KublaCon 2012

Was going to post something about registering for Gen Con events on May 20th, but I’m losing interest in commenting upon that.  Meanwhile, KublaCon ended yesterday, so while things are relatively fresh in my mind.

Friday

I give Eric a lift and we get to the con a bit before 2PM.  Briefly talk to Brad, who had shown up Thursday and noted the large number of people for an unofficial day of gaming.  I totally don’t get why these cons keep moving things earlier.  It’s almost like there’s rampant unemployment to where people have plenty of time to game on weekdays.  Oh, right.

I don’t bother trying to get into a 2PM game, even though there are more RPG events I’m interested in at that slot then any other during the weekend.  Just not mentally “there”, yet.

I chat with people I know for a while, then get dinner at a Japanese place in Millbrae that I go to for potato croquette curry.  Now, some may wonder at this.  I have asked a number of people who have lived in Japan, and they know nothing about potato croquette being served there.  Yet, I have seen it at other Japanese places.  I could search online to see if it’s a dish found in a particular place due to trade/immigration with/from other nations, but it’s more amusing to be one of life’s mysteries.

I wander about a bit longer and then go home a bit after 7:30PM, when the commuter lanes are open.  Yes, I bleed the con dry of all its precious vitae!  Or, not.

Saturday

I figure there’s a good chance I’m in a 9AM game.  I pick up Andy, who had spent Friday working on his Flames of War army for Sunday’s tournament so hadn’t been to the con yet.

Even though I do plenty of L5R already, there weren’t that many things on the schedule that interested me that weren’t at 2PM Friday.  I’m in the L5R game, the only one on the schedule and my first choice over something I don’t recall.

It was not either of the two things I was mentally prepared for.  I was figuring either that the game would be very rooted in the world with a lot of social challenges or that it would get L5R junkies.  I know that sounds kind of similar.  In other words, either the GM(s) would be junkies or the players would be.  I kind of forgot that I’ve played a number of L5R convention games and that it’s common for there to be people who just aren’t that into the world, if they know anything about it at all.  My immersion in all things Rokugani is showing.

The game was a fairly straightforward fantasy RPG experience.  There was only the lightest touch of the society of L5R.  Honor was the main thing that was specific to the genre, and, you know, that’s actually a pretty good thing for a con game, maybe even a takeaway that can be applied to home play.  It’s so easy to get bogged down in all of the details of L5R’s history to where it detracts from simply playing a game.  One other player and I actually seemed to know L5R much better than the GM.  I played the only shugenja since most of the players were new to the system and/or world, and it was an effort to refrain from abusing the power.

Plotwise, one player was the second son of a Crane daimyo.  The rest of us were retinue or friends.  A village got burned down by mysterious attackers and we were off to investigate.  We stop at a village on the way, where the locals speak of strange lights at night.  We check out the nearby hills.  At one abandoned bandit camp, we find a mysterious brass coin.  At the other bandit camp, there be bandits.  We fight a bit, then we find out that they use maho to teleport away.  I Commune with a strange Air kami.  With some other info, we get the picture that the daimyo’s banished brother has learned gaijin magics and returned for vengeance.  We go to the burned village and find a giant sand/rock mound.  We get closer.  It explodes.  We wake up the next day in the bodies of bandit types.  We figure out the need to get back to the castle and restore our bodies.  We get back, sneak in, get some equipment, get attacked by illusionary wraiths that I Spock to irrelevance.  We are short on time, so we don’t fight out the fights against ourselves and the daimyo’s brother who switched bodies with the daimyo, we bust the mirror ball that enables the body switching.  The end.

The GM had frontloaded the combat, an interesting idea for a con game.  The one combat I wish we had fought was against a sand monster that had attacked the village.  The party duelist didn’t really do anything and had to leave early – other than people who hate a game and are trying to flee from it, I don’t understand why people don’t plan to stay until the end of a game.  Other people have trouble getting into stuff, so leaving the slot open for them makes more sense.

Also, the characters were crazy powerful.  Just another example of how higher rank characters are broken.  In 3e, somewhere in rank 2, the game breaks.  In 4e, I think it’s in rank 3.  I rolled a 60 on my first Divination roll.  I rolled a 63 on a Perception/Investigation roll and only tied the party magistrate.  My Commune with Air roll started at 10k5.  I healed 42 wounds with the only Path to Inner Peace I cast.  Someone commented about a “mere 32″ when rolling for something.  I think our magistrate hit 69 twice on Investigation rolls.  For context, a Target Number of 30 is extremely hard for a lot of rank 1 characters and about a challenging TN for many rank 3′s.  I had like 5 skills at rank 5, Spellcraft at rank 7, and several skills at rank 3.

I have plenty of time to kill before running V:TES at 8PM, so I wander around and talk to folks.  Andrew, Brad, and I go to my favorite Chinese restaurant (in the world).  We get our own stuff, so I get tan tan mian.  We get back.  I park in my parking space (the closest one to the hotel outside of their parking lot).

I set up for V:TES.  Tom and Kat, who show up every year to play in my V:TES event, even though they live in Reno, which is insane by the way, show up first.  Geoff, who I hadn’t seen in maybe 6 years, is the only one signed up on the sheet and I spy him.  Rich, who I played some with ages ago, and Brad fill out a five player table while I wonder whether others are going to show since there’s only at least seven other people I know at the con who have played the game a significant amount.  Jeff is around, in between RPG coordinator duties, and the two of us talk while the five play.

They play for 2 hours with no one being ousted.  Brad was playing Akunanse, Rich borrowed Tzimisce, Geoff some Sabbat Pre/Obf vote deck, Tom 419, Kat Lasombra.  To make things a bit more interesting and because Jeff offers, we set up two four-player games with Jeff playing in each.  I go first in my game playing my “collection” !Toreador deck, Kat plays her Lasombra deck, Geoff plays Jacko throws cars and launches RPGs and other flung crap, Jeff borrows my Blessed Resilience deck.  In the other game, Rich plays some Stanislava bleed deck, Jeff borrows my “dudes with agg hands and Potence” deck, Tom plays weenie something, and Brad his Akunanse deck.

In my game, I’m not terribly threatened, so Loonar comes out, learns Auspex and gets a Sawed Off Shotgun.  She also acquires a members only Leather Jacket.  Redbone comes out.  I Effectively Manage and get Malabranca, so I work on him; later, he goes pool stealing, including when my prey is at 3 pool!  Jeff keeps discarding the combo cards for the Force of Will bleeds that is all the deck does, including Forces of Will.  My prey is somewhat contained because I’m oh so spooky [wiggles fingers].  Jacko tries to beat up folks with varying ability – one of Jeff’s guys gets torped and Jeff diablerizes with his other vampire who gets burned by Kat’s votes!  Geoff’s KRCG gets used a lot and even leads to a block or two.  My hand goes from too much intercept to too little and back.  Kat tries to vote, I generate four intercept, she gets five stealth.  Jacko gets bounced to me and it’s on.  Jacko goes long and dodges I think.  He additional strikes Molotov Cocktail.  Loonar additionals Sawed Off Shotgun.  Jacko presses with Flash, I press with Read Intentions.  Jacko presses with Psyche!.  I press with Nimble Feet.  For the win!

I get Kat down to 1 pool after Pentexing her Antonio, leaving her with no blockers as she only has him and Ambrosio.  I fail to kill her and she ousts Geoff.  Jeff breaks the Pentex.  Kat Villein’s and Giant’s Bloods to go to lots of pool.  Jeff finally kills me with Force of Will.  Kat crushes Jeff in the endgame as he can’t block anything she does at stealth and she has vote lock and this little thing we like to call Dominate.

In the other game, Jeff plays most of it with just Thetmes, somehow outbloating Stanislava bleeding.  Jeff ousts the weenies and Brad and Rich gang up on Jeff, Brad gets 3 VPs.

Geoff shows Jeff and me the game he’s been working on for years, so we play a dungeon crawl themed card game.  It’s good.  Definitely polished like he said.  I don’t like that you can only win on your own turn, though, and we didn’t see the party forming mechanic used virtually at all since it was just a three-player game.  I was surprisingly out of it by this point, slept horribly Friday night even though I was in bed around 10PM.  Drive home.

Sunday

I get in before 9AM, wondering whether I got into a 10AM game.  There was talk of playing some pickup Babylon 5 CCG, so I hung around the area where one of the game’s designers, Edi, was running Diplomacy.  Amusingly, two of the game’s original five designers were present at the con, though I never ran into John (Hart).

For some crazy reason, 10AM (and 11AM) games were in a slot that had event registration close at 9:30AM.  I get into my game and we decide that I should play in it rather than try to get a game of B5 going, maybe after my game ends we can see who is around.  When I get to my room after seeing my name on the posting at 9:50AM, the room is full of people who don’t know whether they got in or not.  One person comes in with a written out list.  One person gives up his seat so that a crasher can play as some people are having good luck getting into games and some people aren’t.

The game is Unhallowed Metropolis.  Obscure game where the small print run of the first edition book and obscurity means that the first edition books are apparently quite valuable.  The genre is post apocalyptic zombie/undead Victorian England in the 22nd century.  I wanted to play the “mourner”, a profession that means guarding a dead body for three nights from bad stuff.  A combat profession.  In fact, all three of the characters I was interested in were combat characters as playing an aristocrat or a doctor would be too much the sort of thing I usually play, and I’m not interested in playing a criminal.  I end up with my second choice, “undertaker”, basically a professional bounty hunter of the undead.  Third choice would have been dhampir.

We are hired to acquire the grandson of a nobleman from an orphanage.  Our first challenge is that the area near the orphanage goes under quarantine where the military comes in and cleanses the area.  We are in London, by the way.  Supposedly, it’s worse in the wastelands, but it seemed rather sketchy in town.  We jump a dumpster and blow away some zombies with our aristocrat fleeing towards destruction.  He gets corralled and we enter a building that seems like the orphanage, which it turns out to be.  We go room by room clearing out zombies.  We find paperwork and other stuff that gives us clues as to what’s going on.  I check out an obvious escape by some of the people who were at the orphanage/asylum/genetics lab/etc. and nothing comes of checking out the sheet rope from the window to the roof of the nearby building.  We go to the basement and come across prometheans – form of Frankenstein monsters.

Should comment upon combat in this game.  It’s crazy deadly.  It’s hard to say that 4e L5R is truly a deadly system like the L5R GM and others say, but the GM for this game was certainly right about it being crazy lethal.  I was in six combats.  I shot six times.  Twice, both times with my shotgun, I missed.  The other four times I blew the heads off my targets.  The dhampir got four attacks a round with his swords and the mourner got four attacks a round with her knives.  With essentially one exception, they killed everything they fought in one round.

The aristocrat nukes the first promethean with a pistol.  The mourner slices up the other two.  We find a tunnel but choose to ignore it as we have a location already.  So, we cross town.  Undead follow us out of sight.  We get to a warehouse.  In the warehouse are a bunch of zombie test subjects that we ignore.  We come across a vampire feasting on some corpses and the criminal and aristocrat flee while the dhampir takes him out in a round of combat.  We open another door and come across the kid as a boy cyborg with a big cyborg companion.  This is where I miss with my shotgun.  The doctor throws an acid grenade and somebody dispatches the cyborg’s head, probably the mourner, as the dhampir takes a wound that was one off killing him.

