KublaCon 2022

I did three gaming things at Kubla this year, the year Kubla returned.

I skipped Friday as I commute to this con (even though I haven’t needed to for a long time).

Thursday/Friday, I did review and work on Shadowfist decks.  I had forgotten that I had so many decks already built, where some of them seemed like decks never played.

I built two new decks, stealing Dockyards from other decks I had played with the old South Bay group and didn’t really care about.

I really wanted to build a deck around:

So, I dusted off my cards … yup, went there.

Why?  Stealth isn’t Superleap.

The “big stick problem”.  I find that I can be scary with Lotus decks.  I gots power.  I gots Fighting.  I gots character kill.  I gots lots of losses.

Because people are scared.  So, they get in the way of beef.  So, they attack you and you either lose stuff or spend your characterkill and your charactersteal on defending.  Well, maybe you don’t.  I do.

Because I’m not that good at Shadowfist.  Merlin, who ran the tournament, has a unique Lotus deck that has strong late game because it can just keep recursing while having power generation outside of sites.  Now, I often have power outside of sites … as catch up events.  What I almost never do is some sort of power engine that isn’t site structure dependent.  I’m very much oriented to limited resources.

That may sound familiar, but there’s a difference to VTES.  In Shadowfist, not having certain cards matters a lot as cards, decks, games are much swingier.  When I get serious about tournament decks, I do things like 40 card, tempo decks.

This was a 40 card, trying to be tempo deck.  It wasn’t that good.  But, then, small sample size.

Anyway, didn’t ever explain why this demon gets around the big stick problem other demons are saddled with.  Evasion enables getting by defenses.

Is Stealth good evasion?  Maybe not that good.  Against a single column, might have a bunch of Fighting to still deprive Huichen Kan of glory.

Now, what happened when I played this deck is that I attacked like once with my first Huichen Kan, then it got Shadowy Mentored.

The other deck I build for Kubla was a Noriko Watson deck.

This is my kind of card.  Not because I’m into razor girls, though if I knew more …  I like cards that are weird but in a less overt way.  This is a promo card.  Yes, a unique promo card – the bane of CCGs.  I have a collector mentality even if I don’t try to complete my Shadowfist collection.  I do like chasing cards even if unique promos are dumb and unfair and completely unnecessary for having cool chase cards.

Trying to process what this card is intended to do requires far more analysis than so many other cards.  Then, I love the cost.  In faction games, I like out of facton stuff.

So, I didn’t really try to leverage the damage bonus against Sites, and I didn’t work that hard to increase Fighting/damage for Ambush/Amnotbush.  I mostly focused on something I like to do a lot – do lots of High Tech stuff.

I went with Dragon to have Techie Apprentices and to have “Is That All You Got?” to bring her and Marauder Lord back.

We started a game where I played this deck and called it when people showed up for the tournament.  It was functioning.  I played this in a game the day after the tournament, so I’ve clearly proved that Noriko Watson is the best character ever as I remain undefeated when putting her into play in my increasingly failing memory.  I’m pretty sure she was in another deck I had built at some point, but I don’t remember putting her into play, probably because that deck had only one copy, while this deck had three copies since I relatively recently picked up two more copies.

The game I won, and I only won like two games all weekend and the other game was a disaster where the other players never were able to do anything, had me not drawing any sort of meaningful character, just a bunch of foundation characters, for the longest time, but my site structure was robust as I was using all of the tech cheese.

First turn, FSS, foundation, Manufactured Island.  Play another FSS.  Play On the Wire to gain 5 power around turn three.  Keep playing 1-Fighting dudes because … my deck construction peccadillos.

So, Saturday morning I get my pastrami sandwich from Lucky’s – an actual habit when in my old hood.  And, near SFO is certainly my old hood.  I went to Burlingame Intermediate School and lived in Millbrae close to Millbrae Avenue long before I worked in South San Francisco.  Used to ride the bike to go to Burlingame Bowl before they tore it down when living just off Broadway (in Burlingame).  Lucky’s can do good sandwiches, though everything is location dependent.  This one’s main problem is that there bread can be too dry.

