1 minute ago, Kyros Skyfall said:

I actually like that honor and glory rank does'nt impact much on mechanical effects. any samurai can choose to live in honor or not, they just have to live with the concequences (and the look of others). I think strife and composure are interesting becasue the player canot really ''control'' what they're character are feeling, anyway not entirely control if they're feeling something and wheather it's gonna be a problem or not. without a mechanical system, I don't expect any of my players do ''play'' their character's emmotional journey and outburst, adventures are hard ennough so that they're not gonna willingly handicap themselves^^

Sure, but that’s exactly my issue with it: the actual impact of outbursts can be fairly negligible. So what’s the point then? If your players aren’t willing to play into the narrative and the system isn’t pushing the narrative on them, why play this particular RPG? Why go to the trouble of all the strife minigames if strife is largely going to be ignored? All I see is a bunch of mechanics and game restrictions around strife that likely don’t add anything meaningful to the experience. There’s no payout.

2 hours ago, nameless ronin said:

All I see is a bunch of mechanics and game restrictions around strife that likely don’t add anything meaningful to the experience. There’s no payout.

That has pretty much been my group's experience.

We recently went through and did a major overhaul of the rules just for ourselves that removed strife from being generated by dice rolls and turned it into a type of social fatigue, ran that, and found the game to work 100x better. There were still a few glitches but for a few hours of work retooling a core part of the system we expected as much.

Honor and Glory should have more of an impact than they already do. The system could use for some clean up and working into the rest of the game. I get the impression the developers just didn't know how to handle the concepts and then got distracted by the idea of strife and started smearing it all over the rules like a toddler covered in jam. Now we have a system with all these sticky little strife prints gumming up the mechanics.

8 hours ago, nameless ronin said:

I don’t absolutely want everything to have mechanical consequences per se, and it shouldn’t be too much to ask that players want to play “properly” to a minimal degree, but I have to ask: beyond “I want my character to have high Glory and Honor”, is there any real incentive to try and manage your losses in this regard?

Oh, yes, there is. Exceptionally low glory or honor impose disadvantages. High give advantages. GD is quite annoyed that he's not back above threshold... but he keeps forgetting that sincerity isn't honesty, but "Telling only the essential truth for your duty, and the polite fiction the rest of the time." It is driving much of his decision. as is strife management.

8 hours ago, nameless ronin said:

If this is supposed to be a narrative game, where’s the narrative purpose? Objectively speaking, unless I’m missing something, Glory and Honor are basically commodities you can lose and gain and stake in more minigames, but which only have value insofar as the player choose them to have. And they’re anything but evenly distributed at chargen - for obvious reasons, but that doesn’t change the numbers.

They're specifically dissimilar because the clans are not the same. Truth be told, tho', the real difference is in one table... this is collated from the text. Key tenets of your clan cost/gain you double; weak ones half. The crab being blunt loses half as much honor as would a lion; the crane and dragon could lose double - the crane because it's rude, the dragon because the truth hurt. If the truth was essential, that's not a sincerity volation, and so the Dragon can be blunt at times. The Crane always hurts when he's not being polite.

8 hours ago, nameless ronin said:

So, when you say it helps to make the outbursts hurt... in what way are they supposed to be hurting in the first place? I mean, if it works for your group that’s great for you and your group, but if it only works for your group because your group wants to play a certain way for reasons that are their own and not inherent in the game that doesn’t point at good design.

This group is having the direction of play driven by the honor and glory losses and gains. it's leveraging genre into their play in a slightly coercive manner. They also know that they don't want to be compromised, and yet, an outburst may be just the thing to get things done. Mechanically, they've rolled, and they can't keep thse dice they need, so they go ahead and outburst, in a manner consistent with their task, character, and the situation, and the results are tied to the outburst.

