Honour Is Stronger Than Steel.

It's one of the first lines people new to L5R usually hear, and is, I think, one of the reasons for its attraction. It's not just that you get to be a magical samurai, and magical samurai are cool; it's that the moral code of the setting actually has meaning. Not only are the Heavens incontestably real, but Bushido itself can lend its strength to those who follow it, giving them the power to overcome impossible odds, and even push back against Jigoku (Matsu Domotai, Ikoma Tsanuri, Okura no Oni, etc).

Unfortunately, this is rarely represented well in the RPG mechanics. The Honour Table is arbitrary and flawed, a purely numerical scale encourages a view of Honour as just another character stat (not helped by things like the Ikoma Lion's Shadow school, which actively trade Honour for mechanical advantage), the benefits provided by Honour create deeply weird effects (Doji Courtiers being unafraid of Oni), Honour Rolls are either too powerful or irrelevant, Lore: Bushido rolls have a weirdly high TN, and the different perspectives on Bushido in each Clan are entirely unrepresented. In short, Honour needs to be fixed.

I have said before, and will say again, that I am not an expert on mechanics, and if someone else has a better idea, I'm all for it. As an initial stab at an idea, though, and food for thought, here we go:

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Guiding Principles:

1) There should be some active benefit for being honourable.

2) There should always be some temptation not to be honourable.

3) Honour is simultaneously objective (it was defined by Akodo, and is therefore incontestable) and subjective (everyone has a different idea of what it means to be honourable).

4) Honour is multi-faceted, and a samurai ought to exemplify all of its aspects, not just one or two.

5) The more honourable you are, the higher the bar is set.

My initial preference would be not to track Honour at all, to rework every mechanic that references Honour to something else appropriate, and let the GM give bonuses to rolls as appropriate. That, however, is heavily GM-dependent, and generally creates a whole lot of other issues, so is best avoided.

With that in mind, the first step is to break Bushido down into its component Virtue: Compassion, Courage, Courtesy, Duty, Honesty, Honour, and Sincerity. Honour is distinct from the others, as it concerns itself with an internal sense of integrity, rather than obligations to other people. Rather than penalties and bonuses from actions being applied to one's "Honour Rank" directly, therefore, they would be applied to the relevant Virtue. This immediately makes it easier to resolve apparent contradictions: falsely claiming to have committed some indiscretion in order to cover for your lord would prompt a loss in Honesty, but a gain in Duty.

I will not attempt to provide a comprehensive list of actions that might prompt gains/losses, but dividing the Tenets up should make it fairly self-evident whether an action is good, or bad, and for which Virtues; and the principle of diminishing returns should prevail. The particulars of any such list are not nearly as important as reforming the system as a whole.

Honour is separate from the other six: your Honour is equal to the total of your ranks in your three lowest Virtues- Yoritomo Sumgai might be unsurpassed in Courage, but if he doesn't adhere to the code as a whole, his Honour will still be appropriately low. Honour Ranks are divided into tiers- x < 10, 10 < x < 20, and 20 < x (0 being the absolute minimum, and 30 being the maximum).

Any samurai can attempt to determine the Honour Rank (ie, tier) of any other samurai with a roll of Lore: Bushido/Awareness, at a TN of 15, and this roll would mostly be made automatically upon meeting a new samurai, along with Lore: Heraldry. Further details - precise Honour total, totals of particular Virtues, etc. - can be learned with Raises, but a roll over 15 will always reveal a samurai's Honour Rank, even if it fails due to Raises (note that this would not reveal which three Virtues were contributing to the Honour Rank). In many cases, the additional information will be of more interest to an interlocutor than the Honour Rank - a Scorpion lord, for instance, is unlikely to care particularly about the Honour Rank of the samurai under them, as long as they have strong Duty - but Honour Rank is always the first thing learned.

Each Virtue also provides benefits, irrespective of total Honour Rank:

Compassion: Bonus to rolls dealing with those of lower Status

Courage: Bonus to resisting Fear/Intimidation

Courtesy: Bonus to 'defensive' social rolls

Duty: Bonus to resisting penalties while in direct service to Lord/Clan

Honesty: Bonus to rolls to persuade (of facts)

Sincerity: Bonus to rolls to persuade (of suggestions)

(Here seems as good a place as any to note that, per Leadership , Sincerity means "acting in accordance with your words", not "sounding convincing" - the bonus to persuasion rolls stems from the interlocutor's implicit confidence that you are willing to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak, rather than from your manner of speaking.)

Honour itself provides no inherent benefit, except that anyone who matters will find out what level it's at with relative ease, and will act accordingly.

Again, I'm not going to suggest what kind or scale of bonus should be provided in each case, except that it should scale with the samurai's level of adherence to the Tenet.

HOWEVER

Every time a samurai incurs a loss in any Virtue, the samurai must make a Lore: Bushido/Void roll, against a TN of their own current Honour total (ie, harder for high-Honour people). With a success, the samurai loses the benefit associated with that Virtue for [a period of time appropriate to the severity of the loss, and the time-scale of the campaign], but suffers no other penalties. With a failure, the samurai loses all benefits provided by any of their Virtues for [appropriate time period]. In cases where an action incurs both a loss and a gain, success allows the samurai to retain all their bonuses, while failure means losing the benefit only of the Virtue(s) in which loss was incurred.

(I'm not wholly comfortable with using Void- it seems the most appropriate statistic to use, but only by default, and it does seem to give undue privilege to schools/builds that already use Void, which I'd rather avoid.)

Thus, those with high Honour receive a range of benefits appropriate to their own strengths, and are readily identified as exemplars for others to follow- but also have considerably more to lose from misconduct. A virtuous Matsu might be able to compensate to some extent for her inexperience in court by simple force of honour, but will always be more constrained in the range of available options, risks losing her 'protection' in a single misstep off the path of virtue, and is relatively easily manipulated. An unscrupulous Yasuki might not receive the same reflexive respect, but has a much wider range of options that can be taken with little/no penalty; a Shosuro might be seen (and treated) as scum by the majority of those he encounters, but be nigh-unstoppable in service to his Clan.

***

I am aware that this doesn't address all the issues with Honour- in the absence of a full chart of gains and losses, application of gains and losses is going to be arbitrary, and the Tenets of Bushido are still tracked numerically, which I'd rather avoid, but can see no viable alternative to, if they're going to have any kind of defined effect. Still, hopefully it provides at least some food for thought. Ideas for improvement?

I appreciate your thoughts, and believe that they would make a good system, however for something that is more of a sideshow/special feature to the game than a core mechanic, it seems very heavy on bookkeeping and maintenance.

