Actually it can be that simple. That is why so many fail, they overthink, hesitate, or just do not act at all. Bushido though can be that simple. Mortals tend to create the complications. That is so we can make excuses, find fault with someone other than ourselves, pass the blame and so forth.

That's what I get for thinking we're having an objective conversation rather than somehow channeling in-setting beliefs.

Nevermind.

It seems clear by now that our perceptions of Bushido - and our readings of Leadership - are fundamentally different, to the point that they can't be resolved by further discussion. I think we've all made our cases fairly clearly, and I see no way any of us is going to change anyone else's mind, so I think the correct thing to do is to bring an end to the debate while everyone is still being civil. I thank everyone involved for their input- even where I might disagree with a given point, hearing it is interesting and valuable, and can broaden perspectives.

To repeat yet again- however we perceive and define it, Honour is important in the setting. If nothing else, this discussion has illustrated the necessity of agreeing OOCly within a playgroup what Bushido is.

Hopefully I can add something mechanically useful here.

After a bit of searching, I found the 2nd edition honour table. This is quite unlike the table used by all other editions, as it's basically a 7-by-7 table of gains and losses (with one extra.) You cross reference the clan with the Tenet of Bushido involved, and it tells you the change in honour. As an example, here are Crab and Crane side by side

Hmm, no tables, hope this is legible

Clan Gi Yu Jin Rei Meyo Makato Chugo

Crab 0-1 3-5 0-1 0-0 1-5 1-2 2-5

Crane 2-4 1-2 1-3 2-5 1-5 2-5 1-3

The table's not perfect (it really short-changes the Scorpion) and may lead to everyone being high honour, but it does suggest the idea that not all clans value the same things.

Interesting. As a thought experiment, let's take a Yasuki during the time period when they could choose between Crab and Crane.

If she's highly Courteous and chooses Crane, she'll end up with much higher honor than if she chooses Crab and behaves exactly the same. If she wants to be a high-honor Crab, she'll have to emphasize different virtues. This implies that, at least in 2nd ed, your honor is decided by how your clan perceives you, rather than society as a whole.

This also implies that you can't even trust a high-honor Scorpion, since they only gain appreciable honor from Duty, and don't lose any for lying. You weren't kidding about the table short-changing them.

I think we need to be more "meta" about how we talk about honor and not be locked around just Bushido.

Bushido, in of itself, is just "the Way of the Bushi(Warrior)." It is not in itself " The Way of Honor;" as much as the Lion in and out of setting might wish it. It is " A Way of Honor." Technically there should exist "the Way of the Courtier," "the Way of the Priest," "the Way of the Monk," "the Way of the Merchant" and "the Way of the Peasant." Heck, many of the settings conflicts were caused by the fact that each of the Clan has a different version of Bushido. The Kakita and the Matsu even had a blood feud over it. It should also be in theory possible for Gaijin (once the figure out how to stop breaching etiquette) and followers of Shourido to both be honorable.

The questions we need to examine and answer are "(Outside of following "Bushido" which varies heavily in definition inside and outside the setting), how does the setting determine if an action is honorable/dishonorable?" and "What benefits should being honorable grant in game?"

I'll agree that there is room for - and there possibly should be - a separate code of honour for courtiers and priests. You are entirely correct that Bushido strictly refers to warriors, although it has been adopted more widely (and I don't see that as a problem, necessarily). Monks, however, already have the Tao, their vows to their Order, and their purity requirements - which I agree could be filled out more, but do at least exist - and stand apart from the samurai caste anyway. I also disagree that there should be a Way of the Merchant, or of the Peasant- their job is to follow orders, pay taxes, and break no laws. Not being samurai, they don't need, and shouldn't have, an honour code. If you were running a game that focused heavily on the lower castes, it might be worthwhile to lay out some of their expectations and standard practices in a more formal manner, but it still wouldn't be honour in the same sense. The idea of Gaijin being 'honourable' makes even less sense, as they're not merely non-people, they're not even part of the Celestial Order at all. Followers of Shourido who aren't yet Lost, maybe, but only inasmuch as they privilege proper samurai codes over their own perversion of it.

