Roll & Keep

[Coyote Walks 641]

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2018/8/24/roll-and-keep/

Edited August 24, 2018 by Coyote Walks

[JasonMFlow 56]

Three articles in 8 days! And it's still showing up as "At the Printer"?!?

 

Fingers crossed for another website update error...and the Corebook is about to start shipping!

[Lorne 2,021]

I'm already liking the dice system. This article makes me want to do to L5R what Genesys did to Star Wars...

[splad 136]

Changing the dice system to this narrative Genesys is another example of fixing what ain't broken

[deraforia 169]

2 hours ago, splad said:

Changing the dice system to this narrative Genesys is another example of fixing what ain't broken

?

[llamaman88 430]

Really dig the new roll and keep. There's actual choices to make besides keep high. I've watched players choose to fail, choose not to keep explosions, choose to compromise themselves to succeed. It's pretty cool.

[Donovan Morningfire 10,200]

5 hours ago, llamaman88 said:

Really dig the new roll and keep. There's actual choices to make besides keep high. I've watched players choose to fail, choose not to keep explosions, choose to compromise themselves to succeed. It's pretty cool.

In a way, I think it's similar to how when the Star Wars game first came out, players and GMs had a bit of a learning curve to get used to having more than just the binary "pass/fail" and "roll high" methods that the vast majority of RPGs use.

For the older school L5R players, as you said there's less incentive to just "roll high" in this system as some of those "high rolls" can carry a negative (Strife) with them.

And before those old school L5R players that are belligerent towards the new system say it, I am fully aware that the previous RnK system did allow for keeping lower dice results.  However, I think in all the time I'd played AEG's L5R, I could count the number of times a player choose to keep low-rolling dice on a single hand and still have fingers left over.

[AtoMaki 1,431]

I don't like how they want to sell the new R&K as a Genesys offshot thing. The only thing those two share is the special dice. Other than that, the 5R5 dice system is a step up on the traditional R&K evolution ladder. I also love it if you haven't noticed  . 

Tho I give them this, they should have stuck to 'Raise' and not try to reinvent the wheel with 'Opportunity'. Not only Opportunity is uncomfortably long to write down, but Raises no longer being Raises is what causes most of the confusion IMO.

[BlindSamurai13 275]

Maybe the new Roll & Keep system will make a believer out of me. I'm still willing to try it but I am going in with extreme low expectations. 

[WildKnight 59]

As a guy who was on board with the L5R RPG from 1st edition, I love the new system.  I'm sure that, like a lot of systems, its benefitting from being new and I'll start to see more cracks the more I run it (and the more I have powergamers cripple the fun of running the system by exploiting design weaknesses to become ridiculously powerful), but for now, I'm happier with the L5R RPG than I have been since 2nd edition released.

 

...  admittedly, a big part of that might also have to do with rolling back the metaplot which, frankly, I absolutely hated from the Hidden Emperor forward, but that's nothing to do with mechanics, so that's for another thread.

[deraforia 169]

29 minutes ago, BlindSamurai13 said:

Maybe the new Roll & Keep system will make a believer out of me. I'm still willing to try it but I am going in with extreme low expectations. 

Having low expectations is always a good rule of thumb. Just be sure it's actually just low expectations and not that you've decided to hate something without giving it much of a chance.

And if you do hate it, that's fine, but remember that this is a forum for people who do like it, and they're going to get really sick of you if you're just complaining about it all of the time.

[BlindSamurai13 275]

7 hours ago, deraforia said:

Having low expectations is always a good rule of thumb. Just be sure it's actually just low expectations and not that you've decided to hate something without giving it much of a chance.

And if you do hate it, that's fine, but remember that this is a forum for people who do like it, and they're going to get really sick of you if you're just complaining about it all of the time.

Indeed. Even if 5R5 turns out to be not my cup of tea, I'll still post any relevant news/articles/etc I might see since there are folks that really enjoy the new edition from what I can tell. 

[Tonbo Karasu 2,606]

10 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

I don't like how they want to sell the new R&K as a Genesys offshot thing. The only thing those two share is the special dice. Other than that, the 5R5 dice system is a step up on the traditional R&K evolution ladder. I also love it if you haven't noticed  . 

Tho I give them this, they should have stuck to 'Raise' and not try to reinvent the wheel with 'Opportunity'. Not only Opportunity is uncomfortably long to write down, but Raises no longer being Raises is what causes most of the confusion IMO.

Except that in many ways Opps are almost the inverse of Raises.  A Raise is something that you declare before the fact to make the test more difficult to achieve.  If you fail, you fail, but if you succeed beyond your wildest dreams with no Raises, nothing happens.  OTOH, An Opp is a choice you make after you see the roll.  In some cases, you may have the choice between succeeding and an Opportunity, but if you roll really well you get to make the most of it.  This is part of why I feel that it is an improvement: it was quite depressing to see your 53 appear on the TN15 roll, but then roll 19 when you get to the next TN15 roll and decide to put a raise on it.

[AtoMaki 1,431]

Ah, what I wanted to say is that if they had retained the name 'Raise' for what is now 'Opportunity' then we would have loudly celebrated the system for finally fixing Raises and expanding their role in the dice mechanics with one fell swoop. I bet most people would have swallowed the special dice too because of this. But now we are stuck with 'Opportunities' and booooo. 

[BlindSamurai13 275]

25 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Ah, what I wanted to say is that if they had retained the name 'Raise' for what is now 'Opportunity' then we would have loudly celebrated the system for finally fixing Raises and expanding their role in the dice mechanics with one fell swoop. I bet most people would have swallowed the special dice too because of this. But now we are stuck with 'Opportunities' and booooo. 

Honestly, you have a pretty excellent point there. Its always nice to use familiar language to ease folks into something new IMO. Calling it Raise/Raises instead of Opportunities is a small but nice fix. 

