I believe this just isnt the game your looking for. You keep using extreme examples of taking the worst choices and saying it's broken. Your approach to the game is broken. Your trying to play the game in a way it isn't designed to be played.

You Outburst at start of your next turn. If you don't want to suffer an Outburst during a social conflict scene, just retire yourself from the conflict.

14 minutes ago, SideshowLucifer said:

I believe this just isnt the game your looking for . You keep using extreme examples of taking the worst choices and saying it's broken. Your approach to the game is broken. Your trying to play the game in a way it isn't designed to be played.

I see people use this a lot. This statement assumes that FFG is God omnipotent and knows whats best for L5R when even its writer and AEG could never agree on that.

Let me turn that around, I believe this is not the system for L5R.

or

L5r is not the setting your looking for.

The fact is you are making statement like FFG came up with the L5R story so if you disagree with them then you just do not like L5R.

What you are forgetting is L5R was a card game first with little to no flushed-out storyline.

It was through the AEG writers working with the player base that the story is what it is today.

So the player base that you are tell this just isn't the game your looking for, are the ones who helped create it in the first place.

This isn't Star Wars, Warhammer, Etc. were the story was written by one person, this was a collaborative endeavor by AEG and the whole fan-base.

If he is trying to play the game in away that its not designed to play, maybe its not designed right for this setting.

The truth is if his approach has worked for four editions who are you to say that he is doing it wrong.

L5R has always been a land of extremes. Honor, loyalty, even this Strife system is about extremes. Smiling, Laughing, Crying is a loss of face. The stoic Samurai that can show no emotions. Where a small insult can lead to death at the edge of a blade. If his example is extreme it fits right in.

31 minutes ago, SideshowLucifer said:

I believe this just isnt the game your looking for. You keep using extreme examples of taking the worst choices and saying it's broken. Your approach to the game is broken. Your trying to play the game in a way it isn't designed to be played.

Hey, the game is working for me. I'm in love with the dice mechanic, the combat is 'bleh' but salvageable, a few things need a little fine-tuning... Except for Strife/Outburst that sticks out like a sore thumb. Like, I'm even fine with Giri/Ninjo (there is some potential lying around these two), and I don't think there is a single mechanic in the whole ruleset that gets me so confused and idealess than Strife/Outburst. And that shouldn't be a coincidence.

22 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Hey, the game is working for me. I'm in love with the dice mechanic, the combat is 'bleh' but salvageable, a few things need a little fine-tuning... Except for Strife/Outburst that sticks out like a sore thumb. Like, I'm even fine with Giri/Ninjo (there is some potential lying around these two), and I don't think there is a single mechanic in the whole ruleset that gets me so confused and idealess than Strife/Outburst. And that shouldn't be a coincidence.

What is so confusing and idealess about characters stressing out?

1 minute ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

What is so confusing and idealess about characters stressing out?

The mechanic doesn't fit together. For a generic mechanic to measure "mental damage", it is far too specific with its workings and especially its outcome. For a specific mechanic to measure "samurai drama" it is at odds with the otherwise generic system. Not only that, but when it is all said and done, it actually makes a pretty poor job at doing what it was intended to do: for a core mechanic, it is way too easy to ignore, for a key mechanic, it is way too unsure about what exactly it wants to accomplish, for a simple helping hand for roleplaying it is way too forced into a role of core/key mechanic. There is nothing it gets right, and I have to deal with it with literally every roll I make. That's as confusing for me as it gets. And I have no idea whatsoever how to fix it other than completely revamping it.

The problem is, it isn't the characters "stressing out," lol. It's just a bunch of ambiguous agitations that could be happy, or sad, or angry or excited, or joyful, and they do nothing until the character finally spazzes out and reacts in the last way they got agitated. I'm Happy, Happier, Some Sad, A Little Angry, Excited, Rage, OMG WHOOP FOR JOY!" That's not really how any real person stresses out. Then you add up the fact that the mechanic is fairly toothless for some characters and murderous for others. And the fact that the most stoic characters in the game are going to be Matsu Commanders because they get the most strife-relevant abilities just kinda funny. He'll be able to more or less choose when to be affected by Strife (BECOME ENRAGED! GET COMBAT BUFF! STRIKING AS EARTH! RARR!) and even after he enrages, his school technique will allow him to bleed off the remaining Strife by hitting people, lol. Compared to the Doji Diplomat who is going to crack like an egg since her best possible Composure will be 8, and only if she foregoes having two starting stats at 3 and puts 1 point into Fire and 1 point into Earth, which then inevitably means she can't have Water 3 or even Void 2, which are the two best Strife-mitigating traits in the game. So she's got Composure 6 and Water 3, or Composure 8 and Water 2. Meanwhile, Matsu Marvin has Composure 10 and Water 3 pretty much by default, plus Way of the Lion. Hard as a rock.

