It feels like Glory and Honor are mostly sacred coews that where put into the new game just for the sake of contuniung that. But they both feel wrong now, since the the scales look mostly useless in the new system (not that they had been especially useful under AEG, but at least there the values had directly impact on otehr game mechanics), but worse the ties to Giri and Ninjo feel totally off.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of Giri and Ninjo, and that that L5R finally can live up the potential in regards of Samurai drama, but the game mechanics could be better designed to actually support that.

I mean, I still don't get why following the ninjo is considered honorable, when that often means to ignore the obligations the samurai has. But I could see that people talk about that in a famous or infamous way, when someone follows their passions. While adhere to the duty seems to me not especially glorious, but very honourable to put one's won desires aside and do what is asked of one completely selfless.

Also, looking alone at numbers and association that creates, it feels fine that low honour means less virtous, but then it feels strange that low glory is not less famous, but is instead very infamous.

So, I think the Glory and Honor track should cross somehow, that following the Giri should increase Honor, and following Ninjo well guess that depends what one's own drive actually is. But in anyway, I would say back to the drawing board, the current system is pointless and does not support samurai drama as it should!

1 hour ago, Drudenfusz said:

I would say back to the drawing board, the current system is pointless and does not support samurai drama as it should!

I disagree. As written, I think Glory and Honor do a reasonably good job measuring large, intangible concepts.

Quote

It feels strange that low glory is not less famous, but is instead very infamous.

I've never understood this line of argument. Glory isn't a spectrum of known to unknown; it's a scale of positive opinion to negative opinion. The center represents indifference.

I'm open to thoughts that it SHOULD be a spectrum of known to unknown, but I'm not sure that spectrum would serve L5R very well. It seems to me like there isn't an advantage to mechanically representing a character being unknown (and if there IS, you can model it with an Adversity), but that there IS a significant mechanical advantage to tracking whether people in general think positively or negatively about a character.

2 hours ago, Drudenfusz said:

It feels like Glory and Honor are mostly sacred coews that where put into the new game just for the sake of contuniung that. But they both feel wrong now, since the the scales look mostly useless in the new system (not that they had been especially useful under AEG, but at least there the values had directly impact on otehr game mechanics), but worse the ties to Giri and Ninjo feel totally off.

The values are pretty much identical to their prior edition versions, and the losses are similar to those of 3E.

Several techniques make use of them, too.

18 hours ago, Drudenfusz said:

So, I think the Glory and Honor track should cross somehow, that following the Giri should increase Honor, and following Ninjo well guess that depends what one's own drive actually is. But in anyway, I would say back to the drawing board, the current system is pointless and does not support samurai drama as it should!

If you want that, the obvious way to go about this would be to simply collapse the separate Glory and Honor tracks into a single conflicting gauge, with high Glory on the one and high Glory on the other end.

Ending up with something like this (after slightly shifting around the values which trigger the additional dis-/advantages to align with each other):

Honor  Glory  Advantages/Disadvantages
100    0      3 Infamy and 3 Virtue
90-99  1-9    
80-89  10-19  2 Infamy and 2 Virtue
70-79  20-29  1 Infamy and 1 Virtue
60-69  30-39  
50-59  40-49  
40-49  50-59  
30-39  60-69  
20-29  70-79  1 Fame and 1 Flaw
10-19  80-89  2 Fame and 2 Flaw
1-9    90-99  
0      100    3 Fame and 3 Flaw  

Which I would probably transform into a more readable (in my opinion) single number format, like this:

Honor/Glory  Advantages/Disadvantages
H50          3 Infamy and 3 Virtue
H40-49
H30-39       2 Infamy and 1 Virtue
H20-29       1 Infamy and 1 Virtue
H10-19
H1-9
Balance
G1-9
G10-19
G20-29       1 Fame and 1 Flaw
G30-39       2 Fame and 2 Flaw
G40-49
G50          3 Fame and 3 Flaw

You then attach Ninjo to one end of the gauge and Giri to the other (you might even make the choice which of the two goes to which end part of character creation), which automatically means that the two will be in conflict and pulling you in different directions.

