Crawd, I'm afraid I just don't find your definition of a Low Skill a very useful one.

The whole idea of the "Low Skills" is this: Is it acceptable to use this skill against the Emperor?

Yes, it is certainly dishonorable to use Stealth to sneak up on the Emperor. It is also horribly dishonorable to use Kenjutsu to take a whack at him with your sword, Horsemanship to ride your Utaku steed into his throne room uninvited, Hunting to track and snare his pet peacocks, Poetry to write mean haiku about him, or Ikebana to artfully stick a flower arrangement up his nose. Almost no skill is ever "acceptable to use against the Emperor," so this rule is no help at all in making useful distinctions.

A more useful definition---in the sense of helps us make specific in/out determinations about which skills belong in this group --is "skills which will never be required to discharge the duties of an honorable samurai or law-abiding heimin," i.e. stuff you would only know if you've been up to no good.

Does Stealth have a perfectly acceptable use as part of an honorable and law-abiding life? Yeah. Is that, in fact, the use of Stealth I see being rolled close to 90% of the time? Yeah. Insisting that the whole thing needs to be a Low Skill (for any reason other than Tradition! ) is like insisting Sincerity be a Low Skill because it includes Deceit. Just mark certain less-used Emphases (Ambush, Spell Casting, etc) as Low or Dishonorable, and you're good.

As for Temptation and Intimidation being emphases instead of their own Skills, I feel like it's grouping up two Skills that are already large that it may cause Courtier skill being too strong. Right now, Intimidation is used for bullying, torture and controling (control as being a longterm usage like caging someone and breaking his mind after months/years of mistreatments). Seduction is more about about seduction and bribery. Courtier is about discussion manipulation, rhetoric and gossips. By combining all of these, I feel like it's a "One Skill To Rule Them All" Skills.

If you read the OP attentively, you'll see that it already addresses this. Gossip, negotiation, and rhetoric are broken off into a different skill--Politics--along with Bureaucracy and a few other things. The focus of Courtier is narrowed to influencing people through personal interaction. Right now Bayushi Courtiers have Courtier (Gossip) and Temptation in their school skill list (but not actually, I'll point out, Intimidation); under this revision presumably they'd have Courtier (Temptation) and Politics, or else Politics (Gossip) and Courtier. Easy peasy.

First of all, I'll agree with you, the definition of Low Skill wasn't good at all. It's a skill that "... represent deplorable crafts and practices that no honorable soul would even imagine taking up." (4th ed) or, from the 3rd, a skill "... are seen as unclean and dishonorable."

I mostly focus on Stealth, what's the main usage of that skill? Let's look at the emphases: ambush, shadowing, sneaking and Spellcasting. This is for both 3rd and 4th edition. Sure there's 2 obvious reasons to not lose honor which is for hunting and scouting. Since there's some emphasis changes why not simply remove these from Stealth? Take out the "Hunting" use inside the... let's say... Hunting Skill, which already exist in the Bugei Skill. For the scouting use, how about in a new Bugei Skill: "Scouting" with emphases like trapping etc. I know they set up traps in hunting but it could be in a skill for scouts. Of course that's a suggestion, which leaves Stealth a defined Low Skill usages.

As for the "Less-used emphases" argument, it mostly depend on your games. Most of the time, in my games, people rarely uses Stealth in their "Non-Low Skill" reasons. I'll admit that my group rarely needs to scouts for a military engagement or rarely wants to go hunting. Which ends up a situational point of view. From what I'm thinking, your experiences seem different where there's a lot of scouting or hunting. Then someone could come up with a group where they almost only play bandits or assassins etc where it's way more obvious that Stealth is a Low Skill. It's like you're saying with the Sincerity where someone could say it should be a Low Skill because they are only using it for the emphase of deceit. I think it's easier to manage these few exceptions than managing the whole Skills because there's a few good way. By setting it as a Bugei Skill, you'll have to track every act that involves ambushing a Samurai, shadowing a Courtier, sneaking up a Magistrate, Spellcasting secretly in a Court, etc. Yes, the line between Bugei and Low Skills is pretty much near the middle of the Skill, but it needed a decision between both.

I think it's correct as it is because it prevents someone who isn't too familiar with the Bushido to badly use the skill. I think it's easier to know that sneaking is a dishonor if it's in the Low Skill than in a Bugei Skill. Of course, that's not dumb proof, here's an example: in my very first game, where I barely know anything about the game, one of the player, who was playing a Lion's Pride started to use seduction to convince the NPC to give him some information. Knowing that was a Low Skill and the fact that Lion was a Clan that priorise Honor a lot, I know that was a very wrong move from his character! Why? Because I knew that Seduction was a Low Skill, if it was a Bugei, I would probably just have laughed and thought it was ok. I feel like it's more a way to help the new player to understand the way of the Bushido.

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Now for the Temptation and Intimidation, yes, I've missed that, my bad. However, it feels wierd to have a High Skill with that much "Count as Low Skill".

Why worry about "low skills" instead of actual "low actions"?

With the same hammer, one can build another person a house, or bash their brains in. Is "hammer" a "low tool" because it can be used to kill?

Why worry about "low skills" instead of actual "low actions"?

For a purely in-game mechanical standpoint. It is easier to write rules for a distinctive sets of Skills than a set of different uses scattered around a whole plethora of separate Skills. It also helps distinguish characters who are specialized in Low Skills - and there are four Great Clans worth of people who would probably do this to fit the theme of their Great Clans (one way or another)!

First reaction, Kinzen: love it . Seriously. If I were given the task of writing L5R 5e's social influence system, I would swipe this wholesale to be my starting point.

Some more detailed thoughts:

- Under this system, what do I roll if I want to convince someone to do a generic thing in a way that doesn't involve bargaining? e.g. "It would be in your best interests to support me against my rival because XYZ" or "The proposal I am about to present to the court is honourable and I hope I can count on your support." Is that Courtier (manipulation) or Politics (negotiation)? Or is that Sincerity to convince them of something that would motivate them to do it?

- Following from that... is Sincerity, here, the skill of convincing someone to believe you , or the skill of appearing to believe what you are saying? The former is somewhat dangerous territory, I think... of all the things a social influence system can do, in my experience, "no, your character now believes X" is probably the thing that most takes away a player's agency over that character. Being talked into something against your better judgement or bamboozled into accepting a bad deal is far less intrusive than having your beliefs rewritten.

- Regarding the place of Temptation, Intimidation, etc - I feel I should point out that having them as separate skills in 4e was an innovation in itself. In 3e, they were Emphases of the Deceit skill. Folding them back into emphases of another skill is hardly new, and I find kinzen's logic sound - whenever you have a skill or ability tagged with "EEEEEVIL" in some way, it should come with some sort of temptation to actually use it. Giving it other applications that are acceptable is one way, making it an application of a non-Low skill is another.

- I like the division of labour between the rewritten social skills. Very neat, logical, and clear - and offers definite incentives to specialise in each skill in preference to the others. And there will likely be factional differences in who's most likely to buy what, which I approve of - Mantis will be all about Courtier (or whatever it's renamed) as, to bribe and bully their way through life. Scorpion will focus on Courtier and Politics. Doji will be all about Dat Etiquette, etc. (Though I expect everyone will have good use for Sincerity.)

- I also like that Glory has an actual use here. I'm not 100% sure that it's best use is as an expendable resource, though... personally, I rather like the 3E approach where it adds a flat bonus to all social rolls equal to your Glory rank. Especially with this system including a lot more ways to routinely lose Glory. I particularly like that a) most of those ways spring from failing rolls, to a degree that b) depends on calling Raises (thus, harder rolls are harsher to fail)... and c) a high Glory encourages you to try harder rolls, because you're less likely to fail them. And yet the possibility always exists, and the consequences grow more serious.

- You already covered pre-existing hostile relations between the parties involved, so I am guessing that pre-existing friendly relations would similarly result in a reduction to the target's dice pool?

First reaction, Kinzen: love it . Seriously. If I were given the task of writing L5R 5e's social influence system, I would swipe this wholesale to be my starting point.

Thanks!

- Under this system, what do I roll if I want to convince someone to do a generic thing in a way that doesn't involve bargaining? e.g. "It would be in your best interests to support me against my rival because XYZ" or "The proposal I am about to present to the court is honourable and I hope I can count on your support." Is that Courtier (manipulation) or Politics (negotiation)? Or is that Sincerity to convince them of something that would motivate them to do it?

I would treat that as Courtier (Manipulation), because ultimately you're trying to induce an action, i.e. support from the target. Politics (Negotiation) would be more "if you support me in this cause, I'll do XYZ for you" and Sincerity would be more "you said you would support me if XYZ were true; well, it is." Obviously there *is* some fuzziness between those approaches; there's still a certain amount of judgment-calling that has to go on. But I'd only use Politics if the exchange were more ***-for-tat, or Sincerity if the crux of the matter was persuading somebody of a fact (or a lie).

I'll add that as an example to the final text, to help clarify.