My bread was too dry.  They didn’t have sourdough rolls, so I got Dutch Crunch.  Good Dutch Crunch is, um, good.  A lot of Dutch Crunch is not good, being too dry and get flaky rather than having that good crunch.  If not for that, would have been pretty desirable.  Had a bit too much pastrami as sandwiches are all about getting the balance right.

Also got some pears and some peaches and a nectarine.  I had the peaches and nectarine at the con.  The nectarine was decently hard, so I …

Right, the tournament.  I sucked.  I find three-player Shadowfist hard to get comfortable with, as my play style in multiplayer games is all about table regulation to create the perfect harmonic balance of wasting time.

Oh, wait, the reason for mentioning getting my sandwich is that I got to the CCG room 1.5 hours before anyone else.  We could have easily have played if people would start gaming at 9AM.

After the tournament, played two pick up games, including first four-player.  That dragged.

Had to get set up for my Traveller demo at 6PM.

I had four people for my event.  Got some help from others, mostly Andy as I tend to be very helicopter demoer with games.  It was okay.  I had more people for this event than we had for any of the other three events we had on the schedule.

After done, sped home to feed the cat – primary reason I can’t stay overnight places.

Sunday morning, plan on getting a sandwich.  Just not from Lucky’s.  And, yet, I went to Lucky’s and got nectarines.  Three pounds of nectarines as they had a display further towards the front that had superhard nectarines.  The only quality that truly matters with fruit.  Turned out the larger, harder nectarines were also sweet.  Fruit victory!

Waited for Little Lucca’s to open.  LL is a well known chain in the area.  Giant sandwiches with quality bread.  While it’s possible that their pastrami is different, I have gotten it before, and it was fatty pastrami.  No.  Lean pastrami is the proper pastrami.  Well, if you fry it, can have it be baconfat, but I wasn’t going to go there.

I got Genoa Salami with sourdough, skipped the garlic sauce for obvious reason, did go with pepper sauce.  The pepper sauce was too sour.  Ate half the sandwich for breakfast and other half for lunch.  Then, there were the like four nectarines and a chorizo empanada.

Played Shadowfist in the morning after talking to a player for ages as the 10AM demo I wasn’t running didn’t need me.  Around when the tournament was supposed to start that had no one show up, I played Jeff with my Gazelle piracy deck to have a real test rather than show people the stupid starts the deck can get.  I bankrupted him on round three, with 13 AV on round two and 12 AV on round three.  I had some good draws for opening hand.  Never put Tactical Display in play.

Then, we played five-player Traveller.

For the first time.

It went faster than a two-player demo.  Of course, you have five people who run Traveller events playing.

It was a great game.  Three players qualified for victory in the final round.  Jeff was playing a piracy deck and might have gotten to victory threshold in final round if not for funny stuff.  Three times Liach, T’zen, and Giiar got played, and all three times it affected the game significantly by canceling or redirecting events.

Kevin beat his sister on tiebreakers after they tied on margin of victory.  Meanwhile, I was 18 VPs behind her.  In a game that is a race to 20.

Still, Traveller is clearly the best CCG ever as you can play meaningful solo whenever you want, it was intended to be primarily a two-player game, and every single five-player game I’ve ever seen was a great game.  Give Jeff and me a Nobel or something.

We were done around 5:30PM, so home to feed the cat.

Monday morning, I didn’t go to Lucky’s again.  I got Genoa Salami on sweet roll with no pepper sauce from Little Lucca’s because they wouldn’t give me samples of their Toscono [sic] Salami or soppressata.  Now, not only do I not eat a whole lot of alt-salamis, but I didn’t want some strong herb flavor or wine flavor or want a too chewy or not chewy enough meat.  Also, food I don’t make myself is expensive and it would have annoyed me to pull the meat off and eat it separately because it didn’t go well on bread.

I ran my demo.  I was the only thing going on in CCG room Monday morning.

