Did character creation last night for a playtest group. Isawa Shugenja. Shosuro Infiltrator. Hida Bushi. Akodo Bushi. Unicorn Outrider. Togashi Monk. Three of these people have been playing since 3rd ed, another two have been playing since 4th ed, and one is brand new to the game. I've been playing since 3rd ed.

The Isawa has cognitive lapses and delusions of grandeur.

The Shosuro is mute and is bloodthirsty.

The Hida has a disfigured visage and is bloodthirsty.

The list goes on, and it's not necessary to detail it. These characters are seriously messed up.

It feels VERY different from prior editions where we were all more-or-less noble samurai who were worthy of respect. Me personally, I generally preferred to play with few or no disadvantages in prior editions.

I am concerned that there are too few opportunities in character creation to steer clear of disadvantages, and it means that the characters you get are all somehow seriously messed up and in many cases, less worthy of respect from the players and the GM, much less the NPCs. They just don't *feel* as heroic.

I'm not arguing for NO disadvantages; having a disadvantage or two keeps a character interesting. I do feel that there should be an opportunity for fewer of them though.

paige

I don't think having too many Disadvantages is a problem. Earlier Edition characters were often over-stuffed with them, mostly because quite a few of them were so meaningless they were easy-cheesy free XP at chargen.

The problem with the Disadvantages as they are written in this edition is that quite a few of them are very severe. And the ones that aren't incredibly severe are so meaningless that they'll never come up in play and thus won't help the characters regain Void Points. The way Void Points and Disadvantages are inextricably linked in this system means for characters to function mechanically, they have to be dysfunctional mentally, lol. Or, like the guy who posted about his Shosuro Infiltrator whose Adversity is actually part of his character's cover persona, figures out how to game the system and turn their Disadvantage into something their character doesn't want to be good at anyway, and thus gets free Void Points for "failing" at things they aren't actually trying to succeed at.

The Disadvantage system is really grating for a lot of roleplayers, and way too gamey in its mechanics. Making the Disadvantages the primary source of Void Point generation turns Void Points into a cumbersome mini-game the GM has to constantly be playing and planning for. Especially since VP reset to 1 at every session, no matter what your Void Ring is. I mean, I personally thought they were overused in 4E, but this system is ridiculous.

I actually like what FFG did in the regard of the disadvantages. For me L5R was always about samurai drama, but under AEG the characters easily got an epic hero vibe, while the genre usually should aim more for tragic heroes. So, having the protagnists now deeply flawed and struggle with they own shortcoming far more then it was in under AEG is in my opinion something that makes the game better. Sure, this might need that some people have to adjust their expectations about how they play the game now, but there are enough other games out there that do the epic hero stuff already, so let this be indeed about tragic heroes--as it should be!

What's weird to me is the disparity between the various disadvantages when they're all effectively mechanically identical. It really feels like they just need to be renamed/downgraded, like blind should be poor eyesight and missing leg should be limp. When you compare them to some of the less out there disadvantages like clumsy or bluntness, they sound extreme but they have the same mechanical penalties. It would also make the Earth assessment ability seem a little less absurd than if you're suddenly curing people's blindness and missing limbs.

Char i made had Fear of Death (best stuff if you dont know what you put it lol) and Perfeccionist.

My problem is not, taking away the feeling of hero or something. My problem is that i associate a character coming out of Char gen with skills on level 1 being 13 years old and coming from Gempukku.

Not dumb samurais at age 26.

And anyway in older editions you could be cheesy and pickup stuff for points, but at least you could choose. it was a incentive to have flaws, here you are forced even if it doesnt fit. I mean, not one is perfect, but not everything has to become a game mechanic.

so instead of having a system that I can adapt to my expectations, I now need to adapt my expectations to the system.

I need to be able to make my samurai miserable for drama, but I need to be able to make also heroic epic.

it's not right to say: System is better because samurai drama IS like this and has to be. It needs room to breath for both interpretations.

2 Flaws could be worse. Nothing forces you to take the third (you could take an advantage instead)

If you don't want an inept crippled psychopath, I would strongly suggest the following:

• Sworn Enemy - because that's just GM story fodder! How can you be a hero without a villain?
• Whispers of Doom - because 'doing something heroic' translates in reality to 'we are all gonna die'
• Whispers of Poverty - because the good guys tend to start a campaign storyline on the back foot

For anxieties:

• Perfectionism - appropriately 'samurai archetype'
• Painful Honesty - frankly if you give a drat about the 'sincerity' bit of bushido this should apply almost by default

Also note that there are custom ones you can agree with your GM . Any advantage can pretty much be taken as a disadvantage with a bit of rewording and debate (because there's always a situation where it makes things worse - in fact the game includes rules for 'flipping' advantages and disadvantages). If the options don't sound heroic enough as character traits, come up with ones that do.

So you have large stature? Take it as a disadvantage - so you get the negative reroll for being sneaky and blending in, and have to spend a void point to get a reroll on 'getting stuff from the top of the cupboard'

If there's something in the advantages which seems a more heroic quality, use that as your disadvantage - a trait like 'humble' sounds good but you can easily see checks where it's a bad thing. Fashion as a passion could easily be 'vanity' as an anxiety. Don't like ferocity? How about 'merciful' (where you're forced to take people honourably prisoner/let the surrender rather than kill them, even in the midst of a battle).

