I want to give my players basic ways to interpret the different tenets of bushido in a given simple situation.
Here is what I have so far, does it make sense ? I know no answer will be ideal, but as long as they make sense in comparison to each others that would suffice for the goal of the exercise.



A samurai see a peasant commit a crime on his own turf. He stole a loaf of bread.

Compassion: Did the peasant steal the bread for himself ? Or his family or friends ? Did he steal for a good reason ? I might be tempted to try to help the peasant given the right circumstances.

Courage: Did he act with courage for a just cause ? Or out of weakness and cowardice ? From whom did the peasant steal from and how did he do it ? If the peasant showed courage, I will stand by him, even if he ends up being punished, the sacrifice won’t be in vain. If he was a coward, he will be punished like a coward.

Courtesy: He should be be given a fair punishment, but he needs to be punished. We need to make sure that all parties, the criminal and the victim, can understand and accept the judgement.

Duty And Loyalty: I will deliver whatever my Lord asks. If the peasant needs to die, he dies, if the peasant have to live, he will.

Honor: The peasant needs to be punished, as no matter the reason he stole for, he acted dishonorably. But if his reason for doing so was honorable, maybe someone else also lacks virtue and needs to be punished (for example if the loaf of bread was poisoned and intended to kill a customer).

Righteousness: Laws are laws. Whatever the book says, is what the punishment should be. Done in accordance with the rules. Nothing more, nothing less. Otherwise we descend into chaos.

Sincerity: Do I bring him to justice, or act as if I never saw anything ?

I would rather go with something like this:

• Compassion: Is there a chance to do good in your vicinity? Yes? Then take it. No? Then keep looking for one.
• Courage: When you are to act, act. When you are to speak, speak.
• Courtesy: Think as you act. Think as you speak.
• Duty: You must ensure your people's well being by any means necessary.
• Honor: Give no f*ck and take no ****.
• Righteousness: It is either 'yes' or 'no'.
• Sincerity: If you did it, then tell them you did it. If you said it then tell them you said it.

So a peasant stole a loaf of bread. The first thing the honorable samurai must do is to stop the thief and return the bread to its rightful owner (Compassion) . The honorable samurai must then punish the peasant for the crime of theft, no talking involved, the peasant is a criminal, they must be punished (Righteousness) . While punishing the peasant, the honorable samurai spares a thought of why the peasant stole the bread instead of earning it legally (Courtesy) . If the honorable samurai figures out an underlying issue, then they immediately set out to resolve it (Duty) . If they run into their lord and the lord asks the honorable samurai whether they are really rolling up complex socio-economical issues because of a stolen loaf of bread, the the honorable samurai answers with a straight 'yes' (Sincerity) . If their lord becomes angry at the honorable samurai for implying that the lord is not doing a good enough job, then the honorable samurai tells their lord that peasants stealing bread is indeed a pretty bad sign (Courage) . If the lord starts raging then the honorable samurai humbly bows out of the conversation and leaves to continue with solving the bread-stealing-peasants case (Honor) .

Here note that this is "AKODO's HARDCORE" mode but in my experience players tend to get this a lot easier than the usual "DOJI's FANFIC" mode.

I think you might be working off of a bad premise with the peasant. Bushido is the samurai Code, and it mostly applies to interactions between samurai. Bushido obviously spills over into other interactions a samurai has (such as peasants and gaijin) but I don't think a lot of deep samurai philosophy gets written about these scenarios...

Still following this thread through...

COMPASSION: as written, makes sense to me.

COURAGE: It's YOUR courage as a samurai that you need to think about first. Which the Shadowlands book clearly states is more than valor. It's about doing what you need to do despite adversity and negative consequences that can come to you (because of your actions.) It's possible that peasant in the example showed or didn't show courage in his or her actions. And that might influence how your samurai feels about the peasant (see Compassion & Sincerity). But I don't think the Bushido principle of courage shows up until you have to choose to do something that risks real consequences for you. A peasant stealing bread in itself does not invoke a samurai's courage directly. This is true whether or not you punish the thief.

