Unfortunately, I haven't been feeling it.

I really wanted to like the system since the old R&K system had so many legacy issues, and in many places the new system is so close to be a lot better or seem to want to do things that I really want it to do, but then just fails on the finish line.

Part of it is the relative crunch. I prefer lighter system with mid to late 3rdR ed. being the absolute nadir of L5R for me, and 5th ed. skews towards the heavy side if we ignore strife (more on that later).

There is also an apparent dissonance in design goals with the push for a somewhat more narrative system but the actual mechanics actually being at odds with that goal (ie Strife).

Some of it was surprising for me. I only realized in the previous survey that I never liked the 20 questions, and, as it is, the system forces me to frontload aspects of the characters and worldbuildng that I prefer to emerge in play (the most recent updates have eased somewhat that part but not by much).

Conversely I was expecting to hate the proprietary dice, but the online rollers I've been using have been perfectly fine and once we got used to differentiate the symbols it became a non-issue (except as it applies to Strife).

The big offender though, is as you might have guessed it, is Strife. I like Outbursts, in theory I don't have a, or shouldn't have problem with Strife, and I notoriously kept pushing for more mechanical support for Giri-Ninj ō conflit on the AEG boards, before giving up, but as it is, Strife is a clunky piece of design that drags down the system, and unfortunately, unlike some other parts of the system it's not somethin I can readily change as it is too tied with both the dice system and the Advantage/Disadvantage system.

I'll keep playtesting to see if the game evolves in something more to my liking, but as it is I have no real incentive to use it over 4th Ed. or I might just have to just bite the bullet and make a Fate (Core or Accelerated) adaptation of L5R that actually does what I want it to do.

On 18/11/2017 at 8:39 PM, Kakita Onimaru said:

Yeah. I am wondering how much dislike for the system is due to it not being the familiar 4thed or is genuine dislike for this particualr system. That said, the responses so far (and more own feelings) seems to stem from a lack of interest with the system in particular. The enjoyment we are having so far stems mostly from our knowledge of the setting and us playing around in-character without rolling any dice......which is the age-old secret of RPGs (mechanics are secondary to RP). But, that doesn't take away from the fact engagin with the games mechanics never seem to be particularly fun or engaging.

If you don't want to be insulting you should start by reading the many well thought out anwers you had instead of dsimissing them like if those stating them don't know what they are talking about just because they don't fit your preconceived notions.

On 11/18/2017 at 2:02 PM, AK_Aramis said:

[numbers added for commenting]

1. I'd attribute it more to "I wanted 4R, d***it, and so I won't give it a fair shake"...

2. and a few who keep hoping that if they B***h loud enough, might get 5E to be 4.1...or even 3.1.

3. My issues are mostly with the duel system and with goal setting. The core emchanic isn't bad at all. But it is a bit slower.

1 & 2: Agree. Though to be fair, I'm gonna lump myself in a new group: those that felt 4e was sufficiently flawed that they're very ready to like something that's significantly different. I might be the only member, but I'm guessing not.

I imagine it's difficult to determine how large a grain of salt to take with forum feedback. It's not like anyone participating in the forums is a run-of-the-mill L5R player. It's the folks that care enough to show up--be they old L5R fans, current FFG fans, or serial beta testers. Dunno that the forum group is a representative sample of customers. And another thing that complicates assessing forum feedback: folks aren't always great at differentiating "I don't like this mechanic because it's different " vs "I don't like this mechanic, but it works " vs "This mechanic doesn't work". Each is different. And the better people can communicate the difference, the better info FFG will have.

3. Saaaaaaaame.

10 hours ago, TheVeteranSergeant said:

Somebody wasn't around for the Dark Heresy 2 Beta, lol. They scrapped the entire system due to Beta backlash and went back to the drawing board. Then they failed that second-try and the DH2 product line died out in a little over a year. FFG has seen the price of error and hubris.

Ahh yes, the classic sunk-cost fallacy. Something every good for-profit company lets itself get stuck in.

For the Dark Heresy 2 Beta, there was enough feedback to warrant scrapping the whole thing and in effect starting over.

