What is your take away from the first round of the beta.

what needs to be changed in the different sections.

what needs to be dropped altogether.

what needs to be added.

finally can it be fixed with the current system.

P.S. Please be respectful of others opinions. this ins not a post to argue mechanics there are already plenty of those.

I haven't gotten through any game time yet - that will be Saturday when we finally get to that point, but what I've gone through so far is character creation for 4 people, and some theoretical situations to roll out the dice.

I'm not nearly as concerned about success / failure / blank sides on dice as I was at first. In fact it seems like characters can become quite consistent in their strongest approaches right out the gate (3 ring, 2 skill on a TN 2-3)

The concept of fixed-point TN's or TN's that move only a little by stance is kinda odd to me... We'll see how well it works in practice. I wouldn't mind the TN to hit a character equal to their ring / stance, and then maybe have a circle of advantage / penalty based on element relations. This puts a bit more mechanics into it, but not that much. A player can choose with going with their preferred stance based on opportunities / stats or if they can perceive their opponent's stance they might switch up for an advantage. I like that.

I think the 20 questions game was well done - but I felt quite a disconnect between the narrative direction of a distinction in the 20 questions area and the pre-built distinction options given... Having pre-built things is great as it can help people shape a character when they may not have a specific idea in mind, and the effect is pretty standard for distinctions so that it can be very accommodating to players like us who know exactly what types of things we want, and are more than happy to work our back story into custom advantages / disadvantages, but I think the pre-built ones should be dressed up just a bit better so that we don't feel so bad about having an awesome story / distinction concept and then when we flip through the pre-built ones, we think "did I do this right?"

I do like the way picking your clan and family give you rings and skills. This helps differentiate the families of the great clans, and their culture. All Dragon characters are going to know a bit about meditation because being contemplative is a core component of their culture. Likewise being a Kitsuki is going to give you a more cultural awareness of the subjects of government because Kitsuki as a family tend to concern themselves with these things. I don't want this part to change - but the part where you can pick whether you fully embrace your clan, or sorta buck the trends you're stuck with just 1 skill that is "contrary" to your clan... idk... I like that the skill is tied to the clan, that should stay, but they should probably give a choice of 2-3 skills so a player can better select how they might buck the trends.

The ancestor roll is kinda cool, but I'd like to see it expanded. They could give charts for Samurai, Courtier, Shugenja, Monk, and Mystery or give charts by clan so that this can be a bit more relevant to a character. We almost had 3 characters with Imperial Heritage - including one who was a farm boy turned ize zumi... I'm not opposed to having 1 selection on each chart have you roll a random chart instead - but lets at least start with options that closer to what a character might enjoy - and won't feel tacked on.

When is the next update due?

Open Beta Schedule and Testing Plan (10/12/2017)

Dropped: Void Points tie to Disadvantages. This is just a mess, all the way around. Anybody who thinks this is a good idea probably hasn't really thought much about it, or doesn't have a lot of experience GMing a roleplaying game. It will be a headache for GMs to try to create repeated ways to challenge very narrowly applicable and specific challenges to every individual character, and then, after all that, design them in a way where the characters fail so they get Void Points back, but also fail in ways that aren't complicating or catastrophic to the story progression. Any good GM guide will advise against making too many scenes that are only relevant to one character. This game makes it a core mechanic. This is so bafflingly unnecessary, complicated, illogical, counter-intuitive and time-consuming I can't imagine how this made it into print with a couple dozen "playtesters" listed in the credits. This seems to only exist in the game to make the Disadvantages relevant. Having a mechanic in a game that only exists to make another mechanic relevant is probably a sign that neither mechanic is very well designed.