So "confused and idealess" isn't "I don't understand how this mechanic works." It's "I don't think the designers understand how people work." Or really how their own mechanics work.

29 minutes ago, TheVeteranSergeant said:

The problem is, it isn't the characters "stressing out," lol. It's just a bunch of ambiguous agitations that could be happy, or sad, or angry or excited, or joyful, and they do nothing until the character finally spazzes out and reacts in the last way they got agitated. I'm Happy, Happier, Some Sad, A Little Angry, Excited, Rage, OMG WHOOP FOR JOY!" That's not really how any real person stresses out. Then you add up the fact that the mechanic is fairly toothless for some characters and murderous for others . And the fact that the most stoic characters in the game are going to be Matsu Commanders because they get the most strife-relevant abilities just kinda funny. He'll be able to more or less choose when to be affected by Strife (BECOME ENRAGED! GET COMBAT BUFF! STRIKING AS EARTH! RARR!) and even after he enrages, his school technique will allow him to bleed off the remaining Strife by hitting people, lol. Compared to the Doji Diplomat who is going to crack like an egg since her best possible Composure will be 8, and only if she foregoes having two starting stats at 3 and puts 1 point into Fire and 1 point into Earth, which then inevitably means she can't have Water 3 or even Void 2, which are the two best Strife-mitigating traits in the game. So she's got Composure 6 and Water 3, or Composure 8 and Water 2. Meanwhile, Matsu Marvin has Composure 10 and Water 3 pretty much by default, plus Way of the Lion. Hard as a rock.

So "confused and idealess" isn't "I don't understand how this mechanic works." It's "I don't think the designers understand how people work." Or really how their own mechanics work.

I would argue that this is very representative of how a person stresses out . When something goes wrong, the stress is added of having to make up for it. When something goes right the stress is added of keeping up with it, or turning it into something even bigger. Both of these add stress and frustration to a person. How a person manages stress is very important because you don't have a million different containers within you to hold these feelings. If I am frustrated at a video game, and I then go play a sport instead, the frustration from the video game is carried with me. Whether I am then successful or failing at sports my actions can be effected and the stress can continue to build. If sports is a particularly soothing exercise the stress may be mitigated, but only if sports is soothing.

I don't think the mechanics are sound enough - no. I agree that the stats don't add up quite right. I totally want to see the system fine tuned to be more usable. I don't think the core concept of gaining strife (stress) is problematic though.

5 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

I'm curious how my political hit points shall come to play when I'm trying to pry a door open or approaching a group of cute wild animals to pet them. Because it does, and I'm in no way obliged to start an Intrigue with a door or a bunch of animals. If you know what I mean.

Prying open a door shouldn't require a roll most of the time. But if you're going to roll, remember that all opp spends require GM approval.

The things I described are counter-balancing. If I'm stressed out (things that are making me angry, frustrated, sad, etc), I will do something to relieve stress (things that make me happy, excited, etc). The only way the stress carries with me is if I'm actually not getting over that stress because the other activity isn't actually helping me be happy, excited, etc. But the Strife mechanic is clearly delineating that I'm getting agitated by whatever it is I was doing. If it is something good, then the logical extrapolation is that I've added Strife that was "happy" in nature, and it is functionally identical to the Strife that I got because that High-Fire Scorpion said mean things to me in the last scene.

