Greetings L5R Open Beta Testers!

Here is the thread for this week's focus topic, Chapter 1: Playing the Game . Use this thread to share your thoughts on the core mechanics of the game. We're especially interested in hearing where people are tripping up or might be confused, what aspects people are enjoying (and aren't), and how things are going at the table.

Some questions to consider based on your time at the table:

• How much strife are characters accruing in a given session?

• How common are outbursts?

• How often are characters succeeding or failing on their checks?

• How frequently characters are spending and acquiring Void points?

• How often are the GM and players struggling to find the right approach (skill and ring) for checks?

One thing to note: just because Chapter 1 is this week's focus topic doesn't mean we can't discuss it and make revisions in later weeks—it's just where we'd like to center the discussion in a general sense. If a fundamental problem with dice probabilities is revealed while testing conflicts, for instance, we can always come back to this topic.

And, as one final reminder: please keep the discussion civil. We know people are really excited about L5R , and want it to be the best it can be (and we do, too!). Try to view your fellow testers as collaborators rather than adversaries. While there will unquestionably be many differences of opinion, strive to keep in mind that there are people behind the posts you see, and the more we can learn from each other, the better this will be!

So, discuss away!

Okay, I'm firing away. So far, I have roughly one-and-a-half session worth of playtime in the game (~15 hours), and I'm watching a session as I write this very post.

Quote

How much strife are characters accruing in a given session?

Depends on the character in question. My Earth 3/Water 3 character can eat Strife for breakfast, so she got a lot... and burnt away all of them. Until they learn the system, the other characters were more leery with Strife, but after getting a good hold on how Opportunities/Assistance works, everyone and their kitten was accruing Strife like it was nothing. However, I can't remember if any character ended any scene with more than 5 Strife. Easy to come, easy to go away, so to speak. Minding Strife was bothersome tho - it caused a lot more stress on the players than the characters.

We aren't making many checks though, because as we found out the Advantages/Disadvantages have some strange interactions with the "When to Make a Check?" section. And Conflicts tend to end quickly, so not many checks happening there either.

Quote

How common are outbursts?

We are yet to have a PC Outburst. NPC Outbursts are fairly common though because one of the characters is exploiting the Strife-Nuking Fire Opportunity for Assessment Checks. Making wolves flee with his character's intense stare and all that.

Quote

How often are characters succeeding or failing on their checks?

Characters are mostly succeeding, but boy we have an absolute blast with the dice mechanic! Like, our characters aren't necessarily succeeding in a way that they beat the TN, but they succeed by making the narrative grow and do other similarly cool stuff with Opportunities. We had at least once a PC playing the long game, keeping Opportunities and voluntarily failing checks to build up an advantageous narrative environment, then nuke her opponent with a single blow. That was awesome.

Quote

How frequently characters are spending and acquiring Void points?

Our GM likes to conceal the TN, so the Void Point economy of our characters is off the charts. Never acquired a Void Point through Anxiety tho.

Quote

How often are the GM and players struggling to find the right approach (skill and ring) for checks?

We had, like, one or two arguments at the beginning. None after that. We like the system, it is flowing really well once everyone at the table gets used to it.

41 minutes ago, FFG Max Brooke said:

How much strife are characters accruing in a given session?

Outside of combat, not much except where an anxiety is involved (because in A Ronin's Path, a player only tends to need to do 2-3 checks in a scene), and because mitigating strife is often something you can easily spend opportunity on.

In conflict....substantially more, because you're generally pushing a check every round, and when swords are out, failure is not an option and bonus successes (either because you took a success/strife result or are in fire stance) are much more important because they directly translate to more damage.

Quote

How common are outbursts?

We've had three conflicts, and had outbursts in two of them.

Quote

How often are characters succeeding or failing on their checks?

To date, we've done 3 bits of gameplay:

• A zero XP Hida Defender versus a Goblin Chieftain and a trio of minion Goblins. He hit most of the time (and with an Otsuchi it was basically squish ), but did miss at least a couple of swings.
• A zero XP Bayushi Infiltrator sneaking into a village. He pretty much aced the observing, sneaking and intrigue with no problem, but missed the TN2 'assassination shot' despite a void point and ended up taking 3 arrows to kill the guy.
• The first part of A ronin's path, where they passed about half the investigation checks at the inn, and the Hida passed his social checks with Chiaki only due to a very lucky chained explosive success, for about a 70% overall success on checks so far (Bluntness and Irrepressible Fliration is an awkward combination because not only does your character feel compelled to flirt but they're very bad at it ).