We leave, even though the doctor wants to use the lab in the warehouse as we are fairly sure the cyborg is going to explode.  We walk right into a bunch of zombies.  What’s funny is that they give us our toughest fight in that they swarm the mourner and give her all sorts of wounds.  I do waste my major ammo – I had switched clips in my pistol for the cyborg – blowing the heads off of zombie children.  We limp to a safehouse.  The aristocrat speaks to our employer about the state of the kid, the employer doesn’t want him, so the aristocrat plans to off the kid, which the doctor objects to.  While they argue, the military shows up and blows the head off the kid and arrests the doctor.  We get paid.

Grab food with Jeff at my favorite Chinese place, more tan tan mian and some xiaolongbao – place is known for dumplings and those two dishes are the standard ones I get there.

I don’t get into my evening game, so I wander, running across Rich, Ray, Tom, and Kat.  We play a game of Smallworld with the Underground mechanics.  I play horribly, not having enough experience, and the game quickly becomes a two-player race, though Ray makes a good showing at the end.  There is pounding on Rich, but unfortunately, no pounding on Kat.  She wins by a lower margin than I thought she would.  We play a pickup game of V:TES.

I lend out my 3-cap Lilith’s Blessing Thaumaturgy bruise deck to Rich and my “collection” !Tremere deck to Ray, so I decide to play one of my non-collection decks and play my Archon/Anathema/random weapons/Potence deck.  Tom, my prey, brings out Beast.  Rich brings out Masika St. John.  Kat is playing a goofy Lasombra deck, not her deck.  Ray brings out Malgorzata.  Tom threatens to rush my Nikolas Vermeulen if I don’t say I won’t bleed him (for one?).  He eventually decides to rush forwards and I retain my hand of multiple Torn Signposts and Undead Strength.  Turns out Tom has a fair amount of ranged strikes to go with Carrion Crows.

Ray quickly has five votes, having brought out Polly Kay.  That makes my game awkward as I need votes from Kat’s Aurora Van Brande who became the Archbishop of Philadelphia to pass votes.  My first Archon fails.  I do bring out some Progeny.  She helps me get an Archon on Selma.  I Bloodhunt Malgorzata, torp her, and Selma eats her.  Meanwhile, Tom keeps torping Masika, but Masika keeps coming back with more stuff – Mr. Winthrop, Zip Gun, Weighted Walking Stick, Blood Doll, Camera Phone.  He had put out Lilith’s Blessing early, so he just kept refilling the dorks who were rescuing Masika.  Rich finally is able to Flames of the Netherworld Beast and eat him.  Kat’s Ignacio gets torped and never comes back out, so she’s ineffectual.  Ray does not kill me with Dominate.

Tom goes to 2 pool for another Beast.  He goes to 1 pool to DI something.  I oust him.  Rich ousts Kat and Ray.  The endgame is completely in question for round after round after hour.  After 3+ hours, with my having 3 cards in hand and five vampires in torpor and Rich having all four of his vampires in torpor, I win.  At one point, Nikolaus had four Grenades and a Deer Rifle, only one of the Grenades being thrown for a simultorp.  Murat had Disguised an Ivory Bow to torp Masika.  Two of Rich’s vampires had been Anathemaed to oblivion.

An interesting game for the first hour or so, but it degenerated and, then, became kind of endless as we were so limited in what we could do to each other in the endgame.

I ran across Andy, Eric, and Jeff playing Die Hanse on my way to the car, figured out when I had to be at the con on Monday, and drove home.

Monday

The question was whether Andy and I were playing in Eric’s game.  Another question was whether Eric was running his game.  Two of the three people signed up had crossed their names out.  The third never showed.  However, a crasher showed, so Andy and I filled out the party and we played Eric’s Hunter: The Reckoning, using Savage Worlds rules, game.

I was born to be a wayward nun, so I played the wayward nun.  Andy played a retired park ranger.  Jay played a burglar.  We had to find a fellow Hunter who had gone into the upper Klamath River area, looking for something.  Hiking.

We talk to a park ranger, who doesn’t help.  We hike a couple of days upriver.  We find some tracks and the river is oddly polluted.  We decide to go for a thinner forested area to get a better view.  We spot a cabin.  In the cabin, the burglar finds a claymore mine.  We find lots of weird stick bundles strewn about.  We go upriver and find uranium barrels corroding in the river.  We find more.  We camp away from them and get attacked by werewolves in the night.  Our ranger does heinous amounts of damage to the brain of one of them without felling the creature.  I fail my fear roll and roll badly on the table, getting a major phobia of wolves, rather inconvenient since everything we fight ends up being werewolves.  True Faith protects me as the other two shoot the enemy.

We head Eastward, going further up into the hills, and find more barrels and more stick bundles.  We find a cave which the burglar’s second sight had said was a likely place for who we were looking for.  By the way, I was Judith, the ranger Jim, the burglar Jennie, and our fellow Hunter John.  We find John and I Rejuvenate away one of his wounds and do the healing thing I do.  A rift starts opening up in the cave while the mine we took blows up a werewolf.  Two more werewolves attack us and I do my usual thing of True Faithing while I tend to Jim.  John and I leave and the others finish off the werewolves and join us.  A great sound can be heard behind us.  I’m the only one not afflicted with radiation poisoning.  We get back to the ranger station, find out that he’s a naughty dude, and we report our findings on Hunter.net so that a larger force can come in and deal with the werewolf nest and extradimensional monster thing, while someone needs to clean up the random radioactive waste.

I thought using Savage Worlds (with mechanics Eric came up with) for Hunter worked well.  I’m much more okay with World of Darkness mechanics when playing a human than when playing a monster as the high variance and tedious failures seem more reasonable to me, but other than playing around with how Powers work, like one of mine was fairly useless though True Faith made up for it, things seemed smooth and appropriate.

All three of the RPGs I did were similar in that they were all solid con games.  By con game, I mean that they were reasonably straightforward, kind of fighty, things moved logically forward.  I’ve told some people recently that I actually find the average con game session better than the average home game session, and they seem shocked.  While I’ve had a full spectrum of con games, from the most painful and disturbing examinations of my fellow humans to awesome games, usually my con games are much brisker and more productive than my average home game sessions.  That’s kind of funny when you think about how strangers tend to work better together than people who know each other, though I think the fact that con games are known to be one-shots and tend to be more linear and/or focused has a lot to do with that.  It’s not just more combat, which is an inherently cooperative activity, either.  In con games where I talk with PCs and NPCs a bunch and fight little or not at all, things go much smoother.  Investigations are much smoother.

*shrug*

Eric needed to get home to run a game online, so I drove him and Andy home fairly soon after Eric’s game ended.  I did finally run into Eric P. right before leaving, so I saw most of the people I usually see at the cons.

Summary:  No B5, no Type P Magic, only two games of V:TES though one was outside of my event which was nice, boardgame and cardgame, three RPGs, all of which were good, food I wanted to eat, conversations with people I pretty much only see at cons, and my parking place was always prepared for me.  I feel like I’m missing something that I did.  Oh well.

Samurai Squad

I’ve played an unusual amount of Heroes of Rokugan recently, two mods in the last week.  I commented recently to people I play with online that, while it’s obvious that the more you play the more you get into the campaign, I didn’t realize how pronounced the effect was.  I’m constantly in touch with the campaign due to weekly local play, where I either GM or superfluously hang out while another GMs an adventure I’ve already played.  But, I haven’t been as jazzed about my (main) character in ages.

Then, I had a few other observations from the unusually prolific recent play.  There are my usual views on party composition – unlike home play where a GM can adjust challenges, the living campaign challenges are largely out of a GM’s hands, so metagaming party composition is important.  Combat tactics was something I spent a good amount of time thinking about.  Sure, it may be ironic that someone who favors combat as an activity so much less than others thinks more about it, but it is an outlet for analytical thinking.

I guess I’ll start with some comments on recent mods.  I will do a new set of rankings on subjective desirability and attempted objective quality for what I have played to this point.  But, first, I enjoyed both recent mods I played – Cold Hands, Stone Heart (SoB15) & Tear Away the Darkness (SoB22).  I especially enjoyed the former.

One of my complaints about HoR3 – yes, I have a variety, no, I’m not trying to grief staff by regularly pointing them out – is that too many mods are underdeveloped.  The underdeveloped ones tend to just be short at least one scene or major challenge.  Some play okay but seem to hint at far more than what you end up doing.  I got really tired of investigative mods from HoR2 because they felt like they dragged, but it wasn’t due to having too much to do, simply that what you did had too much sameness to it.

SoB15 was not one of the underdeveloped mods.  It gave me plenty of opportunities to do the things I enjoy … going to try to avoid being spoilery.  The rolls in the game made my character useful mechanically.  It had one or more themes that speak to me.

Meanwhile, SoB22′s enjoyable experience had a lot to do with relief.  I keep telling folks that I really want to read the mod to see whether it’s as harsh as it seems and how it scales for different groups.  I’m a big fan of smiting evil in L5R – as the first Shadowlands mod for the campaign, there was evil to be smited.  I didn’t have as much of a thematic experience, but I got to use my analytical mind …

Latest thoughts on HoR3 mods:

Scenario	Stars	Rank – Quality	Fun	Rank – Fun
SOB07	3.5	1	4	2
SOB00	3.5	2	3.5	4
SOB18	3	3	3.5	6
SOB15	3	4	4	1
SOB06	3	5	3.5	5
SOB09	3	6	3.5	7
SOB13	3	7	3	10
SOB12	2.5	8	3.5	8
SOB20	2.5	9	3	11
SOB11	2.5	10	3.5	3
SOB19	2.5	11	3	13
SOB01	2.5	12	2.5	16
SOB14	2.5	13	2.5	14
SOB08	2.5	14	2.5	15
SOB21	2.5	15	2	17
SOB04	2.5	16	3	9
SOB16	2.5	17	2	18
SOB10	2	18	1	21
SOB03	2	19	1.5	19
SOB02	2	20	1.5	20
SOB05	1	21	0.5	22
SOB17	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
SOB22	pending	pending	3	12

Moving on, party composition.  Fairly sure I mentioned some elements to an effective party in another post.  Some additional comments and some reminders.

First, the more shugenja, the better.  Shugenja are just superior to other schools for the usual reason that magic is almost always better than the lack of it.  Supernatural stuff dies to Jade Strike like it totally doesn’t to a lot of other things.  Tempest of Air, though I believe GMs are too generous with how many enemy targets and how few friendlies get hit by it, wins fights, including fights that wouldn’t otherwise be winnable.  Fires of Purity is broken.  Path to Inner Peace is essential.  Commune is broken.

After that, we get into specific roles.

Always want a talker – Awareness at least 3, preferably higher, at least 3 ranks in Courtier and Sincerity with Etiquette being important if less so.  Why Sincerity?  A lot of adventures come down to convincing someone to shake off possession or the like.