The Kakita/Matsu blood feud is an interesting example. I have tended to see it as the opposite- ie, not that they had different versions of Bushido, but that they had virtually the same version of Bushido. Lady Matsu's problem with Lord Kakita was that he didn't show her respect; his reason for not bowing to her was that she hadn't shown anyone else respect. The Matsu Family persisted with the feud because they had a strong sense of obligation to their Ancestor, and their collective honour and reputation; so did the Kakita. The Matsu never claimed the Kakita were wrong to defend the actions of their Ancestor; nor did the Kakita ever claim the Matsu were wrong to fight for theirs. In an important sense - and this is one of the reasons why Honour is such an interesting part of the setting - both sides agreed that the other was doing the right thing, yet neither could honourably back down (until the Cleansing of Chukandomo, at least).

Moving back into generality, though- I agree that it would be useful to have guides for courtly and priestly conduct (though I think the answer to your first question is mostly, "Is it in accordance with tradition?"). I absolutely agree, and have repeatedly stated throughout this thread, that in-setting opinions of Bushido and its obligations can and do differ. I also agree that we should think about the benefits honourable conduct should provide. I did give a stab at that in my initial post, but, again, I am not very good at mechanics, so I continue to welcome anyone else's ideas.

Hopefully I can add something mechanically useful here.

After a bit of searching, I found the 2nd edition honour table. This is quite unlike the table used by all other editions, as it's basically a 7-by-7 table of gains and losses (with one extra.) You cross reference the clan with the Tenet of Bushido involved, and it tells you the change in honour. As an example, here are Crab and Crane side by side

Hmm, no tables, hope this is legible

Clan Gi Yu Jin Rei Meyo Makato Chugo

Crab 0-1 3-5 0-1 0-0 1-5 1-2 2-5

Crane 2-4 1-2 1-3 2-5 1-5 2-5 1-3

The table's not perfect (it really short-changes the Scorpion) and may lead to everyone being high honour, but it does suggest the idea that not all clans value the same things.

That's fascinating. I don't think I'm a fan -- Fumi outlines the issues there pretty well, and my personal feeling is that Bushido loses something if every group has their own version of it (instead of simply disagreeing about how important certain aspects within it are). But it's still neat to see, so thanks!

You really missed my point. My point about "the Way of <X>"s was more about the fact that if we focus on the Bushido virtues (and how we and Bushi interpret them) we miss that actions can be honorable or dishonorable outside of Bushido. Honor in of itself is mostly about how respectable/righteous a person is in the eyes of a society. The point of the Perceived Honor advantage is exactly that.

Also "tradition" is a non-answer to my question because many dishonorable strategies and techniques are traditions for various clans.

You really missed my point. My point about "the Way of <X>"s was more about the fact that if we focus on the Bushido virtues (and how we and Bushi interpret them) we miss that actions can be honorable or dishonorable outside of Bushido. Honor in of itself is mostly about how respectable/righteous a person is in the eyes of a society. The point of the Perceived Honor advantage is exactly that.

Also "tradition" is a non-answer to my question because many dishonorable strategies and techniques are traditions for various clans.

If I missed your point, I apologise sincerely- any misapprehension is the fault of incompetence, rather than malice, on my part. I do think I understand what you're saying more clearly now, but please correct me if I am still wrong.

I agree, as I said in the previous post, that there are possibilities for honourable behaviour outside Bushido. I'm not convinced that Honour is, or should be, a matter of external perception, though. Perceived Honour is certainly a thing, but the starting point is still the internal measure- Perceived Honour means people think you're a better person than you are, but that doesn't affect the actual measure of your Honour. Likewise, if you ninja-poison your own daimyo, you obviously lose honour- even if nobody ever saw you do it, and so societal perceptions remain identical. Part of the problem here, as Kinzen pointed out in the Expanding the Honour Chart thread ( https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/198070-expanding-the-honor-chart/ ), is that the term 'honour' is used to refer both to the specific virtue of Meyo, and to one's overall level of adherence to Bushido. I actually really like the idea of having a separate measure for how well you are seen to adhere to societal norms, distinct from how well you actually adhere to them (and distinct from Glory/Infamy as well), although implementation could get messy quickly.

You're quite right about traditions being markedly different - for the Unicorn, eating red meat is tradition; for the Scorpion, assassinating enemy commanders is 'tradition' - but if the question is one of perceptions anyway, then that's relatively easily addressed by having how actions are seen depend on who is doing the seeing. At least, I think so, though more clarity certainly couldn't be a bad thing.

