Courtiers are quite literally one-third of the entire game. You can't just write them out.
I agree with @ominous and others. If your character exists to be a social butterfly then there should be mechanics for those proficiencies. You should have to roll checks the same as swinging a sword if it's for somethi g substantive and not Lady Imsaria's Thirteenth baby shower in three years praise the Light!
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
Cue the social combat holy war. Or just copy paste from the countless other times we've gone round and round and round on this.
If your character exists to be a social butterfly then there should be mechanics for those proficiencies.
I agree with this.
The tough part isn't the social rolling, though. I don't know if FFG uses the Honor system, but if it does that is a whole other mess that requires staff/GM intervention constantly.
Courtiers are quite literally one-third of the entire game. You can't just write them out.
Then create and support mechanics for them to do things that non-courtier characters can't. If you're not going to do that, cut them from the MU. It's a simple binary choice. No one wants to play a useless character. Well, almost no one. I dabble in useless idiots.
Cue the social combat holy war. Or just copy paste from the countless other times we've gone round and round and round on this.
No. No, social combat holy war here. I'm not saying you must have social combat on all MU*s. I am saying that, IF you make a social archetype available, you MUST supply a means to make that archetype viable in relation to other archetypes.
I run an old-school D&D game. There are no social rolls and there are no bards or other classes that fit the courtier archetype. The only "social rolls" that exist in that game are morale checks for monsters and hirelings, a charisma check when someone tries to hire hirelings to see if the hireling will work for the offered pay, and rolling to try to haggle a merchant, which is essentially the same as hiring hirelings. Everything else is played out. You want to bluff the guard that you are totally invited to the party even though you have no invitation in hand? You, as the player, need to tell me what your character says and does and I, as the GM, will decide if it's believable. I might roll some dice if I decide that it's questionable whether or not your words and actions are on the edge of being good enough.
However, if the group were to suddenly jump to new-school D&D or L5R, we'd be playing with the social rules from those games, because those games have characters that fill a social role, and I don't want to tell one of my players "Sucks that you picked a bard and dumped a bunch of points into bluff and diplomacy. I'm never going to ask you to roll those skills."
EDIT: And it doesn't have to be a social combat system or anything like that. For other games with courtier players, I have suggested stealing ideas from board games. Have different overarching influence groups like "The Peerage," "The Underworld," "The Merchants," "The Peasants" or whatever, and players can put skill points into those categories. Every week or month or whatever, the player is awarded a number of cubes (remember, we're stealing from board games) for those groups based on their skill. The cubes can be traded with other players, but there could be another social skill that determines a maximum number of cubes a player can hold without excess cubes being discarded at a slow rate, say 1 cube a day or something, until the number of cubes is under the maximum "hand size." Cubes can then be used to pay for attempts to influence the NPCs of each group. Want the third estate to support your idea of guillotines and suddenly shorter nobles? Bid your cubes and make some rolls to see if you make headway or lack-of-headway in that particular case.
Ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
I am saying that, IF you make a social archetype available, you MUST supply a means to make that archetype viable in relation to other archetypes.
Yes, and the 97 bazillion pages of those threads I linked to are the argument(s) between that position and the position that no, you actually don't because social stuff is inherently and fundamentally different than non-social stuff, regardless of what archetypes are available. And I will try to refrain from saying any more because I really don't want to re-hash that subject again.
There are specific things in both 4e and FFG L5R games that only Courtiers can do. I'm also... reasonably sure there are social combat mechanics, I'll look again after work.
I am just re-voicing the side I always take on the social-roll-play vs role-play debate: given the importance of etiquette in the setting, staff for such a game need to be on-point to make sure the normal 0-etiquette lion bushi is not out-socialing the crane courtier just because they pose good.
Hell, the L5R rules simultaneously solve some issues while creating others. Again, will re-read and come back with stuff.
I think social mechanics work best with very active supportive storytelling opportunities (as in ways you use then against npcs). Unless its a pvp game very seldom do combat pcs roll combat against each other, its against npcs in storytelling.
And you could have social sparring for brownie points/onesupmanship just like you can combat sparring.
I did used to get peeved when players relied on their own ooc to be convincing rather than playing to the sheet they know they've built--but honestly now I figure they know that they're cheating and that's on them and will usually show up in other ways. Well and it helps that I tend to play games where people are assumed to have baseline competence in most things and tbe dice are there to allow the pc to do specific directed or exceptional actions rather than assuming that someone with 0 knife skill couldn't figure out how to cut their meat or cut a piece of rope (maybe they'd be messy) or wouldn't know what end to stab people with, or someone with no points in empathy was therefore a sociopath and should be rped as such.
If STs are not asking people to roll to convince the mob/schmooze the merchant/fast talk the used car salesman so nobody invests because they're never needed, then that's a problem with staffing and thinking of opportunities to allow folks to show off their investment! And can be pretty easily corrected.
But I don't think anyone can correct likeability ooc nor should they.