Do you know the Star Wars games, and their Obligation and Morality concept? I think Honour would work quite well with something like the Morality system in Force&Destiny. Whenever you do something that MIGHT be problematic, you get "conflict", and if at the end of a session, day, adventure or whatnot you have accrued too much conflict, you stand to lose honour. I was never a big fan of the sometimes massive drops and gains in honour during court days... the idea that you can lose something as intrinsically personal as honour for a day of talking to too many scorpion courtiers somehow didnt seem correct.

Also, the idea of "conflict" accrueing somewhat lessens the necessity of judging every single questonable action correctly... after all, if you happen to have little conflict, its unlikely your honour will drop, and thus its less important if it would be an offense under these circumstances to lay your hashi down crossed instead of sideways, or stain your family mon with fish sauce.

On the other hand, Duty is something that I believe would be a worthy addition to the system, maybe doing away with "Status" in the process. The higher the number, the more important you are to your lord, but the more often you are required to do something you might not want to do.

In my experience, players usually do NOT want to do what their lord tells them, since it usually comes with no added rewards (its their job after all), and takes time away from their own exploits and plans. As such, in the reality of play at the table, duty is likely more of a hindrance than help, whereas honour especially with mechanical benefits is something to strive for.

Thank you for the reply and thoughts!

I do not know Star Wars (or any other game that isn't L5R, really, which is one of the reasons I disavow any expertise on mechanics in general), but that sounds like an interesting idea. I did think about a 'strike' system for losses in Honour/individual Virtues, in which a loss wouldn't actually be incurred until you did a certain number of things that would cause a loss (but the higher your current rank, the less leeway you would have), but as you rightly say, there's already a lot of bookkeeping going on, and it has to stop somewhere. Otherwise, I'm not inherently opposed to losing (or gaining) honour for single actions, at least if they're of any significance.

More generally, I think the issue here is somewhat similar to the one that was raised earlier, with regards to combat- mechanics should support the themes of the game, so the more of something there is in a game, the more complex the mechanics can/should be. Honour is very important to me in L5R, so I'd be quite happy to accept more complexity, and more bookkeeping, in order to represent it more correctly; for other people, it's more of a sideshow, as you say (these rules could probably be entirely disregarded if, say, the campaign was set on the Wall and all the PCs were Crabs). You are still right, however, that there's a lot to keep track of in these rules, and simplicity is generally a good thing- it's just a question of where the trade-off between simplicity, and a proper representation of Bushido, lies.

I like the thought of adding Duty to the game, whether as part of a more complicated Honour system or as a mechanic in its own right. Basically anything that represents the aspects of the social system that would be important to Rokugani samurai, but may be less so for us as players, I'm down with.

Thanks again!

I like everything abut this thread.

I have little to contribute at present, but I'm sticking a flag in it so I can easily find it later.

Unfortunately, this is rarely represented well in the RPG mechanics. The Honour Table is arbitrary and flawed

I'd be curious to hear you expand more on this -- what exactly you see as flawed about it (as opposed to the flaws in how Honor gets used, which you described elsewhere). I know where I think it falls short, but I'd like to see how other people view it.

a purely numerical scale encourages a view of Honour as just another character stat (not helped by things like the Ikoma Lion's Shadow school, which actively trade Honour for mechanical advantage)

Interesting -- my experience of it is quite different, in that for me, the stat and the fluctuations in it are both affected by my roleplay, and affect how I play my character. I will often decide not to follow a certain course of action once I realize how much Honor I'll lose for doing so, which I think nicely parallels an honorable person cringing at the thought of doing something despicable. (And when I go ahead and do it anyway . . . my PC once embarked on a course of action that, had it not been derailed by something else, would have entailed losing three ranks in the space of a few minutes. But it was for the good of the Empire, so she was grimly determined to follow through.)

As for the "spend Honor" mechanic, I think it *can* make sense . . . but I suspect, without going back to check all instances of it, that it's one of those things where the core concept of what it means OOC got lost along the way. It makes sense to me when it represents choosing to be a bit underhanded in pursuit of your goal (e.g. kicking dirt into your opponent's face to get a bonus to your attack roll), but that may not be the logic behind it in all instances.

the benefits provided by Honour create deeply weird effects (Doji Courtiers being unafraid of Oni)

I don't think the 2-point difference between your average Doji and your average Hida is really that big of a deal, when the bulk of your Fear resistance comes from your Willpower, not your Honor. And if that Doji has good Willpower, too? Then I see the edge she gets as being an appropriate illustration of the core notion that honor truly is a source of strength.

Honour Rolls are either too powerful or irrelevant

By "irrelevant," do you mean that people don't roll them very often? That's true, which is part of why I've built in more uses for Honor in my social redesign. Too powerful, though -- I dunno. I think that's kind of up to GM discretion. I would only let somebody Honor-roll a thing where I feel like Honor actually matters to the task at hand, not any random action they happen to have failed. No Honor-rolling your Games: Fortunes and Winds roll. :-P

Lore: Bushido rolls have a weirdly high TN

Completely agreed. I wouldn't drop it quite as low as you did in your suggestion, but I think it should be 20 or 25, not 30.

I'm going to quote your next points in italics, because stupid forum software.

1) There should be some active benefit for being honourable.

I agree, which is why I built more uses of it into my redesign.

2) There should always be some temptation not to be honourable.

I actually don't see your proposed rules really playing up that aspect. If anything, the effect seems to be the opposite: you get no benefit for being dishonorable that you don't already have, but you stand to lose waaaaay more when you're higher on the chart (all those bonuses that might go away).

For those who weren't reading that thread, I'll quote my reply from over on the magical redesign:

"I've always felt that the temptation to do things the wrong way is inherent in the fact that they give you options a more upstanding person won't consider. If you're honorable and I'm not, you've got six tools in your kit and I have twelve (numbers made up for illustrative purposes). The temptation is to lie to avoid consequences, to bribe where you cannot convince, to seduce because you cannot have that person in the light of day. I don't personally see a need to give incentive beyond that --

"-- but I should note that I say this from the standpoint of having eliminated Low Skills as a separate category, so that they're generally Low applications of other skills instead. My major reason for doing this was to make that temptation more real, because you're just applying something you already know how to do in a dishonorable fashion. That's way more attractive than rolling a skill I don't have and will therefore suck at. For "this is the easy way out" to appeal to a player, it really has to be an *easy* way out, not a harder one."

3) Honour is simultaneously objective (it was defined by Akodo, and is therefore incontestable) and subjective (everyone has a different idea of what it means to be honourable).

People say this fairly often, but I'm not entirely sure I agree.

