Tashiro
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Posts posted by Tashiro
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1 hour ago, BitRunr said:Funnily enough, that's also what Wick says in 1e Silence Within Sound.
The first thing he does is tell you there's a lie to pick out. Also happens to be a game chosen right off the bat after Call Of Cthulhu where everyone was enjoying the "1d4 investigators per turn", and a challenge to John to kill off their PCs in a game where actually killing off PCs is difficult to impossible. I don't draw anything useful from what he did there, but there's presenting what he did, and misrepresenting what he did. JW chose the latter, ostensibly doing it all because he likes creating visceral moments where player ceases to play from an outside perspective and the game world ceases to be a game or another world. You carry his torch for other reasons.
Wait, Champions tells you not to kill the characters? Another reason not to play Champions, I guess.
I don't go out of my way to kill characters, but I don't hold back either. I just had a PC hit in the back with a poison dart, while he's all by himself trying to do the right thing (L5R). I gave him 6 rounds of actions, not telling him if the poison is lethal or not.
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2 hours ago, evileeyore said:That's... ugh. Not even close to relatively true. 1e's lethality was entirely down to John Wick being an abusive [EXPLICATIVE DELETED] storyteller and trying to dress his crap up as 'philosophical' and 'thematic'.
Now, that said, Wick writes some solid and interesting rules. Give him props in that department.
Abusive? Mind you, I don't see eye-to-eye on everything he says, but I do agree with the idea of putting the players through the wringer from time to time. I just believe they should also win if they've earned it.
That said, I love the mechanics he tends to write, and the settings he makes. And the lethality of L5R is a huge draw for me for the game.
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4 hours ago, Suzume Chikahisa said:They seem to have made some serious changes to the Mantis, so I hope they take the opportunity to excise the worst Greek elements from the Cosmology. With the focus on Ninjo and Giri and the increased emphasis on the Confucian and Neo-Confucian values the incoherence and tonal clash is magnified.
I like yours, but even if FFG wants to cleave closer to the orginal l5r cosmology the Izanagi and Izanami myth could provide justification for the existence of the Shadowlands and for a Fu Leng figure.
If they used Izanagi and Izanami, all that means is that there's access to the underworld, and the worst of it is 'unclean', and not much else. But that would also replace all of the various realms as well. Not necessarily a bad thing though - it'd be a lot closer to baseline Shinto. You have 'here', and you have 'there'. Tengoku is off limits, and... that's it, really. That's not a bad thing though. I decided to keep the various realms in my game, just because it's familiar.
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24 minutes ago, Yoritomo Kazuto said:Since they have yet to talk about the founding mythology of Rokugan in the new L5R I hope they do move it closer to East Asian Mythology a bit. The whole it's the Greek Gods in Kimono's thing always bugged me, and I basically ignored it the whole time.
As far as I can tell, it's the same Rokugan - they're just starting the timeline from the beginning, following the same course, but focusing on new stories within that timeline. I've yet to see any clue of anything actually different, canon-wise.
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1 hour ago, JorArns said:I have to say, I like a LOT of what you have here. I'll definitely be appropriating some if it.
I have a Google Doc with this stuff written out, if you want the link.
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That sounds pretty cool. I've considered setting Rokugan as island-based, but hadn't quite gone that far. I've also considered allowing ninja to not be 'verboten' - they exist, everyone knows they exist, and people hire the Scorpion Clan to get things done.
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We don't have a generic 'L5R' forum here, so I thought putting this here might be better than... err, anywhere else?
So, setting up the campaign, I decided to throw out the mythology of the setting. Why? Well, I wanted something that was 1) closer to Japanese mythology, and 2) something closer to Shinto philosophy. The entire background for L5R is way too Western for my tastes. Tsukiyomi devouring his children? Greek. How on Earth would the Rokugani even remotely accept cannibalism as something the kami would do? You would think Amaterasu would have shot him for that, then fished her kids out.
Anyway. So for my campaign, that got thrown out. I had the story follow the Japanese myths, including the 'hide in a cave' and her brother being banished and doing heroic deeds (and founding the Mantis Clan). I had Amaterasu's contest with her brother be what created the kami which founded the Great Clans, crafted by Amaterasu and her brother. This (by the by) also allowed me to sneak Shosuro in as a kami.
