HazelnutMudslide
Supporter
Posts: 129
Preferred Game Systems: L5R, 7th Sea, TriStat, WoD, D&D5e
Currently Playing: Nothing (LFG)
Currently Running: Nothing (LFG)
Favorite Species of Monkey: grease, never know when you'll need one to fix things.
|
Post by HazelnutMudslide on Oct 18, 2017 20:31:07 GMT -8
Hard-shelled clans good. I'm ok with this.
|
|
|
Post by Stu Venable on Oct 18, 2017 20:50:36 GMT -8
Bring It On is a fantastic movie.
Sparky Polastri makes it.
"THESE ... are spirit fingers!"
|
|
fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
|
HJRP 20-09
Oct 18, 2017 22:16:04 GMT -8
via mobile
Post by fredrix on Oct 18, 2017 22:16:04 GMT -8
So I ran my first session of the beta rules yesterday. I used the intro scenario from the 4th Ed book, as I thought it made a better introduction to the world of Rokugan than the one in the beta rules. Most of my six players were neophytes to L5R, and I wanted to run a game
The good news is we had loads of fun, they loved it and want to play again. I'm on vacation for a couple of sessions. So we'll return to the game in three weeks, when I'll start the adventure in the beta rules.
We have two Scorpions, one "openly" and the other masked as an ex-Hida Ronin, a Dragon Investigator (who quickly worked out Miramoto Rai was having an affair, but couldn't prove his innocence), a Crab bushi, a Unicorn bushi, and a Phoenix shugenja, loyal enough to his clan to lie when the kami told him that a man in Phoenix colours stole Miramoto's kimono. So there are some interesting team dynamics happening.
Thoughts:
Nobody (if I recall correctly) failed a single roll. (This even though many rolls were ring dice only, as they didn't have the skill. QUESTION: Am I doing it right? I let them roll on their ring with no penalty as nothing appears in the rules to say they can't, but I'm very willing to be corrected.) Maybe I wasn't being tough enough with TN, but it felt "too easy" in general. I wonder if the probabilities are designed correctly in these custom dice.
No fighting in this game, so I couldn't test leathality.
The strife rules worked well - the crab played comedicslly very well, especially during the Haiku competion where the player composed some excellently shit haiku, and earned little loads of embarrassment on his dice rolls. Then tried to share his sake knowledge passion to recover some strife, succeeded in the roll, but in doing so earn another point of strife so raged out, knocking the sake cups everywhere. And again towards the end of the session, the Ronin/scorpion rolled to detect the Phoenix's lie. Succeeded but earned strife enough to shut him down, so said nothing.
Rules for custom xp spend at the end of character creation are missing. This was a feature of the 4th ed., and at the beginning of the scenario players are given 24 points to spend on their characters, but I wasn't sure if that was meant to be standard or just to meet the challenge of that particular scenario. I went with not giving them any, with their agreement, partly because most of them didn't know the system well enough to spend it anyway.
|
|
|
Post by yojimbohawkins on Oct 19, 2017 0:05:35 GMT -8
Bring it On is great Mantis clan is better though Crab clan are okay. FFG have asked the beta testers to nominate a minor clan to preview. You know what to do....
|
|
fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
|
Post by fredrix on Oct 19, 2017 0:09:10 GMT -8
Bring it On is great Mantis clan is better though Crab clan are okay. FFG have asked the beta testers to nominate a minor clan to preview. You know what to do.... Yeah shout "Monkey!"
|
|
|
Post by yojimbohawkins on Oct 19, 2017 0:40:41 GMT -8
Thoughts: Nobody (if I recall correctly) failed a single roll. (This even though many rolls were ring dice only, as they didn't have the skill. QUESTION: Am I doing it right? I let them roll on their ring with no penalty as nothing appears in the rules to say they can't, but I'm very willing to be corrected.) Maybe I wasn't being tough enough with TN, but it felt "too easy" in general. I wonder if the probabilities are designed correctly in these custom dice. I've encountered this and I've heard this from quite a few people, although it's been mainly aroung combat. Interestingly, FFG have said in their latest email that combat isn't balanced around the assumption that characters will miss a majority of their attacks, but I feel that this is the case for the system as a whole. Apparently the system is about concious character choices around things like defending against strife, or getting hit, or opportunities, etc, dependent on their choice of approach/stance/ring. I feel that FFG is really in love with the strife/outburst mechanic (which I do think is different, interesting and thematic), but to the detriment of the game. If you succeed more often than not, I can see it getting boring very quickly, regardless of strife and outbursts. Thoughts?
|
|
|
Post by yojimbohawkins on Oct 19, 2017 0:53:40 GMT -8
FFG have asked the beta testers to nominate a minor clan to preview. You know what to do.... Yeah shout "Monkey!" I was thinking "MantisWaspHareTortoise! Ooo, and Seppun/Otomo/Miya!", but then I've always been greedy. I'm surprised the Minor Clans are getting a mention. Given FFG's track record with their RPG's, I only expected the Seven Great Clans in the core book and if I'm honest, I'm not expecting to get all the schools/families we saw in the 4E corebook. They've got form for keeping stuff back for splat books, so I'll be pleasantly surprised if we get at least the same options as 4E.