Yes, as Magnus says there are plenty of those in the book which are less extreme. I could add: Blackmailed, Bluntness, Clumsiness, Disdain for a bushido concept, Haunting, Incurable Illness, Momoku, Scorn of..., Shadowlands Taint, Whispers of..., Cynicism, Dark Secret, Impatience, Intolerance, Irrepressible Flirtation, Jealousy, Materialism, Meekness and Superstition. Also note that the most crippling physical ones are there because they are a potential result from the critical tables.

And new ones such as bad eyesight and a limp are perfectly fine disadvantages, and really are not that hard to create actually.

If you don't like the selection of your players, talk to them. Contrary (also a fun disadvantage) to what some believe you are not forced to make or allow borderline dysfunctional characters.

I dislike how many are actually handicapping though. The physical limitations are astounding in their number. There should be some more less damning ones.

Would it be better if the Critical Strike disadvantages were separated from the others, with a note that they're more severe and usually not appropriate for new characters? Or perhaps if they had some separate keyword (eg "Crippling") and a bit more of a warning in the preceding rule text ("Note that Crippling disadvantages are especially harsh and will leave your character markedly impaired even when they aren't directly affecting your rolls. As such, they are generally inflicted as in-game consequences [see Critical Strikes, pg XX], rather than chosen during chargen")?

In theory, of course, they're all balanced based on the amount of Void regen they grant you, but it does make sense that, eg, a Limp disadvantage could apply to almost all the rolls that Missing Leg applies to while still being narratively less harsh (which could discourage people from playing Limping samurai because they feel like they're gaming the system somehow).

Just speculating here, but I wonder if part of the design theory for the writers was to have Samurai PCs be inherently flawed individuals that you see more often in Eastern-themed stories as opposed to more-emotionally stable Western-themed hero. A part of the Eastern-themed hero's journey is overcoming their personal, internal flaws (especially the psychological ones) as well as external challenges; it's not unlike the contrast between Luke Skywalker who started as a nobody and grew to become a famous hero and Han Solo who started out pretty awesome and was largely static within the context of the original trilogy.

I do agree that I think they overdid it, especially with the Anxieties. Though I do think that PCs should have at least some form of Disadvantage to account that the leads in Samurai stories tend to have some manner of flaw in their character.

Han Solo went from low time smuggler to war hero.

Any narrative can be made from any point of view, just like you did in your post and Magnus did on his.

Like Nitenman said, the system should give options.

I will always make a unproven young character with no achievements on Legend of five rings (unless the campaign gives more starting xp or similar) but i still think that is great to have an advantage that literally says "You are a old guy and you have seen some things.". Its an option for those who different of me, enjoy these sort of things.

And im against everything Magnus said. Be it about refluffing everything for your purpose (you shouldnt need to lie to yourself to avoid something you dont want. that make it worse) or "a hero needs a villain!". "Heroes cant be rich!"

16 hours ago, SideshowLucifer said:

I dislike how many are actually handicapping though. The physical limitations are astounding in their number. There should be some more less damning ones.

Thats because unless you're trying to make zatoichi, I don't think you're expected to actually choose them so much as be forcibly given them mid-campaign as criticals.

@Magnus Grendel Great points! Love "Merciful". Do you have a fleshed out version?

@TheVeteranSergeant when you say the disads are to severe or too meaningless, are you speaking from beta play experience, or just analysis? Speaking from a just-analysis place myself: seems like a solution to the meaningless disad problem is to simply contrive a lot of situations where it would matter, right? Don't have a thought about the severe disad problem, except "come up with your own using the rules provided".

@Nitenman Seems like there are some pretty straightforward dials to turn that might help (but maybe not solve) your concerns:

1. Start with more void points at the beginning of a session, so there's less pressure to rely on disadvantages to get them.
2. Take only one disadvantage. Which will mean there's less opportunities to get void points. To compensate, you can:
3. Award void points to reinforce story elements that your group thinks are more representative of good L5R stories.

4 hours ago, sidescroller said:

Speaking from a just-analysis place myself: seems like a solution to the meaningless disad problem is to simply contrive a lot of situations where it would matter, right

Contriving "a lot of" situations to do game mechanics chores sounds like a "solution?" The point of roleplaying games is to have fun and tell interesting stories in the process. Not to find ways to make sure you do all the game chores the rules give you like it's some kind of video game fetch quest or XP grind. The rules should facilitate the stories. Not the other way around. There's no solution to the Disadvantages for Void Points problem other than "Completely discard that stupid idea from the rules." Forcing the players to chase around situations specifically seeking to fail at is about the worst idea I've ever seen in an RPG.