It was great.  Only one person showed, we played constructed decks, I got to overexplain strategy, tactics, factoids about the game.  I screwed up (unintentionally) in hilarious ways that led to her winning.  If you don’t know the game, the story won’t mean anything, but let’s say I needed to play Bwap Advisors on final round, had two Bwap Advisors in my hand, and I couldn’t afford the cost (obviously of either).  She won 22 to 19.

Traveller – “I had no cards left and won!”  Yup, best game in the history of games.  Best game that will ever be made by mammals.

Then, Jeff and I “playtested” a “game” we are working on that is in “alpha”.

The distant spaceship (the playmat is just to define the play space, not a space game), the lock, the buddha, and the object in the lower left all represent play pieces, with the die in the middle as a victory point related goal.  What do you think the dice case is for?  What do you think the object in the lower left is?

Look at our awesome Traveller playmats.  The lower left object, buddha, spaceship, and lock all died at one point or another.  When this game gets published, this will be one of those images that shows the geniusnesses of game designers.

Two more photos that I posted to the Shadowfist Discord server.  They do speak for themselves.  In gibberish, but unaccented gibberish.

VTD 11

Before getting into VTD11 and thoughts on the VTD7-11 arc, here’s a question that is as profound as you want it to be.

Do you prefer difficult or challenging?

The connotations are obvious, but this came to mind when thinking about some play styles of people I play games with.

I’m guilty of converting challenging into difficult at times, even though I see it more clearly with others and wonder why they prefer difficult to challenging.

Let me see if I can construct an example.

Difficult – “Well, we don’t have snow gear, so we need to go pick up some in that last village 2 days in the other direction.”

Challenging – “Without best gear for this, take a (minor) penalty to the roll for Survival?”

Even though it’s “obvious”, the distinction I make in play is:  difficult is about making it harder to progress, which disrupts the narrative; challenging is about progress being harder, which creates variance in narrative.  Let’s say you fail the survival roll above, then you gain some condition or lose some hit points or whatever, but you still track your way through the snow to your destination.  I get really frustrated when groups don’t move forward, even if forward is falling off a cliff.

Anyway, does this have much relevance to VTD11?  Not terribly.  Sure, there was the discussion about whether a fish would be immune to acid or not that kind of got into difficult versus challenging, but it was such a trivial difference.

I did four runs of VTD11; I was only planning on three with seeing how they went before making any decision on a possible fourth.  One of the benefits of fewer Friday slots and more weekend slots is that there were a lot of completely open runs on Sunday in case I was interested in doing a solo run.  Or, maybe it was time of year and had nothing to do with that.  Regardless, there were a lot of empty runs on Sunday.

I did not have a Friday run, so the group started with …

11:48AM

Our theme for this run was 15 token max.  Given the 4 required treasure enhancers, I started calling this 11Free.  Now, even going from 12Free back before Platinum Nugget existed to 11Free is meaningful.  Nightmare, of course.  *Six* players.

Half the party had “Normal level” saves, so we were going to get wrecked if we had to make important saves …

We were reasonably chewed up but healed up for rm7.  First puzzle we failed.  Second puzzle we failed.  Third puzzle was easy.

Rm7 did not go well.  We started getting curses and were never close.  The barbarian not being able to crit was a problem.  Taking lots of damage due to failed saves was a problem.  I was running paladin with goal of protecting monk for as long as possible as monk is murder machine.  I had superhigh AC, but AC wasn’t hugely important.

But, it was interesting.

1:48PM

So, we had our Epic run immediately after.  We hadn’t had time to think about puzzles or strategy.  We brute forced puzzle 1.  With fully powered builds, where I was playing polydruid, we … got chewed up pretty hard in first combat.  But, we had tons of healing.  Still *six* players.

We intentionally made room 3 more difficult, though it may not have mattered.  We got room 4 puzzle.  We screwed around in room 6.  We … almost didn’t all die in room 7.  We were pretty close, where the fault was ours for not winning the fight.  We wasted time, possibly I was the main offender on wasting time, and time killed us.

