This broke my heart

By Tejedor, in "A Rōnin's Path" Adventure Reports

I really love the Crab Clan, and this adventure make them look very inefficient in their sacred task of protecting the Wall, using a group of Yorikis to simple things like communication with officers and critical things like...

Quote

...then, we can plan a strategy together to protect the Empire." .

:(

Okay, yeah. The players should really be able to say, "Look, schmuck, I'm an Emerald Magistrate acting on direct orders of your commanding officer. I'm not drinking your stupid tea, fixing your stupid wall, or doing your stupid ritual. Give me your report and do it now."

But this is the Learn To Play adventure in the free beta. I think some kinda lame social situations that teach you how social rolls work are forgivable.

On ‎07‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 6:23 AM, The Grand Falloon said:

Okay, yeah. The players should really be able to say, "Look, schmuck, I'm an Emerald Magistrate acting on direct orders of your commanding officer. I'm not drinking your stupid tea, fixing your stupid wall, or doing your stupid ritual. Give me your report and do it now."

But this is the Learn To Play adventure in the free beta. I think some kinda lame social situations that teach you how social rolls work are forgivable.

Well, they're not really emerald magistrates, just assigned to one. But Hida Tomonatsu should really have lobbed a clan mon badge or some other badge of authority at them or something similar if co-opting them to act as runners.

A more sensible story element would be explaining why she's doing that; if they weren't there (and she had no specific reason to expect them) presumably the Crab Clan have someone who should be doing that job.

Basically, the job is fine, but the text box in Report, Soldier! could do with being better:

  • It shouldn't matter that they're 'impartial arbiters'. It's a military command and your boss is asking for a status report.
  • She's sending them out to find out what the state of her command is because she's busy planning the next engagement (so doesn't want to go running around after her subordinates) and her subordinates are busy getting ready for the same (so she doesn't want to waste their time calling them to her headquarters). Stating this in an appropriately....crabby?....fashion (i.e. blunt to the point of rudeness) should help them understand that whilst it's an important job, it's important because it needs doing but everyone else has an important job to do too, not because she's standing in the HQ not moving with a flashing 'quest' icon over her head.
  • Mentioning that her messenger corps has been gutted in the previous days fighting or something similar would help make sense of why they're suddenly needed to play go-for - because the Hida clan deputy officers who would be doing it are now dead.
  • It probably should be "I can plan". Again, it's her command, not yours. She's not going to ignore your advice, but she's not answerable to you.
Edited by Magnus Grendel