Hunter – I used to call this the Perceiver but most folks realize the importance in Investigation where too many people don’t value Hunting highly enough.  Picking up trails is essential in a number of mods, more so in HoR3 than HoR2.  The Hunter will have Perception at least 3, preferably higher, at least 2 ranks in Hunting, preferably at least 3, at least 2 ranks in Investigation, preferably 3, should have Battle too since Battle is the only other Perception skill.

Brain – Intelligence 3+, Sage, Commerce, Medicine.  Engineering makes sense but isn’t rolled that often.  Yes, a number of party brains get by without Sage, but Sage is so stupidly good that it really should be part of any character who plans an INT of 4+ and gets the party by while the character works up from INT 3 to INT 4.

“Ranger” – a new category for me, someone who can control range, more specifically, prevent a target from getting out of range of the party when in pursuit and who can affect enemies at range when melee isn’t effective.  This isn’t as essential as the others, and shugenja typically fill this role by accident what with Tempest of Air or Water spells increasing actions/movement or Earth’s Stagnation/Grasp of Earth.  Fire has a harder time with this as Fires from Within is actually not that effective damagewise.

Grappler – grapple is broken, sometimes it’s the only way to deal with problematic enemies.

Murderer – massive damage is the party’s friend, good to target with buffs from shugenja.

Taking my characters’ roles as examples, we can see a bit why I’m so reluctant to play my alt (nevermind not wanting an XP suck for my main).  Typical online party for me is:  Utaku A’Nen, Kitsuki Ketsumei, Ide Xiao Xi, Kitsu Kagami, and Moshi Shigeo (moi).

Ketsumei is the talker.  Xiao Xi and, now that Ketsumei has Hunting, Ketsumei are the hunters.  Xiao Xi and Kagami are shugenja.  I have become a much more useful brain now that I’m INT 4, though I lack Sage.  I don’t think Kagami has Sage, which means no Sage in party.  I think Kagami can ranger, though my recollection is that we don’t ranger well.  A’Nen is a mild grappler (less mild outside of combat).  Xiao Xi can probably grapple well.  Xiao Xi murders well; I’m okay at slaughtering.

Now, my alt, Hoshi Takumi, is best at talker but inferior to Ketsumei.  Two talkers is okay but not thrilling, depending upon what is given up.  For instance, two Air shugenja talkers would be fine because they have shugenja brokenness.  Takumi recently went to INT 3 and is a Sage!  But, he’s been pretty much behind Shigeo at all times as a brain.  Takumi is only a demibrain and will likely never rise to quality braindom.  Takumi also offers nothing else in these categories, though he is a moneypockets, which is a category that’s occasionally useful.

Bottom line, a solid talker and demibrain isn’t as useful to my typical group as a demibrain (Shigeo lacks Sage!), front line fighter, and demimurderer.  Take Ketsumei, though, out of the party and Takumi’s value rises astronomically due to not having niche overlap.

Combat tactics.  I’m not going to go into a lot of depth on combat tactics in this post.  More, there are some bad tactics that amaze me.

Frequent bad tactic – attacking someone who has already gone in the round when there are enemies who have yet to go.  Another, though this is more of a 4e phenomenon due to the awful inversion of the wound chart from 3e – not murdering the wounded, aka spreading damage rather than concentrated fire.

Spellcasting – yes, any spellcasting tends to be highly productive, but not splitting Jade Strike, splitting is far more damage output than calling raises for damage, wasting spell slots on easily winnable battles, and not healing the damage sponges, er, bushi are the main criticisms I have.

Initiative and stance manipulation should be much more common; I’m particularly guilty of forgetting that Center Stance exists, though I rarely see it being a good idea for my character.  Typically, initiative is going to be manipulated by Void Point expenditures, well, speaking of spending Void, people seem to overlove spending VPs for damage soak when ATN boosts are likely to be better defensive return on investment.

Everything is situational.  Most fights aren’t deadly enough for a total party kill, but that’s what gets people dead.  Fight a tough fight and all of those bad habits actually matter.

And, those are my primary HoR thoughts today.

Critical Nit

Critical hits, fumbles, hit location, bleeding, wounds, conditions, weapon damage, armor damage, and a host of other things are bad for PCs.  Feel it intuitively?  Take my word for it?  Perhaps.  Or, I can try to explain why.

One thing I think it takes time for people to realize, and it helps immensely to GM to see it, is that PCs and antagonists don’t have a symmetric relationship to combat.  This manifests in a number of ways.  One way is that PCs will usually be designed for greater efficiency in combat, eschewing certain weapon choices, armor choices, fighting styles, or whatever because they are suboptimal.  On the other hand, “people antagonists” in worlds where stuff outside of combat matters are usually much more focused on combat than an equivalent experience PC.

For example:  In Conan, a dagger is pretty much useless.  Can add poison, can have a bunch of Sneak Attack damage, but you can just substitute some other weapon and be better off.  The thief’s weapon of choice for a PC, assuming you go with some low damage weapon, is a shortsword.  There are examples in Conan of how a PC will go for more well-roundedness with Feat slots or whatever, but a really good example of how NPCs focus on combat was when I played in the battle event at Gen Con for HoR, where rank 2 Bayushi Bushi we fought all had 9k4 attack rolls as compared to my 6k3.  I might not get up to Kenjutsu 5 by rank 3(!!) at the rate things are going due to wanting a high Intelligence and putting points into noncombat skills, neither of which were relevant for one-shot antagonists.

Most of the asymmetry between protagonists and antagonists comes out of the typical fate we look for from each.  All players care about with regards to antagonists is removing the threat of them.  Usually, that means depriving them of life.  Don’t remotely care whether they have all of their limbs, whether they will never be able to breed again, how dented their shields are, etc.  They must be incapacitated, preferably permanently.

Meanwhile, lasting wounds, especially permanent ones, are a resource hit to a PC.  Weapon damage and armor damage – resource hit.  Even if it just takes money to fix something, if the money required rises to the level of significant, then resource hit.  Even survival can be a resource, as various systems have resurrection, usually at a great wealth cost.  Of course, survival can be even more important with the lack of resurrection.

Okay, all this seems obvious.  But, what about crits, fumbles, conditions, bleeding, and hit locations?

Bleeding, and what I really mean by bleeding is not someone in their death throes but someone who can start bleeding from lesser attacks, should be obvious.  Rules for bleeding from casual wounds force PCs to take noncombat actions or to put PCs on a clock.  Who cares whether the goblin bleeds?  The goblin is going to die or I am.

One thing about crits and fumbles is how often they occur and what the results are.  You can build these mechanics in such a way that they favor PCs.  For instance, you can say that fumbles only occur if you suck and make sure PCs never suck.  You can have fumbles reduce the amount of damage or attack percentage when PCs have a huge advantage with either.  Crits don’t tend to be so bad for PCs when PCs have far more hit points than their opponents and all crits do is increase damage.  And, so forth.

Yet, in all likelihood, these two mechanics will punish PCs.  There’s a crucial principle when it comes to RPG combat.  The principle is that PCs want combat to have less variance.  The more predictable combat is, the more reliably the PCs win.

But, you say, what about when the opposition is stronger than the party?  Of course that can occur, but why should it?  Why would the party be favored to lose?  Because … all sorts of reasons, you say.

Sure, there are legitimate reasons to put a party into a losing fight.  Parties choosing to bite off more than they can chew should be at a disadvantage.  Not every fight is supposed to be winnable.  In fact, if you are doing videogame roll-playing, like old school D&D dungeon crawling, the idea is that you go as far as you can as long as you believe you have the advantage and run/hide when you no longer think you can continue.  Though, if you were engaging in this sort of thing, you would expect every first combat in an adventure to be in the party’s favor, otherwise, the party will never get anywhere.

So, back to crits and fumbles.  They increase variance.  But, there are also other imbalances that normally occur.  For crits, antagonists usually make more attacks than PCs.  While this can vary, being outnumbered is a common combat setup for a party.  Even when not outnumbered, monsters often have more attacks than PCs.  There are plenty of RPGs where an animal would get both a bite and claw attacks or a bite and two claw attacks, while a PC will get a single attack.  Everything else being equal, which admittedly isn’t often the case, the increased number of attacks by antagonists leads to more crits.

But, you say, doesn’t this apply equally to fumbles?  Sure, volumewise, can tilt towards PCs.  Fumbles are primarily a screwjob on PCs because of the effects of fumbles.  For instance, if a possibility is to attack a friend or oneself, it’s rather normal for PCs to do more damage than their opponents.  Or, if the fumble is drop weapon, a PC will typically be highly dependent upon a particular weapon where some lizardman or whatever just switches to natural weaponry.  Actually, it doesn’t even need to be that complicated.  PC attacks are more valuable than antagonist attacks, if for no other reason than that the PC perspective is that PCs must win, where antagonists winning is … problematic.

It may seem like too many of my “typical” scenarios would be ones where the party is fighting a larger, but less skilled, force.  It’s also common to fight a single big bad or two badasses.  In these cases, if fumbles are just as likely and the effects of fumbles are normally things like losing attacks, losing defenses, attacking allies, or whatever, then fumbles can be worse for the antagonists.  At the same time, fewer opposition tends to go with more skilled opposition, so in theory, they will fumble less often, depending upon the system.

Again, though, we run into the idea of asymmetry.  If a party gets an easy fight because the opposition rolls badly, then the party is inclined to seek out more fights, to the extent such things are possible within an adventure, balancing out the results, or the party will be more successful, which, as long as it isn’t the norm that combats are easy, is likely not to make the players sad.  Meanwhile, a fight that goes badly because of unexpected results can either prevent the party from continuing on towards a goal or can result in permanent losses, which somehow seems sadder to the players.

As I’ve pointed out in the past, not even that long ago, while GMs can establish that the costs of failure be measured in things like lost reputation, prevention of story goals, being captured, and whatnot, the norm with FRPGs is death or other results that are of a similar severity.  Losing out on treasure, for instance, can be just as bad as dying in systems where stuff/wealth is critical to success.  I stopped playing my first RuneQuest character in part because he lost a bunch of Intelligence, reducing his skills to where I became more inept than I was at initial character creation.

Conditions are more nebulous.  What are conditions?  L5R 4e has a list that I recall fairly well that includes, among others:  Dazed, Fatigued, Blinded, Prone.  Pritnear every system has rules for being poisoned.  Attribute loss would be similar to a condition.  Some systems make these more permanent than others.  Permanent conditions, of course, are a major screwjob on PCs.  We played for over a year with a blind character in Conan.  There were unusual reasons why it worked at all.  In most cases, any sort of permanent injury means retiring or suiciding your character to get one that is whole.

But, what about temporary conditions?  Much less clear how they punish PCs.  Still, predictability.  That’s what we look for.  Dazed is an interesting condition in L5R.  It tends to be extremely bad in a fight, unless the one Dazed has nonattack combat abilities.  For instance, while not great for a shugenja to get Dazed, a shugenja can still cast spells.  A badass bushi Dazed is essentially useless, same with the vast majority of creatures.  I’ve GMed where a PC could Daze enemies, and it made fights insipid, in the favor of the party.