Regular people don't function this way: "When something goes right the stress is added of keeping up with it, or turning it into something even bigger." Or, at least, I don't, lol. I surf. If I have a really good wave, I'm not worried that I won't ride the next one as well. If I knock a project at work out of the park, I don't worry that my boss now has elevated expectations for me. On the flip side, it actually makes me feel better, since now I know I've demonstrated value and it makes me harder to replace. Fear of success is actually a sign of low-level mental illness or psychological trauma a lot of the time. Sometimes manifests in people with PTSD because the feeling of excitement stimulates them in ways uncomfortably close to the way whatever traumatized them did. And while there are countless Self-Help books for people afflicted that way, it's an exception in human behavior, not the rule. I'm the last guy who would be interested in the kinds of High-Heroic, Change The World campaigns. They bore me. If my Matsu Marvin character ended up as the Daimyo of the Matsu Family, I'd probably think it was stupid, lol. But I'm also not here to play Shosuro Successphobic. And even if I was, maybe let that be my choice, rather than the game's mechanic so we don't have an entire party full of emotional wrecks.

I mean, we could suggest that the Strife builds up in part represented as adrenaline, but I still don't really believe that "average" people run so hot and cold, let alone trained samurai. And I'd still have a problem with Matsu Marvin being the most level-headed guy in the room while Doji Doreen is a borderline spaz.

2 hours ago, tenchi2a said:

It was through the AEG writers working with the player base that the story is what it is today.

So the player base that you are tell this just isn't the game your looking for, are the ones who helped create it in the first place.

This isn't Star Wars, Warhammer, Etc. were the story was written by one person, this was a collaborative endeavor by AEG and the whole fan-base.

And that player base turned it into a pretty awful story. Getting it out of the hands of the players and AEG's utter mismanagement is the only reason I'm even looking at the system again.

Yes, FFG is creating a different feel than the samurai-skinned D&D clone that AEG made. They're putting a lot more weight on personal stories and internal conflicts. They've put some mechanical effects on that to bring out the flaws in characters (possibly too much, but that's a matter of tuning). Like it or not, I don't see that direction changing, and FFG's the one pulling the levers now. You can bank on nostalgia and how you were there first, but it's really irrelevant. This seems to be the game they're making - take it, leave it, house rule it. Those really are your only options.

58 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

The mechanic doesn't fit together. For a generic mechanic to measure "mental damage", it is far too specific with its workings and especially its outcome. For a specific mechanic to measure "samurai drama" it is at odds with the otherwise generic system. Not only that, but when it is all said and done, it actually makes a pretty poor job at doing what it was intended to do: for a core mechanic, it is way too easy to ignore, for a key mechanic, it is way too unsure about what exactly it wants to accomplish, for a simple helping hand for roleplaying it is way too forced into a role of core/key mechanic. There is nothing it gets right, and I have to deal with it with literally every roll I make. That's as confusing for me as it gets. And I have no idea whatsoever how to fix it other than completely revamping it.

You are overanalyzing things. It is simple and intuitive.

The more stressed a character gets the closer they get to breaking character and revealing who they really are and revealing who you really are at the wrong time is a bad thing in this genre.

24 minutes ago, TheVeteranSergeant said:

The problem is, it isn't the characters "stressing out," lol. It's just a bunch of ambiguous agitations that could be happy, or sad, or angry or excited, or joyful, and they do nothing until the character finally spazzes out and reacts in the last way they got agitated. I'm Happy, Happier, Some Sad, A Little Angry, Excited, Rage, OMG WHOOP FOR JOY!" That's not really how any real person stresses out.

Wrong. People stress out all the time like that. Heck, I've been the guy who stressed out so much they started laughing.

31 minutes ago, TheVeteranSergeant said:

Then you add up the fact that the mechanic is fairly toothless for some characters and murderous for others. And the fact that the most stoic characters in the game are going to be Matsu Commanders because they get the most strife-relevant abilities just kinda funny. He'll be able to more or less choose when to be affected by Strife (BECOME ENRAGED! GET COMBAT BUFF! STRIKING AS EARTH! RARR!) and even after he enrages, his school technique will allow him to bleed off the remaining Strife by hitting people, lol. Compared to the Doji Diplomat who is going to crack like an egg since her best possible Composure will be 8, and only if she foregoes having two starting stats at 3 and puts 1 point into Fire and 1 point into Earth, which then inevitably means she can't have Water 3 or even Void 2, which are the two best Strife-mitigating traits in the game. So she's got Composure 6 and Water 3, or Composure 8 and Water 2. Meanwhile, Matsu Marvin has Composure 10 and Water 3 pretty much by default, plus Way of the Lion. Hard as a rock.