But, it was fun.

But but, some players really wanted a survivor pin, so we picked one of the empty Sunday runs to plan a “roll the dungeon” run with Epic builds on Hardcore.

I had my usual Anti-Cabal run Sunday morning.

10:12AM

I debated whether to go with more defensive dwarf or try to max out damage with 2h build using Averon’s Deathcleaver.  I eventually decided on 2h build and tried to metagame much more than Saturday Epic run.  I still didn’t have a terrible AC for Nightmare.  My 2h build only averaged about 2.5 damage/round more than my 1h build, yet -7 AC and -7 Reflex save.  Must.  Worship.  At.  Altar.  Of.  Max.  Damage!

We knew all of the puzzle solutions.  Two of us were running Supreme Ring of Elemental Command.

We only had to deal with two rounds of curses in room 7.  I got my (Nightmare) survivor pin, which was my goal.  Got to see success videos for first time.

Where VTD10 Anti-Cabal run wasn’t that fun to me for reasons I don’t fully recall, this was back to usual where A-C runs tend to be my favorite runs.

5:24PM

Time to cakewalk a dungeon so that the other three could get a survivor pin (while I get my non-NM survivor pin, something I rarely get).

I never took a single point of damage playing murder (metagamed Epic build) monk.  I even used Horn of the Valkyrie in room 7 prep round and my Valkyrie buddy didn’t absorb a single point of damage.

We finished combat before curses randomly murdered players, so everyone got their survivor pins.

I wanted to post to the Discord server about how I felt the differences in challenge levels much more doing Hardcore after Epic and Nightmare, but my point is not superclear.  I can’t take Nightmare seriously … unless you run a run with like six or fewer players *and* you put some restriction on builds.  Hardcore was just embarrasing.  The amount of damage being dealt to us (that just got negated by Damage Reduction) sounded like Normal levels of damage.  My build could only miss on a 1 … on Nightmare.  We killed 75% of the monsters in one fight in the first round.

Neither difficult nor challenging.

I find that when I play outside my group on full Nightmare runs, it’s much this experience where I question why I’m even on the run.  I just don’t get why folks don’t want to at least feel challenged.

Anyway, it was still fun for just hanging out showing how True Dungeon has a massive power gap.

Some quotes of a true genius:

V7-11. Overall, I’d say okay. Obviously, as time goes on, innovating becomes harder and harder. Had Plunder!, endless cargo hold loops, and whatever else wasn’t good. Had Cube, beach that looked like a beach, and whatever else that was good. So much less metagaming when not doing same dungeon two/three months in a row. Story was a story, disjointed and not exactly epic.

2021 wasn’t just better in terms of novelty and polish (which multiple months enabled in certain respects) but it seemed like 2021 had more energy in it. Things felt bolder, more striking in 2021.

Even if compare 4-6 to 7-11, even with 4 being a real weak entry in 2021, Vinnie’s monologuing, fog demon, rezzing Lenora, wraiths at door, Gib Gub’s first appearance, using Hood of Reflection (and Gaze Reflection) against basilisk, drowning Bog Beast in acid. Even stuff I didn’t like stood out more. Compare Gibbering Mouther to Hook Horror, though being memorable likely had a lot to do with three months of same fights over just one month. But, the only underwater fights were the merfolk(?) that didn’t look good and the electric eel … which also didn’t look that good (compared to other animated monsters). Only charm was merfolk. Totem Guardian was decent, but it needed to be mixed into a dungeon where that was a weird fight to go with something like a beatdown fight in rm7. Consider Totem leading straight into Kraken from a mechanical standpoint. Others have complained about internal consistency with 7-11 individual dungeons – the totality really feels like there was an outline with a bunch of filler. 3-6 felt like a travel progression that was telling a larger story even if 5 was way better than either 4 or 6.