Again, I apologise for missing the point earlier, and thank you for setting me right.

I see traditions as being relevant when determining things like breaches of etiquette. One Unicorn shaking the hand of another Unicorn? Not a breach of etiquette. The Ide ambassador sticking her hand out to the Doji governor? Breach of etiquette. It isn't so much that perception determines the effect as, are you acting appropriately for the situation you're in?

Traditions do not protect you against things like Low skill use, crimes, and acts of disloyalty, however common such things may be where you live.

The point that Bushido is the Way of the Warrior and that there are other ways suddenly reminded me of the way Pendragon personality traits and religions worked.

Since Idanthyrus has said that they are not familiar with other games, I'll try to explain it easily here.

Pendragon has 26 opposed traits in 13 pairs, like Chaste - Lustful, Just - Arbitrary etc. They always sum to 20, and if one goes down, the other goes up.

The thing is, there are 6 of them which are 'Chivalry' and various other sets of 6 which are described as Religious codes. If you can keep the level of the Religious traits above a certain number, you get a Religious Bonus, which is always on. If you keep the sum of the Chivalrous traits above a certain number, you get a Chivlary Bonus, also always on.

How does this relate to L5R?

It would be possible to distinguish between Clans by giving them a set of favoured tenets, and also distinguish between classes by having Way of the Warrior, Way of the Courtier etc bonuses. It could even incorporate the Spiritual purity from the Magical Redesign thread. Use the 8 virtues of Bushido, rather than 7. This means that you can distinguish between the different approaches of the clans, while still applying the same bonuses and penalties for different actions.

Suggestions:

Bushi: Courage, Honour

Courtier: Sincerity, Loyalty

Shugenja: Righteousness, Self-control

Monk: Respect, Benevolence

Crab: Courage, Loyalty

Crane: Respect, Sincerity

Dragon: Self-control, Benevolence

Lion: Courage, Honour

Mantis: Righteousness, Courage

Phoenix: Righteousness, Benevolence

Scorpion: Loyalty, Respect

Spider: Negative Self-Control, something else

Unicorn: Benevolence, something else

This obviously needs some work, and it may be that 3 is better than 2

You could even do something clever with Shourido, Fudo, etc

The "honour" of gaijin is something we the Unicorn do understand. Something we learned in our sojourn, and something Shinjo taught us to perceive. We experienced chivalry among the gaijin, we experienced other codes of honour as well, that some groups called "The Law". This is part of the reason our "Compassion" seems inherent. Understandably we are not as Xenophobic as the rest of Rokugan, and we acknowledge the sacredness of life, and the cycle of life in a way that is different from the mainstream point of view within Rokugan. Understanding that even gaijin are not without honour is why Shinjo forgave, and adopted the Moto in the first place. Showing compassion to one's enemies maybe a foreign concept to most of Rokugan, the Unicorn just simply live that way everyday.

It just occurred to me that I actually have a resource for allocating most of the clans their favoured tenets: the 2nd ed Honour table.

That would mean:

Crab: Yu (Heroic Courage), Chugo (Duty and Loyalty), Jisei (Self-control)

Crane: Gi (Honesty and Justice), Rei (Polite Courtesy), Makoto (Complete Sincerity)

Dragon: Jin (Compassion), Makoto (Complete Sincerity), Jisei (Self-control)

Lion: Yu (Heroic Courage), Makoto (Complete Sincerity), Chugo (Duty and Loyalty)

Phoenix: Jin (Compassion), Meyo (Honour), Makoto (Complete Sincerity)

Scorpion: Rei (Polite Courtesy), anti-Makoto (Complete Sincerity), Chugo (Duty and Loyalty)

Unicorn: Yu (Heroic Courage), Jin (Compassion), Meyo (Honour)

and a guess at

Mantis: anti-Rei (Polite Courtesy)?, ??, ???

Spider: Yu (Heroic Courage), anti-Gi (Honesty and Justice), anti-Jisei (Self-control)

So, I've done some more refining on this, and tried to work out how to combine Clan, School, tags, benefits and even character sheet
I think that splitting honour up into the different precepts of Bushido is a good way to distinguish between the different Clans opinions on honour. I also think that adding the 8th precept of self-control is a benefit: its existence is implicit in the charts [penalties for showing emotion etc]. These would be Jin (Compassion), Yu (Courage), Rei (Courtesy), Chugo (Duty), Gi (Honesty), Meyo (Honour), Jisei (Self-control) and Makoto (Sincerity).