I removed the entire idea of Fu Leng being evil, and Jigoku being evil. This falls more in line with Shintoism - the spirits are neither good or evil. The idea of 'good' and 'evil' is a human concept, not a divine concept.
The other thing I did was adjust what the Taint is. For me, the Taint is kegare. Spiritual pollution. It isn't 'Jigoku trying to claim the mortal realm' or anything like that. I still have the Shadowlands, but it operates differently: A maho-tsukai tried to steal the power of Fu Leng (who is the guardian of Jigoku - he looks after the punishment of the wicked). The ritual blew a hole open and created a gate to Jigoku. This caused a section of Rokugan to be permanently tainted with kegare. If you're in the Shadowlands, and you perform spiritually impure actions, you can get Taint. Which does most of the nasty stuff Taint normally does.
Monsters still come out of the Shadowlands. They're not Evil. They're simply spirits that are trying to do their job. Punish mortals. In Jigoku they're fine. Here, that's kind of traumatic for the mortal population. These oni and goblins and such aren't evil - they're not malicious. They are spirits - lacking in the free will to choose their path (Void). So they do what they're supposed to do - to anyone they come across. And so they have to be killed (sent back to Jigoku), banished (sent back to Jigoku), or bound (and aren't you a bad person for trying to usurp control there...)
I've also done some adjustments to the Kolat (made them closer to the Yakuza and got rid of this whole 'overthrow the gods' nonsense), and the Lying Darkness (again, something done by mortals messing things up, this time with Meido). So far, it's gone pretty well, the in-character adjustments are few and far between, and it feels more like mythic samurai drama rather than Western Hybridization.
So, for the sake of conversation - what have other people done to tweak their game settings?
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6 hours ago, GhostSanta said:(A lot of cool stuff)
I really love L5R.You are my hero.
GhostSanta reacted to this -
14 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:I need to study this to be be able to complete the task my lord assigned me. Are you questioning my duty?
Ooo, nice answer.
"If your lord assigned you this task, then your lord should be providing you what you need. If your lord didn't provide it, you don't need it. Otherwise, ask your lord."
And that's the crux.
I'm quite familiar with how this kind of thing goes. It would take a lot of Sincerity rolls, Courtier rolls, and possibly bribes (depending on the Honour of the person) to get them to teach you something that your sensei should be teaching you.
Magnus Grendel reacted to this -
17 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:If you can look for someone other than your sensei to teach you a skill, you can look for someone else to teach you a spell, kata or other skill as well, no?
Spells are tied to scrolls with a specific cipher to your school. They're closely guarded secrets, so going to find someone else to give you a spell is... questionable. First and foremost, you'd have to go to a member of your school specifically, and then they'd probably be like 'and why should I let you copy my prayer scroll? Are you questioning your sensei's decisions?'
And that's pretty much the answer for anything.
You want to learn this kata, kiho, or school technique? Why? Are you questioning your sensei?
And here comes the Glory and possibly Honour hit.
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15 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:So you are saying that if a player wants to increase a skill you might tell them their instructors have chosen a different curriculum?
Skills were something else. You raised skills by practice and using them, or finding someone who knew the skill - you didn't necessarily have to go to your sensei for those. But techniques, kiho, kata, spells, those came from your mentors, and thus could be denied if you weren't being an honourable individual or a member in good standing.
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1 hour ago, nameless ronin said:The PC learns the spells from the school he attends, much like he learns skills and possibly kiho. Same for bushi and courtiers, with their skills and kata. I expect the GM doesn’t choose those for the player though. So why treat spells differently?
Because spells are something given out by your masters specifically. 'Here, this is what we think you should know'. Just like if you've pissed off your sensei, when you go up a school rank, you might find you aren't learning your next rank technique. Or you can't find a teacher for your next kata, or kiho.
Nothing's guaranteed.
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28 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:Eeeeeehhhhh... The universal spells can be bad enough, and every shugenja knows these. The GM sets boundaries, but still. As for the GM choosing what spells shugenja get, that’s iffy. GMs can certainly set up houserules regarding certain spells, but choosing them for the player is a definite no-no in my book.
