GMed my first session of a new campaign last Sunday through Discord, HUGE success. Had one veteran friend, my girlfriend that is knowledgeable about RPGs but only played a couple L5R sessions before and two complete noobs, both to L5R and to RPGs in general. We didn't use video, just voice, and used both a dice bot and a music bot that can play stuff from YouTube.
We played using 4e because nothing will ever make me use specialty dice, with no house rules but a severely different setting that I traditionally use in my games. Basically, I make Rokugan more like Japan geographically and culturally, make the social castes actually usable and without slurs and make Taint more similar to the concept of "Kegare", or at least my severely limited understanding of it.
For this campaign, the players are a group of yokai hunters being trained by an old monk that was the formar patriarch of their clan. The adventure basically involved them responding to a letter from a vassal of their lord's clan, complaining about yokai annihilating caravans near the city every couple of nights. The character's sensei told them to solve that by themselves, as a test of their training and competency. He was actually following them the whole time to observe and intervene if the beast was too powerful for them, but he trusted the group to be successful.
And OH BOY were they successful! They managed to kill 8 "bakemono" and a "swamp witch" without getting hit ONCE! Also, the two melee characters, a Hida Bushi and a Hida Pragmatist, managed to kill the witch during the "surprise round" by exploding damage dice MULTIPLE times EACH! It was like 90+ damage, completely bonkers!

So in prose:
Montoyo Inigo-san: "Fire Stance? Methinks you are preparing Disappearing World Style, to hinder my attack. But you should know that I mastered the Flowing Water Strike, so your Disappearing World Style will not stop me!"
The Dead Mantis Robert-san: "I find that a pinch of Coiling Serpent Style is the right seasoning to prevent Disappearing World Style from ruining ones appetite."
Montoyo Inigo-san: "But shouldn't you expect me to expect you to use Coiling Serpent Style, and thus expect me to choose Earth Stance as a counter? Not only does that pervent Coiling Serpent, it would also be a tasteful reflection of this mountainous terrain we find ourselves in."
The Dead Mantis Robert-san: "Naturally. But Earth Stance will not save you if your opponent has mastered the new Flashing Steel Strike, which I admit is unlikely, seeing that is is a very recent technique. But I have!"
Montoyo Inigo-san: "Outstanding! But speaking of new techniques, are you familiar with the Eyes Up! shuji? Because I can tell you, I am."
The Dead Mantis Robert-san: "I have to say it is an honor to fight someone who does not only intimately know the classics, but also keeps up with recent developments. Maybe I should just go with Heartpiercing Strike. A bit generic in a duel, I admit, but classics are classic for a reason. Still, the TN of 4 gives me pause."
Montoyo Inigo-san: "As it well should. But what should also give you pause: I am not left-handed!"
The Dead Mantis Robert-san: "I do not think there is a penalty in the books for fighting with your off-hand. But anyway: What you don't know is that I am not left-handed, either! And I took the Ambidextrous Advantage, just to be sure."
Montoyo Inigo-san: "That strikes me a bit as min-maxing. You would not happen to be an adept of the Powergamer school?"
The Dead Mantis Robert-san: "Wow, dealing 2 Strife with words? Look who is in Fire Stance now."

The progression could go like this:
1) First attacker proposes to start with Disappearing World Style Kata to give the Dazed condition.
2) Countered by Flowing Water Strike Kata, which can remove Dazed before hitting.
3) Countered by Coiling Serpent Style Kata, which makes immobilized and thus prevents Flowing Water Strike, which is a Movement technique.
4) Countered by Earth Stance, which prevents Immobilized.
5) Countered by using Flashing Steel Strike Kata (from Path of Waves) instead of Disappearing World Style if the opponent is in Earth Stance, it works against Earth Stance.
6) Countered by using Eyes Up! Shuji (from Path of Waves) at the start of the Scene, to increase Vigilance.
If you do not like The Princess Bride, this could also be the imagined fight between Sherlock and Moriatty in the Movie Sherlock Holmes.

Yeah, I know it exists, I guess I meant to say, if somehow the license for ASoIaF RPG is up for grabs and FFG decides to try to get it. After all, they already have the license for a a card game.
Oh, I know it's just a game. It's just that you kind of have high hopes for something you are passionate about and then you get disappointed with the final product.
They sure had some great ideas, like decoupling Rings from Skills and the schools now have curricula for advancement, and Strife, but then I take a look at the Conflict chapter and I can't help but wonder what the **** was going on.
And kind of the same thing with the card game. The old game would take 1 hour at most, now it can take easily 90 minutes and then you can't play against multiple people either...