However, it does make things more complicated, and having 8 tracks for managing the decimal parts of honour is too much. Just 8 titles with a place for a single number is more manageable. However, this means that it becomes difficult to track the changes of Honour like is done currently. So I have an alternative suggestion. This is partially inspired by nWoD's morality system.

Changing Honour

Some actions that a character may undertake could shake or enhance their sense and appearance of Honour. As an example, a Breach of Etiquette. The more noteworthy the action, the greater a chance of an honour change. Each action is linked to one of the precepts and has a number next to it. Roll dice equal to the number and compare the results to the characters current rating for the precept.

• If it is an honourable act and at least one dice rolled higher than the current rating, increase that rating by 1
• If it is a dishonourale act and at least one dice rolled lower than the current rating, decrease that rating by 1

For example, Hida O-Ushi has a Rei (Courtesy) precept of 3. She wanders into court while carrying her favourite Die Tsuchi, a moderate breach of etiquette, which is Rei (2). O-Ushi's player rolls 2 dice, getting a 10 and a 4. She shrugs off the courtiers' disapproval.

Had Mirumoto Hitomi, with a Rei of 5, done the same thing with the same rolls, the result would not have been so good, and her Rei precept would be changed to 4.

Starting Honour

A character's honour when they start play is a combination of their School's teaching and their clan's inherent attitudes. All 8 precepts start at the Honour rank of the school, then the preferred precepts of the Clan and School tags are adjusted appropriately. [i am pondering whether the School type's should adjust] Some advantages can also change this, like Paragon or Failure of Bushido.

For example, Doji Hoturi attends the Doji Courtier school, which has a starting honour of 6. The Crane clan values Rei, Gi and Makoto. Courtiers value Rei, Jisei and Makoto. Hoturi starts play with Jin 6, Yu 6, Rei 8, Chugo 6, Gi 7, Meyo 6, Jisei 7 and Makoto 8

On the contraray, his Brother Kuwanan attends the Hida Bushi School, with a starting honour of 3. Bushi value Yu, Chugo and Meyo. Kuwanan starts with Jin 3, Yu 4, Rei 4, Chugo 4, Gi 4, Meyo 4, Jisei 3 and Makoto 4.

Benefits of Honour

Keeping your behaviour up to the standards of your Clan and your School has benefits. If the sum of your three School favoured precepts are over 20, you gain the relevant bonus. If all three of your Clan favoured precepts are over 7, you gain the Clan bonus. A handful of clans have such disdain for a precept that they value its negative. when checking whether you match your Clan's standards, use 11-precept instead.

Crab: Yu, -Rei- , Chugo. Gain +3 Damage Resistance.

Crane: Rei, Gi, Makoto. Gain a Free Raise on Artistic skills.

Dragon: Jin, Jisei, Makoto. Gain a Free Raise against Fear effects.

Lion: Yu, Chugo, Meyo. Gain a Free Raise on Weapon skills.

Mantis: Yu, Gi, -Jisei- . Hostile Social rolls targetting you require an extra raise.

Phoenix: Jin, Meyo, Makoto. Hostile Spells targetting you require an extra raise.

Scorpion: Rei, Chugo, -Makoto- . Gain a Free Raise on Social skills.

Spider: -Jin- , Yu, -Chugo- . Do +3 Damage.

Unicorn: Jin, Yu, Gi.

Bushi: Yu, Chugo, Meyo. You may test your honour on Bugei skills.

Courtier: Rei, Jisei, Makoto. You may test your honour on Courtly/High skills.

Shugenja: Jin, Rei, Gi. You may test your honour on Scholarly skills/Spellcasting.

Ninja: Yu, Chugo -Gi- . You may test your honour on Low skills.

Artisan: Rei, Gi, Makoto. You may test your honour on Artistic skills.

Monk: Jin, Gi, Jisei. You may test your honour on something.

I have additional thoughts, but that's enough for one post.

