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Post by joecrak on Jun 11, 2013 9:58:16 GMT -8
Shugenja aren't wizards! They are holy priests!
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Post by The Northman on Jun 11, 2013 13:38:21 GMT -8
This isn't a nitpick, I just like how you guys are slowly adding more cultural features as you go:
Samurai don't discuss business or commerce. It's considered beneath them, and doing so in public costs honor. Instead they serve as patrons for merchants who act as their agents in such dealings. They don't even handle money or directly purchase their own items in most circumstances.
In the game we're playing right now, I've been tasked with finding a buyer for the excess rice produced by our family, and as such was assigned a merchant assistant of non-samurai birth. I'm present at all the negotiations with the Yasuki (who, as an aside, get a school technique that allows them to practice merchant skills with no honor loss, and another that compels people to buy shit they don't even need - great NPC's), but I simply agree to anything my assistant says because I'm not allowed to publicly participate. Behind closed doors is different, obviously, where we can strategize freely (though I still defer to him, since he's much better at it than my character).
Just something to keep in mind since you're patrons of the sake house.
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Jun 11, 2013 16:28:09 GMT -8
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Jun 11, 2013 17:09:16 GMT -8
On the Lion trying to assert a claim to the valley through your ancestry. That's a non-issue. You're Crane now, and that's what matters. Which doesn't mean that they don't have designs on the valley, just that it's gonna come from a different vector. My L5R-fu is pretty weak (and I didn't listen to the first couple session so might be missing some key history), so forgive me if this is way off base, but what if the Inukai had arrived in the valley while still ronins? Could the Lion clan argue that the crane taking the Inukai into their clan was essentially theft of Lion property? Basically, does the former clan of a ronin retain any hold over them at all?
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Post by Stu Venable on Jun 11, 2013 18:41:00 GMT -8
No, they were already crane during the first adventure.
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Jun 11, 2013 18:52:09 GMT -8
No, they were already crane during the first adventure. Did they only just arrive in the valley in the first adventure?? Man I have to go back and listen to those. I somehow had the impression they had been there a long time (generations). I did know they had already been crane for a while Thanks for clarifying.
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Post by Stu Venable on Jun 11, 2013 19:16:27 GMT -8
In the first adventure, which I intended as a one-shot, the Inukai vassal family was 2 generations removed from Ronin. Renjiro, who was not yet a Daimyo, was Junichiro's courtier who had just arrived from winter court with an assignment from a higher-up in the clan, which was to assist a Kakita vassal family with their bandit problem in the Asai valley. Hilarity ensued.
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Jun 12, 2013 7:03:29 GMT -8
Maxinstuff, possibly what you're remembering is that the valley has belonged to the Crane Clan for centuries. It's just been controlled by different vassal families within the Crane at different times. So the Inukai are new as masters of the valley, but the previous masters were also Crane, and so were the ones before them, etc. etc.
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Post by ayslyn on Jun 12, 2013 7:28:52 GMT -8
Even if they were ronin when they took over the valley, the Lion wouldn't cop to their ancestry. If they had been dishonourable enough to get the boot, and get stricken from the records of the clan.... The Lion would have to admit to that dishonour before being able to contest any sort of claim to the valley.
and...
I just want to stress what joecrak said above as well. Shugenja are NOT wizards. They're priests. Priests in a world that has visible manifestations of that religion's mythos.
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SirGuido
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Post by SirGuido on Jun 12, 2013 8:01:11 GMT -8
I like to think of shugenja as a cross between cleric, monk, and courtier.
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Post by joecrak on Jun 12, 2013 11:27:19 GMT -8
Yea, and no matter what way you slice it, them shugenja are powerful, especially if thy get a ring to 4.
Here's 4k4 come of fire coming at everyone in the cone, and I don't have to roll to hit them only to beat the target number to say the prayer, and what luck! I rolled two 10s!
Then again far more frightening is a blood speaker. Filthy scum. The bleed spell alone can kill someone. As almost happened in this saga.
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Post by otherdoc on Jun 15, 2013 9:00:22 GMT -8
"MY HEART IS LIGHT!!!"
That part of the episode was so awesome I don't even have the words to describe its awesomeness. I loved the fact that they just didn't have the heart to break the news to him. (Though I also loved the way Dave provided a setup for it by saying there was nothing they could possibly tell him that could bring him down. Hysterical.)
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Post by bloodsparrow on Jun 21, 2013 7:41:24 GMT -8
"You don't know what he does with... Knowledge."
I'm laughing so hard I'm crying.
I don't really want to join the dog pile on Stork but seriously. I really want to think that the sword is getting to Mishashi.
Keeping that sword is tantamount to having a bloated rotting corpse in your pantry. (As far as I can tell.)
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Post by henryhankovitch on Jun 21, 2013 10:10:26 GMT -8
Samurai don't discuss business or commerce. It's considered beneath them, and doing so in public costs honor. Instead they serve as patrons for merchants who act as their agents in such dealings. They don't even handle money or directly purchase their own items in most circumstances. I don't know how solidly this is welded into the game system; maybe there's a "haggle over the price; MINUS HONOR" rule in there somewhere. But in terms of fluff, this is the sort of thing that I personally like to see variation with. Yeah, you can have the cultural norm that samurai are above monetary concerns. But that doesn't mean that money doesn't concern them. At best it's a sort of well-meaning hypocrisy; at worst, you'll have greedy daimyos and thieving samurai hiding behind their station while they enrich themselves in contemptible ways. It's not like these guys are squabbling over rich fiefdoms because it's just so honorable to have all the barley in the world. To use a not-exactly-historical example, look at Shogun. Toranaga is very good at portraying himself as the aloof, fatalistic, ideal samurai, while the whole time he's plotting his rise to power behind everyone's backs. Yabu, on the other hand, is basically just as ambitious, but does a lousy job of hiding his greed and his depravity. So in terms of the RP, I actually think it's a good thing to have some samurai who just...aren't that good at being idealized samurai. After all, Nikoma's whole character is based on being boisterous, earthy and uncouth...it doesn't really stretch imagination that he'd be a lot less subtle when it came to money. And I believe it was heavily implied that all three of the original PCs were fairly rough around the edges when they were first sent to the valley. Now all that being said, it's another thing entirely when the party goes before their lord in a formal audience and basically says, "hey, we own this bar now and you should be getting a bunch more cash from it, isn't it great?" Kimi's character at least would be aware enough to keep that sort of thing very private, rather than blurting it out in front of Patton-sama.
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Post by Stu Venable on Jun 21, 2013 12:53:44 GMT -8
I decided to de-emphasize the fact that Samurai aren't supposed to be involved with money and commerce.
The main reason is that I don't want to have scenes where my NPC shopkeeper is having a conversation with my NPC merchant-for-the-party. ie, I want to minimize scenes where I'm interacting with myself.
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