You are too polite to say the least.  I kind of understand the special dice from a commercial point of view but I guess it will be a hindrance for new players. It's not like L5R is a worldly know IP like Star Wars or even A Song of Ice and Fire, if FFG decides to create an RPG based on ASoIaF. So that's already something they made that might push away potential new players.
The rules, for all that is Tainted, the rules. They don't work half the time they are supposed to and in the end, it's best to avoid rolls as much as possible in this game.
AEG L5R was mostly played on a epic and heroic mood, now it's FFG L5R is a samurai drama with a rules system that thought it was supposed to be for an action game and changed its mind halfway and now is neither. And that's another stuff that can push new players away, they might have heard of L5R before and thought it was still an epic/heroic samurai game, and it's now a samurai drama game with rules that don't work half the time. It's a lot of investment for group of new players to make

So, changing the gender of Starbuck turned out poorly?

GMed my first session of a new campaign last Sunday through Discord, HUGE success. Had one veteran friend, my girlfriend that is knowledgeable about RPGs but only played a couple L5R sessions before and two complete noobs, both to L5R and to RPGs in general. We didn't use video, just voice, and used both a dice bot and a music bot that can play stuff from YouTube.
We played using 4e because nothing will ever make me use specialty dice, with no house rules but a severely different setting that I traditionally use in my games. Basically, I make Rokugan more like Japan geographically and culturally, make the social castes actually usable and without slurs and make Taint more similar to the concept of "Kegare", or at least my severely limited understanding of it.
For this campaign, the players are a group of yokai hunters being trained by an old monk that was the formar patriarch of their clan. The adventure basically involved them responding to a letter from a vassal of their lord's clan, complaining about yokai annihilating caravans near the city every couple of nights. The character's sensei told them to solve that by themselves, as a test of their training and competency. He was actually following them the whole time to observe and intervene if the beast was too powerful for them, but he trusted the group to be successful.
And OH BOY were they successful! They managed to kill 8 "bakemono" and a "swamp witch" without getting hit ONCE! Also, the two melee characters, a Hida Bushi and a Hida Pragmatist, managed to kill the witch during the "surprise round" by exploding damage dice MULTIPLE times EACH! It was like 90+ damage, completely bonkers!

Don't really care to watch videos from the guy who thinks the Sonic the Hedgehog movie is a blow against feminism or a guy who got banned from all Magic the Gathering events for harassing a woman. Don't really think "get woke get broke" is a thing either, seeing as D&D and Pathfinder/Starfinder are still the big dogs in the market after years of making efforts to be more inclusive.

Well played.

Let's be more specific: Rokugan as a setting basically ignores gender.
It's still massively racist, has an entrenched class system seventeenth century Hindu India would envy, and advocates suicide as a logical method for dealing with shame.
I feel the label "woke" is rather pushing it.
As well as being gramatically incorrect.

GMed my first session of a new campaign last Sunday through Discord, HUGE success. Had one veteran friend, my girlfriend that is knowledgeable about RPGs but only played a couple L5R sessions before and two complete noobs, both to L5R and to RPGs in general. We didn't use video, just voice, and used both a dice bot and a music bot that can play stuff from YouTube.
We played using 4e because nothing will ever make me use specialty dice, with no house rules but a severely different setting that I traditionally use in my games. Basically, I make Rokugan more like Japan geographically and culturally, make the social castes actually usable and without slurs and make Taint more similar to the concept of "Kegare", or at least my severely limited understanding of it.
For this campaign, the players are a group of yokai hunters being trained by an old monk that was the formar patriarch of their clan. The adventure basically involved them responding to a letter from a vassal of their lord's clan, complaining about yokai annihilating caravans near the city every couple of nights. The character's sensei told them to solve that by themselves, as a test of their training and competency. He was actually following them the whole time to observe and intervene if the beast was too powerful for them, but he trusted the group to be successful.
And OH BOY were they successful! They managed to kill 8 "bakemono" and a "swamp witch" without getting hit ONCE! Also, the two melee characters, a Hida Bushi and a Hida Pragmatist, managed to kill the witch during the "surprise round" by exploding damage dice MULTIPLE times EACH! It was like 90+ damage, completely bonkers!

L5R is woke.
This is by design, and it is also very in line with the current TTRPG fanbase.
I think it is a good decision.
L5R try to satisfy everybody; narrative players, woke players, crunchy players, swrpg players, old school l5r players, tactical players etc etc.

Obviously, I think it was detrimental to the game to try to please every crowds. Tactical/Mechanical players end up with a half broken system that is tedious, and Narrative/Story players end up with a unwieldy and sluggish narrative game.
It is obvious at this point that the creative force  behind L5R 5E was pulling in all kinds of directions and none was able to set their vision.

If it's stupid and it works, it ain't that stupid.
I briefly had a plan to plug an old mp3 player into an old laptop for our music engine, then realized the sound quality was terrible. Now I just have Rhythmbot and a bunch of saved YouTube links.

I watch it Korean with English subtitles. I just get too distracted by the lips not matching the words.
Haven't finished Season One yet, but I'm really enjoying it.
I think there was a mention that the son's mother was a concubine, and that the unborn son would become the heir because he would be a "legitimate" son.

I think it is only english subtitle.
My Country is much better than Kingdoms though!
I like subtiles too, something soothing about it all. Maybe because I have been watching many international movies with subtitles for the most part of my life. And I'm kind of old

IIRC both are available, but I might be wrong. I like subtitles.

