I get what you are saying, but I liked the big name NPCs. Villanova had us scared. Posen impressed us a lot. Elaine is central to all things Avalonian. By all means chuck these NPCs out in your campaigns, but I think a lot of people would miss them if they were gone. 

I like using the given NPCs myself. They make for good inspiration for other ones. And 7th Sea without the Vodacce princes or the Vendel League is just not 7th Sea for me. They're my favorite nations with my favorite NPCs.

Something I noticed with the QS was that some of the sample PCs fell into the category that I would normally have expected to be a metaplot NPC: Prince Alexsy, heir to the Sarmatian Commonwealth; his Fiancée, daughter of one of the Vodacce Princes etc.  I wonder whether PCs are going to be expected to be higher-powered in this edition.

To quote the Kickstarter:

"You don’t start off digging through old dungeons hoping to find a copper piece or two. No! You are trusted knight, a loyal bodyguard, or even… an adventuring queen herself."

So playing high ranking PCs is to be encouraged!

To a certain extent I agree with you because there were so many GMNPC characters with the potential to overshadow PCs. Many of them were famous heroes so they had the danger of making players seem unimportant in comparison. It was really up to the GM to try to manage this aspect of the game.

Overall, though, I'd rather have more characters and just cut some of them out than have fewer GMNPCs.

Also, a lot of backers pledged at a level that allows them to include characters in the sourcebooks. With this in mind, I think it is highly unlikely that 7th Sea 2e will have less GMNPCs than the previous version of the game.

The nice part about having these characters is when you do have one arrive, Players notice it. When a Villanova or Verdugo walk I'm the room, your players know stuff just got more dangerous for them. Yes, there is the danger of overuse leading to apathy as well as long shadows. But a good GM can use those shadows to let the players work out of the spotlight at a grand ball or set themselves up with a good Ally for later. The trick is to let them be fluid in terms of your campaign and use the rest as background news from areas you are not involved in. My players manipulated the Freiburg campaign to drastically change canon and that's great. But they also almost abandoned the plotline to chase rumors drifting out of Montaigne when the revolt happened because of their ties to established NPCs there. If you don't need the NPCs, that's great but grabbing one in a pinch certainly is a time saver too.

Problem is you can't do a game of international politics and court intrigue without various "movers and shakers" on the field.  So as far as I'm concerned, tons of cool NPCs aren't a problem.  Where things become dangerously "metaplot"-wise is when the timeline moves forwards and those characters are changing the world on their own without the PCs' impact.  That's why I'm not a fan of gamelines having moving time frames.  Just erichen the setting's starting "now" and its history to draw on, but let the events at individual tables alter the world rather than a moving timeline do the altering, because that's either going to railroad games, OR make future books less useful to games that weren't railroaded by the metaplot.

Yeah, I remember having to work out "OK, we already did Cabora, but now the meta-plot did something else with it at a different time, so from here out we need to look at the stuff in the new books and see what fits, what we can make fit, and what we have to toss out." :-(

I like the way Exalted handled it (since IIRC the World(s) of Darkness were burned by meta-plot issues, too). They laid the groundwork, left some very important elements open (who is the Scarlet Empress, really, and what really happened to her?), and then in Return of the Scarlet Empress they did a whole book of "Here are some ways you can advance this one big plot element, but none of them are canon."

I like meta-plot as a guideline.  I don't see it as invalidating PC's, as so much of "this is what the world looks like WITHOUT PC interference".  So, the world isn't static in one spot, but actualy has a timeline that a GM can use.  Then PC's can change it based on actions, such as, perhaps they STOP the Montaign Revolution, or they finally Drive out the Occuptaion.  Perhaps they learn of the Montaingne invasion of Ussura before it happens, and alert Matushka... or gather resources together to Hire Pirates to attack the army ships and sink them before they arrive.  