I … don’t have the same enthusiasm I usually do for replaying the dungeons. I didn’t like 4 or 6 that much as they compared unfavorably to 2, 3, and 5, especially reduced interest in 6 after 6A where I thought 6A had the most interesting dichotomy between different paths, but I was interested in doing them more to try different things. I think part of the lack of enthusiasm is that there’s too big a break where not thinking in terms of specific things want to do, part of the lack of enthusiasm is that there were zero choices in 7-11 to begin with and less feel for variance in future runs, and part is that the dungeons lacked combats that felt all that challenging/novel. V7 final combat was novel. Obviously, if you know the puzzle solutions, it’s hard to get enthused about hardly any of them. We had VTD dungeons where you could do six combats if you wanted – guess play 7B and see if they create more variance.

I have clearer memories of various 2021 combats, though, that’s not really fair, as I did multiple months of the same dungeons, mostly three months of the same dungeons while also doing more runs per weekend. Could already see some loss of novelty, though, even last year. Final room combats in 2021 did a good job of feeling distinct. Having 6A have different wraiths swarming on one path from the door wraiths in 5ABC felt repetitive even if the mechanics were somewhat different.

2022 comes across as really wanting to tell a story. The irony is that I felt more like I was progressing through an epic story in V1-6 with “go to this location, deal with this problem, move to next location, deal with its problem” than the more tightly connected 7-11. Billy really doesn’t interest me at all; he might have actually interested me more if you could interact all friendlylike with him. Trying to avoid getting into too much detail as this isn’t a spoiler channel, but 7 felt rushed in what happens, 8 was tedious and claustrophobic, 9 was fun for the change from 7 and 8, 10 felt pretty pointless, and, as others have mentioned, 11 didn’t feel important enough.

Mapping It Out

While not actively playing as much as I was, there’s a gaming swirl.

Finally booked return flight from Skull Con.  That was so annoying, I decided to go to Gamehole Con this year since flights were cheap.

KublaCon is in a couple of weeks, which may have contributed to a dream of playing Shadowfist not real long ago.

VTD11 is this weekend.

And, then, there was Gen Con events.

A late mistake was made that would have vastly increased the success factor.  Event mapping was all about True Dungeon, of course, that is trying to fit TD around a schedule replete with HoR4.  With Saturday blocked off until at least 9PM and an interest in doing all five new mods, well, things could have gone worse.

One thing GC events brings up is that other people have very different interests from mine in all sorts of aspects of gaming.  I know, it’s hard to comprehend how people don’t think like me or, at least, want to be just like me.  For instance, there are people in the TD group that want to go inside the exhibit hall!!

Right this evening a discussion about which is the best rare treasure enhancer for people to pick up when I don’t think there’s any advice someone could give to an inexperienced player about what tokens to acquire.  To make good decisions, you actually need to know a lot about how TD works and what you want out of it.  Then, can easily still make bad decisions.

Eventually going to move off of TD, but I got to thinking about how often I want to play VTD7B-11B.  I’m not actually enthusiastic at all about redoing these dungeons even though I constantly mention preferring having two months of each VTD dungeon.  The gap makes metagaming harder to plan, which might be part of it.

So, mapping software.  In one of my games, coming up with a player’s map came up.  Since RPGs can only be played online these days, that means finding the best mapping tool.  Now, I’m all about quick and easy with click and select from dropdown or whatever functionality …

Because I’m not remotely artistic (in a visual sense).  I know – weird that I’m not great at everything.  I’m sure given a few dozen nanoseconds I could come up with something else I’m not great at.  I visualize well – I have a much easier time doing theater of the mind than pretty much anyone I know.  That also extends to audio as well, by the way.  But, I cannot turn what happens in my increasingly smoothing brain into a product for others to consume.  Actually, you all don’t even get quite a bit of what I think of for blog posts, whether never putting an idea in writing or doing things like telling injokes that only I get.

So, another player put together our map.  I can complain, of course, about things, but that’s unfair unless I’m actually going to do some work.  (Watching 20 minutes of a three hour video on how to do one’s first map is not doing any actual work.)