COURTESY: IMO its not about fairness but that it's important not to mock the peasant and to scrupulously go through the correct procedures when you (almost inevitably) punish him.

DUTY & LOYALTY: Generally your duty as a samurai is to maintain Rokugan's order. Through obedience to your Lord. So barring any special considerations you would punish the thief. Theft is a crime. BUT! If there are special circumstances I think you would consider how the theft impacts your Lord. Does this need to be swept under a rug? Maybe the loss of a bread loaf somehow will humiliate your Lord's rival. In that case you do nothing. It depends on what you perceive as best for your Lord (Family, Clan, Empire...).

HONOR: This is the toughest one for me. I do not think Rokugani "Honor" is the same as the way we generally use the word. I think of Honor as internal reflection upon ones actions, and the drive to self-critique and do better based on external standards passed down through the generations. If the other tenets could be measured in centimeters and inches, then Honor is about taking a tape measurer to your soul. Again, dealing with a peasant stealing bread probably does not directly touch upon a samurai's honor. Unless you feel that acting/not acting somehow doesn't measure up against the rubrics of what you know is "right." AtoMaki found an "interesting" way to express this but after thinking about it I largely agree with him.

RIGHTEOUSNESS: Is acting in accordance to the rules and exceptions of "divine harmony." Where Duty & Loyalty put your Lord front and center, Righteousness puts the biggest possible framework and understanding the "Will of Heaven." Since the Divine Emperor more or less owns everything, I would expect a righteous samurai to come down firmly against the peasant who is stealing. Rarely Lords or even laws may manifestly run contrary to the rules of Divine Harmony and must be opposed in these circumstances.

SINCERITY: Like Honor, Sincerity is about being true to standards. Unlike Honor, acting from Sincerity requires you to listen to your conscience. External examples are of limited value. Oddly enough I think AtoMaki's expression of Honor applies here as well (and his bullet point of sincerity often applies to honor...). A samurai acting from sincerity might or might not punish the peasant for entirely personal reasons.

Ok, so aside courage, pretty much what I had, explained in better and more romantic words. Thanks for all that. It is true that trying to emphasise Courage, in that particular situation, in only a few sentences, was not that easy. I agree that it should be more geared toward your personal courage though, I just don't see yet how to make it clear in that example. How would a samurai who explicitly favors Courage would act in that situation. Go catch the thief himself with an unarmed grab ?

Courtesy also doesn't need to be "fair". Agree there. Even if in a lot of other situations, fairness is pretty much part of courtesy. (Giving a weapon to an unarmed opponent before a duel is an example they give)

And yeah, I was trying to stay within the realm of one situation and see how acting mostly in favor of one tenet would be. I know if you extrapolate the story, you will find better example for all tenets. But that was not the purpose of this very narrow situation, to explain to players different takes on bushido in one single moment.

As in game term, there is always contradictions (many points in atomaki are directly contradicting, like in the example of Honor, if you just bow and then conduct your own investigation, you probably lacked in some other aspect of bushido right there, especially duty and loyalty toward your superior. I also not necessarily agree with his views on compassion, as basically, the peasant could have had many reason to steal the bread. Sure bringing the bread back to an egoistic and downright evil shopkeeper who abused many people to get to this point is "right" but not compassionate.

And also, bread. What a non-l5r example...

The thing with Bushido is that the honorable samurai must make very complex decisions in a very small time-frame while processing and cross-referring all available information. This is tough, even if we assume that the samurai are specifically conditioned to do this during their training. There will be mistakes, but the actual process must go on regardless. The honorable samurai should just return to those mistakes at an appropriate time and fix them (likely producing more mistakes). This kind of "honorable consequence management" is THE samurai drama you should be looking for in an L5R game.

The table in the rulebook is weird. You can literally kill your very own lord and gain Honor from it if you go through certain steps.

44 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

The thing with Bushido is that the honorable samurai must make very complex decisions in a very small time-frame while processing and cross-referring all available information. This is tough, even if we assume that the samurai are specifically conditioned to do this during their training. There will be mistakes, but the actual process must go on regardless. The honorable samurai should just return to those mistakes at an appropriate time and fix them (likely producing more mistakes). This kind of "honorable consequence management" is THE samurai drama you should be looking for in an L5R game.