51 minutes ago, FFG Max Brooke said:

How frequently characters are spending and acquiring Void points?

• So far, I've only seen one spent and one 'extra' acquired (by the discord wheel). The Hida nearly had an outburst trying to talk to chiaki, though, which would have triggered his anxiety.

53 minutes ago, FFG Max Brooke said:

How often are the GM and players struggling to find the right approach (skill and ring) for checks?

• So far it's not been a problem. A Ronin's path is pre-scripted but the spur-of-the-moment "sneak into a village and kill the corrupt headman" didn't feel too hard to assign approaches to checks on (again, it was maybe half a dozen checks total outside of the conflict scenes)

55 minutes ago, FFG Max Brooke said:

And, as one final reminder: please keep the discussion civil.

[Suffers Inappropriate Remark Outburst]

I still really feel as though I'm missing / forgetting / not understanding something when I try to play or roll or anything.
At the risk of sounding like a moron, is there any way you guys can put out a video or flowchart or something of how the game is supposed to be played smoothly? We (my group and I) simply can't wrap our heads around this system - aside from going with "roleplay-wise stances and rings and ring rolls don't really matter, just use your best one."
There seems to be a LOT to keep track of moment by moment and it stacks with every roll. Having an example of what to actually think about when running or playing the game would be super helpful - and knowing what to let go of would be even more valuable. As it stands we keep getting so bogged down in minutia that we stop playing.

8 hours ago, FFG Max Brooke said:

• How much strife are characters accruing in a given session?

Hard to say. You can gather a lot but get rid of a bunch just as easily. Apparently assuming the Water Stance in combat is as relaxing as a trip to the day spa. Also, if your friend has just won a duel do them a favor and get them some tea because they are STRESSING THE **** OUT immediately afterwords.

8 hours ago, FFG Max Brooke said:

• How common are outbursts?

3 characters in my group. In 2 sessions we've had only 1 outburst. I almost had one after a clash but it wouldn't have mattered since i was in a mass combat.

8 hours ago, FFG Max Brooke said:

• How often are characters succeeding or failing on their checks?

VERY few checks have been missed. Assisting each other as much as possible is a big help. Even using rings that are not our best with skills we have little-to-no training in does not seem to slow us down.

8 hours ago, FFG Max Brooke said:

• How frequently characters are spending and acquiring Void points?

We've spent very few and had the oppertunity to gain even less.

8 hours ago, FFG Max Brooke said:

• How often are the GM and players struggling to find the right approach (skill and ring) for checks?

50/50. For the most part we get the thematic nature of the rings and which skills generally are appropriate for a situation. But there are times when what we are trying to do does not seem to fall neatly into any given skill . Also, we have defaulted to having the players announce their ring choice choice and the GM letting us know if our approach is harder or easier than normal.

10 hours ago, FFG Max Brooke said:

How much strife are characters accruing in a given session

Really depended, one player gained strife on every single roll, one player gained some strife but not enough to really matter.

10 hours ago, FFG Max Brooke said:

How common are outbursts?

About every scene we had at least one out burst (yes this is even with mitigation being used)

10 hours ago, FFG Max Brooke said:

How often are characters succeeding or failing on their checks

Again depended, the player that was constantly rolling strife started to fail a lot because they were keeping dice that contained no strife so they could avoid an outburst wich caused them to select dice with no successes. Most other players had not issue at all, they seemed to succeed more often than not.

10 hours ago, FFG Max Brooke said:

How frequently characters are spending and acquiring Void points

Not very as they couldn't generate enough void to use it effectively. Only 1 player was actually aver able to gain a void.

10 hours ago, FFG Max Brooke said:

How often are the GM and players struggling to find the right approach (skill and ring) for checks

Outside of combat it wasn't very intuitive, partly from being able to accurately describe how the character was performing the task with the ring, but also determining what actually constituted a more proper approach. In combat it wasn't quite that bad as the GM is very experienced in east Asian martial arts so applying the element philosophy was quite smooth.

I'm GMing for 2 groups (one is 4 person group, one is 2 person group) and I played 1-on-1 oneshot. All characters started built for 24 xp.

HOW MUCH STRIFE

A lot...but it's manageable. The trend is that skilled characters keep less strife due to Skill Dice having better results and having bigger selection of possible results.

