|
Alien Rope Burn posted:Close- it has unarmed, unarmored PCs facing an oni, though they can just stand back and let it slaughter NPCs (though they'll have minor oni to fight either way). But even that's not the main issue. It's a timed adventure taking place over 12 hours with just fight after fight in a game where magical healing is sparse or otherwise unavailable, and fighting is really deadly. And failure means the destruction of a whole city, so no pressure! The one time I played it, the party was all crippled or dead after the first 3 hours, even with a magical healer. So we just threw in the towel and hit the reset button, and never played it again. There's so many "almost good if not for the incredibly lovely left turns into the dumpster" ideas in L5R.
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2016 21:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 10, 2024 15:09 |
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:Close- it has unarmed, unarmored PCs facing an oni, though they can just stand back and let it slaughter NPCs (though they'll have minor oni to fight either way). But even that's not the main issue. It's a timed adventure taking place over 12 hours with just fight after fight in a game where magical healing is sparse or otherwise unavailable, and fighting is really deadly. And failure means the destruction of a whole city, so no pressure! The one time I played it, the party was all crippled or dead after the first 3 hours, even with a magical healer. So we just threw in the towel and hit the reset button, and never played it again. I always took being unarmed as their attempt to steer you away from attacking the main Oni. If you had went into this teahouse armed, you'd have drawn steel the second it showed up and gotten murdered. That said, I ran this adventure one time and I had to explicitly explain to my players that this was basically an into vignette and fighting the Oni was suicide because they ran right for the katana and wanted to get hacking. Maybe, just maybe, if they had more experience in-setting at the time they would be a bit more wary, but when you just get out of a D&D campaign a demon the GM drops near you is a demon to kill. Beyond that the adventure was a mess because it assumes that players don't mind be followed by mysterious strangers and can put together insane clues from a mute old man. About the point of the fight in the burning warehouse that I had to dial back severely to avoid a TPK is where I just rewrote the ending.
|
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2016 22:34
|
|
|
EverettLO posted:Beyond that the adventure was a mess because it assumes that players don't mind be followed by mysterious strangers and can put together insane clues from a mute old man. About the point of the fight in the burning warehouse that I had to dial back severely to avoid a TPK is where I just rewrote the ending. I'd be okay with that, like an rpg adventure version of The Poseidon Adventure with evil demons instead of crumbling ship.
|
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2016 23:36
|
|
|
EverettLO posted:I always took being unarmed as their attempt to steer you away from attacking the main Oni. If you had went into this teahouse armed, you'd have drawn steel the second it showed up and gotten murdered. This is possible, but at the same time there are some people you aren't ostensibly supposed to sit back and watch get killed. You are, after all, magistrates, and probably not supposed to let a group of Crane representatives get their heads torn off. It's a bit of dissonance, given back in those days those samurai who hadn't served in the wall were supposed to think of oni as the Japanese mythic stereotype - brutish thugs who like murder and sake a bit too much - and not the horrible puzzle boss killamajigs they actually were. So it's not like you're supposed to have a good grasp on what you're facing back then. (It was a bit silly, but a lot of the enforced ignorance of the old Wick-era L5R didn't make much sense.) On a totally different note, though, since I have the book open, I'm compelled to tangent into this particular quote: Night of a Thousand Screams posted:About the authors: 
|
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2016 23:56
|
|
|
I forget, which artist was it who slipped "Wick is an idiot" in Japanese into the background of one of Kachiko's cards, and ended up being forever barred from doing any work for L5R from that point on?
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2016 00:18
|
|
|
W.T. Fits posted:I forget, which artist was it who slipped "Wick is an idiot" in Japanese into the background of one of Kachiko's cards, and ended up being forever barred from doing any work for L5R from that point on?
