24 minutes ago, Matrim said:

I think you are wasting your time trying. This is a game. It is a representation of an imaginary activity in a world which is made up. The mechanics do not have to have anything to do with your concepts of honour/dishonour at all! For the purposes of the card game it is locked down to 'passing honour' to the one who bid less and that can mean anything you want or nothing at all.

It could be the winner gracefully saying ' he/she lost but fought well so I honour their bravery'

it could be the winner behaving dishonourably so the loser 'gains' honor

or it could be a mechanic and the player could not give two hoots and just use that to win the game.

I hate to bring up an old L5R meme but no one here is actually a magical samurai, Rokugan does not exist and does not have fixed rules as to what is honourable or dishonourable actually is (beyond a passing resemblence to Japanese/Chinese culture but it is not actually Japanese/Chinese culture which does not exist in fictional Rokugan) and this is , in the end, a game involving pieces of card that needs set rules to actually have a game.

Old L5R had just as many factors that could be misinterpreted or considered weird when the mechanic was studied in detail. This will have as well . It is a weakness of any game that has a passing resemblence to a reality.

Your point that this is a fictional world I agree with, but:

There are quite fixed rules on what honor/dishonor means on a personal level. The RPG had a nice table of them, and has since at least 2nd Edition, if not 1st (I didn't play 1st Edition). This establishes there is a set of guidelines on how to act, that they are enforced external to what is perceived. There is an important aspect that for this particular IP, the story matters to a lot of the people. And with the description of the rules, there is some disjoint between the expected narrative and playing competitive that a lot of people don't like.

Lets look at a Crane player who included duels in their deck, maybe doing some form of military/honor switch. Because she wants to win, whenever she duels, she always bets the bare minimum for her always win the toss, and tries to bully-duel. She gets to the finals, and is playing against a Crab player. Every duel, she continues betting like she expects, and the crab player, generally knowing that he can't win any duel, bets 1 every time. The narrative according to some people is that the Crane player is acting constantly acting dishonorably by guaranteeing that she wins each duel. Does this mean each time she dueled, whichever character in her army won the duel was kicking sand in the face of the Crab, who is basically conceding each time because they don't resort to dirty tricks? It seem counter-intuitive to the typical Crane behavior, who usually win via skill, given that the Kakita Dueling Academy is considered one of the two finest in the land, and would discourage this behavior, and points that winning a duel should be considered a dishonorable action.

Edit: Last thought: People are going to build decks to win. Most likely they are going to play duels with the guarantee that either they will win, or it will be a high honor cost for their opponent to win. Does this mean that every duel is in a tournament setting, where story is probably going to be decided, will be won via some dishonorable action?

Well, talking about RPG Honor Rules...

A year or two ago, or maybe three, John Wick said that in retrospect, Honor rules should look totally different and that if he did them today, he would want to give each Clan unique and different rules for gaining and losing Honor.

Let it sink for a moment.

5 minutes ago, WHW said:

Well, talking about RPG Honor Rules...

A year or two ago, or maybe three, John Wick said that in retrospect, Honor rules should look totally different and that if he did them today, he would want to give each Clan unique and different rules for gaining and losing Honor.

Let it sink for a moment.

I'm do not think I agree with that sentiment. That would change how honor is perceived as a whole. I think there should be some clan specific rules, sure, but I don't think it makes sense in the large scheme of things that each clan would have their own unique set of rules, because then honor isn't a universal trait. For example, most clans think using stealth to ambush an opponent is dishonorable. However, the Scorpion, use it all the time, and consider it to be acceptable, for the greater good. And they are considered the lowest honor in the empire (Ignoring spider). Special rules for the scorpion would lead to the implication that a member of the clan shouldn't lose honor for ambushing an opponent, possibly even gaining it if it is for the greater good. That means that the Shosuro Actor (I think that is the right family) who is deceiving everyone and pretending to be a Crane Courtier be one of the most honorable of people, because she is working for the greater good of her clan? The scorpion work by bringing people down to their level, then dropping them even lower. The Yoritomo and Yasuki should gain honor by being greedy merchants, something that most samurai should and do consider beneath them. Should the Shosuro Actor or Yasuki Merchant be considered equal in honor to the Lion Samurai or Utaku battle maidens?

Ambushing your opponent should be fair game if they are your opponent (read, you are at war with them/blood feuding/etc), to be honest. Honor isn't about fair play. "Honor = Fair Play" is why Lion is being stuck as "Clan of the best tacticians and strategists in the Empire" while also being forced into strategy of "throw samurai at them and win by superior number and superior muscle, because advanced tactics and stratagems are dishonorable by definition of not being fair play".

Honor, Bushido and stuff are a very, veeery deep topic and it's very easy to misrepresent it and/or simplify it to the point where it misses the point. Which, again, is why Lion Clan was IMHO horribly mishandled.