I think that while I still wouldn't personally care to track all the Virtues separately, yoinking the White Wolf system might be a good way to approach doing so. I think it has the potential to work better than trying to force the L5R system into a shape it wasn't built for.

(Maybe give monks the chance to Honor-test Trait and Ring rolls?)

Many thanks for your input, Karasu! I like the ideas a lot. Will have to consider them some more. I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that it allows people to focus on only a couple of the Tenets, while suffering no penalty for ignoring the others... but in principle, it has a lot of potential. Much appreciated!

I remember what I was going to ask. How would Honor-scoping work in this setup? Or would it work at all?

The additional thoughts I had, which hopefully answer your questions.

Testing your Honour

Depending upon their school, an honourable samurai may test their honour on appropriate rolls that they would otherwise fail. After failing such a roll, the player may choose to test their honour. They get a second chance to roll against the same target number, but rolling and keeping a number of dice equal to their middle relevant precept. A success produces the same result as if they had passed originally, but failing again shakes the character's faith in their own Honour and causes an automatic loss of a level in that precept.

eg. Akodo Toturi the bushi is riding hard to reach an important battle in time, but fails his Horsemanship check. Luckily, Horsemanship is a bugei skill and Toturi is Honourable. He has Yu 7, Chugo 6 and Meyo 9. So he gets to reroll the test using 7k7.

Sensing Honour

It is possible to tell something about another character's honour by making an Awareness/Lore:Bushido roll. The basic TN is 15. If successful, this will give one of three results: Very Honourable, Honourable or Dishonourable.

• A character will show up as Very Honourable if their precepts would give them both your Clan bonus and your School bonus.
• A character will show up as Honourable if their precepts would give them either your Clan bonus or your School bonus.
• All other characters will be perceived as Dishonourable.

It is possible to make raises on this test to find the exact values of individual precepts, at one raise per precept. Note that you must start with precepts which are considered favoured by your character, and go through these (at least 3 and up to 6) before starting on other ones.

eg Going back to the brothers Hoturi and Kuwanan. Kuwanan tries to sense Hoturi's honour, and makes the Lore:Bushido check. The GM checks whether Hoturi is a good Crane and Bushi. Hoturi has all three Crane precepts at least 7, but his bushi precepts only come to 18, so Kuwanan perceives him as Honourable.

Static Effects

[i'm not as sure about this section, and it may be that it's making something that's already complicated even more so. Then again, it's inspired by the 'Add your Honour to Fear checks' thing. Alternatively, it may be a case of going through all the techniques and spells which talk about honour and assign them to different precepts. Or even having these in the appropriate rules section rather than Honour.]

• When making an opposed social role with non-Samurai you may add your Jin.
• When rolling to resist Fear, you may add your Yu.
• When rolling to resist Courtier techniques you may add your Rei.
• When rolling to resist Temptation you may add your Chugo.
• When rolling to resist the Lying Darkness you may add your Gi.
• When rolling to resist the Shadowlands Taint you may add your Meyo.
• When rolling to resist a disadvantage, you may add your Jisei.
• When rolling to resist Spells you may add your Makoto.

Hrm. I have to admit, I'm not at all a fan of the way this makes "honorable/dishonorable" so subjective. And I'm with Idanthyrsus in being concerned that you can basically get away with just pursuing your favored tenets, without worrying about the others. I can see having issues with the way the current mechanics don't provide much granularity on the individual tenets, but I feel like this goes much too far with the granularity, to the point where the concept of "Honor" as the end product of those tenets has been lost.

I like the system you presented, Karasu.

Perhaps instead of finding out if a person is honourable or dishonourable, you could learn if they would make an excellent samurai, a good samurai or a bad samurai, in your opinion of course. Honour might not be subjective, but whether or not someone is a good samurai is subjective. There are also advantages to pursuing all tenets, and maybe you could also include an extra tenet to clan and school tenets. ie a Crane would value Rei, Gi, Makoto and one extra, while a Courtier would value Jisei, Rei, Makoto and one extra. So an Doji Courtier might value Rei, Gi, Makoto and Jin due to their clan and Jisei, Rei, Makoto and Chugo due to their school. The sum of favoured school tenets would need to be increased, of course.

Does "Hostile social rolls targetting you require an extra raise" mean social rolls like intimidation or if someone is gossiping about you?

The Spider being opposed to Chugo seems odd. Wouldn't - Meyo - be a better fit?

