The Moderator Off-Topic Good Example Blues

[daidoji_gisei]

Some days I just hate having to model appropriate behavior.

There's a discussion going on in the story forum about the Shadowlands, and of course Bearers of Jade came up. And at a certain point I was moved to post my opinion on BoJ, which can be summed up as, it had some really neat bits but it left me wondering why the Empire hadn't fallen to the Shadowlands years ago. In reply a couple of people posted, "oh, you're wrong because of X, Y and Z". You know what? I know about X, Y and Z. I'm on the effing Story Team, which does take a certain familiarity with the setting. I still hold my opinion on BoJ. Astonishing, I agree, for a woman to maintain an opinion after being contradicted, but there you have it.

I cannot, however, say any of this in the thread, because that would take the thread off-topic. Deliberately derailing threads is a bad thing, and as I am a moderator I need to avoid bad things. Some days this is. Really. Annoying.

Comments

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

I love Bearers of Jade to pieces, but I have to admit that that bag of rice that is really oni-lets or whatever all by itself makes me wonder why the empire isn't in smoldering ruins. It strikes me as a much better resource for non-canon roleplaying and fanfic than for the current storyline.

[daidoji-gisei.livejournal.com]

The bag of rice: Exactly. Exactly. What good is your wall now, O Crab? And BoJ is full of things like that.

For the current storyline, we treat it as what it it presents itself as: it is a book of stories that the Rokugani tell about the Shadowlands. Some of it may be factual (as stories may be factual) and some of it is sheer imagination. Which is which is left to the GMs discretion. ;-)

[helen-keeble.livejournal.com]

I love BoJ with a deep and undying passion, but even I must admit that there is a certain thematic clash between a sourcebook that presents an enemy as essentially unbeatable and a CCG setting that requires the enemy to be roundly trounced every couple of years. :-)

In my RPG games, I always used the (secret from the players) underlying idea that Fu Leng was using the Wall - and indeed the whole Crab Clan - as a very large, very visible _distraction_ from his real plan to corrupt the Empire. If the Wall actually worked, why would we need tsukai-sagasu and Inquisitors..?

(this only works in a certain sort of game, of course - I like to run metaphysical conspiracies rather than purely human-driven court or battlefield settings)

[d-silverblade.livejournal.com]

Ahem.

The Crane Committee for Polite discourse would like to ammend the above to: "a book of stories that the (proper) Rokugani DON'T tell about the Shadowlands." (It being understood that most Crab would not know proper if it came at them with six arms and slavering fangs, in a pitch black room).

Otherwise, though, that's probably the sanest interpretation of BoJ that there may be. It allows people who want to bring part of it into the game to do exactly that (because, if there's a story, perhaps there's a grain of truth to it somewhere...), and it allows people who want to ignore it, including the story team, to not bring them up, because, well, it's a story, and even if there really is an Onilet bag of rice somewhere, it's obviously very, very safely lost and all that remains is stories. And lost it can remain.

[ironhand.livejournal.com]

Besides, said bag of rice was sadly boiled too long by an inept Crab Master Chef in the jade water.

Tragic, really. Could have been the best damn rice ever tasted, and now we'll never know...

[the-bumper-car.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, I lost my head in that thread. But I blame the goddamn rice-oni!