My concern about creating a social sphere is that I don't think it solves the problem of excluding certain kinds of people from certain kinds of scenes. It might even making it worse, by giving courtiers a separate niche that bushi and shugenja can't infiltrate.
I'm not trying to crap on anyone's ideas. I just don't personally have the kind of problem-solving mind that sees a solution to this, so I hope someone has input they want to share.
I think @bored had a game? Or iirc they would be a good person to talk to about it. I might be conflating them with someone else though.
I don't really read here much anymore, but yeah, I ran an L5R game although it didn't really last that long. It was under 4e rules and I had to write all that code myself (I do probably still have it but not in an easily-transmisible format), so it was much different than the current FFG stuff system-wise although mostly identical setting-wise (the rebooted setting is a bit different, particularly re: getting rid of some of the still-assumed gender norms etc and gender-flipping a couple of the old NPCs, like Hoturi). I've played FFG in table top and it's interesting, although I predict there would be some MU issues in terms of defining Rings/Approaches, as the game gives you a lot of leeway there but also requires the GM to say no on occasion, so those gray areas might lead to some arguments/rules lawyering.
More generally, there are setting challenges. Personally, STing on my game, I found getting people to adopt anything like actual social/court RP extremely difficult, there's just a lot of assumptions that are vastly different in terms of how social interaction works. Maybe the answer is just to say 'fuck it' and not try and replicate that stuff too much? I don't know.
It's still one of my all time favorite settings/lines (I was even into the CCG tournaments back in the day), so good luck to anyone who wants to try it. You'd have me as a player if nothing else.
Can you explain why it is imperative to have everyone have access to every scene? I'm not sure i understand. Or I don't relate to the idea that one should never have scenes that have a specific focus that includes every type of pc.
Ideally for some scenes it would be nice to have the opportunity for a balanced group be more successful, and ST can certainly nudge things that way...but a lot of the time the problems arise not with the code or system but with other players not wanting to give and take. Which can also be managed by the ST but its not very much fun to do so in the moment. I do find that largely people (aside from the person that wanted to do everything/control everything) are pretty grateful when the ST asserts some action control (hey bob, you can't do x, you, and z. Pick one action and pose appropriately. Hey bob, I asked earlier thar you limit yourself to reasonable actions so that others can participate. Pick one thing, the next time I have to stop the scene you will need to leave. Byeeeeeee bob!). In my experience as a ST there are players of social PCs that will attempt to dominate a scene just as much as combat pcs have the reputation for.
I think the more that you give and protect player opportunities to use the abilities of their pcs the more relaxed they get about when an individual scene might have less for them to do than they hoped, because they can trust that another time they might have more focus.
But a lot of that is setting game culture rather than relying on code or system to solve problems. I do think that if it's possible perhaps narrowing focus is also not a bad thing. I don't have an issue with extreme narrowing (all courtier or none), but setting and clear guidelines for what kinds of characters you will accept can help. Maybe all fighties must have experience supporting political delegations/missions, or courtiers are going somewhere with a reputation for needing some degree of self-defense, and do not approve fish out of water pcs for the specific setting and scope.
@mietze Was that addressed to me, or someone else?
@greenflashlight said in FFG L5R:
by giving courtiers a separate niche that bushi and shugenja can't infiltrate.
I mean... a Courtier isn't going to go to the front lines of war, nor are they going to go deal with spirits with kung fu or spells... so separate niches already exist. But nobody is saying Bushi or Shugenja or Monks cannot participate in court. They are all Samurai (... kinda, not really monks, but they also have Cloister RP where nobody but the monks go, so again, niches exist)
However, court IS where Courtiers shine. So like... let them?
I hear you. But it is not so easy to cut them out. So you have to have a robust, enforceable system. And if you don’t, you are killing the setting.
It’s baked in. That’s my point, if I had one.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
@jennkryst That's fine for tabletop, but in a MU* setting where people are already painfully shy about contacting one another for scenes, I worry about the wisdom of creating a game so rigidly segregated that it's effectively three to six different games in one.
@greenflashlight
It's not really that much different from WoD games where you'll have Werewolves and Vampires and Changelings that all have a bit of their own thing. And sometimes a werewolf gets dragged into some Vampire business for some reason... they won't be the best suited for it and hopefully the player/character both recognize that they're out of their element and act accordingly, but it can be a fun time to have those separate spheres if players and storytellers come to it with the right mindset.
When done right, it's not so much excluding someone as making sure there's opportunities for builds besides just combat-heavy characters, give spies or social butterflies time to shine. Or combat characters moments to not just punch a problem away and struggle through something for character development.
@greenflashlight So it is totally cool that a Courtier will not be allowed to 'infiltrate' Bushi RP out on the battlefield (as well they shouldn't, because they don't have training in all the combat skillz), but a Bushi being forced to not be on-par socially with a Courtier is somehow creating a rigidly separate game.
Still. Nobody says that the Bushi cannot go to Court. At no point should Bushi be restricted from participating in social scenes. However... the Bushi should going into social scenes knowing that, barring a botch or horrible dice roll... the Courtier will run circles around them.