[Tonbo Karasu 2,606]

I'm not so sure.  Look at 7th Sea 2e.  It got some flack for using the term 'Raise' for something that really isn't a raise.

[AK_Aramis 1,002]

The big difference between L5R5 and SW/Genesys dice mechanics is that difficulties are static numbers in L5R5, but extra dice rolled and subtracted in SW/G. 

This solves the one big issue I had with FFG SW. It does, however, also create a hole that my players voted to fill...

... there is no backfire/overkill outside magic.

We adopted the backfire for all action rolls.

[AtoMaki 1,431]

11 hours ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

I'm not so sure.  Look at 7th Sea 2e.  It got some flack for using the term 'Raise' for something that really isn't a raise.

Opportunities are the same as Raises tho, just earned differently. 

[Donovan Morningfire 10,200]

4 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

Opportunities are the same as Raises tho, just earned differently. 

Yes in that they allow you to do extra things, but no in how they're acquired and implemented.

A Raise is something you had to declare at the outside, before you rolled and sometimes (depending on the GM and/or the circumstance) before you even knew the Target Number.  And not only were they something you had to set out to do before rolling, they still fell into the "all or nothing" realm in that you could very well fail a task simply because you came up just short of the Raises you needed, whether the player simply had bad dice luck or got overly ambitious with the number of Raises they called, even if their dice result was enough to meet the base TN for the task in question.

With an Opportunity, the character is literally taking advantage of circumstances that occur in the midst of doing what they are doing, which may very well be unplanned benefits that could assist you even if the character failed in their objective.  Calling that sort of a thing a "Raise" can seem rather disingenuous since it's conceptually different even if both Raise and Opportunity are something that gives you a bonus to the results of your check.

Plus, as Tonbo Karasu said, there was enough flack for 7th Sea 2e using the term Raises when such a thing operated very differently than RnK's Raises, even if they both have the same effect in allowing the PC to perform a task better than the bare minimum required or with added perks beyond just succeeding.

Of course, FFG has already been getting crap for changing things to begin with instead of keeping the classic RnK system, so not really any way to "win" other than doing what they think is best for the system as they've envisioned it, since there's no way to completely please the grognards that insist 1e/2e/3e/4e was the "bestest" iteration of L5R so why bother pandering to a group of people that will just find something else trivial to whine about?

[AtoMaki 1,431]

5 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Yes in that they allow you to do extra things, but no in how they're acquired and implemented.

 

That's... what I say too. But since I saw exactly one person on these forums who had no problem with the second part, and people are generally more focused on the first part, I'm fairly sure that the "trick" would have worked. 

7 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Of course, FFG has already been getting crap for changing things to begin with instead of keeping the classic RnK system

1

This is mostly due to FFG being ****-bent on reinventing the wheel and not calling their system 'R&K 2.0' when it is exactly that. It does not send a very good message. 

[AK_Aramis 1,002]

9 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

Opportunities are the same as Raises tho, just earned differently. 

Yes and no...

Raises were declared before the roll, and changed the difficulty, giving an all or nothing. (exception - spending a void for a "free raise" after rolling but before resolving)
No matter how high above the difficulty you rolled, it had no effect on the outcome.

L5R5 difficulty is not (usually) increased; failing to get the opportunity needed for one's intent doesn't  usually cause a failure. Likewise, extra successes give benefits in increased damage.

Standard uses for raises in old-L5R: Extra damage, extra range, additional side effects, subtlety, flashiness, special ability triggers.

Standard uses for opportunity in L5R5: Extra range, side effects, subtlety, flashiness, special ability triggers.
Extra successes do extra damage.

Also, given that old-L5R was armor as to-hit penalty, while L5R5 is armor as damage reduction, the application of extra successes vs high armor targets is still effectively a difficulty penalty, but softer targets it's a damage penalty. Plus, you can still do cool stuff to them even if you don't get through their armor.

[digdoug 38]

On 8/24/2018 at 9:21 PM, splad said:

Changing the dice system to this narrative Genesys is another example of fixing what ain't broken

So is going from OG Roll and Keep to this trash.

[The Grand Falloon 1,718]

7 minutes ago, digdoug said:

So is going from OG Roll and Keep to this trash.

Well, there's the door. You're not needed.

[Hida Jitenno 586]

Of course, you could always incorporate Raises into the game by allowing the players to voluntarily shoot for more successes with a higher base TN. "Make the opportunity instead of take the opportunity."

[tenchi2a 442]

On 8/26/2018 at 5:19 PM, The Grand Falloon said:

Well, there's the door. You're not needed.

Well, that's no way to promote the game.

First let me say I no longer really care one way or another what happens with this game. As I have said before I'm just here to follow the story and see if its worth using in 4th.  

But I see a few ways that this can go at this point.

1. FFG manages to capture enough of the old fan base + transfers from SW/Genesys to support the game. (From the response I'm seeing on the L5R fan sites that seems unlikely)

2. FFG gets an influx of players from SW/Genesys + new players to support the game. (Possible, but I have no info on this as I'm not in with the SW/Genesys)

3.  Game fails to drive in the needed numbers and FFG release a Genesys setting for it. (Not sure on this one as I don't know if Genesys is working out for them)

4. Game fails to drive in the needed numbers and FFG release a updated version of the old R&K system. (I don't think they are likely to invest more money to do this)

5. Game fails to drive in the needed numbers and FFG drops the game entirely. (More likely if the sales are bad) 

If people come to this site and are treated like that, all you are doing is driving more players away from the game.

While he may leave anyway I doubt he doesn't know other players that might be interested, and if they get the idea that the forum is hostile you may lose them before they even try it.

That said, do what you want, that was just my 2¢.