Posts made by Jennkryst

@carma The way it was handled in our last game, just a random portal opened up at the start of every game session, anyone who missed last week falls out of it, and anyone who is absent this week falls into it. So... timey-wimey.

Equipment management and/or local economies.

Encumbrance rules exist for a reason: for the ST to rules lawyer a player into not being able to carry all of the things. When we ignore this, the characters SHOULD look like the Junk Lady from Labyrinth. Yet somehow they do not.

Local Economies... some places have a magical ATM for gold. I know some bandits stole all your gold and we gave it back to you... it was only 40 pieces... but now that we have slain the dragon, we're going to sell you some of it's loot, and you will now magically have thousands of gold to pay us!

... semi-related to economies, anyone else remember when 1 gold was a month's wage for a peasant? How many adventurers were killed because they limped back to town with 3hp left and a farmer gets them with a pitchfork and doesn't have to work again for years, because this player had 100 gold on them?

@reason Path of Waves if the new nation is Gaijin. I haven't come across rules for playable Kenku or Naga or anything like that for 5e, but they could be made with the Gaijin rules, too.

This isn't entirely true, I see a school for the Kitsune Shapeshifter, so that could also be used to model other races.

Edit to add: Maybe land route for the Ivory Kingdoms to do stuff. Here have a semi-canon map!

... map won't load, go to fan wiki instead- https://l5r.fandom.com/wiki/World/Planet_of_L5R_and_Rokugan

@songtress I meant more 'go into battle with your pet', but perhaps I SHOULD read all the techniques and school abilities first. After work!

More book updates!

Path of Waves, the book for Ronin and Gaijin, also has Bonds, and has a convenient 'here is how to build your own schools' section, which... I'm not saying should be used to make custom schools for any given MU, BUT! It does have 'you get X skills and Y techniques' guidelines, which every book school appears to follow, so it a great place for doing the theoretical XP Maths! Also, because Ronin and Gaijin aren't very clan-y, it has alternate 20 questions.

Fields of Victory, the WAR book, adds Mass Combat stuffs. Oddly no bonds, these can be kit-bashed for your support staff as desired, I guess? Also details Clan Badger. I don't know anything about them, but it's a Badger, so lulz. Also has a Beastmaster school, so you can fight alongside your pet Pokémon. 10/10.

@testament said in Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings:

2nd ed(because I like THAC0 and you can't tell me otherwise).

All hail THAC0. All hail Spelljammer!

Playing 3.5 just felt like a White Wolf system without saying it was White Wolf and I never actually played 4th ed, but from everything I had read about it, it didn't seem all that interesting.

4e isn't horrible, and I stand by my assessment that it is hands down the best D&D to play in a MU, because every power and ability is written in gamist terms. Theatre of the mind is already tricky enough before you start dropping 60' fireballs on people. You code in a grid and a 5x5 spell, set it on grid, hits that 5x5.

This makes extra sense when you realize 4e was designed alongside an online program for chatroom play or something that could track all the timers on buffs and debuffs and everything else (late 00's, so it never materialized).

Maybe it's just my wargaming background, but I was never put off by having to track all that stuff. A mu could also track it with +init somehow?

All that said, I don't think D&D is particularly good for MUs in general (levels are the dinosaur problem in convenient number format)... then again, you can solve this by following the FF14 method of 'this is a level 5 plot, I do not care if you are level 20, if you join this plot, you revert to your level 5 self'. Which... easier to do in 4e than others. Surprise benefit!

@reason It's less have Imperial Families, and more 'here are a bunch of monk orders that anyone else could have left their family to go join'.

As for why crab land bad... I'd guess its 50/50 'all the crab are stoic gruff types over everyone's shit' and 'almost anything could be tainted, and if it looks at you the wrong way, you can become tainted, too'... but @Songtress can clarify further.

All our XP calculations are wrong, we overlooked step 13. We're doomed. Doomed!

Emerald Empire has the Imperial Families, their schools, and then some monk orders. So that's probably a must for the game, on top of the core.

Courts of Stone is less REQUIRED, but it gives a bunch of ideas for Winter Court (not just for socialites - we got archery tournaments, we got hunting trips, we got snowman building contests, we got romance, we got espionage, and we got rules for that one Crane Shinobi school. Yes, that one. Ninja-Crane!)

Courts of Stone also has rules for Bonds, which are... um. Complicated, at a glance. They are your ally-type rules, but they work with both PCs and NPCs. It is tricksy because this costs XP? A social web on your +sheet or in +notes or something would be great... like Intimacies in Exalted. Some way to track ways to leverage characters?

FLGS did not have the Lion/War book, but I'm sure there are similar rules for Bushi for their Mass-Combat stuffs.

@pyrephox said in Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings:

SOCIAL ROLLS

Let's GOOOOOOO!

@il-volpe It's active enough that I have been in 1 court scene and 2 other staff-run plot adjacent scenes. There are 3 big events planned Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and Saturday night. That's just staff, also plenty of stuff from Producer/player level STs.

Edit: Dunno about Vamp... Mummy is a subset, but I've focused more on Ling because of alt lulz.

@il-volpe Depends on the sphere. Changeling plot is semi-active, so you get lots of opportunity to roll and/or bullshit learning.

You could always go FULL BATTLETECH CLANNER about babies, but that might be a little too... eugenics-y.

If we're voting for cool locations, I lean towards the new to 4e and erased in the reboot location, Kaigen's Island. The proximity to Shiro Shiba and metaplot gives you built-in Mantis/Phoenix conflict, it's an island so we got boats and sea monsters... speaking of monsters AND plot... this Island just happened to be recently raised from the ocean floor, so it's extra supernatural, which means it's got some shadowland taint of its own!