While the book gives many examples of advantages and disadvantages - I think the best part of this system is that you can go completely custom easily. The mechanics are simple. What makes something a distinction, adversity, passion, or anxiety is fairly simple to determine, and then the mechanics are pretty straight forward from there. You are basically picking which type of advantage / disadvantage, and when it applies. If it applies too narrowly, then it won't be a very bad disadvantage, but you won't get much void from it, and it won't add much to your character. If its too broad then you can expect it to effect you constantly. Something like picky eater would be narrow, something like blind would be broad. They are both acceptable, the difference is just how much you want it to impact your character.

Anyone have play experience with the new disad system yet? I'd love to hear some firsthand reports of this specific issue. Maybe @Scorpienne had the playlets group?

@shosuko I agree. I really like it when games that include good guidelines/toolkit to make your own stuff.

@rsdockery I like the balanced-as-you-play aspect that you mentioned. IME/O, most of the 4e disads weren't worth the points (though many were worth the fun! )

@TheVeteranSergeant : So I'm guessing that's a "no" on beta play test experience? That's ok, me too.

Lemme take another theoretical stab at this:

10 hours ago, TheVeteranSergeant said:

Contriving "a lot of" situations to do game mechanics chores sounds like a "solution?" The point of roleplaying games is to have fun and tell interesting stories in the process. Not to find ways to make sure you do all the game chores the rules give you like it's some kind of video game fetch quest or XP grind. The rules should facilitate the stories. Not the other way around.

Absolutely! Perhaps I was unclear; I mistakenly assumed that most posters here are GMs, not players, which may not be accurate. So of course, players shouldn't have to chase opportunities to be hindered by their disadvantage.

Rather, it's the player's responsibility to choose disads that they want to be part of the game/story, and it's the GM's responsibility to introduce situations in which the disadvantage could apply. In fact, the beta discusses this a little bit! Check out p. 61, text box "Advantages, Disadvantages, and the Narrative". I'll summarize here. According to the beta, advantages and disadvantages should be:

1. Story hooks
2. A chance to use associated mechanical effects
3. A chance to use associated narrative effects
4. Discussed together by the player and GM

19 hours ago, sidescroller said:

Seems like there are some pretty straightforward dials to turn that might help (but maybe not solve) your concerns:

Yep, those points are more or less what I keep saying on the site.

my opinion is: focus on making the systm sound and coherent,and fun to play and let us GMs handle the flavor/drama. And while I understand what FFG tries to do, I think they kinda missed the Void mechanics and concept.

all those folks saying "all the better, samurai drama is like this" are sorta shoving THEIR conceptions of Samurai Drama on other throats. And I indeed challenge this. I don't need to be "taught" samurai drama. I need a setting and rules which allows me to materialize My concepts of Roleplaying drama and samurai/kenjutsu/shinobi/court drama for my players, without being constricted by the dev team's vision.

And that's maybe what I reproach to the adv/disadv Ninjo/Giri void system. While the intent is there, the execution is a miss.

Give good rules first and GM guidelines on samurai drama to help those who need. Don't make drama a mechanic, particularly when it impacts the Concept of Void so much.

1 hour ago, sidescroller said:

: So I'm guessing that's a "no" on beta play test experience? That's ok, me too.

I don't want to hate this, and there's a lot of time left for alterations to be made. But in its current state, this game is unplayable without ignoring quite a few rules, and really gamey on most of the mechanics. Honestly, it has some cool ideas, but it's a bad game, rules-wise. Disadvantages and Void Point regeneration are non-starters. Strife is completely meaningless to any player who figures out they need Water 3 (or Void 3 as a lesser alternative). Smart players will realize just how meaningless Trait diversity is to anything other than advancements given how nebulous the rules for Approaches are and how low the target numbers are typically and how low the variance is (+/- 1 usually). A character needs one Strife-reducing trait (Water) and one opponent-nerfing trait (Earth or Air). And characters are fairly boring cookie-cutter copies of one another, with as few as 15 functional permutations (I mean, find me the bushi character that doesn't take MA:Melee, lol).

@sidescroller I guess it wasn't clear from the OP, I am running the playtest group. We are talking about the number of disadvantages in the context of about 10 hours of play.

Paige

On 10/12/2017 at 0:15 PM, Scorpienne said:

Did character creation last night for a playtest group. Isawa Shugenja. Shosuro Infiltrator. Hida Bushi. Akodo Bushi. Unicorn Outrider. Togashi Monk. Three of these people have been playing since 3rd ed, another two have been playing since 4th ed, and one is brand new to the game. I've been playing since 3rd ed.

The Isawa has cognitive lapses and delusions of grandeur.

The Shosuro is mute and is bloodthirsty.

The Hida has a disfigured visage and is bloodthirsty.

The list goes on, and it's not necessary to detail it. These characters are seriously messed up.

It feels VERY different from prior editions where we were all more-or-less noble samurai who were worthy of respect. Me personally, I generally preferred to play with few or no disadvantages in prior editions.

I am concerned that there are too few opportunities in character creation to steer clear of disadvantages, and it means that the characters you get are all somehow seriously messed up and in many cases, less worthy of respect from the players and the GM, much less the NPCs. They just don't *feel* as heroic.

I'm not arguing for NO disadvantages; having a disadvantage or two keeps a character interesting. I do feel that there should be an opportunity for fewer of them though.

paige