So, why bring up conditions?  Because conditions are more commonly inflicted on the party than inflicted by the party.  The whole point of supplements like the Monster Manual is to throw different stuff at parties and “different” often comes with special abilities that do weird things to enemies.  Also, an easy victory by the party due to blinding the enemy dragon tends not to be as problematic as an easy PC kill when your tank or spellcaster or whoever goes blind.  Anyway, that conditions are more commonly relevant to a PC than to an antagonist means having to deal with something outside of the norm, greatly increasing the reduction of efficiency of the party.

Conditions are things that have more impact the fewer combatants on a side.  If you kill a mook a turn, then you don’t really care if one of those mooks is also stunned.

Hit locations is interesting in that I see them being a PC screwjob whether the PCs are outnumbered or whether the party outnumbers the enemy.  While the Conan forums may have always given the impression that PCs fight similarly built NPCs, I have rarely played any RPGs where the antagonists were often built like the PCs.  Feng Shui, with named characters, comes to mind as a case where antagonists were akin to PCs, but usually, you either have a horde of mooks or a small number of big bads.

Obviously, if fighting your doppelgangers (not the monster but identical builds), hit locations would be fair.  But, when fighting inferior opposition, do you really care whether you hack off an arm or a leg when the enemy is dead either way?  Then, hit locations usually go with spreading damage around, i.e. the target can potentially receive more damage than a straight hit point system.  Even in RuneQuest, there’s some truth to this for PCs in that taking out a limb caps damage from a single attack.  I would argue that RQ is a good example of how this screws PCs on the other side – the big bad side.  If you spread damage around on a big bad, all that ends up happening is you end up taking far longer to kill the big bad.

But, you say, RQ has pretty severe penalties for losing a limb, so doesn’t this suck that much more for big bads, which are being outnumbered by the party?  No.  Hit points in systems with hit locations don’t tend to follow a “balanced” scale.  If you take a RQ character and give it 10 more hit points with the normal increases in each hit location, it becomes far, far more resilient.  How do I know?  I had such a character for a time.  One of my characters had roughly a 50% increase in hit points, and he became ridiculously more resilient to damage.  A big bad is not only going to have these defensive benefits but also improvements in offense to justify being a party challenge.  But, even ignoring the offensive side of the game, spreading damage on a high hit point target is awful for a party.

Note that one of the most played systems, if not a FRPG, which uses hit locations is BattleTech.  While BT is its own thing and lacks a lot of similarities to hit location systems in FRPGs, it is interesting to note just how resilient spreading damage can end up being in BT, something I think is a good thing in the game.  Of course, where limbs come off all of the time in BT and the player can not be too displeased, limb loss at the humanoid PC level is something I equate with a dead PC, displaying a way in which I find hit locations to be a screwjob to PCs – you would rather take generic damage and live or not live than lose the use of part of a body even if you do live.

Okay, you say, I get it – you just want PCs to never be threatened, for adventures to lack any sort of challenge, any sort of adventure.  Free XP and gold for all.

Actually, several of these mechanics I’m fine with, if handled in a reasonable way.  The ones I’m never fine with are bleeding, hit locations, and equipment damage; not specifically because they screw PCs but because they generate a bunch of accounting hassles while punishing PCs in ways I don’t see any benefit in.

Yes, I do realize that not having bleeding makes for some undramatic situations where you can just leave a horribly wounded person lying around forever.  Actually, let me make an exception or modifier to my feelings on bleeding.  Bleeding from any sort of damaging attack is annoying since it generally requires being taken out of a fight to deal with, which is crippling to parties.  Bleeding to death from something like being in negative hit points might be fine, preferable even if the alternative is you just die when you hit negative hit points (or the equivalent).  Conan, for instance, has bleeding to death rules that I’m fine with.

I’m generally anti-fumbles not because I have no sense of humor and hate variance but because too many fumble systems are disproportionately brutal to a PC, and it’s not often funny if fumbling directly leads to dying.  Maybe, it’s the systems I’ve played recently that have colored my thinking.  In the past, when I played less gamist systems, fumbles were more entertaining.  Immortal saw a 10% chance of fumbling every single time you used your magical powers (that everyone pretty much had); it even seemed like the intent was that you would fumble so that you got weird disadvantages from being tainted.

Really, more my point is that GMs/groups need to be aware of how these sorts of mechanics affect party results.  In particular, the more of these mechanics, the greater difficulty PCs have in being functional, a major takeaway from my RuneQuest experiences.

Maybe this is another case of my being inconsistent or having a hard time articulating a point of view that hits a sweet spot on a spectrum, but I’m hardly in favor of predictable combat.  If I know success is inevitable, I’m inclined to not fight it out at all.  At the same time, I have no interest in combat just being a randomfest of randomness, where anything can happen.

Why?  Because high levels of randomness undermines strategy and tactics, as well as undermining character building.  Decisions should matter.  If I want to attack the enemy but just end up shooting my commander in the back every time due to fumbles (this basically happened in a Mekton game I played in for our party), then I have no attack strategy/tactic left.  Why does my build matter if combat is highly unpredictable?  I might know next to nothing about first aid and be an aggro character, only to find myself repeatedly being removed from combat to stop bleeding.  Or, maybe I’m the tank healer who just sucks up attacks and keeps everyone else alive … who gets critted repeatedly or who fumbles parries repeatedly or who takes a head shot and gets immediately knocked out.

Elusive Targets

Been a while.  Been hard to focus on any one idea or interest.  That hasn’t changed …

Sometimes, I realize I don’t come across as the most consistent person in my arguments, opinions, and whatever.  In some cases, that’s due to being far more precise in what I mean than what is conveyed.  In some cases, I make an exaggerated statement for effect that undermines precision.  In some cases, I’m just not consistent, something it took me quite a while to realize.

Then, even if I were always consistent, as much as I try to describe thoughts in precise terms, it can be torturous to be precise or try to be precise.  Meaning isn’t always conveyed better by adding descriptive modifiers in an effort to be more specific.

There are times, like when it comes to RPG campaigns, when it helps to be clearer in what is desired out of the campaign.  Since I haven’t tried to write down my favorite things about role-playing sessions, I often don’t clearly express what experiences I want to have.  Yesterday, I wrote a couple of e-mails to one of my GMs about the sort of things I enjoy.  While I’m sure it’s kind of painful to follow, at least it’s a start and putting it in writing is better than trying to talk through points.

So, what experiences do I want out of a RPG session?

The Spotlight & Contributions & Cool

I’m not a spotlight type.  To argue for the validity of astrology, I could see someone using studies with sufficiently large sample sizes.  Otherwise, it’s far too subjective.  I bring this up because one of the features of my Sun sign is hating the spotlight.

Many times when I’m being spotlighted, I feel uncomfortable, feeling like I’m taking up other people’s time with things they don’t care about.  This is, yet again, another way that RPGs and fiction differ.  In reading a book, the reader doesn’t need to share the experience.  Role-playing is a social activity.  Meanwhile, I don’t mind other people being spotlighted for stretches.

I build bad characters, just like I build bad decks with CCGs and choose bad strategies in boardgames.  The goal isn’t to suck.  In fact, it bothers me when I can’t contribute my share to games.  Even two-player CCGs, where a lopsided game can be quickly conceded, the experience would have been better by not sucking.  Much of my drive that leads to sucking is the overwhelming desire to be unique.  I might play other people’s decks, but I don’t build other people’s decks (with rare exceptions).  I hate having cookiecutter characters.  I hate taking the well-known strategies in boardgames and, on those rare occasions I play them, wargames, miniatures, etc.

The thing is is that it’s pretty easy to discover most effective strategies.  In order to do something different, one has to either end up using an inferior strategy or discover something new.  Most of the time, it’s the inferior path.  With Conan d20, I tried a low Strength fighter.  Now, Conan is quite favorably inclined towards low Strength Thieves as Sneak Attack damage is insane.  It is not remotely favorable to those without copious amounts of Sneak Attack damage.  Even with new Feats in splat books, Strength or Sneak Attack damage or spells are what matter in combat.

Given my predilection to building (mechanically) offbeat characters, I still want to contribute.  I still want to pull my weight.  What that weight is varies by group.  In some groups, everyone needs to strive for effectiveness; for such a group, I will work harder to make a more effective character.  In other groups, being “sidekick level” or “spearchucker level” is good enough.  Usually, there’s something in between where a party weakness can be addressed.  That Conan character ended up being the primary diplomat of the party and a backup religious expert.

Okay, great, blah blah blah … why does this matter?  So, there’s designing a character and there’s playing a character.  Both should be meaningful to the GM, but GMs often have enough things to worry about without figuring out exactly how a party is going to function before it has some time to work together.  Given a particular build, in this case, a L5R build, to contribute, certain things need to happen.  My L5R character is knowledgeable about spirit realms.  If other (Rokugan’s realm is also a spirit realm) realms are never important, then that facet of the character serves no purpose and my contributions decline.

I don’t want the campaign to be all about spirit realm stuff (travel, invasions, etc.) just because I built a character that relates to that since I don’t care about the spotlight nearly as much as I think others do.  Well, I realize that quite a few people I play with are just as disinterested in the spotlight as I am, but some people care more.  But, since that’s the direction I went in character creation, it should be an element of the campaign.

Here’s where we get into consistency issues.  On the one hand, I eschew the spotlight and am often happy being a lesser contributor.  On the other, I like doing cool stuff.  I like to sneak up on people with awesome, which means being bodacious at least occasionally.  Of course, everyone has different ideas of cool.  I don’t find massive combat overkill cool, maybe when it’s a surprise.  I’m more into saving people who appear lost, holding off a superior force, or making emotional gestures.  Though, sure, sometimes I like one-shotting the high priest who is going to eat all of our souls, too.

In general, doing things others don’t is important to cool.  If everyone studies the glyphs, it’s just rolling dice.  If everyone else is looting the sarcophagi while I study the glyphs, that’s interesting to me.  One of Robin Laws’ gamer archetypes is the specialist.  I came out in the quiz mentioned in this post as 58% specialist.  That sounds reasonable.  I don’t always feel the need to be an expert in some area, but I like having my niche.

Looking back at the examples from HoR2 mods that I listed for my L5R GM, it’s clear that doing thing others didn’t and, maybe, couldn’t pleased me.  Though there have been instances where combat prowess or the like have been these things, usually it involves interactions with NPCs.

The World As We Know It

This is not going to be all that enlightening, but without a world (and people in the world) to interact with, interactions with NPCs aren’t going to happen.  So, one of the things I look for from my GMs is having NPCs, preferably NPCs with some depth, even better NPCs who are recurring characters.

I’m not going to like every NPC.  Nor am I going to hate every NPC.  But, I should fancy some NPCs and despise others.  To an extent, it can be forced.  A party villain may have done horrible things to every PC’s family.  I’m very much into subtlety, especially my own, but when it comes to NPCs, I don’t know that subtlety matters much.  Some things about a world just need to grab the player.