6 hours ago, Kyros Skyfall said:

I actually like that honor and glory rank does'nt impact much on mechanical effects. any samurai can choose to live in honor or not, they just have to live with the concequences (and the look of others). I think strife and composure are interesting becasue the player canot really ''control'' what they're character are feeling, anyway not entirely control if they're feeling something and wheather it's gonna be a problem or not. without a mechanical system, I don't expect any of my players do ''play'' their character's emmotional journey and outburst, adventures are hard ennough so that they're not gonna willingly handicap themselves^^

But they do. Choose not to do your duty, Glory Rank Strife. Choose not to follow your heart, Honor Rank strife.

17 minutes ago, AK_Aramis said:

1) Oh, yes, there is. Exceptionally low glory or honor impose disadvantages. High give advantages. GD is quite annoyed that he's not back above threshold... but he keeps forgetting that sincerity isn't honesty, but "Telling only the essential truth for your duty, and the polite fiction the rest of the time." It is driving much of his decision. as is strife management.

2) They're specifically dissimilar because the clans are not the same. Truth be told, tho', the real difference is in one table... this is collated from the text. Key tenets of your clan cost/gain you double; weak ones half. The crab being blunt loses half as much honor as would a lion; the crane and dragon could lose double - the crane because it's rude, the dragon because the truth hurt. If the truth was essential, that's not a sincerity volation, and so the Dragon can be blunt at times. The Crane always hurts when he's not being polite.

Major Clan Information
Clan	Key Tenet	Weak Tenet	Colors
Imperial	—	—	Jade & Gold
 Crab	Courage	Courtesy	Brick Red, Gunmetal, Blue
 Crane	Courtesy	Courage	Skye blue, White
 Dragon	Sincerity	Duty, Loyalty	Emerald Green, Yellow
 Lion	Honor	Compassion	Gold, w/Earth tones
 Phoenix	Righteousness	Sincerity	Red, Yellow, Orange
 Scorpion	Duty	Righteousness, Honor	Black, Blood Red, White
 Unicorn	Compassion	Courtesy	Purple, White

3) This group is having the direction of play driven by the honor and glory losses and gains. it's leveraging genre into their play in a slightly coercive manner. They also know that they don't want to be compromised, and yet, an outburst may be just the thing to get things done. Mechanically, they've rolled, and they can't keep thse dice they need, so they go ahead and outburst, in a manner consistent with their task, character, and the situation, and the results are tied to the outburst.

1) that’s great, if you care about it. More than about character concept, at least. When I play bushi, I typically gravitate towards ronin or Lions. With courtiers I prefer Scorpion or a minor clan. To spell it out, I almost invariably end up at the extreme ends of the honor and glory spectrums. This edition keeps those stereotypes for the clans and families, but I’m supposedly incentivized to get away from the low ones asap?

2) this is actually a particularly terrible way to go about honor gains and losses in my opinion, so it’s not likely to endear this system to me. Actions shouldn’t be less dishonorable because you don’t care about that aspect of bushido; neither should others be more honorable because you do. By that logic, someone who doesn’t care about bushido in general should rarely suffer more than a superficial honor loss.

3) again, it’s great that it works for your group. When I play a Scorpion who sacrifices his honor to do what needs to be done and keeps a low profile because that makes him more effective, I want him to have (and keep) low honor and low glory. When I play a ronin who needs to be pragmatic rather than honorable just to survive, “managing” my honor is not in the cards (and glory is a lost cause period). That outweighs any concerns about additional (dis)advantages, especially since I’m already annoyed about those being regimented in the first place.

This would probably work a lot better if L5R was not a game involving all these different clans. Make everybody a Crane and balancing honor and effectiveness actually becomes a working narrative. Something similar could be found for glory, I’m sure. But that’s not what L5R has been so far. Having these very different clans is one of the most interesting parts of the game. Maybe for this edition the goal is for samurai drama to be the only significant narrative that matters, and the interplay between characters from different clans is not supposed to be meaningful anymore. That should be incorporated in the setting and rules then though.