The table in the rulebook is weird. You can literally kill your very own lord and gain Honor from it if you go through certain steps.

All this is ok, but we found that many times, multiple tenets can all be part of the same situation;

Peasant steal a bag of rice;

Compassion because his family is dying. But then you fail Righteousness for doing what the law says. By saying nothing you lose Sincerity. Etc etc.

Basically, we try to figure out one or two tenet that can come in conflict in a given situation, to make the calculation easier, if you know what I mean.

The purpose is not to be 100% accurate simulation of bushido on a scale of 1 to 100. But more like, find a decent gamey way to make it simple enough to stay enjoyable around the table.

Hence the purpose of the original situation. Given a similar situation, how each different samurai might react depending on which tenet they favor (for them to roleplay easier) obviously lots of other details can come into play, but I'm trying to keep it to original reactions based on favoured tenet of each players, since following all tenets is mostly impossible in a lot of situations.

12 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

All this is ok, but we found that many times, multiple tenets can all be part of the same situation;

Peasant steal a bag of rice;

Compassion because his family is dying. But then you fail Righteousness for doing what the law says. By saying nothing you lose Sincerity. Etc etc.

Yes, this is the complex decision making and managing the fallout, the cream of Bushido-fu.

In my example, if the peasant has a starving family then the situation is retroactively solved at the Duty step where the samurai sets out to dig to the bottom of the problem. Unless the samurai deduces that the peasant only stole because he is too lazy to work at which point the starving family simply stops mattering because Bushido has many things going for it but being merciful is not one of them.

2 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

I see compassion as being merciful. In a human sense of things. You think this is wrong?

I also see duty as being totally about your direct superior commands and not as much as general samurai standard duty. For example, the scorpion are about it because if they have to commit dishonorable acts for their superiors, they do so without arguing, even if it breaks other tenets.

Following standard samurai "rules and laws" would probably be more righteousness and honor.

After ruminating on this some more I have some additional thoughts.

HONOR, DUTY & LOYALTY, RIGHTEOUSNESS & SINCERITY are all points of Bushido that help tell you what to do as I see it. Though they all put their emphasis on establishing what is “right action,” the core of what makes for right action is centered in different places for each tenet.

• Honor measures an action against all the external examples you’ve been taught.
• Duty & Loyalty measures an action against its impact on your Lord and Clan
• Righteousness measures an action against what is right in the “Celestial Order”
• Sincerity measures an action against your personal beliefs and conscience.

COURAGE & COURTESY are points of Bushido on the contrary that seem to primarily tell you HOW to carry out a “right action” once you decide what that is..

• Courage requires you to boldly ignore any negative consequences to you for directly & zealously pursuing the right thing.
• Courtesy equites you to do the culturally respectful thing, regardless of any negative consequences to you.

COMPASSION I struggle some with. It’s the Unicorn’s primary tenet. I think it seems to “stand by itself” as the ability to recognize value in things outside of the strict samurai world. When you treat a peasant politely that is a minor to trivial act of compassion. You can command or ignore such a person with impunity. But you their value and acknowledge it with civil discourse. It also is the ability to recognize the value in your adversaries and enemies . (At least those not consumed by the taint of Jigoku...)

• Compassion seems to me to be an internal exercise. Thus in some ways I see Compassion vs. Courtesy in the same vein as Sincerity vs. Honor. If so, perhaps it should be put above with Courage and Courtesy.

My two cents.

Thanks for starting the thread. It’s helped sharpen my thinking about the Code of Bushido within the context of Rokugan.

24 minutes ago, Void Crane said:

After ruminating on this some more I have some additional thoughts.

HONOR, DUTY & LOYALTY, RIGHTEOUSNESS & SINCERITY are all points of Bushido that help tell you what to do as I see it. Though they all put their emphasis on establishing what is “right action,” the core of what makes for right action is centered in different places for each tenet.