HOW COMMON ARE OUTBURSTS

Not a single Outburst happened to our player characters. Players used Water and Earth Opportunities (sometimes even using the 2 : 1 conversion if they weren't using correct ring ATM) to keep themselves in check. In the game where I was a solo player, I also used Earth Opportunities aggressively to calm down NPCs before they would suffer an outburst.

SUCCESS RATE

Players never feel like they fail, because even when they don't get enough successes, they can use rolled Opportunities into something cool, making them very happy. Ring 3 Skill 1 seems be enough to tackle most TN 2 TN 3 challenges; Ring 4 Skill 1 was enough to do TN 4 challenges. In the Solo game I played, I actually had 100% success rate on rolls.*

*Mostly due to a combination of using proper Social Skill for the Status involved, using Water opportunity to decrease future Social Check TN, and using Void Opportunity to decrease next [pick ring] TN.

FREQUENCY OF THE VOID

In groups I GMed? Three Void Points were regenerated - two to hidden TN, and one to a Twist of Fate. One Void Point was used to Parry, one was used to make a crit happen.

In the game I played? I kept my Void tank full (and that's 4 Void) for most of the game, and I've spent 4 Void points during the session overall. 1 Void Point was gained through hidden TN, 1 from Twist of Fate, but majority of my Void Production was inverting my Advantages into Anxieties.

Not a single Void Point was created through the Outburst or reroll-to-fail.

APPROACHING THE APPROACH

We had no problem with approaches. They are super intuitive.

Reposting some thoughts I've mentioned elsewhere:

Strife

As regards Strife, I have found that it feels like it punishes involvement, in the sense that the more rolls you make you the more you get (while Opportunity can reduce it, this is at a far lesser rate to its increase). This is a psychological hurdle however and it may be that the solution is not a mechanical one, perhaps it's even my fault for worrying about Outburst (I do note in the email it suggests rolling with it and letting the Outburst happen, which perhaps I ought to).

I do think that there should be some revisions to Strife: perhaps you gain far less during relaxed situations where you are more able to keep control and are not facing pressures such as time/danger etc. simulating that you move at a comfortable pace and find it easier to keep your poise. This would mean that you are only in real danger of gaining appreciable strife is in dangerous situations, which generally means that a) action is unavoidable and thus you are not being punished for being proactive, rather being psychologically damaged due to circumstance and b) you are less likely to feel aggrieved receiving it as danger in games generally means you take damage.

I also wonder whether, to avoid outbursts in every scene, but to still keep a sense creeping tension gnawing at your self control, whether there should be a second track, mechanically having a Temporary and Permanent Strife. Temporary would operate much like Strife does now, but with outbursts being more minor and therefore less of a concern and feeling of loss of control. However for every X temporary Strife gained you get 1 permanent Strife. This builds up slowly but inevitably as eventually even the most disciplined breaks.

Just a couple of thoughts and potential solutions. Ultimately it seems to be balanced well enough, I just fear that in fun scenes with no real danger where you wish to participate, you may feel left out due to unlucky rolls or previously acquired Strife. I worry it will become a barrier to fun and not the vehicle to drama it is intended (this is based on 1 session play however).

Approaches

I was very pleased to see your question on page three about how approaches should be presented. I strongly feel that due to the thematically distinct feeling of the rings, and their importance in dice rolls, they should be the first point of contact and therefore approaches should be organised by ring. Skills are useful as a quick reference, a way to swiftly check the axis for the most likely approach, however where skill approaches don't suit, I found myself always looking at approaches in other skill sections based on their ring. Therefore putting approaches under ring for me makes sense as I know that if I want to be creative/inventive I am looking somewhere in Fire. Or if I am being rational and reasoning I am looking in Earth.

Ring Approaches should be listed as they are now: by skill.

I answered this question the other way in the survey, but I realize now they should stay as they are. It really makes it feel like an expanded skill list and I love it ? ???

(It will also encourage players to use their weak rings more.)

#iwaswrong

EDIT: To the above poster, I did not read your post before I posted this. Please do not read it as a response. Have a nice day

You can edit your answer in the survey, I think. They are keyed to google accounts and there is a button "edit my answers" after you re-enter it.

2 hours ago, Kakita Shijin said:

Ring Approaches should be listed as they are now: by skill.

I answered this question the other way in the survey, but I realize now they should stay as they are. It really makes it feel like an expanded skill list and I love it ? ???