Greetings from the Sands, Evil-Smelling Brother-in-Law of a Camel!
Kingdom Season 2 is on Netflix.
Happy Watching.

I'd been watching Kingdom many months ago, but I remember being hooked. The wait for a Season 2 has been way too long, but at least we know it's supposedly in the works.

Spoilers ahead, I guess.  Nothing you wouldn't learn by the end of episode 1.
   I thought I was done with zombies, but put them in Korea in the 1500's (I'm guessing?), add political plots and really amazing hats, and I am all over it!
   For real, the setup is basically a Shadowlands plot.  The king of the Joseon dynasty in Korea falls ill with smallpox.  He has an adult son, though I didn't catch if he was from the king's deceased wife or a royal consort.  In any case, she's dead, and the king now has a pretty young wife (of the conniving Cho family! Boo, hiss!), heavy with child.
   Apparently, if the king dies before the child is born, the crown prince will become the king.  If he dies after the child is born, that child will be the king, with the queen as regent.  The crown prince will be right out of the line of succession, and probably killed by the Cho, just to be sure.
   Sure enough, the king dies before the child is born (before the show even starts, actually), but the dastardly Cho have a plan. Using the resurrection plant, the king is brought back to life as a flesh-craving monster!
   Chaos, of course, ensues.
   This show is much more zombie-apocalypse than I would go for, but that basic scenario just begs to be played out on a smaller scale.

Prestidigitation is a cantrip that lasts only a short time, a few minutes I believe but perhaps there is an edition somewhere that allows it to last up to an hour. The point is, it isn't a permanent alteration of the object. Furthermore, prestidigitation is generally specified to work only on a single sense. This doesn't present any more opportunity to "destroy the economy" than someone printing counterfeit coins or the fact that a thief could sneak around and swipe everyone's gold pouch and the coins from vender's tills.
The solution to that problem, one that every realistic economy and realistic merchant would already be taking with or without magic in the world, is for the kingdom to simply mint its coins with noticeably different sizes and weights. So the Wizard could use his prestidigitation to make the coin look like a different sort of coin, but the very moment that coin is in the merchant's hand they will notice that it feels like it is a different size than it is supposed to, and once it is dropped on the scale the wizard's whole scheme will be dead.
The magic daggers loophole is also a result of you not comprehending basic things. You seem so certain that if a thing exists in the world, then it is infinite and forget and details or consequences. It is not an assumption that you are a bad storyteller, this is the third time you have demonstrate it.
Magic daggers require time, effort and money to create. Whatever one can sell that first magic dagger for, there are only so many people in the world who have any actual use for a magic dagger. It is only because you imagined your customer base to be infinite and that the supplies to make them were infinite and that they would always sell for a set, stated price that you came to the conclusion that it is a loophole to make infinite money.
It is because you ignore the most basic, fundamental details of a functioning fictional world that you end up in this predicament. Imagine if you were an individual trying to sell the greatest Steak Knives in the world, diamond-edged, never need to be sharpened, can cut cleanly through all food. The perfect kitchen knives and you can buy now for only $2000!! No scam, no tricks, no misdirection. These truly are the greatest kitchen knives in the world, and everyone has a kitchen and uses knives-- so that means every last person on the planet would buy them and give you $2000, right?... Why, you should instantly have $15 trillion dollars overnight!!
Except... no. No, you would not. Because not everyone even has a spare $2000, much less is willing to pay that much for whatever marginal advantage that would give over the standard knives they have that they didn't pay even $20 for.
And a magic dagger in the Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder world is worth all that much less.
Who exactly is going to be your customer for that? The level 1 adventurers/mercenaries/soldiers are going to have less than 100 spare gold, and most of them aren't even specialized in using daggers-- so they don't want them. To anyone who is level 5 or up? Well, they are in the same position as your own party and to them a +1 dagger is trash.
Maybe some sort of mage guild can pull the magic out of it and use it for something more useful, but it is going to be worth less to them than what you spent making it.
And no merchant is going to buy dozens of them off you when they know that they can't turn around and sell those things at a higher price to someone else.
 
The end result of you producing endless +1 magic daggers is simply going to be that the value of a +1 magic dagger is going to completely collapse to the lowest price point you are willing to sell the things at and you aren't going to be selling all unless you are willing to take a major loss on every one you sell. And, at the same time, the ingredients you need to make the things are just going to keep increasing and increasing as you have bought all of it in the area.
If this is an ongoing world, then maybe the next character you create will have the option to buy a regular dagger for 4 GP or a magic +1 dagger for 8 GP and everyone can tell them the story of how some idiot wizard after selling a single magic dagger at a high price decided to flood the market with thousands in a get-rich-quick scheme and went bankrupt having to sell the things copper pieces on the gold just to get rid of them and now everyone in town has one of the things and use it for mundane tasks. And, you know what? Chances are that even if one has the option of buying a magic dagger for less than the price of a long sword, they will still elect to buy the long sword.
And, no, it doesn't matter that the rulebook says that a magic +1 dagger sells for XYZ-- that was the going price before you came and disrupted the normal flow of business. The rulebook also said the population of this town was ABC, but after you blew up a quarter of it last week, that number is no longer accurate either.
 
