On 10/12/2017 at 0:11 PM, AtoMaki said:

So it happens that I'm also not a big fan of the Strife/Outburst mechanic. Partially because I think it is toxic, and partially because I feel like it is quite easy to ignore (together, my final opinion is that Strife/Outburst is everything that is wrong with the Beta).

I'm thinking about how to fix it. My first draft was making it a sort of forced resource a player can spend on positive/negative results. I realized that this is too close to Opportunity, so ditched the idea. My second draft dawned on me today, and it would work like this:

• Strife is renamed to Tension. It represents the overall situation becoming more... well... tense. It isn't necessary the character, but someone or something is hitting nerves when he/she/it shouldn't. The stakes are rising, people's patience is running out, the plot chickens, the works.
• Tension is not tracked individually for each character. Once a Tension result is kept, the GM adds a Tension token to the whole scene in general.
• Once the number of Tension tokens go above the lowest Composure in the scene, the situation Escalates. In a Conflict, this means real escalation (Intrigue to Duel, Duel to Skirmish, Skirmish to Mass Battle). In a non-Conflict, this means a similar turn of events - things are getting more interesting, for the better or worse. Note that Escalation is not necessarily bad, in fact, some characters might want to hit Escalation and roll with the wave - while others might want to do otherwise, creating a back-and-forth game.
• Once the Escalation is in, as a general rule of thumb, whoever kept the Tension that triggered the Escalation will be in the middle of the shift, while whoever had the lowest Composure will cause it. However, either character can choose to have an Outburst instead of an Escalation. So the character will tank the situation change, eat a bullet for the team, and do something really stupid, nullifying all Tension tokens on the spot and preventing the Escalation. The character with the lowest Composure chooses first.
• Once the Escalation happens, the Tension tokens are nullified and the whole process begins anew.
• Optionally, Composure may be renamed to Discipline (I like this name better), and there may be an option for the GM to determine a Composure for the scene itself as a sort of countdown-until-escalation.

Example 1: A Bayushi Courtier riles up a Doji noblewoman. Over the course of the Intrigue, both sides keep enough Tension to trigger Escalation thankfully to a result kept by the Bayushi overcoming the Doji's lower Composure. The situation escalates: the Doji had enough, she is now visibly angry, her On is falling apart, and her Kakita cousin challenges the Bayushi to a duel to save her honor. The Doji obviously wants to see the Bayushi put on the sword, so she passes, reasserting some self-control with a smug smile. The Bayushi wants to live, so the player decides for an Outburst - the character snaps under the threat and goes on a lengthy tirade about the Doji being untouchable only because of their Kakita duelists, and how unfair is that... the court laughs at him and he suddenly finds himself politically negated by his own emotional upsurge.

Example 2: A Moto Bushi tries to infiltrate a castle to kill a merchant. His sneakiness is not very sneaky tho, and he just barely avoid the guards while making minimal progress. The player decides for a wager: since the scene already has quite a few Tension tokens because of previous rolls (including rolls made by the GM for the guards to spot the character), he deliberately keeps two Tensions in his next roll to go over his character's Composure and trigger the Escalation. He is both the cause and the subject of the change: maybe his previous fumbling made the guards nervous, and they are expanding their patrol, offering him an opening; maybe the guards alerted the merchant's bodyguard instead. Either way, the scene shifts, and our Moto can rethink his plan with the change in mind.

Why bother calling it Tension? This is nothing more then Draaaamaa. I don't need Stephanie, who loves Draaamaa, stirring every pot she can just to see the chaos it may bring.

Strife doesn't do that. Strife actually makes you roleplay the character you actually made. That is what makes people all prune-faced, they don't want to do that. They are there to see how awesome their dice rolling is and what phat loots they gotses.

I haven't played yet only read through. I like the strife system, it seems very fitting to the theme of the game. I do agree with the lack of skill choice at character creation, the creation seems a bit static and needs to allow for a bit more flexibility for skill choices, maybe adding experience would do this, or just working a few more personal skill choices into the questions.

One thing I am really missing on a setting level is Ishiken, no Void invocations at all, really makes the 5 Masters of the Phoenix a big off as far as story is concerned. Also, I have really enjoyed using the Ishiken in the past both as a player and from an NPC perspective, they can be used for a shot of the uncertain and esoteric, in a very different way from the Dragon monks.