I picked up a couple of the FFG books from FLGS, buuuut local music festival didn't get canceled, so work is going to be hell until next week, not a lot of time to read through them.

@bored said in FFG L5R:

Conversely, I think if you just gave people XP... you'd see much more min-maxed results, even if they were more 'XP equivalent.' Everyone would max their chosen MA, Fitness, Theology, Courtesy, and perhaps a few others based on their character/build. They wouldn't end up reflecting their clans and families, which is important in L5R. It's part of the setting: characters strongly reflect their heritage, and breaking with tradition is rare and a big deal.

This is fair. Possible solutions include XP for the generalists to bring them up to min-max level... OR we give people a pick of skill ranks that conveniently add up to the same XP. Must pick from LIST, where LIST is provided by your clan/family/school.

... really, the generalist xp option FEELS like the best, as long as you put in restrictions on what it can be spent on.

@reason said in FFG L5R:

So... I suppose the REAL question is... why aren't we coding one up right now?

At a guess, because there's 7 clans, 30 families, and 31 schools in the core book (assuming there isn't a monk order somewhere outside of the chargen section). With more Clans, Families, and Schools added from other books (we will almost certainly want Mantis and other monk orders)... that's a lot. It's easier to just have chargen be '+request Chargen=I am this Clan, Family, and School, please +setstat my rings as _____, my skills as ______, my techniques as _______, and here are my +notes about whatever else'

@reason ... oh shit, I skipped step 4 in my calculations. THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING (okay not really)... yeah, strait 2's is 30 xp, and 3/3/2/1/1 is 36 XP, so it's still the 6 XP difference MAX for rings I accounted for with my previous math, just more than 2/2/2/2/1 vs 3/2/2/1/1 (with a 3 XP variable if you go in the middle, with 3/2/2/2/1).

Skills have a max spread of 8 XP for Bushi and Courtiers (16 XP for eight 1's vs 24 XP for 3/2/1/1/1), and 8 XP for Shugenja (12 XP for 1/1/1/1/1/1 vs 20 XP for 3/2/1)... admittedly fewer overall skills, but they also get 5 techniques vs the Bushi/Courtier 2 techniques (so 9 XP extra... but it's all their basic 'do spirit world' kit, so this is fine)

Edit because math is hard, mmkay?

@reason You're one ring too high - The Family bonus is a +1 between one of two rings, not a +1 to both. Which does indeed mean if you're going the most well-rounded path, you're 2/2/2/2/1, so you will have one ring that is your 'weakness'... Exciting!

I meant to go check the used book store for other FFG books, but I didn't. I only have the core at the moment, so I couldn't tell you if they are NEEDED. I think there is plenty of variety in the core, with the exception of maybe definitely bringing in some more Monk orders.

@reason Yeah, the maximum variation of most/least efficient builds is just 14 XP worth of stuff. I mean, that's still seven rank 1 skills, or four techniques and a skill... or raising a ring to 4 and a rank 1 skill...

It's not a TON in the long run. But it annoys me a tiny bit.

That's also assuming Bushi/Courtier. Shugenja get fewer skills in exchange for more techniques.

Also also, there are 4 schools in the core book that do not follow the pattern - Kaiu Engineer School, Togashi Tattooed Order, Ikoma Bard School, and Kaito Shrine Keeper School. The two monk schools get 4 skills (and variable techniques), while Kaiu Engineer and Ikoma Bard get three techniques (should probably be errata'd to a 'pick one' as almost every other school has)

@reason Would you be surprised to know that the 4e game @bored ran took place in Sunda Mizu Mura... Clear Water Village, which is INCREDIBLY close to the wall, and is a major port for Crab Clan?

As for XP... it's an easy HR. Without a ton of thought put into it, I'm inclined to say 'You get 3/2/2/1/1 rings' and then where we go for skills and techniques is ... I'm not sure yet. I glanced over all the schools, and it looks like non-Sugenja get 5 skills and 2 techniques, and Shugenja get 3 skills and 5 techniques? But you also have the one family skill and 2 clan skills, so (needs more math for all the things)...

Ooooor skills can just get a spread like the rings. But I am more inclined to use 'start 0, spend XP' because this allows for specialization, but does not punish you for generalization. Either way, more math is needed.

IRONICALLY, the whole 'nobody needs to invest in social attributes because Rings are how you approach things' means that those who want to do social good definitely need the skill.

Funky dice are funky:

The 4 results are thus: in the d12 column, the symbol on 3 is opportunity, the symbol on 8 is success, the symbol on 12 is Success + reroll (the reroll is included in the 'keep'), and the little candle flame you'll see on various lines is strife.

As you can see, there are no... 'take away number of successes' like in the Genesys/Star Wars dice.

Strife is kind of your social damage track - not only can you gain it yourself by choosing to keep a die result that has the symbol on it, but you can inflict 2 strife on another (generally as a side effect of Fire approach), heal 2 strife from another (Earth approach), or heal 2 strife from yourself (Water approach), all by spending those specific opportunity dice. A note - any approach can heal strife from yourself 1:1 with opportunity.

Specific techniques can give you other things to spend opportunity or success on; it is very much a guideline for shaping narrative play with dice, rather than just making stuff up as you go along. There is always going to be something cool and fun, or at the very least useful, to spend opportunity dice on.

AS FOR MIN-MAXING, it's kinda still around a little bit. If your house + school add to the same skills or rings, it saves on XP in the long run. Not... a LOT, but it does. Obvious solution is the usual: give a pile of XP and start from scratch, or a set spread of what they can have. This is not a must, but it annoys me, so I will whine like a child if it's not done.