Seriously, dude, this is all the more evidence that details do not "get in the way of a good story", but that you only have a good story if you keep the details in mind and if you just ignore all logical consistency for your world, then you end up doing really stupid things that break your fictional reality entirely. All loopholes will disappear once you apply just a bit of intelligence and common sense to the thing and keep in mind that just because things exist in the world, that doesn't mean they are infinite.
 
 
And here is the thing... it was your example and your complaint, when trying to use the strawman that I was asking for exact number, amounted to "Well, if we at all keep track of where a Clan's troops are, then it will get in my way of having them have infinite troops to fight full strength on infinite fronts and completely ignore the fact that they might be short on resources."
You were the one who set up your own scenario, came up with the elements and you completely missed the fact that in your own described scenario that you were having the clan at war on two fronts and that might be deeply pertinent to the story if you decide to have them now fighting on a third front. That you flat out said that the way you would tell the story is just to invent a sizable army out of thin air so that they would be putting up a serious fight on this third border and could completely ignore everything else that was going on in the world.
I seriously doubt that you would have even realized that within this scenario you invented, that it was incredibly pertinent to the story that the Phoenix clan would be completely unprepared for any sort of battle and not be able to muster up the troops to fight.
 
You know that that reminds me of? Years ago, there was this show called "Star Trek: Voyager". In this show, there was a starship that was lost far, far away from all other humans and bases and, generally, supplies. They were supposed to be out there for a 1 month mission and ended up on the other side of the galaxy. And you know what? Start of every episode, everything was reset to status quo. In any given episode, the ship could be damaged, have parts of it blown off... perfectly pristine at the beginning of the next episode. They never ran out of any critical supply. They made a half-hearted attempt to say that they had limited number of their most common weapon left, put an actual number on it-- and ignored it, they fired out 3x as many by the end of the show without ever getting more. They had these little mini-ships that they could send out on missions called "shuttlecraft". They were maybe about 1/20th the size of the entire ship. The writers of the show were such lazy hacks that every single time they wanted there to be trouble, they resorted to the exact same trick-- they had one of these mini-ships destroyed or otherwise lost. And they went through more than 20 of the things during the course of the show. And they started off with a stated set number of crew members and it is possible they lost as nearly as many nameless extras from that crew as they had crew in total, but never was there any noticeable depreciation in the number of people onboard.
The result was that the entire premise of the show completely fell flat. It never felt like they were cut-off on the other side of the galaxy, in desperate straits.. because the writers refused to have any functional continuity, refused to keep track of the details, failed to have any consequences to any actions that would disrupt starting next week off with a pristine ship and everything back to status quo. And it sucked.
 
And in the same way, you are asserting that you should ignore all factors in the world and just charge ahead with the same default answer to everything, long after it stops making any sense whatsoever. Never any consequences, never any story elements interacting with each other, everything happening in a vaccuum and neatly returning to the status quo.
You don't need to know how many people exactly there are in the empire, but it is good to know roughly how many are around. And if resources are limited, then you can't have the people in your story wasteful with those resources and have there always be more and no consequences for having been wasteful. If the people in your story are doing A, then you can't have the same individuals also doing B. If you stated that someone was in one location that you previously stated was 1 months journey from a second location, you cannot have them appear in the second location the next day with no explanation for how that happened.
And just because there happens to be something magical in your world, that doesn't mean that a mundane person can drop a mundane spoon to the floor and have it turn into a frog without any explanation and no one batting an eye unless it has been clearly specified that this is somehow part of how magic in this world functions. In fact, the more you have fantastical elements in your world, the more grounded you need to make the non-fantastical parts of it if you want to tell any story with any emotional weight at all. You cannot tell a Tale of Ice & Fire story while allowing your world to follow loose Adventure Time rules.
 
Is it possible to put too much detail in the world? Sure, but only once the only way to convey those details is to make massive lists or try to name or count every last individual, neither of which I at all even implied was necessary. But, on the other hand, you have demonstrated that every problem you encounter in storytelling is directly because you neglect to keep in mind the details and basic common sense in your stories, thus entirely missing the storytelling opportunities when they arise. So are so far on the "nothing matters, its all wonderland and everything is status quo all the time and there are infinite everything!!"-- that as far as you need be concerned, the more detail you get the better.