However, there hasn't been nearly as much backlash against the entire L5R 5e system, in spite of the narrow-mindedness of a few folks that are **** bent on hating this system simply because it isn't another retread of the AEG system.

Then again, if FFG sees that they can't recoup their development costs, they could just pull the plug on the RPG entirely and instead focus on the far more profitable LCG and minis lines and just simply let the prospect of an RPG rot. Then the old guard grognards can happily go one playing their preferred AEG version of the game without having to worry about continuity reboots or having to learn new mechanics.

Forum feedback is at best a vocal minority, and while there's a lot of talk of issues that need to be addressed (and may well be once the Beta period is closed), it's not nearly the vehement backlash against the system as a whole that you seem to think it is.

57 minutes ago, sidescroller said:

I imagine it's difficult to determine how large a grain of salt to take with forum feedback. It's not like anyone participating in the forums is a run-of-the-mill L5R player. It's the folks that care enough to show up--be they old L5R fans, current FFG fans, or serial beta testers. Dunno that the forum group is a representative sample of customers. And another thing that complicates assessing forum feedback: folks aren't always great at differentiating "I don't like this mechanic because it's different " vs "I don't like this mechanic, but it works " vs "This mechanic doesn't work". Each is different. And the better people can communicate the difference, the better info FFG will have.

Excellent point.

It does seem there's a lot more of "I don't like this mechanic because its different" than the other two categories. I've seen some folks post possible alternatives, some good and some not so good, but those seem to be in the minority on these forums.

My own issue is that the overall mechanics just feel like they get in the way of the fun. And if this is the version of the rules that FFG opts to stick with, then I'll simply vote with my wallet and get my RPG fix with other games that I do enjoy playing, ones that generally have a lighter touch on the rules than past editions of L5R has typically had.

Honestly, I think the biggest hurdle that FFG has to overcome is the locking down each skill approach to a specific ring. My group is talking about trying a third test run that deep-sixes that aspect of the rules (which for us has been the biggest drag) and see if that improves the fun factor by allowing players to choose which ring to use, so long as they can give a valid narrative reason why it'd apply. It's an approach that John Wick took for the second edition of 7th Sea, and it works amazingly well, as the players can come up with all sorts of reasons, from plausible to nuts to just plain awesome, as to why they should be allowed to use an unconventional trait for their skill test/risk.

Strife is also a recurring issue, but I don't have any viable solutions to that dilemma and it may just be our group has lousy luck with the dice given the frequency of strife results we get when using various dice roller programs. Making the outburst/unmasking an option is certainly a step in the right direction as the player still retains control of their character, but again depending on dice luck it could just mean the player has no dice to keep when they roll once they've exceeded their composure.

9 hours ago, AK_Aramis said:

Funny, I know a lot of college kids who LOVE Dark Heresy 2...

What you know as Dark Heresy 2 is Only War With Inquisitors, and not the original, completely revamped, totally original system. The two are vastly different. It is like 5R5 (the dumped DH2 Beta) vs 4th Edition with some bling (the Dark Heresy 2 you know).

This is pretty much the point @TheVeteranSergeant tries to make.

1 hour ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

For the Dark Heresy 2 Beta, there was enough feedback to warrant scrapping the whole thing and in effect starting over.

However, there hasn't been nearly as much backlash against the entire L5R 5e system, in spite of the narrow-mindedness of a few folks that are **** bent on hating this system simply because it isn't another retread of the AEG system.

As someone who participated in the DH 2 Beta, I can say that the negative backlash is remarkably stronger here. The criticism on the DH2 Beta was a lot tamer and largely remained positive because most people liked the changes just not the implementation. I dunno if there was anything that came even close to the hate Strife is getting here.

It’s a beta. Negative comments are always going to be a majority of the contributions. Human nature tends to predispose us to putting more effort in complaints than praises. Besides, praises are nice to receive but the complaints are the purpose of any test phase. Complaints are ok. Complaints are the point. It’s up to FFG to figure out what to make of them. Squabbling about other posters’ supposed intentions doesn’t help.