On the other hand, I realized only recently just how little interest I take in other PCs.  It’s not that I don’t care about them being successful, it’s that I don’t feel a need to interact with them since they don’t help the plot move along.  I am, after all, primarily a storyteller archetype, so I care a lot about plot.  Sure, sometimes I like to interact with another PC, but that’s typically because the PC’s player is female.  Then, there are campaigns where players drive what happens, not campaigns I play in nor campaigns I would be all that excited by as I hate driving the action – I have an extremely reactive personality.

There are other things I like to see in the world.  I like the world to be biased towards the PCs.  Yup, I said it.  I’m not looking for fair, though fair is a step up in some cases.  I want the world to be more pleasant than the real world.  Otherwise, might as well play real life.

I want the world to be oriented towards telling stories.  I play RPGs to get away from mundane crap like worrying about money, worrying about my career, worrying about food and shelter.  Shopping is not an adventure.  Nor is a lot of the other minutia that crops up.  Not every moment needs to be about dramatic challenges, but I want to do things that are sufficiently engaging that I would write about them later.

What about the PCs’ place in the world?  While I’m a high fantasy kind of guy, when it comes to RPGs, I don’t know that it matters a lot to me how important the PCs are.  I don’t want to be constantly reminded of lack of importance, of course.  Look at L5R.  A newb character in most campaigns is going to be Status 1 or 2, maybe be an Emerald Magistrate with effective Status of 4.  If a campaign constantly pointed out that the Status 3+ NPCs got to sit at the big kids table and we were nobodies, that would be fairly irritating.  On the other hand, knowing that there are lots of more important folks but having them be off stage is fine.

Eeps & Toys

I hate stuff.  Not always.  Not even usually for some kinds of stuff.  But, in general, equipment, magic items, and the other stuff that define the specialness of D&D characters, et al, just turns me off.  I can’t stand the idea of a +1 sword or a Bag of Holding.  Those are videogame toys.  I don’t even like the idea that armor is useful and I have virtually no interest in distinguishing one weapon from another beyond ranged vs. melee.

However, I do like rewards.  I like experience points, especially in games where you can buy precisely what you want rather than games where you only level up.  In terms of other rewards, there are a couple I like.

I do like “useless” stuff with flavor.  L5R has a lot of potential for this where superior equipment is scarce but a scrap of the banner held by some dude when some force held off a thousand goblins means a lot.  My favorite mod experience in HoR2 came from Words and Deeds.  One of the things that happened in that mod was gaining possession of a notable shogi set.  It had some mechanical benefit, in fact even a benefit I used in the mod to win the shogi tournament, but the coolness to mechanical benefitness ratio was extremely high.  I think part of it was also that it had a significant cost.  I burned a bunch of allies and/or favors to afford the set.  And, when I gave it away at the end of the mod, I was quite pleased with myself.

I’m also more inclined to favor stuff, even useful stuff, when it’s one of a kind and is the result of what a character does.  Being handed Stormbringer is not interesting.  Fighting Yyrkoon and Mournblade to get it is somewhat more interesting, only being kind of a fail because someone has already done that.  Forging one’s own blade from a scale of a dragon that the character slew – that works.

I’m even more into intangibles.  I liked the Reputation mechanic in Conan until I eventually gave up on it as it wasn’t serving to distinguish characters from each other and it was just a tedious accounting exercise.  I like that L5R has a Glory mechanic, though I wish it actually did something – a suggestion I made to my GM.  I like being thought of favorably (or feared) by nations, towns, NPCs, factions, cults, etc.  There’s a reason people donate money to universities, et al, and have their names put up on the buildings.  And, think about the adventure creating advantages of having a library named after your character; that library ain’t burning down without a pile of corpses.

Rocks Fall, Massive Damage Save Of 50

I don’t feel a need to be constantly challenged.  That is, there are times when playing when it’s okay for things to be happening that aren’t an obstacle.  On the other hand, weak challenges are lame.  More specifically, if I think the challenge was easy, I’m not interested.  Even if it is easy, if I think it felt challenging, then I’m happy (just don’t tell me differently).

In particular, I hate easy combats.  For whatever reason, even though I can get deeply into what proper tactics should be, combat just doesn’t interest me a lot to begin with.  Pointless combats or combats that are just resource drains are annoying, even in videogames.  I hated random encounters in the slums in Pool of Radiance because they just wasted my time getting to interesting stuff.

Dangerous combats are a different story.  I often get excited by combats that don’t seem survivable, though it helps if the system isn’t insipid.  Then, combats where there’s a particular goal, like rescue a kidnap victim or protect a helpless character or prevent some building/object/whatever from being destroyed, tend to be interesting to me.

Similarly, other challenges should be engaging.  I tend to find riddles to be obnoxious.  Usually, either someone knows the answer immediately or it’s just painful trying to come up with an answer.  Other forms of puzzles, like logic puzzles, don’t really work for me, either.  I like logic puzzle books, some more than others, but the experience of having a bunch of people try to work a puzzle out is not one I’m interested in – I don’t like shared efforts for such things.

Talking to NPCs can be good or bad.  Arguing a point, court drama style, might be good.  Bartering, negotiating terms, and the like tend to just be irritating, which is probably why I’m so uninterested in HoR’s political interactives.  Logistical challenges don’t do it for me, either.  It’s too close to “accounting nonsense” to worry about how much water we have, how fast a horse can go in a day, and so forth.

Traps are not as exciting to me as intelligent opposition.  Some traps, like ones where you have to figure out what order to pull levers in and the like, don’t interest me at all.  I’m more inclined towards physical challenge traps resolved with dice rolls.

I do want decisions to matter.  However, very often, there’s not enough information to make an educated decision, in which case it didn’t matter.  Just recently, our party had a decision as to whether to take a shortcut or not – there wasn’t enough information to determine the advantage over one path or the other, just a guess that the shortcut’s increased risk would make up for the shorter path, so it was a non-challenge and an irrelevant decision.

Like combat, other challenges should tie in some way to the party’s goals (or PC’s goals).  Arbitrary obstacles, whether traps, puzzles, or whatever, are just as bad as arbitrary combats.

Grandpa, What Happened?

Ultimately, the experiences I’m looking for are ones that make for good stories after the fact.  I want to do things I think are cool without bogging things down for everyone else or stealing their thunder.  To be cool requires that there be context, with the world being the context.  I want to be rewarded for things that I do, appropriately of course.  I want to overcome meaningful challenges, i.e. challenges that seem challenging, whether they really are or not.

Salmagundi

No theme, just some observations and thoughts.

CCG

Played V:TES in Pleasanton recently.  One game, about four hours, 20 minutes.  At the four mark, I was winning, even though my grandprey in the five-player had self-ousted right after rescuing one of my prey’s vampires (they were all in torpor).  It was an interesting game.  At times, some players didn’t have much to do, but everyone was highly involved some of the time.

It took me a few tries, but I nuked Jost with Anathema + Archon rush.  I was amused by my deck as I brought out Greger, gave him Potence, got blocked bleeding, so Disguised out a Deer Rifle!  If not for the Deer Rifle, I would have been toast as my predator had Basilia, who got both the Blade of Enoch and a Weighted Walking Stick, and my prey was Celerity/Protean aggpoke.  When my prey did get Desert Eagles, my guys started exploding.  I did end up using a couple of the Grenades I Concealed out as well as tried to punch a few times for five with Torn Signpost + Undead Strength.  Speaking of too many weapons, my grandpredator was playing a Pier 13, Ghoul Retainer deck.  Of my four Sabbat Threats, three were blocked and the other did a mighty one pool damage.

RPG

I am constantly amazed by groups that have had various campaigns that don’t make a concerted effort for party PC design.  I don’t mean the sort of “force you to storytell” mechanics of a game like FATE but just making sure that the party will have a reason to adventure together.  Nor do I mean mechanically fitting in a party, since GMs can adjust to party strengths and weaknesses.  Wargames, like D&D, might require that you have party balance to play “normal” adventures, but most RPGs handle unbalanced parties.  I mean in character reasons that my character would adventure with other characters I don’t like or have no respect for.  Same issue when introducing a new character to an existing party.

I’ve already designed a new character for one of my campaigns because I have yet to see how my current character would work with one of the other players.  Yes, I mean player, not PC.  His PC is an extension of his interests, like my character is the extension of mine.  The two PCs are polar opposites.  As I have an extremely collaborative personality and prioritize the plot and the party over individual goals/interests, it makes sense for me to create a better fit.  This was actually something I worried about as soon as I saw the other players’ concepts.  Now, I haven’t decided to switch characters yet as the campaign hasn’t progressed that far, but unless I see some real change in the party dynamic, I should pull the trigger soon.

I have frequently praised L5R.  I have noticed something, however, that is a weakness of the roll and keep system.  I quite enjoy the openended rolls possible when faced with a static target number.  I kind of ignore that the Raise system doesn’t work like it’s presented.  I have decided that I’m not much of a fan of contested/opposed rolls, however.  The random “I rolled 50 on 3k2″ is cool when it, 1., is better than rolling 25 and, 2., isn’t rolled against another PC to determine who wins something.  I’m not even that thrilled when a NPC rolls some crazy number to beat a superior dice pool of a PC, but it’s especially unpleasant when two PCs are contending (in a contest, say) and the inferior competitor so often defeats the superior.

Boardgames

Was a busy weekend.

I’m fairly bored with most of Scepter of Zavandor at this point.  The parts I’m not bored with are the endgame manipulation of VPs and certain subtleties of play.  Not that these mean much when I play a better game than the people I typically play this with.  While others pointlessly pick up Crystal Balls, I get Crystals of Protection and far outproduce.  I’m the only one who ever seems to get the Tomcat Sentinel and convert my gems into Opals.  I’m happy to believe that there are better players than I, but I don’t need to be clever in how I buy Sentinels, be clever in when to buy inactive gems, or need to figure out how to ever get any use out of Crystal Ball.

I could report on our Seafarers of Catan game, which nobody seemed to enjoy, and our Dominion games, but I don’t like either game.  I at least like Scepter, even if I’ve grown tired of it.  It’s normal for me to tire of boardgames since they are so limited, so no big deal.  I still consider Puerto Rico the best Euroboardgame I’ve played and I grew tired of that years ago.  I did comment to someone in the group that I should look around for a new boardgame.

Review – Imperial Histories

I finally got my copy of the latest book for 4th Edition Legend of the Five Rings.  My review of the previous book can be found here.

Unlike last time, I have read a substantial review of this product on a gaming site already.  David Giles wrote one for rpg.net there.  So, some of my remarks may be in response to things he wrote.

I’ll just go quickly through some areas I mentioned with the previous review.

Aesthetics

Typical of the line.  David brings up that the art is from the CCG.  While I think the art in these books is decent to great, I do feel like certain images are overused and there is art that I’d like to see more of – cleaner images of people interacting with the world mostly.

Outline

There’s an introduction that speaks of how to use each chapter.  Some may want to focus on canonical stories, others may want nothing to do with knowing what’s going to happen, while some may want a different spin on the familiar.  Different eras may suit different desires better.  And, so forth.