One game we were playing, actually took place almost entierly in the Midnight Arcipalago, and we were sailing West.... about the same time Cordoba was going to raise, meaning we weren't going to get stopped by that barrier.  The GM was coming up with new things for the New World we were going to encounter, when the group broke up.... but without the Meta-Plot, and keeping the world static, while he COULD have ignored the barrier and did that anyway, it doesn't have the same effect as timelines lining up, and it happening 'by chance' so that we were one of the first to discover that the path west was now open.  It was also going to lead us to Cathay (where my character was from), and my FWJ of Betrothal that my character knew NOTHING about (since he had been away from home for almost 2 years at that point).  Was lining up to be epic.

So I liked 7th Sea for the fact that it DOES have people that are out in the world, doing good and evil.  The PC's aren't the ONLY ones that shake up the world, but just some of many.  Finding like minded people, and foiling evil ones, stopping the evil from spreading, THOSE are things I enjoy most about 7th sea (even played a Villian game once, was kinda fun :P )  But what drew me to want to play L5R so much WAS that it had a meta-plot, and it wasn't just a small group of people that arbitraly decided where it goes, but was a community thing of sorts (card game.).  I never been part of the RPGA or the PFS, so I have no idea how much influence 'sanctioned games' really have on the lore persay, if any.  But worlds need to move and evolve as time goes on.  

These last several posts really hit the mark on how to use metaplot. The GM needs to ignore anything published that conflicts with his game in terms of what the players have changed. Then, the GM needs to embrace the changes outside the player's radius of control. Sometimes these changes help the players in ways like dropping a barrier. Sometimes they hinder the group by replacing a ruler that supported them. (And keep in mind, the GM decides how big that radius is. If keeping a ruler or barrier in place helps your plot, it stays ). Metaplot is just a shortcut for GMs that don't want to spend time building those details.

My husband just mentioned one of the worst meta-plot screws he remembers: Horizon: Stronghold of Hope for Mage: The Ascension.

In this $15 (at the time) book, a whole sub-realm was laid out, where the mages had gotten a clue and set up a place where they didn't have to worry about Sleepers.

Four years later, they released an official novel for Mage Revised that blew up Horizon. So, if you were trying to follow the meta-plot, there went an entire sourcebook.

We're both glad game companies, and the gaming community, doesn't seem interested in Big Official Meta-Plots anymore.

In the end, I don't think 7th Sea is possible without at least a few high-power, metaplot style NPCs, mostly because these characters explain how things became as they are and indicate the possible future absent PC intervention. It is important that what made 7th Sea so rich and vivid a world is partially the number of pieces already in play. The clockwork of the political setting was, for the most part, settled, which in turn allowed the players to understand and influence events without having to conquor kingdoms. 

Plus, every so often, you get that one player that wants to use "Come Hither" on every major NPC on the planet and has the stats to make a go of it. Wait, that was my PC. And the original goal was to end the Castillian invasion by seducing ALL of Leon's daughters to argue for a return of the nation. Plus everybody loves a good villian so why not load the field.

I kinda think that depends when in L5Rs history you were looking. There were a lot fo currenty active cahracters during teh 1st Edition Clan War timeline. The Seven Thunders were already decided - though could of course be miodified for your game - and all the daimyo were well-developed and their plans and schemes well documented for the GM to work with, or not, as fitted their campaign.

I personally like it when a game gives me a nice stable of current NPCs who are active in the world to use. If I like the character and their palce in the metaplot I can include them, but if not, I also have the option to change or repalce them whilst also knowing how their removal from the setting will affect the awider metaplot ebcause scheme X or plan Y won't happen as dictated by the metaplot.

And of course there's the old adage that if you stat it, some players will want to try to kill it.

So if you don't want the PCs to try to kill someone/something, don't give them/it stats. :-)

Stats on NPCs are a sometimes thing. Leader of the swordsman's Guild? That needs stats because the players deserve to know they had a fair fight. (Overmatched, but fair). The O'Bannon... Better without them. His supernatural aspect should define him as more or less unkillable outside of very specific circumstances. As a GM, you can always decide to let the players do in an NPC if it suits you and no player will object. But prevent them from killing an NPC they know has a specific stat level and you will never hear the end of it. (In their eyes you will have cheated them) As for that effect on metaplot, I don't care. Once it's in my game, I just expect to adjust future information.