Bushido has multiple tenets, which sometimes conflict. Every clan makes different decisions as to which aspects to prioritize -- but that doesn't mean they disagree on what those aspects *mean*. The Crab agree that certain things are in keeping with Courtesy; they just don't care, because those things get in the way of fulfilling their duty, and given a choice between keeping their noses clean and getting the job done, they choose the latter. (Talking about maho and Shadowlands creatures: breach of etiquette. Also necessary, when you're a Crab.) The Scorpion prize Loyalty above pretty much anything else, but that doesn't mean they think they're honorable just because they're loyal to their clan. I think the clans generally agree on what "being honorable" looks like; it's just that they place different priorities on that goal and its various aspects, and some are more willing to let go of it than others.

4) Honour is multi-faceted, and a samurai ought to exemplify all of its aspects, not just one or two.

Agreed -- which is why I'd probably take a look at the chart and try to add more components that are clearly upholding or violating a particular virtue. In general, though, I think "you have to exemplify all aspects to really be honorable" is represented by the fact that you might gain Honor for fulfilling your duty, while losing Honor for the manner in which you fulfilled it, resulting in a net wash or even a loss.

5) The more honourable you are, the higher the bar is set.

Also agreed. I like the fact that the general trend on the Honor chart is diminishing gains and increasing losses the higher you go. (With the occasional weird-but-appropriate "you gain Honor for doing this at low levels, have no change at medium levels, and *lose* Honor at higher levels.")

Regarding the actual mechanics: I have to agree with Kaiju that this sounds INCREDIBLY complicated. You've got six independent stats and a seventh derived one that isn't always derived from the same things, separate benefits for each of the six, effects that can change each of the six (thus potentially requiring you to recalculate the seventh), a roll you have to make every time you might lose Virtue (against a TN that changes every time), variable results which might negate one benefit or all of them or maybe none of them but the interpretation of the results depends on circumstances . . . I agree with you that Honor is supposed to be really important in Rokugan, so it could stand to get better treatment than it does currently. But I don't think this is the way.

Entirely off the cuff, but: I think it could work to track each Virtue separately, and have each element on the Honor chart say which Virtues it's related to (potentially more than one). If you gain or lose, you gain or lose in the Virtues listed. Your Honor Rank gets calculated as the average of all Virtue Ranks -- meaning that you don't need to recalculate unless one of the Virtues rises or falls by a whole rank. It's possible this would make Honor generally more stable over time (because fleeing from battle as an Honor 5 samurai would lose me .6, but if that's only coming off of Courage then my Courtesy and so forth can mitigate the overall effect) . . . I'm not sure, and a lot would depend on the actual balancing of the numbers. Anyway, if there's one part of this I'd be tempted to implement, it would be the part where the Virtues get handled individually. But I'd keep the benefits to Honor Rank only, so you can't min-max for whatever suits your build, and I'd drop the part about rolling every time you lose Honor; the benefits are there, period, and only change insofar as your Honor changes.

Kaiju: "judging every single questionable action" is, for me, part of the RP. :-) My character lives in a culture where she has to constantly police herself for inappropriate behavior; doing the same OOC just helps me get into character . . . .

Once again and as always, many thanks for the attention and reply!

To address each point in turn:

I'd be curious to hear you expand more on [the Honour Table] -- what exactly you see as flawed about it (as opposed to the flaws in how Honor gets used, which you described elsewhere). I know where I think it falls short, but I'd like to see how other people view it.

I have two main issues with the Honour Table:

1) The grades of 'breach of etiquette' are not made clear- when is a breach of etiquette 'minor', when is it 'major', and when is it 'blasphemous'? There are similar issues around clarity throughout the table- does 'acknowledging a superior opponent' require that you bow out, or just that you admit their superiority? Who counts as a 'rival' for 'showing sincere courtesy to enemies or rivals'? How do you distinguish 'sincere' and 'false' courtesy? his is manageable as long as the players and the GM have the same basic instincts about the setting, or the players at least trust the GM to make reasonable calls, but is still a potential issue.

2) Honour gains in general (particularly at the higher end of the table) are heavily skewed towards Compassion and Courage- which are also the virtues most players are likely to follow instinctively, regardless of their, or their character's, attitude towards Bushido. This has, in my experience, routinely led to Wasp Code-following Tsuruchi and hard-bitten Hiruma reaching HR 6+, which just feels wrong.

I like the idea behind the Honour Table- the notion that particular acts can incur higher honour losses at higher honour ranks, or even switch from being honourable to dishonourable, is one I approve of. I just don't think it delivers.

I will often decide not to follow a certain course of action once I realize how much Honor I'll lose for doing so, which I think nicely parallels an honorable person cringing at the thought of doing something despicable.

That's precisely my issue- you (not you personally. Indefinite 'you') make the decision based on a numerical calculation, rather than a reflexive sense of what ought to be done. I'll grant that it affects and is affected by role-play, as it should, but it's too easy for players to either deliberately seek out honour gains regardless of what their character might otherwise be inclined to do ("Hmm. I need to be HR 7 to become a Lion Paragon. Better go look after some peasant children, even though I'm a Lion soldier who would never normally be seen dead with a heimin!"), or engage in Honour-lawyering to try to gain Honour/avoid losing Honour from particular actions. Honour should naturally affect roleplay (at least for characters who aspire to follow Bushido), with honourable types being inclined to do honourable things and disinclined to do dishonourable things, rather than players considering the Honour Table/discussing with their GM and making calculations about whether or not a particular course of action is worth pursuing.

It makes sense to me when it represents choosing to be a bit underhanded in pursuit of your goal (e.g. kicking dirt into your opponent's face to get a bonus to your attack roll), but that may not be the logic behind it in all instances.

I would have no objection to a player deciding to do something dishonourable, and receiving some advantage from it. On the contrary, that's precisely why characters should be tempted to be dishonourable - it can give you an edge an honourable opponent will never have. I'm just not happy about a mechanic that explicitly trades Honour for extra dice in a mechanically predictable and universally-applicable manner. (Also, I hate almost everything about the ILS with a fiery passion, thus writing them with the strike-through.)

I don't think the 2-point difference between your average Doji and your average Hida is really that big of a deal, when the bulk of your Fear resistance comes from your Willpower, not your Honor. And if that Doji has good Willpower, too? Then I see the edge she gets as being an appropriate illustration of the core notion that honor truly is a source of strength.

That's just a difference of opinion, then. Yes, Doji are honourable. That may well give them the strength to face death with dignity. I don't see it as reasonable that they get to apply all of their Honour - which is drawn primarily from the maintenance of perfect conduct in court - to facing down a ravenous tide of slavering hell-beasts, but that's just a feeling on my part, and I certainly can't object to others feeling differently.