It’s interesting to me the subtle differences in my games.  In this game, GM thinks players should come up with a map, and I think comparing locations helps as I had a very different idea of where a few places were located.  Another difference with this game is a L5R specific one.

So, normally in my L5R play, authority is omnipresent.  The setting is all about being told what to do and what you can’t do.  So, when things like marriage come up in this game, I’m all like, “I thought my family would tell me who I’m marrying.”  Where we live – daimyo tells you.  Marriage negotiations – family/clan will tell us what happens.  This setting is far more frontier colonization, where we seem to largely be in charge of what we do.  And, that requires a lot of fighting against usual setting expectations.

Speaking of fighting, I’m tired of making decisions in RPG play.  That is, I’m tired of making strategic decisions.  Have something happen to my character, then I’ll tell you how I respond to that.  I don’t want to decide what to do today.  Tell me what happens to me today.

I’m a planner.  I work in a business planning department.  I recorded a screencast of how to fill out Gen Con wish list, which was promptly ignored.  I don’t buy generic tickets because I’ve already worked out my entire con schedules.  I often know what flights to book for a year at a time.  I’m tired of planning.  I want to just do stuff without thinking about what stuff to do and have things happen and react.

I certainly don’t want to discuss plans.  You want to assassinate the Emperor?  Sure, whatevers – should I make a Stealth roll now?

I realize this lack of wanting to think too much is along the lines of similar behavior that has driven me nuts in other players in the past.  Why aren’t they trying to do something?  Don’t they have any goals, interests, analysis on how to accomplish party goals?

Of course, it’s not like I won’t give people my analysis.  It’s just that I’m tired of analyzing – I just want stuff to happen, well, I want cool stuff to happen.  Random event tables may be okay but random decisions aren’t and neither are “You are now all duck clowns.”.

So, uh, maps.  I don’t use GPS.  Someone may claim it’s because I’m old.  Besides that, I look at maps (yes, mostly Google Maps, but not always e-maps) and figure out where places are and drive/walk directionally.  Sure, it’s been forever and I may have used this example, but I corrected people who lived in Shanghai on which direction places in Shanghai were in because they only thought in terms of subway stops while I looked at city maps and could visualize what cardinal directions things lay in.  I’ll get lost, more so close to where I’m trying to go, by not just using some directions device, but I’ll often discover I’m right near where I’m supposed to get.  Why should anyone care about this?  Because I care where things are located.  It matters to me whether something is West or East of something else.  Much like I care how words are spelled, including names of people/places.  Data accuracy.

But, then, I also function as a data analyst.  *sigh*

Mission Accomplishing

I played a HoR4 mod recently.  First time this year for this character.

It was rather hollow.

Most of the rolls involved Athletics to travel from one place to another.

Which got me back to the subject I can’t escape of feeling of accomplishment.

Do dice rolls give a sense of accomplishment?  After all, isn’t the point of dice that they provide random success/failure?

Think one answer is pretty clear, though it’s to a slightly different question.  In and of itself, dice rolling is meaningless.  It’s just a random number generator.  Don’t need a hu-man involved to generate random numbers.

So, why do we tolerate dice so highly?  Well, why do I tolerate dice so highly – some people are perfectly happy to play roulette or slots or whatever that takes zero skill?

Dice serve two purposes.  The results inform what decision to make next, and they are the culmination of decisions made previously.

It’s not just RPG play – games are about decisions.  I play games with large luck factors, but there’s still a decision making process … or it’s not actually a game in any sense that matters, it’s just a random number generator.

But, anyway, RPG play.  I’m rather guilty as a GM of wanting players to roll dice to make them feel like they are doing something, even though as a player I don’t see the purpose of rolling dice to roll dice.

Plenty of people for decades have pointed out that dice rolling is only for when there’s some consequence to the results.  And, yet.  And, yet, maybe the GM does have some consequence in mind when calling for a dice roll, but, if the player doesn’t perceive the consequence, it just doesn’t matter.

There needs to be a closer link to choice -> roll -> result than I perceive.