The rane bands are, as described in the book on p 166:

0 : Touch
1: Sword 1-2 m
2: Spear 3-4 m
3: Throw 5-10 m
4: Bow: 12-100m
5: "Volley" 100m to "several hundred"
6: Sight "several Hundred" to "several kilometers"

Curvature of earth limits horizon to 4.7, but a 30m tower to 12km...

A practical example...

5 PC's . Nara, Kanzi, Hanzi, and Hanako are at range 1 to each other, line across behind ichiro, a meter ahead. So, all range 1 from each other.

Other side, at 500m a group of bakemono of mixed armament. Some stay put (1/3 the reserve) , at range 6, some close 1 band to range 5 (1/3 - the archers), some close 2 bands (the "bushi), and Ichrō runs forward 2, as well. Ichiro is now range 3 from his firends, range 100 - 300 from the reserves, range 12-100m from the bakemono archers, and range 1 from the bakemono bushi. Did he move 10m? 100m? 400m?

Another example:
4 bushi: Anako & Kono vs Chin, and Hana. each pair are whispering to each other at very close range - band zero.
Hana and Chin are at one side of the village commons. ANako and Kono the other side. About 120m apart.
• Hana closes 2 bands, drawing her Katana. She's now 2 bands away from Chin, her yojinbo, some 3-4 m... but has crossed 100m to get to range 3 of Anako & Kono.
• Kono then closes two to cut down her rival... SHe's now range 1 from Hana, and can strike. She's range 3 from Chin, some 5-10m, and range 2 from her lover Anako, some 4m... but Anako and Chin are still 120m apart... as neither has moved from range 5 from the other.
• Anako drops her pack and moves 1 band in. now, 1-2 m from Kono, 3-4 from Hana, but only 1-2m from where she dropped her pack, and between 12 and 100m from Chin (band 4)...

9 hours ago, Moon of Dalo said:

Why bother calling it Tension? This is nothing more then Draaaamaa. I don't need Stephanie, who loves Draaamaa, stirring every pot she can just to see the chaos it may bring.

Uhm... drama? How so?

Quote

Strife doesn't do that. Strife actually makes you roleplay the character you actually made. That is what makes people all prune-faced, they don't want to do that. They are there to see how awesome their dice rolling is and what phat loots they gotses.

As someone who has played the game, I can confirm that Strife is a minor annoyance at the very best, a meager disruption at the very worst. I dunno if it actually has any connection to roleplaying other than triggering Outburst (Draaaamaa) and maybe forcing some character interactions on the mechanical level (removing Strife from each other or transferring Strife then burning it away).

I've found the opposite. Strife drives the current system at it's very core.

4 minutes ago, SideshowLucifer said:

I've found the opposite. Strife drives the current system at it's very core.

Oh, it does, just not for the better. It is like the evil twin brother of Opportunity nobody in the family wants but they have to deal with him either way.

See, I disagree. A lot of our l5r games are social with little combat as a rule, so the stress mechanic is a very important part of the game for us. Taking little jabs at someone and trying to make others lose face is what court settings and intrigues are all about.

Only got half a session in, but it was a major motivator - because my players noted that violations of the code can and will draw honor and glory hits

11 minutes ago, SideshowLucifer said:

See, I disagree. A lot of our l5r games are social with little combat as a rule, so the stress mechanic is a very important part of the game for us. Taking little jabs at someone and trying to make others lose face is what court settings and intrigues are all about.

This is part of the problem, you see. We now have one very specific situation when Strife is actually useful to some degree, though the core mechanic actually goes around it so you might as well not bother about Strife anyway. So even for the thing it was specifically made for, it is effectively redundant. And there is a lot more to do in L5R than court drama.

Sure, but it works in combat as well, though a lesser degree. It's just fine in mass battles.

Combat is a fairly rare thing in most l5r games I've played. None of the systems have ever made it a good game for combat.

I'd like to see the mechanic grown upon myself. I think stress would make excellent complications for things that require being centered or that require clear thought.

Maybe a system can spend a characters stress to make things more difficult would be appropriate.

1 minute ago, SideshowLucifer said:

Sure, but it works in combat as well, though a lesser degree. It's just fine in mass battles.

1

Of course it works. It is just not relevant to the point where it might as well not exist at all. Same for mass battles and even duels. There are only poor mechanical tie-ins to remind you that Strife is a thing even if you would think it isn't.

Duals it's kinda a big deal since its pretty much the killing blow mechanic.

In battle, it makes you easier to crit if you go berserk and you could lose honor for your actions. In mass battle you could outburst in a number of interesting ways that could cost you honor, glory or even the battle itself.