- Following from that... is Sincerity, here, the skill of convincing someone to believe you , or the skill of appearing to believe what you are saying? The former is somewhat dangerous territory, I think... of all the things a social influence system can do, in my experience, "no, your character now believes X" is probably the thing that most takes away a player's agency over that character. Being talked into something against your better judgement or bamboozled into accepting a bad deal is far less intrusive than having your beliefs rewritten.

Mmmm, I see the distinction you're making. I can say with the most passionate, persuasive sincerity that the sky is green, but the most I can do is convince you that I *believe* it's green (and am therefore delusional). I had sort of been assuming that modifiers would reflect that -- you'd get a huge boost to the Investigation roll any time somebody's selling you a line you have reason to know is implausible -- but that doesn't leave room for the target to say "I know this is not true, but I believe the agent believes it." I'll rework that section and see if I can't find a good way to split that hair. (I do think it should be possible to change the beliefs of a character; it happens all the time in real life, and there are ways to run it that are less frustrating for the player. But it shouldn't be an auto-effect on a successful roll.)

- Regarding the place of Temptation, Intimidation, etc - I feel I should point out that having them as separate skills in 4e was an innovation in itself. In 3e, they were Emphases of the Deceit skill.

Oh, interesting -- I hadn't noticed that. (I, er. Tried to read the 3e book once. Slammed into so. many. typos. and continuity errors. that it was just painful to get through.) I loved the fact that L5R made honesty and deceit two facets of the same skill; I didn't realize that was a 4e innovation, too.

Giving it other applications that are acceptable is one way,

That's my house-rule in my current campaign. There are times when Intimidation is acceptable (delivering a duel challenge or a declaration of war), and ditto Temptation (courtly flirting, with no intent to actually seduce). But I decided I like this approach better.

- I like the division of labour between the rewritten social skills. Very neat, logical, and clear - and offers definite incentives to specialise in each skill in preference to the others. And there will likely be factional differences in who's most likely to buy what, which I approve of - Mantis will be all about Courtier (or whatever it's renamed) as, to bribe and bully their way through life. Scorpion will focus on Courtier and Politics. Doji will be all about Dat Etiquette, etc. (Though I expect everyone will have good use for Sincerity.)

Yeah, the next step after I post the Court Battle system will be to rethink school skills, so I've been chewing on who will prioritize what.

- I also like that Glory has an actual use here. I'm not 100% sure that it's best use is as an expendable resource, though... personally, I rather like the 3E approach where it adds a flat bonus to all social rolls equal to your Glory rank. Especially with this system including a lot more ways to routinely lose Glory. I particularly like that a) most of those ways spring from failing rolls, to a degree that b) depends on calling Raises (thus, harder rolls are harsher to fail)... and c) a high Glory encourages you to try harder rolls, because you're less likely to fail them. And yet the possibility always exists, and the consequences grow more serious.

Honestly, I'd have to playtest this whole shebang whether I know for sure if ablative Glory is a good idea or not. I originally came up with that idea for IA/my own campaign, which doesn't have this full set of rules; the idea then was that since PCs tend to rocket up the Glory scale, making it not ablative would mean a constant +10 to every social thing you do ever. This has the potential to keep that in check, so that PCs would stay lower on the chart until they really do save the Empire. But it's possible that in play, it would make it way too hard for them to increase their Glory, or discourage them from trying the harder rolls.

- You already covered pre-existing hostile relations between the parties involved, so I am guessing that pre-existing friendly relations would similarly result in a reduction to the target's dice pool?

That or a boost to the agent's -- that one could go either way. But yes, that's the idea.

Sure, makes sense. It was just that all the examples you gave up until now were, like, "manipulate the other guy into breaching Etiquette", so I wasn't sure if Manipulation was really supposed to be that narrow, or if it had broader applications.

Mmmm, I see the distinction you're making. I can say with the most passionate, persuasive sincerity that the sky is green, but the most I can do is convince you that I *believe* it's green (and am therefore delusional). I had sort of been assuming that modifiers would reflect that -- you'd get a huge boost to the Investigation roll any time somebody's selling you a line you have reason to know is implausible -- but that doesn't leave room for the target to say "I know this is not true, but I believe the agent believes it." I'll rework that section and see if I can't find a good way to split that hair. (I do think it should be possible to change the beliefs of a character; it happens all the time in real life, and there are ways to run it that are less frustrating for the player. But it shouldn't be an auto-effect on a successful roll.)

Right, exactly. There's an important difference between "I'm not lying" and "this thing I am saying is true", and while sincere belief or the appearance thereof is necessary to convince someone of something (in that if you don't seem to believe it yourself, no amount of argument will help), it's not at all the whole story.

And yes, I do think the system needs to incorporate a means of convincing someone to change their mind, it just needs to be handled carefully. If you recall my overview of the Exalted 3e Social Influence System, I think that handles it pretty well... you can roll to convince someone of something, but if he wants he can spend Willpower to reject it. Your argument is convincing and he can't find a hole in it, but he's just too invested in what he currently believes to accept it, so he sticks his mental fingers in his ears and goes "LALALALA". A PC can therefore always resist having his mind changed if he wants, at least until he runs out of Willpower; the GM can decide to have an NPC spend willpower, but the player always knows that they can try again if at first they didn't succeed, and sooner or later they will succeed.

Oh, interesting -- I hadn't noticed that. (I, er. Tried to read the 3e book once. Slammed into so. many. typos. and continuity errors. that it was just painful to get through.) I loved the fact that L5R made honesty and deceit two facets of the same skill; I didn't realize that was a 4e innovation, too.

Yeah, that was a fantastic innovation from 4e, and such a brilliant expression of Rokugan.

Honestly, I'd have to playtest this whole shebang whether I know for sure if ablative Glory is a good idea or not. I originally came up with that idea for IA/my own campaign, which doesn't have this full set of rules; the idea then was that since PCs tend to rocket up the Glory scale, making it not ablative would mean a constant +10 to every social thing you do ever. This has the potential to keep that in check, so that PCs would stay lower on the chart until they really do save the Empire. But it's possible that in play, it would make it way too hard for them to increase their Glory, or discourage them from trying the harder rolls.

That is definitely a potential issue - it's one I've run into playing FRO, as well, where this one random city is full of Glory 10 people after a year, just by virtue of them making art every week. I've been tinkering off an on with a system to have Glory give diminishing returns, similar to Honour - as you become better- and better-known, things that would once have been considered amazing are just par for the course from someone like you. (Basically: when you would gain Glory, first subtract (1-your current Glory rank). I could have gone for a full tables of diminishing Glory gains ala the Honour table, but so many of them scale that I think it would be excessively fiddly.)

That's my house-rule in my current campaign. There are times when Intimidation is acceptable (delivering a duel challenge or a declaration of war), and ditto Temptation (courtly flirting, with no intent to actually seduce). But I decided I like this approach better.

Yeah, the Imperial Archives approach is good, I think... but you can potentially do the same thing with his approach, while giving people even more encouragement to buy ranks in the potentially-dodgy skills, and thus be tempted.

Yeah, the next step after I post the Court Battle system will be to rethink school skills, so I've been chewing on who will prioritize what.

My first thoughts:

Yasuki: Courtier all the way (we really need a different name for this, btw). Bribes and threats are absolutely the Yasuki way. I'd allow Commerce to substitute for Politics (Negotiation) when negotiating trade, incidentally (with Politics (Negotiation) complementing it - if I may be forgiven a GURPSism - and vice versa). That allows the Yasuki to have a school-based aptitude for commercial negotiations without making them peculiarly strong at the other aspects of Politics.

Doji : Etiquette. Etiqette, Etiquette, Etiquette. And Sincerity, for sure. I'm not sure which of Politics and Perform: Rhetoric would be more appropriate here... maybe both, but I don't know that you'd want them to have all the skills as school skills?

Kitsuki: Well, the Kitsuki thing has never really been about social skills per se. It's always been the Investigation School. I imagine they'd want some amount of Etiquette for its Composure applications, at least?

Ikoma: Ikoma are so very much about the Perform skills, both Rhetoric and Storytelling.

Yoritomo: Like the Yasuki, Courtier all the way, with a particular focus on Intimidate.

Asako: Hmm. Presumably Etiquette? With their Lore skills being used to buff their social actions, as before.

Bayushi: Courtier and Sincerity, I would think... although Politics (Gossip) would fit too... hmm. Or all three of them.

Ide: Etiquette and Sincerity, all the way.

That or a boost to the agent's -- that one could go either way. But yes, that's the idea.

Makes sense!

Also, some more thoughts regarding the mechanics for insults: first, unless Games: Sadane is removed from the list altogether, I think it needs to be able to perform the same function (and possibly Etiquette: Insult can be used to play Sadane with a couple of Raises?). Second, I like using "insult back, call for a duel, or lose Glory" to incentivise escalating disputes, but I think more could be done to build that into the mechanics. What if the Glory loss for the loser of the insult-volley escalated as the exchange went on, raising the stakes until one party or the other decided to go for a duel or bowed out (thus eating the accumulated Glory loss, of course)? And maybe something to encourage the insults to get more severe as you go... it occurred to me that you could require the party responding to match the number of Raises on the roll made against them, but then it's impossible to win an exchange of insults against someone with higher Void than you, and I do not like that at all.