By "irrelevant," do you mean that people don't roll them very often? That's true, which is part of why I've built in more uses for Honor in my social redesign. Too powerful, though -- I dunno. I think that's kind of up to GM discretion. I would only let somebody Honor-roll a thing where I feel like Honor actually matters to the task at hand, not any random action they happen to have failed. No Honor-rolling your Games: Fortunes and Winds roll.

More or less, yes. Honour rolls are incredibly powerful for high-Honour characters, especially in the early stages of the game. They may not match the Focus roll of a dedicated duelist (which is probably when most high-Honour characters would most like to have some kind of defence), but they blow the vast majority of other rolls out of the water until a fairly late stage in character development, so there is a strong temptation to disallow them outright. As such, it comes down to GM discretion whether/when to allow them, as you say- when you have a good GM, it can work. Otherwise, they're more than a little imbalanced, in one direction or the other. Any mechanic which works only as long as you have a good GM is not a good mechanic.

***

And following you into italics:

Lore: Bushido TN is too high

Completely agreed. I wouldn't drop it quite as low as you did in your suggestion, but I think it should be 20 or 25, not 30.

The TN15 in my rework only allows you to get the most basic idea of how honourable your interlocutor might be, with more detail requiring raises. If we were keeping a single stat for tracking Honour, and Lore: Bushido allowed you to learn precisely what it was, I would absolutely agree that the TN should be in the 20-25 range.

People should be tempted to behave dishonourably

I actually don't see your proposed rules really playing up that aspect. If anything, the effect seems to be the opposite: you get no benefit for being dishonorable that you don't already have, but you stand to lose waaaaay more when you're higher on the chart (all those bonuses that might go away).

You're probably right about this. I find it difficult to come up with credible benefits for behaving dishonourably, beyond "you have more options open to you". Essentially, I would declare a whole lot of things to count as Low skill usages (similar in principle to that aspect of your social redesign), thereby limiting honourable characters to a relatively small number of options, while their dishonourable opponents would always be able to outmanoeuvre them by means of dirty tricks. Being dishonourable would give no mechanical benefit, except for having more options at your disposal. But I readily admit that my mechanics are far from perfect, and would be over the moon if someone came up with a better way of representing the respective advantages of honourable and dishonourable characters.

Honour is simultaneously objective and subjective

People say this fairly often, but I'm not entirely sure I agree.

Bushido has multiple tenets, which sometimes conflict. Every clan makes different decisions as to which aspects to prioritize -- but that doesn't mean they disagree on what those aspects *mean*. The Crab agree that certain things are in keeping with Courtesy; they just don't care, because those things get in the way of fulfilling their duty, and given a choice between keeping their noses clean and getting the job done, they choose the latter. (Talking about maho and Shadowlands creatures: breach of etiquette. Also necessary, when you're a Crab.) The Scorpion prize Loyalty above pretty much anything else, but that doesn't mean they think they're honorable just because they're loyal to their clan. I think the clans generally agree on what "being honorable" looks like; it's just that they place different priorities on that goal and its various aspects, and some are more willing to let go of it than others.

This is my fault for not being clear enough. You are correct that there is general agreement among the Clans on what constitutes Bushido, and that some Clans simply don't care (in the case of the old-school Wasp, they deliberately reject it entirely... even though the Wasp Code basically replicates Bushido in different words). If 'honourable' is defined as 'in accordance with Bushido' (which, in strict terms, it is), then there is little disagreement as to what it means to be honourable. My point was, rather, that different Clans have different concepts of what constitutes desirable behaviour. For the Lion and Crane, and to a lesser extent the Phoenix, the Clan's idea of 'good behaviour' overlaps more or less perfectly with what Bushido demands- the Daidoji may occasionally do some dirty things, but they recognise this as undesirable behaviour, they simply see it as necessary. For the Crab or Scorpion, Bushido itself - while formally incontestable - is not seen as a good thing per se. The Scorpion actively scorn it as a prison that allows them to outmanoeuvre their opponents, while the Crab are more likely to use 'sincerity' in sarcasm than in praise. Therefore, while determining someone's Honour rank may be hugely important for a Lion or Crane in forming a judgement of someone, a Scorpion or Crab would be looking for other things entirely (mostly Duty), and see adherence to Bushido at large as irrelevant at best.

***

Mechanical suggestions

Your thoughts are greatly appreciated, and almost certainly worth more than mine. I am entirely confident that implementing my system without change would be a disaster. All it's intended to do is provoke thought about the merits of treating Honour differently from the current system, and if it's done that, I call it a success!

I was giving this some thought, and began asking myself is it the vitues, or the virtue of bushido. Compassion, courage, courtesy, duty, honesty, and sincerity all work together to build honour as a samurai follows bushido. When I look at those seven virtues, I see how they are interwoven into one code. Now this all parallels the fruit of the Spirit ( love, joy, peace, patience, temperence, self-control, and faith ). Note though that it is fruit of the Spirit, not fruits. You do not get one without the other. They all work together, and through each other. Any one of those maybe more prevelent than others in one's given actions. That does not mean the others are absent. I do like what you are preposing, as others have said it sounds complex, with a lot if accounting. Perhaps there is a way to view all seven facets as one whole so that you do not have to track so many additional stats? I am not sure how you would do this. My gamemaster just always handed me a situation that called for a decision. Many times those decisions had honor loss attached to any or all of my options. I would tend to try to discern which decision best upheld the essence of bushido, since all the options violated the letter of bushido to some extent. The Essence of Bushido being the balance of the virtues working in harmony. This is just my thoughts, hoping it can help bring some clarity.

One other note; Compassion is not just in how you deal with those of lower rank, but also how you deal with peers, superiors, and even your enemies.

Thank you for presenting this topic, and thank you fir your time reading my ramblings.

Yosama- that's precisely why the 'Honour rank' in my system is defined as the total of the lowest three virtues, to measure adherence to Bushido as a whole. You may be suicidally brave, or unfailingly honest, but if you don't follow the Code as a whole it doesn't count. Bravery without Courtesy is for beasts and bandits; Courtesy without Bravery is for geisha and grovelling merchants. I agree that counting each Virtue individually makes for a lot of accounting, and it would be nice to be able to link them together more organically - my mechanics are a very long way from perfect - but you're right that a proper pursuit of Bushido requires adherence to all of its Tenets together.

All thoughts are welcome and appreciated!