|
|
fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
|
Post by fredrix on Oct 19, 2017 2:38:30 GMT -8
I didn't run combat yet, so can't speak to that. Most of our rolls were around the Haiku contest, and all my excellent players insisted upon writing their own Haiku, so I gave them each a free success and just used the rolls to add successes/strife/opportunity. So, though it didn't matter I noted that only one player failed their roll. After that I watched more for failure on other actions. There was maybe one? As GM I only made one roll all evening (which is good I think) when one of my players was watching Miramoto Rai and he tried to go off with his lover without my player seeing. He failed against a high TN. So three failures all evening. The strife mechanic worked well, and the players got into it. You are right I think managing strife replaces a lot of the failed rollls in the earlier versions.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 19, 2017 6:15:47 GMT -8
So I've not had a chance to read over the rules yet but the discussion has prompted a question in my head - do you still accumulate strife on a failure? Given the fact you can choose how many die you keep if you know you've failed (GM openly stating difficulty) could you choose not to keep any and not take any strife? Seems counter-intuitive given I'd expect to accumulate more on a failure or is there a mechanism for what happens on a failure?
|
|
fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
|
Post by fredrix on Oct 19, 2017 8:58:29 GMT -8
So I've not had a chance to read over the rules yet but the discussion has prompted a question in my head - do you still accumulate strife on a failure? Given the fact you can choose how many die you keep if you know you've failed (GM openly stating difficulty) could you choose not to keep any and not take any strife? Seems counter-intuitive given I'd expect to accumulate more on a failure or is there a mechanism for what happens on a failure? You have to choose to keep at least one die. So there’s a chance you pick up strife on failure. But it’s a small one.
|
|
|
Post by joecrak on Oct 20, 2017 6:39:45 GMT -8
Bring it On is great Mantis clan is better though Crab clan are okay. FFG have asked the beta testers to nominate a minor clan to preview. You know what to do.... What?! Where, How?!
|
|
fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
|
Post by fredrix on Oct 20, 2017 7:08:50 GMT -8
FFG have asked the beta testers to nominate a minor clan to preview. You know what to do.... What?! Where, How?! If you signed up to the play test (as opposed to just downloading it) you’ll have had an email about some of the discussion so far. The link to the survey is in there. And the choices of minor clan are Fox, Mantis, or Sparrow
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 20, 2017 22:46:04 GMT -8
Thoughts: Nobody (if I recall correctly) failed a single roll. (This even though many rolls were ring dice only, as they didn't have the skill. QUESTION: Am I doing it right? I let them roll on their ring with no penalty as nothing appears in the rules to say they can't, but I'm very willing to be corrected.) Maybe I wasn't being tough enough with TN, but it felt "too easy" in general. I wonder if the probabilities are designed correctly in these custom dice. I've encountered this and I've heard this from quite a few people, although it's been mainly aroung combat. Interestingly, FFG have said in their latest email that combat isn't balanced around the assumption that characters will miss a majority of their attacks, but I feel that this is the case for the system as a whole. Apparently the system is about concious character choices around things like defending against strife, or getting hit, or opportunities, etc, dependent on their choice of approach/stance/ring. I feel that FFG is really in love with the strife/outburst mechanic (which I do think is different, interesting and thematic), but to the detriment of the game. If you succeed more often than not, I can see it getting boring very quickly, regardless of strife and outbursts. Thoughts? What are you setting your TN’s at? I’ve only just started to read through the book (I haven’t finished my cover to cover read yet), but my assessment so far has been that you will struggle if you have less in a ring than the number of successes required (because you would need a critical success that rolled to explode and got at least one more success in order to allow you to keep more success). You have a 1/6 chance on every die (both the ring D6 and the skill D12) to roll a critical success. On your ring die this crit always includes a strife, while on a skill die half of your crits will include strife. Starting characters seem like they can be fairly unskilled in a variety of areas. However, at the suggested xp rate of 2 per hour of play I can see this changing rather rapidly (it takes 16 xp spent on the right things to go from rank 1 to 2, which means you can accomplish that in two sessions that last for four hours). Skills cost 2x new ranks while rings cost 3x new rank. This means a single session could yield a raise to a ring from 1-> 2 and a new skill at 1. Likewise you could get 4 skills to rank 1 or 2 skills to rank 2 from 1. If your session went a tad long, you could even raise a ring from 2 to 3 in a single session’s worth of XP. So while starting characters can easily be challenged outside their area of expertise, I think that such weakness can easily be shored up with XP rather quickly. So instead of failure being our metric for success, we have to consider how much success or opportunity a roll requires to be truely useful. At attacker may be wanting to inflict critical damage, in which case they need to have successes and opportunity, or they may need to get extra bonuses successes to be able to contend with armor. All the while the player needs to manage their strife and outbursts. Thus the effective player is not merely successful, but successful plus tm. To paraphrase 4th edition, “Samurai are not as other men.” Are you happy getting your 2 success and scoring a few wounds? I don’t know about you, but I want more. Like honor and glory you are both testing yourself and comparing yourself to others. There are no awards or accolades meeting minimum requirements.
|
|
|
Post by akavidar on Oct 21, 2017 19:48:53 GMT -8
Bring It On is a fantastic movie. Sparky Polastri makes it. "THESE ... are spirit fingers!" I understand you have underwear up your ass right now, but it beats the hell out of a shattered skull. Think about it.
|
|
HazelnutMudslide
Supporter
Posts: 129
Preferred Game Systems: L5R, 7th Sea, TriStat, WoD, D&D5e
Currently Playing: Nothing (LFG)
Currently Running: Nothing (LFG)
Favorite Species of Monkey: grease, never know when you'll need one to fix things.
|
Post by HazelnutMudslide on Oct 22, 2017 16:04:49 GMT -8
And the choices of minor clan are Fox, Mantis, or SparrowEdited for realistic voting results. The other two have NO chance of getting the vote.
|
|