Each era gets an explanation for how it can be used.  Then, you get a chronology with notes.  The status of clans and other factions, such as Shadowlands, is detailed for each era … one can easily forget that the Unicorn are absent for almost all of the first nine centuries of Rokugan … for reasons that I will get into.  There is some discussion of theme for the era.  Important characters.  And, a few mechanics that may or may not be relevant only to the particular era.

Fiction

I quickly grew tired of reading it.  While arguably not the same as the chapter heading fiction, I did read some of the sidebars with Ikoma’s comments about The Dawn of the Empire era.  I just didn’t feel like Ikoma was saying them as they lacked a worldliness to them.

Meat

The meat of each chapter is what challenges are going on during the era.  These are all done well enough, I suppose – I haven’t really thought about how I would use the information to run a campaign.  That I’m not really looking at the material as someone eager to incorporate one of the eras into a new campaign is a bias that should be taken into account, of course.

Clear effort was put into explaining what sort of campaigns the eras would be good for, and I have a lot of respect for that.  Not every group wants a political campaign.  Not every group wants a survival campaign.  Etc.

I do question, a bit, how four of the eras are all within a century of each other.  David and I may have different views on specifics – he wished that Heroes of Rokugan did more with the Spider Clan, I wish the Spider Clan had never been conceived as it’s insipid, we seem to agree that L5R, the RPG, is overly tied to L5R, the CCG.  Sure, 4e is the first version of the RPG to aim for timeline neutrality rather than setting in where the CCG currently is, but Imperial Histories reminds us of how influential the CCG is by having era after era that starts with the era when the CCG was originally set and continues forward from that point.

There is certainly value in providing info on such eras for someone like myself who doesn’t follow the CCG at all.  The current HoR campaign, in fact, picks up right after one era and draws upon the following era, so I get to learn more about important NPCs, the background, and possible, related events.

It’s just that one might expect more on eras that we know little to nothing about.  Heroes of Rokugan II gets a chapter.  I, of course, know all about it.  David thought it was more what the product should have been about.  He is far more concerned than I am with the repercussions of events in Rokugan, with evolution.

Everyone seems to agree that The Great Famine chapter is awesome.  A contest was held to have someone contribute an era to the book and Jason Bianchi’s entry won.  For a game largely driven by its CCG, this sort of supplemental material only for the RPG that does no harm to the CCG is perfect.  Well, maybe not perfect.  David’s complaint is that in order to not mess around with future history everything needs to be swept under the carpet, expunged from “official” history and forgotten by later generations.  That it makes one feel like nothing you do during that time matters.  Though, as I would never have a campaign where the future is already written, I don’t see the issue with having a campaign in the 7th Century and diverging at that point in history.

My greater concern with the eras set before the 12th century is that so many elements of L5R I’m familiar with don’t exist.  Numerous minor clans won’t exist.  Schools won’t exist.  In The Dawn of the Empire, obviously, a lot of the schools won’t exist.  Families won’t exist.  The Unicorn aren’t even present for three of the eras and partially present for one.  HoR2, with its “take everything you know, assume that not much has changed except that we aren’t doing the same events as the CCG anymore” tactic is the most comfortable to me.

For instance, I am playing in a home campaign, now.  I don’t know that I mentioned this previously.  Our home campaign is set in 1001.  No Monkey Clan.  No Jade Champion (was vacated hundreds of years earlier and reinstated a century later).  It’s not superweird – the Unicorn are back, for one thing.  But, it’s different enough to notice.  It does have the advantage, of course, of ignoring the Spider Clan, the Destroyer War, Iweko Dynasty, even The Four Winds era, none of which I’m all that enthralled by.

The other notable alternate timeline to HoR2 is KYD – The Thousand Years of Darkness, an era mentioned before and highly desired by some.  It provides an example of how to make a real mess of Rokugan.  Other chapters talk about how you could diverge immensely from canon.  This chapter is that divergence.  HoR2 ends up being a major divergence in what crazy stuff didn’t happen rather than what crazy stuff did happen, but it also predated a lot of the weirdness the CCG inflicted upon canon.

Imperial Histories 2 is a product that already sounds in the works for release maybe two years from now.  A number of people have commented about what they would want to see.  Some want to go animesque, sci-fi, modern, whatever.  After all, there’s only so many variations on The Great Famine, “fill in the gaps with secret history” style era.  And, yet, the Devil is in the details.  We all likely want our version of L5R, but it takes effort to come up with your own campaign ideas, so if someone is willing to go to the trouble of detailing the ideas, makes life so much easier, as we see by people using HoR2 for their own campaigns.

Mechanics

There aren’t a lot of new mechanics.  That’s not so unusual, as Emerald Empire didn’t have much, either.  Even more so than EE, though, I’m just not that interested in what game mechanics are included.  Some are time specific.  Most are far too narrow in scope.

The one thing most relevant to me – Tattooed Monk mechanics – weren’t even all that.  First, they are schools rather than paths or advanced schools, so I doubt the campaign staff for HoR3 would make any use of them.  Second, even if they were somehow relevant, the mechanics go in the opposite direction I want to go in.  While it’s claimed that Hoshi Tsurui Zumi care less about combat, the school still forces unarmed combat mechanics down your throat.  Why can’t there be a Tattooed Monk School where you get to choose not to be a martial artist archetype?

Bottom Line

I am of the belief that one buys every product put out until it becomes clear that the quality/effort drops.  It’s a trivial amount of money to keep up with about four products a year as expenses go.

Here’s my system and rating from my last review:

x	Don’t bother if free.
*	Don’t pay for.
**	Look for if you must or buy at deep discount.
***	Worth buying.
****	Should have in collection if you play the game/genre.
*****	Should have in collection if you don’t play the game/genre.

While kind of a strange way to measure things, since it will lump this book in with books I think are better, it rates ****.

My system is showing its fundamental flaw, as Imperial Histories would still get **** due to being a worthwhile reference, but I would say it’s more like Emerald Empire and less like the more important The Great Clans.  I’d even put it behind Emerald Empire due to the mechanics being mostly meaningless and the ideas being more for an aspiring GM, rather than a player or someone already running a campaign.

So, new system.

x	Waste of space, sell or toss if owned.
*	A bad product that might have one thing you want.
**	Mediocre to average product.  Usually limitedly useful.
***	Good product.  Gets looked at *or* key to specific campaign.
****	Superior product.  Regularly referenced.
*****	Product that’s so good that you want to use it for other games.

So, this fits better as a ** or ***.  I might decide that it’s a good reference and gives me ideas for characters, campaigns, or whatever.  For the moment, it’s an interesting read that I think is necessary up to a point for consolidating various canonical storyline information but not a product I’ll need to look at all that often.  I don’t even look at Emerald Empire that often, which suggests to me that EE should be a ***.  Because of more important mechanics, I do look at The Great Clans often enough, but it’s also probably a ***.  Enemies of the Empire, for enlightening me to a great deal I didn’t know and for giving ideas for antagonists, would be more like a ****.

I mean, I do love the aesthetics of all of the new books.  They are so much more pleasant to read than other RPG books with a lot of evocative art.  And, if you play the game regularly, there’s no reason not to have the books, but some are just better than others.  And, I do think having more relevant mechanics is something AEG can work on.

[Classic] Strength of Air

Another instant classic, this time from a post to the Alderac L5R forum.

* * *

I started responding on the thread about Mirumoto Bushi when I realized I would have just been threadjacking, so here goes my concern.

So far, I feel like every school (even shugenja) is an Air school in 4e play. I’m not entirely sure why 4e feels so Air heavy, but it may be due to:

1. Inversion of wound chart, making even low Earth characters unlikely to be in wound penalties.

2. Lower attack bonuses (Free Raises, static) combined with higher base ATNs making it harder to hit, not only reducing damage which the lower Earth characters enjoy but also leading to high Reflexes making hitting much, much harder than in 3e (3e being when missing was never expected).

3. Less reason to buy up skills, leading to more points devoted to traits with the best bang for the buck with skill use being Awareness. Increased Void cost of 4e can siphon off points, but that still doesn’t encourage Earth above 3, Water, or even Fire (as important as Agility generally is, see 4. for more on Reflexes) for bushi and courtiers.

4. Far more tactical movement use, leading to combats that start further away, leading to more ranged combat.

5. Three key Awareness skills, generating increased value out of Awareness increases.

6. Agility no longer mattering for dueling.

All of this can be undermined, of course. Magic and special attacks are a great way to ignore ATN and make Willpower more relevant. Successful Fear is incredibly harsh. Cover or restricted combat setups and forcing characters to string bows (which I wouldn’t as it’s just annoying and shafts Tsuruchi, et al) would reduce the value of bows. Making Investigation, Hunting, Intelligence skills more essential to success reduces focus on Awareness skills.

But, still, given that the Awareness skills can’t just be ignored and Reflexes didn’t lose anything from 3e to 4e, while my sense is that Earth did and Agility has a harder time keeping up with Reflexes while losing dueling relevance, I’m weary of how important I see the Air Ring being. Only likely to be exacerbated when The Book of Air comes out.

* * *

While I probably disdain the Water Ring the most, I’m fond of Perception.  I just find the Air Ring a bore and try to ignore it when my characters aren’t forced into it.  This is quite detrimental, of course.  Putting aside how important Awareness is for dealing with people, by ignoring Reflexes, I’m hurting initiative, which was essential in 3e, the game of whoever strikes first wins, and Armor TN, essential in 4e, the game of grinding away where someone might actually miss with an attack.

I had a 3e character who sucked, hard, relative to the 3e standard.  But, I enjoyed him for his unkillability.  He could hit people, especially with Full Attack stance, which he could survive due to Earth 4.

I have a somewhat similar build with 4e and it’s obnoxious how dependent he is upon armor (for not getting hit and reducing damage).  Sure, I see all 4e bushi being largely screwed when not allowed to use armor, but at least a Reflexes character can dodge attack after attack and still isn’t that likely to be in wound penalties if someone rolls unusually well.  At least initiative is not as important as it used to be, though that does depend upon not facing a bunch of spellcasters who can make a mess of combat before you act.  On the flip side, those spellcasters do ignore ATN, so at least Reflexes doesn’t help as much defensively.

Maybe, it’s just that I play in less investigative adventures and more social + combat adventures where Intelligence and Perception become less relevant.

Desired Supplements

Oh, the sin of desire.  Whatever.  AEG runs a column on rpg.net for the L5R RPG.  For 2013, they have two undetermined slots for sourcebooks.  Here is my post on what I’d like to see for future sourcebooks:

Sourcebook interests:

1.  Spirit Realms besides Ningen-do detail, including areas between realms.  What do Fortunes look like when you meet them?  How would you survive for extended periods in Toshigoku or Gaki-do?  And, so forth.
2.  Military Campaigning – Imperial Legions, Jade Legion, Clan Legions – What are they like?  How do they fit in with samurai serving locally or “adventurous” samurai?  Can be more on mass combat for tabletop RPG play, though I’m expecting The Book of Water will address mass combat alternatives.
3.  Adventuring in the outdoors – There’s a lot of uncivilized sections of Rokugan but too many details need to be worked out by a GM for anything more than “oh, look, a bandit camp” such as having animal encounters laid out in detail.  Not to say it should all be about fauna, how to find water, extreme elements, and such that can be found with some research but also just what are the uncivilized areas of Rokugan like?  What is it like to go into Shinomen Mori?  What is it like to spend a week climbing mountains in Dragon Lands?  What are islands without ports and cities like?
4.  Monsterhunting campaigning – While monsters can easily show up in a book focused on Spirit Realms and it’s not really necessary to statblock everything under the Moon, I’m thinking more of a campaign that is monster-smiting focused, not to be confused with a pure Shadowlands supplement.  In addition to more on the Shadowlands, what would a roving band of monster hunters really find within Rokugan?

