Just got the relevant email in my inbox. Looks like good stuff, especially the willingness to update and explicate the dueling/iaijutsu rules. Curious what other people think.

FWIW: I don't love "Wounds," but I can't think of anything better. (Fatigue, Exertion, and Trauma all seem more confusing to me, plus Trauma connotes emotional damage to me, not physical.)

Hey, thanks for the heads up!

Their defense on Strife and Outburst is... interesting.

1 hour ago, AtoMaki said:

Hey, thanks for the heads up!

Their defense on Strife and Outburst is... interesting.

You're welcome!

I completely agree with their reasoning for Strife and Outburst. I think having a mechanic that forces samurai to drop their On is valuable.

Without it (and in my experience), you get players who will stay in one emotional lane the entire game because they've decided that's how where they fit on L5R's emotional human/emotionless samurai spectrum. Strife explicitly reinforces emotional outbursts while implicitly reinforcing the social standard of not having them. It's smart, and I think it works.

10 hours ago, Doji Meshou said:

Without it (and in my experience), you get players who will stay in one emotional lane the entire game because they've decided that's how where they fit on L5R's emotional human/emotionless samurai spectrum.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with this. For example, we assume that samurai have the grit and the mental conditioning to actually live up to their stoicism. They are not as much as suppressing their emotions as they rise above them, and they are pretty good at that. Yes, this is not entirely normal for a human, but slicing up a towering oni with a katana veers rather far from human standards too, so there is that.

Over here, if a character is up to an Outburst-equivalent, then the player sets up the scene (back then, this needed a GM talk... but not anymore thankfully to Opportunities), decides the timing, then roleplays it in a way he/she sees it fit. There is no need for a clock that shows up when it is Drama-O-Clock. It is redundant and annoying, and disrupts our game and roleplaying experience.

2 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

I don't think that there is anything wrong with this. For example, we assume that samurai have the grit and the mental conditioning to actually live up to their stoicism. They are not as much as suppressing their emotions as they rise above them, and they are pretty good at that. Yes, this is not entirely normal for a human, but slicing up a towering oni with a katana veers rather far from human standards too, so there is that.

Over here, if a character is up to an Outburst-equivalent, then the player sets up the scene (back then, this needed a GM talk... but not anymore thankfully to Opportunities), decides the timing, then roleplays it in a way he/she sees it fit. There is no need for a clock that shows up when it is Drama-O-Clock. It is redundant and annoying, and disrupts our game and roleplaying experience.

It sounds like you've got a pretty high-functioning group! I think I do too, but as a GM, I'm glad to have the mechanical tools to enforce emotionality, especially given so much of the setting encourages repression. My interest in L5R is primarily in the am-I-human-or-samurai conflict, so I'm grateful the mechanics have my back.