Changed: Strife. We had an old saying in the Marines. Good initiative, bad judgement. Strife isn't a bad concept. Games like Call of Cthulhu have used Insanity in a well-thought-out, coherent, logical manner that fits the game's subject matter and play style. This is not Strife. Strife is some kind of strange mechanic where some characters go from 0 to near-outburst and back towards 0 on a fairly common basis. These kinds of mood swings aren't even remotely realistic for normal, functional human beings. A "stress" mechanic needs to reflect building levels of frustration/stress/excitement. As written Strife just makes characters bizarrely and almost humorously temperamental, as they shoot from hot to cold and with no relevant tie to what mood they're agitated about, only that they are vaguely agitated until they have an outburst which is happy, sad or angry depending on what they happened to be doing at the time. I see a lot of people say this mechanic makes the characters feel more "alive" or more "like real people" but it strains credulity and I wonder what kind of people these people know, lol. On the flip side, the Strife mechanic can be completely sidestepped by the right combination of Rings and thus stances. What entry-level character is going to deal with Strife best? A Matsu Bushi with his Earth 3, Water 3, Resilience 12, Composure 10 and Fitness 2. He'll just Water Stance all of his Strife away, especially on uncontested rolls, remaining cool as a cucumber, and he can just turtle up in combat using Earth Stance, swapping out to Water if he needs to shed Strife and shrugging off criticals. There are other combinations that will render Strife mostly meaningless (a character with high Air and/or Void, though Water is clearly the best), but that's the funniest since Matsu are known for being Brash and hotheaded. Ironically, their +1 Fire is just giving them 2 extra points of Composure, lol. Basically, there's no point to a mechanic that is either crippling to some players, or almost completely irrelevant to them. Strife isn't a roleplaying mechanic as it stands. It's a minigame that players will be min/maxing stats for. And it won't even be that bad, since there's really no penalty for min/maxing. Why? Glad you asked...

Changed: Approaches/Stances. Water. Why would I use anything else 80% of the time outside of combat? Maybe 90% of the time. Or maybe if I don't have high Water because I goofed in character creation (or got stuck in a Clan/Family/School path that didn't give me +1 Water somewhere, wait, we're back to how character creation has problems) and have a higher Void instead. Investigating this room? Water. Riding my horse? Water. Researching this old spell tome? Water. If I get my Water high enough, variable TNs won't even matter because my extra kept dice will counterbalance any disadvantageous Approach penalties unless the GM is just aware I'm always using Water and trying to beat me. And, it shouldn't have to be said that's not a very good mechanic if it creates that kind of situation. Conversely, if I'm in combat, I have little reason to use anything other than Earth or Air, with the occasional round of Water if I need to dump some Strife.

Changed: Skills. Related to Approaches, completely untethering skills from Rings/Traits creates a boatload of balance issues and ends up being very gamey. Previous editions of the game could end up with wacky Archer-Courtiers who maxed out one hyper-relevant Ring to become really hyper-specialized. This version will do the same thing. Well, except that the character will just be really good at everything rather than just a few specific things. Again, unless they goofed during character creation. Right now, there's no real incentive to be good at everything other than the results of derived attributes, but some of them will be less relevant to certain kinds of characters anyway. Not to mention that since Void Points reset to 1, and Void Points are hard to get, and Void Points are less useful, the Void ring is somewhat irrelevant to any character other than one who can raise it to 3 for free at CharGen and and use it as Water Lite (though they goofed and should have raised Water to 3).

Changed: Disadvantages are a gigantic mess. Like I mentioned, tying them to Void Points means having to run side games and scenarios so the characters can fail checks and get them back, lol. Any good GM guide will advise against making too many scenes that are only relevant to one character. This game makes it a core mechanic. On top of that, the Disadvantages are so poorly balanced, that some of them are severe past the point of usability/desirability (an issue for roleplayers) or so meaningless they are mechanically inefficient (occuring so infrequently you can't get Void Points back with them). A player will spend more time optimizing their Disadvantages than they will on the rest of character creation combined. Smart players will realize if they aren't making a Noble Samurai that they can run a ninja or something and their Disadvantages will just become neat little Void-generating Advantages as the character "fails" at doing things they weren't planning to succeed at anyway. Somebody already posted this character and the Beta's barely been up a week.

