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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DrunkonDuty" data-source="post: 6281705" data-attributes="member: 54364">I was just posting in the "Shout Out to L5R" thread about what I like about the game. I considered mentioning the metaplot but didn't. I'm glad as it gives me an opportunity to rant about it here.The Setting of the game (using the term setting as it was defined above, a thing that has been set, past tense is important) is pretty cool.  Yeah it's a bit cliched but I can live with that. One of the things in the setting that most appealed to me back in 1e L5R was the whole Crab Clan sitting on the Kaiu Wall, watching for the next Shadowlands invasion. Just as they have done for a thousand years. The Crab hate the Shadowlands with an all-consuming passion. It's got great potential for some dark and desperate role play situations. Go forward a few years and 2 editions. I'm happily flipping through my shiny new copy of L5R 3rd Ed. I'm reading the extended timeline and what's one of the first new things I notice: The Clan Wars (or whatever the hell it was called) has the Crab Clan allying with Shadowlands to invade the Empire. This is a serious WTF? right here. Any of the Clans allying with the Shadowlands would have been a bad joke. That they had the Crab do it was just... so utterly crap. Terrible terrible metaplot. Some years later I am still stunned when I think about it. And the scary thing is: this was written by fans. If some idiot company exec had done it that would at least make a sort of sense. "Oh an idiot who didn't know the game and didn't care about it made the decision." No, this came about from play by fans. OK, play in the card game but still.I start all my L5R games in the year 1000 or before (i.e.: before the metaplot started to happen.)A metaplot I didn't mind and have been willing to use an adapted form of is the Greyhawk Wars. I mean I sure wouldn't use all of it. I've never liked Iuz all that much. The whole "Iuz is the great mover and shaker of the Flanaess" is a bit trite for me. But the idea of a general war engulfing the whole continent is one I'm cool with. The original published setting had the Flanaess on the edge of just such a conflict and having it move forward is fine. Champions Universe has Doctor Destroyer as it's #1 evil megalomaniac. He faked his death in 1992 when he wiped out Detroit. Personally, I hate the character (he's just boring!) and I re-write the metaplot as him having died in 1992. Really. Irrevocably. Not in some "it's a comic book he'll be back" sort of way. The guy is dead dead dead.So in answer to the OP: I guess metaplot is something I can take or leave. That is I will take some parts of it, leave others. As an aside: I think a game's back story is metaplot too. It's just that it's metaplot that was already in place before we started playing our games in the world setting.As an aside to my aside, I have a distinct feeling of having written pretty much exactly this in a previous thread some years ago.Cheers all.</blockquote>

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