I’m not enjoying this game because to me it doesn’t seem to be doing what it purportedly should be doing. I don’t get much of a samurai drama narrative, and the little I do get comes from players wanting to roleplay more than from the mechanics. That’s because my players spend more effort (ab)using the mechanics to minimize the impact of strife as much as possible than they do turning a (rare) unmasking into a ‘dramatic’ event. It almost works counteractive. Whatever tension there is ends up being abstracted into the mechanics, so there’s no narrative result to speak of. Skill resolution has a similar problem, but there my players’ response is simpler: they just disregard that they can choose an approach and go with whatever ring seems the most logical for the skill. The whole approach system rubs them the wrong way, they don’t want anything to do with it. The school advancement concept they like, the reduction of schools to a single tech plus an ultimate not so much. Advantages and disadvantages are bland in their uniformity, but at least creating custom ones is explicitly an option (and, in fairness, that wouldn’t be the case without that uniformity). Being tied hand and foot with regards to which you have to take and how many... did not go over well. It stifles their character creativity, which fits right in with the straightjacket feel of chargen as a whole. All in all, we just don’t see what the pros of the system are supposed to be.

I am not enjoying the game either for reasons I am not alone to dislike like the big list of skill mixed with the approach system that make skill check painful to handle, the straighjacket character creation and the strife system wich looked good on paper until I saw it being gamed by my players.

Some interesting numbers, because I feel like it:

According to the answers in this thread, 8 people enjoy the system, 5 people are on the fence, and 11 do not enjoy it. That's a rough 33% / 21% / 46% distribution.

Thought' this should be up to share and all !

1 hour ago, AtoMaki said:

Some interesting numbers, because I feel like it:

According to the answers in this thread, 8 people enjoy the system, 5 people are on the fence, and 11 do not enjoy it. That's a rough 33% / 21% / 46% distribution.

Thought' this should be up to share and all !

First Rule of Statistics: Numbers can be manipulated to say whatever you want them to say.

Given the volume of folks that have posted in these forums who in turn haven't posted in this thread, your so-called "sample" suffers from heavy bias.

If you can be bothered to actually broaden your sample to account for all of the posters, both active and inactive, in this sub-forum, then perhaps your snide little observation might be worth a ****. Of course, that by its nature excludes those beta playtesters who don't bother posting to these boards (not that I can really fault them given how toxic this place can get), so again you're left with a very biased sample.

Funny, I know a lot of college kids who LOVE Dark Heresy 2

Funny how you claim the sunk cost fallacy isn't a "true" fallacy (as if that's a thing) but then use this fallacy to anchor your argument.

Same can't be said for 4th ed L5R - 3 of the 5 still have L5R4 stuff sitting on shelves.

While the veracity of this claim is suspect given your prior statements, one can guarantee these aren't the core rulebooks which routinely list for well over $100 second-hand. Selling hard-copy supplements for a game that has been out of print for over two years is probably fairly difficult. But also entirely irrelevant. Everybody has acknowledged that 40K is a robust license that comes with a large built-in audience. L5R RPG doesn't have that . Which makes the margin of failure slimmer. Notice this Beta is open and free (aside from them bungling the $5 dice-roller app and facing backlash) whereas people paid to be a part of the DH2 Beta. Dark Heresy 2 could be hilariously bad and still sell to 40K Die Hards, much in the way people have flocked to even the most painfully mediocre (and all but the worst) of the Star Wars license efforts simply because it's Star Wars. Just as D&D4E still has its fans despite being so widely disliked by D&D fans that it made Paizo's Pathfinder a household name in the RPG community and by 2011 4th Edition was being out-sold by a D&D3.5 Clone. Like was said, any game other than FATAL will have its fans. But when you look at the vocal opposition to the Beta and the slow death of this forum and the lack of discussion for it on other gaming forums, it tells a story for anyone willing to read. At least there are enough 40K fans to care enough to be upset about the DH2 Beta. This forum has 20-30 people accounting for the majority of its posts, and a good chunk of them don't actually like it.

