4 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

So the entire clan background is to be disregarded?

You have the "Clan's View of Bushido" section exactly for that, it is covered pretty well when it comes to mechanics. That's where you have the rules telling you that you are indeed a stereotypical Crane/Lion/whatever, and even if you did not play along with Questions 7 and/or 8 then you are just a special snowflake, enjoy your two Skills.

15 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

You have the "Clan's View of Bushido" section exactly for that, it is covered pretty well when it comes to mechanics. That's where you have the rules telling you that you are indeed a stereotypical Crane/Lion/whatever, and even if you did not play along with Questions 7 and/or 8 then you are just a special snowflake, enjoy your two Skills.

I get the feeling we’re not on the same page. What I’m saying is that samurai from clan A deal with honor differently than samurai from clan B according to the setting background, but the mechanics are trying to make it so they deal with it the same way.

Yes, the rules push characters towards the stereotypes for their clan/family/school. That’s besides the point. There is no contradiction between setting and rules in that regard (in fact, it’s arguably exactly as it should be). My point is that when it comes to honor (and possibly glory, but certainly to a lesser extent), there is a contradiction between setting and rules. That’s why I feel that regardless of whether this is a mechanically sound game or not it’s not a suitable game to be set in Rokugan, with the entire clan range (and presumably ronin and monks too) at the players’ disposal.

2 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

What I’m saying is that samurai from clan A deal with honor differently than samurai from clan B according to the setting background, but the mechanics are trying to make it so they deal with it the same way.

But... The aforementioned section specifically makes characters from different clan deal with honor quite differently. That doubled/halved forfeit/reward is nothing to sneeze at. It paramountly changes Honor "economy" because of the interlinked gains/losses from multiple virtues.

Tho, I must admit, the Crane/Courage and the Phoenix/Sincerity weak-virtue combinations are indeed hilarious considering the fluff.

When I was doing my homebrew for 4th edition, I wanted the chargen process to "lead" you through typical growing-up experience of a young samurai. Similarly to this edition, it was supposed to be done by answering questions; Honor related stuff (Honor was remade, too) rotated around important people in your life from certain categories, developing both NPCs of importance and picking mechanical stuff (in this case, Virtues your character decided to uphold).

Some random thoughts on Experience gain. Currently skills and Rings can be bought to any rating at any school rank. Rings, regardless of XP cost and how much they provide towards ranking up, are generally going to be thought of as more valuable. What if purchasing Skills and Rings were limited to the current school rank? Limit plus one if they are on the school's curricula. Go back to each school having a single ring on their curricula though likely not something that could be invested in until school rank 2 or 3 because of limitations. This would encourage rank 1 characters to to focus on broadening skills and techniques. At rank 2 they may diverge to patch up a weak ring or continue focusing on their school's skills and techniques, and rank 3 skills will give them a pretty strong edge in their focus of study. At rank 3 they can continue to up weak rings or specialize in their school's ring, with the one ring and skills at 4 representing some heavy specialization and capability.

This would give schools a more traditional rpg class style feel, with everything tied to school rank. That could be a plus or a negative. This would also max things out at rank 6 or 7 depending on if they are on the character's curricula or not. Ronin advancement could just be everything counts full xp towards gaining school ranks, but without a specific curricula they cannot break the rating by 1.

On 12/21/2017 at 9:32 PM, Suzume Chikahisa said:

Not a fan of the pivotal scenes.

They have at least two problems I can see:

1- They eat up session time, more so if multiple players call for a pivotal scene.

2- It's session time in which the remaining players are actively sidelined.

There are way in which such framing could work, notably troupe play, but that's really never been a mode of play L5R used and the beta hasn't provided any support for it either.

In general this is how I feel.

From a player standpoint I like the option but me just blurting out at any point "My turn!" and taking away from the story in progress or someone else's turn is problematic.

As a GM it both helps by giving equal opportunity to the players but at the same time now I have to have X number of scenarios extra per player for any "just in case" moments