26 minutes ago, Mirith said:

Your point that this is a fictional world I agree with, but:

There are quite fixed rules on what honor/dishonor means on a personal level. The RPG had a nice table of them, and has since at least 2nd Edition, if not 1st (I didn't play 1st Edition). This establishes there is a set of guidelines on how to act, that they are enforced external to what is perceived. There is an important aspect that for this particular IP, the story matters to a lot of the people. And with the description of the rules, there is some disjoint between the expected narrative and playing competitive that a lot of people don't like.

Lets look at a Crane player who included duels in their deck, maybe doing some form of military/honor switch. Because she wants to win, whenever she duels, she always bets the bare minimum for her always win the toss, and tries to bully-duel. She gets to the finals, and is playing against a Crab player. Every duel, she continues betting like she expects, and the crab player, generally knowing that he can't win any duel, bets 1 every time. The narrative according to some people is that the Crane player is acting constantly acting dishonorably by guaranteeing that she wins each duel. Does this mean each time she dueled, whichever character in her army won the duel was kicking sand in the face of the Crab, who is basically conceding each time because they don't resort to dirty tricks? It seem counter-intuitive to the typical Crane behavior, who usually win via skill, given that the Kakita Dueling Academy is considered one of the two finest in the land, and would discourage this behavior, and points that winning a duel should be considered a dishonorable action.

Edit: Last thought: People are going to build decks to win. Most likely they are going to play duels with the guarantee that either they will win, or it will be a high honor cost for their opponent to win. Does this mean that every duel is in a tournament setting, where story is probably going to be decided, will be won via some dishonorable action?

Do you mean like how Soshuro Jimen became the Emerald Champion...!

6 hours ago, Mirith said:

I'm do not think I agree with that sentiment. That would change how honor is perceived as a whole. I think there should be some clan specific rules, sure, but I don't think it makes sense in the large scheme of things that each clan would have their own unique set of rules, because then honor isn't a universal trait. For example, most clans think using stealth to ambush an opponent is dishonorable. However, the Scorpion, use it all the time, and consider it to be acceptable, for the greater good. And they are considered the lowest honor in the empire (Ignoring spider). Special rules for the scorpion would lead to the implication that a member of the clan shouldn't lose honor for ambushing an opponent, possibly even gaining it if it is for the greater good. That means that the Shosuro Actor (I think that is the right family) who is deceiving everyone and pretending to be a Crane Courtier be one of the most honorable of people, because she is working for the greater good of her clan? The scorpion work by bringing people down to their level, then dropping them even lower. The Yoritomo and Yasuki should gain honor by being greedy merchants, something that most samurai should and do consider beneath them. Should the Shosuro Actor or Yasuki Merchant be considered equal in honor to the Lion Samurai or Utaku battle maidens?

First honor is more of an internal thing in the RPG. while it effects how one cares himself it is more about how you perceive yourself page:90. and the rules for different perceptions of honor are already in the game, see the honor gain/loss by rank chart on page:91 of 4th ed corebook.

Glory is more what the honor rank in the CCG/LCG is representing.You don't gain Honor for wining a duel in the RPG you gain Glory.

The rpg was trash, sorry, and the whole system was a lesson in bad game design.

Honor is different depending on which culture is talking about it, but it is essential a credit score. How reliable are you at doing the things you say you're going to do, and at what cost. It has a lot of tie in with culture norms and expectations, as well as religious and individual ques. The way it's handled in the new card game is such an extreme abstraction that it really can't be fairly compared to the way it's handled in the other games that carried the IP.

8 hours ago, Belechael said:

I can not for the love that I have for the previous incarnation of this game accept that you if you want more resources you are greedy and therefore "punished". This is not a game I like to play. That same feeling applies to dueling if what we know so far is true.

To those of you who can interpret all these into something that feels appropriate for this setting I'm very happy for you (no sarcasm). It's just not for me, sigh...

I can not for the love I have for simple common sense, understand how you go about your daily life with your thought process. You appear to be butt-hurt because, even though there have been MANY logical reasons why, you can't comprehend game mechanics as being related to lore. Have you considered that your comprehension skills are just lacking in such a way to prevent you from understanding common things as people have discussed. Or are you just purposefully going out of your way not to see things the way everyone else can? If this game has mechanics that you don't feel in theme to the setting, then how in the hell did you ever play the CCG where there were an assload of mechanics that didn't make sense thematically? Seriously!!! Everyone has given logical, thematically correct reasons as to why certain mechanics are there and for some reason you can't see them, but you can sure see thematically correct reasons as to why it makes sense that a Crane duelist will issue a duel challenge to an oni and the oni obliges. Really? I can picture this really happening in setting!!! Crane duelist doesn't like the way the oni is looking at his wife. "Show me your stance!" Oni says "ok, let's get this over with." They both stare at each other, focussing on their opponent's weakness until that right moment, then STRIKE! Hell yeah, man!!! I can totally see why drawing more cards and losing honor because of it doesn't make sense to you when things like this are perfectly acceptable in your bizzaro world! Ok, man. I get it, you have your old5r glasses on and can't see anything beyond that.