Perhaps may notice the trend:  I get plenty of politics and intrigue already, I’m more interested in heroic adventuring and more physical adventuring throughout the world(s).

When I think of what Asian fantasy role-playing that I want to do [censored], I think of an InuYasha style world.  There are all sorts of spirits and many of them are naughty and the roving band of heroes tries to help innocent folks get by in the country – cities and large population centers are never, to my knowledge, shown.  Now, InuYasha is a bit lacking in subtlety for me; I wouldn’t say it’s too high fantasy as I like high fantasy but more that the PC abilities tend towards the over the top stuff you see a lot in anime.  In particular, InuYasha with his sword and Miroku both have abilities that are more superheroes in a fantasy world, which would be okay but not the more ghostbusters vision I have.

L5R could do this, but most folks who play L5R want the politics and intrigue, the infighting between clans and Imperials, that I just don’t care anything about.  In my Ghostbusters of the Five Rings world, the Scorpion Clan would have no reason to exist.  In truth, the idea of clans is unnecessary.  The Crab would be specialists in monsters.  The Crane Clan would just be courtiers, artisans, and merchants.  The Dragon would be esoteric monks.  The Lion would be soldiers.  The Mantis would be sailors, island-dwellers, and merchants.  The Phoenix would be priests.  The Unicorn would be … nonexistent.  Imperials would be off stage to where they would be just plot device individuals – “I, rich noble dude, am being haunted.  Help me.”

But, this isn’t going to happen.  Or, at least, it’s unlikely.  It’s not that it would be all that hard to strip L5R of numerous mechanics and flavor elements logistically, the issue is that people have expectations based on the source material, including just the mechanics in the source material.  In other words, as a GM (though I’d prefer to be a player) in such a campaign, the actual L5R RPG books would need to be hidden to not give players preconceived notions of how the world works.  Roll and Keep core mechanic, Rings/Traits as per L5R, combat system, weapons, mundane goods, even magic system could all be retained, but it should be written out in a document stripped of all of the Rokuganiness of L5R.

A different Asian FRPG system could be used much the same way.  Qin: The Warring States, Weapons of the Gods, whatever – the need, though, is to separate out world specific elements that don’t fit this sort of campaign.

Do people do this sort of thing all of the time?  Sure.  Fantasy Hero or any other generic system could be redone to reflect an Eastern world.  Non-generic systems are repurposed all of the time, as well.  It’s just that so much of L5R is wrapped up in its world as a niche product.

Anyway, back to the realistic.  I find 4e L5R supplements to be amazingly good.  A step up from 3e and a huge step up from some of the 1e books that felt mechanics heavy even if they were supplying some essential world information.  Now, having said this, I still need, as a GM not so much as a player, visuals and details that players largely don’t care about.  I want to know what a small Mantis island looks like.  Do they vary much?  I want to know what the terrain is like in Gaki-do and what there is besides gaki.  I want to know how the Imperial Legion functions since it rarely seems called upon to fight in times of peace and it’s a major disruption from the normal duties of samurai.

Actually, I don’t even know what is normal for samurai.  Emerald Empire will talk about birth, gempukku, death, marriage, but what about:  What do samurai get assigned to do after gempukku?  Why?  How?

Emerald Empire and material in other books addresses mundane aspects of a samurai’s existence, but I’m still trying to process how the world works.  You aren’t supposed to wear armor anywhere that is supposed to be safe – this often comes up when traveling in adventures.  How far out are patrols?  What are the areas without patrols like?  No peasants?  How big are these wilds areas?

On a different topic, ashigaru get mentioned often but samurai are often the ones who do stuff in adventures, for obvious metagame reasons.  But, what about these ashigaru?  How common are they?  What are their lives like?  What is their military organization like (given that I don’t have virtually any sense what the samurai military organization is like)?  How do they work together with samurai?  In theory, much of warring is done by ashigaru, but the game acts like it’s Crane duelists taking out Lion commanders while actual lions are running around and dying to Phoenix fireballs as Utaku Battle Maidens charge into dual-wielding Mirumoto.

Deeds, Not Words

Bushido Mechanics

Can’t spell Compassion without Passion,
Can’t spell Courage without Rage,
Can’t spell Sincerity without Sin,
Can’t spell Duty without … um … doh!
… back to the drawing board.

No, not talking about the RPG Bushido, though I do own it and met someone recently who ran/played it, much to my surprise – very hard system.

I’ve been thinking increasingly about distinguishing character facets by pulling out each of the L5R tenets of bushido.

Bushido Hierarchy

I have trouble seeing my HoR characters’ personalities.  Since I’m pro-Honor, I started thinking about which tenets they cared more about to act Honor-ably (try to up their Honor Ranks) during play.  It didn’t take long to realize that the obvious thing to do was to simply rank every tenet.  For the moment, not putting any numerical value on them but just seeing what was relatively more or less important.

My first pass was interesting.  I certainly realized that I didn’t really know for many of the tenets what they believed was important.  Also, I ended up with two very similar profiles, which seemed wrong.

Example:

Bushido Hierarchy:
Courage > Courtesy > Sincerity > Honor > Honesty > Compassion > Duty

I ended up redoing my hierarchy for my other character.  One thing that was throwing me was that I was using astrology, both Eastern and Western to aid forming these characters’ personalities and the keywords I pulled out for their signs pushed me into a lot of tenets.  At first, I had both characters caring little about Duty but realized that Duty was one of the most important aspects of my other character.

Of course, the higher one’s Honor Rank, the stronger the character feels in general.  The lowest tenet for one character may be more valued than the highest of another.  Which brings us to scoring.

Individual Scores

One of my characters is Honor 5 and the other Honor 7.  These are the averages of the rank values for the individual tenets, though I don’t think a lot of people really think about it from this direction.  While certainly people realize that Honor Rank is an average and that different tenets are ranked differently, that the average of those ranks should be the same as the overall can be surprising to look at.

A character may very well be 10 in Duty and 1 in everything else, a Scorpion say, and average out to a 2.  Not surprised?  Well, that’s a stereotypical case.  What about someone who is 10 in three tenets and 1 in the rest, averaging out to about 5.  This character is extreme, to the point where I couldn’t see it being all that reasonable.  Still, variance is an issue, though high Honor and low Honor characters are going to be much more limited in variance.

Example:

Bushido Hierarchy:
Sincerity – 9
Duty – 9
Courtesy – 7
Compassion – 7
Honesty – 6
Courage – 6
Honor – 5

This is, of course, my Honor 7 character.  What stands out to me isn’t the high end but that he’s really not all that Honor(tenet)able.  Just average.  Ignoring that Honor (tenet) and Honor (mechanic) get confusing, it helps me to realize what I can let slide.  There’s also a medium level of variance, in my opinion.  An Honor 8 character has to get into 10′s to have more than a slight variance.

It would be interesting to build more characters with one superlow number to really define the character in the setting.  Speaking of which, how do these numbers come about?

How To Score?

For my characters, I’ve given them astrological signs and went through my astrology books to pull out character traits.  Often, those traits correspond to tenets (or work against them).

Example:

Sheep – righteous, sincere, gullible, mild-mannered, shy, artistic, fashionable, creative worker, emotional, pessimistic, withdrawn, gentle, compassionate, forgiving, dislikes strict schedules, doesn’t take well to discipline or criticism, fond of children/animals, close to nature, homebody, subjective, food/shelter/clothing, lucky, survivor, placate/evade enemies, roundabout, worrier, romantic

This is for the second character.  Note that his Compassion isn’t all that high relative to other tenets.  Other tenets came up as important when looking at his Western sign.

But, not every character has had this much work put into it.  The mechanics of L5R, itself, help produce values or a hierarchy.  “Paragon of …” or “Failure of Bushido: …” should clearly distinguish tenets.  I’m working on a character at the moment with Paragon of Compassion and Failure of Honesty.  If I don’t score Compassion highest and Honesty lowest, I’m being inconsistent.

Then, there’s background and the more common stuff that players come up with for their characters.  My Sheep belongs to a family that puts in a lot of hard work and is very traditional but also went to a school that is very much into hard work.  All of this lends itself well to Duty being an important aspect, which was why I redid my numbers for the character to where, now, Duty is a 9.

There’s another way.  I don’t have much respect for random character creation out of a book – any system.  But, inconsistently, I find randomizing for my own benefit very helpful for coming up with a more fully realized (or weirder) character concept.  While building the new character, I hadn’t decided what Paragon or what Failure (if Failure at all) the character would have, so I rolled d10′s to give relative values for each tenet.  As the character is starting out with 7.5 Honor, I simply added two to each die result.  The average was right on.  The results kind of problematic.

A disadvantage of random results, which is why I’m against being forced to be random, is that you get results you aren’t comfortable with.

I also randomly rolled d12′s for astrological signs, getting Ox and Pisces.  That was less problematic, though, going with this will force me to stretch some as a role-player.

But, why does this all matter?

Tenets

I see the tenets being rather confusing.  In particular, sincerity and honor are confusing.  What’s amusing is that L5R doesn’t really try to define honor, even though that only makes it worse for players and GMs.  At least there’s some attempt to separate honesty and sincerity.

Compassion

Not much of an issue here.  Though, it’s interesting how much of Rokugani society is predicated upon the idea that your lessers aren’t even people when the encouraged philosophy says to be nice to them.

Courage

Courage is not the absence of fear.  Courage is making fear your bitch.  However, fear, itself, is considered a weakness in Rokugan, which is also inconsistent when courage can’t exist without it.

Courtesy

Okay, be polite at all times.  But, it’s no biggy if you murder someone for disrespecting your sword?  Okay, kind of weird.  Metagamewise, anyone accidentally touching your blades, you, or whatever should be left off the hook so that you look compassionate and courteous.  Though, see honor.

Duty

Simple enough, until you get into Scorpion “loyalty”.  Is loyalty just duty or something more?  Do Scorpion even make sense?

Honesty

I get the distinction between honesty and sincerity when it comes to speaking.  When it comes to philosophy, it’s messier.  So, just being truthful, in and of itself, is honorable, yet being dishonest in a sincere way is also (partially) honorable?

Honor

Big problem of definition in L5R because Honor is a mechanic as well as a tenet.  I did a dictionary search of honor for guidance.  Very interesting in that it went in a direction I don’t think about for L5R.