Changed: Character creation. Novel ideas there, and I especially like the 20 Questions. But the end results are a mess. Skill points are scarce, and tying them into Clan and Family choice means they are even scarcer. Family choice was way too important in 4E because a "wasted" Trait increase could make that family less ideal for certain Schools. This edition makes it even worse by tying skill increases to Family choice. What if somebody wants to play an Ikoma but have a hard time stomaching losing 2 of their 7 skill points to things that aren't terribly useful to a Bushi or a Shugenja? Young Doji Hoturi is going to make a pretty run of the mill duelist, but he'll be fabulous at putting his hair and kimono together and choosing some fashionable accessories for his outfit. Given how important skills, Rings and stances are to the game, Clan/Family/School is going to be of critical importance for beginning characters just for those two extra skill points and that ring increase. Either get rid of Family skills, or include some player choice to it, so at least young Kitsu Moto and Ikoma Tsanuri aren't starting off in a hole compared to their cousins Toturi or Tsuko when it comes to being a military leader. Skills are a little sparse and variation is very low. This system is going to create a lot of "PC Templates." There will be a lot of them, but it's illusory diversity since most of the variation comes from choosing Clan and Family. One Akodo Bushi is going to look remarkably like all the rest of them, and the game kind of actively discourages you from playing an Ide or Kaiu one, simply by virtue of starving those characters of relevant skill points. The system is, as mentioned before, only good at creating Noble Samurai and (inadvertantly) Exploit Ninja. If you want to make an "Off Type" character, hopefully you like Sailor Dragon, Kolat Lion, Fancy Unicorn, Painter Crab, or Farmhand Scorpion, because otherwise the system isn't really interested in your character concept unless you want to jump through some hoops to get there (Disadvantage Step 13).

Changed: Stances. Some of these are amazing. Water is ridiculously good for anything uncontested, and simply "really good" for everything else. Void isn't too shabby. It's like Water-Lite. Earth and Air are good for contested situations like combat or antagonistic intrigues. Fire is good for... Austin Powers and other people who like to live dangerously. Either that or a character who also has a really high Water and can just douse his Fire Strife on subsequent actions.

Changed: Dicord, ninjo and giri. I was incredibly interested in this when I read the original article. I was hoping it wold create an interesting, dynamic or profound look at the character's lives and the struggles of adhering to the conflicting tenets of bushido. It's not that, lol. As written, this is very cumbersome to traditional games. Having to tailor a session of one character's ninjo and another's giri is going to require a lot of incongruent writing. Really, there are a lot of mechanics in this beta that involve the GM and players creating scenes just to satisfy bizarre or out-of-place game mechanics, and not because those scenes are, you know, interesting or relevant to plot advancement. Ninjo and giri were the most interesting thing about the Sneak Preview article, and probably the most disappointing thing in actual play. As written, there is nothing about ninjo or giri that make them "samurai" in nature. Really, they aren't even normal struggles regular people have. I want to surf all day. I have to go to work. I rarely struggle in my life because of this. Heck, more relevantly, I was in the Marines. I had to do all kinds of dumb stuff. If I could keep my composure, somebody who trained from childhood to be a samurai ought to be pretty good at it, and normal day-to-day life isn't going to be a struggle. Ninjo and giri, like Strife, aren't doing a very good job of creating believable samurai struggles. Like Disadvantages to Void Points, ninjo and giri exist to validate a game mechanic for Discord, nothing more. There's actually a lot of potential in this idea. But you're going to have to find it because, as Slipknot once said: You had a dream, but this ain't it.

Can any of these be fixed? Some of them. Others will probably require a ground-up reconstruction. Void Points, Disadvantages and Strife, the way they currently exist, are non-starters for this game. Fundamentally bad to broken. The disappointing nature of ninjo and giri sucks, but you can completely ignore the entire section in practice and the game won't even notice. Stances, Skills and Approaches aren't hard to fix. Tether skills to one or two rings so you can still vary approaches, but not exploit the simplistic target number system. Rewrite the stances so that there aren't "clear winners." Put more choice back into character creation, instead of the illusion of choice by asking 20 questions that have fairly simple, one-directional answers.

Changed the layout of the book is a mess. Opportunity examples need to be listed with the corresponding skills.

Changed the ranges don't work real well with combat and movement. There needs to be increments within the rangebands.

Dropped the advantages and disadvantages need to be scraped and rewritten with more thought put into them. They are poorly thought out, either being too encumbering for a character or too insignificant. Getting this right would help with void point regeneration.

Dropped the dualing system is way too encumbered with too many weird oddities. It needs to be written from the ground up to make it more playable. They have the right idea, but currently the rules get in the way of that idea.