• Honor measures an action against all the external examples you’ve been taught.
• Duty & Loyalty measures an action against its impact on your Lord and Clan
• Righteousness measures an action against what is right in the “Celestial Order”
• Sincerity measures an action against your personal beliefs and conscience.

COURAGE & COURTESY are points of Bushido on the contrary that seem to primarily tell you HOW to carry out a “right action” once you decide what that is..

• Courage requires you to boldly ignore any negative consequences to you for directly & zealously pursuing the right thing.
• Courtesy equites you to do the culturally respectful thing, regardless of any negative consequences to you.

COMPASSION I struggle some with. It’s the Unicorn’s primary tenet. I think it seems to “stand by itself” as the ability to recognize value in things outside of the strict samurai world. When you treat a peasant politely that is a minor to trivial act of compassion. You can command or ignore such a person with impunity. But you their value and acknowledge it with civil discourse. It also is the ability to recognize the value in your adversaries and enemies . (At least those not consumed by the taint of Jigoku...)

• Compassion seems to me to be an internal exercise. Thus in some ways I see Compassion vs. Courtesy in the same vein as Sincerity vs. Honor. If so, perhaps it should be put above with Courage and Courtesy.

My two cents.

Thanks for starting the thread. It’s helped sharpen my thinking about the Code of Bushido within the context of Rokugan.

Well said. Great post.

And yeah the purpose of the thread was exactly that!

17 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

The table in the rulebook is weird. You can literally kill your very own lord and gain Honor from it if you go through certain steps.

It depends on why you're killing your lord, but...yes. It would require very specific circumstances, though.

16 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

All this is ok, but we found that many times, multiple tenets can all be part of the same situation;

Any decision that matters will always require you to consider multiple tenets. The beta had example breachs of courage of 'withdrawing from battle'

1. Trifling Breach - Fleeing from battle (rather than being sent elsewhere to perform another task) at your lord’s order
2. Minor Breach - Fleeing from a lost battle to protect your lord’s interests
3. Major Breach - Fleeing from battle purely to save your own skin

Thing is, not doing (1) is by definition a violation of Duty.

My mental map of the tenets kind of falls into two halves, like this:

• Duty - the right thing to do is whatever your lord tells you (or whatever you believe your lord would tell you if you could ask them)
• Compassion - the right thing to do is to be kind, especially to people lower down the social order than you
• Righteousness - the right thing to do is follow the law and/or tradition
• Courtesy - the right thing to do is not to cause offense or embarrassment to anyone involved (including you)
• Sincerity - the right thing to do is to tell the truth, openly, to everyone involved (lying by omission still counts)

• Honour - you should never avoid doing what you think is the right thing because of what you want or what's convenient
• Courage - you should never avoid doing whatever you deem is the right thing because of what you risk by doing so

I tend to default to examples by giving actions which follow one but violate another.

• " do I or don't I provide testimony to the magistrate " is a classic conflict, depending on what the effect of the testimony is likely to be, it could be a conflict of sincerity vs duty (no, my lord doesn't have an alibi at that hour), sincerity vs courtesy (my friend does have an alibi at that hour but it's because they were in bed with their rival's spouse).
• Duty vs righteousness is essentially this setting's version of the classic military dichotomy of " you cannot give me what we both know is an illegal order "; because in Rokugan you can . But the correct response in the abstract is probably for the vassal to offer to commit seppuku rather than carry it out, which - in theory - results in the lord rethinking things and going " maybe this isn't as honourable a plan as I thought ".

2 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

• Duty vs righteousness is essentially this setting's version of the classic military dichotomy of " you cannot give me what we both know is an illegal order "; because in Rokugan you can . But the correct response in the abstract is probably for the vassal to offer to commit seppuku rather than carry it out, which - in theory - results in the lord rethinking things and going " maybe this isn't as honourable a plan as I thought ".

That is why I think giving each clan a favored and disfavored tenet is great. Because nothing will be totally black or totally white.

But, when it comes to honor loss and gains in game, you cannot start to calculate every tenet separately for each action to come up with the final result... It would take way too long. As a GM you need to round things up a bit. Focusing on the few tenets that are most roleplayed by each of your pc.