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2016 01:06
|
|
|
"Idiot" is kinder than what he said, it was something like "Wick sucks dick" or "Wick sucks rear end". In any case, it was Matt Wilson, who would go on to be the creator of Warmachine and Iron Kingdoms. I'm not sure he was barred per se, I didn't hear anything like that, but more than likely Wilson was happy to just focus on his own material (like the late, lamented VOR). AEG certainly struggled to find somebody who could draw Kachiko like Wilson did afterwards, so I don't think they let him go. I remember one AEG staffer at the time lamenting at having had to commission multiple artists before finding at least a passable piece to use for the Scorpion Clan Coup, commenting in bewildered horror that one of the pieces they commissioned of Kachiko actually looked "kind of chubby". Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I'll tell you the objectively worst adventure for L5R, and that's Way of Shadow. Way of Shadow is the sort of thing I would cover in an F&F, but it's probably too much of a pain for me to care (and I wrote up Pathfinder for F&F, so I can loving talk about writing up PITAs). See, there are roughly eight chapters in Way of Shadow. Four of those form one full novella (a journal, technically) about this guy named Kitsuki Kaagi, who's seeking out the Shadow (spoiler alert!). Three of them are adventures paralleling the novella. And one last chapter details the Shadow extremely roughly. See, what you're supposed to do is read one chapter of novel, then read the next chapter, which details the adventure. Well, that's not quite accurate. That gives the impression that the adventure is presented in a straightforward manner, which it certainly isn't. See, the adventure chapters assume you've read every word of the the novel. That's right, you refer back to a novella section (a journal entry), then go forward and read the section that tells you how to use this prose text as an adventure, and you do that for like twenty or so chunks of text per adventure, back and forth, back and forth between the two chapters trying to comprehend what's going on and how it translates prose into an in-game scene. Oh, you want to talk about railroading? It's not like it assumes the novella can go off the rails! Things have to turn out a certain way for the rest of the novella to make sense! You want to talk about being a guest star? Because you're going to be Kaagi's supporting cast! Oh, you think you can change events? The final chapter of the novella isn't connected with an adventure, so it assumes the adventures turn out close enough to the way the novella is written. Want to find out what happens in the end, players? Read the book you've been guest starring in! If that's not enough, the Shadow of this game's era is an unstoppable force. The only way to avoid being slowly destroyed by it is a combination of ignorance and avoidance. If you know about it, it'll seek you out and either corrupt or poison you until you're either dead or one of its minions. It's only vaguely statted and using it at all will involve a serious amount of handwaving on the GM's part. The only tools that can fight it reliably are in the hands of overpowered, ridiculous NPCs (the Dragon champion and the Kolat, namely, oh and I guess the Naga, but they're not mentioned in this book yet, so hope you've figured that unmentioned clue out based on their use of crystal). And it upends the setting into nihilistic cosmic horror. It's just a big ball of high-minded but extremely ill-conceived notions. If it was just a novella, it'd be relatively inoffensive if you're down with the presented Shadow concept (I'm not, but YMMV). But I guess they felt it had to be a game book and so they shoehorned some half-adventures in, as if nobody would notice the cracks between the two. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Mar 24, 2016 |
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2016 01:07
|
|
|
That sounds like The Dracula Dossier but done in the absolute worst way possible.
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2016 01:36
|
|
|
Swagger Dagger posted:That sounds like The Dracula Dossier but done in the absolute worst way possible. I am probably one of the people that format was meant for. When I first got it I thought it was a very interesting way to frame an adventure. When I read the adventures, though, I decided never to run them. As mentioned by Alien Rope Burn, they assume you react a certain way to lead the adventures along and provide no guidance for the very real possibility that the players try anything other than the book's solution. Actually, almost all of the first edition adventures had the problem that they do not lend themselves to actual play. Either the things were never playtested or were only playtested by a limited few who all had similar, idiosyncratic ways of handling problems. My go to example is in Honor's Veil, where your PCs are guarding a shipment of scrolls and they are hijacked by bandits who flee across a chasm and cut the rope bridge (if I recall it correctly). The players are assumed to just go on and report their failure to their lord. What players anywhere assume this is an insurmountable problem and move on? As for the Shadow, I really like it as a villain from a conceptual standpoint. The problem is, in the pre-Scorpion Clan Coup era it turns your campaigns into Call of Cthulhu, with both a similar body count and chance of making an impact on the enemy.