Must keep the stress mechanic is the glue that holds the whole game together. I find it amazing.

Dropped get rid of armor breaking katanas. It's silly and adds nothing. I can see it for creatures, but samurai armor would not break the blades.

I disagree with most of what The Veteran Sergent said. Ninjo, Giri, Disadvantages, and Outbursts are supposed to exist in any Samurai-based roleplaying game. If people used to play the old L5R game with character's that didn't have goals, duties, character flaws, and emotional quirks, they were doing it wrong. I think many of the Sergent's criticisms only hold if you think of these mechanics as more than what they are: background conditions. If my character has the Fear of Death Anxiety, why would the GM have to revolve gameplay around it? I'm just supposed to roleplay it, and no side missions are necessary. Outbursts are also not supposed to be incredibly disruptive. Remember, Rokugan is an incredibly stoic culture, and something as simple as attempting to suppress a chuckle for the rest of the scene can be an "outburst". Ninjo and Giri are only as disruptive or useful as the Storyteller and Players make them. Crab players have always had to come up with a good reason to be with a party if they aren't defending the Kaiu wall, and Kolat characters have always had to come up with a good reason to stick with a party who are hunting down his fellow Kolat. These things are not new, they are just more explicit and harder to ignore. Which is good, because they were always supposed to be core aspects of the characters, and were never meant to be ignored. Also, Void Points are supposed to be given out at the GM's discretion, not just by Disadvantages. If your players don't roleplay well enough to merit Void points, that sounds like their problem.

On the other hand, the Sergent is mostly right about the stances. Void seems to need some sort of buff (its almost never better than Water), and Earth needs some sort of nerf (especially since it prevents a lot of fun mechanics). Earth should probably just be changed so that it only prevents opportunity-based critical strikes and opportunity-based conditions, but not persistent effects overall. Void should probably give you an extra opportunity or something, since none of the stances do something like that and it would give it a unique role to play, even if you removed the strife-negating effect in the process. In addition to balance concerns about the stances, most players are justifiably concerned about the low number of skills one gets at character creation. Just giving the player the ability to allocate 3 skills freely would probably be enough to alleviate this worry, so long as one capped this allocation at skill rank 2. In addition, the Battle Rage outburst should probably be rewritten into a negative thing, rather than a positive one. Outbursting shouldn't really be a good thing, ever. The reason why a Matsu might prefer Water stance (and the Way of the Lion ability) is because it allows them to channel their anger into productive endeavors, without worrying about losing control. This makes plenty sense for the flavor of the Matsu, without needing some sort of Battle Rage in addition to this.

Change: Character creation needs starting xp.

Change: Dueling needs a major overhaul.

Drop: Glass Katanas, (Razor-Edged) the idea of a katana breaking on the samurai armor is plan silly.

Change/Drop: Strife system needs Major work. As it stands the Strife system takes to much control out of the hands of the players. This mechanic forces a player to consider dropping opportunity or extra successes to avoid it. The truth is from what I have read a lot of players/GM plan on ignoring it anyway at this point so do we really need it.

Change: advantages and disadvantages, are bad just needs a lot of work. some form of XP cost or this advantages/disadvantages is worth two choices is needed. Also players should have a choice of how many they have or the choice to have none at all. It should not be forced.

Drop: Twenty questions is a great guide, but should not be the creation system.

Change: weapons need tons of work. As stated above Razor-Edged needs to go. Naginata needs to be reworked, it should have some use at range 1. Crossbow needs to go. Zanbatō needs to be replaced with No-Daichi, while there where Zanbatō in Japan, these weapons were inspired by Chinese contact. Plus the reference is to anime.

Change: I feel the restriction on rings and skill level is two low. this was tried in 1st ed and did not work. Also I believe Rings should start at 2.

Edit: just to clarify the restriction I am referring to is the 5 limit.

Drop: ninjo and giri. To me these are RPG items and should not be part of mechanical Character or have any rule set for them outside of Player/GM agreement.

Drop: The Skills and Rings from Clan/Families should be removed. They shoehorn you into schools, when there are plenty of examples of NPC from the story going to schools outside their normal families.