This thread is trying to figure out how a character that favors "courage" for example, would generally act, no matter the example. Is "courage" also a RP feature basically.

It doesn't mean this same character is not sometimes sincere, or honorable, or even courteous. Its just that in game you have to be a bit more lenient when it comes to a character favored or disfavored tenet. It is a RP tool after all. A scorpion cannot lose honor each time he does a dishonorable action, because he can also most probably gain honor for "duty and loyalty" while doing it.

2 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

• 2 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

That is why I think giving each clan a favored and disfavored tenet is great. Because nothing will be totally black or totally white.

2 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

It doesn't mean this same character is not sometimes sincere, or honorable, or even courteous. Its just that in game you have to be a bit more lenient when it comes to a character favored or disfavored tenet.

This. It's what means that different choices are going to be 'the honourable approach' for different clans, which is where the in-party dynamics can come into it, and decisions which don't invoke multiple tenets tend to be the easy ones.

(Is the honourable choice a] murder the innocent for no good reason or b] do not murder the innocent for no good reason? Place your votes!)

You're supposed to embody all the bushido tenets, all the time. The fact that that's impossible and they're mutually exclusive in most situations is irrelevant to the ideal samurai!

In practice, it means that the favoured and disfavoured tenets represent 'tie-breakers' where the demands of different facets of bushido are otherwise roughly equal.

I came up with an example of this to reflect the clan's views that I used with my group:

You have an elderly daimyo of a minor family. He's loyal, pious, intelligent and polite. Basically a really good egg, for all that his domain is one slightly fortified manor house nominally called a 'castle', two villages either side of a stream, and the bridge crossing between them. Said bridge is moderately strategically important, and hence there's a small Imperial Legion garrison - a handful of Bushi each from one of many different families. The Daimyo is respectful to them, and not only meets but actively exceeds his obligations - providing the Imperial troops with rice, sake and the services of ashigaru retainers to bulk out patrols or sentry posts where needed - and thus saves a fair expense from the purse of the garrison commanders' superior.

His biggest weakness is his (only) child and heir, who is a classic spoiled only child. Said child has never really been taken to task, and - critically - none of their father's swordmasters has ever really tested them; but has just allowed them to win in order not to offend them (because they have an ego, a short temper, and a cruel and inventive streak) or disappoint their father, who has a tendancy to take anything their child tells them at face value. 

Said heir has convinced themselves they're the Kami's gift to modern swordsmanship, and has decided to challenge the various Bushi in the garrison to prove how much better they are than the outsiders.

• Accepting the challenge and 'winning':
  • Is going to humiliate the heir, who is, when all's said and done, basically just a child (failure of compassion)
  • Is going to offend both the heir and the garrison's "host" (failure of courtesy)
  • Is going to cause otherwise avoidable problems for the garrison (failure of duty)
  • Showing up the heir's tutors as failing to instruct them properly (failure of righteousness)
• Avoiding or Throwing the challenge and 'losing':
  • Is backing down from an honest fight (failure of courage)
  • Is allowing an insult to the Imperial Legions to stand unchallenged (failure of honour)
  • Is allowing the heir's delusions of his skill to stand, potentially landing them in a worse situation later (failure of sincerity)

Assuming the honour hits with the two choices are of broadly equal severity, then it's the clan's views on Bushido which will tip things one way or another.

• Crab: Courtesy is less important than Courage. Someone should stand up to the Heir and teach them a valuable life lesson - WIN
• Falcon: Courtesy is less important than Honour. The Honour of the Imperial Legions is at stake and should be defended - WIN
• Dragon: Duty is less important than Sincerity. The Heir should not be allowed to retain a false impression of their own ability - WIN
• Lion: Compassion is less important than Honour. The Heir issued a challenge, bordering on an insult; if they didn't know what they were doing that's their problem - WIN

• Crane: Courage is less important than Courtesy. The Heir should be allowed to fight and 'win' rather than cause a scandal - LOSE
• Phoenix: Sincerity is less important than Righteousness. The Heir is the child of the garrison's host, and embarrassing their family and vassals over the Heir's failings is not the right thing to do - LOSE
• Scorpion: Honour is less important than Duty. The garrison's job is to protect the bridge; being asked to suffer the heir's discourtesy is trivial compared to retaining their father's willing support and letting the garrison do their job - LOSE