Actually, that is the core of the problem right there.
"I want to steal this thing from Japanese samurai culture"
"But the very social climate things that even allowed that to be a thing don't exist in your world."
"I'll just say they work the same way."
..... and that is the face-palm moment.
The world needs to be consistent, at least the social setting parts of it if the social setting parts of it are the parts players are allowed to interact with. None of what I wrote about in my long post is due to "magic" and therefore kami cannot be used an an explanation. If you want to explain away weird weather patterns or land formations or what have you... by all means.
This is about the flesh-and-blood human element in the setting.
Yeah, FFG has only printed 1 Ronin card so far, it was an unnamed and the stories haven't started heavily relying on putting in Ronin characters yet. They haven't put "Ronin Families" yet either, thus-- a year in and this isn't a problem.
But, they have copied the old setting so much that it is a potential future problem. And it was most definitely a problem in the original version of the setting, everything from Toturi leading a 2000 man strong ronin army to making a minor clan out of every animal imaginable.
So if FFG is already starting to flirt with the concept of Minor Clans in the setting beyond the Mantis, it is worth thinking about these things.
 
How long before before a story takes place in City of the Rich Frog and they start writing about the oxymoronic "Ronin Family that governs the city". Even within Rokugan, it is very, very important that the term "Ronin" means "homeless and not employed by the imperial system" and not simply "neutral to the 7 Great clans", because if the guys who are governing the city for the Emperor by his command are "ronin" by any definition of the term, the term itself entirely loses all meaning and impact.
In fact, because those guys have governorship of a city, they probably deserve the title of "minor clan" as much as I am sure no one would take the "Frog Clan" seriously. Meanwhile, the "Tortoise Clan" which doesn't really have its own lands and simply lives in and around the capital ought to simply be an "Imperial Vassal Family" since they don't have governorship over any lands.
The best solution is not "magic" or "kami", but simply noting that there actually is more social mobility in the setting than initially stated, and most of that mobility happens when one of the Minor Clans or Vassal Families gets created, which is only when something remarkable happens, and that the lowest ranking samurai do marry commoners into their families. That there is sort of a gray area there where bleed-over occurs.
And it allowed Vassal Families to remain part of the setting, just requires a slight reinterpretation of the origin of a number of them and a bit of the execution.
So, for example, someone could be from the Endo family, which might mean something to a Crab. And they certainly would not have been started by "Kaiu Endo", but rather the overseer for the crew of stonemasons who built a castle for the Hiruma would have been named simply "Endo" and then he and his crew would have been elevated to vassals of the Crab Clan called the "Endo family".
But, if they meet a Lion, they would still initially introduce themselves as a member of the Endo family, but expecting that any but those most versed with the structure of the Crab Clan wouldn't know what that was. They would never introduce themselves as  member of the Hiruma, but they might wear a Hiruma mon because they are servants of the Hiruma. They would introduce themselves as vassals of the Hiruma perhaps, in which case the Lion would understand that they are worthy of a bit more respect than an Ashigaru or a Ronin, but not as much as a proper Hiruma. In fact, depending on just how proud and pompous the Lion was, he might not even consider the Endo a proper samurai at all, but just a Crab favored Ashigaru group. (But  that is still above Ronin, because someone at least likes them and has been impressed by their abilities.)
 
This would help make the setting not only more consistent, but potentially much richer and deeper.
Because there were good ideas there, but huge plotholes left because so many different hands got ahold of the elements and decide to use the elements without quite understanding the meanings of the words they were using or maybe didn't come up with the best ways to describe their ideas. And then every time someone came up with a new idea, whether it be "Minor Clans" or "Ronin Families" or "Vassal Families", they applied the label to everything in sight, including things that probably shouldn't have had that label.

@Tabris2k Internal consistency is not too much to ask. It helps a lot with suspension of disbelief. Seeing problems where none exist, though...