Thing is its not an expanded skill list, as you use approaches that are not in skill group to make rolls. Why, when you are not restricted to skill approaches do you group them as skill approaches? In the Ronin's Path adventure, there are many occasions when you roll approaches outside of the skill group (Survival skill with non trade approaches) and therefore I don't see why they want to convey the implication that this is undesirable.

On 10/18/2017 at 10:12 AM, FFG Max Brooke said:

• How much strife are characters accruing in a given session?

Averaging 1 per roll with it swinging between 0 to 4 on a roll (thanks mostly to a disadvanatage)

On 10/18/2017 at 10:12 AM, FFG Max Brooke said:

• How common are outbursts?

We had none the first few times as everyone was actively avoiding them, then found they are easily gamed power-ups --especially in combat. Note this was us trying to break things as you do in a beta.

On 10/18/2017 at 10:12 AM, FFG Max Brooke said:

• How often are characters succeeding or failing on their checks?

Mostly succeeding with more failures when actively trying to mitigate strife.

Playing the characters as characters and not trying to mechanically optimize every game choice, it was about 60-70% success rate. It could be gamed for near 100% but honestly wasn't worth the effort.

On 10/18/2017 at 10:12 AM, FFG Max Brooke said:

• How frequently characters are spending and acquiring Void points?

One person spent some void on a technique. No regaining of void points as didn't bother to do story gymnastics or game things to try and get them back.

On 10/18/2017 at 10:12 AM, FFG Max Brooke said:

• How often are the GM and players struggling to find the right approach (skill and ring) for checks?

Not struggling, but it occasionally felt like we were bsing our way through skill and ring choices. Partly due to the way the rules ask you to make a check.

Scenario: You want to find the jar of cookies in the kitchen
Way the rules say to resolve this:
Declare you want to find the cookies
Decide on skill group. So in this case the you and GM have to decide of this is going to be considered learning info (scholar) or getting a resource (trade)
IF we decide on learning information, we have to choose between Culture ( where does one normally hide cookies) or Sentiment (where would this person hide the cookies)
IF we decide on getting a resource, we have to choose between Commerce ( where is best to store cookies) or Skulduggery (where would be a good place to hide something)
Now you decide how you're attempting to find the cookies and describe it.
Then justify using any (dis)advantages.

This method puts the mechanics first and your character's action's second. Your method is having the story support the mechanics instead of the mechanics support the story. It would be better to have the player state what their goal is and how they are trying to achieve it, then choose the ring and skill that best fits based on that description. Their actions should decide the ring and skill, not the ring and skill deciding the actions.

The more the game pushes the mechanics front and center, the more players and GMs focus on the mechanics than the story.
it seems like the skill first approach the game is using exists to cover for the fact that skill choices are not always readily apparent or are really lacking and you have to go through some mental gymnastics to make a skill (any skill) fit the situation.

Might want to make sure to mention in this section that if no skill fits or you don't have ranks in the appropriate skill to just roll your ring.

Not sure approaches should be tied to skill groups. Feels a little limiting.

On 10/18/2017 at 10:12 AM, FFG Max Brooke said:

what aspects people are enjoying (and aren't)

The biggest killer of fun at the table has been strife. The concept is great. The execution is, in my group's opinion, an utter failure.

This mechanic isn't working. Everything you say you want strife to do; it doesn't.

The fact that you can gain more strife trying to arrange flowers than letting your father's killer go free is a problem with the game mechanics.

The mechanic quickly becomes a mini-game of trying to keep strife low or manage it to use an outburst like a power up. Either way , strife is more bookkeeping than a tool to inform roleplay.

It also makes players feel like they are being punished for succeeding.

The mechanics requires a certain level of trust between players and gm and the module writer. If you already have that level of trust at your table, then you probably don't need the mechanic to inform your roleplaying.

Strife needs to be de-coupled from the dice and tied to the actions/choices of the characters.

The idea that pushing yourself requires emotional investment is great. Tying that to the dice themselves isn't. It would be better having strife be something you voluntarily take on to add successes or opportunities to a roll. For instance take on 3 strife per resource gained, limited by when reach an outburst then done using strife like this for the rest of the scene. Dice would need some tweaking. This would also help make the strife that occurs outside rolling have more impact.

For outbursts, remove all the various mechanics for the different types of outbursts. It is needless clutter. What exactly should happen needs to revisited once there is a better direction for strife in the game. Would be best to have it give a single benefit across all outbursts so it is the display and rp elements that shine more so than some mechanic to be exploited.