Change/Add: Schools should be change to provide the all the skills. Suggestion: (Shiba Guardian School [Bushi]) Skill Increases (choose Seven, can be chosen more then once.): +1 Courtesy, +1 Fitness, +1
Martial Arts [Melee], +1 Meditation, +1 Survival, +1 Tactics, +1 Theology.

Finally: The game mechanics should show the outcome of a roll or the limits on character creation. not how the PC play his character. The rule should not govern how a group plays their campaign, they are there to give a way to judge results not how to play.

change : Make void great again.

probably the biggest miss in this beta. Void is an expression of the unity of your rings, something greater than its sum. People need to start with their void rank, void needs to come back daily. Void isn't you powering up from adversity, its your chi, it comes from harmony, not strife or unbalance. Have the devs read Gorin No Sho, understand the source material and acknowledge its efficiency instead of trying to reinvent the wheel by making it square.

change : disadvantage should nt be forced down the players throat. It's not because a player start with no disad that he is a flawless paragon. Rework the disad, making them less extreme and most of all don't tie void to them else people will take meaningless ones to minimize impact and game the system.

Here is my take so far:

Change: Void Points need rework. Make them important again. And for the love of the Kami use Meditation or techniques (ohhh One with the Void how much I miss you ) to regain Void Points instead of Disadvantage please... Sorry for the Outburst too much Strife and no Shiba Guardian around, sigh...

Add: Add a few xp to character creation, let the players add a few other skills or tech or incantation at start...

Drop: If Disadvantages provide something let it be xp at the character creation stage, not Void Points...

Change: Reconsider swapping Kata for Kiho on Kuni Shugenja School Techniques Available. Will help delineate the difference between Bushi and Shugenja and keep balance in place...

Change: I’m not a Crane, however Kakita Bushi and Iaijutsu need rework (I know it is coming but had to say it). For about a 1000 years they had been dedicated to dueling, they aren’t the Crane foot soldiers those are the Daidoji. Kakita are the specialized Bushi, whose task is solely to defend the Crane honor via dueling, come on guys make them the best duelist out of box again...

Add: Ishiken-Do advantage and Void Incantations. They were powerful before, I think the beta will be a good place to test them.

Change: Update the Isawa Elementalist to reflect that is capable to perform Void incantations.

Add: Different School and Multiple Schools. It will be nice to test power balance between School Combinations.

Change: I think that using the lowest honor character to break initiative ties is a mistake. Let the GM and the players handle it.

Change: Defense, enough said.

Change: Duels, again, enough said.

Change: Equipment needs rework...

Change: Beta layout, guys please fix this.

Here we go!

Character creation: love the 20 question set up, but needs a quick reference sheet for those who have done it more than a few times. I keep going back and forth on whether or not we need more xp thrown in here or not. While characters may look very similar on paper, just the difference in one or two rings will make them play very different at the table.

advantage/ disadvantage: keep them as is, absolutely love the way it's done. Please never go back to the way it was done before.

weapons: fine, would like some more please.

schools: just need more. SUPER interested to see how you guys deal with advanced schools or alternate techniques (if you feel you need to at all with the way rank progression is currently handled.) Also, keep the current rank progression system.

school types: one of my biggest issues with the previous edition was how monks and shugenja could dominate the dedicated courtiers and bushi at what they did. This doesn't appear to be the case anymore... Please, PLEASE don't go back to that design idea.

base system/ dice/ strife: it's fine. Maybe a little adjustment to how quickly strife is gained but otherwise fine.

This system is designed to inform the story, not just to resolve actions. it's effective at it, to. You may not like it... and that's fine. But don't say it's bad. It's very good at what it's made to do.

I really like the dice and Strife system. The whole book needs to be reorganized. I really should not have to flip through multiple tables at different ends of the book to figure out what I can do with a Guard Action in a Fire Stance vs the same thing in an Air Stance. I haven't had a chance to run it, and in its current state, I don't think I can. I don't have players that will read and reread the book, and then patiently read it a third time as we spend an hour resolving our first duel. There might be an elegant system here, but my players will walk away before they find it.

10 hours ago, tenchi2a said:

Drop: Glass Katanas, (Razor-Edged) the idea of a katana breaking on the samurai armor is plan silly.