12 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

1) that’s great, if you care about it. More than about character concept, at least. When I play bushi, I typically gravitate towards ronin or Lions. With courtiers I prefer Scorpion or a minor clan. To spell it out, I almost invariably end up at the extreme ends of the honor and glory spectrums. This edition keeps those stereotypes for the clans and families, but I’m supposedly incentivized to get away from the low ones asap?

Well, you'll never suffer for void points...

12 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

2) this is actually a particularly terrible way to go about honor gains and losses in my opinion, so it’s not likely to endear this system to me. Actions shouldn’t be less dishonorable because you don’t care about that aspect of bushido; neither should others be more honorable because you do. By that logic, someone who doesn’t care about bushido in general should rarely suffer more than a superficial honor loss.

Honor is internal. Glory is external. Honor change differences by clan have been part of every edition I've read - 1st, 2nd, OA, 3rd. 5th is just keeping to the same. It's not "my character believes." It's "My family ingrained in me"

12 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

3) again, it’s great that it works for your group. When I play a Scorpion who sacrifices his honor to do what needs to be done and keeps a low profile because that makes him more effective, I want him to have (and keep) low honor and low glory. When I play a ronin who needs to be pragmatic rather than honorable just to survive, “managing” my honor is not in the cards (and glory is a lost cause period). That outweighs any concerns about additional (dis)advantages, especially since I’m already annoyed about those being regimented in the first place.

This would probably work a lot better if L5R was not a game involving all these different clans. Make everybody a Crane and balancing honor and effectiveness actually becomes a working narrative. Something similar could be found for glory, I’m sure. But that’s not what L5R has been so far. Having these very different clans is one of the most interesting parts of the game. Maybe for this edition the goal is for samurai drama to be the only significant narrative that matters, and the interplay between characters from different clans is not supposed to be meaningful anymore. That should be incorporated in the setting and rules then though.

Based upon what you're saying, you've never actually played L5R as written - you've played D&D using L5R combat... Fine for you. But it really shows a lack of rules knowledge of all editions.

6 minutes ago, AK_Aramis said:

1) Well, you'll never suffer for void points...

2) Honor is internal. Glory is external. Honor change differences by clan have been part of every edition I've read - 1st, 2nd, OA, 3rd. 5th is just keeping to the same. It's not "my character believes." It's "My family ingrained in me"

3) Based upon what you're saying, you've never actually played L5R as written - you've played D&D using L5R combat... Fine for you. But it really shows a lack of rules knowledge of all editions.

1) which doesn’t mean anything.

2) which is not contradicting anything I said, and doesn’t change anything about the mechanics. Yes, honor is internal. No, that doesn’t mean it’s relative.

3) if you want to be insulting, you could at least explain a little.

The problem is, once you inextricably link a mechanic into the dice results, it just kinda smears itself over the rules. Once the design team decided custom dice mechanics were going to be intrinsic to the game, everything on those custom dice needed to matter every time you roll the dice. A 6 is always worth 6 on a D10, whether your target number is 16 or 26. However, the only results on the current dice are 1/0 with a (roughly) 12% chance of 2+ successes on an Exploding die. Adding 1 to the TN can swing the probability of success by a large margin, giving less wiggle room with TNs. Adding 1 to the TN only shifts probability of success in the D10 game by 3-6% across most routine bands of the TN spectrum. TN2 on 5k3 is statistically difficult to fail, TN3 is challenging, TN4 has about a 16% chance of succeeding. The swing is just so drastic: from no expectation of failure, to no expectation of success. Literally based on -/+ 1.

Look at Calming Breath. CB came around because Water Stance was so effective at removing Strife that mathematically a character with a decent Water trait could just get into a standoff with anyone trying to get them to Outburst (Unmask now) and, failing catastrophically bad luck on consecutive rolls, statistically never fail. So Water Stance was nerfed, giving birth to Calming Breath (which was conceptually designed to be used with Water Stance). Along with Water and Fire Opportunities because you could Strife Nuke low-level minions and players fairly easily. The problem with Calming Breath is it also "heals" a character, because Wounds are now (inexplicably) called Fatigue. Now somebody asks "Why can't I just Calming Breath outside of Intrigues to bring myself to 0 Fatigue and 0 Strife?" I joked that there was no stance for healing yourself, and then, as if I had challenged them, they put one in, lol. Of course, that would remove most of the value of the Medicine Skill and certainly makes healing magic less crucial. All because the dice have a little Strife squiggly on them you will inevitably accumulate, but inherently want to get rid of.

