This might be a stupid question, but...Isn't the Orientalism of L5R incredibly cringe? I'm just surprised that the whole "Fantasy Japan by Western Weebs" thing has lasted for decades.
>>97956392>OrientalismKys
>>97956392L5R has always been embarrassingly cringe (it’s the point), but still less cringe than you.
>>97956392L5R is a mishmash of East Asian history the same way your average D&D setting is a mishmash of European history. I do think the FFG reboot of the setting did a better job of actually being informed of said history (at least until the culture consultants got brought in) instead of just pulling from whatever bullshit the writers remembered from ninja and Kurosawa movies, but different strokes.
>>97956392Orientalism is when Westroons use Eastern Culture to either hype up a fantasy vision for society (see: weeabs) or denigrate the Non-Western world as inferior.None of this is present in L5R which is just nerds wanting a cool setting to have epin ninja samurai fighting with.Shit Avatar is more Orientalist than L5R.
>>97956392>Isn't the Orientalism of L5R incredibly cringe?No, but I can already see that (You) are.
>>97956547SPBP
>>97956392No.Why do you want to eliminate foreign cultures?
>>97956392I have never seen the>thing>thing, japanMeme the other way around before, impressive.>pop culture fantasy mixWOW AMAZING>pop culture fantasy mix, japanErrrm cringe?
Orientalism and exoticism are good and proper things in the field of entertainment, including TTRPGs.
>>97956392What's the problem, specifically?
>>97956392I talked to a Japanese girl about this once before. She said she finds it frankly no more cringe than the average westoid’s impression of feudal Japan, since the average westoid’s impression of feudal Japan is embarrassingly simplistic and way too focused on “Muh Honoru”. That said, she had no problem getting the appeal of the setting, and I like talking to her about the differences between the actual historic samurai and their conflicts and the more fantastical interpretation L5R has gone with. Funny thing is that she loves the Crab clan. As the less honorable fight-happy pragmatic to a fault clan using big nasty weapons and siege equipment against the oni, she claimed they’re closer to how more samurai acted back in the day the moment, and she finds how the lore described them pissing most of the other clans off by being scruffy and abrasive hilarious. I figure if I ever run that Iron Empire campaign, I’m calling her up since she’s also a bit of a /k/ nut and wishes the optional gun rules were part of the main game.
>>97956392>Isn't the Orientalism of L5R incredibly cringe?No it's based, the polar opposite of cringe.
it's only cringe if you insist L5R is an accurate portrayal of historical japan.
>>97956392>oh ho ho look at me being an Intellectual of 2026 judging games white people played.>why fetishize ninjas, you fucking crackers>anyway, might I remind you of the atrocities japanese are capable of like Rape of Nanking and Unit 731??!
>>97956392it lasted because it's goodyou want a human centric fantasy of a similar culture?good luck making itbest you'll find is legends of qin, legends of wulin or ninja crusade, and there's no getting around how on the nose they are
>>97956875The only culture these goycattle want is an endless Los Angeles sprawl, with slight variation for New York or London.
>>97956392The only cringe thing about l5r is that Clan War is never coming back.
>>97956392>This might be a stupid questionIt was.
>>97956392>asian person claims to have problem with l5r>look inside>3rd generation chinese-american who vehemently opposes anything that portrays japan in a positive lightThe literal only actual Japanese people I've ever seen had a problem with it had said problem because the translations were atrocious at some points and the old lore freely used the word eta which is basically a slur.
>>97956392you know you can just make an L5R thread, right? you don't have to pretend to be left wing in order to make people jump to defend it against the gay commie wokescolds. you can just talk about L5R.
>>97956392It's clearly not for you, so you should either leave well enough alone or just kill yourself
>>97957103I don't think japs have any room to talk after all their western fantasy and wild west pastiche settings. Don't get me wrong, I love those things, but you have to embrace the flanderization of another culture's view pf your culture if you're going to indulge in their fiction.
>>97962141Yeah, that’s pretty much where I’m at, and what we ultimately came to agree on regarding L5R about. She could act as indignant as she wanted regarding what Legend of the Five Rings does regarding its inaccurate portrayal of samurai, but it’s about as worth her time as getting indignant over the TMNT for portraying ninjas “wrong”. That and there were parts of L5R she liked, like the Crab Clan and their eternal vigil fighting the forces of Jigoku, and the minor Clans like the Kitsune and Tortoise. I was just stating as far as “cringe” goes, the majority of the content is not much worse than most media that goes for theater over realism. The cringiest it gets is when they run out of Japanese words to use and you see shit like Fu Leng in the book, frankly, and that’s for a different reason.
>>97958385Truth nuke, a society inclusive of everything is a society inclusive of nothing.
>>97957103I want to play a game with a rekijo now
>>97956392>but...Isn't the Orientalism of L5R incredibly cringe?It's super-cringe, but it's cringe like the SCA rather than in the Oriental Adventures way.The rules of the game are clearly structured and explained to support a specific type of drama and they accounted for a lot of ways for people to have fun.
>>97962938I have this old chestnut of an L5R LARP.
The cringeness of L5R is so high that the orientalism claims are pretty unnoticeable, if true. (still, for a supposedly weeb thing, I do find strange how... not really japanese L5R feels. Ever for the ninties, it doesn't seem to TRY to do that)
>>979616675 editions are too few to have something to actually talk about, sadly. There's like one guy posting about his game and a bunch of others that are just there. A few curious newbies I guess. With the fanbase split between at least 3 editions even asking about rules can be a gamble. Samurai really have gone out of fashion.
>>97966151In the 90s especially, L5R was defined by a few specific influences. Namely, certain samurai movies that John Wick watched, whatever it took to be the opposite of what John Wick perceived D&D to be, and whatever it took to churn out more CCG sets with canonized tournament results. You'll note that "Japanese history" is not on that list. It was much more important to the writers that the setting be explicitly hostile to rootless adventurers and also include lots of quickdraw katana duels than representing anything in particular about Japan.
>>97966427This. It was born from a very specific form of Japanese culture obsession, the kind that was all about cheesy kung fu and old jidai geki movies that removes it quite a bit from anime weaboo shit, to a point. Though the fact the names are a cornucopia of whatever sounds Asian definitely helps.
>>97966427>explicitly hostile to rootless adventurersI don't know, being a ronin is supposed to be damning when they start talking about them, but soon they still state that you're still a bushi, even if at the bottom of the social class, so you are still worth more than whoever is below. Plus your skills are in demand and valued anyway.