• Unicorn: Courtesy is less important than Compassion. Humiliating the heir personally is more of a problem than a nebulous 'scandal' - NEUTRAL
• Mantis: Honour is less important than Courage. Not backing down from a challenge is more important than the implied insult to the Legions - NEUTRAL
• Imperial: Compassion is less important than Duty. The Daimyo's support is key to efficiently running the garrison, but coddling the child achieves nothing - NEUTRAL

Which should, in theory, lead to a lively debate in the barracks.

Yup "tie breaker" is the perfect word to represent it simply. Favored and Disfavored tenet are really where it is at for most of the honor gains or lost. This is FORCED on the player depending on his clan and is a very defining mechanic that is often overlooked because if you don't use those those favored or disfavored tenet (in a roleplay sense) you will struggle with honor gains as you will always end up in an almost "tie".

Though, if you follow your favored/disfavored tenet, you will gain a lot of honor.
But as we said in other threads, gaining honor is easy in this game. Unless the GM tries very hard to make it difficult or that the player is mature enough to decide to lose honor for story/roleplay purpose.

19 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

I see compassion as being merciful. In a human sense of things. You think this is wrong?

You can be compassionate and merciless at the same time. Bushido often compels you to be like that. You save travelers on the road from bandits (Compassion) but the bandits are dead meat for you and even if they survive the fight you should put them to sword either way.

Sparing a peasant because they dared to cross the road in front of you is not being merciful, it is not being an *ss.

Compassion is less about being merciful, more about being understanding and empathetic, and a lack of cruelty. Compassion is breached when you inflict pain, suffering and death for no cause, or with no attempt to meliorate it. You sacrifice for Compassion when you aid and support others before yourself, or when you help or heal people when it isn't even your best interest. A samurai does not fight to fight, part of your whole package is to defend the people and the land.

An example of Compassion would be a samurai meets a starving villager. He says that bandits have raided his town and stolen their food, "Oh samurai-san, please help". Not only does the samurai agree to help, because fighting rowdy bandits is in his job description and covered by several other tenets of bushido, but also he gives the villager some of his trail rations unbidden, for clearly the peasant has a greater need than he in that moment.

On 7/30/2019 at 9:24 AM, AtoMaki said:

The table in the rulebook is weird. You can literally kill your very own lord and gain Honor from it if you go through certain steps.

Well yes, of course. Way of the Scorpion showed that way back in first ed. http://onibushi.tripod.com/id23.htm

8 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:

Compassion is less about being merciful, more about being understanding and empathetic, and a lack of cruelty. Compassion is breached when you inflict pain, suffering and death for no cause, or with no attempt to meliorate it. You sacrifice for Compassion when you aid and support others before yourself, or when you help or heal people when it isn't even your best interest. A samurai does not fight to fight, part of your whole package is to defend the people and the land.

An example of Compassion would be a samurai meets a starving villager. He says that bandits have raided his town and stolen their food, "Oh samurai-san, please help". Not only does the samurai agree to help, because fighting rowdy bandits is in his job description and covered by several other tenets of bushido, but also he gives the villager some of his trail rations unbidden, for clearly the peasant has a greater need than he in that moment.

In the original bread (I really should change it to rice) stealing example. How would someone who absolutely wants to follow the Compassion tenet at all cost would act ? Would such a samurai try to dig deeper than the surface of the crime before rendering his judgement or taking his stance ?

Yes, but not necessarily while looking at the act, but the punishment. they stole, they get punished. They were greedy and wanted to sell the rice for money to do something personal with, beheading. They were lazy and don't work for food when they could? take a hand. they stole for their family because of hard times? 10 lashes.

On 7/31/2019 at 10:37 AM, AtoMaki said:

You can be compassionate and merciless at the same time. Bushido often compels you to be like that. You save travelers on the road from bandits (Compassion) but the bandits are dead meat for you and even if they survive the fight you should put them to sword either way.