There has always been something that has bugged me about the setting, something that seems to have carried over from AEG to FFG. It is a logical inconsistency between writing the empire as an eternally stable place, yet also wanting to take from the real life Japanese feudal society elements that arose purely because of the chaotic state of affairs.
The first issue is Ronin.
Now, what is a Ronin by definition? It is a samurai who has no master. During the Sengoku period, it is likely we would apply it to someone who somehow got their hands on a serious weapon (bow, spear, sword, etc.) and armor, but doesn't work for any particular Warlord and maybe instead acts as a mercenary, hiring themselves out to whomever is willing to pay them. Now, this would arise in a number of ways
1) They did previously work for a Daimyo, but their side lost a war, the Daimyo was killed or deposed and the victorious army had no interest in hiring them.
2) Their Daimyo ran out of rice to pay them with, either through mismanagement or through famine or through enemy action. Regardless, they couldn't afford to continue to pay all their soldiers and had to let some go.
3) The person was a peasant who got ahold of the armor and weapons through some means and simply gave themself a new name. Yes, this was perfectly fine during the Sengoku period, it wasn't even unusual. One could be a farmer who decided to go follow a Warlord around and rise from being the guy who carried his shoes to one of his top generals to inheriting his entire empire should he die without heirs. The class restriction didn't exist until the Edo period.
4) They were a complete embarrassment and failure, not to the point of getting executed (and some of these notable samurai would behead their own family over nothing more than simply avoiding future inheritance disputes, yes-- even killing children if they figured the child might just grow up to want revenge), but instead would exile them and risk them working for an enemy down the line.
Now, by the later Edo period when peasant family lines were required to eternally be peasant family lines and soldier family lines were required to eternally be soldier family lines and all the wars of Daimyo trying to wipe each other out were brought to a close, it was only #2 and#4 that were happening. In fact, it wasn't even until this period that the concept of Ronin really began to solidify, because now-- if one was born a samurai, they couldn't just be a farmer or hunter or craftsman or trader like they could during the Sengoku period. Everyone's role in society was decided by birth, and if your job was to be a soldier and yet there was no one willing to pay you to be a solider, you were doomed to slow starvation. You could sell off your gear, maybe everything but your sword, and that might give you enough to last you a while.. but pretty much you were just doomed. You certainly couldn't afford to get married and have children and such-- you would be condemning any male children in particular to death unless you could get them adopted.
And that whole "they would keep their sword last"-- yeah, that is where the whole misconception of holy reverence for swords that is so fundamental in Rokugan came from. It wasn't that the swords were the most valuable piece of property or the greatest status symbol-- that would have been the horse. And, yes, every worthwhile samurai had a horse and knew how to ride it, it wasn't exclusive to some group of half-Mongollian outsiders who somehow all have one. The thing is, the horse also cost the most to keep, so that would often be the first thing to be sold off when a samurai landed on hard luck. And then would go the armor and all the actual serious war weapons because they were too much trouble to transport around, plus there were no more wars. So, in the end, all they had was their cheap, easily transported sidearm-- their katana. And that's why it became the symbol of "my family used to be samurai".
 
Now, Rokugan-- the land is far too stable. No Great Clan (which is all that was established during the time when a random peasant could become part of the samurai class) has ever been destroyed or gone bankrupt. No original clan has ever disappeared, period. So no ronin would ever have been created through the most common methods. Also, we are to believe that the Edo period restrictions on social class are not only currently in place, but always have been-- so the idea that these "Ronin" are just simple peasants who obtained weapons and decided to go parading around as samurai in hopes someone would hire them... that seems unlikely given that there are only 30 or so legitimate names in the empire, it is extraordinarily unlikely that people are being adopted into clans.
That means that the only possible source for Ronin would be people being monumental screw ups that get exiled, but somehow don't screw up enough to get executed. But this doesn't seem likely to happen very frequently-- afterall, any given clan has only about 4 families, so exiling your own family members doesn't seem like it is going to happen often enough for their to be a pool of thousands of ronin. Especially given that within Rokugan, there doesn't seem to be any method through which these ronin would feed themselves since there aren't a ton of minor factions or wealthy merchants for which they could do mercenary work.
 
Things get even more complicated given how the term "Ronin" has been abused in the setting and applied to things that are absolutely not in any way ronin. I am talking about the "Ronin Families"-- a pure load of nonsense. If the Emperor or a vassal of the Emperor says "I need a neutral party to oversee this city, so I am promoting you merchants to governor", then one is absolutely NOT a "Ronin". They have been assigned an actual governorship of an actual place, that would give them a more legitimate claim to the concept of "Minor Clan" than quite a lot of "Minor Clans" do. But, really, what they would be in such a case would be Imperial vassals. They absolutely would not be categorized with people who got exiled from one of the Great Clans and now have no official duty or job or legitimate method through which they could feed themselves. The same goes if you are so good at crafting blades that your family is granted a promotion and made the official Imperial smiths or if you saved the Emperor's child and are now made the official watchmen of a district of the Imperial City. Those are all legitimate stations for which one is getting paid through legitimate means by legitimate sources in the empire. In fact, they are all perfect examples of exactly what a Vassal really is and not the wonky way in which it was misused later. They aren't part of your family, but they work as servants answering to your family. Those are NOT "Ronin". And it makes no sense whatsoever for Rokugani society to refer to them as such. It is like calling the live-in nanny, maid and butler of the mayor "homeless people" because they nor their parents own or rent the house that they live in. "Ronin" does not mean "neutral", it means "unemployed" and given that it's use is still derogatory within Rokugan, it cannot have been redefined to be "neutral to the Great Clans, employed directly by the Imperials."
 