This is more faults with School design than rather than Strife/Outbursts as a system. Way of the Lion's ability to bank and spend Strife as bonus successes in Skirmishes/Mass Battles when no other Rank one school ability anywhere close to the same power level that is the problem there. If Doji Diplomat's Rank 1 let them covert Strife into Bonus Successes during Investigations and Intrigues

I've been keeping silent about Strife, but on reflection, I'd like to lay this out as food for thought -- both for the people who adore the Strife mechanic, and those who loathe it. (And those who feel meh about it, too, if any such exist.)

My take is that I am 100% for the concept of Strife. For putting mechanical support behind the idea that the life of a samurai is difficult, that culture and ideology make near-impossible demands on them, and that from time to time they fail to live up to their own ideals and behave in ways that are not considered appropriate. I play with the sorts of people who will do that with their PCs whether there's a mechanic interacting with it or not, but not everybody does -- and besides, anything represented in the mechanics is going to feel more real, more built into the world, than something that remains pure fluff.

But I am 100% not a fan of how Strife is currently implemented.

Here's what I don't like about it:

* It's unpredictable. I have no idea, going into a situation, whether it will be a peaceful cakewalk or the most stressful thing my character has done all year.

* It's randomized and therefore disconnected from the story. I might nearly die in combat or be forced to make nice with my mortal enemy in public and skate through without turning a hair, while spotting tracks in the forest or remembering a detail of history causes me enormous anguish.

* It requires constant bookkeeping. It slows down roll resolution (would I rather fail or gain Strife? Take Strife for that extra success? etc) and means I'm constantly increasing and decreasing the total, a dozen times or more per session.

* It also requires me to remember a bunch of different rules governing Strife increase and reduction.

Note what is not on the list: the fact that my character might have an Outburst. (Whatever term you want to use for them.) I'm fine with that part, though I agree its presentation could use tweaking. I just don't want the whole thing to be driven by random chance, so that my character's mood is subject to the luck of the dice rather than what's happening in her life, and I don't want to devote that much of my brain to remembering how much Strife I have and what I can do with it and how I can decrease it. Because that's time and energy I'm not spending actually imagining my character's mental state in an organic fashion.

I would love the Strife mechanic if its rises and falls were much less frequent and tied, not to the dice, but to the concepts of the setting and what's happening in the plot. Strife goes up when you have to chose your giri over your ninjo. Strife goes up when two virtues of Bushido come into conflict and you have to choose how to prioritize them. Strife goes up when you nearly die. Strife goes up when a Disadvantage interferes with your life. And it goes down when you do things that bring you peace . . . which is stuff like meditation, tea ceremony, and so forth, but not when you luck into some OP on a roll in the correct stance and if you don't get those OP, well, too bad.

If the goal of the Strife mechanic is to emulate the drama of a samurai's life, that looks to me like a much better way of achieving that goal than a randomized minigame. But right now, the things I'm looking for are nothing more than a passing mention in the section on Strife, rather than the core of the concept.

I'm curious to know whether this approach appeals to anyone else: both the camp that likes the current setup, and the camp that does not.

@TheVeteranSergeant So your character might have a Passion of Surfing - and when simply surfing, not in a surf competition, you could just take a water approach of "having fun trying new things and doing whatever bro" to drop a LOT of stress quickly.

However - if you had a bad run at the arcade and instead of hitting the waves (your passion) you stopped by a Pottery Barn to try and paint something fun, but also couldn't paint a straight line this day... you might just break the pot and go home in a huff.

40 minutes ago, TheVeteranSergeant said:

The things I described are counter-balancing. If I'm stressed out (things that are making me angry, frustrated, sad, etc), I will do something to relieve stress (things that make me happy, excited, etc). The only way the stress carries with me is if I'm actually not getting over that stress because the other activity isn't actually helping me be happy, excited, etc. But the Strife mechanic is clearly delineating that I'm getting agitated by whatever it is I was doing. If it is something good, then the logical extrapolation is that I've added Strife that was "happy" in nature, and it is functionally identical to the Strife that I got because that High-Fire Scorpion said mean things to me in the last scene.

