Crafting the Story

by Shawn Carman
Legend of the Five Rings Lead Writer

The storyline is what sets the Legend of the Five Rings game apart from other CCGs out there. Maybe that sounds a little arrogant, considering I’m the game’s lead writer, but that wasn’t always the case! I started out as a fan, and it was the story that brought me into the game. That I’m now writing it is a little hard to fathom sometimes!

The story of L5R begins with the fans. Most major story decisions are determined by a tournament win somewhere, and then the writing team works to integrate that result with whatever else is going on in the story at the time. Recently, we are working to take into account what fans are doing other than simply winning tournaments, in an effort to allow as many people as possible to influence the events taking place in the Empire of Rokugan. From our Winter Court RPG event, to the discussions that take place on individual Clan web sites run by the fans, there’s very little we don’t watch and take into consideration when we work on the story. It can be a challenging job to work everything together, but so far, it’s well worth it.

All fiction set in Rokugan begins either with a Clan or a character. The Clans have well-established themes that we writers use to determine how the Clans should react to certain events, and how the overall relationship between the Great Clans should develop. When a pivotal event happens somewhere in the Empire, how will the Lion Clan react? How will the Mantis Clan react? The answers to those two questions should be very, very different. If not, then we have to go back and examine whether or not we’re keeping the Clan themes in mind.

The other essential element of Rokugan’s story is the characters that appear in the story. The Story Team tries to establish each individual character as unique, even when we first create them. When we see new art for an expansion, we name the character and write flavor text for them. Even then, we make notes about each new personality, so that when that individual appears in the story, we have some idea of how they should interact with other characters.

Over the past few arcs, the most positive feedback we’ve gotten from fans has always been about characters who struggle to live up to the code of bushido. In Samurai Edition, you can expect to see a great deal more of that. We will be presenting a picture of the Great Clans, forced into situations where they must choose do to what is best for the Clan, or what is demanded of them by the code. Characters will be facing the kinds of crises that create history’s greatest heroes, as well as its most terrible villains. If we play our cards right (ha!), every fan will love what their Clan is doing during the Samurai arc. And every fan will hate at least one thing their Clan does as well! In the end, what will we have?

That’s a surprise.