I have to admit that the idea of being able to focus on just a subsection of the tenets was part of the aim. Partly because I think that is an accurate reflection of how most of the characters actually function in the background and partly because some clans get the short end of the stick.

Currently, if you do an excellent job of role-playing a Lion or Crane and increase your honour because of it, you get the awesome ability to do tests of honour on a huge number of dice. However, if you do a great job of role-playing a Crab or Scorpion, and your honour hits the floor, you get penalised for it. If you want to have a mechanical benefit you're encouraged to be as honourable as possible even if you come from a low honour clan.

That said, I'm not completely wedded to doing things that way, and just like throwing ideas about the place and seeing if anyone likes them. I'll think about a way to make things less stuck in silos.

As for the Spider, Metalrift, I had the impression that one of the ways they recruited people was all about "With us, you don't have to do things just because he told you to: do things because they're good for you ." which is absolutely the antithesis of Duty and Loyalty. I'm not sure that it would be possible to identify a 4th tenet for each category: I was struggling with the 3rd one for some of them.

here my thoughts, if you are going into honour in more detail, then why not create stats for all the tenets of bushido, i realise that this could be unwieldy but if you want to define how closely a character follows bushido as an integral part of rokugani society then having a ranking system for all the tenets might be a way of doing so?

overall, i think incorporating a mechanic that suits both GM and players is all that matters, some really great thoughts however from everyone.

Sometimes I think that going the other way is an option as well. The old Bushido roleplaying game tracked On (face). You could have two statistics, Honour and On, one is how honourable you really are, the other is how society perceives you -a mixture of status and the rest of your image.

Maybe there is no easy mechanical way of handling honor. Maybe it isn't something that should be handled in a mechanical way.

Maybe instead what is necessary is a list of actions that a person might possibly perform as part of play broken up into "highly honorable", "honorable", "acceptable", "dishonorable" and "very dishonorable".

At the end of a session, the GM and players reflect on their characters actions and decide at what times during the story they displayed these levels of virtue. Honor can rank from -5 to 10. Players that displayed a lot of highly honorable behavior might go up an honor rank is between 6 to 9.

Those that displayed a lot of "highly honorable" and "honorable" behavior may go up if their rank is 5 or lower. If one's rank is above 6 then a lot of simply "acceptable" behavior may cause one to lose a rank while a lot of "dishonorable" and "very dishonorable" behavior may cause them to lose 2 or 3 ranks.

Those with honor rank 1-5 may lose honor if they perform "dishonorable" and "very dishonorable" actions. the last may even cause them to lose 2 ranks.

Those who are below rank 0 may actually go up if they perform "acceptable" behavior and certainly they will go up if they perform "honorable" and "very honorable" behavior. While "Very Dishonorable" behavior might drag them down.

The primary benefit from honor need simply be that others react to you better. There is plenty of indication in the setting that people intrinsically understand a person's honor level unless the individual is actively trying to hide it. Reputation proceeds them and there is a certain "aura" about them for lack of a better word.

Even dishonorable people, although they may have feels that an honorable person has only managed to remain such through blessed life experiences and may think they lack what is necessary when times get tough, are still going to feel a bit of (if grudging) awe and respect when dealing with highly honorable people and feel somewhat compelled to treat them better... maybe even act more honorably in return.

Meanwhile people truly lacking in honor are going to be known as untrustworthy backstabbers who one cannot and should not put their faith in. As such even other low honor people are not going to trust them further than they can throw them and feel a lot less conflicted about using, betraying or destroying them to meet their own ends. In fact, even highly honorable people are liable to find themselves acting less honorably towards a low honor person.

People are going to generally prefer to deal with honorable people, even if they are hiring someone to do a dishonorable job like assassination, they will choose the most honorable among those who are willing to do such a thing-- because the lesser ones are likely to just take the payment and run or turn on the person who hired them to get a reward from the target.

I don't think it needs to be any more mechanical than simply having a rank number and the general guidelines of how people should react.

If it really has to be implemented for something precisely mechanical, maybe sincerity rolls and reaction bonuses can be affected by it. But, really, a good GM should be able to figure out what to do once it is understood that people can generally "sense" or are likely to "hear about" a person's honor level and that is the indication of their general trustworthiness.