You may be indulging in your passion for armaments by polishing your sword (reducing 3 strife), but that doesn't mean that a burr on the blade and the polishing cloth tearing did make it harder (2 strife gained from the roll) and limited your net gain (net 1 strife removed).

7 minutes ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

You are overanalyzing things. It is simple and intuitive.

The more stressed a character gets the closer they get to breaking character and revealing who they really are and revealing who you really are at the wrong time is a bad thing in this genre.

Well, it does try to be simple and intuitive for something that is very complex and highly counter-intuitive, that's part of the problem.

Otherwise, I'm with Kinzen on this one. That's some good argument right there, I'm loving it. The only difference is that I'm not a fan of the concept either, but that's just my personal taste talking.

Addendum: and in trying to think about what Strife represents and how it maps to real-life experiences . . .

Let's say I'm cooking dinner. Mechanically, I make a Cooking roll and discover that oops, I can only succeed if I take Strife. So my choices are: get upset in some fashion, or let dinner burn (i.e. fail the roll).

What the heck is that representing in terms of my actual lived experience? Success is upsetting, but failure isn't? That doesn't make sense. Realistically, what would happen is one of the following:

1) Cooking dinner goes fine. Success, no real stress.

2) Cooking dinner is a disaster. Failure and stress.

3) Cooking dinner starts to go wrong. Do I give up, or do I try to salvage it? I decide to salvage it. The process is difficult and stressful in its own way and I'm not entirely satisfied with the result, but at least we have something edible.

The mental disconnect I have here is that when you roll and get successes-with-Strife, that isn't actually representing Scenario 3. I can try to imagine it that way -- that the success results I'm looking at actually represent me teet ering on the brink of failure, with a chance to salvage the meal if I go all-out -- but that's not the natural interpretation, because they're successes . Scenario 3 would best be represented by a different mechanic. One where you fail a roll . . . and then can choose to take on Strife in order to turn that failure into a success.

Mind you, balancing that kind of approach would be difficult. If you can easily shed the Strife you took, then it becomes an instant "never fail a roll" mechanic. But it would sell me much more persuasively on the concept of "what price are you willing to pay for victory" than the current "booby-trapped success" model.

On Strife:

First (because it seems to matter which side anyone's on) I don't mind the system. I've played a lot of Exalted, so the idea of the Outbursts/Limit Breaks is pretty comfortable.

On the accumulation of points: I look at it far more abstractly. Strife is something which builds up internally all the time . My stress over work is building up whether I'm at work or not, because I'm thinking about it constantly. Because RPG's need mechanical systems to control these things, they tie it to the dice. This makes the dice system more interesting, adding an element of "What do I keep?" to the R&K system that was absent in previous incarnations. So when you pick up strife from a roll, I don't see it as being (entirely) directly related to whatever your doing at that moment. It's a proxy for the broader segment of time you're in, as the stresses and contradictions of your world get to you.

Does it make for a perfect 1:1 mechanical parallel? Nope. But I think the end result works if you're willing to let it.

5 minutes ago, Buhallin said:

On the accumulation of points: I look at it far more abstractly. Strife is something which builds up internally all the time . My stress over work is building up whether I'm at work or not, because I'm thinking about it constantly. Because RPG's need mechanical systems to control these things, they tie it to the dice. This makes the dice system more interesting, adding an element of "What do I keep?" to the R&K system that was absent in previous incarnations. So when you pick up strife from a roll, I don't see it as being (entirely) directly related to whatever your doing at that moment. It's a proxy for the broader segment of time you're in, as the stresses and contradictions of your world get to you.

Does it make for a perfect 1:1 mechanical parallel? Nope. But I think the end result works if you're willing to let it.

I don't need the dice system to be interesting, personally. I need it to function as invisibly as possible, so it doesn't disrupt gameplay.

And for me, "willing to let it work" means working overtime to invent reasons why that specific moment is the one that put my character over the edge, while (to borrow AtoMaki's phrase in another thread) watching my whole family be eaten by an oni isn't a big deal. That isn't what I want to be spending my creative energy on.

4 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

1) Cooking dinner goes fine. Success, no real stress.

2) Cooking dinner is a disaster. Failure and stress.