But what these do represent, however, is people who were previously "peasants" now being elevated to the level of "samurai". And we are given to understand that the Emperor has the option to do this. Which isn't too unusual, because as Rokugan was first forming, every family that doesn't carry a kami's name (and some of them that do) never did have the blood of one of the Kami. They were just originally folk like any other folk who did some favors for Kami and thus got named as special. And then that person's whole tribe, or literally everyone they felt like adding to their organization, became part of their family regardless of whether they were actually related or not. At that point there was no distinction between "peasant" and "samurai", so there was no issue. The "samurai", the "nobility" ended up being whomever got adopted into one of these families by the time the empire fully formed and the class mobility restrictions were put into place. So that's why and how the initial families got to be so very large. In fact, even beyond those carrying a Kami's name, some of the families in the empire are absolutely not at all related to the person whose name they carry because that person died without having any children.
But what about after the restriction gets put in place?
Okay, so if the Emperor decides that he likes the sword that was made for him so much that the guy who made it and all of his children and all of his apprentices and maybe anyone else he decides to include are now the "Tsi family", or the guy who saved his son and his 100 underlings and all their wives and children are now the "Yotsu" family, or that group of merchants who just delivered a big bribe to him to buy governorship of that city and all of their underlings and wives and children are now the "Kaeru" family. That is all good and fine, 6/7ths, if not more, of Rokugan are peasants. If a bunch of peasants are offered the ability to raise their social rank, naturally they would be all for it. Of course, even in these cases, the final family isn't really going to number more than a few dozen, maybe a couple hundred in the case of Yotsu.
But... what happens when the Emperor decides to award a new family name to someone who is already a samurai? "Hey, Komori! You are now the Bat Clan!" What exactly happens in a case like this? It seems like these samurai often wouldn't have anyone under them. There is no good reason their relatives would be at all willing to stop being "Phoenix Clan" and start being "Bat Clan", so it isn't like he is going to be recruiting all his brothers and cousins and uncles to his new Clan. But like the very next week, there are thousands of them and they have a fully fleshed-out, unique school that is just as powerful as any Great Clan school.
This can't be adopting a bunch of Ronin because, as I explained above, Ronin are already massively overrepresented in the setting because the very circumstances that created 99% of the Ronin that ever existed in Japan absolutely do not exist in Rokugan given that the setting insisted that there were only 7 clans and for 1000 years there were only ever 7 clans and that number never fluctuated and no daimyo ever rose or fell. So if someone is granted a new unique family name by the emperor, are they then allowed to promote all their favorite ashigaru and servants and merchants to the rank of nobility by adopting them all? Is there a particular grace period in which they are allowed to do that or can they just do that going forward?...
Oh, as an aside-- how did this play out in real Japan? Well-- funny thing that-- people were free to just rename themselves whenever they wanted. They could just give themselves whatever new name they felt like, whenever they felt like doing so. In fact, often the same individuals would go by several names during the course of their lives. Now-- if one's relatives were particularly powerful or famous, it is very likely that one wouldn't particularly want to change their name. Also, if one had accomplished a number of impressive feats or participated in important events under one name, they might not want to change it again. However, if one was on the outs with one's family or one's family were peasants or one had really screwed up under their old name or their family had mostly been killed or disgraced or deposed... yeah, one could just go by a new name for no reason other than they just felt like doing so. All they needed to do was just start introducing themselves by and using the new name. Also, if you were the child or possibly other relative to someone with great status who changed their name, you generally went along with it and changed your name too.
So new family names were being made up all the time. There were even cases where two entirely unrelated groups reached considerable fame using the same name, possibly entirely by accident and sometimes with the later simply showing reverence to the former. And there were times when two people would go to war simply because they had both picked the same name and needed to fight to decide who was more deserving of it.
That within Rokugan either the Emperor (or one who speaks on his behalf) or one of the Daimyo has to be the one to grant the family name kind of cleans up this whole system.
And, if a newly named family by the Emperor, a "minor clan" is allowed to just elevate everyone they want from the lower society ranks to being part of their family, why would this be a right granted exclusively to Minor Clan samurai and forbidden to Great Clan samurai? Surely if a minor clan can inflate its ranks by just granting samurai status to whomever they want, then the Great Clans would certainly want the right to do the same, particularly if they lose a lot of members to warfare or tragedy.
In fact, this would allow continuation of the use of "vassal families". Only the previous use of the term was wildly inappropriate. Somehow most of the origins of "vassal family" were that someone within one of the typical Great Clan families accomplished some great feat or specialized in something interesting, so they were rewarded... by demotion for them and all their relatives. Because vassal means "servant", and this isn't some Japanese word that you can just bend over and redefine however you like because you haven't any respect for the language and it was a gray area to begin with. If they were a vassal, they work for you and are going to be of lower status than your own family. Vassals within Great Clans would almost certainly be Ashigaru or merchants or craftsman or others who showed great service and sacrifice and were thus honored by being made quasi-samurai. It could also be exiles from other clans who ended up siding with them or ronin who showed great service and thus were given a place in the clan, but not as full members.
While this would solve the issue, it creates another pretty big problem-- no longer does the story of Taka and his Monkey Clan make the least bit of sense. The stories were written to imply that him simply obtaining weapons and armor and passing himself off as a samurai was somehow extraordinarily rare, if not a unique circumstance. But examination of the setting indicates that probably quite a lot of the ronin are just ashigaru and the only explanation for how every time a new family gets named, they are immediately as numerous as the fleas on a dogs back even though it was only 1 guy who was granted the name. And even a peasant rising up to become a minor clan wouldn't necessarily be a unique incident at all. (Is there any good indication that the Boar clan wasn't exactly that? Since when do samurai engage in mining activities or fail for a generation to report into their superiors?!)
 