Respect, esteem, privilege, exalted position – these all tie heavily into Status.  The idea that honorable actions are actions worthy of praise or reward is different from the internal concept of integrity, which seems to be what L5R is going for.

Killing an oni is?  Dutiful?  To an extent.  But, really, it’s honorable in the sense of doing something that should be esteemed.  Yet, the game would think of this more as Glory-ous.  Similarly, everything under Glory would tie into honor if you look at honor externally as something to be proud of.

If you look to define integrity, once you get past honest, you get into a definition loop.  Moral, righteous, virtuous – it all ends up being the same thing.  Correct action.  But, that’s circular.  What is correct?  Can only know that by knowing what is honorable/virtuous.

Sincerity

At least honor seems like something we comprehend even if we can’t define it.  Sincerity’s problem is honesty.  Again, it’s simple to distinguish the two when it comes to what someone says.  If someone speaks truth, then honest.  If someone lies or hedges, dishonest.  If someone sounds truthful, then sincere.  If someone sounds dishonest, then insincere.

But, that just means that honesty and sincerity are differed by perspective.  That’s not entirely the distinction with sincerity that L5R is going for.  There’s a concept of sincerity of action that honesty doesn’t really apply to.

Being one in action and word gets mentioned multiple times.  What does this mean?  There’s an element of believing in one’s actions, including one’s speech.  There is no try, there is only do or do not.  Even if try is more honest.

How does this apply to playing the game?  Sincerity, to me, is very much about the lack of doubts, whether internal or external.  Credulity, believability.  Overconfident types aren’t sincere even if they have no internal doubts as they aren’t believable in what they think they can accomplish.

Actually, I’ve been trying to come up with a good model for opposing the Three Sins of Rokugan:  fear, desire, and regret.  Courage clearly opposes fear.  Duty clearly opposes desire.  What opposes regret?  I thought about honor, which also fits with seeing duty/honor/courage being the “action” tenets to compassion/courtesy/honesty/sincerity being the “social” tenets.

While sincerity’s lack of doubts lends itself to opposing fear, I can also see lacking doubts being anti-regret.  Then, compassion could have some element of overcoming regret, like courage overcomes fear, by being compassionate to oneself.  Maybe it’s easier to apply every tenet in some way against the Sins than I thought once you get into this line of thinking.

Fan-tizzy

I’ve been thinking about fantasy RPG systems.  In particular, it’s the age old question of what FRPG system I would want to use.  Hardly exciting.  Can already predict talking about L5R’s sweet spot with mechanics and flawed world.  But, I started thinking about some specifics.

First of all, what games are FRPGs?  I don’t mean so much whether Shadowrun counts as fantasy or whether mixed genre games should go in their own, though this is relevant.  I mean more that there’s a particular subtype of fantasy role-playing that I have in mind.

Conan d20 is certainly a FRPG, but it isn’t what I’m concerned with at the moment.  Conan simulates swords and sorcery, a genre with limited magic and where supernatural elements are typically rooted in the “bad”, the enemy.  Or, if “good”, only show up to counter evil.

What I’m wondering about these days is what system would I play something like Wheel of Time in or Spellsinger or Young Kingdoms – worlds where magic is in the hands of the heroes.  There is a Wheel of Time d20 supplement, yet there’s no way I would want to use d20 as a base.  Young Kingdoms is covered by the Chaosium model, which I have no interest in either.

Why not these systems, though?

d20

Too mechanical.  Too much accounting.  I feel like I’m playing a MMORPG, which should give an idea of how pointless I view 4e D&D, which is an obvious MMO ripoff.

Starting characters are too weak.  Experience benefits are too slow and awkward.  Feats are boring.  The only thing I actually like about d20 is the skill system and “improvements” on d20 keep trying to “fix” the skill system.  I don’t even like how d20 or any D&D version does attributes, even though it’s the 3-18 system that I was first introduced to and has been used extensively in RPGs.  I hate using a d20 for resolution as to me it produces far too much variance and too many dull rolls.

I can’t speak to how well the magic system works for D&D d20, too little experience too long ago.

Chaosium

RuneQuest, Stormbringer/Elric, Call of Cthulhu, Basic Role-Playing, etc.  d100 resolution has the same problem as d20 resolution, only providing more “empty” values – rolls that don’t interest me in any way.

All of these games are far too crippling to PCs in my experience.  In our RuneQuest play, I just figure that a limb will be lost every fight, that death is two or three hits, that combat doesn’t really work unless you are superior to the enemy, have a bunch of potions (mainly Heal 6′s to restore limbs), and enough PCs know Healing 2 or Xenohealing 2 for recovery and stopping bleeding.

It’s RQ that inspired me to about a few things.  The first is the usual problem I have with features such as hit location, bleeding, fumble charts that screw over PCs.  Other than building the “there’s no symmetry between PCs and what they fight” arguments for why these things suck, which is kind of interesting when you think about just how much difference there is and how that impacts game design, there’s not much gained from this line of thinking.

The more interesting line of thinking for me that got me on this kick was two-fold:  what sort of magic system I want to see when the PCs are expected to be spellcasters; how games should handle recovery.

The more I’ve come to participate in RQ’s magic system, the less it makes sense to me from a marketing standpoint.  Much like Vampire: The Masquerade made a mistake by having variety of abilities at discipline dot levels PCs wouldn’t have and not at the levels that players care about, RQ is all about having this giant world of magic that PCs barely touch.

Even Battle Magic, which is readily attainable, depletes power points in a death spiral way and the costs of learning it are absurd relative to our income.  My recollection is that, in fact, the intention is to limit each PC to a few spells.  Unfortunately, that rules out the focused spellcaster and just causes everyone to look the same, which is the number one thing that I complain about.

Then, there’s Rune Magic, which seems like it would be important.  It’s laughable how poor the incentives are.  Sure, we are dumb and don’t sacrifice to learn Rune Magic every chance we get, which seems to be the way the game is supposed to be played.  But, even so, when I knew a Rune Spell, I never wanted to cast it, just like any one-shot effect that seems good is something no one wants to ever use.  Even at Rune Lord, every spell is a one-shot.  To actually play the game they talk about requires a bunch of Rune Priests, which I’ve been told shouldn’t be adventuring, anyway.

So, what should a “PC magic” system look like?  Daily spell slots?  It might get tiresome to hear, but I do think it works with L5R, though maybe only because the need to cast is relatively rare.  I actually have found, in my not so recent experiences, that D&D spell slots work okay.

Power points?  I don’t find this to work.  It’s all about replenishment rate.  In games with this mechanic, I find someone blows their wad out in a fight and, then, can’t do anything forever.  In Conan, sorcery is better suited to bad guys as they can replenish with human sacrifices.  But, then, Conan isn’t a “PC magic” system.

Fantasy Hero

Which brings us to Fantasy Hero.  The Hero engine was intended for Champions, and it often shows in how the system often doesn’t capture the flavor of genres without a lot of work under the hood.  On the plus side, the engine is so customizable from a power standpoint (the skill system blows), that you can eventually find a particular flavor.

Anyway, if you play it without a bunch of limitations, casting a spell is pretty much just a factor of making a skill roll (which blows) and spending END.  Rechargability is easy, so you can produce consistent effects (depending upon making skill rolls) each and every fight.  This is more what I’ve been thinking of when it comes to recovery.

I find that recovery can be a huge problem.  In Conan, sure, you will get your hit points back after three days of rest, but fighting back to back major fights is crippling.  L5R is not remotely designed for multiple battles in a row – shugenja will run out of Water slots for healing fast and possibly all slots; Void Points will be gone by the second fight.  Another case of how D&D does things better, as the whole engine was built around the idea of multiple fights.

Take an extreme example.  You fight a major battle with everyone a mess and half your offensive spells gone.  Clerics replace enough hit points and the other half of the offensive spells enable a second engagement of the same level.  When tapped out (spellwise), you are done for the day.  Now, of course, D&D’s dungeon crawling philosophy is predicated upon the idea that you can secure a part of the dungeon long enough to refresh, which is not different from other situations where you know when you have to stop and you stop.

With Fantasy Hero, if you want to enable an easily recharged battery, it’s simple to have that recharged battery.  Can take five phases, or whatever, to replenish END every fight.  I think a lot of people are opposed to this.  I’m not sure if they’ve thought it through or not, but I can see how it sounds wrong.

If you can instantly recover (heal, have full spell options, etc.) after every fight, then what’s the real cost of a fight?  Preventing death could be, though death is not a viable option in some worlds, like worlds that make any sense.  A lot of adventures don’t have a viable alternative to winning a fight.  In fiction, you would just get captured or you would fail some mission critical objective, like preventing the damsel from being whisked away or a village being burned to the ground.

Being captured has often been considered worse than death in the hack and slash world.  After all, can get resurrected, but being captured means losing stuff, and stuff is the game’s god.

Precious

Okay, I forgot to mention earlier another thing that always bothers me in FRPGs that I’m choosing to dredge up.  I hate stuff.  I hate external power.  To me, characters and not just fantasy characters should be defined by what makes the character special and not how special their stuff is.

Admittedly, in certain cases, a character is tied to stuff.  Elric is tied to Stormbringer, even if he is special without it.  There’s a certain allowance that can be given to a character, though only when the stuff is unique.

I particularly hate armor.  I quickly got tired of AD&D’s armor system where you always chose the heaviest armor you could.  RuneQuest is exactly the same way.  I don’t care if it’s realistic or not.  It has terrible flavor, and again, it makes everyone the same.  I find that in RQ, every single one of my characters gets exactly the same armor because any other choice is moronic.  For a variety of reasons, Conan has grown in my esteem, but one thing I always credited it with was that armor was something to be minimized.  Sure, it’s hecka useful to have some, more so than I thought for quite a long time, but in a world where the outdoors matter, anything above light armor is suicidal.

So, what system succeeds in the stuff department?  Conan does a very good job, even though some weapons are much better.  L5R does well enough, though 4e is a step back with how powerful armor turns out to be.

None Of The Above

And, so it goes.  I may really like L5R at the moment, but I have major questions as to how adaptable it is to more generic fantasy with even just the system.  I suppose anything can be house ruled, with house ruling the closest system being more sensible than another.  I could change basic healing in L5R to something where you pretty much restore all your wounds after every fight without Path to Inner Peace.

But, I wonder.  I wonder if I’m overcomplicating things and missing an obvious choice if all I wanted to do was dungeon crawl or reflect a specific fantasy genre where magic resided heavily in the party.  AD&D or oD&D would probably be fine for dungeon crawling.  As for high fantasy, I’ve already argued that the nature of it is antithetical to mechanics.  Medium fantasy, for lack of a better term, is not even something I have a clear grasp on.  Maybe Spellsinger would fall into it.  Maybe when you cross swords and sorcery with high fantasy, as Moorcock does, you get a balance rather than two different genres.

Maybe if I understood Ars Magica better.  Maybe if I went to the trouble of playing around with Fantasy Hero (and just ignore how much I hate skills in Hero).  Savage Worlds isn’t going to do it – I never developed a good sense of the mechanics.  RQ, in theory, could be made more palatable to me, but it would completely change the nature of the game, and it would likely be less palatable to others.