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2016 01:48
|
|
|
Gonna correct my previous statement: Pre-Scorpion Coup is the worse not because it lacks Great Clan Mantis, but because it lacks CLAN MONKEY
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2016 02:53
|
|
|
NinjaDebugger posted:http://heroes-of-rokugan.net/index.php?page=PriorCampaigns Thanks, that looks like a great resource. I poked around the wiki, and it mentioned they gave out a gencon-exclusive module 'Whispered Secrets'. Anyone happen to know what's in that?
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2016 03:52
|
|
|
Tunicate posted:Thanks, that looks like a great resource. No. It may have been one of AEG's big RPG events, HoR provided most of the judges for those, and I never played them.
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2016 13:08
|
|
|
Tunicate posted:Thanks, that looks like a great resource. Whispered Secrets was the scenario run at AEG's RPG Night at Gencon 2012. There was a printed copy that was given out to attendees. It's not available as a pdf, unlike the 2013 scenario. Gencon 2012 was when the Second City boxset was released, so the scenario had characters arriving at the Second City and investigating odd occurrences. I have a copy, but I'd have to review it to give a better summary. I do remember possessed monkeys though.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2016 03:27
|
|
|
jadarx posted:I do remember possessed monkeys though. You have my attention.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2016 08:28
|
|
|
Yawgmoth posted:This, always and forever. There's a handful of short scenarios in the Book of [Element] series that are kind of neat If i remember correctly the scenario in the Fire book is a loving Samurai Hogwarts of sorts and that seems awesome.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2016 09:44
|
|
|
Elfgames posted:If i remember correctly the scenario in the Fire book is a loving Samurai Hogwarts of sorts and that seems awesome.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2016 20:02
|
|
|
Anyone ever play in the Star Wars-official-alternate setting? The one where its Rokugan in space? How did it turn out, if you did?
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2016 21:35
|
|
|
There were actually three different Emerald Stars games going on in PbP at SA, though Ettin's is the only present survivor. Infinite Oregano ran two others for a time as well. Those looking to do it will have to invent a lot from whole cloth, there isn't really much detail other than the broadest of strokes. Our games weren't too different from normal L5R games, but with the addition of things like an information culture, cybernetics and robots, your Star Wars-ey themed planets, things like that. It really comes down to what you want to do with a game like that, what you think you can add with spaceships and blasters.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2016 22:15
|
|
|
the answer to "when should I set my L5R game" should always be "one of the cool AUs from the Imperial History books"
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 10:01
|
|
|
Blockhouse posted:the answer to "when should I set my L5R game" should always be "one of the cool AUs from the Imperial History books" Yeah, the default timeline is like after the zombie apocalypse and before Star Wars. It's been a while, but it does it seems to be at the most quiet and boring time in a long while.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 15:49
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:Close- it has unarmed, unarmored PCs facing an oni, though they can just stand back and let it slaughter NPCs (though they'll have minor oni to fight either way). But even that's not the main issue. It's a timed adventure taking place over 12 hours with just fight after fight in a game where magical healing is sparse or otherwise unavailable, and fighting is really deadly. And failure means the destruction of a whole city, so no pressure! The one time I played it, the party was all crippled or dead after the first 3 hours, even with a magical healer. So we just threw in the towel and hit the reset button, and never played it again. My GM ran that module for us, though cleaned up and inserted into the campaign to have it make more sense. It was exactly as much of a meatgrinder as it looks like, though it fit the tone of the campaign so us ending up all dead or dying, with the Empress and huge chunk of the Clan Champions dead (but the heirs saved!) was a fitting end.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 16:22
|
|
|
Blockhouse posted:the answer to "when should I set my L5R game" should always be "one of the cool AUs from the Imperial History books" Or make up your own era, like I'm currently doing for a game I'm planning! It's about a secret war between the Shadow and the Kolat in the century before the return of the Unicorn and the PCs will help start a third conspiracy to defeat them both.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 17:43
|
|
|
Covok posted:Yeah, the default timeline is like after the zombie apocalypse and before Star Wars. It's been a while, but it does it seems to be at the most quiet and boring time in a long while. Not really, I would say? Thanks to the ongoing metaplot, about any point in the "default" 4th edition timeline is a huge mess, though it may not be so obvious from the RPG books, which are usually snapshots right inbetween various disasters. In fact, my usual gut instinct is to find a quieter time than the default setting, since the metaplot makes it a hilarious parade of evil lords and metaphysical crises without pause. "Why is it raining blood?" "Oh, that's probably the Dark Lord of the Shadowlands. Or is the Greatest Bloodspeaker in History? "Well, at least the sun didn't commit suicide this time. Remember that?"