Ultimately, dice are just a tool and one that doesn’t need to exist.  Yet a ubiquitous tool.  So, how does this tool get used more productively?

I’m constantly thinking about how GMs, myself included, need to present to the players a situation where decisions appear to matter.  Oh, they don’t have to actually matter – if you can trick the players into thinking they have choices when they don’t matter, still winning (for everybody).

Let’s say I present to the party three candidates for Godking of Everything.  This could be good – get to know them, figure out strengths and weaknesses, tie interests to who gets the position, fight off others’ attempts to do things.  This could be awful – why do I care who wins, do I just roll something to win, what’s the point?

But, somewhere between the extremes, there are still so many pitfalls.  Is someone making compelling decisions as to how to proceed?  Do those decisions turn into meaningful results?

I keep thinking about how much more immediate Conan play was than so much of my more recent home play.  There was something obvious to do much of the time.  Because there was some short term goal, make a decision then stuff happens.  Dice didn’t decide what to do, but they affected how things went to some degree.

Though, it feels now if maybe not then that what happened was largely due to decisions.  It’s not like current play lacks decisions, it’s that the decisions seem meaningless due to lack of context or lack of seeing how the decision changes anything or lack of seeing why you would ever choose options available, so what creeps in is having random number generation decide what happens.  Which, coming back to somewhere above, when perceived, comes back to play feeling hollow.

Because one of my posts about accomplishments left off with players’ goals, I keep thinking of trying to focus on that as that’s related to this problem.  But, that seems a slightly different rant about how GMs think far too often that players want to decide what the game is about.  Here, it’s not the metadecisions but having the tactical decisions in play feel like they matter to achieving some sort of accomplishment.

Yup, just another side of the same coin of trying to have RPG play be more fun as feeling like accomplishing things is fun.

Growing Dragon

As someone who games a lot but doesn’t really have interactions with D&D, obviously not talking about some dragon.

So, I use the personal name Taiyosei repeatedly.  It’s getting lazy, but it be what it be.

Mirumoto Taiyosei is a Shiba Bushi in a game where I never was concerned with advancement.

Now, I’m concerned with advancement as I’m sitting at 148 Insight.

But, this isn’t about where to go to with one of my characters, as I’ve done that before, and it seems redundantly redundant.

Let’s chart a course of how got here, though, as maybe it will have some meager value.

Started with 40 points.  Because I’m over loading up on disads for points in anything besides living campaigns, one point of disads.

Different School, L: Ivindi, Sage eats up 10/41 points.  (Not actually a Phoenix, not a Courtier, so no reduction.)

Started with Void 3, so Earth 2, Water 2, Fire 2 (A4), Air 2, Void 3.  A “Fire/Void” build.  As the other PC at the start was a Kitsuki Investigator, let him cover Water and Air.  Then, he pretty much stopped playing.

So, Agility 4 is distinctive.  Or, it would be if the next player to join and only other active PC didn’t also start with Agility 4.  In this game, where we haven’t really been trying for some threshold of competence, that’s … funny.  With my concern more on just doing interesting stuff than in some sort of mechanical coherency, doesn’t bother me in the same way that having poorly constructed parties in home play often does.

It’s even more amusing that we hardly ever use Agility.  Most of our rolls are for investigating, with our Perception 2’s.  Combat is rare and involves things like getting beaten up by a tiger, then not doing anything to the tiger as it runs away.

Started with 18 skills.  Since it was unknown how we got XP or when, just wanted to be able to pump Void Points into rolls.

Speaking of which, the cadence of rolls is such that Shiba Bushi 1 comes up all of the time.  Without Luck or Honor Rolls, though, and failure is still frequent and, sometimes, funny.  I normally see L5R as a system of success where failed rolls on important things are like fumbles.  This is different where failure is always possible.  I rolled 6k5-10 against 2k2 and failed a contested roll.

Not that 18 starting skills is the worst thing in the world, in general.  A bit much, perhaps, where can fill in after some XP gains.