Sitting in my google drive is a half-complete modification of the Honour system heavily inspired by Pendragon's personality traits. I've grabbed the precepts of Bushido, Shourido and Rujia as a starting point. If there were The 'fun' bit would be trying to set these up as a collection of opposed pairs. After that it's just a question of applying numbers and mechanics.

3 hours ago, Sparks Duh said:

I can not for the love I have for simple common sense, understand how you go about your daily life with your thought process. You appear to be butt-hurt because, even though there have been MANY logical reasons why, you can't comprehend game mechanics as being related to lore. Have you considered that your comprehension skills are just lacking in such a way to prevent you from understanding common things as people have discussed. Or are you just purposefully going out of your way not to see things the way everyone else can? If this game has mechanics that you don't feel in theme to the setting, then how in the hell did you ever play the CCG where there were an assload of mechanics that didn't make sense thematically? Seriously!!! Everyone has given logical, thematically correct reasons as to why certain mechanics are there and for some reason you can't see them, but you can sure see thematically correct reasons as to why it makes sense that a Crane duelist will issue a duel challenge to an oni and the oni obliges. Really? I can picture this really happening in setting!!! Crane duelist doesn't like the way the oni is looking at his wife. "Show me your stance!" Oni says "ok, let's get this over with." They both stare at each other, focussing on their opponent's weakness until that right moment, then STRIKE! Hell yeah, man!!! I can totally see why drawing more cards and losing honor because of it doesn't make sense to you when things like this are perfectly acceptable in your bizzaro world! Ok, man. I get it, you have your old5r glasses on and can't see anything beyond that.

Hey, Sparks you know but it just looks like you described.

Anyway, I get it, you have your newl5r glasses on and can't see anything beyond that.

4 minutes ago, kempy said:

Hey, Sparks you know but it just looks like you described.

Anyway, I get it, you have your newl5r glasses on and can't see anything beyond that.

You realize that the drawing you put in your post supports the point that Sparks was making, right?

Which is, in his flowery manners, that it's weird for people to reject the new game because of "incoherences" between mechanics and setting, when there were at least as much, if not more, such incoherences in the old game without them batting an eye.

1 minute ago, KerenRhys said:

You realize that the drawing you put in your post supports the point that Sparks was making, right?

Which is, in his flowery manners, that it's weird for people to reject the new game because of "incoherences" between mechanics and setting, when there were at least as much, if not more, such incoherences in the old game without them batting an eye.

I know, i've seen Sparks "dueling oni" argument maybe ten times or more in various places so it started to be boring. I thought he will starting with something new.

Anyway personally i don't have serious problems with explanation of all idiotic things in total fantasy settings (in both versions), i'm just in group of people who don't like mechanisms as they are. Not as they try to explain "reality".

3 hours ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

Sitting in my google drive is a half-complete modification of the Honour system heavily inspired by Pendragon's personality traits. I've grabbed the precepts of Bushido, Shourido and Rujia as a starting point. If there were The 'fun' bit would be trying to set these up as a collection of opposed pairs. After that it's just a question of applying numbers and mechanics.

We did it basically this way:

You have Honor "Slots", any number between 0 and 10. You pick a number you feel comfortable with and then fill these individual Honor Slots with Virtues. In the Odd Numbered Slots, you have to insert something that's either from Bushido, or your Clan's/Family Favored List (which might *also* consist of Bushido). In the non-odd numbered slots, you can write whatever you want.

First slot is special, though, as it contains 4 Virtues - this is your "core".

What these Virtues actually do? As we noticed that spending Void Points is fun and introduced more and more ways to do so, we realized that spamming Meditation/Tea Ceremony to regain Void Points was quite rythm breaking. So I used the opportunity to play with that using Honor. Upholding your Virtues, embracing them and putting them into practice restores your Void Points, and can give you up to 1 Void Point abovce your normal limit. This makes you want to actively act honorable, in order to regain your primary resource. I also love the philosophical and spiritual implication - tying Void Points to Honor mean that Honor leads to enlightenment and attaining harmony, which really enhanced our play experience.

However, you might ask, why not just go 10 Honor then and get much much much Void?

What Honor can give, Honor can take away. Failing to uphold your Virtues, not acting when someone is violating them, and violating them yourself has the exact opposite effect - you lose Void Points, and can end up at negative one, where you will need to regain 2 Void Points in short time window in order to "pay off the Void debt". Some of the Scorpion Techniques now interact with the concept of provoking this Honor Void Loss.