The advantage FFG has in L5R over 40K is that they bought the entire L5R license, so they can republish old material without worrying about the imaginary "losses" of abandoning a product they don't think will sell. They put some money into 5th Edition, and it's encouraging that they thought L5R was valuable enough to try. If it ends up that it didn't work, throwing good money after bad by printing it would be foolish. As you argue but overlook, there is no significant "redevelopment" cost to 4th Edition, which means writing it off as an option is fairly naive. FFG is clearly going to look at the lessons of Pathfinder and their own past missteps. Most of these "just walk" "they're not giving it a fair chance" and "grognard" arguments sound more like defensive "I like this and want to be right!" behavior than anything else. Provide feedback that you think will help FFG and convince them their product will sell, rather than demeaning the people who don't want it. FFG is getting a lot of valuable feedback from the Beta's detractors on this forum. One might speculate more than it is getting from its champions.

8 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Given the volume of folks that have posted in these forums who in turn haven't posted in this thread, your so-called "sample" suffers from heavy bias.

It actually suffers from a small sample pool, but as TheVeteranSergeant said, it covers the most important people around here.

My main point is, however, that 8 vs 11 ain't that bad at all out of a pool of 24. I expected a much worse rate, to be honest.

18 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

If you can be bothered to actually broaden your sample to account for all of the posters, both active and inactive, in this sub-forum , then perhaps your snide little observation might be worth a **** . Of course, that by its nature excludes those beta playtesters who don't bother posting to these boards ( not that I can really fault them given how toxic this place can get ), so again you're left with a very biased sample.

The irony, it burns.

1 hour ago, AtoMaki said:

Some interesting numbers, because I feel like it:

According to the answers in this thread, 8 people enjoy the system, 5 people are on the fence, and 11 do not enjoy it. That's a rough 33% / 21% / 46% distribution.

Thought' this should be up to share and all !

Lets clear the air here.

The system in and of its self is not bad it's just very poorly implemented and needs way more work then a beta is capable of.

The dice work here (can't believe I am say this), but has some issues with scaling. Need a 2 success side to scale correctly.

On the strife system FFG made a pretty good fix.

I would say they need to add some more low impact ways to burn off strife like geisha, drinking, etc. Since this is how true samurai let of steam.

The skill system need lots of work. Such as adding more skills so it is easier to know what to roll, Linking would fix a lot of issues with approaches.

A dueling system that comes out more as a stop poking me fight.

The whole void system needs work, and needs to be divorced from the advantage/disadvantage system which is forcing the buggiest problem.

The biggest issues is the Mad-lib character creation system that brings the whole thing down.

Now at least to me these issues can be fixed with little change to the system as it stands, but FFG is so Gun-Ho that hey know better that they seem willing to tank the game to prove it.

That's where a lot of the venom comes from IMHO.

I think Tenchi2a is right about where the venom come from. FFG seems to treat that beta more as a marketing tool to preview the game in advance that really listening to the feedbacks they received. I can perfectly understand why people are angry with the little changes they made until now.

14 minutes ago, rcuhljr said:

The irony, it burns.

Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot.

47 minutes ago, tenchi2a said:

The dice work here (can't believe I am say this), but has some issues with scaling. Need a 2 success side to scale correctly.

Just curious, what would be the proposed facing change? It would be easy to run the probabilities and figure out how big of an impact that has on Expected Successes.

It couldn't be mated to a Strife result because then it would skew the power of Fire Stance even further. So on the D6, are you suggesting 2xSuccess, Explosive+Strife, Success+Strife, Opportunity+Strife, Opportunity, Blank? Or removing the Success+Strife and replacing it with 2xSuccess? The D6 becomes significantly more powerful with a 2x Success face on it, because it raises the probability of 2+ Successes from 8% to 25%, and raises the probability of 3+ success all the way up to almost 7%. Basically making the D6 over 3 times more likely to score a multi-succcess result. Conversely, the D12 becomes comparatively less valuable, since it only goes from just under 5% to 18%. This is actually the reverse of the current situation, where the D6 only has a 50% expectation of success but the D12 has a 58%, which was intended to make Skill dice more attractive. The D12 would need either more than one 2xSuccess or another Explosive (no Strife).

Removing the Strife+Success face for 2xSuccess would conversely reduce the power of Fire Stance (not automatically a bad thing) and would also reduce the impact of the Strife mechanic (which is already mostly toothless).