Change: weapons need tons of work. As stated above Razor-Edged needs to go. Naginata needs to be reworked, it should have some use at range 1. Crossbow needs to go. Zanbatō needs to be replaced with No-Daichi, while there where Zanbatō in Japan, these weapons were inspired by Chinese contact. Plus the reference is to anime.

Drop: ninjo and giri. To me these are RPG items and should not be part of mechanical Character or have any rule set for them outside of Player/GM agreement.

Glass Katana / Razor-Edged was actually pretty brilliant. The fact is if you swing your katana into armor it will lose its edge very quickly. Even cutting Tameshigiri will dull your edge noticeable each session. I really liked this part. What I think should be changed is armor. I've thought about armor, and I think it needs to be represented 2 ways. As an attacker you need to be able to say either "I am attacking through the armor" or "I am attacking the weak points in the armor." If you are attacking through the armor the current system works great, but there should be the option to attack the weak points represented by a TN increase, which gives no damage to the armor or weapon when used as you are then cutting between plates and such. Another option should be given via opportunities to specifically damage the armor. Japanese armor isn't a full steal casing the way western armor is. Being able to cut the cords on your opponents armor is very thematic, even if not realistic, and I'd like to see that as an approach in the game.

I don't care about Zanbato vs NoDachi - provided BOTH are options as they are both real weapon. Anime may reference and give exaggeration to the Zanbato but that doesn't mean it isn't a real thing.

I like the idea of Ninja and Giri being cemented, and relevant to the workings of honor and glory. I think the system needs work, and should change - I'm not sure how, but I do like it being there.

Attacking weak points is Striking As Water.

4 minutes ago, shosuko said:

What I think should be changed is armor. I've thought about armor, and I think it needs to be represented 2 ways. As an attacker you need to be able to say either "I am attacking through the armor" or "I am attacking the weak points in the armor." If you are attacking through the armor the current system works great, but there should be the option to attack the weak points represented by a TN increase, which gives no damage to the armor or weapon when used as you are then cutting between plates and such. Another option should be given via opportunities to specifically damage the armor.

Your idea about attacking the weak points in someone's armor, while thematically appropriate, would not work in the system. Almost everyone will have Ashigaru or better armor, meaning 3 resistance. In order to ever make it worthwhile to attack through armor rather than target the weak points, the TN increase for the latter would have to be greater than the resistance of the armor. Martial Arts attacks are 2+ TN, so targeting the weakpoints would have to be 6+ TN. This is a problem insofar as such TNs are nearly impossible to reach and insofar as the system is not built around people attempting to consistently get such TNs. 6+ TN is supposed to be God-like.

4 minutes ago, WHW said:

Attacking weak points is Striking As Water.

I would agree, if Earth Stance did not prevent Striking As Water (Earth Stance prevents persistent effects, and Striking As Water's effect is a persistent effect). This means that, in the current system, someone in Earth Stance who uses Striking as Earth or really good armor to get 5-8 resistance will be able to consistently Damage our weapons which are Razor-Edged.

This is the only time I will be responding on this thread. As was stated, please do not respond to others post here. That is not the point of this thread. If you like a mechanic then mark it as a Keep and move on. The point of this post is that the Devs are reading the forums and to put everyone's concerns and likes into one tread to make it easier for them, not to debate. There are already threads for debating most of these mechanics so please keep this thread clear of them.

Thank You

10 minutes ago, tenchi2a said:

This is the only time I will be responding on this thread. As was stated, please do not respond to others post here. That is not the point of this thread. If you like a mechanic then mark it as a Keep and move on. The point of this post is that the Devs are reading the forums and to put everyone's concerns and likes into one tread to make it easier for them, not to debate. There are already threads for debating most of these mechanics so please keep this thread clear of them.

Thank You

afaik - the devs are going to be using surveys to compile feedback, and while they may read the forum this isn't their primary tool to monitor impressions of the game. Unless there is a reason not to build on the ideas of another person I don't see why I shouldn't respond to something. It doesn't change their thoughts, but it might give them more to think about. It might let others see another perspective. As long as no one is getting heated I don't see the problem.