So if you pick too many Virtues, or if you pick conflicting ones (as sometimes upholding one means you end up neglecting other), you will struggle to keep your Void Fuel Tank replenished. As mentioned, we are used to spending lots of Void, so not having access to it is a serious complication.

Pick not enough Virtues, and you will lack opportunities to fuel your Void Tank, and will face bad rep from other people, who will consider you undisciplined and unable to dedicate yourself to higher causes.

But how they can know? Easy. We reduced the ridiculous TN of "Honor-sensing", and it's a pretty standard practice now. The fun part is that you don't just get the "Her Honor is 5", you get "Her Virtues are this, that, and this". And of course, some sneaky deceptors might trick you into thinking that they have different set of Virtues than in reality.

Practical implications? People don't look at you and see "Honor 6, gotta respect the dude", but see "His Virtues are trash, they don't align with mine or my Clan's at all, I'm gonna smack talk him and provoke some Void Point loses" : P

I can share the list of Clans and their Virtues later, if anyone is interested.

My main point is that I think it is valid that there are some disjoints between mechanics and story that make it hard to correlate the story in your head to what is going on in a competitive environment in what is described as a story driven game. However, it doesn't stop me from playing.

12 hours ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

Sitting in my google drive is a half-complete modification of the Honour system heavily inspired by Pendragon's personality traits. I've grabbed the precepts of Bushido, Shourido and Rujia as a starting point. If there were The 'fun' bit would be trying to set these up as a collection of opposed pairs. After that it's just a question of applying numbers and mechanics.

Oh, I started to do something exactly like that (in my mind, not in the material plane), I would love to see what you came up with!

8 hours ago, WHW said:

We did it basically this way:

You have Honor "Slots", any number between 0 and 10. You pick a number you feel comfortable with and then fill these individual Honor Slots with Virtues. In the Odd Numbered Slots, you have to insert something that's either from Bushido, or your Clan's/Family Favored List (which might *also* consist of Bushido). In the non-odd numbered slots, you can write whatever you want.

First slot is special, though, as it contains 4 Virtues - this is your "core".

What these Virtues actually do? As we noticed that spending Void Points is fun and introduced more and more ways to do so, we realized that spamming Meditation/Tea Ceremony to regain Void Points was quite rythm breaking. So I used the opportunity to play with that using Honor. Upholding your Virtues, embracing them and putting them into practice restores your Void Points, and can give you up to 1 Void Point abovce your normal limit. This makes you want to actively act honorable, in order to regain your primary resource. I also love the philosophical and spiritual implication - tying Void Points to Honor mean that Honor leads to enlightenment and attaining harmony, which really enhanced our play experience.

However, you might ask, why not just go 10 Honor then and get much much much Void?

What Honor can give, Honor can take away. Failing to uphold your Virtues, not acting when someone is violating them, and violating them yourself has the exact opposite effect - you lose Void Points, and can end up at negative one, where you will need to regain 2 Void Points in short time window in order to "pay off the Void debt". Some of the Scorpion Techniques now interact with the concept of provoking this Honor Void Loss.

So if you pick too many Virtues, or if you pick conflicting ones (as sometimes upholding one means you end up neglecting other), you will struggle to keep your Void Fuel Tank replenished. As mentioned, we are used to spending lots of Void, so not having access to it is a serious complication.

Pick not enough Virtues, and you will lack opportunities to fuel your Void Tank, and will face bad rep from other people, who will consider you undisciplined and unable to dedicate yourself to higher causes.

But how they can know? Easy. We reduced the ridiculous TN of "Honor-sensing", and it's a pretty standard practice now. The fun part is that you don't just get the "Her Honor is 5", you get "Her Virtues are this, that, and this". And of course, some sneaky deceptors might trick you into thinking that they have different set of Virtues than in reality.

Practical implications? People don't look at you and see "Honor 6, gotta respect the dude", but see "His Virtues are trash, they don't align with mine or my Clan's at all, I'm gonna smack talk him and provoke some Void Point loses" : P

I can share the list of Clans and their Virtues later, if anyone is interested.

Very interesting! I would like to see this as well, if you can share!

1 hour ago, Mirumoto Saito said:

Oh, I started to do something exactly like that (in my mind, not in the material plane), I would love to see what you came up with!

Very interesting! I would like to see this as well, if you can share!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17Cl5Ftr0zz0ghr3GCout6m4ZCkUzULJ1ATHziMNhnCg/edit

1 hour ago, WHW said:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17Cl5Ftr0zz0ghr3GCout6m4ZCkUzULJ1ATHziMNhnCg/edit

Thanks! Will give it a read as soon as I can!