Idathyrsus - You may want to check out John Wick's game Blood and Steal. I have not had a chance to look at it myself but John has stated that if he had the chance to do the game over again he would do something very simular to what your are talking about with having each clan set what they value and have honor relative to what each of the clan's value. Thus a high honor scorpion would be excessively loyal to the clan while a low honor scorpion would be ready to rebel and be uncomfortable with his orders.

I have not had a chance to look at blood and steal but it might be worth a look.

I would like to see a bigger focus on the virtue of Honor. It is the foundation of everything and should be treated as such - not even Duty should topple it (considering how duty without honor is pretty darn meaningless). This would kill the drama L5R likes to force on the setting, as the absolute expression of absolute righteousness is "I don't care" and righteous people tend to sh*t on others' opinions as well as readily disregard what they perceive as nonsense (and they perceive everything as nonsense that can't hit their extreme moral standards). But yeah, I wouldn't mourn the loss of stuff like the Moto/Phoenix War . Not to mention that I like sober and no-nonsense samurai more than tragically conflicted ones.

Thanks for your reply Idanthyrsus.

I guess I was hoping I had stumbled on a way to simplify your accounting by introducing just one or two additional stats in conjuction with honour. Let us say for example I as Unicorn Bushi would add Bushido, and Compassion. I could take hits to one or the other depending upon my deeds, and words. That would have a direct effect upon my honour then. Like say I show mercy to an enemy samurai gaining points in compassion, but losing them in bushido for not carrying out my duty to its full extent. Thus overall being a netwash or even a loss to my honour.

I see your desire to present your honour system as more complex adding to a larger array of the facets of bushido. Nicely done.

Thanks again,

Shinjo Yosama

1) The grades of 'breach of etiquette' are not made clear- when is a breach of etiquette 'minor', when is it 'major', and when is it 'blasphemous'? There are similar issues around clarity throughout the table- does 'acknowledging a superior opponent' require that you bow out, or just that you admit their superiority? Who counts as a 'rival' for 'showing sincere courtesy to enemies or rivals'? How do you distinguish 'sincere' and 'false' courtesy? his is manageable as long as the players and the GM have the same basic instincts about the setting, or the players at least trust the GM to make reasonable calls, but is still a potential issue.

Ah, see, I consider that a feature rather than a bug. The answers to those questions are sufficiently complicated that I don't think it's feasible to really nail down answers; the possible variations are too numerous. I think that providing some examples would be great, and the specific phrasing of certain things could be improved (e.g. something clearer than "acknowledging") -- but I see that more as tweaking rather than the chart being fundamentally flawed.

2) Honour gains in general (particularly at the higher end of the table) are heavily skewed towards Compassion and Courage- which are also the virtues most players are likely to follow instinctively, regardless of their, or their character's, attitude towards Bushido. This has, in my experience, routinely led to Wasp Code-following Tsuruchi and hard-bitten Hiruma reaching HR 6+, which just feels wrong.

Agreed. The major revision I would make to the chart is to ensure that every virtue is represented by both gains and losses, preferably at all levels.

I will often decide not to follow a certain course of action once I realize how much Honor I'll lose for doing so, which I think nicely parallels an honorable person cringing at the thought of doing something despicable.

That's precisely my issue- you (not you personally. Indefinite 'you') make the decision based on a numerical calculation, rather than a reflexive sense of what ought to be done.

That isn't quite what I meant, though. The numbers give me guidance as to where those actions ought to fit in with my character's sense of morality. Without the numbers, my "reflexive sense of what ought to be done" would too easily default to the assumptions of me, the player.

Case in point: after our session last night, I asked my husband, as a matter of RP, whether he was planning on saying anything to the ronin NPC who disarmed him while he was possessed, thus winding up with a round or so where the ronin was holding his Sacred Weapon. He said no, probably not, because the Rokugani way is to sweep awkward stuff under the rug, right? But then we remembered that it might count as enduring an insult to one's clan, so we looked up the numbers and yeah, at his Honor Rank that would be a problem. Then we went back and forth a bit discussing whether the scale of the Honor loss meant his character would be willing to swallow it for the sake of harmony (because the ronin is, like the PCs, Chosen by the Oracles, so he's in the awkward position of being their metaphysical peer but their social inferior), or whether he'd feel compelled to say something. Then we remembered that taking a clan samurai's Sacred Weapon, however necessary it might have been at the time, is probably a breach of etiquette, so the ronin would lose Honor if he didn't apologize; ergo the most likely result is that next session the ronin will make amends, the PC will forgive him, and honor will be satisfied on all sides.

The numbers guided the RP decisions, to help us stay in the Rokugani mindset. At no point did the player say "man, I'd better yell at him, because otherwise I'll fall into a lower Honor Rank and not have as good of a bonus from it." Other people may treat it in a more munchkin-y way, but you really can't write rules in a way that defeats the determined munchkin; it only encourages them. :-P If I had a player who wanted to become a Lion Paragon, the challenge wouldn't be "crank your Honor up to 7 so you can take this path;" the challenge would be "your PC is not honorable enough for the Paragons to give him the time of day. If you want into that path, you have to change and become a better samurai." I'd be inclined to solve this problem by more fluff-based discussion that reminds the players to think about what the numbers mean .

I would have no objection to a player deciding to do something dishonourable, and receiving some advantage from it. On the contrary, that's precisely why characters should be tempted to be dishonourable - it can give you an edge an honourable opponent will never have. I'm just not happy about a mechanic that explicitly trades Honour for extra dice in a mechanically predictable and universally-applicable manner. (Also, I hate almost everything about the ILS with a fiery passion, thus writing them with the strike-through.)

Heh. I have to admit, I'm not a fan of them either. They're in my campaign, but I at least made the minimal change of calling them the Ikoma Bushi school -- because seriously, why in the name of all the little Fortunes would a Lion advertise their dishonorable training with a name like that?

More or less, yes. Honour rolls are incredibly powerful for high-Honour characters, especially in the early stages of the game. They may not match the Focus roll of a dedicated duelist (which is probably when most high-Honour characters would most like to have some kind of defence), but they blow the vast majority of other rolls out of the water until a fairly late stage in character development, so there is a strong temptation to disallow them outright. As such, it comes down to GM discretion whether/when to allow them, as you say- when you have a good GM, it can work. Otherwise, they're more than a little imbalanced, in one direction or the other. Any mechanic which works only as long as you have a good GM is not a good mechanic.

I actually thought the writeup for the optional rule *said* it had to be a situation where calling on your Honor made sense, but having looked at it, no such thing. So yes, it should absolutely specify that. Which may not fully address your objection, but I think I'm more comfortable with leaving some thing up to GM discretion than you are.