Sure, makes sense. It was just that all the examples you gave up until now were, like, "manipulate the other guy into breaching Etiquette", so I wasn't sure if Manipulation was really supposed to be that narrow, or if it had broader applications.

I was just having a hard time articulating its other uses. :-)

Right, exactly. There's an important difference between "I'm not lying" and "this thing I am saying is true", and while sincere belief or the appearance thereof is necessary to convince someone of something (in that if you don't seem to believe it yourself, no amount of argument will help), it's not at all the whole story.

And yes, I do think the system needs to incorporate a means of convincing someone to change their mind, it just needs to be handled carefully. If you recall my overview of the Exalted 3e Social Influence System, I think that handles it pretty well... you can roll to convince someone of something, but if he wants he can spend Willpower to reject it. Your argument is convincing and he can't find a hole in it, but he's just too invested in what he currently believes to accept it, so he sticks his mental fingers in his ears and goes "LALALALA". A PC can therefore always resist having his mind changed if he wants, at least until he runs out of Willpower; the GM can decide to have an NPC spend willpower, but the player always knows that they can try again if at first they didn't succeed, and sooner or later they will succeed.

Problem is, the only expendable resources of that kind in L5R are Void Points or, if you stretch, Glory or Honor.

Right now I'm leaning toward making it a matter of Raises: a successful roll means you look like you believe what you say, but Raises are necessary to persuade your target. (I'm trying very hard to stick to the core of what Raises should represent -- a core I think 4e lost sight of after a while -- but I think it works here? After all, one of the ways a lie can start to look suspicious is when the liar seems to be pushing too hard to get you to buy it.) How many Raises are required will depend on the magnitude of the lie; a simple thing like "No, my lord, I didn't see anything" might not require any, whereas one that goes against the target's deeply-held beliefs would be a lot harder, e.g. "Your friend has betrayed you; I saw it with my own eyes." And that leaves room for partial belief, such as "I believe you saw my friend do this, but I'm sure he had some other reason for it."

I may also borrow a page from the new intimidation mechanics and say that a successful lie imposes a penalty on subsequent rolls that might reveal the lie, such as Investigation; Raises make the penalty larger. My main reason for hesitating there is that, by the structure of modifiers I've built, it should be a penalty to the target's rolls -- but if that target is a PC, telling the player they have a penalty = telling them they just got snowed. I've personally been known to make Investigation rolls for my players as a matter of course, so they won't know when they're overlooking stuff, but not everybody does that. I could represent the penalty in another fashion -- a boost to other people's rolls/the static TNs -- but that undermines the modifier structure, which I'm reluctant to do.

Oh, interesting -- I hadn't noticed that. (I, er. Tried to read the 3e book once. Slammed into so. many. typos. and continuity errors. that it was just painful to get through.) I loved the fact that L5R made honesty and deceit two facets of the same skill; I didn't realize that was a 4e innovation, too.

Yeah, that was a fantastic innovation from 4e, and such a brilliant expression of Rokugan.

Not just of Rokugan, I think. Most games just handwave that whole truth-telling thing as if it's an auto-success and needs no skill . . . but if that were true, cop shows would be out of business. It's entirely possible to be honest and still not look believable.

That is definitely a potential issue - it's one I've run into playing FRO, as well, where this one random city is full of Glory 10 people after a year, just by virtue of them making art every week. I've been tinkering off an on with a system to have Glory give diminishing returns, similar to Honour - as you become better- and better-known, things that would once have been considered amazing are just par for the course from someone like you. (Basically: when you would gain Glory, first subtract (1-your current Glory rank). I could have gone for a full tables of diminishing Glory gains ala the Honour table, but so many of them scale that I think it would be excessively fiddly.)

I had the same thought some time ago. Should a skirmish with bandits really be all that impressive when you're Glory 9? But yes, making the chart would be a paaaaaaaaaaain. Much easier -- and in some ways more interesting -- to have Glory be a resource you can lose/are encouraged to spend. The part that would need playtesting is seeing how, under this arrangement, gains and spends balance out.

Regarding school techniques: I started poking at those last night. It's kind of funny . . . obviously I need to swap in skill replacements where the new setup requires it, e.g. Politics (Gossip) instead of Courtier (Gossip) and so forth. Plus I'll have to tweak anything that's been made redundant by the new basic mechanics, such as imposing a penalty on somebody through successful intimidation; the Yoritomo should be better at doing that than anybody else, not the only ones who can do it at all. But beyond that . . . you know, the title of this thread is "Kinzen's Excessively Ambitious Social Redesign." If I'm going to waste my time rebuilding everything from the ground up, why not go whole hog? Why not replace techniques I think are just boring or unsuited to the school's themes?

It . . . may take a while for me to finish that part. <lol>

Yasuki: Courtier all the way (we really need a different name for this, btw). Bribes and threats are absolutely the Yasuki way. I'd allow Commerce to substitute for Politics (Negotiation) when negotiating trade, incidentally (with Politics (Negotiation) complementing it - if I may be forgiven a GURPSism - and vice versa). That allows the Yasuki to have a school-based aptitude for commercial negotiations without making them peculiarly strong at the other aspects of Politics.

I've renamed Courtier as Influence in the draft document. Good point about the skill substitution. I've been trying to choose one skill, or emphasis of a particular skill, that I think is the iconic mark of each school -- not that nobody else has it, but nobody else makes it the heart of how they operate. For the Yasuki, it's definitely Commerce.

Doji : Etiquette. Etiqette, Etiquette, Etiquette. And Sincerity, for sure. I'm not sure which of Politics and Perform: Rhetoric would be more appropriate here... maybe both, but I don't know that you'd want them to have all the skills as school skills?

Going through the school skills last night, I was boggled to see they get Perform: Storytelling out of the gate. There's nothing in their techs that uses it, and nothing in the fluff about the Doji being renowned as storytellers (as opposed to poets or whatever).

Kitsuki: Well, the Kitsuki thing has never really been about social skills per se. It's always been the Investigation School. I imagine they'd want some amount of Etiquette for its Composure applications, at least?

Yeah, they get the Courtesy emphasis in 4e, but I've switched that out for Composure. And Investigation is definitely their iconic skill.

Yoritomo: Like the Yasuki, Courtier all the way, with a particular focus on Intimidate.

OH MY GOD the Yoritomo as written are one-note wonders. Literally EVERY technique they have is at least partially about intimidation. I'm fine with that being their iconic skill, but they're at the top of my list for "I don't have to redesign this just to make the mechanics work, but ye gods I want to, because they are totally lacking in variety."

Not quoting the Bayushi bit because I've hit the forum limit, but: the Bayushi are one of the schools where I could easily wind up giving them All The Emphases. Influence (Manipulation, Temptation), Politics (Gossip), Investigation (Interrogation), Calligraphy (Cipher), Sincerity (Deceit) . . . I'm considering trying to standardize how many emphases each courtier school gets in the starting package.

Also, some more thoughts regarding the mechanics for insults: first, unless Games: Sadane is removed from the list altogether, I think it needs to be able to perform the same function (and possibly Etiquette: Insult can be used to play Sadane with a couple of Raises?).

Sadane is . . . a bit of a mess. First of all, I remember some of the game's writers saying it was not originally intended to be what players have turned it into, i.e. a way of insulting other characters. Second, I don't buy it as a "game" in the sense of the Games skill; it doesn't have rules and a victory condition in the way that go or shogi or Fortunes and Winds do. It just has conventions, in much the same way that giving a gift has conventions. (Same for the Game of Letters.) I've always treated it as an emphasis of Courtier. Under these rules, I think Etiquette (Insult) is the way to go.

Regarding the insult escalation thing, look for a new thread from me in a bit, where we can discuss this (and other things) in more detail, without clogging up this one.

Not quoting the Bayushi bit because I've hit the forum limit, but: the Bayushi are one of the schools where I could easily wind up giving them All The Emphases. Influence (Manipulation, Temptation), Politics (Gossip), Investigation (Interrogation), Calligraphy (Cipher), Sincerity (Deceit) . . . I'm considering trying to standardize how many emphases each courtier school gets in the starting package.

At the moment in 4E, one is pretty standard, with just a little handful of schools getting two or none. Courtiers are a bit more likely than average to get two, but also more likely to have their "Any one..." free choice skill restricted by skill category. I'm sure you don't need me to point that out ( ), but it does seem like a pretty good benchmark to me. After all, you don't need to have an Emphasis to use a skill in a particular way (with a few exceptions), and you get a small mechanical boost when you do have it, so there's no need to hand them out too freely at character creation. I'd suggest that whenever you've got a School Technique that specifies using a particular emphasis, that would obviously be a good one to consider adding to the School Skills list, though that doesn't seem to have been a completely consistent principle in 4E.