Advantages:

A couple of players thought that it would be a good idea to streamline the advantages. Basically for each advantage you choose to either re-roll or remove strife. Not this thing where some do one and some do the other. Same with disadvantages. Each should allow the option to reroll or add strife as fits the situation. We all would NOT have void points tied to the disadvantages. Also get rid of the categories, more clutter the game doesn't need.

2 hours ago, Bazakahuna said:

Thing is its not an expanded skill list, as you use approaches that are not in skill group to make rolls. Why, when you are not restricted to skill approaches do you group them as skill approaches? In the Ronin's Path adventure, there are many occasions when you roll approaches outside of the skill group (Survival skill with non trade approaches) and therefore I don't see why they want to convey the implication that this is undesirable.

It may be that I don't fully understand how Approaches work (or I might change my mind again). My experience GMing Fate Accelerated makes me wary of having players look at stats to determine approaches. It should be the other way around.

"This is how I want to do it ... oh look at that, my stat is low ... here goes nothin' ?"

I'm thinking if approaches are listed by ring (since that will remind players of their stats) it will make the game less about story and more about winning.

We have run about 7-10 sessions. Combat is a little clunky due to choosing between strife or failure, but it works for the most part.

I'd say we average 2 to 3 outbursts per session. Most outbursts are due to social intrigue and combat, which is where I think it should be.

Void is way too difficult to recover. We have a tattooed monk who struggles a lot with regaining void for his kihos.

Our players enjoy the strife mechanic far and beyond the rest. It's pretty much the only system that is designed for that purpose, and while the other systems work, without strife, we would use a different system where combat works far better.

Strife could use some refinement, but it's the glowing jewel of this edition and system, without which, it would just be a subpar system with a great setting.

5 hours ago, jmoschner said:

The biggest killer of fun at the table has been strife. The concept is great. The execution is, in my group's opinion, an utter failure.

This mechanic isn't working. Everything you say you want strife to do; it doesn't.

The fact that you can gain more strife trying to arrange flowers than letting your father's killer go free is a problem with the game mechanics.

The mechanic quickly becomes a mini-game of trying to keep strife low or manage it to use an outburst like a power up. Either way , strife is more bookkeeping than a tool to inform roleplay.

It also makes players feel like they are being punished for succeeding.

The mechanics requires a certain level of trust between players and gm and the module writer. If you already have that level of trust at your table, then you probably don't need the mechanic to inform your roleplaying.

Strife needs to be de-coupled from the dice and tied to the actions/choices of the characters.

The idea that pushing yourself requires emotional investment is great. Tying that to the dice themselves isn't. It would be better having strife be something you voluntarily take on to add successes or opportunities to a roll. For instance take on 3 strife per resource gained, limited by when reach an outburst then done using strife like this for the rest of the scene. Dice would need some tweaking. This would also help make the strife that occurs outside rolling have more impact.

You don't have to keep dice equal to your Ring. Your last request, that you voluntarily take Strife to add Successes and Opportunities is literally how the game works. I roll to make a barbed comeback to another courtier, and the GM says TN 3. I've got 2 Successes, a blank, and a Success with Strife result, and I get to keep 3. Now I can keep the 2 plain Successes and buy the remaining with a point of Strife, but if I don't want the Strife, I can choose to fail by keeping the 2 Successes by themselves or even no dice at all. Because you're not required to keep any dice, you're quite often presented with failing calmly or doing great at a cost.

The useful distinction between the system as-is and your suggestion is that the Strife being on the dice means that players can't game the system and succeed 100% of the time, right up until they outburst.

45 minutes ago, MuttonchopMac said:

Your last request, that you voluntarily take Strife to add Successes and Opportunities is literally how the game works.

That is how it is supposed to work. In practice in my group’s experience the mechanic did not play out that way.

Yes players can choose to fail, and we did when appropriate. We found the way it plays out to not be enjoyable. The solution shouldn’t be between failing or having to play an accounting game.

The strife mechanic is already easy to game and creates boring needless bookwork.

As a tool to inform role play it was a failure for our group.

8 minutes ago, jmoschner said:

That is how it is supposed to work. In practice in my group’s experience the mechanic did not play out that way.

Yes players can choose to fail, and we did when appropriate. We found the way it plays out to not be enjoyable. The solution shouldn’t be between failing or having to play an accounting game.