This is my fault for not being clear enough. You are correct that there is general agreement among the Clans on what constitutes Bushido, and that some Clans simply don't care (in the case of the old-school Wasp, they deliberately reject it entirely... even though the Wasp Code basically replicates Bushido in different words). If 'honourable' is defined as 'in accordance with Bushido' (which, in strict terms, it is), then there is little disagreement as to what it means to be honourable. My point was, rather, that different Clans have different concepts of what constitutes desirable behaviour. For the Lion and Crane, and to a lesser extent the Phoenix, the Clan's idea of 'good behaviour' overlaps more or less perfectly with what Bushido demands- the Daidoji may occasionally do some dirty things, but they recognise this as undesirable behaviour, they simply see it as necessary. For the Crab or Scorpion, Bushido itself - while formally incontestable - is not seen as a good thing per se. The Scorpion actively scorn it as a prison that allows them to outmanoeuvre their opponents, while the Crab are more likely to use 'sincerity' in sarcasm than in praise. Therefore, while determining someone's Honour rank may be hugely important for a Lion or Crane in forming a judgement of someone, a Scorpion or Crab would be looking for other things entirely (mostly Duty), and see adherence to Bushido at large as irrelevant at best.

I agree . . . which means I'm not sure what the problem is? It's like if you're talking about a high school and popularity. Some cliques think being popular is hugely important -- and certainly it does bring advantages -- so they very assiduously follow the behaviors necessary to be popular. Other cliques think that game is rigged or really not as important as it looks, so they focus on doing their own things, some of which may gain them a small amount of popularity, but not as much as if they really tried to pursue that goal. That kind of variance of opinion looks completely normal to me, and I don't think the current system does a bad job of representing it.

Bremathon- Thank you for the suggestion! As I have said elsewhere, I'm really not much of a 'gamer', being devoted pretty much exclusively to L5R, so seeing similar things done elsewhere is potentially very helpful. Will look it up!

AtoMaki- I agree that Honour is, or should be, the ultimate basis of 'morality' in the setting. The difficulty I have with it is that, per Leadership , Honour itself is an internal thing:

"A true Samurai has only one judge of his honor, and that is himself. Decisions you make and how those decisions are carried out are a reflection of who you truly are. You cannot hide from yourself."

As such, it's much harder to determine whether a particular action is good or bad in terms of Honour than it is for the other Virtues, unless you allow the players to set their own Honour values, which I think most people would agree is overly ripe for abuse. If you (or anyone else) can think of a better way of incorporating Honour as a virtue, rather than as a reflection of adherence to the other Virtues, I'd love to hear it.

Kinzen- Addressing each point in turn.

The answers to those questions are sufficiently complicated that I don't think it's feasible to really nail down answers; the possible variations are too numerous. I think that providing some examples would be great, and the specific phrasing of certain things could be improved (e.g. something clearer than "acknowledging") -- but I see that more as tweaking rather than the chart being fundamentally flawed.

Whether or not it counts as 'flawed' depends on the amount of tweaking necessary, and is ultimately a subjective judgement. I agree that it's not possible to list every possible instance of an action that would gain or lose Honour, nor do I think it would be desirable to do so, as it would just intensify the temptation to engage in rules-lawyering. We both agree that it could do with being clarified in several places, though, and I think that's the essential point.

The numbers guided the RP decisions, to help us stay in the Rokugani mindset. At no point did the player say "man, I'd better yell at him, because otherwise I'll fall into a lower Honor Rank and not have as good of a bonus from it." Other people may treat it in a more munchkin-y way, but you really can't write rules in a way that defeats the determined munchkin; it only encourages them. :-P If I had a player who wanted to become a Lion Paragon, the challenge wouldn't be "crank your Honor up to 7 so you can take this path;" the challenge would be "your PC is not honorable enough for the Paragons to give him the time of day. If you want into that path, you have to change and become a better samurai." I'd be inclined to solve this problem by more fluff-based discussion that reminds the players to think about what the numbers mean .

Again- you're lucky to have a good RP group. Almost any set of rules can be made to work well by a good GM with a supportive group of players, especially if they have the same base idea of the setting. That doesn't mean the rules are inherently good. You're right that munchkins can and will find ways to abuse pretty much any ruleset, but I think it's still reasonable to try to find ways of reducing the temptation to do so, while increasing the impetus to resolve things with reference to fluff, rather than crunch. As I said in my initial post, if I had confidence in every GM who ran the game, I'd probably do away with the numbers altogether, because Honour isn't (or shouldn't be) quantifiable at a fundamental level. I just can't think of a way to get rid of the numbers while retaining some benefit for behaving honourably, beyond "let the GM make judgement calls".

I agree . . . which means I'm not sure what the problem is? It's like if you're talking about a high school and popularity. Some cliques think being popular is hugely important -- and certainly it does bring advantages -- so they very assiduously follow the behaviors necessary to be popular. Other cliques think that game is rigged or really not as important as it looks, so they focus on doing their own things, some of which may gain them a small amount of popularity, but not as much as if they really tried to pursue that goal. That kind of variance of opinion looks completely normal to me, and I don't think the current system does a bad job of representing it.

The problem, as I see it, is that the current system provides no way for a Crab or Scorpion to look for the things that are important to them. You can find out someone's Honour Rank precisely (albeit with an excessively high TN), but there's no way for a Scorpion to tell whether or not someone is properly loyal, or a Crab to find out whether someone has the strength of will and heart to be worthy of their respect; nor is there any way for a PC (or NPC) to actually definitively possess those qualities, short of a Paragon Advantage (which should only be for fairly exceptional people anyway, and is relatively hard to find out) or consistent demonstration of a given behaviour (which would be reasonable, in a way, except that this is a setting in which people can discern things as integral as Honour Rank with a few minutes of conversation and a roll of the dice- if you're going to require consistent behaviour over an extended period of time to demonstrate Duty or Courage, there's no reason not to require it for Sincerity, Compassion, or Honour in general).

Once again, thanks to all for contributing

The problem, as I see it, is that the current system provides no way for a Crab or Scorpion to look for the things that are important to them. You can find out someone's Honour Rank precisely (albeit with an excessively high TN), but there's no way for a Scorpion to tell whether or not someone is properly loyal, or a Crab to find out whether someone has the strength of will and heart to be worthy of their respect; nor is there any way for a PC (or NPC) to actually definitively possess those qualities, short of a Paragon Advantage (which should only be for fairly exceptional people anyway, and is relatively hard to find out) or consistent demonstration of a given behaviour (which would be reasonable, in a way, except that this is a setting in which people can discern things as integral as Honour Rank with a few minutes of conversation and a roll of the dice- if you're going to require consistent behaviour over an extended period of time to demonstrate Duty or Courage, there's no reason not to require it for Sincerity, Compassion, or Honour in general).