The custom dice aren't an easy fix. They cause most of the problems with the ruleset.

1 hour ago, TheVeteranSergeant said:

Just curious, what would be the proposed facing change? It would be easy to run the probabilities and figure out how big of an impact that has on Expected Successes.

It couldn't be mated to a Strife result because then it would skew the power of Fire Stance even further. So on the D6, are you suggesting 2xSuccess, Explosive+Strife, Success+Strife, Opportunity+Strife, Opportunity, Blank? Or removing the Success+Strife and replacing it with 2xSuccess? The D6 becomes significantly more powerful with a 2x Success face on it, because it raises the probability of 2+ Successes from 8% to 25%, and raises the probability of 3+ success all the way up to almost 7%. Basically making the D6 over 3 times more likely to score a multi-succcess result. Conversely, the D12 becomes comparatively less valuable, since it only goes from just under 5% to 18%. This is actually the reverse of the current situation, where the D6 only has a 50% expectation of success but the D12 has a 58%, which was intended to make Skill dice more attractive. The D12 would need either more than one 2xSuccess or another Explosive (no Strife).

Removing the Strife+Success face for 2xSuccess would conversely reduce the power of Fire Stance (not automatically a bad thing) and would also reduce the impact of the Strife mechanic (which is already mostly toothless).

The custom dice aren't an easy fix. They cause most of the problems with the ruleset.

I was suggesting that one of the Success sides would be a 2xSuccess, this I believe this would allow for a better upper level scaling in the system. As to the d6 I would

say it only needs to be done on the skill die (d12). Now I could be wrong.

Are you currently enjoying this game?

No group no fun . At the moment no. After a couple of sessions my group didn’t want to continue on. Must say 1st that I my group is a mixed of noobs and veterans rpg players with limited to almost encyclopedic knowledge; so I will can claim that I have a more neutral audience.

Now being said that almost all agree that the game have good ideas, however it’s too much of a hybrid and doesn’t feel unique on it’s own, and just decided to take a break until the final product hits the shelves. Right now without players, I can only keep watching closely the changes to get more familiar.

Specifically, would you chose to play this game instead of another RP system?

At this moment no. It has to change a lot of this to prefer this over 4E.

What RP system do you think this game is better than?

Not a fair question as the product isn’t finalized.

Now IF the question are:

Do I like the system as it is?

Then I will say no. I do think that they have good ideas, but I do not like their execution on some items, personally I don’t like how the schools are constructed, I can play them but not a fan. I wished they would have gone like the Star Wars models not the model they followed up. Duels, not a fan of this iteration.

Will I play it?

Sure, a shugenja, as I am not fond of the Bushi and Courtiers in this edition. The worst case scenario I’ll play it once.

2 hours ago, tenchi2a said:

Lets clear the air here.

The system in and of its self is not bad it's just very poorly implemented and needs way more work then a beta is capable of.

The dice work here (can't believe I am say this), but has some issues with scaling. Need a 2 success side to scale correctly.

On the strife system FFG made a pretty good fix.

I would say they need to add some more low impact ways to burn off strife like geisha, drinking, etc. Since this is how true samurai let of steam.

The skill system need lots of work. Such as adding more skills so it is easier to know what to roll, Linking would fix a lot of issues with approaches.

A dueling system that comes out more as a stop poking me fight.

The whole void system needs work, and needs to be divorced from the advantage/disadvantage system which is forcing the buggiest problem.

The biggest issues is the Mad-lib character creation system that brings the whole thing down.

Now at least to me these issues can be fixed with little change to the system as it stands, but FFG is so Gun-Ho that hey know better that they seem willing to tank the game to prove it.

That's where a lot of the venom comes from IMHO.

Maybe it depends on how you look at it, but what part of all this (supposedly a part that’s not bad, apparently) do you consider the system rather than the implementation? From where I’m standing there are ideas, intentions really, and turning that into a system is the implementation. And sure, that implementation is flawed in several ways but I doubt there is no underlying problem with the ideas being ill-considered in the first place.