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 17:58
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:Not really, I would say? Thanks to the ongoing metaplot, about any point in the "default" 4th edition timeline is a huge mess, though it may not be so obvious from the RPG books, which are usually snapshots right inbetween various disasters. In fact, my usual gut instinct is to find a quieter time than the default setting, since the metaplot makes it a hilarious parade of evil lords and metaphysical crises without pause. "Why is it raining blood?" "Oh, that's probably the Dark Lord of the Shadowlands. Or is the Greatest Bloodspeaker in History? "Well, at least the sun didn't commit suicide this time. Remember that?"
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 18:45
|
|
|
Actually, as I'm planning my game, I've started butting head with some frustrating rules of 4E. Now, don't get me wrong, it's still my favorite edition of Legend of the Five Rings, but it's not perfect. My complaints mostly consist of: - There's some really unclear wordings - Paths are really badly designed - Ronins/Minor Clans get the short end of the stick - Some advantages/disadvantages need work None of this is game breaking, of course. But it is frustrating. Paths are really the one that gets me the most. In previous editions, the way Paths worked was kind of weirdly complex and led to some weird meta-game, but I think the solution ended up worse than the problem. Almost no path is worth taking, outside of some lucky ones, because they're all either really bad or replace a core technique of your school. The perfect example is the Ujina Skirmisher, which is an okay technique but replaces a core technique of the Hare school that gets improved at Rank 4. Meaning suddenly they have no Rank 4 technique? Another example of bad design is the Suzume bushi, which is actually an alright school except the Rank 3 technique which is worse than useless. You get to spend a VP to add a worse bonus than a normal VP. They then printed a Suzume Storyteller path, except it replaces the actually good Rank 2 technique with another terrible "Spend a VP to get less than a normal VP" technique. I'm not sure how to "fix" this. Should I go back to pre-4E Paths that were slotted between normal Ranks? Especially since now there aren't Insight Caps anymore, this shouldn't be as much of a problem as it used to be. Edit: And don't get me started about how terrible most of the Ronin Paths past Rank 1.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 18:47
|
|
|
Yawgmoth posted:Is Night of a Thousand Screams is the one that opens with the PCs fighting an oni with no way to have jade anything short of having read the module beforehand and knowing to buy it during chargen? I remember reading one that had something like that in it. Outside of the main mystery of who killed your predecessor, which isn't really meant to be solved much like Twin Peaks, it has plenty of things you can investigate and actually do on your own. It's the adventure in the back that's um, bad, to put it mildly and not even from a design standpoint. If you play Opium Wars as an intro adventure you destroy the status quo the three book set built up and killed off a bunch of interesting PCs.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 18:54
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:Actually, as I'm planning my game, I've started butting head with some frustrating rules of 4E. Now, don't get me wrong, it's still my favorite edition of Legend of the Five Rings, but it's not perfect. My complaints mostly consist of: Most of this makes sense when you realize that the point of playing a Minor Clan is that it sucks. I mean, in First Edition Minor Clans didn't even have techniques past Rank 3. We should consider ourselves lucky there are even five techniques for Minor Clans schools in 4th, much less one alternative path for flavor. One might argue that this is not a system for people looking for supremely balanced factions or characters (and it never was), and if players are focusing on making mechanically-superior characters or murderhobos, they may find it very dissatisfying unless they stick to a handful of schools and are treating it purely as a combat simulator... which really wasn't the intent of the game and there frankly are other systems that do it better. (Funny story, when I originally wrote the Suzume Storyteller Path, it replaced the Rank 3 technique. After playtesting they changed it to replace Rank 2.) As for how to "fix" it, there is always allowing players the option of taking one of the "generic/self-trained samurai techniques" from the Imperial Archives instead of their corresponding school technique. Those are generally pretty useful. Spookyelectric fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Apr 10, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 20:00
|
|
|