Final note: If an act would increase (or decrease) both your Honor and your Glory (or your Ninjo and your Giri) at the same time, the gauge stays in place. You are being pulled into two directions at once, but - being the great samurai you are - stoically stay your course...

I don't think this would work for anything other than the "ronin outcast is actually only virtuous person left in this corrupt society" stories

I really like the idea to tie advantages together with disadvantages but @WHW has a point... With a look at Ninjo and Giri, I think Passions and Anxieties are the perfect canidates to add to the table instead of tieing glory to honor.

Like this:

Giri - What makes you a better samurai on a cosmic scale (honor) and in the eyes of society (glory).
Ninjo - What makes you a happier human being.

Honor
100    3 Anxiety and 3 Virtue
80-99  2 Anxiety and 2 Virtue
65-79  1 Anxiety and 1 Virtue
30-64  
20-29  1 Passion and 1 Flaw
1-19   2 Passion and 2 Flaw
0      3 Passion and 3 Flaw

Glory
100    3 Anxiety and 3 Fame
80-99  2 Anxiety and 2 Fame
65-79  1 Anxiety and 1 Fame
30-64  
20-29  1 Passion and 1 Infamy
1-19   2 Passion and 2 Infamy
0      3 Passion and 3 Infamy

Both scales are guided by Giri and Ninjo (What you should be vs. what you want to be).

Giri is found in high honor and high glory. The question is more if your reward for being an upstanding samurai is fame or a deeper understanding of Bushido.

Ninjo is found in low honor and low glory. Flowing your passions instead of your duty.

A character with high glory, might choose to have low honor. The fame and the social pression let the character find releave in dishonorable behaviour. On the other hand an honorable person might ignore the wispers of doom, which gives him the time alone to follow some of his passions.

Why the interest in making low Honor and low Glory a good thing?

1 minute ago, Doji Meshou said:

Why the interest in making low Honor and low Glory a good thing?

Glory is how others see you.

Low Glory means you have less pressure on you due to everyone not expecting that much of you.

While high Glory means you are expected to be a pillar of society equaling lots of pressure.

8 minutes ago, Doji Meshou said:

Why the interest in making low Honor and low Glory a good thing?

It is not so much about making low honor and low glory a good thing. It is about making high honor/glory a hard thing.

The samurai drama shines when the samurai does the right thing despite the fact that it will kill him. Doing the right thing should be hard...

Not following your passions abanding your humanity to become a famious paragon of bushido should come with downsides.

2 hours ago, WHW said:

I don't think this would work for anything other than the "ronin outcast is actually only virtuous person left in this corrupt society" stories

I see your point, but please note that the base for this proposal was to take the issue described by @Drudenfusz and then try to mechanically resolve it as requested in the OP.

With that in mind, I stand by a conflicted gauge mechanism as the most direct (and in my personal opinion also the best) way to realize this.

1 hour ago, Yandia said:

With a look at Ninjo and Giri, I think Passions and Anxieties are the perfect canidates to add to the table instead of tieing glory to honor.

I agree but I disagree with your proposal for the actual tracks and their tie-ins.

First off, when I read the beta rules for the first time, I actually assumed Virtues and Flaws were meant to be Passions and Anxieties as this seemed the natural traits to put there. Only on a second (or more probably third, to be honest) did I notice that these were their own entries in the dis-/advantage lists and was less than thrilled with that realization. So I am with you on the point that Passions and Anxieties could figure here prominently, but as the OP did not seem to take issue with this, I kept the type of dis-/advantage as per the beta standard in the initial conflicted gauge proposal.

Secondly, if want to indeed focus even more on Ninjo and Giri, I see no reason to step away from the idea of a conflicted gauge. If anything, it seems even more fitting. What I would step away from instead is the notion of measuring Glory and Honor.

So, instead of having two tracks (or one conflicted one) for Honor and Glory with Ninjo and Giri somehow related to one or both of them, I would instead have the mechanical side of the Ninjo-Giri conflict play out directly on a single conflicted gauge. The question for moving in either direction on this gauge is no longer whether an act is honorable, glorious or any combination of the above, but whether it means that you put your duty above your desire/belief or vice versa. Or to phrase it a bit differently, the question moves from "What (did you do)?" to "Why (did you do it)?".