Ahhhh, now I see what you're getting at.

I think what I would do is this. If you aren't statting each Virtue separately (which I wouldn't, just because it makes things complicated very fast), I think you could still retain some of this flavor in a more qualitative sense: for every increment of five by which you clear the original TN*, you can determine which Virtue is strongest or weakest. So if the starting TN is 20, then at 25 you could figure out that the Crab is very Courageous, and at 30 you know his sense of Duty is suprisingly weak -- so this is the kind of guy who chafes at being given jobs away from the front lines, and may go charging off for his own glory rather than doing what he's supposed to. Since there's no number to be measured, the GM would just have to make a descriptive call as to what fits the character best, but it would still give you a way to get more information without revamping the whole setup.

*Done as scalar success because I don't think Raises fit here: you aren't more likely to fail to gauge somebody's general honorability just because you also tried to find out more detail about it.

Bremathon- Thank you for the suggestion! As I have said elsewhere, I'm really not much of a 'gamer', being devoted pretty much exclusively to L5R, so seeing similar things done elsewhere is potentially very helpful. Will look it up!

AtoMaki- I agree that Honour is, or should be, the ultimate basis of 'morality' in the setting. The difficulty I have with it is that, per Leadership , Honour itself is an internal thing:

"A true Samurai has only one judge of his honor, and that is himself. Decisions you make and how those decisions are carried out are a reflection of who you truly are. You cannot hide from yourself."

As such, it's much harder to determine whether a particular action is good or bad in terms of Honour than it is for the other Virtues, unless you allow the players to set their own Honour values, which I think most people would agree is overly ripe for abuse. If you (or anyone else) can think of a better way of incorporating Honour as a virtue, rather than as a reflection of adherence to the other Virtues, I'd love to hear it.

Honor is the representation of how much the character acts according to the other six tenets of Bushido. Someone with high Honor should follow the Bushido as a whole by the letter and thus his actions should be rather... straightforward (a Bushido doesn't give much space for acting differently than a certain way). A high-honor character is dead-set on a very well defined course of action, and every other high-honor character follows the very same course of action - that is objectively treated as the "best/right" and "only" course of action. On the other hand, low honor characters do not follow this "Only Way", their actions are automatically "wrong" and/or "inferior", thus despicable and carry little or no weight. A high-honor character simply shouldn't bother with the actions of a low(er)-honor character, and just simply auto-ignore them even if they are insulting or trying to express their authority.

Game mechanic wise, high-honor would allow the character to put lower-honor characters to a sort of "ignore list" and never interact with them or allow them to interact with the character. On the other side of things, high-honor character would be able to communicate better, expressing/understanding complex ideas with only half-words and body language - their thoughts are centered around the same thing, the "Only Way", and there isn't much else to say.

I think what I would do is this. If you aren't statting each Virtue separately (which I wouldn't, just because it makes things complicated very fast), I think you could still retain some of this flavor in a more qualitative sense: for every increment of five by which you clear the original TN*, you can determine which Virtue is strongest or weakest. So if the starting TN is 20, then at 25 you could figure out that the Crab is very Courageous, and at 30 you know his sense of Duty is suprisingly weak -- so this is the kind of guy who chafes at being given jobs away from the front lines, and may go charging off for his own glory rather than doing what he's supposed to. Since there's no number to be measured, the GM would just have to make a descriptive call as to what fits the character best, but it would still give you a way to get more information without revamping the whole setup.

*Done as scalar success because I don't think Raises fit here: you aren't more likely to fail to gauge somebody's general honorability just because you also tried to find out more detail about it.

I like this as a compromise- you could potentially allow people to swap one of their scalar successes (eg, learning a samurai's highest Virtue) for learning roughly where a specific one of their Virtues was (in general terms, as you say, since they're not being formally tracked), regardless of whether it was their highest or lowest. That would make it easier for people to find what they were looking for, I think. I like it. Thanks for the suggestion!

(and yes, scalar success absolutely makes more sense than Raises here; I had built them into my set of rules for that reason, even if my rules as a whole are not workable.)

A high-honor character is dead-set on a very well defined course of action, and every other high-honor character follows the very same course of action - that is objectively treated as the "best/right" and "only" course of action.

I'm not sure that this is true. People who follow Bushido are certainly tightly constrained in the range of actions they can take, but there are still plenty of situations in which there can and will be disagreement as to the proper course of action, even among high-Honour samurai. Consider Akodo Hari, who chose to commit seppuku rather than follow orders to cut down a routing enemy- in his own mind, that was the only honourable course of action, but there is no shortage of honourable samurai who would have followed those orders without hesitation. Or consider Matsu Tsuko and Akodo Toturi; Tsuko could not turn against Hantei XXIX in good conscience, while Toturi was quite willing to, but both were honourable samurai (I've always preferred Tsuko, but that's a debate for another time). Some samurai would happily butcher a village of peasants to deprive an enemy lord of their service and taxes, or to ensure Taint didn't spread, or simply because they were ordered to; others would consider that a monstrous breach of Compassion, and of Honour in general. In many cases, each high-Honour samurai will consider their own actions to be the "Only Way", and scorn those who do not follow it, as you say, but that doesn't stop other high-Honour samurai from having their own, different, "Only Way". There are a lot of things on which all high-Honour characters agree. There are also a lot of things on which high-Honour characters profoundly disagree.

Otherwise, I agree that people with high Honour should generally find communication among themselves easier. I think this is partially addressed by Kinzen's social rules, which make it harder for high-Honour people to engage socially with low-Honour people, but I'm not sure that that fully satisfies the idea that Honour can give you strength more generally.

I'm not sure that this is true. People who follow Bushido are certainly tightly constrained in the range of actions they can take, but there are still plenty of situations in which there can and will be disagreement as to the proper course of action, even among high-Honour samurai. Consider Akodo Hari, who chose to commit seppuku rather than follow orders to cut down a routing enemy- in his own mind, that was the only honourable course of action, but there is no shortage of honourable samurai who would have followed those orders without hesitation. Or consider Matsu Tsuko and Akodo Toturi; Tsuko could not turn against Hantei XXIX in good conscience, while Toturi was quite willing to, but both were honourable samurai (I've always preferred Tsuko, but that's a debate for another time). Some samurai would happily butcher a village of peasants to deprive an enemy lord of their service and taxes, or to ensure Taint didn't spread, or simply because they were ordered to; others would consider that a monstrous breach of Compassion, and of Honour in general. In many cases, each high-Honour samurai will consider their own actions to be the "Only Way", and scorn those who do not follow it, as you say, but that doesn't stop other high-Honour samurai from having their own, different, "Only Way". There are a lot of things on which all high-Honour characters agree. There are also a lot of things on which high-Honour characters profoundly disagree.