Sparing a peasant because they dared to cross the road in front of you is not being merciful, it is not being an *ss.

Of course, for a Lion, sparing that peasant *IS* being "merciful." But that is because the Lion are rather (in)famous for their lack of Compassion.

15 minutes ago, sakieh said:

Of course, for a Lion, sparing that peasant *IS* being "merciful." But that is because the Lion are rather (in)famous for their lack of Compassion.

That's because the Lion's focus is Honor, so nobody can tell them how to be Compassionate. They are not lazying around Compassion by being merciful and stuff but do what it really means: kick Bad Guy butt.

By the way, fun fact: the Bushido L5R uses is the one from Nitobe Inoze. It is literally Traditional Christian Values BUT WITH SAMURAI because Inoze was a devout Christian. He got a lot of flack in his time for his Bushido being sneaky pro-Christian/pro-West ideological subversion. If you really don't want to spend time with explaining Bushido to your players, then just tell them that they are reskinned European Chivalric Knights, it will do the trick.

1 minute ago, AtoMaki said:

That's because the Lion's focus is Honor, so nobody can tell them how to be Compassionate. They are not lazying around Compassion by being merciful and stuff but do what it really means: kick Bad Guy butt.

By the way, fun fact: the Bushido L5R uses is the one from Nitobe Inoze. It is literally Traditional Christian Values BUT WITH SAMURAI because Inoze was a devout Christian. He got a lot of flack in his time for his Bushido being sneaky pro-Christian/pro-West ideological subversion. If you really don't want to spend time with explaining Bushido to your players, then just tell them that they are reskinned European Chivalric Knights, it will do the trick.

Ok, that last bit? That really is new to me. Though I generally go with the Hagakure and Book of Five Rings, myself.

Though, an intersting bit that I think does not get much play in the current rule set: the different FAMILIES have different emphases on Bushido, as well. I mean, in the Crane, sure, the Doji put an emphasis on Courtesy. But, the Asahina have an emphasis on Compassion, the Daidoji put an emphasis on Duty, and, let's face it, the Kakita are as much about Courage and Honor as just about anything else. So, while the Crane as a whole put an emphasis on Courtesy, I would expect an Doji Courtier trained Asahina to be more Compassionate than a Doji with the same training.

19 hours ago, sakieh said:

Though, an intersting bit that I think does not get much play in the current rule set: the different FAMILIES have different emphases on Bushido, as well. I mean, in the Crane, sure, the Doji put an emphasis on Courtesy. But, the Asahina have an emphasis on Compassion, the Daidoji put an emphasis on Duty, and, let's face it, the Kakita are as much about Courage and Honor as just about anything else. So, while the Crane as a whole put an emphasis on Courtesy, I would expect an Doji Courtier trained Asahina to be more Compassionate than a Doji with the same training.

Indeed. The Asahina's whole pacifism thing, for example, gets mentioned but not really underlined - the Asahina School, for example, teaches fire invocations as part of its rank 3 curriculum, despite the fact that they're generally destructive magic.

Equally you probably get rivalry between families within a clan just as much as you'd get rivalries between clans within the empire. Yes, the 'ruling family' is generally locked by tradition but the relative power and influence of the other families will vary over time.

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Indeed. The Asahina's whole pacifism thing, for example, gets mentioned but not really underlined - the Asahina School, for example, teaches fire invocations as part of its rank 3 curriculum, despite the fact that they're generally destructive magic.

Equally you probably get rivalry between families within a clan just as much as you'd get rivalries between clans within the empire. Yes, the 'ruling family' is generally locked by tradition but the relative power and influence of the other families will vary over time.

Their fire spells are just to make fireworks and bbqs. Did you miss the sidebar?

Oh, yes, the sidebar about invocation names. Thanks for pointing out my mistake.

Sorry that I missed that. It makes far more sense that the school would teach Totally Pacifistic and Harmless Method of Lighting Small Non-Threatening Cooking Fires

(a.k.a. Breath of the Fire Dragon )

The fact that other families might use similar invocations for more nefarious purposes obviously doesn't reflect on the Asahina school at all....