For instance, the whole samurai drama notion. FFG came up with Strife for this. That’s great, except there’s actually no Strife in the game except as as an abstract number. Strife itself is meaningless outside some number manipulation the player does. What is in the game are unmaskings (sometimes, when the number manipulation isn’t successful), but that’s not drama. Drama is the internal struggle, not the occasional slip of composure. I mean, that failure is part of it but only a minor one. And because the only part of Strife that’s apparent in the game are those unmaskings, there’s no real narrative. The character slips up, oops, suffers some loss of face, life goes on. There are no real repercussions. At most one could argue characters should strive to increase their honor and glory, and unmaskings set those back. The problem with that is in a setting with several very different clans the characters can be from is that they all can have different appreciations of honor and different paths to glory. If and how they pursue these are individual choices, not baseline qualities all characters share.

Now when I said only unmaskings are apparent in the game I wasn’t entirely truthful: the GM is supposed to encourage the players to roleplay the internal struggle whenever strife builds up. That’s pretty non-committal though, and even if the player makes an honest attempt he’s really put on the spot to come up with some way his giri and ninjo are clashing if he wants to contribute to the samurai drama narrative, or otherwise express some kind of stress or other internal turmoil. There’s no consistency, it’s two entirely different things rolled up into one concept. This is where FFG should (in my opinion) rethink some of the ideas they came up with to build a game around. Choose a single narrative and make that the real core of the system, rather than trying to fit together a bunch of pieces that aren’t part of the same puzzle. The reason they didn’t do that, it seems to me, is that they can’t find such a narrative that fits Rokugan - but that’s no excuse.

Now I kinda wish we had a dedicated thread for fan ideas and mods. Like, I'm really curious how @tenchi2a or @Nitenman would fix the game's flaws. I mean, come on guys, I know you have something in your minds !

I have tons of ideas but I don't want to litter my beta game topic with it.

32 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

Maybe it depends on how you look at it, but what part of all this (supposedly a part that’s not bad, apparently) do you consider the system rather than the implementation? From where I’m standing there are ideas, intentions really, and turning that into a system is the implementation. And sure, that implementation is flawed in several ways but I doubt there is no underlying problem with the ideas being ill-considered in the first place.

For instance, the whole samurai drama notion. FFG came up with Strife for this. That’s great, except there’s actually no Strife in the game except as as an abstract number. Strife itself is meaningless outside some number manipulation the player does. What is in the game are unmaskings (sometimes, when the number manipulation isn’t successful), but that’s not drama. Drama is the internal struggle, not the occasional slip of composure. I mean, that failure is part of it but only a minor one. And because the only part of Strife that’s apparent in the game are those unmaskings, there’s no real narrative. The character slips up, oops, suffers some loss of face, life goes on. There are no real repercussions. At most one could argue characters should strive to increase their honor and glory, and unmaskings set those back. The problem with that is in a setting with several very different clans the characters can be from is that they all can have different appreciations of honor and different paths to glory. If and how they pursue these are individual choices, not baseline qualities all characters share.

Now when I said only unmaskings are apparent in the game I wasn’t entirely truthful: the GM is supposed to encourage the players to roleplay the internal struggle whenever strife builds up. That’s pretty non-committal though, and even if the player makes an honest attempt he’s really put on the spot to come up with some way his giri and ninjo are clashing if he wants to contribute to the samurai drama narrative, or otherwise express some kind of stress or other internal turmoil. There’s no consistency, it’s two entirely different things rolled up into one concept. This is where FFG should (in my opinion) rethink some of the ideas they came up with to build a game around. Choose a single narrative and make that the real core of the system, rather than trying to fit together a bunch of pieces that aren’t part of the same puzzle. The reason they didn’t do that, it seems to me, is that they can’t find such a narrative that fits Rokugan - but that’s no excuse.

As you stated, when looking at a game, you sometimes have to look at what you believe the writers intended, and judge it from that stand point.

This will determine if there is a way to implement that idea.

As to how the writers implemented what they where trying to that is where the RAW comes in.

If you can see what was intended and find where the RAW can be changed to make it work then the game has promise.

If you can't see what they where trying to attempt then the RAW need to be scrapped for a major rewrite.

The promise I see comes from the fact that in most areas of the RAW, I can see what the writers where trying to implement.

