L5R 5E

[Alzie]

I don't know if anyone has seen this, but Legend of the Five Rings just recently came out with a beta for 5E. Now, I happen to like 5E from a coding perspective because it pairs down a lot of the shit that you had to code into CG/The System. I was wondering what other people happened to think of the 5E system otherwise.

For those that do not know about the 5E system, here is a link to the beta on drivethrurpg. It's free.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/223045/Legend-of-the-Five-Rings-RPG-Beta-Rulebook

I will say that one of my favorite rules as it stands is that you can now be a useful crafting specialist out of CG. In 4E, you could start with the star smith clan and never smith a sword your entire campaign because the TN was an outrageous number. In this edition, you can actually make a useful sword even at the beginning of the campaign if that's your shtick.

In other news, would people play an L5R 5E game? (This is my real purpose for posting this because I'm shameless and have been considering a new game)

[ShelBeast]

Yes.

[Faceless]

Yes.

@Aria has told me a bit about it, since I've never played it. It has me wanting to play it.

[Jennkryst]

I would play the shit out of one, and have been rather vocal on the FF Forums about stuff, even. I really think that a MU, given our nature of usual accelerated XP and min-maxing, could help hammer out a lot of the issues, even.

There are some changes to be considered, but all games have THAT.

[Collective]

I have been waiting to play a mincing, well-dressed, urbanely snarky Kakita duelist my entire adult life. (Seriously, I already have a back story written up and everything.)

[Alzie]

Ok, since there is some interest here, what about staffing interest. I don't mind being the mechanical person on the game, but there's only so much one can do with a coder and job machine. Do we have any takers for theme/plot and people that like people?

[Ganymede]

@alzie

I'm gonna need to have a full look at the game. I'd like to, but I've heard there are some mechanical changes between 5E and 4E that sort of alter how Honor, Glory, and plots generally go.

[ShelBeast]

@ganymede Yeah. it seems fairly different.

[Jennkryst]

@ganymede Fantasy flight, so SYMBOLS.

HOWEVER.

Roll and Keep, so you pick which symbols to keep.

[WildBaboons]

I know nothing about the system or game or whatever.. but seeing that their dice app cost $4.99 makes me never want to deal with them as a company. that's just obnoxious.

[bored]

@alzie

We were talking a bit about the beta in the other old L5R thread. I'm always interested in L5R games but I have serious doubts about how feasible the new system is for a MU, simply because resolving a check is a pretty complicated process; once you've built your pool, you have to pick and choose dice to keep (and unlike in 1-4E, there's no simple 'you probably want to keep highest, or maybe lowest in a few scenarios), and then there are possibly additional steps of adding, removing, and rerolling dice (sometimes to be rolled, sometimes with set results) from the result.

That said, I'm always a big fan and I'd be willing to help if someone else is shouldering the code this time around. I still have all my news, setting, and grid material from Kishi Kaisei, although I assume a new game would probably want to use the new canon/setting from the LCG as its likely to be used for the RPG as well.

[Aria]

Personally, I love L5R. Love.

It was, in fact, the first TT game I ever played back when I was a little baby gamer toddling around after the comic store nerds like a little gosling. I still love it, even if I occasionally look at some of the <insert other rant here> nonsense John Wick sold me on when I was 15 and impressionable.

With that said, I absolutely loathe the Fantasy Flight symbol dice thing. I've dealt with it in their Star Wars game and not only does it grind game-play to a frustratingly slow halt while you try to figure out what you actually rolled, it tends to result in... odd outcomes. I like the idea in theory, but in practice things can get really wonky really fast. Having the dice rolls coded would likely fix the former issue; I'm honestly not sure how to address the latter one without a fairly substantial overhaul of the system.

[Jennkryst]

@aria Good news is that there are only two dice types, instead of six, so easier. Also fewer symbols. But as mentioned before, the R&K aspect will make it tricksy, mu-wise.

[bored]

I'm sitting here trying to think if there's a way to basically 'pre pick' dice. This was how I handled it on my (d10) code, where the default +roll assumed you always kept highest, but there was also a /switch to keep lowest. I just discarded the idea anyone would ever want a 'medium' roll (and did have it show dice faces so you could pick manually if you really wanted), but obviously that system was easier overall. This would be a lot more complicated in 5E.