After many sessions, it's by far my favorite part of this new system but I'd love to see it expanded. High stress should make meditation and crafting more difficult as well as commanding an army.

46 minutes ago, SideshowLucifer said:

Duals it's kinda a big deal since its pretty much the killing blow mechanic.

In battle, it makes you easier to crit if you go berserk and you could lose honor for your actions. In mass battle you could outburst in a number of interesting ways that could cost you honor, glory or even the battle itself.

1

Yeah, the poor mechanical tie-ins I'm talking about.

On ‎10‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 5:19 PM, tenchi2a said:

First, let me say I'm not a fanboy of this system. The system need tons of work before I would think of buying it. But this constant hate is not getting us anywhere. I started this Topic as a way for us to identify the problems with the system and suggest fixes that FFG could use to make the game better.

Strife: I have never been a fan of forced mechanic in an RPG. This to me takes away the freedom of the player to play their character as they see fit.

Fix: I would use some form of Honor roll to counter this mechanic. That way if a player wants or thinks the outburst is appropriate they can just let it happen or if the what to fight the urge they can roll Honor.

Character creation: The current Mechanic for Character creation are OK, but have some issues.

1. The Starting ring values are to low.

Fix: I would increases the Rings to 2 at start.

2. Characters have limited variation in the creation system. The only options one really has is the Advantages/Disadvantages they choose. and with those being limited you'r going to get a lot of clones.

Fix: Add some starting xp to the game so players can customize their Characters.

Critical strikes to weak: The current system seems to make Critical strikes weak. this has the added disadvantages of making duel seem pointless.

Fix: Critical strikes should have the same bonus damage as the strike that landed them.

There are more but need to head to class.

1. I agree with 2 Starting ring values.

2. I think a few more starting skills that players choose could help or starting with XP also could work to show their past experiences.

3. NA yet but hoping to check this out soon!

After some play throughs, the approach to strife really needs to change. They need to remove strife from the dice (and adjust the dice a bit) and make it something you voluntarily take on to gain opportunity or success. Then adjust it so it is harder to remove outside of downtime. This way those advantages that help you remove strife become a little more useful.

This also helps the situations where players acquire strife outside of rolling fell like they have more weight. Players were frequently generating as much strife on common rolls (that shouldn't even be stressful) as what they would get for going against their ninjō or giri.

On 10/15/2017 at 1:36 PM, Moon of Dalo said:

Why bother calling it Tension? This is nothing more then Draaaamaa. I don't need Stephanie, who loves Draaamaa, stirring every pot she can just to see the chaos it may bring.

Strife doesn't do that. Strife actually makes you roleplay the character you actually made. That is what makes people all prune-faced, they don't want to do that. They are there to see how awesome their dice rolling is and what phat loots they gotses.

This post sounds like Draaaamaa, no offense. Making players do anything by enforcing it mechanically isn’t really something I’m in favour off. Plenty of less hamfisted ways for doing that, and making people do anything against their will is an iffy proposition to begin with.

3 hours ago, jmoschner said:

They need to remove strife from the dice (and adjust the dice a bit) and make it something you voluntarily take on to gain opportunity or success.

This is already the case, as you don't have to keep the dice with strife if you don't feel like it.
You get to keep from 1 to ring value dice. So, unless you roll only strife, you don't have to keep any dice showing strife.

But if you want that extra success/opportunity that comes with strife, well... your choice.

On 10/15/2017 at 4:36 AM, Moon of Dalo said:

Strife doesn't do that. Strife actually makes you roleplay the character you actually made. That is what makes people all prune-faced, they don't want to do that. They are there to see how awesome their dice rolling is and what phat loots they gotses.

More ridiculously arrogant and unearned elitist foolishness. I've found there is a strong tendency for people who want Strife to work to argue for it to the death because they want it to work, not because it actually works well, lol. They brook no possibility that the mechanic would be fine in theory, but doesn't work very well in practice.

Because anybody who understands the current dice mechanics knows that Strife, as written, is just a statted minigame that is easily sidestepped by a character built around doing it. So all it does in actual game play is turn some poorly-statted characters into spazzes, and has little to no effect on other players other than to make the player (not the character) distracted as they play Stress Chess and contemplate their moves. It really brings no roleplaying element into the game at all, just a weird mechanical effect that introduces ambiguous unspecified agitation to a character. It's little more than a complicated dice mechanic that pays no heed to whether the agitation is excitement, anger, sadness, or joy (etc) but then causes a character to inexplicably have an outburst tailored to whatever he was doing at the time. "I'm Happy, Happier, Some Sad, A Little Angry, Excited, Rage, OMG WHOOP FOR JOY!" That's not roleplaying, lol. That's being a temperamental spaz.