Sadane is . . . a bit of a mess. First of all, I remember some of the game's writers saying it was not originally intended to be what players have turned it into, i.e. a way of insulting other characters. Second, I don't buy it as a "game" in the sense of the Games skill; it doesn't have rules and a victory condition in the way that go or shogi or Fortunes and Winds do. It just has conventions, in much the same way that giving a gift has conventions. (Same for the Game of Letters.) I've always treated it as an emphasis of Courtier. Under these rules, I think Etiquette (Insult) is the way to go.

Yeah, using Sadane as written has always puzzled me a bit. Somewhere I got the impression that it was originally meant to represent essentially a load of extras from the Tale of Genji standing around playing the dozens, but integrating that well into a setting where we're also told that insults are met with steel would have needed a bit more guidance than was ever really given. Mostly I've seen it used for just plain delivering insults--subtle or direct--or for stuff like art criticism, where indeed Etiquette, Sincerity ("His Excellency's shamisen playing is indeed the most unique performance this court has ever heard!"), or the relevant artisan or perform skill works just as well or better. I know it's Tradition!, but apart from that reason, I doubt it would be much missed as a separate skill.

At the moment in 4E, one is pretty standard, with just a little handful of schools getting two or none. Courtiers are a bit more likely than average to get two, but also more likely to have their "Any one..." free choice skill restricted by skill category. I'm sure you don't need me to point that out ( ), but it does seem like a pretty good benchmark to me. After all, you don't need to have an Emphasis to use a skill in a particular way (with a few exceptions), and you get a small mechanical boost when you do have it, so there's no need to hand them out too freely at character creation. I'd suggest that whenever you've got a School Technique that specifies using a particular emphasis, that would obviously be a good one to consider adding to the School Skills list, though that doesn't seem to have been a completely consistent principle in 4E.

I'm thinking I'll give them all at least one; I'm contemplating two.

Yeah, using Sadane as written has always puzzled me a bit. Somewhere I got the impression that it was originally meant to represent essentially a load of extras from the Tale of Genji standing around playing the dozens, but integrating that well into a setting where we're also told that insults are met with steel would have needed a bit more guidance than was ever really given. Mostly I've seen it used for just plain delivering insults--subtle or direct--or for stuff like art criticism, where indeed Etiquette, Sincerity ("His Excellency's shamisen playing is indeed the most unique performance this court has ever heard!"), or the relevant artisan or perform skill works just as well or better. I know it's Tradition!, but apart from that reason, I doubt it would be much missed as a separate skill.

It's supposed to pretty much be art criticism, if I recall correctly, not the dozens/flyting. Because yeah, that REALLY doesn't fit the setting, not without a lot more context. One way or another, I don't think it needs its own skill.

Okay, the Court Battle thing.

Just as the Mass Battle system models large-scale combat, with hundreds or even thousands of people fighting for an extended period of time under the command of their officers, the Court Battle system models large-scale political maneuvering, with groups of people pursuing a shared goal under the leadership of a senior courtier. When a clan delegation pursues a trade agreement at Winter Court, or two different factions vie to gain the loyalty of an important ally, or rival samurai compete for appointment to a high position, Court Battle offers a way to determine the success or failure of the effort, without playing through the actions of every character in every scene.

Court Battle operates in much the same way as Mass Battle, though the elements in play are different. The GM should determine how long a Battle Turn lasts for; in general, this should not be less than one day. The GM should also determine how many Battle Turns are appropriate for the scale of the conflict.

Each Battle Turn consists of the following stages:

Stage 1: Declaration - During this stage, all characters participating in the Court Battle must determine their level of involvement. Unlike in a Mass Battle, this does not mean they are physically distant from the situation; it only means they are not putting themselves in a position to be closely involved with the political maneuvering. The levels of engagement consist of Idle, Attentive, Active, or Central. Because the characters need not be distant from the action, it is possible to switch to any level of engagement during any Battle Turn.

The leading courtiers of each faction now make a Contested Politics (Court Battle) / Intelligence roll. If one of the leaders wins this roll by 5 or more, their side is considered to be winning, while the other side is losing. If the difference is less than 5, a stalemate results. The GM may add to or subtract from this total to reflect circumstances, including the results of previous Political Opportunities (if any).

Stage 2: Determination - Each player involved with the Court Battle now rolls one die and adds their character's Intelligence and Politics skill, if any. The total of this roll is compared to the Court Battle Table to determine whether they have earned and/or lost Glory in that turn, representing the fallout from their offstage actions, or encountered a Political Opportunity. Glory constitutes the "health" of the character in the Court Battle; if it ever falls below 1.0, the character is socially "dead" and can no longer participate in the battle. (If the political goal was especially important and their side loses the battle, that character may face seppuku or a future as a ronin.) Dice of Glory damage cannot explode.

Stage 3: Resolution - If the character encountered a Political Opportunity, that scene should be played out before the next Battle Turn begins. Political Opportunities in a Court Battle are chances for the character to do something memorable, either weakening the opposing side's resources and alliances or gaining the admiration and support of an NPC for their own side. As with Heroic Opportunities in Mass Battle, the character may choose to decline a Political Opportunity. (The GM should always select Political Opportunities which are appropriate to the character, though they needn't be easy.)

I'll post Political Opportunities when I get a chance. I had a brainstormed list of them on the old forum, but lost that when the boards went away. The Court Battle Table is . . . a work in progress, shall we say? By which I mean that I have NO BLOODY CLUE whether those numbers balance out in anything like a reasonable fashion. Yes, it's possible to wind up earning more Glory than you lost even in a bad situation, or vice versa. That seems appropriate to me for this kind of scenario. The roll numbers are nudged upward a hair because without Wound Penalties complicating things, the only way to roll below 3 is to have Weakness: Intelligence and roll a 1.

I'll look at this in more detail later, because running out of the house now, but also, interesting! Two quick things:

Your battle table Google Doc isn't public right now!

If dropping below Glory 1 knocks you out of the battle, how viable is this likely to be as an activity for newish PCs (who start at 1)? Can't tell how common Glory loss is on the table, admittedly, because I can't see it yet... XD

Oops -- fixed that. Should be viewable now!

I don't think Court Battle is the kind of thing newbie PCs should be involved in. If you really haven't done anything to distinguish yourself (i.e. earn Glory), then you're unlikely to be brought to the kind of court event where this sort of thing goes on, much less permitted to speak for your clan on such an important matter. You need to establish yourself first, which means doing things that will give you a bit of Glory to work with.

Oops -- fixed that. Should be viewable now!

I don't think Court Battle is the kind of thing newbie PCs should be involved in. If you really haven't done anything to distinguish yourself (i.e. earn Glory), then you're unlikely to be brought to the kind of court event where this sort of thing goes on, much less permitted to speak for your clan on such an important matter. You need to establish yourself first, which means doing things that will give you a bit of Glory to work with.

I really like the concept of court battles, and like the matrix you put there .

One question though. Do you feel there is a risk of losing the actual social interaction by tying it in so rigorously to a mechanical framework? I think with battle this stuff makes sense, because it is a mass brawl and melee, but mass battles always felt less personal to me than skirmishes.

This is quite interesting, and also good.

I like how five courtiers could defeat 500 in court battle, although I find it interesting that winning a court battle often results in less political opportunities than losing, but maybe not all opportunities are advantageous.

One question though. Do you feel there is a risk of losing the actual social interaction by tying it in so rigorously to a mechanical framework? I think with battle this stuff makes sense, because it is a mass brawl and melee, but mass battles always felt less personal to me than skirmishes.

It's definitely less personal in the same way that Mass Battle is less personal -- but I envision this being used for the sort of thing where abstracting a chunk of it is a feature, not a bug. The Political Opportunities represent the exciting moments, the scenes that are actually worth playing through; the turns in which you don't get an opportunity to do something especially interesting get glossed over the way they probably would be in a normal campaign, except that this provides a way to say those segments still accomplished something on a broader scale.

Of course, that will be a good deal clearer when I post examples of Political Opportunities. :-)

EDIT: Also, I should say that (unlike Mass Battle), it's possible to be doing other things at the same time as a Court Battle. If a turn is five days, then PCs can get up to all kinds of hijinks in the interim, unrelated to the battle itself -- though of course it should still eat a fair amount of their time (especially if they're more heavily engaged).

This is far from complete, but I decided to post what I have rather than wait until I've done my whole list, so that people can see the kind of thing I have in mind.

POLITICAL OPPORTUNITIES

In the battlefields of court, there are many chances to bring other skills into play besides the obvious one of Politics. The sampling of Political Opportunities listed below gives examples of how various abilities can be made relevant to the progress of the Court Battle. The GM is free to invent others, especially ones suited to the characters involved.

Any given Political Opportunity can be disposed of in a roll or two if the GM and player wish to simplify matters, but many of them can also expand into full scenes of roleplay, with other rolls preparing the way for the one that will decide the success or failure of the Opportunity.