Well, the PC is getting the spells from their school, so the school decides - not the PC. Though the PC can offer suggestions, perhaps.
And yeah, of course the universal spells - but then, you're talking about a world where every single thing has a spirit you can talk to. That's like, the foundation of Shinto right there. If you're going for Japanese fantasy, that's **** near to be expected.
(And currently, I've got my PC party facing a guy possessed by a kansen of fire. Though in my game, kansen aren't evil - they're just the wrathful aspect of a normal fire kami. I'm going as heavy into Shinto as I can for my game, so nothing spiritual is 'evil'. But all kami have benevolent and wrathful aspects).
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18 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:I also like my Rokugan as a deeply mystical place ripe with the supernatural. I like to take the world creation myth as the actual reality, with a chance that one can even run into a Kitsu or another member of the Ancient Five Races who can tell what the world looked like before it had taken form, because he/she was there and saw it with his/her own eyes. It really gives a lot of depth to the setting.
I also like my supernatural weird and bizarre, with lots of false expectations tied to the various supernatural creatures. For example, Yuki no Ona, or the Snow Maiden, is a fairly well-known spirit. The common expectation when encountering one is a beautiful young woman in a snowstorm or similar snowy environment. Everyone who hasn't met one will recall this image, and the more knowledgeable blame this false picturing as the primary reason for the many victims. Because the Yuki no Ona is not the woman. It is the snow. In its natural form, the Yuki no Ona is a massive, formless mound of fine white powder, almost unmistakable from snow except that it is not wet and it doesn't melt. It also has a quite freakish ability: it can consume and "assimilate" anything that comes in contact with it (people, objects, anything) and then perfectly replicate the assimilated thing from its own body mass. The spirit makes a habit out of assimilating and replicating things indiscriminately, so if you enter a village where the Yuki no Ona was sighted, chances are high that the whole village is already the Yuki no Ona, from the houses to the villages to that annoying dog that barks at you when you enter the village - they are all one spirit manifested in a series of replicas connected by its body mass (in this case, the snow that seemingly covers the whole village). Just touch the snow on one of the roofs. I dare you
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That... is awesome. Just very awesome.
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31 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:On the one hand this. On the other hand shugenja PCs being nuclear-powered Swiss army knives is a bit annoying at times.
With 1e and 2e, I often found that bushi could keep pace with shugenja. In later editions... the bushi got hit by serious nerf.
Also, the GM is the one who chooses what spells shugenja get from their mentors, so... if the PC shugenja are so 'swiss army knife', I'm placing that at the feet of the GM.
Magnus Grendel reacted to this -
Just started a scene this morning - a warehouse explosion in the middle of Ryoko Owari. The PCs who got to the scene see an Asahina floating over the building, trying to prevent the flames from spreading by calling rain. When they got close enough, they saw a person on fire inside the warehouse, seemingly unaware, and now they're trying to chase the person through the city. They've got enough human drama - trying to negotiate with the Unicorn, hunt a ronin bandit outside the city, and so forth - but this is something they can't negotiate or just hit with swords.
So the question becomes 'how do they fix it'?
For me, L5R is always going to be 1e and 2e in feel - the early days. 4e felt entirely too 'sanitized' for me. -
47 minutes ago, Doji Meshou said:Extremely low. I like L5R best when it's rooted in human emotions and drama. When magic shows up, it ought to be disorienting and upsetting -- literally uncanny. Otherwise I feel like I'm playing East Asian-flavored Dragonlance, which is not my thing.
Which is interesting, as a lot of the older Japanese stories are deeply rooted in the mythic, yet still focus on human emotion and drama. Look at the Kojiki as a good example, or Kwaidan, there's Akura Kurosawa's Dreams as another example. I mean, the setting has the spirit realms, Jigoku, and shugenja - that in and of itself kind of lends to the idea that the spirit world is there. And then, of course, if you lean in towards Shinto, on top of everything else, the entire idea is that the spirit world and the physical world are side-by-side - everything is alive and filled with spirit.
That's not Dragonlance - Dragonlance is left in the dust.
Magnus Grendel reacted to this -
For 5e, how do you want your fantasy?