Spookyelectric posted:Most of this makes sense when you realize that the point of playing a Minor Clan is that it sucks. I'm sorry, but that's a huge cop out. There's a difference between "perfect balance" and "this technique is terrible and useless and no one will use it ever". You don't need to make the Minor Clans Schools/Ronin Paths/All Paths balanced with each other to have them be useful. As for Muderhobos, that's kind of a strawman? You don't need to go full D&D kill & loot to want your character to not suck at what his school supposedly does in the fluff.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 20:57
|
|
|
hey guys we wrote a whole bunch of rules for combat and we named a character archetype "warrior" but you know don't actually fight anything.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 21:17
|
|
|
NutritiousSnack posted:Outside of the main mystery of who killed your predecessor, which isn't really meant to be solved much like Twin Peaks, it has plenty of things you can investigate and actually do on your own. It's the adventure in the back that's um, bad, to put it mildly and not even from a design standpoint. If you play Opium Wars as an intro adventure you destroy the status quo the three book set built up and killed off a bunch of interesting PCs.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 21:20
|
|
|
You know, as much as I'd like to jump on Spookyelectric's post, I'm gonna try and keep it more positive. I'll just say I strongly disagree with that design stance. What would people like to see changed in Legend of the Five Rings, rules-wise? What do people find unsatisfactory about it as it stands? I say this not just to take an critical swipe at 4th edition, but since we've probably got a long gap until 5th edition, the idea of going through and doing a fan-based retooling (like was recently done for Exalted 3e) has been weighing on my mind. As such, I'm curious as to what people have disliked in this edition, or would like to see return from earlier editions? I'm not making any promises, but as issues like the ronin techniques and the paths come up over and over again, I think it'd be interesting to try and come up with some solutions to these issues.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 21:44
|
|
|
I'm not certain that the Suzume Bushi Rank 3 and Suzume Storyteller abilities are useless (since school techniques don't trigger the one-VP-per-round limit), but they do have a notable problem in completely failing to synergize with the rest of the school. This is particularly weird considering that the flavor text implies that a synergy should exist in the first place. (That said, while ronin paths can be annoying to deal with relative to their benefit at least the books do say that playing a ronin is basically hard mode.) My particular patch to the problem of odd timing would be to allow an alternate path to be taken at the given rank or at a higher one corresponding to the relevant school. Of course it's a houserule, but prima facie it doesn't seem terribly weird considering that whatever you're replacing is usually (*coughSuzumeBushicough*) designed to work in concert with the rest of the school.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 21:45
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:What would people like to see changed in Legend of the Five Rings, rules-wise? What do people find unsatisfactory about it as it stands? I say this not just to take an critical swipe at 4th edition, but since we've probably got a long gap until 5th edition, the idea of going through and doing a fan-based retooling (like was recently done for Exalted 3e) has been weighing on my mind. As such, I'm curious as to what people have disliked in this edition, or would like to see return from earlier editions? Every technique and/or path should have a point to it, and the point cannot be "makes you objectively worse." No reason to design it otherwise. If you want Minor Clans to suck you say upfront "don't play a Minor Clan, they suck," and if you want a school to be so bad as to be pointless you don't even bother making it. Anything else is lying to the player.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 21:47
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:You know, as much as I'd like to jump on Spookyelectric's post, I'm gonna try and keep it more positive. I'll just say I strongly disagree with that design stance. I've mostly already said my problems with 4E. Tighter wording of mechanical effects so that nothing's unclear (example: the condition on which you lose the Mirumoto ancestor are really weird if you're going purely as written), better integration of the Paths mechanic and no technique that is pointless (similar to what ProfessorCirno is saying). I don't mind if not all schools are balanced: Isawa are pretty much the 'best wizards' but the other Shugenja school are still interesting to play despite being somewhat less good. But they should be fun to play and be good at what they're supposed to be good at. I do have to ask about that fan rework of 3E. While I've switched over to 4E a long time ago, I played 3E for a few years and I'm curious as to how it looks. NGDBSS posted:I'm not certain that the Suzume Bushi Rank 3 and Suzume Storyteller abilities are useless (since school techniques don't trigger the one-VP-per-round limit), but they do have a notable problem in completely failing to synergize with the rest of the school. This is particularly weird considering that the flavor text implies that a synergy should exist in the first place. (That said, while ronin paths can be annoying to deal with relative to their benefit at least the books do say that playing a ronin is basically hard mode.) Spending 2 Void Points to add 1K1+Honor to one roll is really bad. Either give the bonus to every roll for free or add to a normal VP expenditure, like other similar schools.