A Work of Art
You place one of your own works where an influential samurai can see -- and hopefully admire -- it. You must call Raises on the Artisan or Calligraphy roll to impress your target. If the work achieves its desired effect, you may add +1 per Raise to your leader's Politics Roll next turn, as well as earning Glory for your accomplishment.

To Whom It May Concern
A potential ally is too far away or too reclusive to meet with in person; only a letter can win them over. This Opportunity requires both Calligraphy (Correspondence) and Etiquette (Courtesy) rolls. It earns no Glory, but gives your leader +3 on their next Politics Roll.

Codebreaker
Honor must give way before practicality; your leader must know what an intercepted letter says. Roll Calligraphy (Cipher) to crack the code. At the GM's discretion, this Opportunity may first require you to intercept the letter, before you can read it. If you succeed, the enemy leader suffers -5 to their next Politics Roll.

Reading the Omens
Success consists not only of what you do, but when you do it. A successful Divination roll tells you the best time to engage in a particular action. At the GM's discretion, this Opportunity may also require you to persuade your leader to follow your guidance. This gives +1 on their next Politics Roll, and an additional +1 for each Raise called on the Divination roll.

Another Glass?
Several notorious drunkards have invited you to share a jug with them. Roll Etiquette (Composure) / Earth to determine whether you can hold your liquor well enough to impress them. If you succeed, your leader gains +1 per drinking companion to their next Politics Roll.

Offer Three Times
You have obtained a fine gift for a potential ally, which can win them over to your side. Because the target is reluctant to support you, an Etiquette (Courtesy) roll is required to make them accept the gift. At the GM's discretion, this Opportunity may first require you to discover what sort of gift the target would most appreciate. If you are successful, your leader gains +3 to their next Politics Roll.

Cutting Words
A samurai from the opposite side has made a mistake, leaving himself open to ridicule. This may be resolved with a single Etiquette (Insult) roll, or may escalate to a back-and-forth contest or even a duel (see Swords at Dawn). If you emerge victorious, the enemy leader suffers a -5 penalty to their next Politics Roll, but if you fail, your own leader takes the penalty instead, in addition to whatever Glory you may have lost.

Black and White
A revered general believes your side to be made up of weaklings and fools, but you have a chance prove your acumen on the Go board. The GM determines whether you need to win the game in order to impress the general, or whether a good performance is sufficient. If you succeed, your side gains +3 on the next Politics Roll from the general's support, but if you fail, you lose -3 instead.

A Friendly Game
Some of the younger and rowdier samurai have gathered to play Fortunes and Winds. Circumstances will determine whether you must win the game or not; some targets will support you if you prove yourself a good player, while others will be more pleased if they emerge victorious. At the GM's discretion, this Opportunity may also involve Social Skill Rolls to ingratiate yourself with your fellow players, or even Investigation to notice someone cheating. If you make friends, your leader gains +3 to their next Politics Roll, but if you antagonize anyone, this may be negated or even turned into a penalty.

Don't Make Me Angry
Some people only understand force. Make a rival samurai back down. You lose Honor for Influence (Intimidation) according to the usual rules, but if you succeed, the rival leader suffers -5 to their next Politics Roll.

Rope Enough to Hang Themselves
Lure a rival into a breach of etiquette that will disgrace their side. Roll Influence (Manipulation). A minor breach of etiquette imposes a -3 penalty to the opposing leader's next Politics Roll; a major breach inflicts -5, and a blasphemous breach increases that to -10.

Grease a Palm
It isn't honorable, but you know someone who could be persuaded to help . . . for a price. At the GM's discretion, this Opportunity may first require you to investigate what would constitute a suitable bribe. You lose Honor for Influence (Temptation) according to the usual rules, but if you succeed, the rival leader suffers -5 to their next Politics Roll.

Bedroom Politics
A lonely samurai might appreciate some company. You lose Honor for Influence (Temptation) according to the usual rules, but if you succeed at seducing your target, your leader gains +5 to their next Politics Roll.

Problem is, the only expendable resources of that kind in L5R are Void Points or, if you stretch, Glory or Honor.

Right now I'm leaning toward making it a matter of Raises: a successful roll means you look like you believe what you say, but Raises are necessary to persuade your target. (I'm trying very hard to stick to the core of what Raises should represent -- a core I think 4e lost sight of after a while -- but I think it works here? After all, one of the ways a lie can start to look suspicious is when the liar seems to be pushing too hard to get you to buy it.) How many Raises are required will depend on the magnitude of the lie; a simple thing like "No, my lord, I didn't see anything" might not require any, whereas one that goes against the target's deeply-held beliefs would be a lot harder, e.g. "Your friend has betrayed you; I saw it with my own eyes." And that leaves room for partial belief, such as "I believe you saw my friend do this, but I'm sure he had some other reason for it."

I may also borrow a page from the new intimidation mechanics and say that a successful lie imposes a penalty on subsequent rolls that might reveal the lie, such as Investigation; Raises make the penalty larger. My main reason for hesitating there is that, by the structure of modifiers I've built, it should be a penalty to the target's rolls -- but if that target is a PC, telling the player they have a penalty = telling them they just got snowed. I've personally been known to make Investigation rolls for my players as a matter of course, so they won't know when they're overlooking stuff, but not everybody does that. I could represent the penalty in another fashion -- a boost to other people's rolls/the static TNs -- but that undermines the modifier structure, which I'm reluctant to do.

Yeah, going that route would basically require introducing Willpower points or something similar into the system... which I would be fine with, personally, but it would be another thing you'd be changing.

Basing it on Raises could work, but I see a difficulty there, in that it imposes a hard cap on what it's possible to convince someone of, based on your Void. "Void 2? ****. Even my 10k10 Sincerity pool can only convince people to believe trivial things." I also think that Sincerity being, by itself, the skill used to convince someone of something is... not quite right? It takes more than earnestness to convince someone to change their mind, after all.

Not just of Rokugan, I think. Most games just handwave that whole truth-telling thing as if it's an auto-success and needs no skill . . . but if that were true, cop shows would be out of business. It's entirely possible to be honest and still not look believable.

Oh, I meant more the "truth and lies use the same **** skill" part. I mean, if you look at D&D - Diplomacy would be the skill most commonly called on to convince someone of something true, I think, but that leads you to odd situations of characters who can convince you of absolutely anything so long as it's not actually true . Ask them to convince you of what they really think, and they're stuck.

I had the same thought some time ago. Should a skirmish with bandits really be all that impressive when you're Glory 9? But yes, making the chart would be a paaaaaaaaaaain. Much easier -- and in some ways more interesting -- to have Glory be a resource you can lose/are encouraged to spend. The part that would need playtesting is seeing how, under this arrangement, gains and spends balance out.

I'm in the opposite camp, actually: I think having Glory as a number that's constantly going up and down in small increments as you spend it sounds considerably fiddlier. While making a chart for it could be a pain (depending on how consistent a rule the chart is based on - if you just have a flat formula for how Glory gains change by rank, then it could literally be a one-line change to the current rules if you wanted), it's a pain that you undertake once and done.

Regarding school techniques: I started poking at those last night. It's kind of funny . . . obviously I need to swap in skill replacements where the new setup requires it, e.g. Politics (Gossip) instead of Courtier (Gossip) and so forth. Plus I'll have to tweak anything that's been made redundant by the new basic mechanics, such as imposing a penalty on somebody through successful intimidation; the Yoritomo should be better at doing that than anybody else, not the only ones who can do it at all. But beyond that . . . you know, the title of this thread is "Kinzen's Excessively Ambitious Social Redesign." If I'm going to waste my time rebuilding everything from the ground up, why not go whole hog? Why not replace techniques I think are just boring or unsuited to the school's themes?

It . . . may take a while for me to finish that part. <lol>

Hah. I look forward to it nonetheless!

Remind me - were you the one who posted on the AEG boards about the idea of making "favours" a basic mechanic for all Courtier schools (ala the Doji and Yasuki favour tables from past editions), in the way that shugenja have spells and bushi have kata? Because I thought that was an excellent idea, and I am sad to see that the thread is now gone with all the rest.

I would also say, as a suggestion - anyone should be able to claim that their position is synonymous with Bushido, such that disagreement without making a good enough case to the contrary makes you appear dishonourable and constitutes a Breach of Etiquette. It shouldn't just be a Doji thing. Doji (and probably Ikoma) should be better at it once they hit the appropriate rank, but it shouldn't be something only they can do.

Oh! And Cadence should not be just a Doji school tech (partly because it's an awful tech, and partly because the Crane really shouldn't be the only people who've had the idea). I would take my lead from Calligraphy and make "covert non-verbal communication" an application of a social skill - Etiquette, maybe? Make the various Clan, family etc private languages Emphases that represent knowing them (and of course, giving away the secret is super-duper dishonourable), and an observing third party can roll to try to decipher the message.

I've renamed Courtier as Influence in the draft document. Good point about the skill substitution. I've been trying to choose one skill, or emphasis of a particular skill, that I think is the iconic mark of each school -- not that nobody else has it, but nobody else makes it the heart of how they operate. For the Yasuki, it's definitely Commerce.

