIRC). In this deal, they negotiated an agreement with WotC allowing them to release Rokugan and a few other D&D books for L5R, and then quite a few books with rules for both D&D and roll-n-keep L5R.
As with most D&D sourcebooks, Oriental Adventures was tool-kit oriented, rather than just focusing on one topic, like Rokugan. Also, the Rokugan setting information was not, I think, completely written by AEG staff – although several are credited, such as Ree Soesby.
And that’s basically it: cross-marketing attempt that didn’t quite pan out for WotC, since they’d already decided to divest themselves of L5R.
I’m trying to think of any cross marketing which has worked out for WotC. Chainmail, several forgotten CCG’s…
Maybe this is just a product of my bad experience with a particular group (actually, an online thing - look around, I believe it’s the only one that there is), but I find the setting kind of absurd, especially in the way that most people venerate it. You get the common battle cry on messageboards, Rokugan is not Japan! RINJ RINJ RINJ! This is code for, ‘don’t expect it to make any sense or actually fit together, but if you try to temper it with real stuff in order to make it fit together, then we’ll all go bugfuck.’ I feel that there’s some genuine nostalgia/escapism here, which I find rather disturbing - who wants to live in a world where truth is theologically and willingly subordinate to force of arms? Or one that suffers under the yoke of the most brutal caste system in history?
The setting kills it for me, and the mechanics I find generic. If I want to do Asian fantasy, I’ll play Qin.
Honestly, I’d find a troop of howler monkeys merged in a transporter accident with ADD-suffering 13-year olds to be more charming company than most of the L5R online community. That bad experience isn’t in isolation.
But. I no more think that Rokugan is like Japan than I think that the World of Greyhawk is like medieval europe. For all that Gygax threw in, say, paladins and random harlots.
L5R is a game for people who want a dose of Orientalism, frankly. They want to play the samurai and ninja they see in movies and anime and manga. It does a pretty good job at that, and its mechanics support that play style quite well.
The setting, however, suffers from (1) being primarily a collectable card game setting (where the money comes from), and (2) the long absence of a unifying authoral voice. John Wick had a clear view of what stories to tell in Rokugan from the beginning of the CCG. Subsequently this has been diluted by ongoing storylines to support the CCG, retcons from succeeding story authors, and simple drift of focus as they try to accomodate a wider player base.
Rokugan hasn’t been Japan from day one, and that was never the intent. (perusing the sprung Japanese of person and place names can easily tell you that!). It’s quite fun to re-image L5R using Japan as a source, of course, but at a certain point you’re really better off going for something like Sengoku.