The strife mechanic is already easy to game and creates boring needless bookwork.

As a tool to inform role play it was a failure for our group.

What would you suggest to tweak it to better fit how your sessions went?

Just now, Darksyde said:

What would you suggest to tweak it to better fit how your sessions went?

I would say decoupling strife from the dice is the first step.

Then looking to find ways based around the choices of the characters Not the players that earn strife.

Whether that is taking strife for an extra die or an opportunity or what have you, that would take more play time and development.

Look for ways to bring more of the role play situations to the foreground that generate strife.

7 minutes ago, jmoschner said:

I would say decoupling strife from the dice is the first step.

Then looking to find ways based around the choices of the characters Not the players that earn strife.

Whether that is taking strife for an extra die or an opportunity or what have you, that would take more play time and development.

Look for ways to bring more of the role play situations to the foreground that generate strife.

So working strife more like destiny in SW. Players buy strife for dice or bonuses etc and either accrue too much or the gm can 'spend' them for stuff?

Assuming changing the dice is not an option what would you recommend?

8 minutes ago, Darksyde said:

So working strife more like destiny in SW. Players buy strife for dice or bonuses etc and either accrue too much or the gm can 'spend' them for stuff?

Assuming changing the dice is not an option what would you recommend?

That is one direction to take it. Would really like to see the main source of strife things like having to choose between saving the puppy or the kitten.

If cant change the dice would look at having the symbols work more like narrative opportunity for the gm and then turn the strife concept into something that functions like honor or glory where you have a rating that represents how composed the character is and has advantages and disadvantages similar to honor and glory.

36 minutes ago, jmoschner said:

If cant change the dice would look at having the symbols work more like narrative opportunity for the gm and then turn the strife concept into something that functions like honor or glory where you have a rating that represents how composed the character is and has advantages and disadvantages similar to honor and glory.

That does sound far off from we currently have just on a larger scale. Do you think something as simple as upping Composure would help out? So say make it x3 or x4 instead of x2?

I still need to dive in to some of the school stuff deeper as I know there is ways of 'spending' strife that might alter this idea but you could always up the cost to compensate so the combat purpose of strife doesn't deviate hugely but outbursts (or what ever one prefers to call it) happen less frequently and/or are easier to manage.

I have seen games in the past with built in optional rules and it feels more and more like it could come in hand for the strife mechanic. I understand people feeling like it gets in the way of RP and would rather it were something the gm handed out when they felt it appropriate but from a beginner stand point, either role playing entirely or first time GMing having a solid mechanic is a huge help. I would have loved something like this for some of my first goes as a GM. So it seems it might be helpful for an advanced (for lack of a better term) strife system that eased up on things and give more control over to the GM as well. Grey side bar or appendix type stuff. Do you think that would be helpful or just a waste of word count?

3 hours ago, Darksyde said:

What would you suggest to tweak it to better fit how your sessions went?

I'd suggest it needs to work something like Insanity does in Call of Cthulhu. I don't know exactly how that looks quite yet because I need to revisit CoC and think about it, but I know what it looks like now is not good. Strife plays like it only affects non-optimized low-Rank characters. Well-optimized and high-rank characters don't really care. It's little more than an annoyance, or a way to Become Enraged in combat. Heck, the Lion even have an ability that lets them bleed off the other half. A Lion Bushi could max out his Strife to get the Enraged buff, use Earth Stance to ignore the criticals he's now more vulnerable to, then use Way of the Lion to bleed the rest of the Strife off completely. The Lion Bushi can potentially finish the combat with zero Strife after going berzerk a few minutes earlier, lol.

If we have to keep the dice (and I'm not a huge fan of such narrowy-fixed probabilities so I wouldn't miss them if they went away), maybe create a system that accounts for the accrual of Strife and then work out a larger cap for a slow-build, slow-relief system, with penalties for "Composure Checks" (perhaps with Composure's derivation re-worked) the higher your total is. This would represent long-term mental/emotional struggles. Say you've gotten 20 Strife, meaning you've got some long-term psychological stress you're dealing with, and now you take a 1k1 penalty on Composure-related (whatever that ends up meaning) rolls. This makes Compsure similar to the old Willpower or Honor checks for resisting short term aggravations and provocations.