Makes sense... so probably Yasuki => Commerce, Doji => Etiquette, Kitsuki => Investigation, Ikoma => Storytelling or History (or Rhetoric?), Yoritomo => Intimidation (though Commerce would also fit... it would just require a school redesign, and also overlap a lot with the Yasuki), Scorpion => Influence?, Ide => Sincerity?

Going through the school skills last night, I was boggled to see they get Perform: Storytelling out of the gate. There's nothing in their techs that uses it, and nothing in the fluff about the Doji being renowned as storytellers (as opposed to poets or whatever).

Yeah, it's definitely an odd one. It would probably make more sense as "Any one Artisan or Perform skill", or the like... it might be a holdover from 3E giving them Storytelling (Poetry), before those skills got shuffled around? Doji all having training in poetry would make sense, it being viewed as the most refined of all arts in Rokugan - I mean, hell, if Crane military officers are expected to have training in poetry, I expect their courtiers are too.

Yeah, they get the Courtesy emphasis in 4e, but I've switched that out for Composure. And Investigation is definitely their iconic skill.

Makes sense. The Courtesy emphasis seems to have been the go-to for maintaining composure in 4e... really, it did nearly everything the skill covered. Splitting it up makes a lot of sense.

OH MY GOD the Yoritomo as written are one-note wonders. Literally EVERY technique they have is at least partially about intimidation. I'm fine with that being their iconic skill, but they're at the top of my list for "I don't have to redesign this just to make the mechanics work, but ye gods I want to, because they are totally lacking in variety."

Not quoting the Bayushi bit because I've hit the forum limit, but: the Bayushi are one of the schools where I could easily wind up giving them All The Emphases. Influence (Manipulation, Temptation), Politics (Gossip), Investigation (Interrogation), Calligraphy (Cipher), Sincerity (Deceit) . . . I'm considering trying to standardize how many emphases each courtier school gets in the starting package.

Gotta admire the Yoritomo for their focus, eh? But yeah, they could maybe use a little diversity... Mantis courtiers in the fictions may mostly spend their time swaggering and blustering, but that's not the only thing they do.

Regarding the Bayushi... eh. If you're looking at giving them that many Emphases, I think I'd advise taking a step back and reconsidering your direction with them - the 4e standard is, like, two. I think a more elegant way to do what it looks like you're aiming at here is what 4e already did with the Bayushi 1 tech - namely, give them bonuses to social rolls that they made at people, depending on how many mental/social weak points they had. It felt very Scorpion... although if one is redesigning, it might make sense to limit it to mental or social disadvantages that the Bayushi actually knows about. It just gets odd, otherwise. (With the tech otherwise improved to compensate for the reduction in scope, of course.)

Sadane is . . . a bit of a mess. First of all, I remember some of the game's writers saying it was not originally intended to be what players have turned it into, i.e. a way of insulting other characters. Second, I don't buy it as a "game" in the sense of the Games skill; it doesn't have rules and a victory condition in the way that go or shogi or Fortunes and Winds do. It just has conventions, in much the same way that giving a gift has conventions. (Same for the Game of Letters.) I've always treated it as an emphasis of Courtier. Under these rules, I think Etiquette (Insult) is the way to go.

Regarding the insult escalation thing, look for a new thread from me in a bit, where we can discuss this (and other things) in more detail, without clogging up this one.

Sounds good!

Now, the Court Battle thing - it liiiiives! YES!

...OK, time for more coherent thoughts and questions.

- What determines the actual winner of the court battle? It is not immediately clear to me from reading this, but maybe I missed something.

- I think every result on the table should come with a Political Opportunity attached. They're the thing that makes any given round of the court battle interesting... can you imagine the boredom of rolling and getting "ho-hum, adjust a number up and down" when everyone else at the table got a personal scene out of their round?

- Following from that - perhaps divide the Political Opportunities into more and less beneficial categories, with the category you get depending on how well you roll? Some opportunities might be to gain or press an advantage, others more about avoiding a loss (though potentially still with the opportunity for a gain if you do very well - or vice versa, even the best opportunities could backfire if you screw up).

- I think it would be nice to have some method of determining what Opportunity you got, besides "the GM decides". It works for Mass Battle, because while the opportunities there are generally pretty distinct, they all run on basically the same skills - go fight some people with your fight-y skills. The Political Opportunities all run on different skills, that you may be amazing at or terrible at, so leaving it to the GM alone is basically saying to the GM "decide whether the PC does great or terrible on this round." I'm not sure exactly how to do that... when the last thread was up, I had a notion of allocating the opportunities to cards, and then having the various results on the table say "draw X cards and pick one to happen to you." I suspect that might be impractical, though.

Basing it on Raises could work, but I see a difficulty there, in that it imposes a hard cap on what it's possible to convince someone of, based on your Void. "Void 2? ****. Even my 10k10 Sincerity pool can only convince people to believe trivial things." I also think that Sincerity being, by itself, the skill used to convince someone of something is... not quite right? It takes more than earnestness to convince someone to change their mind, after all.

The Raise issue is true of every skill. The solution is to take Great Potential: that uncouples the skill you want to be awesome at from your Void, by capping your Raises at skill rank instead.

As for the other, Sincerity is fundamentally the skill of persuading somebody of "facts" -- not of convincing them to change their behavior (that's Influence), etc. There are other things that can affect whether or not somebody believes your words, but it's much simpler to represent those with modifiers (e.g. your opponent gets a bonus if you're lying about a subject they know well). If the situation is complicated enough that abstracting it to one skill is too much of a simplification, then just as with any other social skill, you can always make the scene more involved.

I had the same thought some time ago. Should a skirmish with bandits really be all that impressive when you're Glory 9? But yes, making the chart would be a paaaaaaaaaaain. Much easier -- and in some ways more interesting -- to have Glory be a resource you can lose/are encouraged to spend. The part that would need playtesting is seeing how, under this arrangement, gains and spends balance out.

I'm in the opposite camp, actually: I think having Glory as a number that's constantly going up and down in small increments as you spend it sounds considerably fiddlier. While making a chart for it could be a pain (depending on how consistent a rule the chart is based on - if you just have a flat formula for how Glory gains change by rank, then it could literally be a one-line change to the current rules if you wanted), it's a pain that you undertake once and done.

Ah, I see. The fiddliness of Glory changing doesn't bother me any more than the fiddliness of Honor does; what I'd want to avoid is trying to decide how to describe, say, the alterations in how much a "skirmish" gives you -- because it should drop off as you go up the chart, but the scale of the fight should also be significant, like if you fought more people or somebody who was higher IR then you still get more Glory, or if the circumstances you were fighting in made your victory more impressive, and maybe that wouldn't be any more of a pain to put together than the Honor chart was, but that one's done for me and this one isn't. :-)

Remind me - were you the one who posted on the AEG boards about the idea of making "favours" a basic mechanic for all Courtier schools (ala the Doji and Yasuki favour tables from past editions), in the way that shugenja have spells and bushi have kata? Because I thought that was an excellent idea, and I am sad to see that the thread is now gone with all the rest.

Favors! That's what they were going to call them!

That thread is gone, but I launched my own version the other day . I suspect, given the term "favor," that I'm taking it in a different direction than they intended, but it's the same general concept: a modular way of customizing courtiers a la spells, kata, and kiho. I'd love your thoughts over there, and will mostly skip what you said here to keep the conversation from being splintered -- but yes, you can see there that Cadence being open to everybody is one of the first ideas I had. I'll definitely think about "mine is the honorable position" as another option.

Yeah, it's definitely an odd one. It would probably make more sense as "Any one Artisan or Perform skill", or the like... it might be a holdover from 3E giving them Storytelling (Poetry), before those skills got shuffled around? Doji all having training in poetry would make sense, it being viewed as the most refined of all arts in Rokugan - I mean, hell, if Crane military officers are expected to have training in poetry, I expect their courtiers are too.

I'm sorry, but STORYTELLING (POETRY)? Somebody was not paying any attention to what Japanese/Rokugani poetry is like. Those two skills have bugger-all to do with one another.

Right now I have it as Perform: Rhetoric and then any one Artisan/Perform, but I may switch that around. I realized I couldn't just choose the school skills first and then worry about techs later, because of course the techs should interact with the school skills, at least in some instances.

Regarding the Bayushi... eh. If you're looking at giving them that many Emphases, I think I'd advise taking a step back and reconsidering your direction with them - the 4e standard is, like, two. I think a more elegant way to do what it looks like you're aiming at here is what 4e already did with the Bayushi 1 tech - namely, give them bonuses to social rolls that they made at people, depending on how many mental/social weak points they had. It felt very Scorpion... although if one is redesigning, it might make sense to limit it to mental or social disadvantages that the Bayushi actually knows about. It just gets odd, otherwise. (With the tech otherwise improved to compensate for the reduction in scope, of course.)