When I got into L5R with 1e, there was a strong mythic element to the setting. The kami were a solid foundation of the setting, and in the very first adventure in the book, one of the gods themselves shows up to see the PCs in disguise. As you go through the adventures you encounter mythical creatures, one of the Oracles, oni, undead, and strange creatures from inside and outside of Rokugan. The game setting itself has a strong mythic feel to it and the samurai themselves progress from 'normal people' to iconic and archetypal heroes after a fashion - the techniques and abilities they use making them less than human. (If they survive)
In my campaign, the PCs had to face shuten doji - a possessing spirit that could transform entire armies into a hive mind. A PC dissolved into a pool of shadow when they gave themselves up to the Lying Darkness. One PC died when Fu Leng ripped out of his torso and was made manifest for the Day of Thunder. One PC faced herself because of the Egg of Pan'Ku, and another held the bloodsword Passion. Heck, one married a literal phoenix from the spirit world, giving it a tangible anchor to the physical realm and granted it mortality.
I like my Rokugan with bright colours, and the feeling of myth. Later editions seemed to kind of grind it down closer to reality.
Where do you want your 5e?
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On 04/10/2017 at 10:22 PM, SideshowLucifer said:Sounds like you just really wanted the old editions back. Raises to me were the absolute worst part of the game other than the hyper lethality. As for the roleplaying for them part, simply don't use it then. I actually find it rather elegant to have it in there as a breaking point and to focus on that side of things. I'm never wild about custom dice, but all in all, I can live with them if this is the result. Most of the actions are either simple enough that raises are required, or are tough enough that you will have to suffer stress to succeed. It's a nice balance with the system they choose to work with.
To me that sounds like 'the worst part of L5R was... L5R', because the hyper lethality and the raise system for me were fundamental parts of the game. They were what made the engine work. When I found out how lethal L5R was, I was overjoyed, and the Raise system allowed me to, more or less, set my own Difficulty for tasks, with concrete benefits for doing so. I'm finding this edition way, way too soft on the lethality.
(I'm currently running a 4e campaign. I've been sorely tempted a few times to take the engine back to 2nd Edition, I'm finding 4e not 'mythic' enough in setting, and way too low fantasy in mechanics.)
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1 hour ago, Doji Meshou said:But I think in general it is.
Maybe, I'd like hard numbers before I made such a claim though. But my thing with L5R was I got to enjoy not being soft on the players while remaining within the scope of the mechanics. There needs to be more games willing to do that without having to house rule to up the ante.
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1 hour ago, Doji Meshou said:FWIW: I think we-as-long-term-L5R-players like the old lethality more in concept than in practice. We really like other peoples' stories about ignominious death.
Considering my players still talk about (and entertained by) the deaths in our campaigns (including me), that might not be necessarily true.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDkoj932YFo
The video here talks about longsword vs katana, and compares a number of different things. The guy's voice bothers me a bit, but it's a good show of how the katana functions.
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I'm using it as an example, because it was used as an example in the fiction for L5R 1e as something 'done'. Then of course, there were the combats that happened as well in L5R, which was usually settled in the first round of combat. The person who went first typically killed first - and usually in the first round of combat. (This was also the editions which had the notorious Crane technique at higher rank which was 'hit your target before Initiative is rolled, which was awesome sauce, and the Dragon 'if you kill your target, it doesn't count as an attack' Technique).
Armour didn't reduce damage. It reduced the chance to hit - it was more for deflecting close shaves than actually stopping the weapon. (Just saw some videos not too long ago showing just how armour-penetrating a katana actually is).
My general point is - there should be some swing option for the GM to raise or lower the lethality, and it looks like that might actually go into the book, so good. People who like low lethality get their wish, people who want high lethality get their wish - I consider it settled.
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Lethality?
in Rules Questions
Posted
Interesting enough, that can result in honour loss. When you hit someone, it's supposed to be a clean, killing cut. Causing someone to cry out in pain - or inflicting a crippling blow - is considered shameful (the former to the person hit and the person who inflicted the hit, the latter for the person who inflicted the hit). As such, samurai are aiming for either a grazing blow (proving a point) or a clean, killing blow (to show skill and finesse).