Hit It With a Rock

Lurking Rhythmically: "I'm busy preparing for tomorrow's game of L5R, which has been on hiatus since November. I'm sending them to Winter Court, which means that for the next 3 months of game time, they will be stuck in a castle as lots of politics unfold around them."

As I understand it, L5R is an ideal RPG system for creating a myriad of situations like Vizzini and Westley vying for control by means of iocaine powder in The Princess Bride. There is an entire clan devoted to subterfuge and insidious backstabbing that is just begging to upset the balance of negotiations, trade agreements, and ceasefires. When you decapitate the undisputed emperor Hantei at dinner in a hostile takeover of the capital city, you'd best have some trusted buddies hiding in the bushes to spring out and give you some much-needed backup.

Then again, your GM could just ignore that boring espionage and political intrigue aspect altogether. You would wind up in another situation from The Princess Bride, wherein you just throw rocks at the problem until it falls down or you do. Hit it with a rock. It dead yet? No? Hit it with a rock with raises. In this latter scenario, Winter Court passes by in, literally, a sentence, so that characters can get back to hitting things with rocks again.

Of course, this is Rokugan, after all. Rocks are relatively dishonorable, so you end up using a sword or a heavy stick instead, but the theory is the same. This makes the "careful what you say" aspects of L5R seem strange and foreign to me.