And don't get me wrong. If Strife played out like Insanity in Call of Cthulhu, I'd be much more receptive. It's hard being a Samurai sometimes. And I spend my whole live abstaining from the things that make me happy, getting stuck in ideological binds, and occasionally taking orders from idiots. But that stress is slow-burning. My starting character is a scrub. If I want him to be a spaz (like Strife makes characters with low Water and Void), make it a Disadvantage I can opt into. If I want my character to be an idealistic young samurai who slowly but surely realizes that being a samurai isn't all Glory and Honor and it eats away at him unless I work to manage his psychological state (perhaps in a similar way to how CoC mitigates Insanity), that would be epic. Playing a stat-based dice-rolling minigame of impulse control isn't my idea of a good time,

1 hour ago, Exarkfr said:

you don't have to keep the dice with strife if you don't feel like it.

That is probably the biggest lie about strife. This tries to shift the blame to the player instead of acknowledging the system is flawed.

Even selecting to minimize strife, it was building up in our game at an average of a little over 1a roll. Worse for some players better for others.

How is that a lie ?

Weren't you arguing that strife should be something voluntary ?

It is.

Or a I misunderstanding you ?

Let me pose a scenario and a question and see what responses you can provide:

You have a player that doesn't care about the stats that would increase their strife threshold,
The player has decided to play a Crab Berserker.
An Intrigue takes place and includes the other 3 players at your table.
The outcome of this Intrigue is very important to at least one other player.
The NPCs engage the group and social skills start being resolved.
The Crab player takes enough strife from sources in the conflict to cause an outburst.
The Crab player choose enrage as the outburst choice and proceeds to fight an NPC that was part of the Intrigue.
The fight will end the Intrigue and cause the NPCs to either fight the PCs or flee.
The other players do not want this to happen.
The Crab player will not take another outburst.

How do you resolve this issue at any given point in the scenario?

11 minutes ago, Silverfox13 said:

Let me pose a scenario and a question and see what responses you can provide:

You have a player that doesn't care about the stats that would increase their strife threshold,
The player has decided to play a Crab Berserker.
An Intrigue takes place and includes the other 3 players at your table.
The outcome of this Intrigue is very important to at least one other player.
The NPCs engage the group and social skills start being resolved.
The Crab player takes enough strife from sources in the conflict to cause an outburst.
The Crab player choose enrage as the outburst choice and proceeds to fight an NPC that was part of the Intrigue.
The fight will end the Intrigue and cause the NPCs to either fight the PCs or flee.
The other players do not want this to happen.
The Crab player will not take another outburst.

How do you resolve this issue at any given point in the scenario?

This is less a mechanics issue and more a player issue. Almost any mechanic can be used in a way that will make the game unfun for the other players. In this scenario, it sounds like the Crab player is being a jerk and not taking the other players' feelings into play. If I was faced with this situation, I'd suggest a few alternatives to the Crab player which fit the spirit of what he wants to do. Maybe he smashes a piece of property or flips a table? Maybe he challenges the NPC to a duel immediately? The duel option speaks to me especially - the NPC (presumably a courtier?) can have a second duel for him, and you can have a duel and an intrigue going on at the same time.

Tell the Crab player DBAD, enraged isn't the one and only choice they have for an Outburst. Exposing a Disadvantage or Objective would be far more fitting and enjoyable.

Wounds: a meta game (mini game) system of forcing a players actions based upon measuring undefined physical injury.

Strife: a meta game (mini game) system of forcing a players actions based upon measuring undefined emotional strain.

Both systems have consequences beyond the Players control, both can be gamed heavily. Why is one completely acceptable yet the other seen as game destroying?

42 minutes ago, Exarkfr said:

How is that a lie ?

Weren't you arguing that strife should be something voluntary ?

It is.

Or a I misunderstanding you ?

It isn’t voluntary. In my group‘s experience the dice did not give them any option to avoid strife on most rolls.

For example on a r4k3 more often than not 2 of those dice had strife.

The dice might need to be adjusted to come out with less strife. But that's another thing.

What I was pointing out (as it's easy to miss when reading the rules) is that one does not have to keep as many dice as their ring value, only up to.
You chose which dice you keep, thus it's voluntary.
That's all.