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 22:06
|
|
|
I agree with Cirno. As it is, the game enforces its theme of cool samurai ranger adventures by actively punishing styles of play it deems wrong. I mean, why are monk orders or ronin or ninja even in the book when the game all but spells out "this is not a game about these people". It's kinda passive-aggressive in that nineties "earn your fun" way. If L5R was some kind of storygame that embraces failing forward and narrative control and stuff like that, my opinion might be different. But in L5R being bad at solving adventurer problems means that you should do your best to avoid engaging with the game mechanics at all, lest you die and also maybe dishounour your whole clan. It's not entirely healthy a design.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 22:14
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:Every technique and/or path should have a point to it, and the point cannot be "makes you objectively worse." No reason to design it otherwise. Yeah, it's a system with XP. If you want to make minor clans or ronin less powerful because they don't have as many learning experiences, then... just give them less xp? Or require more xp if you want to go up an insight rank 'self-taught' (and for ronin, honorable musha shugyō challenges should count the same as great clan training). I mean, the entire game is named after the Book of Five Rings. A player who says 'I want to be Musashi' shouldn't be told 'ok but he sucks'. He literally wrote the book on being a cool samurai.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 22:19
|
|
|
Tunicate posted:the book on being a cool samurai.  It's actually the book on being a groggy old man.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 22:23
|
|
|
Hey, you're allowed to disagree with the design philosophy of the game. I'm just saying that's how they designed it. They never intended for Minor Clan schools to be on the same level as those of Great Clans. They have various reasons and those reasons will probably not matter in the end because the school is not on the level where you find it useful mechanically. That's fair. But it's also a little disingenuous to say that the designers are "lying to the player," or that the school is a "trap" in the same sense as a lot of Pathfinder feats. The mechanics aren't obscuring what the school can or can't do. I still choose to play a Minor Clan character because doing so gives me something I don't get playing as a Great Clan character, and that thing has nothing to do at all with mechanics. Maybe I'm just a masochist? I seriously doubt they went, "Oh, give the Suzume school a technique that is just horrible." They probably weren't even thinking "Let's discourage players from playing an iconic school." But I know they did think, "Make sure the Suzume school is not as generally powerful as a Great Clan school." Whether or not that resulted in "useless" school techniques is something we can debate. But I think largely designers saw the mechanics as a means to an end here, and so that debate is kind of missing the point. I think they wanted to make a game where many characters were unequal and that didn't really matter. It's meant to portray a setting that is inherently rigid and unfair, as "gritty 90s" as that may seem. I don't say this to defend it or to say you're not allowed to dislike that or anything of that ilk. But maybe the system isn't concerned with mechanically elevating a clan that is portrayed consistently in the setting as having less resources, less time to develop techniques, and far less members than the clans they're actually highlighting. I agree that viable mechanics are important. Heck, I usually play courtiers and Minor Clan characters, and I want those options as offered to be useful during the game. But there's something else about playing a Suzume Bushi that makes it fun, even if the Kakita or Matsu is mechanically better at fighting. I can honestly say that I don't feel "punished" for playing a Minor Clan in 4th edition. I certainly did in 1st Edition. I do if I multi-class in D&D, or choose the wrong Feat in Pathfinder. But not for playing a Sparrow in 4th Ed L5R. That's how it is for me, anyway. I realize not everyone will feel similarly. Generally I do think that if a game offers an option for play, it