Theoretically, you could set up your roll to take the TN as an input. This would mean you'd take successes over opportunities first, up to that number, but then you might need another /switch to specify what you'd prioritize after that (as, for instance, on attacks, extra successes = more damage, while opportnities can be used to trigger crits, so both have value). I imagine the code could be smart and prioritize opportunities if you didn't have enough possible successes to beat the TN, since the game does provide a lot of things that can be triggered even on failed rolls.

Then you'd need another switch/input that specified a ceiling to how much Strife (the negative symbol only appearing paired with good symbols) you were willing to accept on a roll. But that starts getting into some crazy forking logic. Are you willing to take extra Strife to succeed, but not for Opportunity? Or are you willing to fail to avoid it?

With so much decisionmaking, I don't know how plausible it is to try and make an automated solution. Nevermind that there are explosive results among the possible faces, which trigger further rolls etc.

[Alzie]

@bored Rather than automation being the issue, I think the biggest issue is that there are two types of die now. Both have different sets of symbols on each side and you can keep from each set of dice. So, that's my biggest thing. Coding a nice way to show the sets from each type and also keeping from each type in a manageable way since, for instance, explosions only count for that specific die type.

The other random things, like strife and opportunity are easy to just tally up no matter the side they fall on.

[Thenomain]

@alzie

Possibly consider listing a term for each die, maybe in two different colors or with two different symbols. I don’t know the system yet, but for instance

[good][good][sly]
<sly><bonus><retreat>

Unless there is a clear cut logic to which results will be kept when.

[bored]

@alzie I don't think the dice are that hard themselves. They're basically each just a dictionary, right? 1=blank, 2=succ, 3= succ/strife, etc.

Once you've rolled, you won't have a pool of different dice any more, you'll have a set of results where what sort of dice they came from is irrelevant. IE, your total might look like [explode][success][success/strife][opportunity][blank][blank]. Technically some of those results can only come from one die type or the other (there's no raw explode on the d6), but it doesn't matter when you're picking what you keep. You're picking results, not kinds of dice.

As for what I mean by automation, is that you can't, by default, just 'tally' things. The roll above, say it was keep 3, it could be a 3 succ 1 strife result or a 2 succ 1 opportunity roll. So either you're building an interface to interactively choose dice, or doing it manually and tallying results outside of code, or you come up with some compromises to let people specify things and do it all in one roll.

[Alzie]

@bored except that the type of dice do matter? You have a d6 and a d12. Each one has a different set of sides. Once you get into explosion, you explode the die that the explode came from. So you can't just say you're gonna explode a d6 all the time. If the explode came from a d12 then you gotta roll another d12 and take the result.

You can tally things though. If you roll 6d12 and end up with 3 sux, 2 strife and 1 opportunity. This is all that really matters. No one actually cares what the symbols are, they care what they have to build their keep with.

So probably, if I was coding this, I would just roll each one and tally. If I encounter an explode, roll the explode and list it separately next to each explode. Then just present it to the player and let them build their keep out of the final possible results. That's the only reasonable automation path I see for this.

Otherwise, it would be, as you said, an interactive path whereby someone would roll initially, have to use another command to roll further dice and potentially more commands later on.

[Alzie]

I guess that won't work either. Since you have to apply advantages and disadvantages and they may not even keep the explosions. Whoever decided on this stupid dice system should be shot.

Anyways, I'm guessing we'll do:

• Player types some +roll command
• Player gets initial roll result back
• Player does all this intermediate bullshit
• Player decides what to keep
• Player might need to roll additional ring/skill dice
• Everyone is happy

So we need an initial roll command and one for additional ring/skill.

What should the initial roll command look like though...The additional is easy:

+roll/<type>

where type is ring/skill.

But what about the initial one? Terrible things floating in my head so far.

+roll <#>s<#>r/<TN>
+roll <#>s<#>r vs <TN>
+roll <#>:<#>/<TN>

[Alzie]

@bored You can actually reduce the dice system down to 7 results once you get to laying it out. Also, you said you had your old code and the thing you did in sheet with the rings was really cool. Did you still have that?

Re: 7 results.

Ring: 0, 1, 4, 7, 2, 6
Skill: 0, 0, 1, 1, 5, 4, 4, 3, 7, 2, 2, 2

0 - Blank
1 - Sux
2 - Opportunity
3 - Explode
4 - Sux/Strife
5 - Sux/Opportunity
6 - Opportunity/Strife
7 - Explode/Strife