Oh god, no, I'm not giving them that many. Merely that with each school I started out by listing all the ones that fit, as a way of clarifying in my mind what their flavor was. The Bayushi are all the underhanded flavors at once. :-)

I'm probably going to break up some of the current Bayushi synergy, because I do think they're fundamentally broken against anybody with a Mental or Social Disadvantage. Free Raises against your target (even if, as you've pointed out, you have no idea what those Disadvantages are), which makes you exceedingly likely to win the R2 to figure out their weaknesses and get Blackmail on them, whereupon your R4 means you get Free Raises AND their dice don't explode AND you make them roll their weakest Trait -- in other words, they're toast. The only way to defend against them is to have no relevant Disadvantages, which makes for boring characters. Their theme is great, but I need to rethink how they get mechanized.

- What determines the actual winner of the court battle? It is not immediately clear to me from reading this, but maybe I missed something.

As near as I can tell, that's a flaw of the Mass Battle rules, too. I guess if you come out Winning on the final turn? But since your previous status has no effect on your next roll, your general can Lose Lose Lose Lose Win . . . which, yes, can happen in real life, but the odds of it get smaller with each period of time in which you're losing, and that doesn't seem to be true here. I feel like there needs to be an additional rule in there to cover this question -- something tracking margin of victory, maybe? Instead of the GM arbitrarily picking a number of Turns, say that whichever leader rolls higher adds their margin of victory to a running total, and the battle ends when they reach a predetermined amount. (Which could apply to both types of Battle). It opens up the chance for the conflict to resolve quickly if somebody gets an overwhelming advantage, or to drag on forever if they're too easily matched, which sounds realistic to me. And I feel like winning/losing should affect your next roll, though not in such a large fashion that you can never regain your footing once you're on the defensive. -1k0 per margin of 5 by which you lose the Contested Roll? Or per margin of 10?

- I think every result on the table should come with a Political Opportunity attached. They're the thing that makes any given round of the court battle interesting... can you imagine the boredom of rolling and getting "ho-hum, adjust a number up and down" when everyone else at the table got a personal scene out of their round?

Every single PC getting an Opportunity on every round would make this take forever to play through. :-) I don't think I included this note in my original description of the concept (it's in the draft document), but this doesn't have to be the only thing going on a given session -- in fact, it probably shouldn't be unless you're really in the thick of it. If you're Idle, you don't get Political Opportunities, but you have a lot of free time to be pursuing other interests and duties unrelated to the battle. If you're Central, you're devoting nearly every waking minute to the effort, but you also get a Political Opportunity every turn no matter how you roll. Giving everybody an Opportunity every round really muddies the distinction between the Idle characters and the Central ones, and the gradient between them.

- I think it would be nice to have some method of determining what Opportunity you got, besides "the GM decides". It works for Mass Battle, because while the opportunities there are generally pretty distinct, they all run on basically the same skills - go fight some people with your fight-y skills. The Political Opportunities all run on different skills, that you may be amazing at or terrible at, so leaving it to the GM alone is basically saying to the GM "decide whether the PC does great or terrible on this round." I'm not sure exactly how to do that... when the last thread was up, I had a notion of allocating the opportunities to cards, and then having the various results on the table say "draw X cards and pick one to happen to you." I suspect that might be impractical, though.

My original phrasing might not be clear enough, but I don't think the GM should be choosing Opportunities the character is terrible at. For a lot of them, it wouldn't even make sense: nobody would put your PC forward to prove your side's awesomeness with a game of Go if you aren't a good Go player. You won't get a chance to time events well if you don't know which side of a kawaru coin is up. Randomizing it makes it more likely that players will have to decline Opportunities they're not suited for, which makes getting an Opportunity much less exciting.

Yeah, Storytelling (Poetry) was always pretty weird. In a sense I think it was in service to a similar goal as the one you're working on with Influence--grouping multiple tasks requiring verbal skills and creativity as emphases of one skill-- but for artisan and perform skills the more granular approach makes better sense to me, too, especially when you add some "never unskilled" Advantages that cover those categories.

I've been cogitating about Opportunities, but I keep ending up checking this thread on my phone, on which this forum works pretty horribly, so I think I'll hold off for a bit longer :/

As for choosing opportunities, you could have them on a chart with the instruction that it's either GM's choice or "roll twice and choose one." Some people do really like rolling on encounter charts. And a random element for small scenes like this can be a fun improv challenge for GM and player, if you like that kind of thing.

Yeah, Storytelling (Poetry) was always pretty weird. In a sense I think it was in service to a similar goal as the one you're working on with Influence--grouping multiple tasks requiring verbal skills and creativity as emphases of one skill-- but for artisan and perform skills the more granular approach makes better sense to me, too, especially when you add some "never unskilled" Advantages that cover those categories.

For the most part the Perform skills are palette swaps of one another -- it doesn't matter much whether you're playing a shamisen or a biwa or a flute, except for flavor purposes. But poetry is central enough to the cultural milieu that lumping it in with something else makes NO sense to me.

I've been cogitating about Opportunities, but I keep ending up checking this thread on my phone, on which this forum works pretty horribly, so I think I'll hold off for a bit longer :/

Do you mean ideas for more, or thoughts on how they could be different? Ideas for more, I got plenty of already. :-P Just need the time to type them up.

As for choosing opportunities, you could have them on a chart with the instruction that it's either GM's choice or "roll twice and choose one." Some people do really like rolling on encounter charts. And a random element for small scenes like this can be a fun improv challenge for GM and player, if you like that kind of thing.

It will be easy enough to slap some numbers on there once I have a full set of examples.

It is a system-wise issue, yes, and for those skills where Raises fundamentally determine what you can and can't do, I think it's a system-wide problem - it decouples "being good at a skill" from a lot of the things you'd expect from, well, being good at a skill, and it places an immovable divide between "I cannot possibly do this thing" and "I can totes do this thing" that, again, is unrelated to how good you actually are at the thing. For some skills, it doesn't matter much or at all - some just have no application for Raises at all by default, and others (e.g. Medicine, most things relating to combat) allow you to call Raises for a bonus to the final outcome but don't qualitatively change what you're doing based on Raises. But for those skills where it is - for instance, many mechanical implementations of art contests have it come down to who calls the most Raises, which amounts to "highest Void wins, unless there's a Kakita Artisan present, in which case they win" - I think there's a problem. And it's a problem that's best not extended to skill where it doesn't currently apply.

I think your art contest example more illustrates the limitations of how people run that sort of thing, than the limitations of the Raise mechanic. :-) Art isn't just about doing X well; it's about a lot of social factors, too. If I care enough to actually run a contest in-game, I'm going to make it more interesting than just Single Artisan Roll With Max Raises.

Anyway, I'm personally okay with the current situation, because I see Void as a measure of greatness of spirit, and somebody who leaves their Void down at 2 will just never be great. Those characters, to me, are the workhorses of Rokugani society: their dice pools mean they'll reliably succeed at the basic stuff, but true inspiration is out of their reach. Your 10k10 liar with Void 2 has a great poker face, but he can't bring others along for the ride.

Yeah, but you don't spend Honour to do stuff normally, barring a few school techs and the like (and things like Ikoma Lion's Shadow and Dark Paragon aren't things that you're expected to use lightly). In the areas where it does things, it applies a static, constant bonus of some kind. Honour going up or down is a significant event, at least in my experience.

Then you play with very different people than I do. <g> We frequently have minor losses and gains, the former usually on account of minor breaches of etiquette. Not every session, but going 2-3 sessions without a change happening would be surprising.

I don't think "honour demands that you agree with me!" belongs in there as a special ability that you buy, FWIW. I think it should just be something that anyone can attempt, with varying degrees of credibility depending on who they are and what the subject is (possibly your Honour rank should affect the difficulty... since apparently Honour is something that can be perceived by others, I think it makes sense that people will take such a claim more seriously coming from someone who is themselves honourable).

I could see doing that with a Sincerity roll. Honesty (adding Honor Rank) if you really do think yours is the honorable position; Deceit if you're just trying to play your target. Or -- and I like this even better -- Lore: Bushido. Make it do something other than Honor-scoping!

Yeah, the Storytelling skill was a mess . To give another example: it had Oratory and Rheoric as separate emphases... where Oratory was the spoken word, and rhetoric the written . Specifically the written word. There's no such thing as spoken rhetoric, apparently!

That . . . would be news to the Greeks. (Rhetor is literally the Greek equivalent of the Latin orator; both mean "speaker.")

I liked the look of this system because it clearly established the stakes of any given political conflict: you want the thing to happen, they want it to not happen, or vice versa. Or maybe they don't necessarily want the thing to not happen. Maybe you can convince them to let you make the thing happen unopposed, in return for something else. And it also lets you model courts with more than two sides active, which is going to be most of them.

I figure this doesn't model the whole court; it only models specific portions thereof, where Group A and Group B are conflicting over mutually exclusive goals. Though come to think of it, I don't think it would take much work to allow for a three-way battle (e.g. three groups all campaigning to get their guy nominated as Imperial Advisor). I'll ponder that.