should be a good option. It's why I have problems with 80% of the classes in games like Pathfinder. But L5R is a little unique in that there's more to the game than the face value of the mechanics. It just suffers from both having to be a narrative game and a 90's-era design philosophy RPG. In the context of the setting, a Minor Clan's dojo being the equal of a Great Clan's does not make sense. So they chose to reflect that in the mechanics, for good or for ill. This isn't exactly the same thing, but I remember there was this one guy on the AEG forums who used to vocally complain, every single edition, that they didn't release an expanded weapon list, new mechanics for weapons, or at one point, a complete re-tooling of how weapons worked in the game. Frequent comparisons to Pathfinder and their more-varied weapons lists. Complaints that there weren't rules for dungeon-crawling. That there wasn't an expanded maneuvers list. Every single time, every release thread, same complaints, gradually angrier each time. It was especially memorable because they would release the table of contents and index for every supplement ahead of time, he would post afterward complaining that he didn't see anything in the index that interested him, and then post again after the release of the book saying that he'd bought it and could confirm that it didn't contain anything he could use. More useless fluff, he would often say. These are authors who hate adding mechanics. I always wondered why he was still buying supplements and playing when the game so very clearly wasn't delivering what he wanted. Spookyelectric fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Apr 10, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 22:43
|
|
|
Eh, as a narrative game it seems like the stories the game promotes should be the type of thing that you see happen in the setting backstory. Which seems to be all about fighting superdemons or having an peasant impersonate a samurai and earn his own clan, or blowing up the sun, or having a ronin become emperor or some poo poo. And the way the rules work doesn't seem to reflect that? For instance, starting out as a peasant with 1 in each ring, I don't think you could ever play Toku and plausibly impersonate a samurai, let alone survive combat with one. And yeah, samurai movies are ridiculously lethal, but Zatoichi managed to survive through like, two dozen of them, and metaplot characters don't seem to ever die in random pointless skirmishes. There seems to be a huge divide between what a PC is supposed to be capable of, and the crazy poo poo that continuously happens for decades and decades. Also, on a totally petty note, apparently mantis courtiers still lose honor for using signature mantis weapons? What's up with that? Tunicate fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Apr 10, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 23:00
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 10, 2024 15:09 |
|
|
Tunicate posted:For instance, starting out as a peasant with 1 in each ring, I don't think you could ever play Toku and plausibly impersonate a samurai. And yeah, samurai movies are ridiculously lethal, but Zatoichi managed to survive through like, two dozen of them, and metaplot characters don't seem to ever die in random pointless skirmishes. To be fair, Toku was totally carried by his traveling companions. They did all the samurai stuff while he essentially just watched. I don't think he was ever portrayed as an especially good warrior. I just think he was really lucky and everyone just assumed the reason he became a ronin was because he sucked. It was okay that he sucked. They liked him for different reasons. Of course, becoming popular with players then means that you have to be a badass in fictions. That was the source of much escalation in terms of batshit stuff happening in metaplot. The stories I could tell... quote:Also, on a totally petty note, apparently mantis courtiers still lose honor for using signature mantis weapons? What's up with that? Yeah, the honor system in L5R is a little abstract and strange in that way. Sometimes the chart seems to imply that others are deciding if what you are doing is honorable, and therefor honor is a measurement of how others perceive you to be (implying that the ways of your Clan don't matter, you're being judged in the eyes of the Empire at large). But an equal amount of times, it seems to imply that honor is internal, and it's how your character perceives him or herself (and therefore the ways of your Clan *do* matter). If I poison someone's tea and no one sees me, I still lose honor. So whether or not I am observed doesn't matter and honor is a purely objective measurement. But then there are school techniques that negate honor losses if I do the same thing. So honor isn't a purely objective measurement and is actually totally subject to perception. Not exactly consistent. Spookyelectric fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Apr 10, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2016 23:10
|
|