What this would mean is that as far as samurai ranks go, it would look more like this than how it has been presented before.
10. The Emperor - Obviously just the Hantei line, and even then it is only 1 person from each generation. The Emperor usually takes a consort, so if one can marry the Emperor, their child can hold this role.
9. Emperor's Immediate Family/Highest Imperial Offices - This is the rank for the Champions and Shogun (if that is still a thing) as well as the Empress. They are basically free to do whatever they want until the Emperor tells them otherwise. One pretty much needs to do something pretty amazing to end up here (except the prince/princess who is born into it) and even then, it is unlikely anyone who isn't a top Great Clan or Imperial member is even going to be given the opportunity to try.
8. Great Clan Leaders & Imperial Family Elite - Again, this is going to be passed down through the most pure bloodlines and one can't really aspire to this. You can marry them if you are no more than a couple stations down, but you aren't going to achieve this rank through marriage.
7. Great Clan with Imperial Offices or Governorship  & Typical Imperial Family members - These guys have high station and important roles in the functioning of the empire. It is possible for regular samurai to achieve this rank through hard work/promotion.
6. Minor Clan Leaders - They have actual land governorship, but small ones and aren't generally part of the main political workings. This would be granted to someone who doesn't have strong ties to any clan or sets themselves up somewhere no one else wants to lay claim to. Almost certainly going to come from someone who is already a samurai, or at least be able to claim they are.
5. Typical Great Clan Samurai & Low Rank Imperials - These are the ones who don't have any land claims, beyond maybe their own households, but work for those who do. This would be seen as the "average" samurai rank and one still kind of needs to be born into this rank to hold it. This is what people are typically playing when they make an RPG character and such. Someone from the next few lower stations could marry in.
4. Imperial Vassal Families - These would be peasants who did particularly great work for the Emperor or someone close to him. It can be regularly acknowledged that they were peasants or merchants or craftsmen before they got a promotion and a name. They have no land claims, but would have a specific job that they do mainly for the Imperials, but possibly for high ranking Great Clan samurai-- they just aren't tied to any clan in particular. A peasant can be promoted to this rank, but only if they somehow both encounter and do a great deed for the Emperor and his immediate family or the Empire as a whole-- something that happens less than once a century. Also, they would probably marry peasants into these families and try to marry their own children out of them. 
4. Low Rank Great Clan Samurai & Minor Clan Samurai - No land ranks, no real influence. They are probably kept really busy with mundane tasks, even doing things that would be considered "below" most samurai station. When a Minor Clan very first forms, it is possible non-samurai can become Minor Clan samurai, but they will need to have had a strong relationship with a hero who was granted his own Minor Clan. It might also be possible for non-samurai to marry into these ranks as no one from higher ranks will want to marry down into this rank.
3. Great Clan Vassal Families - They were granted their family name for a Great Clan and were either ronin or non-samurai before then. No land claim, can hardly even expect acknowledgement outside of their own clan. They likely have some narrow duty for their clan and get treated marginally better than standard ashigaru. This is going to be a peasant so exceeding expected duty it likely only happens once a century.  It is likely that they just marry or adopt peasants at this point as no one would marry down into these families.
2. Minor Clan Vassal Families - Same as Great Clan vassals above, but their deeds were for some Minor Clan leader. An average rank samurai is likely not going to treat them any better than a ronin or ashigaru. This is likely only going to happen if someone shows great service well after the Minor Clan establishes itself, because otherwise why wouldn't they just marry the person into their clan as a full member? It is likely that they just marry or adopt peasants at this point as no one would marry down into these families.
1. Ronin - Former samurai who did something so shameful that they were exiled or were from a Minor Clan that got wiped out yet survived it or, most likely, just Ashigaru with weapons who are claiming some heritage they probably don't have. They are going to serve as mercenaries, probably mostly for merchants unless a clan is really pressed for troops. Plenty others are just going to become bandits. But if Rokugan is functioning as well as it claims to be, anyone stuck in this purgatory is likely going to starve to death.
 
This would mean that rather than the edo era hard divisions between social classes, social advancement is possible, mostly through military service. And for Rokugan to have lasted so long, this would almost certainly have to be the case. The real life government that imposed the social structure that Rokugan intended to emulate rotted away within 200 years with the samurai having almost nothing left but the clothes on their back and their side-arm and the merchants and entertainers effectively running the society despite being the "lowest" social tier.
Of course, social mobility even under this system would still be unusual. Unless someone accomplishes something pretty historic and way beyond their station in life, they themselves are not going to advance. However, they could marry their children off to higher ranks generation by generation. So social ladder climbing would still be possible, it would just generally be a generational thing where you first marry into the grayish tier of the vassal families and then try to marry up to being a full fledged member.

Amen. Just take a look at the PC and NPC name list of my current, just barely initiated, campaign:

 
 

Amen. Just take a look at the PC and NPC name list of my current, just barely initiated, campaign: