This beta continues one of the great traditions of L5R - an honor and glory track.
This creates a lot of uninteresting book keeping. You track the minute changes from 0-100 covering a few points for a breach of etiquette or failing in bushido with some ultimate penalty or reward which is far removed from the players immediate actions. There is also an inherent dissonance between these factors which are directly tied to the decisions of the player role playing that character that are different then other aspects like skills and aptitudes, in that a player can be perfectly honorable from the onset. If a player always makes the most honorable choices, even at a sacrifice to themselves, then they have always been honorable.
For the sake of creating a more narrative system that reacts to how players act out their character, and to enable more appropriate responses from the game, I feel this needs to change. We need to move away from deciding "how honorable" a character is, and focus instead on whether or not they have acted honorably, and the karmic reward for such actions. We also need to do away with the notions that non-people are somehow naturally honor-less. Certainly less people care if they are honorable or not, but there is nothing that says a peasant, or a ronin could not be honorable. Honor is understood across the caste spectrum.
Giri and Ninjo already set a better stage than we've had before. Finally we give a specific line on the character sheet in which a player can dictate what they perceive as "honorable." The game already has a decent idea of giving players advantages as a reward for being honorable, and disadvantages as a penalty - but this is still far removed and includes the extra book keeping.
To simplify the system I think we should simply give the player an advantage for the session IF they make a choice that follows their Giri or Ninjo. If they make a choice that forsakes either then they receive a disadvantage which can be called out against them. These are temporary karmic rewards for the player's actions and are immediately available. If the player chooses Giro over Ninjo then they are both activated, an advantage and disadvantage, giving both the player and the GM tools to create actual narrative consequences for these actions.
Its simple, direct, and allows a player anywhere on the honor spectrum to become engaged by the system, and tempted to act honorably.
Then Status will change - In my opinion the Status spectrum has never served as a stable model for social or political advancement, or renown. Not all advancements are linear, and it has never been able to properly manage all of the ways in which a character can be known, especially when it comes to being known for the bad things.
I suggest we simply give a space to list off traits freely. These traits allow a person to be recognized within a context. If they are known as a bandit then they gain the bandit trait. If they are known to be offensive in court, then they gain the offensive trait. This queues the GM and players to act according to that players tendencies. These are not always all known to everyone, and social skills discovering (dis)advantages would be able to uncover traits as well. These are primarily role play queues but can be turned to give the same mechanical effect of a (dis)advantage based on context. If a player has a negative trait exposed this could cause them the anxiety penalty just for being exposed - or could even give the adversity penalty if they were making some check when this trait was exposed, and knowledge of this trait would hinder them.
Basically these changes make honor a more dynamic system with direct rewards and consequences. Status is now free to be whatever status needs to be, both non-linear and concealable allowing duplicitous characters to properly function. The book keeping is dropped out as the system is turned into a simple list of triggers which either happen, or don't, and aren't awkwardly added together...