Only skill above 1 was Kenjutsu.  That turned out to be poor metagaming.  Investigation 2 would have been vastly more relevant.  Took some “Agility skills” with Games: Kemari, Horsemanship (more relevant when third PC a Unicorn), Stealth, Sailing, Jiujutsu (so far been useless).

Courtier, Etiquette, Sincerity of course.  Athletics, Investigation of course.  Tea Ceremony due to Void 3.

So, first buy was longest in making – Intelligence 3.  This “ensured” the Fire/Void build, let’s call it a Sun Build as that’s quite appropriate …

With that finally accomplished, it’s Commerce time!  And, Medicine.  And, Hunting because we trek through the jungle routinely even though third PC was more thematically Hunty.

Then, asked the GM whether the idea was that we would be Trait 2 losers who failed routinely or whether we should actually be like competent L5R PCs.

Raised Investigation to 2 as that seemed most thematically appropriate and was getting rolled most often, not something surprising to me at all.

Got a huge burst of XP.  So, asked other PC whether we wanted to be redundant or split up Water and Air.  Vaguely split up.  So, I bought Awareness to 3 under belief she would buy Perception to 3.  If original PC was around, wouldn’t have bothered with Awareness 3 unless play shifted to more social.

So, then, Mirumoto Taiyosei became Earth 2, Water 2, Fire 3 (A4), Air 2 (A3), Void 3.  Vastly less incompetent than at start.  Lot of 4k3 dice pools that can turn into 6k5 occasionally.  Still 6k4 attack roll with sword, though that hasn’t paid off.  Still have to take simple action to draw sword.

Finally, latest buys are:  Games: Go 1 as learning from boss; Games: Shogi 1 as learning from partner; Lore: Cartography 1 for see below; Commerce 2 because all L5R play eventually ends up about checking people’s books (at one point, felt just like being an auditor); Lore: Theology 2 because it’s only natural that Commerce and Theology rise together.

So, why Lore: Cartography when have Sage?

We don’t have any shugenja.  At no point in play has a shugenja done anything.  So, what am I getting out of Shiba Bushi 2?

On the one hand, Shiba Bushi 1 has been insanely useful as 3k2 base roll is trash.  On other hand, have zero incentive to go to SR-2.

However, this is a Second City game.  So, Imperial Explorer Path exists.  Next two buys are obviously Cartography 2, 3 to go up to 150 Insight and gain the vast awesome of … thematically being just like my partner.

Such awesome metagaming on our part.

So, Earth 2 is painful.  In one encounter, got knifed twice and staved to get into Hurt.  Surrounded by a mob with a +10 penalty to social rolls is … interesting.

I’m used to oblivious PCs, so PER 2 hasn’t bothered me a whole lot.  It’s never clear what success means, anyway, as play is very in the moment.

Awareness 2 was kind of annoying.  I was doing a lot of Meditation early on but not as much recently.

We are terrible at combat, though we can theoretically hit tigers, if they would stop running away after they win Initiative and ambush us.  We’ve rolled lower Initiatives than heimin in combat.  Good thing we rarely fight.

So, was there anything important in this advancement path?  Could have just as easily gone with Perception 3 or Awareness 3 instead of Intelligence 3.  Could have bought Investigation 3 like partner did.  It’s not going to be a similar path to anyone in a more fighty game, as Earth 2/Reflexes 2 is a great way to just keep dying.

Do I have any regrets?  No.  It’s easier, of course, to not have any regrets when never was concerned with mechanical competence.

So, besides going to IR-2 as an Explorer, any plans?  Not really.  Considered Courtier 2 before settling on latest buys.  Yes, play 300+ point character in one game and debate whether to go to Courtier 2 in another game.

So, glorious … I mean, Glory-ous.  Might be Glory 6 pretty soon.  Status 3 at moment as a junior Emerald Magistrate.  Honor has held around starting.  Infamy is 1.7.

Would like Earth 3 so not just going to die from any random tiger, but that’s s-o-o-o-o expensive …