One of my favorite ways to explain the Lion to people is to explain what happened when they found out Fu Leng was possessing the Emperor. Some of them said "we serve the Throne; we cannot honorably turn away from that duty." Some of them said "we serve the Empire; we cannot honorably support Jigoku." And some of them said "there is no honorable course of action here; therefore we will commit seppuku in protest." Three profoundly Lion answers, all built on a foundation of Bushido -- and all arriving at different conclusions.

Back on the topic of the Honor mechanics -- I should add that one of my biggest problems with the chart is that it doesn't work very well for modeling habitual behavior. Once my ise zumi got the Ocean tattoo and no longer needed food, she started giving her meals away to peasants. If she'd gotten a boost for "showing kindness to one beneath your station" every time she did that, she would have been Honor 10 before the month was out. Conversely, a character who assumes a false identity (and doesn't have a technique to shield against this) will bottom out in no time flat. In such cases, I think you have to rule that the increase or decrease will only apply sometimes, whether it's a set period of time (one Honor gain for each month of giving away food) or based on particularly egregious instances (Honor loss only when actively lying about your past, not every time you introduce yourself by a fake name).

There is really just one "Only Way", and that's following all the virtues simultaneously. Literally any step that is not the full application of all the virtues at the same time is automatically considered a stray path and not the "Only Way". It doesn't matter who takes that step or why, these circumstances can serve only as cheap excuses. Personal feelings (like Matsu Tsuko feeling bad about betraying the Emperor) shouldn't matter at all... when the time comes to act, the samurai must listen to the voice of Bushido, and not his heart. Only the perfect solution is acceptable - anything less is wrong, thus dishonorable, and makes the samurai performing it also dishonorable.

Going with the peasant-killing samurai example, a truly high-honor samurai would simply not comply the order. His lord is committing a sever breach on at least two virtues (Compassion and Courtesy) and most likely violate three other (Courage, Duty and Sincerity). The lord is simply wrong, and it is the samurai's responsibility to tell this to him (as per Compassion, Duty and Honesty) in a way that makes it clear but not overtly insulting (as per Courtesy and Sincerity), and stand his ground even if his lord freaks out (as per Courage). If the lord does not admit his failing, then the samurai effectively must rise against him and save him from himself, so to speak. This must be the only way to solve the situation. Every other solution is dishonorable to some extent, and thus a path no truly honorable samurai would ever take. This scenario is implied in the core rulebook, actually, but does not get the spotlight it deserves for (IMO) obvious reasons.

Of course the problem with this - and the reason I think the creators tried their best to avoid the matter - is that this would put some samurai into a very sensitive place. The Matsu in particular would suffer a lot, turning from honorable samurai to glorified thugs with lots of pride. Not to mention that players and fluff writers would suddenly feel the full weight of "show and don't tell" as their characters "couldn't hide from who they truly are".

Kinzen- That is another good point. I've encountered it especially with regards to Courtesy and Honesty. There is no bonus for simply 'being polite', or 'telling the truth', nor should there be - on one level, that should be default behaviour, like 'not committing any crimes' - but at the same time, a character who is consistently honest, or polite (or sincere, or whatever) should receive some reward for it, even if they're never placed in a situation where that tendency is truly tested (eg, giving a truthful report at their own expense).

AtoMaki- I respect your opinion, and greatly appreciate your input, but I'm going to have to disagree with you on this. There are innumerable instances where it is not possible to follow every Tenet of Bushido at the same time; where taking any of the courses of action on offer is, from some perspective or another, a breach of Bushido. Tsuko's personal feelings were irrelevant to her on the Second Day of Thunder; what mattered to her was that rebellion would be a failure of her Duty, so it was simply not an option for her. I'm sure there are plenty of honourable samurai (especially in the Phoenix and Unicorn) who would agree with you that an order to exterminate the peasants in a village requires resistance (or at least Kanshi), but there are also plenty of honourable samurai who would disagree. I agree that the way of honour is narrow, or that more than a few of those who walk it see their own steps as the only permissible ones, but I do not accept the view that there is truly only one honourable thing to do in any given situation.

Bushido as presented in L5R is inherently self-contradictory. The tenets can and do contradict. It is very possible for characters to disagree in good faith as to the proper course of action.

A samurai who is ordered by his lord to lie faces three choices -- violate Honesty, violate Duty, or commit kanshi .

E: of course, re-reading the opening section of the 4th ed core book reminds me just how much of Rokugani culture is built on ignoring Honesty, so... there's that.

Kinzen - Your giving out of your abundance is charitable, but not sacrificially hindering. Now if you had been giving of your meals to peasants prior to the ocean tattoo that would hold some sacrifice to the giving. I do not mean to diminish the charity you showed, but to give it perspective. Perhaps always telling the truth, giving from abundance, upholding moral purity can have minor reward, and make it easier and in character to do so when such truth, charity, and moral standard comes with a sacrfice attached to it.

Also the more you exhibit a particular courtesy, or behavior it becomes expected. Once something becomes expected it no longer comes with social reward, or with a greatly diminished reward. I know you have mentioned such before, and this is just a reminder to help enforce that train of thought.

I like everything abut this thread.

I have little to contribute at present, but I'm sticking a flag in it so I can easily find it later.

This is true for me, too. It's good to read this.

Kinzen - Your giving out of your abundance is charitable, but not sacrificially hindering. Now if you had been giving of your meals to peasants prior to the ocean tattoo that would hold some sacrifice to the giving. I do not mean to diminish the charity you showed, but to give it perspective. Perhaps always telling the truth, giving from abundance, upholding moral purity can have minor reward, and make it easier and in character to do so when such truth, charity, and moral standard comes with a sacrfice attached to it.

This is true -- but it isn't a distinction the Honor chart makes. One way or another, you've got to come up with some reason why you don't get the boost (or the loss) for every repetition of a particular action.

Also the more you exhibit a particular courtesy, or behavior it becomes expected. Once something becomes expected it no longer comes with social reward, or with a greatly diminished reward. I know you have mentioned such before, and this is just a reminder to help enforce that train of thought.

The Honor chart enforces that to some extent, by giving diminishing rewards (and increasing consequences) as you rise in Honor Rank.

Ahhh I see, thanks for reply.