The problem is, you can't really just ignore Strife. If you don't use Strife and Composure, then Fire Stance is overpowered because there's no risk (and Strife is a Risk/Reward mechanic). If you just ignore the results entirely, Fire Stance is completely worthless, and Void becomes pointless. TNs have to be adjusted because higher TN are harder to hit without Fire. Wait, except Air Stance is better now, and becomes OP without Fire Stance to balance it out.

If this game had been devised without full buy-in on the custom dice (it's clear that was a done deal early in development that they were going to FFGicize the game), the custom dice would have been tossed out the window very early once it became clear there was no value being carried by them. They're basically at the core of everything that doesn't work, or works poorly, in this game. And most of that is because the rules are too complicated for fixed probabilities. Fixed probabilities don't scale well, which means the more mechanics that are tied into the dice, the harder it is for them to all reconcile against those fixed probabilities. Every time you roll the dice, you're trying to A: succeed at tasks, B: resolve mechanical/narrative distractions goodies with Opportunities, and C: collect (or avoid collecting) Strife points. That's a lot of "moving parts" for a simple roll of the dice and it makes every task in the game carry the same mechanical weight. In most games, routine rolls are a simple pass/fail. In this game, they're a pass/fail/spaz/have an epiphany.

22 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

1) which doesn’t mean anything.

2) which is not contradicting anything I said, and doesn’t change anything about the mechanics. Yes, honor is internal. No, that doesn’t mean it’s relative.

3) if you want to be insulting, you could at least explain a little.

You're rejecting the part that HASN"T changed since prior editions. Which means either you never played it as written, or have a delusional view of one or the other edition as written, or have ignored major parts of the prior editions.

if you find being called out for complaints about legacy issues insulting, then the onus is on you. Differences in Honor gains/losses are part and parcel of L5R RPGs (except 4th). You said that's bad, and not part of how you play; either you were unaware (simple ignorance) of the rules, ignored the rules, or rejected the rules, or only played the 4th ed. Either way, it's not what John had in mind when he penned 1E.

3 hours ago, AK_Aramis said:

You're rejecting the part that HASN"T changed since prior editions. Which means either you never played it as written, or have a delusional view of one or the other edition as written, or have ignored major parts of the prior editions.

if you find being called out for complaints about legacy issues insulting, then the onus is on you. Differences in Honor gains/losses are part and parcel of L5R RPGs (except 4th). You said that's bad, and not part of how you play; either you were unaware (simple ignorance) of the rules, ignored the rules, or rejected the rules, or only played the 4th ed. Either way, it's not what John had in mind when he penned 1E.

I’ll grab my 1st ed book as soon as I get home, but I would certainly appreciate a page reference.

14 hours ago, TheVeteranSergeant said:

Every time you roll the dice, you're trying to A: succeed at tasks, B: resolve mechanical/narrative distractions goodies with Opportunities, and C: collect (or avoid collecting) Strife points. That's a lot of "moving parts" for a simple roll of the dice and it makes every task in the game carry the same mechanical weight. In most games, routine rolls are a simple pass/fail. In this game, they're a pass/fail/spaz/have an epiphany.

I don't think they're going to change or remove the strife mechanic anyway. I personnaly like this mechanic, and I don't give a **** if its called a narrative system or not : i just like the idea that your character's emmotion are taken into consideration.

but as I said earlyer : if you don't like the core mechanic of this game, it's just not for you : you don't HAVE to switch to 5th ed, 4th is good to you know.

Options abound. If they realize the dice mechanics are functionally broken, they don't HAVE to publish it that way. FATE and PbtA are good too, you know.