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Post by joecrak on Jun 24, 2013 8:16:17 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. I can understand that and have been in that situation, my work around was have the ayers spend the xp to acquire a merchant servant which they could role play, or they would suffer the glory loss if they haggled. But I had to do this because one player planned to eventually learn from the merchant school which prevents the glory loss, has I ignored that aspect I could see his character feeling lessened by the aspect. When they would use an npc merchant they didn't have the advantage for I gave them a flat price they couldn't argue with less they lose glory.
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Post by jazzisblues on Jun 24, 2013 10:15:02 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. This is one of those cases where our cultural understanding falls down on us. A nobleman whether it be Japanese or European wouldn't think in terms of going shopping for something. He would likely either send someone to get what he wanted, or he would send someone to bring the merchant (tailor) to him so the tailor would do the fitting and then would deal with the nobleman's underlings to work out price and payment and such trivial details that would be beneath the nobleman. One way you could deal with this would be for them to rp sending the servant off on their errand and then when the servant returned with the goods and whether they were right or wrong ... you get the idea. That's how I would do it anyway. JiB
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Post by The Northman on Jun 24, 2013 11:44:34 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. I don't think it makes for a poor game by any means, but it's intended to be viewed as dishonorable. Otherwise the Yasuki wouldn't get a technique that allows them to ignore such honor losses. In fact, you could make a good case for honor specifically being the 'how good of a samurai you are,' stat. I think the two ideas are complimentary, not exclusive. I wasn't trying to say anyone was 'doing it wrong,' only pointing out the cultural bias against doing such things - that Stu has decided to back away from that element makes it a moot point.
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