Anyway, I like using Mass Battle as the model because it seems to fit Rokugan, y'know? The notion that they see court and the battlefield as analogous things. Plus, it saved me from having to invent the whole wheel. ;-)

If you prefer to stick more closely with an emulation of the Mass Battle system, I think it makes the most sense to say "go until one side accumulates X margin of victory over the other." With perhaps an upper limit on the number of turns - if night falls and the armies are still stalemated, that probably means the battle was a draw. Likewise, if Winter Court ends and neither side has gotten what they want, that's probably the end of this particular conflict (soon to be picked up in other venues, no doubt) since it's now time for everyone to go home.

Right, there's an expiration date on these things. I probably wouldn't cap it at an arbitrary number of turns -- I'd let in-game events affect things. The end of Winter Court would be one reason to shut things down, but plot developments could also put people in a position where the old conflict is no longer relevant or feasible.

Well, yes, of course the GM shouldn't be handing people Opportunities that they're awful at (unless they're awful at every possible thing, which seems unlikely). But the GM will have to decide between giving them an Opportunity for their best skill, or the second-best skill, or something they're decent-but-not-brilliant at, or whatever. And the system doesn't really give them guidelines for that - should the Kakita Artisan spend every round doing "A Work of Art"? Can the master scribe spend every round codebreaking? The GM can always rule "no" in the interests of variety, of course, but as a GM I find some level of guidance from the system to be helpful. Also, I think giving the players a fair-but-not-unlimited degree of choice contributes to interesting decision-making - "Hmm, an opportunity for Bedroom Diplomacy has crossed my path, but I'm too honourable for that... likewise for intimidating that guy... I'll be crushed in this Go game... and I have no head for alcohol... I'm not bad at Divination, though, I'll try reading the stars so we can time our next move perfectly." As a player, I'd find that more interesting than the GM just telling me "this round, you have the opportunity to do some divination."

If you're awful at every possible thing, you have no business going into Court Battle. :-P (I probably won't bother posting all the rest of my Opportunities -- I'll save 'em for the PDF version when this is done -- but they're pretty comprehensive in the skills they encompass. Meditation and Sailing are very nearly the only skills I have a hard time incorporating as court-useful events.)

But your point is taken about giving players choice. I was following the Mass Battle model, but it's true that most of the Heroic Opportunities are slightly different stagings of "and then you fight." Given the variety on hand here, it makes sense to let players have some agency as to which one they want to pursue, without letting them select from the whole list each time. I'll make a note to work that in.

And now, some Opportunity brainstorming from me:

A False Face

A samurai willing to step outside the bounds of honour can learn a great deal by being somewhere he or she is not supposed to. Roll Acting or Stealth to infiltrate the private areas of the opposing delegation, overhearing plans and gaining access to secret documents. On a success, your side gains +3 to its next Politics roll, and the opposing side suffers a -3 penalty... however, on a significant failure, you are caught and the scandal imposes a -5 to your side's next roll. The personal consequences for you are also likely to be drastic.

(Possibly the benefits for this one ought to be scaled up to account for the risk.)

Chicken Soup for the Samurai Soul (and body)

One of your fellow courtiers struggles with illness or health problems, or perhaps a friend or loved one does. Regardless, you could win a valuable friend by providing help. Roll Medicine; on a success, your side's leader gains +3 to his or her next roll. On a significant failure, your advice proves counterproductive, and the recipient's anger instead imposes a -3 penalty to the next roll.

An Ornament of the Court

You have the opportunity to impress the guests at a party or informal gathering with your skills as a performer. Choose a Perform skill and roll it; for each Raise you call on this roll, your side's leader gains +1 to his or hell next Politics roll, and you gain a point of Glory. A failed roll instead loses you that much Glory.

The Art of Serenity

The tea ceremony ranks among the most beloved arts of the Emerald Empire, and a samurai can win much respect by skillfully hosting one. Roll Tea Ceremony; if you are successful, your leader gains +1 to his or her next Politics roll for each guest at the ceremony. At the GM's discretion, this Opportunity may also involve social skill rolls to ingratiate yourself with your guests.

The Great Hunt

A bushi whose support your side courts is known as a keen hunter, and an upcoming hunt provides an excellent opportunity to ingratiate yourself with him or her. Some combination of Animal Handling, Horsemanship, Hunting, an appropriate Weapon Skill (probably either Kyujutsu or Spears) and Etiquette (courtesy) will enable you to impress this bushi with your skill and charm; Raises to show off should probably be necessary for a signifcant benefit.

Filthy Lucre

Trade is beneath an honourable samurai... much as a foundation is beneath a building. An opportunity has arisen to secure a favourable trade deal that will strengthen your side's efforts in court. Roll Commerce/Intelligence; on a success, your side gains +3 to its next Politics roll, but on a failure, unfavourable terms instead impose a -3 penalty.

(Possibly, for those without a school that lets them openly engage in commerce, an Etiquette roll might be called for to conduct the negotiations without being dirtied by your proximity to money?)

Also, an observation about the table - it seems like nearly every result that has you taking any Glory loss at all will result in a net loss of Glory. The average on 1d10 is 5.5 - so any time you have "lose X dice of Glory" and "gain Y Glory", unless Y is 6 or more times greater than X, you are losing Glory. So if e.g. you are Central, you will lose Glory unless you roll 30(!) or more, even if your side is winning. If you are Active, you will lose Glory unless you roll 27 or more, even if you're winning. So I think those numbers could use recalibration.

But does it make sense that he's literally incapable of ever convincing anyone of anything important? That's my problem with making it Raise-dependent.

Ah -- but the way you just described it is not accurate to what I'm trying to design here.

1) He can totally convince people of true things, because Raises don't generally come in on Honesty; it's just a rising TN.

2) He can convince people of false things that are relatively plausible . That could be a small lie ("no, my lord, I didn't hear anything last night") or a huge one well-supported by evidence ("I know it's hard to believe, my lord, but your yojimbo killed your husband" when the murder is the culmination of an elaborate and well-executed frame job).

What he can't do is persuade somebody to swallow a really implausible line out of left field -- that takes a lot of Raises, because you're trying to do something extra hard, with an increased risk that you might fail.

Does that make more sense now?

Now, does this depend on the GM adjudicating Raises in a fair and sensible fashion? Yes. But that's true of the Raise mechanic, period, outside the few instances (manuevers, spells) where its use is very numerically delineated. If Raises get used at all in normal (non-technique) social rolls, we're going to have to deal with a degree of GM judgment. My solution there is just to try to be extra-clear about how I'm viewing this, and give lots of examples. I can attempt to be clearer on the Deceit Raises thing in the actual document.

Ooh, I like that. Hmm... maybe, since we're doing the complementary skills thing as part of the system, let them both play into it? Sincerity complemented by Lore: Bushido, or vice versa?

Probably the former, but either could work.

I dunno, I think the free-wheeling nature of Rokugani court is a fairly significant difference compared to the battlefield. In any given courtly dispute, there will be multiple other factions around who may be supporting one side or the other, or neutral but a potential source of support, or pursuing a goal opposed to both, and any competent courtier will be paying keen attention to them at all times.

Right, but most of those are what the Political Opportunities represent. You do X and impress a potential ally, or put your enemies' allies off their stride, which translates to an effect on the next turn's roll. The only place where I think they need to be treated as independent factions is when their goal is directly opposed to that of the other factions, and that's where my three-way battle idea came in.

And re- inventing the wheel is different from inventing it. ;-) I'm putting a rim on the wheel, maybe, but it already had some spokes. </tortured metaphor>

Several of your Opportunities are exactly the kind of thing I was planning! But I broke up "The Great Hunt" -- you can show off your Horsemanship in one Opportunity, or Hunting in another, Animal Handling in a third, and then there's one for a display of weapons, etc.

Also, an observation about the table - it seems like nearly every result that has you taking any Glory loss at all will result in a net loss of Glory. The average on 1d10 is 5.5 - so any time you have "lose X dice of Glory" and "gain Y Glory", unless Y is 6 or more times greater than X, you are losing Glory. So if e.g. you are Central, you will lose Glory unless you roll 30(!) or more, even if your side is winning. If you are Active, you will lose Glory unless you roll 27 or more, even if you're winning. So I think those numbers could use recalibration.

The flip side is that a number of Political Opportunities can also earn you Glory, and a Central character gets one on every roll. But that's where the playtesting comes in, figuring out whether the frequency of that counterbalances the loss. Probably not, and I need to rejigger the numbers, but I haven't had a chance to mess with it yet.

Now, does this depend on the GM adjudicating Raises in a fair and sensible fashion? Yes. But that's true of the Raise mechanic, period, outside the few instances (manuevers, spells) where its use is very numerically delineated. If Raises get used at all in normal (non-technique) social rolls, we're going to have to deal with a degree of GM judgment. My solution there is just to try to be extra-clear about how I'm viewing this, and give lots of examples. I can attempt to be clearer on the Deceit Raises thing in the actual document.

Raises in general are an area where I think the published RPG really falls down by not providing a framework on what sort of task or difficulty would require what sort of TN or how many raises.