I hear you. But it is not so easy to cut them out. So you have to have a robust, enforceable system. And if you don’t, you are killing the setting.
It’s baked in. That’s my point, if I had one.
That's my point as well. Dismissing the social systems in L5R is missing a massive part of the setting. As it is based on an amalgam of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Mongolian cultures, though predominantly Japanese, etiquette, customs, social niceties, and the subtle meaning of minor actions are all very important things. Sometimes more so than combat, magic, or subterfuge skills. This is a game with a Tea Ceremony skill for goodness sake. An entire skill devoted to performing a tea ceremony, because it's of such import to the culture of the setting.
So, yeah, if you're going to eject social mechanics from L5R, you are clearly doing a disservice to the setting.
As this is an FFG thread, its worth explaining that FFG L5R weakens the role protection/delineation between the traditional Bushi (warrior) / Shugenja (priest/mage) / Courtier / Monk / (Ninja, shh) schools considerably.
In prior editions, you picked a school, it fit into one of those categories, and you got a technique each rank from that school (or one technique + access to a new spell level each rank for Shugenja). So, absent (supposedly very rare) multi-schooling, Bushi would only get more combat techniques as they went on, and Courtiers only more courtier stuff. This meant that by higher ranks the niche protection was extreme: bushi could one-shot Oni and courtiers had abilities approaching mind control.
In FFG, the technique divisions exist not in Clan schools but in categories: Kata (fighty stuff), Kiho (monk chi techniques), Invocations (spells), Shuji (social, meditative and leadership techs), and Ninjutsu (dishonorable stealth-based techs that no one admits exist). There's also a general 'Rituals' category that includes stuff that is basically universal Rokugani practice (like the Tea Ceremony). Individual Clan schools have access to 3 of these, usually 2 'specialized' ones + Rituals. And MOST Bushi and Courtier schools have access to both Kata and Shuji. The differentiation comes in a rank 1 school specific advantage, and school 'curriculum' that reward you for advancing in a semi-defined path and provide early access to specific techniques or possibly even toss in something special 'out of class' (IE the Hiruma Scout has the usual Bushi selection of Kata, Shuji and Rituals, but can access a couple specific Ninjutsu techs for sneaking around).
On the whole, everything is much more mix-and-match, pick-and-choose. And with only Rings rather than stats, there's not much of the potential min-maxing statwise that would generate socially inept Bushi in earlier editions. Being high Earth means you are enduring; that can mean shouldering blows on the battlefield, but it can also mean standing firm in court. So basically, it's much truer to L5R fiction in that the average Bushi will be socially competent if they put even the tiniest effort into it.
But yeah, it also expects that you roll social stuff, in part because everyone CAN participate. If you're not comfortable with social dice, it's not a good choice of system whatsoever.
@jennkryst said in FFG L5R:
@greenflashlight So it is totally cool that a Courtier will not be allowed to 'infiltrate' Bushi RP out on the battlefield (as well they shouldn't, because they don't have training in all the combat skillz), but a Bushi being forced to not be on-par socially with a Courtier is somehow creating a rigidly separate game.
Not only is that not what I said, I don't think it's a reasonable inference to draw from everything I've said about it in this thread, but whatever. I'm very tired of trying to talk to people who keep changing it to suit them. It's really starting to hurt my feelings.
If the problem to solve is getting shy players to take initiative and people feeling welcome to participate in mixed scenes then honestly I don't think that is ever solvable by system or mechanics.
That is a game culture thing.
You can nerf everyone into oblivion, remove whole systems from play and you will still have players who have anxiety about jumping in because it is not about sheets but initiating out joining play. You will also always have players who will refuse to participate in anything they're not "good" at and define being good as having a high probability of success. There isn't anything wrong with that as a playstyle but in that case nothing will really satisfy except for free-form play with no risk, so if they need that to feel comfortable and welcome then honestly they'll need to find a game that allows full choice rather than systems that allow for failure/risk.
And again, those games can be fun too esp when there's a culture of sharing the limelight and interest in developing other people's stories.
The issues tend to happen when there are mixed playstyles/expectations. People who enjoy risk of failure/less control over degree of success and needing to adjust play accordingly are going to see a system as a means to help them enjoy that kind of informing of play. If others see it more as a guideline to inform their play in general but not limiting it to whats on their sheet, thats going to clash.
And even then you have differing personality types (such as the all or nothing folks, if they are you maxed out or high statted for a thing they don't feel comfortable even trying, or someone moving from a high xp/power game to a low or moderate one now feeling inadequate).
But I think it is almost never the system but game culture. And you must cultivate the culture too, the system won't build it for you. Without guidance, you'll still have people not on the same page but hundreds of them.
Courtiers are quite literally one-third of the entire game. You can't just write them out.
I agree with @ominous and others. If your character exists to be a social butterfly then there should be mechanics for those proficiencies. You should have to roll checks the same as swinging a sword if it's for somethi g substantive and not Lady Imsaria's Thirteenth baby shower in three years praise the Light!