3) Cooking dinner starts to go wrong. Do I give up, or do I try to salvage it? I decide to salvage it. The process is difficult and stressful in its own way and I'm not entirely satisfied with the result, but at least we have something edible.

4) Cooking dinner goes fine. A short call from work interrupted it.

3 minutes ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

4) Cooking dinner goes fine. A short call from work interrupted it.

That's the scene shifting. You are getting stressed from answering the call (roll Fitness to pick up the phone!), not from cooking the dinner. The two actions are not related even if one interrupts the other.

Note that I wouldn't mind if the Strife mechanic had more of this, being more about scene shifts rather than random spikes of emotions.

18 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

Addendum: and in trying to think about what Strife represents and how it maps to real-life experiences . . .

Let's say I'm cooking dinner. Mechanically, I make a Cooking roll and discover that oops, I can only succeed if I take Strife. So my choices are: get upset in some fashion, or let dinner burn (i.e. fail the roll).

What the heck is that representing in terms of my actual lived experience? Success is upsetting, but failure isn't? That doesn't make sense. Realistically, what would happen is one of the following:

1) Cooking dinner goes fine. Success, no real stress.

2) Cooking dinner is a disaster. Failure and stress.

3) Cooking dinner starts to go wrong. Do I give up, or do I try to salvage it? I decide to salvage it. The process is difficult and stressful in its own way and I'm not entirely satisfied with the result, but at least we have something edible.

The mental disconnect I have here is that when you roll and get successes-with-Strife, that isn't actually representing Scenario 3. I can try to imagine it that way -- that the success results I'm looking at actually represent me teet ering on the brink of failure, with a chance to salvage the meal if I go all-out -- but that's not the natural interpretation, because they're successes . Scenario 3 would best be represented by a different mechanic. One where you fail a roll . . . and then can choose to take on Strife in order to turn that failure into a success.

Mind you, balancing that kind of approach would be difficult. If you can easily shed the Strife you took, then it becomes an instant "never fail a roll" mechanic. But it would sell me much more persuasively on the concept of "what price are you willing to pay for victory" than the current "booby-trapped success" model.

I don't quite follow on this. It feels like you are defaulting to only 'bad' reactions to things where outbursts are socially bad but not inherently from bad feelings or reactions.

So in your example after making the cooking roll and taking the strife you have caused yourself an outburst. Well you were obviously on the brink of an outburst or scored a massive amount of successes + strife to trigger one. In the former you may be so elated that something finally went right today that you let out a little woop of excitement. In the latter your outburst might be a celebratory 'in your face wok!'. either of which gains you some odd looks by your household/guests/team members.

Strife isn't just stress the way I see things. It is more of a build of emotion, good and bad. When you finally can't keep it all bottled up you let a little of that emotion slip, in good ways and bad depending on the scene and situation.

1 minute ago, AtoMaki said:

That's the scene shifting. You are getting stressed from answering the call (roll Fitness to pick up the phone!), not from cooking the dinner. The two actions are not related even if one interrupts the other.

Exactly. You're introducing something that is completely unrelated to the check I'm making, in order to explain why the check had the result it did. I don't want to have to do that once, much less constantly.

2 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

And for me, "willing to let it work" means working overtime to invent reasons why that specific moment is the one that put my character over the edge, while (to borrow AtoMaki's phrase in another thread) watching my whole family be eaten by an oni isn't a big deal. That isn't what I want to be spending my creative energy on.

True story: We've got a small dog that likes to attack our vacuum cleaner. Typically, it's cute but a little annoying. One time, my wife just lost it and started chasing the dog around the house with the vacuum. I still mess with her over it to this day.

Why did she lose it right then? What made that one moment biting the front of the vacuum the one that put her over the edge? The answer is that it doesn't matter . At no point in my many retellings of that hilarious moment of losing it has anyone stopped and asked me "But why did that put her over the edge? Why didn't she lose it at work?"

If you're trying to invent reasons why it happened right then, IMHO you're trying to over-control it. People lose it at random times for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with what they're doing at any specific given moment.

One way to look at things is that the entire culture is based on perfectionism. If something goes wrong, it causes stress. Composure is very important. A samurai is not supposed to show any cracks in public. It would be frowned upon to even show sorrow or anger if your son fell in battle.

You can't look at this from a modern western mentality.