So you take a trip to the geisha, or you spend some time at the theater, compose a bunch of haikus, smoke some opium, cheat on your spouse; whatever floats your character's atakebune. I'm sure we can come up with some realistic ways to relieve stress. Could even come with potential Honor and Glory repercussions if you take easier.dishonorable ways of doing it,

This makes it a roleplaying aid. You know your character is weary and getting broken down, and you can roleplay them that way. And you don't have to do such short-term math all the time.

6 minutes ago, TheVeteranSergeant said:

I'd suggest it needs to work something like Insanity does in Call of Cthulhu. I don't know exactly how that looks quite yet because I need to revisit CoC and think about it, but I know what it looks like now is not good. Strife plays like it only affects non-optimized low-Rank characters. Well-optimized and high-rank characters don't really care. It's little more than an annoyance, or a way to Become Enraged in combat. Heck, the Lion even have an ability that lets them bleed off the other half. A Lion Bushi could max out his Strife to get the Enraged buff, use Earth Stance to ignore the criticals he's now more vulnerable to, then use Way of the Lion to bleed the rest of the Strife off completely. The Lion Bushi can potentially finish the combat with zero Strife after going berzerk a few minutes earlier, lol.

If we have to keep the dice (and I'm not a huge fan of such narrowy-fixed probabilities so I wouldn't miss them if they went away), maybe create a system that accounts for the accrual of Strife and then work out a larger cap for a slow-build, slow-relief system, with penalties for "Composure Checks" (perhaps with Composure's derivation re-worked) the higher your total is. This would represent long-term mental/emotional struggles. Say you've gotten 20 Strife, meaning you've got some long-term psychological stress you're dealing with, and now you take a 1k1 penalty on Composure-related (whatever that ends up meaning) rolls. This makes Compsure similar to the old Willpower or Honor checks for resisting short term aggravations and provocations.

So you take a trip to the geisha, or you spend some time at the theater, compose a bunch of haikus, smoke some opium, cheat on your spouse; whatever floats your character's atakebune. I'm sure we can come up with some realistic ways to relieve stress. Could even come with potential Honor and Glory repercussions if you take easier.dishonorable ways of doing it,

This makes it a roleplaying aid. You know your character is weary and getting broken down, and you can roleplay them that way. And you don't have to do such short-term math all the time.

For the record I have nothing against changing the dice spread, I am just going on the assumption that that is one of the immutable things that is set in stone.

I know the tracking of strife is one of the thing your group hasn't cared for in general but would it help the tone at all to expand on it for other types of interactions? So your example is all combat but in theory the lion, while a beast in combat, can't get rid of strife during a negotiation to save his life /but/ as you state because it is a derived stat he can argue for longer than the coutier he's there with. So what if along with a higher composer strife had more options in Intrigue conflict to bleed off? To cover another complaint I"ve seen a lot if it was also limited to conflict rolls so your random 'i want to make a scarf' crafting rolls aren't going to lead to some issue for a scene.

Here is my take:

• How much strife are characters accruing in a given session?

Let’s say that the amount of strife accrued was in control. Most of players avoided strife results.

• How common are outbursts?

Not common at all. Only one player decided to have one just for the fun of it and was amusing. Good role play too. However the rest of the group didn’t follow.

• How often are characters succeeding or failing on their checks?

Success rate was pretty common, more than 70%.

• How frequently characters are spending and acquiring Void points?

At first Void points were saved like jade fingers in Shadowlands. Only one VP was regained thru disadvantage. Luckily our GM corrected this by concealing the TN, so the Void Point economy of our characters improved.

Note: Maybe this is not the best place to mention, however here I go, please reconsider tying VP with another mechanic instead of disadvantages. It seems awkward that you can regain a VP thru a failing roll triggered by a disadvantage. Since both Meditation an Tea Ceremony take Strife off how about a ritual?

• How often are the GM and players struggling to find the right approach (skill and ring) for checks?

50% in the first group, but in the second group it run much better as the GM had more experience.

Okay guys, time for an update! Yesterday, my gaming group took your advice and gave an honest try to Outburst and Strife. The results: 13 Outbursts, and two breaks because of unceasing laughter at the gaming table .

The mechanics look fine, but they are rather... I dunno how to put it... difficult. I guess you are fixing this one now, but there is a hilarious misalignment between the emphasized theme of the game and what the Strife/Outburst mechanic does. Instead of promoting serious roleplay, we found that it tends to break up the seriousness and cause legitimately funny situations. The closest parallel would be the constant quipping in Marvel movies. This isn't necessarily bad, of course, but I dunno if this is what you guys are aiming for.