With that we would arrive at a gauge looking something like this:

Ninjo/Giri  Advantages/Disadvantages
N50          3 Passion and 3 Infamy/Flaw
N40-49
N30-39       2 Passion and 2 Infamy/Flaw
N20-29       1 Passion and 1 Infamy/Flaw
N10-19
N1-9
Balance
G1-9
G10-19
G20-29       1 Fame/Virtue and 1 Anxiety
G30-39       2 Fame/Virtue and 2 Anxiety
G40-49
G50          3 Fame/Virtue and 3 Anxiety

I threw virtue/flaw in with fame/infamy, as in such a model, I feel that a character who is self-less and dutyful to such an extent as to gain bonus advantages, may be perceived not only as especially famous but could also be seen as a paragon of samurai ideals. The conflict is no longer between being virtuous or famous but being either or both of those and being who you want to be, loving whom (or what) you wish to love.

I don't think honor and glory are correct... i think the player should pick one tenant of bushido for their giri and another for their ninjo. Compassion ties to a lot of ninjo motivations, and duty ties to a lot of giri. Both of these are "honorable." Neither inherently make you famous.

Honor should be the only gauge, glory was always a bit off in my mind. Status makes your rank in the caste system, which shouldn't change much. Glory should be given in titles. If people know you're titles then they know you, whether that is good or bad (infamy). Titles could function like a distinction advantage when you leverage your title, and an anxiety when your title is leveraged against you. Since advantages can be flipped it could even cause a weakness.

4 hours ago, Yandia said:

The samurai drama shines when the samurai does the right thing despite the fact that it will kill him. Doing the right thing should be hard...

Doing the right thing should look hard but not necessarily be hard. Remember that Rokugani samurai are the Fettered : their honor (supposedly) compensates for any hardship they encounter by making them stronger in face of adversity.

By the way, if I wanted to point at sacred cows in the Beta, I would rather pick the concept of Legend of the Five Rings Standard Samurai Drama(tm). I... really want it to go and stay go .

1 hour ago, AtoMaki said:

I would rather pick the concept of Legend of the Five Rings Standard Samurai Drama(tm). I... really want it to go and stay go .

But that is the best part.

2 hours ago, shosuko said:

I don't think honor and glory are correct... i think the player should pick one tenant of bushido for their giri and another for their ninjo. Compassion ties to a lot of ninjo motivations, and duty ties to a lot of giri. Both of these are "honorable." Neither inherently make you famous.

Honor should be the only gauge, glory was always a bit off in my mind. Status makes your rank in the caste system, which shouldn't change much. Glory should be given in titles. If people know you're titles then they know you, whether that is good or bad (infamy). Titles could function like a distinction advantage when you leverage your title, and an anxiety when your title is leveraged against you. Since advantages can be flipped it could even cause a weakness.

I like that idea, but I am not so sure about how well that fits for actual samurai drama, since the conflict between the Giri and the adherance to Bushido and the personal interests of the normal human nature are the things that are supposed to be in conflict. And I would like to see that L5R finally could get there, and stop bothing with absract notions of honour and glory which lead nowhere.

On 10/29/2017 at 4:22 AM, Yandia said:

It is not so much about making low honor and low glory a good thing. It is about making high honor/glory a hard thing.

Yep. This is key...

So, on the honor tables, losses scale to HR, but gains are fixed as if rank 3. If you're below HR 3, minor losses are less than minor gains. If you're above HR3, a matching minor loss and gain is a net loss.

Theoretically, a nice mechanic... if the GM can readily track player honor. Not so easy when my players have me telecommute in...

Last night, all my players had glory and honor changes... Pretty much, they all stayed right about the same.

I will say, this edition's table is far more fiddly than the one in 2E or 3E... and harder to remember. But also far more instructive.

I just played a session of 4E and we had a great time with glory. In that system glory says how famous you are, and this is constantly relevant. We liked it a lot.

You could make an argument for fame being the product of both glory and status, rather than any one thing.