But on the areas that I highlighted, I fined that they missed the mark.

14 minutes ago, tenchi2a said:

As you stated, when looking at a game, you sometimes have to look at what you believe the writers intended, and judge it from that stand point.

This will determine if there is a way to implement that idea.

As to how the writers implemented what they where trying to that is where the RAW comes in.

If you can see what was intended and find where the RAW can be changed to make it work then the game has promise.

If you can't see what they where trying to attempt then the RAW need to be scrapped for a major rewrite.

The promise I see comes from the fact that in most areas of the RAW, I can see what the writers where trying to implement.

But on the areas that I highlighted, I fined that they missed the mark.

Since you suggest the game needs more low-impact ways to burn off strife, I wonder what you think the writers were trying to implement when it comes to strife as a concept. In my experience strife is already too inconsequential to matter, never mind if PCs get even more ways to get rid of it.

26 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Now I kinda wish we had a dedicated thread for fan ideas and mods. Like, I'm really curious how @tenchi2a or @Nitenman would fix the game's flaws. I mean, come on guys, I know you have something in your minds !

I have tons of ideas but I don't want to litter my beta game topic with it.

Yes, I can see many ways that this can be made a good if not great game, but FFG has made it clear from what they have done so far that they are not in anyway interested in fixing the game that they seem to see as working.

And just to preempt the commits, yes I would love to see a 4.5 or 5th ed of the AEG game. It has over 20 years under it's belt and as many years of rewrites and fixes that have made it the game it is today. Is it perfect. no but it is far more playable then the beta in its current form.

Can the Beta work, yes if the FFG writes are willing to work with the players and make it one.

1 hour ago, nameless ronin said:

For instance, the whole samurai drama notion. FFG came up with Strife for this. That’s great, except there’s actually no Strife in the game except as as an abstract number. Strife itself is meaningless outside some number manipulation the player does. What is in the game are unmaskings (sometimes, when the number manipulation isn’t successful), but that’s not drama. Drama is the internal struggle, not the occasional slip of composure. I mean, that failure is part of it but only a minor one. And because the only part of Strife that’s apparent in the game are those unmaskings, there’s no real narrative. The character slips up, oops, suffers some loss of face, life goes on. There are no real repercussions. At most one could argue characters should strive to increase their honor and glory, and unmaskings set those back. The problem with that is in a setting with several very different clans the characters can be from is that they all can have different appreciations of honor and different paths to glory. If and how they pursue these are individual choices, not baseline qualities all characters share.

Now when I said only unmaskings are apparent in the game I wasn’t entirely truthful: the GM is supposed to encourage the players to roleplay the internal struggle whenever strife builds up. That’s pretty non-committal though, and even if the player makes an honest attempt he’s really put on the spot to come up with some way his giri and ninjo are clashing if he wants to contribute to the samurai drama narrative, or otherwise express some kind of stress or other internal turmoil. There’s no consistency, it’s two entirely different things rolled up into one concept. This is where FFG should (in my opinion) rethink some of the ideas they came up with to build a game around. Choose a single narrative and make that the real core of the system, rather than trying to fit together a bunch of pieces that aren’t part of the same puzzle. The reason they didn’t do that, it seems to me, is that they can’t find such a narrative that fits Rokugan - but that’s no excuse.

I don't see strife as a just for drama thing.

This come across clearly (at least to me) in the changes the writers made in the rewrite.

To me strife = stress.

And at least to me giri and ninjo are more the drama side of the coin that feed into strife but are not strife itself.

These are the role-playing part of the system that I think need to be handle better in the current system, and not made a tack on to the strife system.

Also I think that strife should be defined better and be ignore for dice rolls where stress is not as prevalent.

Example: if you are judging the value of an item, the roll should not generate strife unless the act of valuing the item has imported repercussions for the game.

This should be a GM rule-able system when it comes to when strife is incurred.

2 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

Since you suggest the game needs more low-impact ways to burn off strife, I wonder what you think the writers were trying to implement when it comes to strife as a concept. In my experience strife is already too inconsequential to matter, never mind if PCs get even more ways to get rid of it.

LOL was writing and answer to this as you post came in .